Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  But those troubled souls and disturbing illustrations of man’s inhumanity to himself stop on immersion in clear, bracing waters. Questions quickly resolve, and the prognosis appears benign. Coral, rocks and greenery are free of siltation or brown algae; fish numbers appear proportionate to carrying capacity for shelter and sustenance. The biggest population segment here are juveniles, ohua — which thinned to “sustainable” levels in Hawaii long ago, nearly three decades, or five decades if you go back to the start of the aquarium madness, in which sustainability defines the acceptable level of destruction.

  Humuhumu, milletseed butterflyfish, threadfin and citron butterflies, damsels and angels, mostly one-inchers and curious as pups, approach to see who in God’s blue ocean this new being can be. Given a minute or two for their tiny hearts to warm, for familiarity to settle in so the gates can open, the curious fish relax, till skittish reaction is gone.

  Then they seem to peer incredulously and ask, Ravid? Is that you? We heard you were coming. Oh, we have ways. News carries quickly under water, you know.

  So the recent émigré/emigrant from twenty degrees above the equator to seventeen degrees below, more or less, gets chicken skin, recalling the open ocean in the dark, which, after all, is not too far from here. Yet setting painful memory aside, he lets the healing begin. With his hands out front, his fingers form a rectangle through which he frames the fishes and therein frames his love. Clicking imaginary masterpieces for the art gallery and the heart, he captures essential character and meaning.

  The oceans are my shepherd, I shall not want...

  So the man submerges once more with a spreading smile that can’t help but leak seawater and the taste of home — sure it was the scene of domestic strife in recent days and nights, but that doesn’t mean the family will remain dysfunctional.

  Hardly.

  Free diving beyond the reef edge to twenty feet, he rises slowly, blowing his biggest bubble with his head in the center. Into the thickening mix with emperor and regal angels, blue damsels, turquoise chromis, all the little fins and his heart aflutter till — wait!

  Flame angels!

  Just there — a mated pair, peeking out and darting to other cover, demure as a deb, brazen as a beau, and far more virtuous than either. But despite their red-orange bodies and vertical black bars in a riotous fire burst stumbled onto like lost treasure, an unfortunate segment of humanity wants to capture and contain them, wants to watch them under control, in captivity, as they fade away.

  Flame angels, at one time the heartthrob of Hawaii’s reefs, are now gone for export to small tanks in America’s offices and homes of people seeking contact with nature’s last vestige. Or to massive wall tanks in Asia.

  Gone.

  No more — but not here. I don’t think here. Could it be here too, that another crime in our collective death is allowed, validated as vital to the aquarium collectors, who also have needs and children to feed? And what else can the home hobbyist in the heartland of America or the insular affluence of Asia do, imagine life on the reef? Don’t they need their little slice of Paradise too, to calm them down after a hard day of capitalism or communism or whateverthefuckism, after all?

  Or is that Paradiseville?

  Well, the scourge of scoop nets, barrier nets, trashcans, coolers and devastating mortality en route can’t be here with this many baby fish on hand.

  And the commercial development popping up like brown coral necrosis on every recollection of Hawaii is already a night and two days and a million small deaths ago, and it drifts farther away with each heartbeat here, for here is a place of throbbing imminence. Hello, my friends, Ravid fills a bubble with greetings, which these fish can read beyond mere rationale — oh, some things are known, or sensed among friends in shallow water and extraordinary coral heads, no trash or damage or monofilament. This place — our place — goes deeper than any place sensed in long time. And maybe a man who’s a mite smarter than only a few days ago will guard against the gates of his heart opening too far, lest they be flooded again with effluent of an undesirable nature.

  And yes, of equal importance is to keep them open just a crack, so whatever goodness is available might seep in, and yes, it does feel like our place — ours in a possessive sense, not in terms of ownership but of belonging in a natural home with no deed of ownership, as nature must have intended before the missionaries came to Hawaii and ended up “owning” the place. This will be different than that because the world has filled with humans since then. But our place will be protected by the exigencies of human travel; people won’t come if it’s not convenient. Here we can live the life, naturally connected, far from suburban centers no longer fit for nature. We’ll be safe; the freight expense and local government being prohibitively difficult on all the stuff required for trashing our lovely place. Oh, it will happen, given a century or two for progress to catch up, but by then something superior to material rationale and spurious “growth” may be enjoyed.

  Arrival is secure on confirming reef hospitality and health. The coral heads as yet untrammeled are not yet browned by leech field seepage, runoff and warming, except for some bleaching on the margins where inertia is broken and may be gaining momentum, because the end of the world begins on the reef. And oh, the end is nigh, unless humanity goes away first, ceasing and desisting by means of its own unwitting invention. These shores are lined with human habitat — simple and pure, to be sure — with cesspits long past their useful lives. How can humans survive in a system designed for failure? They can’t. The numbers here are still low enough to sustain the delusion, and the rate of growth is far slower than most other places, but additional pressure and inevitable failure sooner or later spell doom. Human population growth will kill nature here too over days that begin the same, innocent and charming, with more of one thing and less of another than the day before. It’s a pattern of growth, all too familiar, ignored at the common peril. No other species so thoroughly destroys its natural cover for money and then adapts to something wholly less lovable. Oblivion is the first step in the destructive process, which is neither nice nor sane. So what? Should all humans be rounded up for incarceration, guilty of befouling nature beyond the rights of any species?

