East of Suez

by Howard Engel

Most of the divers from our group were in the bar as well. The dive had worn some of the frost from most of the party, except for the New Zealanders, who still pretended to be traveling alone. The Brewsters were collecting the names and addresses of their fellow adventurers and taking snapshots of those of the party who had warmed to them.

  “I’m from Boston, but I’m a class traitor: I’m doing graduate work at Yale. So I’m living in New Haven.” I nodded vaguely and she kept going. “I’m writing a book based on my thesis about Ruiz. The writer. It’s time somebody took a look at him. Luckily, my supervisor introduced me to his New York publisher.”

  “Ruiz? Sounds Spanish. Sorry, I don’t know him.” I tried to say it in a way that suggested that I might know any other writer she cared to mention.

  “If you haven’t heard of him, you will. Jaime Garcia Ruiz has written a dozen novels set in Paris in the 1920s. He uses real people, the artists: sculptors, models, musicians, and painters who lived in Montparnasse, wining and dining in the cafés. You know the sort of thing—Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald mixing with fictional people, Picasso and Miró sorting out undercover matters of state, Modigliani nailing a corrupt dealer in fake masterpieces.”

  “I don’t think I’ve run across him yet.”

  “He’s a big international best-seller. And they’re shooting a film based on one of his books in London as we speak: Murder in Chrome Yellow.”

  “I’m not very with it, aesthetically. I’m not much of a reader. Try me on the prime ministers of Canada or the states of the union.” Having said that, I was determined to redeem myself. “Why come here, then? Shouldn’t you go to Spain?”

  “Sorry? It’s the noise in here.” I repeated what I’d said once more. She smiled at me across the table and leaned into an explanation: “Two reasons. Have you got an hour? First, Ruiz isn’t Spanish, in spite of his name. It’s made up. I think he’s English. He’s something of a mystery man. Nobody knows anything about him. His publisher’s lips are sealed. I think, for reasons I won’t go into, that he lives here. Which brings me to my second reason for being in Takot: I love the underwater swimming. That brought me here in the first place. I fell in love with marine biology reading Steinbeck when I was young,” Beverley said. “He studied it at Stanford, but didn’t take his degree. He did a bunch of odd jobs before he started publishing books.”

  “Who is this again?” I asked.

  “Steinbeck. John Steinbeck. His middle name was Ernest or Ernst. I guess that was his German forebears talking. He won the Nobel Prize.”

  “Oh yeah. Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden. I remember a book about a wino collecting all of the unfinished drinks at a bar to make a near-lethal cocktail.”

  “Yuck!” she said, making a sour face. I winced at the thought myself and cleared it from my mind with a mental image of the fair Fiona. Here, within days of my arrival, I’d met both a professional and an amateur marine biologist. What more can the oceans hold for my entertainment?

  “What do you do that’s new and exciting?” She was twisting a lock of dark hair around a finger in a nervous way. I wanted to help her to take it easy.

  I watched her eyes go indoors as I explained the joys of selling ladies’ ready-to-wear in Grantham, Ontario. “It’s only eleven miles from Niagara Falls,” I told her, as though that fact took the curse away from being a small city directly across Lake Ontario from the Ontario capital. I went on and on until I ran out of gas. By then a real question had lodged in my brain. “Do you know Fiona Calaghan?”

  “Damn it all to hell! Can’t I go anywhere without being asked that after five minutes’ conversation?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Am I right?”

  “We used to share an apartment, as a matter of fact. Are you struggling under her spell?”

  “In the five minutes I spent with her, she seemed pretty impressive. Do you know Father O’Mahannay? The priest who talks like a guidebook? Well, he put me on to her. Blame him. Why are you down on her?” Again I had to repeat my question. The noise in the place wasn’t that loud, and we were sitting close enough for ordinary purposes. She took a breath and considered the question seriously.

  “You’re right. She’s the best friend I have in Takot, so I should get off her case. But it bugs me that in a year’s time, when I’m going down the Nile or up the Amazon, some halfway decent-looking paddler will ask me that question. Isn’t there anything that bugs you?”

  “My older brother is a rich, successful surgeon and I’m always asked if I’m his brother.”

  “Same thing!” she said with mild triumph in her eyes.

  “I’m Sam Cooperman’s brother, Benny, by the way. Are you staying here in Takot?”

  “Yeah, I’m up on the hill, inside the old walls, across from the big temple with the yellow dome. Are you confused enough or do you want more?”

