“Hmm,” he said after the waiter was gone. “But they were referenced in the other books, right? Then they must be there.”
“We searched in the person registry, and there was no Fontanelli listed there. There is a Vacchi, but he had nothing to do with you. We searched in the local registry, in the key-word registry, in…”
A loud crash startled her. There was a collision by the double-winged doors that led into the kitchen. A tray on the floor surrounded by glass shards from a green water bottle and a drinking-glass. A trainee waitress, close to tears, had to endure a ranting from the cameriere.
This seemed to amuse Alberto. “When I spent a night here last year the very same thing happened,” he told her. “They should put up something like a traffic sign to let them know which door is in and which is out.”
“Yes,” Ursula said absentmindedly. “I thought they had one.” The late afternoon sunlight reflected brightly from a couple of shards. One of the doors was still swinging back and forth making a slight creaking sound, like a bird chirping. Alberto said something but she didn’t hear. She was thinking about traffic signs, kitchen doors, and then started to shake her head. “Ich bin eine Idiotin! Ich bin die größte Idiotin, die jemals …“ “I’m such an idiot! I’m the biggest idiot that ever…”
“Ursula?” Alberto looked at her concerned. “What’s the matter?”
She stood up and looked at her wristwatch. She might have just enough time. “I have to go back into the archive,” she said, suddenly aware that she had been speaking German.
“The archive? But what do you want to do so late…”
“The outgoing registry — I forgot to ask for the outgoing registry!”
She swam back up to the surface. Benigno tore the mask from his head, kicking water.
“Dynamite fishers!” he shouted breathlessly. He looked around and then pointed. “Over there!”
Indeed, a narrow fishing boat on the waves barely a quarter mile away was bobbing on the waves. Two men sat inside, one rowing and the other messing around with a net.
“Well then let’s get out of here,” John said and looked around to the Prophecy. But the yacht was around the cliff and could not be seen from their position.
“No, I must go over there. Dynamite fishing is strictly forbidden. It destroys the coral and the fry … You saw it down there. It’s my duty to arrest them.”
“How do you plan to do that? With your bare hands?”
But Benigno shook his head, put the mask on, went underneath the surface and swam towards the boat.
“What now?” Patricia asked troubled. “We can’t let him go alone.”
John had a twisted look. “My bodyguards will quit or kill me if I go swimming after him.” He patted himself to find the little plastic case that Marco handed him before he went diving. He opened it and got out the walkie-talkie. “Let’s see if this thing is as watertight as the manufacturer asserts.” He switched it on, and what a surprise, wet as it was, a red LED light came on. “Nice toy.” He pressed the call button. “Marco? Can you hear me?”
“I hear you loud and clear,” Marco’s voice said from out of the sealed mike.
“Marco, please come here with the motorboat,” John told him, hoping to have made himself clear. “We’re in the bay. Hurry!”
The answer was an unintelligible, “Mrchsptrst …”
“With the boat.” John repeated. “Boat … come … fast.”
“Icnt hrsts ssstkr.”
John looked at the red light. “I did all I could,” he said, turned the unit off and stuffed back into the pouch. “Come on, we can’t leave Benigno alone.”
They took off the scuba gear and swam after him on the surface but with no real hope of catching up with him. Benigno obviously had a swimmer’s physique for a reason. As they swam towards the fishing boat small fish floated all around them on the water’s surface. More and more the closer they got.
The two fishermen were busy collecting their catch and didn’t notice the swimmers approaching. When Benigno suddenly appeared on the surface they were almost startled to death. One guy nearly dropped his net and the other one started to shout. Benigno shouted in a language that for John sounded only like malang-malang and alala, and then the three men were shouting at each other all at once.
The guy with the paddles spotted John and Patricia swimming towards them. He stood up and held a paddle like a weapon, shouting and gesticulating with it, looking like he’d use it as a club. The other man tried to calm him down with composed words, but he didn’t seem to have much influence over his companion.
“My God,” Patricia screamed and swallowed some water. She spat it out. “He’s going to smash Benigno’s head!”
John didn’t answer, mainly because he was out of breath from swimming so fast. He stopped and put out his arms to keep Patricia from getting any closer to the boat, which was bobbing wildly in the water and would have tipped over for sure if it didn’t have the outrigger on it. The situation was pretty serious.
“He’s afraid for his boat,” Patricia shouted. “It’ll get confiscated when he’s caught fishing with dynamite. You used to get the death penalty for this.”
John looked at her surprised. “How do you know that?”
“Read it in the guidebook.”
No wonder the man was so upset. A fisherman without a fishing boat meant the end of his career. People had committed murder for less. But instead of trying to hit them with the paddle, he stopped and just stood there staring over their heads to the horizon. The three in the water also turned around to see what he was looking at: the Prophecy’s motorboat, white, elegant, and racing over the waves right towards them. Now that the shouting had stopped they could hear the boat’s engine roaring.
The fisherman sat down and dropped the paddle. He put his hands over his face and cried. The other man looked at him with dismay, the net still in his hands and the few fish wriggling within. They yielded to their fate.
