The Dragonfly Sea

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Outside, Nioreg clamped both his arms around Delaksha. Delaksha yelled, “Assassins!” She twisted her body. “Where’s that woman?” She was looking for Shu Ruolan, and spotted her standing next to the guardrail. “Explain this, you supercilious self-righteous bitch!”

  “Delaksha!” Nioreg scolded.

  “What, Nio? What? Everything is negotiable for you, is it?”

  “Be reasonable.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not their fault.”

  “They exist, don’t they?” She then slumped on Nioreg, arms hanging loose, drained.

  * * *

  —

  When Lai Jin made his way past the passengers, he avoided all eyes, but his steps were firm. Ayaana watched him, stricken. His steps slowed down. What could he say? That they had been used? His senior crew advised that they seal the container as best they could and sail on. They could endure the stench for a few more days. But they had been used. They had been played, and this—the assumption of his dumb gullibility—wounded both his pride and his honor the most. He had gone to the sea in order to rewrite his life. But now malevolent humans had woven the grotesque into his destiny. Today, life lay heavy within him. It was not just about the bloody contraband on his ship; it was also about the potent uncertainties that had shaken him. What if he had resigned his commission on the day he heard Shanghai Accent? Too late. The chaos was in full flowering within and without. Lai Jin retreated to the helm. The boat set off on a faster course. No one spoke. It returned to being a ship of human silences offset by the groan of machines.

  * * *

  —

  Lai Jin was expecting the knock on his cabin door. He slid it open. Her eyes were red. She had been crying. He lowered his head. “I apologize,” he said.

  Ayaana touched his arm.

  Lai Jin straightened up slowly. Weary, weary eyes.

  She sat on the edge of his bed. When he looked at her, it was with resignation.

  He got up to stand before the Zao Wou-Ki print, addressing it as he rubbed the burned side of his face. “I am a plastic duck floating in current.” Bitterness in the turn of his lips. He turned to study her. “Go to sleep, Haiyan. Tomorrow I will do something.” His fingers touched hers. “You believe me?” His voice was cold.

  Ayaana stared at him before muttering, “I need air.”

  She left.

  Lai Jin straightened his cuffs and stepped out to return to the bridge and relieve the night command.

  * * *

  —

  When the morning came, Captain Lai Jin was in dress uniform. He had never fully exercised the legal authority that his command of sea vessels gave him. Dared to walk a precipice. Playing with fear, playing with fire. A gamble. First he summoned the entire crew and apologized for jeopardizing their jobs by not anticipating the deception that had allowed globally condemned illegal shipments aboard their ship. His apology contained a subtle warning; it was in their interests never to be linked to this sort of contraband if they wanted a future in shipping. He said he had come to a decision about the cargo, the responsibility of which was his alone to bear. He informed his crew that in the night, he had received orders to meet another ship in the high seas in order to transfer this particular cargo. He added that he intended to ignore it. He demanded the cooperation of his crew.

  * * *

  —

  Ayaana’s lessons with Teacher Ruolan that day were a return to the basics:

  “What is your name?”

  “Where will you live?”

  “How do you know?”

  * * *

  —

  The late-afternoon skies were violet and broody when the plan was executed. At the instigation of the usually taciturn captain, some key crew aboard the MV Guolong imagined a storm. What a storm it was, for it rendered the instruments that stored and conveyed data useless. Electronic failure. It caused the MV Guolong to “lose its bearings.”

  Lai Jin asked the chief officer, “What ships in the vicinity?”

  “Three. Can’t tell.” He studied the radar. “Fishing boats.”

  “Let them pass,” the captain said.

  After three hours, the execution of an illusion.

  “Rough seas.”

  “Massive waves.”

  “Rolling ship.”

  “Thirty-five-degree pitch?”

  “Make it forty.”

  “Mortal danger.”

  The “threat” of the ship’s capsizing forced the captain to select containers to dump overboard. His instructions were carried out. After three hours, six steel containers full of “scrap metal” were sinking out of sight. A necessary loss—it was thus recorded. Being “off course” after the “storm,” the MV Guolong missed its rendezvous with the waiting ship. In addition to this, an uncommon static had been interfering with the MV Guolong’s communications system, and no messages were coming through. The MV Guolong went even farther off course. The ship’s log recorded an unusually storm-haunted passage to Xiamen.

