The Pirate's Daughter

by Robert Girardi

  “Sounds lovely,” Wilson said.

  When it was almost too dark to see, they paddled over to the bank and hid the dugout among the reeds. As a precaution Tulj did not light a fire. They ate a dark meal of cold pressed meat out of cans in the rustling silence of the jungle; then they made their bed in the reeds. Wilson could not see any stars, just the unfeatured blackness of the leafy canopy, and he stared into this blackness and lay awake and listened to the sound of Colonel Saba snoring and the river hushing along from somewhere to somewhere, and he heard Tulj tossing and scratching himself on the other side of the clump of reeds.

  “Tulj, are you awake?” Wilson said.

  The man grunted.

  “Where the hell are we going?”

  “Down the Hilenga,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

  “Where does the Hilenga go?”

  There was an empty second or two, and it seemed Tulj would not answer. “To the sea,” he said at last. “Sooner or later all rivers go to the sea.”

  “Tulj …” Wilson said.

  “We are going to meet friends of mine at a certain spot in the delta in three days’ time. They want to talk to us, and they very much want to talk to you. They want to know everything you have learned about the evil men who deal in slaves. Will you tell them?”

  “Sure,” Wilson said. “Who are your friends? Tell me now so I can know what to expect.”

  “No. It is not wise for you to have any more information at this point,” Tulj said. “What if we are captured? Be patient. Wait and see.”

  8

  They paddled along for three days without setting foot on dry land. The river became the vast swamp of the Hilenga Delta. The sun of noon barely penetrated the dense leafy cover overhead. Mosquitoes hung thick in the thick air; Wilson covered every inch of exposed flesh with a citrus-smelling insect repellent. Orange monkeys hung lazily from half-submerged trees. Aquatic snakes and muskrats the size of collies swarmed among the monstrous roots of the baobabs. Flocks of azure macaws clouded the uncertain distance.

  Once Wilson let his hand fall into the green water and pulled it back covered with leeches. He pried the valuable little creatures off his flesh and repatriated them carefully in the muddy water.

  At dawn on the fourth day, Tulj led them to a small island completely obscured by the tangled roots of mangrove trees. In a clearing at the center a lean- to covered with canvas tarp and fronted with mosquito netting sheltered crates of canned food and plastic barrels of freshwater. Wilson washed his face and his neck in the water, put on another layer of insect repellent, and broke open an aluminum package labeled “Yorkshire Pudding,” with the expiration date of 10/30/2037. Inside, he found a gelatinous substance covered with viscous liquid, a yellow and brown mess that was surprisingly edible despite its disgusting appearance.

  When Wilson finished eating, Tulj took him to the west side of the island and pointed to a break in the trees. “This is a good place from which to watch,” he said. “My friends will arrive sometime late today, possible tomorrow.”

  “What am I watching for exactly?” Wilson said.

  Tulj gave a short laugh. “You will know when you see them,” he said, then he went off to take a short nap behind the mosquito netting of the lean-to.

  Wilson watched the river for the next few hours.

  The green light of the jungle didn’t seem to change. He had no idea what time it was. His old illuminated digital watch had stopped working way back during the rainy season at Quatre Sables. Just below, the river broke out of the clotted channels into a wider stream. Wilson thought he detected a breath of fresh air on his face, a slight briny tang that made him think of sea. He turned away for a half second at a snapping sound in the trees and, when he turned back, saw that the channel had undergone a remarkable transformation. The sun, now risen directly overhead, shone down in thick, smoky columns of light through breaks in the canopy of leaves. The effect was spiritual, like light shining through stained glass windows. White birds lifted off the water and flew in an upward arc through the smoky light. A few minutes later Wilson saw a vague something on the river in the distance.

