by Howard Engel
NINE
I WAS KNOCKED-UP, as the Brits say, by loud knuckles on my door shortly after the crack of dawn, reminding me of my date to see life underwater out at the reef. I found my swimming things and my camera. Some private investigators enjoy playing about with fancy equipment. I don’t. I remember a time when I was trying to read the instructions for running a tape recorder while concealed under a dripping eavestrough near the Black Duck Motel outside Grantham. I avoid fancy equipment whenever possible. Nevertheless I examined the instructions that came with my new camera “for use above and under water.”
I wasn’t hungry. The croissant and coffee that came to my door were all I needed at this ungodly hour. I was running short of fresh things to wear, so I put the few things that might have another day in them in a drawer, rolled the rest into a ball, and took them down to the lobby.
As the desk clerk accepted my laundry without comment, he gave me a note from the letter rack behind him. It turned out to be an invitation to dinner the following evening from my ecclesiastical friend Father O’Mahannay. I made a note in my book so I wouldn’t forget: 9:00 P.M. Late for eating at home, but it seemed right on time for these foreign parts. Where was this dinner? The Hôtel de Nancy. Never heard of it. I’d ask someone later. Something to look forward to. The last word on the note, I didn’t understand. It was the word “Smoking” without further comment. Everybody in Takot smoked; I didn’t see the necessity of warning me that I could look forward to more of it the following night. The good father was making a big difference to my stay in Takot. He did everything but run guided tours. I’d bet it wouldn’t take much persuading to get him to show me the old slave market, the gold traders at work, the blue temple, and the red-light district.
The main thing on my plate for the day was my expedition out to the reef. I double-checked to see that I had all of my photographic equipment in my bag and that it had been placed close to the door so I wouldn’t forget to take it with me. I get anxious about these things.
I tore the croissant to pieces and ate the jam-dipped fragments along with two cups of filtered coffee. My mother would shake her head at a skimpy breakfast like this, but I thrived on simple pleasures. Oatmeal was for hockey players. This was my second or third breakfast in Takot. The use of a recent New York paper was mine without my asking. I tried to work my way through a couple of the major stories without getting much out of the items. The trouble with not being able to read is that you keep picking up new things and discovering again and again that all printed material is the same. If I could read a comic book about Donald Duck, I could as easily read all about giant squids in the Encyclopedia Britannica. My problem didn’t bother me much, not all the time, but it did when I was impatient and in a hurry. I didn’t think of it most of the time.
Out of nervousness I repacked my camera and swimming things. You’d have thought I’d never been swimming in the ocean before. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t. I’d stuck to the pool in my few trips to Florida, where I didn’t find many fans of salt water. I was surprised at my own inexperience.
The taxi was waiting when I reached the lobby. I gave the driver the address and he quickly brought me down the hill to the ocean. I tried to stop myself from getting excited. Once again I’d forgotten the name of the sea. Surely the size of a body of water should demand a permanent place in my memory. I wondered if there was a limit to the size of a body of water or land that could slip out of my mind. But where was it written that you had to know the name of the ocean you were swimming in? Who’s going to know I couldn’t remember? I was a tourist, wasn’t I? Lots of tourists take this trip and are excited about doing it. As we rounded the tsunami-beached wreck in the middle of the road, I reflected that I hadn’t blown my cover: I was just another tourist like all the others I was going to meet on this trip.
I remembered that I was expected at the West Block, or whatever the man had called it, not the place where I booked my gear and passage. I was glad that some shards of memory remained to me. I started meeting my fellow divers as soon as I went through the door and into the wide lobby-like area, first in this assembly area, then in the unisex changing room, then on the wharf. The dock and loading platform were a mass of Lycra and rubber when I got there. I recognized Mr Ho, the local man who had suited me up: Ho’s-on-First. Henry Saesui was there too, but I had to check in my Memory Book for his name. He wasn’t wearing the skin-tight rubber tights a few of the others were sporting, but he was taking charge of our departure.