  * * *

  —

  Order returned to the MV Guolong. There was the continued murmur of gentle seas dotted with many fishing boats that scrambled out of the way of the great, lumbering vessel.

  [ 53 ]

  Lai Jin walked into Ayaana’s cabin with the Zao Wou-Ki print in a roll secured inside a plastic covering. He found her sitting cross-legged on her floor, looking at a map of China. She did not look up at him. He crouched next to her. His fingers stretched her curls, watching them spring back. He wanted to tell her about dumping the containers overboard. But he also knew that, the less the passengers knew, the better for all. Shanghai Accent was a powerful man, and not everybody on the ship could be relied on to maintain the silence. Someone would break. The fallout would bury him…He would not worry yet.

  Ayaana examined her map. “How much longer?” she asked.

  “Thirteen hours,” he said, stroking her face. Touch.

  Now she looked up at him, asking with caution, “I will not see you again?”

  He gave her the Zao Wou-Ki print, not answering.

  She took the print. “Something else,” he said. He handed to her a wooden box lined with “Made in China” red felt. It was the ocean-rescued bit of Chinese porcelain, a relic from an admiral’s junk, gift of the people of Kenya to the people of China. “Keep it safe,” he told her. But he also had to wipe the tears from her face, using both his hands.

  Silence engulfed them. Ayaana had then retrieved a wrapped package from her suitcase. In it was Fundi Mehdi’s compass. She offered it to Lai Jin. She said, “Keep it; it is from my sea.” He did not react. She repeated: “Take it.”

  What he did was tilt her head to watch her eyes, to watch them and then to kiss her, biting her lower lip. And then she was crying. Her hand rose. She scratched his face where the fire scar was. He winced, but then laughed and dragged her to her feet. They leaned in close to each other, clothes entangled, swaying, not really touching. He bent his head to inhale, as if for the last time, her scent. Like autumn’s last apples. Like waiting for rain. Like the moment just before the Qiantang River plows into the East China Sea: scent of sea and life and earth and fear, rising skyward as a tidal bore. This was the smell of now and—as always—waiting. He murmured something into Ayaana’s lowered head. Whatever it was, it secured the spell. With his head touching hers, he said, “Ni hui gudan.” A pause. “It is the way of life, Haiyan. Loneliness is a country with a teacher’s voice.” He thought that he was being lucid, that the words he strung together made sense. “Also, ruxiang suisu”—Become that which you find at your destination. However, Ayaana heard only sounds that crashed over her head and racked her heart. He took the compass gift and marched, quick time, from her cabin. Lai Jin would stand outside for thirty seconds, touching his own face, the burned, scratched side, in lieu of goodbye. T
he storm that had unmoored him from his pathway should have subsided within him. It raged.

  * * *

  It was portentous that Ayaana’s first glimpse of China would be through the filter of unshed tears, and a body quivering as if in the throes of malaria as it wrestled with a new inner sense, that of unrequited hauntedness.

  Bahari itatufikisha popote.

  The ocean leads anywhere.

  [ 54 ]

  The high-pitched screeching of Xiamen’s emblematic egrets was supposed to herald auspicious arrivals. Today, because of the mist, they appeared as omens of disquiet. Lai Jin glanced over his shoulder at the sea. It was as troubled and hoary as he was. A cold wind blew in like a chill warning. Lai Jin had hoped for warmth. Unease was like an itch on his tongue. He tightened his lips. Whatever his fate, he would receive it.

  * * *

  —

  The harbor. Mandarin: gang kou, Ayaana remembered. Teacher Ruolan had told her to imagine the things she would see from now on only in Mandarin. Ayaana’s gaze was struck by the numerous cranes and containers, and a flotilla approaching the harbor. To the east was a smog-filtered Taiwan. She had found it on the map. She looked for it through her window and saw only Kinmen. Grand words blared a message that was echoed back from Xiamen. She would one day decipher what they meant. She saw the high white buildings and sweeping structures of a nation speeding toward its vision of progress. Swathes of green, and acres and acres of apartment buildings. Ayaana’s eyes scanned the distant hills.

