The Navidad Incident

by Natsuki Ikezawa

  Something comes into view above the surface. He watches as a large dark presence looms into view between the beach and the far shore. Perhaps several hundred meters out. What can it be? With no discernible shape, it just hovers there, motionless to the naked eye. No, it’s not moving. Just a chain of black shadows cast darkly upon the surface of the sea. The sun beats down as harshly as ever, his forehead still beads with sweat, yet everything suddenly goes dark, his body is enveloped in a strange chill. As if he’s been shut inside something. The shadows grow darker and increasingly real; their weight almost ripples the calm sea.

  Matías strains to see as there before him, slowly, very slowly, the shadows take on substance, becoming a line of long objects. Ships. A cordon of ships squatting low in the still waters. Immobile bulks, never to budge. They’ve made their last voyage and come here to die. After logging so many thousands of leagues back and forth from the Persian Gulf to the Far East, bellies filled amid desert sand and salt tides, they sailed off past Kharg Island, withstood the fiery wastes of the Indian Ocean, squeezed through the narrow Malacca Strait to prow northward time and again, only to end up here for eternity, their final mooring. It almost makes Matías feel sentimental. He’s not himself. What does he know about tanker routes?

  The shock of realization brings ten massive tankers into menacing focus. He knows he’s sitting on a beach hundreds of meters away, and yet he can see each ship in amazing detail. There’s a bridge with railings jutting out from both sides. The round portholes of each officer’s cabin. The vestigial smokestacks of the gas turbine engines. The huge pipes that run the length and breadth of those vast hulls, the countless valves and pumps, the catwalk extending over the bow, the rigging all so impossibly clear. Men stripped to the waist, running laps on the deck. Anything to relieve the endless boredom. Well, how much work can there be for the crew of a stationary ship? They hardly speak as they slouch past one another.

  On closer observation, Matías can make out reddish spots of rust on the broad sides. The crew have grown sloppy, it’s been ages since anyone did any hard work and scraped the hulls. He remembers how much he himself once enjoyed the task, yet here no one lifts a finger … And now they’re gone, there’s not a soul left on board. The jogging crewmen have all disappeared and left the ships deserted. Little by little the rust encroaches, no longer just on the pumps and pipes and gadgets, but penetrating deeper and deeper into the very structure. Sea spray and oxygen join forces, sending feelers into the cracked paint, corroding the toughest iron. Below the waterline, the decay advances even faster; seawater presses at every nick and dent, drawing ever nearer to the tonnage inside through some magnetism of liquid to liquid, enticing the crude to come out.

  Then one day, two ships burst their bottoms. Winds whip the lagoon, and the oil spreads slowly but surely out to sea. It may take a year or three times that long for it all to leak out, but that’s nothing compared to the tens of the thousands of years that oil and water are fated to commingle.

  Soon the other ships join in, their hulls ravaged by gaping holes, the metal plates emitting a sulfurous stench. The bombs come flying over the reef from distant seas and are followed in turn by satellite-guided missiles. The rumble of explosions is heard in Baltasár City, black smoke rises into the stratosphere, visible for hundreds of kilometers around. Citizens tremble in fear. It was all quite foreseeable: hoarding so much here in one place was practically asking someone to steal or burn or sink it. No need to look very far for a motive either; if the intention was to deal a major blow to the pride and economic might of a hated power, the locals can readily oblige. The notion that the other man’s gains come at one’s own expense is as old as humanity.

  The crude oil slowly sinks to the bottom of the lagoon. The hundred-year-old cells of coral suffocate one by one; the ocean floor is sealed in a sticky euthanasic shroud that steadily kills off the schools of fish that once lived here. Dead coral looks so much like human bones. A mere coincidence of nature? But bones are bones, and there are deeper parallels to be drawn, lessons laid down—for whom? By whom? The dead coral? The people who killed them? God? No, not God. God died before all of them. If everyone here has Catholic names but no one goes to Mass on Sunday, it’s because God is dead.