  “I can’t remember much of anything, unless I write it down. Mind if I make a note to myself?” I pulled out my Memory Book. She watched as I made my notation. “How long have you been here?” She worked on her answer while repeating the information she’d already given me.

  “I first came two years ago, just for a couple of weeks. I stayed longer the next year and now I have a lease. Like the most insidious kind of lichen, the place grows on you. It’s the spell of the place, I suppose. It’s not that I’ve come to enjoy the look of the beggars in the markets or the sad way they treat stray dogs and cats, it’s just that everything else in the world seems less real somehow. In time, you’ll love Takot. You’ll see.” I watched her when she’d finished, as she picked up her beer again. “It’s a funny place, Mr Cooperman. I don’t think I’m real any more unless I’m on my way out to the reef or feeling the current begin to snatch at me on the seaward side. Coming back here afterwards is like changing from Technicolor to black-and-white.”

  “You sound like you’re a prisoner of your freedom.” Had I said that? I was surprised. Once in a while I catch myself being cheaply poetic. I should stick to the facts, just like old Joe Friday used to say on television. She was still chewing over my observation.

  “Takot has spoiled me for other places,” she said. “I go diving whenever I can. I haven’t missed a month in nearly a year.”

  “You can dive a reef or a wreck elsewhere.”

  “Of course. But I leave them for other divers. I’m stuck on this place. It’s like it has a secret that I have to discover in order to break a spell.” She was worrying the strand of hair into obedience. “I keep using these fairy-tale images. I’m sorry. It’s as close to being the prisoner of a dream as I’ve ever come. And I’ve been around more than most.”

  “You make it sound ominous, almost frightening.”

  “I guess it is. It’s like that windward side of the reef. You can get caught by the current and enjoy the show of the passing things you see on the reef. It’s almost hypnotic, like a spell. Then, when you try going back, that’s when you feel the power of the current, that’s when the reality sinks in. It can be frightening. I don’t recommend it.” She fixed her hair back with a silver clasp and, at last, left it alone.

  I ordered two more beers when the waiter came around again. As we talked, she emptied the contents of her pockets, one by one, on the table and there sorted out what might be thrown away and what must be kept. I found it almost hypnotizing to watch. And she didn’t even seem to notice. It didn’t interfere with our conversation.

  “Can anybody use that reef? Does it belong to anybody?” Again she asked me to repeat the question, but instead I asked: “When did you begin to lose your hearing? That’s not just salt water in your ears.”

  “You’ve caught me out. I can usually fake it. It started when I was in my teens. It’s getting worse now. I have a hearing aid, but my vanity encourages me to leave it off. And, naturally, I don’t wear it in the water. What was your question again?” I repeated it.

  “As far as I know, the marina maintains it. They rebuilt the float after the tidal wave.”

>   “The tsunami? Were you here then?”

  “No. A friend wrote me. And I saw it all on television.”

  “Back to the outfitter.”

  “Poseidon? They don’t own the reef. I think anybody’s free to dive out there. It’s government property. There’s an old wreck at five fathoms: the James O’Reilly, out of Dublin, as you might guess. An old merchantman from around 1910 or so. Most people go to look at it, but the rest of the divers look at the wildlife, which is always in flux. From goby to giant clams, I’m your girl. I could go out there every day if I could afford it. If you’ve got the equipment, it’s the place to go, unless you want to go further north up the coast.”

  “When will you be going out again?” I asked, feeling the salt begin to prickle on the back of my arms.

  “Maybe the day after tomorrow. Can’t put it off for more than two or three days.”

  “You’ve got it bad.” I tried to make the next sound casual: “I heard that it was a Canadian who started this place.”

  “Jake Grange. What about him?”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Jake was like a great athlete trying not to go soft in the sun. He played college football. Jake kept active and brown, but the life here got to him. Vicky—that’s his wife—she was always coming and going with their kids. She wasn’t into the life the way he was. She said she needed a regular fix of Paris every year to keep her sanity.”

  “Did the kids put a spoke in that wheel?”

  “Oh, it’s easy to get babysitting in Takot. And they had a tutor. Clever young man down on his luck.”

  “Where did they live?”

  “They were on the floor below me, actually. My place isn’t as big, but the plan is similar as far as it goes. I think they lived here at first, on the water, before the operation got too big. You would have liked Jake.” I nearly told her that I had known him and that even in the small high school community the closest I ever got to him was watching the football team practice in the back field. Wait a moment. That can’t be right: Vicky said I introduced her to Jake. My brain had missed its footing again. What was my connection to Jake?