There were about a dozen of us. Counting is hard when everybody’s dressed alike. Three local fellows were wearing their rubber bottoms and tops with enough of a difference to separate the crew from the passengers. Some yellow slashing on the shoulders set them off. It’s funny how, in every realm, we show subtle marks of rank. The army didn’t invent it. We did. One couple from Minneapolis was called Brewster. She had a shrill voice and seemed to be flaunting her ignorance. Her husband winced as quietly as possible. Another couple, a pair of newlyweds, I thought, didn’t talk much except to one another. They came from Boston. Yet a third couple, Englishspeaking, turned out to be from New Zealand. Auckland. They didn’t talk to anybody, except to complain about our three guides. There were three Japanese tourists, who spoke better English than I did, but only to one another. There was a fat Russian with his teenage daughter. The group could also boast of a good-looking young woman with black hair, wearing sunglasses, and a bald fellow who looked like an American ex-army officer. There were others, but they kept moving around too quickly while we were still waiting on the floating dock. The bald ex-officer was telling us about the high and low tides, the New Zealanders were keeping counsel, Mrs Brewster was telling her neighbor about a disappointing meal on the last trip they’d taken. “You couldn’t imagine anything more terrible. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear there was dog or cat in it. Isn’t that right, Milt?” Milt was looking at the girl with the sunglasses, pretending that he was traveling alone. I was watching this woman as well. She was a focus to start my research before things got muddled again.
Soon, we were off in the boat, cutting through a lively surf. Our boat was a soundly built job, locally made from available wood: no prize-winner, but sturdy enough. That was my assessment from the sound of the bottom slapping against the breakers as we cut through them. There was nothing of the tinny noise you get at home in an aluminum outboard. Looking over the side, I could make out part of the boat’s name: Manaw-something. The curve of the bow took the rest of the name out of sight. My natural curiosity presented the idea of leaning over the side to see the rest of it, but such was the hypnotic spell of the slapping of the hull on the waves that I pushed the thought from my head. I noticed that the other passengers had been rendered passive by the trip as well. People who had brought novels or guidebooks with them were looking off at the water. There wasn’t a single conversation going on anywhere so far as I could see. The noise of the motor, I guessed, accounted for that.
Glancing over my shoulder, through the spray churned up in our wake, I could see the city receding behind us: white houses, the wall, the citadel, now looking more threatened than ever by the surrounding forests. On either side of the city, the jungle came down to the water’s edge and rose behind the town. The trees seemed to be rolling down the hills to the sea. Takot, the city built by man, was a temporary setback, to be corrected in time. Beyond the green hills stood the mountains. This series of gently rounded knobs reminded me of a line of circus elephants joined trunk to tail. The silhouette of these marching pachyderms ran up and down the coast as far as the eye could see. Beyond the elephants the sky unfolded, as blue as childhood’s dream of heaven.
Mrs Brewster tied a bandana around her head and put on sunglasses. She clung to her husband, whose eye was still where I’d seen it last. With the ups and downs of the boat in the surf, it was hard to keep tabs on the people I had identified on the pier, let alone winkle out the others I hadn’t differentiated yet. As a group, we were foreign:
mostly from North America or northern Europe. We were tourists, mostly, some of us well past our first experience of living out of a suitcase. I wasn’t the oldest aboard nor the youngest, I was glad to see: we were all typecast for our parts.
My immediate shipmate, holding tightly to his wife, was the young bridegroom, an investment banker from Boston I learned later, who smiled at me with a look that said “I don’t want to know anyone too well. You never know.” He reminded me that young people have a wonderful capacity for middle age that they carry about with them through their twenties. Just to see whether I’d get an answer, I tried asking him what there was to see on the bottom. But the noise of the motor made it impossible to hear an answer, so I gave it up. Still, I admired his equipment. He’d brought it with him, judging from the wear and scuff marks. On the other side was one of the New Zealanders. When we were hit by a wave that came over the bow, I offered the woman a fairly fresh Kleenex, which she rejected with a look I haven’t seen outside a courtroom. Behind me—I couldn’t see who it was—somebody was trying to explain the special quality of someone called Herbie Hancock. I listened without growing any wiser.