  Dead. The beach is littered with the oil-choked bodies of seabirds, just more bones and a few feathers slicked down with tar. A vision of pitch-black depths. Three million kiloliters of crude oil now cover everything inside Brun lagoon, a symbol of things to come for the earth at large. Sadly, not a soul is left to witness this scene, much less mourn. There’s no one left at all.

  The ships break apart. First one, then another. Devoured by rust and battered by winds, the welds split open in the rocking waves, reducing the hulls to scrap metal, irregular lumps of oxidized iron. Red bones beside white coral bones, both foaming gently at every high tide. No fish to be seen anywhere. The shores deserted, though the sky is still blue. Only the white clouds look down silently on the remains of the ten tankers.

  In a daze, Matías wipes his forehead, now slick with sweat, then disengages his hand from her grip and stands up. Just standing on his own two feet should break the spell. At least he can turn his back on all he’s seen and look up at the sky. The blue, however, is no different from the sky in the hallucination. It changes nothing. He looks behind him and sees the children still peeking from behind the palm trees a few paces away. This helps bring him back to reality, until he detects a look of alarm in their faces as well, which only makes him more afraid. Have those kids seen what I just saw? he wonders. Even without channeling through Améliana’s hand, did they see the same things on their own?

  Matías turns away from their troubled eyes and looks warily toward the sea. The lagoon seems as calm and clear as ever. Glancing to the right, he sees Jameson and the Home Office man drawing something in the sand with sticks. Os and Xs, a game of tic-tac-toe. Those two didn’t see a thing. At most they must think their boss was just sitting there surveying the water with that strange girl. The children, however, saw. They witnessed those visions.

  “Was that the truth?” he asks Améliana under his breath. He was dead right in thinking this woman has special powers, but their effect is so distressing and unfavorable to him personally that it puts a quiver in his voice.

  “ ‘Truth’ isn’t to be trusted,” says Améliana. She chooses her words precisely; her tone is unerring and deliberate. She wants him to understand. “Better not use that word. Grasp at ‘truth’ and you’ll only get your hand cut off.”

  “So then, that was all your …” He searches for the best way to put it. “That was you envisioning things?”

  “I don’t have such powers. All I can do is pick up on the currents taking shape here and now.”

  “Which means one day all that might really happen?”

  “That I can’t say. The future’s not that simple. I’m only a switchboard. So many things pass through me and scatter in all directions. What you saw is only one of many futures for the choosing. It’s you who are in a position to decide. Unless you choose to make it real, it’s only a hallucination. Don’t you see?”

  “Unbelievable. Totally unbelievable. Let me ask just one more thing: how many years would it take for all that to happen?”

  “That I can say least of all. It isn’t for us to know. It’s all just hints and signs. Five years? Two hundred? I can’t tell. But if it’s two hundred years, you can safely take that course. The plan should bring us many benefits here, no one is going to fault what you did two hundred years ago. But …” Améliana starts to speak, then drifts into silent thought. The wind rustles the palm fronds overhead. Behind her, several butterflies flit about, the bushes stir. The sweat dries on his forehead. “But if it’s only five years, then what would you have me say?”

  “I get the picture. Don’t say anything. I saw what I needed to see. And I now know the kind of power you have. The r
est is for me to think over good and hard on my own. Well, then, let’s be going.”

  05

  Five AM. Matías wakes. Breathing only a few times a minute, he hasn’t so much as twitched until now, yet when his internal timer switches on, his wake-up circuits surge with juice. Microscopic solenoids in his eye sockets throw tiny levers, springing the hinges of his eyelids. His retinae make out a blur of ceiling. Slowly he raises himself upright on his futon and looks around. His head is a complete blank.

  A piece of paper lies beside his pillow—Take bath. Put away memo. That’s right, he’s supposed to do what’s written there. No need to think, just follow the instructions (conscious thought he can jumpstart later). Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows the handwriting. He even has a sneaking suspicion that it’s a note to himself and that he’s done all this before. Minimum brain functions can manage this much activity. No self-destructive impulses this morning

  He files away the note and heads for his Japanese bath. He slides open the door, steps in, tosses his yukata night robe into a hamper, opens a second inner door, and carefully crosses the slippery wood-slatted floor. There’s a window, but outside it’s still dark. One by one, he removes the planked lid from the tub and steps over the lip of the tub, slowly shifting his weight to the foot in the water before stepping in with the other and lowering himself down. He stretches out his arms and legs. His body weight is buoyed by the water, his muscles support only the neck up.