The motorboat came alongside the fishing boat. Marco was behind the wheel and sitting beside him was a young, wiry man wearing sunglasses. John remembered him; his name was Chris, a red-haired Irishman who had been having a hard time with the tropical sun.
“Is everything all right?” Marco asked with concern and let the ladder down so that they could climb aboard.
What distressed John the most was the meager catch the two men had. The fish they had already caught barely covered the bottom of an old mustard-colored bucket, and none of the fish were any larger than a hand. Altogether, including the fish still in the water, it would make maybe two full meals, if you ate the fins and bones too.
“I don’t get it,” he told Benigno. “How can this be worth it? I mean, they don’t get the dynamite for nothing.”
Benigno was in no mood for contemplating the economics of this. He just sat there, wiped his face with jittery hands and murmured something in his mother tongue. “Over ninety percent of coral reefs have already been destroyed by dynamite fishing,” he said. “It is forbidden, they get their boats taken away, but they just won’t stop it.”
“Yes,” John nodded. “But there’s got to be a reason.”
“Because they are stupid! Stupid and superstitious and thickheaded!” His nerves seemed frazzled.
John peered over to the others. Marco looked at him expectantly. Patricia crouched beside Benigno on the bench as if she wasn’t sure if she should put her arm around him or not. The two fishermen stared up at him from their bobbing boat with anxious expressions.
“Benigno,” John said, “I want to see how they live.”
The government representative looked up at John confused. “How they live?”
“Yes. Their village, their families, their whole surroundings. I want to understand why they do this.”
“Why?”
“I just told you why. I want to understand how they live.”
The broad-shouldered Filipino wanted to respond, but then he remembered why he was sent h
ere. “They live a very simple life. It is of no interest to you, I’m sure.”
“If I say I’m interested then I’m interested.”
Benigno was obviously conflicted. “But this is not part of the nice things to see in my country. That’s what I am here to show you. Not a miserable fishing village.”
“I’ve seen the nice parts of your country for the past three weeks.”
Benigno stared down at the deck, as if there was an answer to be found there. “We should just hand those two over to the local authorities and keep going. That would be best.”
“Not for the two of them. And I have no desire to play policeman.” John rubbed his chin. “But, of course, I don’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to. My office will be able to organize having a translator flown here. It’ll only take few hours.” That John didn’t want to force him to do something was a lie. For the first time he was using McCaine’s method of exerting power deliberately.
And he was doing it successfully. Benigno kept staring straight ahead. The fact that he had not spoken showed he was thinking about it. Benigno did not want be sent home — what a disgrace that would be. “No, that’s not necessary,” he mumbled. “If you would really like to …”
“Thank you.” John pointed to the fishermen. “Tell them what we want to do, tell them to lead us to their village.”
“Right now?” Patricia asked upset. “No, John, you can’t do that. I have to get back to the ship and wash the salt out of my hair.”
Of course, right now and immediately, John thought. We’ll never find them again later on. “We’ll be back by this evening. Benigno, please …”
With Patricia still complaining, the envoy leaned towards the side of the boat and spoke with the fishermen. The one with the paddles, a squat man with a face covered in scars, seemed to be the spokesman of the two. John noticed that the other man had two fingers missing, probably due to handling dynamite _ this had obviously not been their first time at it. He was much older, with gray hair and wrinkles, and he appeared softer and more submissive of the pair.
“They are not very happy about the idea,” Benigno explained. “They want to know what we want in their village. They think that we want to harm their families.”
“Tell them that they have nothing to fear, that we won’t press charges.”
Benigno cleared his throat. “If I may make a suggestion, give them some money, five dollars or ten. That’s a small fortune here. Then they might believe you.”
John pat his neoprene suit. Of course, he did not have any money with him. Come to think of it, since he’d been wealthy he hardly ever had money on him anymore. “Does anyone have ten dollars?” he asked and looked at the others. “Marco, you maybe? You’ll get it back.”
“With interest and compound interest?” Marco asked, already digging around in his pants pockets. He pulled out a ten dollar bill and handed it over to John. “Now you owe me.”
“Thanks.”
He handed the money to Benigno who held it to the fishermen. They talked back and forth and the one with the paddles made big eyes. He studied the strangers looking down at him from in the big motorboat. He took the bill.
“His name is Pedro and the other man is Francisco,” Benigno said. “They will take us to their village.
The village was so close to the water that looked almost as if the woods right behind it had gradually pushed it there. The small gray huts with wicker, straw walls, and roofs made of weathered palm fronds stood close together, some on stilts in the water and others over the mangroves. Faded pieces of clothing hung on wash lines. Only a closer look revealed them to be tee-shirts, pants, and shorts. There was cardboard, corrugated sheet metal, and plastic foil behind and in between the huts. Groups of children, most half naked, ran towards them when they saw the big white motorboat approaching their worn-out pier, looking like something from another world.
“Don’t touch anyone’s head,” Benigno warned them, “and that includes the children. It’s considered impolite.”