  Another hour passed before he could make out the approaching craft. It seemed to be coming along very slowly, but distances are deceptive in Africa. The craft grew no larger in perspective for a long while, then Wilson heard the steady burp and splutter of an old inboard, and it was right there, coming through the muck of the channel around the island, and he could hardly believe what he saw: In an odd, wide-bodied turquoise boat stood three naval officers wearing spotless white uniforms straight out of Madame Butterfly. They were stiff as statues; the humid breeze did not ruffle their short hair. Behind them, sitting on two rows of padded benches, a half dozen marines in dress tunics of blue and red. From the stern, the white ensign of the British Royal Navy flapped in the breeze.

  Wilson watched until this strange vessel came up past his lookout. The flat keel of the thing seemed to be made of glass. Beneath the feet of the officers, monstrous carp swam along, their scales ancient as granite flashing in the green river. In the next minute the boat disappeared into the reed-choked channel.

  Tulj and Colonel Saba squatted in the clearing in front of the lean-to, throwing dice across a stained bit of canvas.

  “A bad habit I picked up in the army,” Tulj said, glancing up as Wilson came out of the trees. “But common to all soldiers, everywhere. Think of the Roman legionaries dicing for Christ’s clothes—” Then he saw the look on Wilson’s face and stood up. “Well?”

  “This is going to sound ridiculous,” Wilson said, catching his breath. “On the river, a turquoise boat with a glass bottom full of naval officers in white dress uniforms.”

  Tulj nodded gravely. “They are a little early,” he said.

  9

  From the deck of the big motor launch, Wilson looked back to the place where the brown waters of the Hilenga met the ocean’s choppy blue. The last African mud stained the surface red more than three miles out, then fell off as sediment across the continental shelf. The afternoon sky was touched at the horizon with pale, scraggly clouds. Seabirds wheeled overhead. Africa lay in the wake, incomprehensible, vast.

  Only now did Wilson allow himself to think of what he was leaving behind. He thought of Cricket, and he thought of the dark interior of the jungle, those sunless glades where no white man would set foot, and he thought of the Iwos living hidden away from the world with their strange language and arcane knowledge—then he set his heart against the past and took a deep breath of salty ocean air and turned to face the great ship riding the waves just ahead.

  She was HMS Gadfly, a new compact cruiser of the Somerset class. Smaller than a traditional destroyer but larger than a minesweeper, she carried two turrets of 118 mm marine guns, a full complement of Stinger surface-to-air missiles, and a large platform at the stern to which were fixed three Sea Harrier jump jets, their wings folded like sleeping birds. A radar dish turned steadily from the top of the superstructure, and Wilson could almost see invisible signals darting through the atmosphere a million times faster than the Great Carew’s carrier pigeons. The white ensign and the captain’s pennant—a yellow sea horse on a blue ground—flew at half-mast from the topgallants.

  Wilson turned to the nearest officer, a blunt-faced sublieutenant whose nametag identified him as Bunsen.

  “Something happen?” Wilson said, pointing to the flags.

  “Sir?” the sublieutenant said.

  “Half-mast,” Wilson said.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, sir,” he said stiffly.

  “Oh, what the hell, Bunsen. He’s one of us.”

  It was another lieutenant whose tag read “Navigating Lieutenant Peavy.” This one had straw-colored hair and startling blue eyes like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. He came forward, shook hands, and offered Wilson a cigarette.

  “No, thanks,” Wilson said, then he changed his mind. They were Westminster Navy Cuts, in the gold tin. Lieutenant Peav
y held out an old flint and fluid lighter, and Wilson lit up. The cigarette was strong, but with the characteristic flavor of Turkish tobacco. Wilson was becoming a smoker. He blew smoke into the sky over his shoulder. It drifted off over Africa.

  “You see, it’s our captain,” Peavy said, and he lit his own cigarette and unbuttoned the top button of his dress collar. “The poor man died last week, right in the middle of the mission.”

  “What happened?” Wilson said.

  “The same thing that’s been happening to Englishmen for centuries in this miserable part of the world,” Peavy said. “Some kind of fever. He went ashore at Zanda and caught something. No one knew he was that sick. One morning he didn’t show up for breakfast and we went into his cabin and he was dead.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Wilson said.