  He soaks, relaxed but not letting himself drift back to sleep. He must concentrate on reviving his mental capacities little by little. No, that’s backwards, a dog chasing its own tail; his mind has to revive before he can concentrate on anything. He repeats his name and title: His Excellency, President of the Republic of Navidad Matías Guili, consciously moving his lips … one … two … That’s you, he tells himself, the President. Without you this country has no leader. It would be sheer chaos, an invitation to ruin. So put some feeling into it! Like a real potentate with his grip on everything.

  One hundred repetitions. Wouldn’t it be nice, the odd thought skims across his not-yet-himself mind, if we could recite other names for a change? Somewhere deep in the recesses of his memory he hears a beautiful, rhythmic chorus. A litany of names, an ever-permutating sameness. Generation after generation, a dizzying trail leading all the way from mythic past to pre-modern times. Buddhist monks chanting dawn service in a temple. How many decades ago did he hear them for a month of mornings?

  Mahaguru Vipashyin Buddha

  Mahaguru Shikhin Buddha

  Mahaguru Visvabhû Buddha

  Mahaguru Khrakucchanda Buddha

  Mahaguru Kanakamuni Buddha

  Mahaguru Kâsyapa Buddha

  Mahaguru Sakyamuni Buddha

  Seven generations. Only then did the historic Buddha Gautama Sakyamuni enter the picture. And still the novices drone an interminable succession of disciples, voices echoing in the dark worship hall, white breaths hanging in the chill air.

  First Patriarch Mahâkâsyapa

  Second Patriarch nanda

  Third Patriarch Chanavâsa

  Fourth Patriarch Upagupta

  Fifth Patriarch Dhritaka

  Sixth Patriarch …

  From Western heavens to Eastern lands, the Lamp of Dharma passed down to their own present-day roshi. A hypnotic recitation of enlightened transmissions master-to-disciple, ensuring a collective body of wisdom. If only he could chant such reverend names! But no, this is all he’s got. No tradition, no lineage, just a farce of fealty.

  First President Cornelius

  Second President Matías Guili

  Third President Bonhomme Tamang

  Fourth President Matías Guili

  End of service. Hardly six generations of holy ancestors culminating in the Buddha. Nothing but idiots, himself included. All three of them put together couldn’t boast a hundredth of the wisdom of any one of those Zen patriarchs. Nor does Matías believe this short list is in any way legitimate, especially not himself.

  Back then when Matías was in his twenties, Ryuzoji training at a Zen temple every morning, he’d rise before dawn and sit in the cold, mouthing incomprehensible sutras, followed by that endless invocation of Buddhas and patriarchs. Then finally he’d receive a scant serving of watery gruel for breakfast. He remembers nothing else. No, there was something, a strange phrase—If you meet the Buddha, kill him. If you meet a patriarch, kill him. Ruthless, but vitalizing words—what was that all about?

  Thoughts waft through his head like vapors rising from the tub. The coarse imperfection of the spoken word. The sound of his own voice as it reaches his ear. The flimsy excuse of a name. Another silent voice tells him, These things are you.

  His hundred repetitions finished, he glances around the dimly lit bathroom, then looks down at a pathetic drift of pubic hair and a shriveled cock, thighs refracted even shorter in the water, feet vanishing in the murk. Reaching out, he sees his own two arms. Totally naked, totally meaningless. Better he should hand rule over to the best-looking man in the country. Wouldn’t citizens look up to a fine, strong physique? Wouldn’t somebody who embodied such obvious qualities, anybody, make the people happier? Why didn’t they do things like that in America or Japan? Maybe then they’d stay contented on their own turf and not come bothering everyone else? No, nations are bullshit.