  Destiny.

  Ayaana had suddenly forgotten the Mandarin word for “destiny.” Inside her cabin, a cramping knot in her stomach. From the deck, a cool wind. Scent of salt and spilled oil: a particular perfume of harbors. They would need to wait awhile before the tugboat and pilot that would escort the MV Qingrui/Guolong to harbor showed up.

  Blaring foghorns. Was she home?

  * * *

  —

  Sounds of arrival, the rumble of the anchor; the ship had become a thing alive. Vibrating, clanging machinery, mechanical groans, and grunts and whines. Raised voices, shouts, and commands. Lights. The mixed relief of arrival. Within the farewells, a reluctant wrenching of souls from the intense temporary universe they had inhabited, forced to re-emerge into a land-based reality. The struggle of separation, even though for many this was also a homecoming. Delaksha had been wandering around for hours, huddled in Nioreg’s black jacket, and when she bumped into Ayaana, she had whispered conspirationally, “Here is life! Here is life.”

  Ayaana walked as one condemned. She ached for a return to life aboard the ship.

  Ni shi shei? the sea still called out to her. Who are you? She ignored it.

  * * *

  —

  Disjointed hours. Ayaana relinquished herself to the guiding hand of Teacher Ruolan. Delaksha had sought out Ayaana and smothered her in a tight, teary hug as Teacher Ruolan glared. “You thing, you lovely thing. I could eat you up. I most emphatically love you, child. We will come and see you—won’t we, Nio? We shall travel to Pate with you—won’t we, Nio? Nio, give her your number. It must serve as our address and means of contact for now.”

  On impulse, Ayaana turned to and cupped Delaksha’s face to kiss her on her forehead, as Munira used to do to her. “Thank you,” she said. Nioreg handed Ayaana a business card, with a single number on it. He nodded at her. “You have your people.” He patted her shoulder.

  Ayaana hugged him. Around them, amplified noises and voices. Their bodies swayed, as if the ship were still being buffeted by waves.

  * * *

  —

  Assorted officials boarded the ship to scrutinize their documents. There was a further delay. A meeting of crew and ship captain with another set of officials had resulted in a terse shouting match. Yet another bunch of officials came on board the MV Guolong, one of whom was the square-jawed Shanghai Accent, who was wearing a dark brown hat. He glared at Captain Lai Jin, who stood before him at ease. They left together to survey the cargo hold. A few minutes later, shouting from below resounded on the ship. They all re-emerged almost an hour later. Shanghai Accent was waxen with distilled rage, his mouth a thin line. Captain Lai Jin was pale and uncommunicative, a red streak across his face. An indifferent smile was on his mouth, in his eyes, the resigned look of a pickpocket discovered and destined for some pain. “With evidence from the voyage weather report, you will be shot as a thief.” Lai Jin did not react. The MV Qingrui/Guolong, even-keeled and loyal, already seemed diminished by her motionlessness, and wounded by what was to come.

  [ 55 ]

  Ayaana hovered at the threshold of a step that would lead her into China. Before she left her cabin, she had vomited her fear. Moving forward now, when everything within her screamed for retreat. The captain and some of his crew stood in line to say goodbye. When Ayaana reached Lai Jin, she lowered her head, as he did. No words. Teacher Ruolan and Ayaana were swathed in silence. After the officials left the boat, Teacher Ruolan was the first of those who had traveled from East Africa to disembark, with Ayaana at her heels. A porter carried their luggage. There was no retinue to welcome them, no elaborate speech makers, just a single black car to carry both of them away. Neither looked back.

  Inside the car, Shu Ruolan exhaled. “Now we start again.”

  Ayaana nodded. Shu Ruolan bowed her head to look at her cell phone, which had suddenly clicked into life. Ayaana asked her, “Where will you go?”

  Teacher Ruolan carried on with her clickety-click for a minute, before she turned to Ayaana. “I go back to work. Like you.”