  Peavy shrugged. “Staff Commander Worthington’s our acting captain now. He’s a good man. You’ll be chatting with him soon.”

  Lieutenant Peavy touched hand to cap and turned aft but Wilson called after him. “I’ve got to ask you something,” Wilson said.

  The officer turned back.

  Wilson gestured to the turquoise glass-bottomed boat suspended like a dinghy from the hawsers at the stern. “The blue boat, the white uniforms. Do you people usually invade Africa like that?”

  Lieutenant Peavy gave a tight smile. “We’re not exactly invading,” he said. “Sort of reconnaissance. It’s acting captain’s orders. We’re more or less covert here, poking around without authority from the local government. Of course there is no local government, just a parcel of bickering tribes, but if we’re captured wearing our uniforms, it will be that much harder to shoot us for spies. As for the boat, it’s the Hilenga, you see. We can’t go up that damned river with anything of ours—too shallow for the launch and too full of nasty stuff for the rubber boats. We found about a dozen of these glass-bottomed numbers abandoned in a warehouse in Port Luanga last year. Brought over from Disneyland in America in the 1960s for some sort of aquatic safariland scheme, apparently the idea of a millionaire from Texas. Problem is, the Hilenga’s too muddy to make out much more than the occasional carp, so the millionaire went bankrupt and flew back to Texas and left his boats behind. We had our engineer fix up a couple of them for our own purposes. Quite stunning little tubs really. Lovely color.”

  “Definitely unexpected,” Wilson said.

  “That’s exactly the idea,” Lieutenant Peavy said. “If we’re taken by the BPF or the APF or any of those chaps we can say, ‘Here we are on holiday in our fancy dress uniforms in a blue boat with a glass bottom,’ and hope they put us down as eccentric Englishmen and let it go at that. Pretty good plan, don’t you think?”

  It was not a question that expected a reply. The lieutenant withdrew to the stern, and Wilson went below to check on Tulj and Colonel Saba, resting on cots in the hold. They were ashen-faced and green around the edges, and the tight compartment smelled strongly of bile.

  “I am an officer of infantry,” Colonel Saba said in a weak voice. “I am not much of a sailor.”

  Tulj moaned and rolled his eyes. “I agree with Saba,” he said. “The navy is not for me.”

  Wilson went to the first aid station and found the Dramamine. He waved the green bottle of seasickness pills in their direction. “Try a couple of these,” Wilson said.

  “I prefer organic remedies,” Colonel Saba said. “Western medicine is no good for the spirit.”

  “I became a vegetarian last year,” Tulj said. “Do these pills contain any animal fat?”

  “Let me put it this way,” Wilson said. “This stuff does nothing for your soul. Then again, yonowpe does nothing for your stomach.…”

  10

  By the time they came aboard the cruiser, the Africans were feeling better. But there was no boatswain’s whistle, no official greeting. The three of them were hustled past a few curious sailors, through a hatchway and down a metal ladder into a windowless briefing room deep in the superstructure. On one wall was a large map of Africa stuck with pins; on another a recent photograph of the queen looking like someone’s grandmother, which in fact she was. Down the center, a long dun-colored table, coffee ring stains marring its surface.

  Tulj slumped at the table and put his head down. Wilson studied the map of Africa and the portrait of Elizabeth and paced the room. There wasn’t much else to see. The ship’s nuclear engines hummed beneath them. Colonel Saba seemed nervous. He sat down, then got up and sat down again. He lit a cigarette and put it out.

  “I don’t like this at all,” he said. “Why are they taking so long?”

  Tulj lifted his head. His eyes looked red and tired. “Don’t worry, Saba,” he said. “These people are working for the unification of Bupanda, as are we.”

  “Why is that?” Saba said, and his voice sounded strained. “Did you ever ask yourself that, Ra’au? What do they want?”

  “They want what they wanted a hundred years ago,” Tulj said wearily. “They want a ready market for their manufactured goods. They want our raw materials, tin, diamonds, that sort of thing. And in exchange they want us to stop killing ourselves so we can work happily in their factories for cut-rate wages. Didn’t they make you read Karl Marx in the APF?”