  He gets up out of the tub, dries off with a bedsheet-sized towel, tramps into the changing room, wraps himself in a fresh yukata, and walks down the hall. Twenty steps, then he opens the door to the dojo. Before him scowls his formally attired official portrait. He kneels down solemnly before it; an image of himself the way others see him. Yes, this is the man the country needs. He must drill it in, take on that role and work another day.

  Fifteen minutes later, President Matías Guili returns to his private study, unlocks a desk drawer, and takes out his official log. All of yesterday’s events he himself will have written down there the night before. He just has to read through his notes, a motley of memos on salient works-in-progress, questions to be decided today along with assorted commentary. The issues for immediate consideration this morning are public servant salaries; whether to allocate state assistance to the latest Arenas agricultural venture; selecting someone with no conflict of interest to head the vastly expanded M. Guili Trading Co; and then there’s that big conundrum—what to do about the Japanese oil depot project. Reference materials from the Finance Bureau on the salary question are in a separate envelope. A three-percent wage hike seems perfectly in order, but the hard part, as ever in all countries, is funding it. If a natural incremental increase in customs duties won’t do the trick, then by some other means. Navidad’s income taxes are next to nil. How about shifting the entire educational budget, teaching staff and all, onto ODA and asking Japan to foot the bill? Got to take a tough stance toward Japan, find an angle they can’t refuse. Support for the Arenas farm is fine by him. Those oranges were good. And if it means he can bring the Arenas folks into his camp, then a share of the assistance package will find its way back as a political contribution to him, completely cutting out the Tamang faction, with no strain on the state coffers. He takes running notes on a handy memo pad. Just business as usual.

  After that there are another twenty-odd items to consider. Why the hell does he have to decide all this crap? Which is to say, why have all three presidents—Cornelius, himself, and the three-month wonder Bonhomme Tamang, but especially himself because he’s been in office the longest—why have they failed to foster either a responsive bureaucracy or reliable legislators in this country? It’s a struggle for the Executive Office to get the various bureaus to crank out any paperwork at all, let alone propose new policies and enact them. He can’t delegate anything. Whether financial matters or diplomatic relations or even domestic in-house business, the sad truth is they barely manage to nod their know-nothing heads as prescribed in some imported textbook, when the r
eal task is for them to see the big picture, line up a battery of proposals in response, then submit their write-ups for presidential approval. That’s the only way to get on with work. But no, they overbudget willy-nilly so nothing balances. They project annual revenue growth on no basis whatsoever, then inflate budget figures to match. They draft bills that don’t do anybody any good. And the legislators are even worse, never thinking beyond what might profit their own constituent villages, using any means possible to squeeze the state for money, anything to maintain a thin veneer of political prowess. Legislative referendums are a circus. He’s put up with these shenanigans for eight years now. Oh, he tries to get those idiots to see reason, scattering the necessary incentives their way, applying pressure behind the scenes. He’s done his best to run this place like a real country, and not once have that lot come up with a single constructive idea. All right, he’s slipped up on occasion. He never intended to lose his elected seat to Tamang. Not because he especially wanted to cling to power, but simply because he knows there’s no one else who can keep the brainless bureaucrats and even dumber legislature in line. Predictably, after just one month in office, Tamang ruined everything. And then the very next month he provoked that ridiculous squabble with Japan. He put on such a big show—Proud Leader of a Self-sufficient Modern Nation!—despite Navidad’s singular lack of any industry. Matías should have ignored the fool and just gone back to minding his M. Guili Trading Co. With all the bureaucratic ties he’d cultivated over eight years, he could easily have told them not to come poking around. The country could go fuck itself, he’d keep his enterprise afloat until things eased up enough for a comeback. But no, Tamang had to go stick his silly little fingers where they didn’t belong. He initiated a detailed review of certain “pet projects” Matías had okayed as president. He looked into the Navidad Teikoku Hotel and the story behind its construction. Undue scrutiny that served no one, nothing but a self-righteous bid for popularity. A genuinely stupid move.