It was impossible to see where we were going: the tilt of the bow masked the view ahead. To the east, I could see where the mountains came straight down into the sea. I couldn’t detect any sign of habitation, no coves or beach strips. A heavy haze in the air exaggerated our distance from shore. The three-man crew occupied the front seats, one driving, the others aspiring to the job as young people will. Their outfits were black like ours, but they had orange stripes across them, chevron-like. After all, they were our leaders. Did I say that before? At the stern of our boat was a large net full of scuba gear: emergency pieces to ensure a happy trip for all, I guessed.
A high surf was breaking on the offshore side of the reef. Once it came into view, the sound drowned out the boat’s motor. The lee side was as calm as a swimming pool. The driver—if that’s what you call him—cut his motor to half and kept reducing speed until finally we pulled up at a raft attached to the reef with pieces of blue nylon rope. Now that the boat had stopped, the heat returned with interest. It warmed whatever flesh was showing.
The three-man crew bestirred itself to action. Strong hands pulled a sisal-wrapped gangplank from the raft and brought it over the gunwale, where it was made fast for our disembarkation. The float was big enough and steady enough for all of us to stand or sit on while valiantly struggling to get into the rest of our underwater gear. The top of the reef, where it appeared above the water, had been cemented over, to add additional space for divers when needed. Clanking of air tanks took me back to Florida and the memory that I’d been given my diving papers more as a courtesy than as a reward for merit. Some of my mates made heavy going of it, while the rest of us managed the tight-fitting rubber and Lycra as well as we could. One of the guides explained the size and shape of the reef, beginning to name and describe some of the wildlife we might expect to encounter. The sharks out here, we were told, were white-tipped sharks and not usually a nuisance to divers. I was glad to hear that until he began listing the things we should be careful to avoid: manta rays, anglerfish, and a few others that my mind couldn’t cope with. He ended up teaming us into pairs of buddies so that we could look out for one another. My buddy was to be the male New Zealander. The guide hadn’t noticed that we were not a couple. The Kiwis made a small fuss, which I took personally. He objected to being separated from his wife, so I ended up paired with the woman in the dark glasses, who didn’t seem to like the idea as much as I did.
The chief of the guides called: “Cinch up!” The sound of metal flanges fitting into metal or hard plastic slots nearly deafened me.
In pairs, we jumped into the water. After the first four had gotten wet, one of the crew joined them. I got it: there would be a crew member for each group. This sounded safe enough to me as I moved to the side of the float and launched myself into the deeps. I could see strings of bubbles from my predecessor as she returned to the surface. I did that too, and found it took me a few minutes to adjust my breathing to the tempo of the Aqua-Lung I was using. It rationed the air, so getting out of breath was inadvisable, dangerous even. In this buoyant salt water, the instinct to throw off the tanks and make for the surface was almost too much for me. I also didn’t care for the way the straps holding my twin-set of tanks cut into my shoulders. A finer adjustment on the float might have saved me that. I made a mental note and quickly forgot it again as another diver plunged into the water above me in a shower of bubbles.
From the instructions we had been given, I gathered that the ocean side of the reef was dangerous because of strong currents running by that side. The lee side of the reef seemed calm enough, but I didn’t feel that the reef was moving past me at all; it just bobbed up and down along with all the hundreds of tiny and larger fish which moved away from me with lazy, half-bored expressions.
The trim form of my buddy flicked by me. She was examining the coral structures on the wall of the reef. She took a few exposures with her camera and moved on along the rampart of the coral mass. I followed her at a safe distance, moving a little lower to see what the coral mass was anchored on: more coral, as it turned out.