  “You’re thinking of the MPF,” Saba said, shaking his finger. “The Anda Popular Front was never Marxist. We were social democrats.”

  “I don’t care what you were,” Tulj said. “And I don’t care what the British want this time, not really. Call them neo-imperialists, postcolonialists, whatever you like. As long as they can help stop slavery and end the slaughter.”

  A few minutes later Lieutenant Peavy came in accompanied by a smartly dressed officer with the gold caduceus in his collar.

  “This is Acting Staff Commander Tombs, our medical officer,” Peavy said. “You will be deloused, and he will examine you. Then you will each be debriefed by Acting Captain Worthington.”

  Peavy left, and Tombs went to work. “Don’t want any nasty tropical diseases brought aboard,” Tombs explained, and the three of them were sprayed and showered and poked and prodded and issued new underwear and starched cotton jumpsuits.

  As a mark of military deference, they came for Colonel Saba first.

  “I do not like this,” he said as he was led out the hatch by Lieutenant Peavy. “What if they ask me about the Bandali stadium?”

  “Go on.” Tulj waved airily. “Just answer their questions politely. These are the British. Afterward, I assure you, there will be tea.”

  Saba went off, placated.

  “He still hears the screams of the women and children at night in his dreams,” Tulj said when Saba was gone. “It is time we all forget the screaming in our head and attempt to start over.”

  “For that I recommend yonowpe,” Wilson said.

  Tulj grinned.

  An hour later, when Lieutenant Peavy returned for Tulj, the African came around the table and took Wilson’s hand in both of his own. He started to speak, then his eyes brimmed over with tears, and he enveloped Wilson in a big African bear hug.

  “Thanks for saving my skin back there,” Wilson said.

  “Where will you go after you have spoken to the British?” Tulj said.

  “I don’t know,” Wilson said. It was the first time he’d thought about what he would do with the rest of his life. The idea seemed strange. “I guess I’ll go home.… Here, let me give you my address. Write and tell me how the war is going.”

  Wilson took a mechanical pencil and a matchbook cover from Lieutenant Peavy and wrote down the address of his old apartment overlooking the Harvey Channel, now inhabited—for all he knew—by a witch.

  “My friend,” Tulj said, folding the matchbook cover into the pocket of his starchy overalls, “God has given me the chance to repay you for my life and for my brother’s life, and I am grateful. I may not see you again in this world. But I hold out the firm hope that one day I may buy you a fine meal—kif, na-kif, kif-tu, the works—and many bottle
s of tejiyaa in a Bupanda free from war and suffering.”

  “I’ll look forward to that,” Wilson said.

  When Tulj was gone, Wilson sat alone in the briefing room staring up at the map of Africa stuck with pins. Then, without thinking, he removed the pins and rearranged them in the shape of a great question mark that spread from the west through the Congo, across the Hilenga Delta, over river and lake and morass and mountain range and savanna and desert—as if the continent itself held the solution to his future.

  11

  The captain’s stateroom was large and carpeted, with three brass portholes, an imposing desk of burnished teak, and built-in mesh-fronted bookshelves full of weighty-looking volumes. Age-darkened paintings of naval scenes were bolted to the bulkhead. Wilson saw Nelson dying in Hardy’s arms at Trafalgar, the Battle of Jutland, Sir Richard Grenville’s Revenge fighting a hundred Spanish ships single-handedly off the coast of Sño Miguel in the Azores.

  The acting captain, a gangly young man just a year or two older than Wilson himself, seemed uncomfortable with the position of authority into which fate and virus had pushed him. He was all knots and bones, his uniform didn’t fit well, and his hair stuck up like the feathers of a bird. The effect would have been comical except for his eyes, which were large and penetrating and full of a fierce intelligence.

  “Mr. Wilson? Worthington here, acting captain, HMS Gadfly, Blockade Squadron.” He stepped out from behind the desk and shook Wilson’s hand.