  Well, no. Not really. Not all of them. But the alarm should be sounded. But then the sounder is an alarmist.

  Besides, a man should feel good about what’s become of him without factoring the worries of the world, especially here. Otherwise, he might as well find some rafters and a necktie — I’d like something in a daring diagonal stripe in two colors, or maybe...maybe three!

  Ha!

  And looking up to the scudding clouds, Ravid allows: “Lovely. A simply beautiful, lovely day. The first of many. Many, many in a lifetime starting now.” The chimerical moment balances the interminable other. Whimsy should be a reference point, no matter what comes. This moment and these impressions are a milestone with a wish for more on the road ahead, the road taken, unpaved and lined with forest. A man of tourism knows what will likely happen. He has seen nature’s indifference turn malignant when human people get involved. Maybe he can help slow the process here. That would be a contribution, and it could happen.

  The missionaries failed to export resources from French Polynesia anywhere near the magnitude of their haul in Hawaii, because this tropic is different — so far from the money ports and the labor sources. And massive extraction/exploitation seemed less frequent under French influence and etiquette and exotic appetite without shame. This place was liberated for Godly pursuits and the spiritual plane as it relates to food and fine wine, art and sex.

  That’s different from the Superbowl, We’re number 1, March madness, NASCAR, Halliburton, neoconservatism, the religious right, mad cow burgers, Coke, fifty-two-million-dollar box offices, epidemic obesity and, of course, world domination for more oil. This place is still an outpost in the limitless sea and may stay that way, as far from the USA as the seventh moon of Uranus, culturally speaking.

 
; So a happy man walks home with equilibrium in mind, with happy thoughts and faith restored on caffeine, sugar and a visit with old friends. Hope for stability and fulfillment is no longer a pipe dream but a reality forming up. Crossing the road to his cheap digs, he slows to a shuffle on reentry — in from orbital altitude and down to earth.

  What can he do to make ends meet? How can he keep a roof over his head and buy groceries? Well, a man visibly beyond the endearing naiveté of youth understands that at a certain point in life, making ends meet is no less difficult than earning well. That is, the universal value system generally grants credibility and wisdom directly with aging; in time, a person can earn by what is known with equal dispatch as by what is done. The converse is an aging person who remains in manual labor, which makes him pure, or undeveloped, or maybe both.

  Near the front steps, he finds six feet of hose connected to a hose bib. As the bracing water flows over his head, under the trees with birdsong abounding, he’s fairly certain that a man never had a shower so luxurious. Can this be another pattern, in which balance teeters between anxiety and fulfillment? Does anxiety come from doubts about a future happiness based on money, recognition and artistic success? Will contentment instead derive from the inner light and peace of mind unmatched in the material world? Well, maybe nobody can ever know these things in the short run, which underscores the critical need for fulfillment at this juncture, so that karmic resolution will factor the free will of a waterman with gifts worthy of development.

  Back inside he sits. The place sinks in and seeps out in sweat. He breathes along with the rustling fronds, grateful to be here rather than anyplace else, grateful to be alive. What can he do to make a living? Alone, far from friends or family and bearing up to the vicissitudes of hope, he laughs. Maybe he’s doing it, letting his batteries recharge on fresh voltage.

  Still, the questions persist: How long will this charging process take? Well, he isn’t the first wayward Jew at a loss for direction. But he could be setting a new standard of disappointment for a poor old gray-haired mother, who must know by now that her only begotten son will not be a lawyer or a doctor — or an accountant or movie star or professional this or executive that or anything she could wear on her sleeve with pride. Not that appearing on her sleeve is his life’s ambition, but filial duty counts for something, and she doesn’t even know where on earth her son can be found. She may be thinking of him this very minute, worrying, no doubt, and in fact she is. Why wouldn’t she?

  True, it’s only eight inches south by southeast from where he was, which would be the same as a new phone prefix, which isn’t much different, if she knows the number. So he decides to call, even as he wishes he’d called before migrating, before his new French world could sting him for forty bucks on a short phone call home. Coffee and a Danish for nine dollars? This exotic French tropics business will require attention and diligence. Still, it’ll be forty bucks well spent, on a call wisely reserved for post-arrival, because now he can report a safe flight and landing and rich prospects. Things are already working out for the best. If he’d called sooner, he’d only have to call again later anyway.

  Near sundown, in the same time zone as Hawaii, Ravid is back at Taverua, buying a call.

  “Hello? Who could be calling at this hour?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Me? Me who?

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “So tell me what is wrong?”

  Why must something be wrong? Why must she energize the negative? Why can’t she assume good news? Why does she believe that nothing can happen for the best? But this exchange wore itself out long ago. He is done with belaboring and accepts the badinage as the lesser of two burdens because she is Mother, whatever that means and requires, including her faith in calamity.

  “Nothing is wrong. Things are going right. I’ve been thinking about moving for a long time now...”