  * * *

  —

  The car was on its way to Xiamen University, where Ayaana’s China sojourn would unfold. They traveled on the widest roads Ayaana had ever seen, within view of the largest number of people she had ever seen using a single pavement. She gaped at the sight of all the floating bridges. Ayaana watched as though she were in front of a television screen. The sun was high and cool over the humid land. Amid inundating odors, she sniffed citrus in the air, and stared when she saw the first of the flame trees lit up with red flowers, transplanted exiles from her own world. She counted the flame trees and imagined them as family so she would not feel the bite of the loneliness that was already burrowing into her bones, then turned to watch the moving crowds, the density of numbers. She felt herself contract as their car raced along the roads and Shu Ruolan studied the messages on her phone.

  [ 56 ]

  Among the last to disembark from the MV Qingrui/Guolong were Nioreg and Delaksha. Delaksha had been forced to wait, because special paperwork had to be organized to allow her temporary entry into the People’s Republic of China. To her giggling delight, on these documents, for ease of processing, she was listed as Nioreg’s wife. Seventy-two hours later, halfway down the gangway, Delaksha pivoted to tease Nioreg, who was lugging their luggage behind her. Some mechanism groaned. The shouting of several men just as Delaksha pointed out to Nioreg the greenish tinge in the clouds hovering over the land. They were shaped like giant spacecraft.

  [ 57 ]

  Stranded by fate, his nerves on edge, Captain Lai Jin declined to leave his ship. On top of everything else, neither he nor his crew had been paid their wages. The crew at least had options, and people waiting for them. Lai Jin had only his ship, the MV Qingrui, and the shelter of his seas. He also had Shanghai Accent’s ringing vow: “I will bleed you; I will boil your bones in my spit.” Lai Jin had wanted to laugh at these imprecations, thus making the mistake of underestimating the depth of human malice.

  * * *

  —

  Captain Lai Jin was made culpable for all the losses and tragedies now attached to the ship and its passage. The Powers used these to make the captain pay for the loss of their illicit cargo. Even though his crew confirmed his witness in their testimonies, he was still accused of incompetence and overreaching his mandate. The ship’s owners were then sl
apped with a two-hundred-million-yuan penalty—which was far, far too much for lost scrap metal—which they ignored by declaring bankruptcy before the court orders could take effect. Overnight, the company dissipated into Xiamen’s morning mists.

  * * *

  —

  Lai Jin had been abandoned on his ship. His migraines had returned. The pain drilled into his head. He shut his eyes. And then, in the silence of that night, in the condemned, decrepit part of the harbor, to which he and his ship had been consigned, ping!

  His eyes snapped open. He had waited. Another ping. And then the sound started to fill the ship and its emptinesses and the hole that had opened inside him, so that, hours later, wielding a torch, he set out to find the source. Focused, mind emptied of all other wanderings, he searched his ship, listening. He was in the engine room when the ping gave away its hiding place. Lai Jin retrieved the watch from within the nook of a tangled mess of pipes. For an elongated moment, elation. He rubbed the dust and oil spatter off the watch with his finger and stared at the ticking minute hand. In another extended moment, the sense of existential loss. He touched the leather straps, and fastened Muhidin’s watch to his wrist.

  Fuata mto uone bahari.

  Follow the river to find the sea.

  [ 58 ]

  Falling leaves, a low-whistle wind. A permanent woolen cloud shrouded the skies. She walked with hesitant steps on pristine streets, wading through ineffable stories in a land that was not quite her own. She turned to the cloud, attempting to discern a glimpse of definitive sun, ignoring the cry of food vendors on the streets. The sun. She knew it was there, because her dress clung to her sweat-drenched skin. Her world was touched with fluorescent strangeness, and somewhere out there, in the mesmerizing dissonance, was the promise of happiness she was eager to discover. She heard her heart thumping as if she had been running. Her moving through Xiamen University Street caused heads to pivot. She heard voices, these other voices. Sounds, noises, words, strings of letters that dissipated around her, without meaning. Tuning in to the unspoken, unstated, to the contours that made up these other faces that she was supposed to be part of. Still she drifted. She counted the hills and trees and giant bridges and heard the birds and tried again and again to see the sea before her.