Since my conversation with my client, whose name I had now forgotten—underwater exercise hadn’t limbered up my memory, I discovered, and my notebook wasn’t waterproof—I had been thinking that this reef was somehow central to whatever mess she and her husband the football player were caught up in. It wasn’t quite international waters here, so close to shore, but it was far enough away from dry land to be beyond the hard look of an overworked coast guard unit. Shore people could leave things out here to be picked up later by offshore boats, and, contrariwise, the offshore people could leave things for the local people who knew where to look. Exchanges could be made between trusting parties, with nobody, not even the coast guard, seeing who was making the exchanges. I owed this much to my client. How far away and long ago that conversation now seemed.
I felt good about this scheme. When it worked, the world spun around as usual, but when something went wrong, gravity came to an end, spinning all the players off into outer space. The thought that the players might be as confused as I was made me feel less guilty about enjoying my underwater swim on “expenses.” Of course there was danger. I was taking a chance down here. A moray eel might jump out at me from the reef and bite through my flippers, I mean fins, or something. Sure, I was taking a big chance for my old friend What’s-her-name.
As I was swimming along an underwater wall of mossy coral, one of the guides came in front of me, indicating he wanted a word in his office above. I followed him to the surface, where both of us stripped off our masks.
“Current too strong that way,” he said through my sputtering. “Dangerous current.” He indicated the direction of the fast-moving water, pulled his visor down again, and was off like a traffic cop looking for more offenders of the Highway Traffic Act. Slower at re-attaching my visor and mouthpiece, I followed him at a distance.
Giving a last look at the dangerous side of the reef and thinking that Tarzan wouldn’t be pushed around by teenagers with yellow slashes, I caught something at the edge of my vision. On a small shelf close to the junction of the fastmoving current and the calmer waters I was heading for, I spotted a yellowish something. When I turned, I could see it was a rubber or canvas bag, trapped inside a chain-link mesh. The color was almost washed out by the clear green of the water, which had made my own flesh look as though it had been in the water too long. The bag appeared well anchored to the reef: I saw a chain disappearing into the coral mass. I reached for my camera and tried taking a few pictures without looking at the accompanying instructions. And just in case, I marked the spot in my mind before continuing to follow my guide into safer waters. Here I could feel the ocean current tugging at me like an insistent magnetic invitation. I was tempted to follow it, but I kept my head. On my first serious dive, I wasn’t going to follow the Siren
s’ song.
Soon I caught up with my buddy, who was still examining the coral walls where I’d seen her last. She turned her head and nodded, sending an ambiguous signal to me. I couldn’t read it accurately, but I assumed it was a sign of friendly recognition. She was taking her responsibilities as my buddy seriously. I couldn’t see anything bad coming of that.
Suddenly, I could see the leering snout of a moray eel staring out at the woman from a safe crevasse in the coral display of waving noodle-like appendages. Swimming alongside, I tapped my buddy on the shoulder while pointing in the direction of the danger. I could see her face through her mask, a smile even. She moved a foot or two away from the mossy wall and waved a friendly paw in my direction. I watched her progress for a while, then made a few more exposures on the camera just to keep my hand in. The mug of the eel is still the best of my underwater collection. I suspect that he hangs out at that part of the reef expressly to get his picture taken. Everybody wants to get into show business. There’s no stopping them. I also had a few shots of the hiding place I’d found. This, at last, was something to show my client when I presented my bill. Some sort of ray moved steadily under me, looking for a free lunch. I was beginning to feel peckish as well.
TEN
THE LOVELY SEA NYMPH turned out to be a graduate of Sarah Lawrence. Her name: Beverley Taylor. When the voyage back to the mainland was over, we had a drink in the small canteen at the outfitter’s. The ceiling was covered with fishing nets and festooned with green and blue glass floats and the shells of various sea creatures. Beverley laughed at my theory about the show-biz ambitions of the moray eel, but said that she had known a few and wouldn’t put it past them.