  “Oy. Where are you?”

  “I’m in Tahiti.”

  “Oy, Gott. Tahiti.”

  “I love it.”

  “You love it. You love Hawaii!”

  “Yes, I do. Can I have only one love?”

  “How did you get in? They won’t let you in, because you wouldn’t get the visa like I begged you to do. I begged you, but you wouldn’t...”

  “Acch! Don’t ask.”

  “You won’t listen. You’re a rolling stone...”

  “Yes. No moss. But I still don’t want some. This place is so beautiful; it’s unbelievable. The corals and fishes — I saw flame angels right in front of the...the hotel.”

  “Oh, you’re staying at a fancy hotel, making friends with little fishes. Tell me why I should worry.”

  “You should worry because that’s what you do best. But try to think of something new to worry about. I’ve never felt better about a decision.”

  “And what did you decide to do in Tahiti of all places? Make more with the bubbles business?”

  The question of the bubbles business and making more or less has loomed heavily on the intrapersonal plane for hours. The correct answer will take a while longer to develop, but a formative response is required right now, to appease anxieties and enhance practicality, and so it spurts forth: “Take pictures. You know it’s my calling.”

  “It’s your calling. Who’s listening? You’re going to take pictures of little fish and then what? Trade them for your dinner?”

  “Yes. You do understand. And to think that all this time I thought you were predisposed to see me as a failure who couldn’t grasp an honest dollar. I was wrong.”

  “Never! I never saw you as a failure. A waste, maybe, but not a failure. Never a failure. I want you to come home and be a mensch.”

  “Mommy, dearest. In case you haven’t noticed, I am a mensch. My pictures of little fish are highly regarded. I’ll sell them in New York, just like I did last time. Maybe even to the same people...”

  “Maybe, schmaybe. I remember what they said, those same people. Maybe parakeets will fly out my tuchas too.”

  “Are you getting feathers down there?”

  She laughs.

  Finally.

  Tzim lachen; it should be to laugh, because that and love will survive us. So the long distance shortens with the best they have to share, rendering all well on the immortal plane that will survive them. Things get better yet when he gives her the Taverua phone number, but please, she shouldn’t call unless it’s a dire emergency, since getting the call will cost him about a hundred dollars, besides the terrible expense at her end.

  “A hundred dollars?”

  “It’s a hotel on the water in Tahiti. They got overhead.”

  “So what do you need with such a fancy hotel?”

  “I don’t. I stay much cheaper across the street. They know me here and will come get me for emergency calls. That’s emergency. Okay?”

  “Everything should be good. Are you making friends?”

  “I just got here, but already if I have any more social demands I won’t be able to get to my work.”

  “Oh, pardon me. Your work.”

  He allows the silence to congeal, so the disrespect can be recognized for what it is, so it can leave its damage at both ends of the line, since she too factors money per minute. And for what, so Ma Bell can get rich on their hard-earned dollars?

  “When will you call me?”

  “I’m calling you right now, as we speak. This is a call that we’re on. We’re in the moment, which is a great achievement, you know. I’ll call you again when I have more news. Okay? Now I have to go.”

  “You have to go. What, Mr. Little-Fish-Picture-Executive already? Okay, go. Have your next important moment. Be well.”

  “Yes. And you.”

  Ravid no longer wonders when he’ll feel good about the obligatory call; he simply feels relieved at having completed the task — at fulfilling the duty of hearing her voice and letting his voice be heard. He feels more relieved that God in heaven, or whatever force allows events to unfol
d, spared her from hearing his plea for help in the inky deeps. Not that he actually thought she could hear his plea; he only wished that she’d call the Coast Guard on general principle and chronic, low-grade fear for her son’s safety, that she would provide his coordinates for pickup as easy as hailing a taxi at the airport. Such delusions are common among dying people. What he honestly knows is that she would have heard of what became of her son and spent the rest of her days alongside him in those hours prior to sinking.

  Still, he’d called her by name, and she’d had no clue, unless she’d saved his ass on the supernatural plane. Could she be a psychokinetic force to reckon with? She has the psycho part down pat, with the power to drive strong men to irrational behavior. She can be a world-class pill, an Olympian neurotic of notable perseverance. Add those characteristics to equally strident instincts for motherhood, and the probability becomes greater than zero that she could control a situation from a distance. God knows, she’s tried for years.

  Then again, on realistic analysis, many mothers lose their cubs to natural hazards, a sad and disturbing image, though such losses may underscore wide-ranging motherhood skills, from that with no chutzpa as a lesser force of nature to that which rules the cosmos by sheer galling willpower. Maybe some individuals are better equipped for survival because of what their mothers can conjure against the odds, against reality...

  But when you think about the context, the depth and darkness, the troughs and crests, the visions of imminent...

  So the sweat rolls down his ribs and into the sheets. The drops form rivulets that converge to streams and rivers flowing to a shallow estuary that rises with a springtide just as night squalls drive the breakers inland on a storm flood from the implacable sea. Waves are soon breaking over the rustling fronds, as the southern moon rises indifferently. A man hangs on, clinging to hope in the face of hopelessness, sinking into middle age, dreaming in violent resolution.