But the children never got close enough for this to happen. They kept a respectful distance from the strangers with the brightly colored neoprene suits. A throng of kids escorted them as they followed the two fishermen. Even Patricia went along, who up to the last moment had complained and said she would not set foot on land. Only Chris remained on the boat.
They were still on the pier when a man drew near to greet them. There was a rusty hook where a right hand should have been. They shook his left hand then continued walking. Sitting in front of a hut was a man who only had one upper thigh left, looking glumly at a brown bottle on his lap. They saw several young men using homemade crutches because they had each lost a leg. Another one had no arms. When the people realized the strangers felt sorry for them, they brought them into another hut where a man without arms or legs lay in a sack hanging from the ceiling. The villagers said something and laughed heartily and even the man in the sack laughed a dirty toothless laugh.
“What did they say?” John wanted to know.
“That he made two kids since his accident,” Benigno said embarrassed.
Patricia turned away. “I think I’m going to vomit,” she said.
It was like a drug-induced trip through a strange world, a nightmare from a hellish painting. This wasn’t a village, it was a battlefield. The inhabitants looked like they lived on the frontlines, where there were landmines every step of the way. But perhaps the only fight they were fighting was one of survival.
They got to Pedro’s hut. His wife, a delicate woman with big jaded eyes, bowed deeply before them until her husband commanded her with a rough tone to get the guests something to eat and drink. With her head low, she went away and returned with a brown bottle without a label that smelled of alcohol and a bowl of rice with pieces of fish in it. Pedro introduced his children. There were seven in all, four sons whom he named. Then he made a gesture for his guests to sit so they could eat and talk.
“I still have some money,” Marco whispered, “in case it’s proper to give them some for their hospitality. I mean, I guess we’re eating up their food for the entire week.”
“Later,” Benigno whispered back.
Francisco sat with them although they still didn’t know what relation he was to Pedro or his family. After a while other villagers came to join them to look at the strangers, though no one dared stare for any length of time, except for the small children. Everyone wanted to tell their story.
“They say they must go out further to the sea because there is nothing to catch anymore near the coastline,” Benigno translated, and added bitterly, “It’s no wonder, they destroyed everything here. They sawed-off the branch they were sitting on.”
John could see part of the beach from where he sat. There was a raggedy old man out there handling a fine-meshed net judging by the shimmer in the sunlight, as if nobody had told him there were no more fish. He displayed great patience, throwing the net into the water over and over again. “Do they even know what they are doing with the dynamite?” John asked. “Why it’s forbidden?”
Benigno asked, the fishermen answered, and then Benigno talked to them, explaining the consequences of using explosives. Judging by their expressions they had never been told it was illegal. They didn’t know that coral reefs were the home and food source for countless fish and that dynamite destroyed the coral. And they did not know that by trying to increase their catch this way they actually created underwater deserts and destroyed all life, and that their children would be left with nothing.
John looked over at the old man again and remembered that at one point, a hundred years ago it seemed, he had been sitting in his office reading about this subject in a book. Back then he had understood it all so well, although the preservation of coral reefs seemed like a secondary issue. But this here was real. For these people the preservation of coral reefs was a matter of life and death.
“They didn’t know,” Benigno said in annoyance. “They s
imply thought dynamite fishing was forbidden because it was dangerous for them.” He shook his head. “They still don’t seem to fully understand …”
Patricia DeBeers was twisting the ends of her hair and examined them. “Why did they even start doing it? Didn’t the old method work well enough for centuries?”
“Good question,” John nodded.
Benigno passed the question on. It was mostly the elders who answered with long melodious comments, while the others nodded in agreement. But Benigno could not translate everything they said, so he simply told them in a nutshell: “The fish catch wasn’t enough anymore.”
“Why not?”
“There were too many people.”
“They had to find a way to catch more fish than the traditional methods allowed. I understand.” John nodded. So indeed, overpopulation was the mother of all problems. He looked around and saw the hordes of children, the human interest and compound interest of their forefathers. “Have they ever thought of having fewer children instead?”
Benigno shook his head. “That’s something I don’t even have to start asking. That’s not allowed.”
“Why?” Patricia asked sharply. “What about contraceptives?”
“They are against the law. And it’s against God’s will.”
“And is it against God’s will to give penicillin to a child with pneumonia?”
He looked embarrassed. “I can’t be the judge of that. That’s the church’s business. I go by what the priests say.”
“Is that what you do?” She looked at him with a sharp grin, leaned closer to him and said in a low tone: “I have a riddle for you: do I take the pill, yes or no? Guess.”
Benigno stared at her with widened eyes. John had a strong impression that if the two had had a relationship, he had just witnessed its end.
Later on, on their way back to the boat, they passed by the old man with the net. He had caught a handful of small fish in the two hours they were there. The fish were only an inch or so long.
John pointed at them and asked Benigno: “Ask him if he knows that those little fish won’t grow up into adult fish to make more fish. Ask him if he knows that he’s destroying his last chance to ever catch anything at all in the coming years.”
One Trillion Dollars Page 46