  When I looked at Beverley again, she was smiling. Her face glowed with incandescence, like the eyes that came from the movie screens of my adolescence.

  “Thomas!” she shouted. I looked behind me. It was my favorite drunk—now, apparently, sober.

  “Dear heart, it’s you! How are you, my love? Am I too late? Have you got to the paan yet?” Thomas was handsome and dissipated, a kind of conscious pose. His collar was torn. Was Beverley itching to mend it?

  “Thomas. Sit down, we’re just talking about how you used to tutor kids when your funds ran low. I don’t know why we say just talking when talk is one of the better things people do. You do turn up in the oddest places.” Beverley was fussing with her neckline, checking buttons.

  “This is Ben Cooperman. He’s a friend of Father O’Mahannay.” I couldn’t remember telling her that, but with my memory how was I to know?

  “Oh yes. Mr Cooperman. I gather we’ve already met. Please don’t add to the catalogue of my latest escapades. Why is it that the details always come home to roost? I hope I didn’t borrow any money from you?” He grinned and looked as though he was about to sit down, but he didn’t.

  “Just the thirty thousand I gave you for a taxi. Don’t worry about it.”

  He hovered, still smiling. “I hope I had change for a tip. Your vowels say you’re not American. Canadian, perchance?”

  “Is this beach restricted?”

  “Let’s begin again. My name is Thomas Lanier. I’m from New Albany, Mississippi, but I’ve lived all over. I’m paying rent on a flat in West Hampstead which I’d like to unload. West End Lane. Northern Line. Any takers?”

  I told him who I was and we shook hands. For a while we sparred over which town was smaller, Grantham or New Albany. Then we tilted about which place had added anyone to Who’s Who. He won because some well-known American painter or writer was born there. Nobody of importance ever came from Grantham. None that I could think of, anyway.

  “I’d love to join you chaps, but I’ve got to settle a diving bill with Henry. I’ll leave you to admire Beverley’s classical bone structure, Mr Cooperman. Goodbye, my love. I swear that man Henry can hear a penny drop at a distance of three miles. Hope you’re still here on my way back. I may have to borrow the price of a drink.” With that, he was off without a glance behind him.

  “You know him from someplace?” Beverley asked, the blush lingering on her cheekbones. I described the circumstances. “Poor bunny, he gets into all sorts of scrapes. If he enjoyed the company of women better, he’d have them all over him. He’s so helpless. Utterly copeless.”

  “He prefers men, then?”

  “No! I didn’t mean that. He just doesn’t let anybody get too close. It took me a long time to learn his father’s a big seafood importer in Boston or New York. I learned that getting my hair washed. He’d never tell me. Thomas can be lots of fun. But you never get any closer than we were a moment ago. He’s allergic to intimacy, I think. And light-years from commitment.” Beverley looked serious for a moment, then smiled to herself.

  “What?” I asked.

  “One time he took me out and began, after several green stingers, to tell me all about the horrors of his life. But I didn’t have my hearing aid in, so I couldn’t hear a word of what he was saying. He went on and on, and I kept nodding and making sympathetic noises, while he was slowly dissolving into his drink. I put up a good performance, but I still don’t know the secret tragedy of his life. Although he is certain we share a common secret. If it wasn’t so sad it would be hilarious.”

  “Is he a permanent resident here?”

  “He’s all over the place. He sent me a card from Tokyo once. Another from Libourne. In France. And there were others from New York and London.”

  “And you say he doesn’t become attached? That’s quite a bundle of mail from somebody who doesn’t give a damn.”

  “Ha! If that’s attached, Don Juan’s a limpet.” She finished her drink and checked her watch. I fished out a couple of bills and paid the waiter, who gave me a bow and a pointed-fingers salute.

  “Maybe Thomas’s that mysterious writer you were talking about. José Gonzales or whatever.”

  “Jaime Garcia Ruiz?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thomas? Ha! He never sits still long enough to write a haiku, let alone a series of novels. Thomas is not the reflective type, although he’s worked at Columbia or N.Y.U. But I have a few ideas about Jaime Ruiz. I’ll tell you about them one day.”

  “Shall we share a taxi? I think it’s on my way back to the hotel.”

  “Which one?”

  “Alithia.”

  “That’s completely in the other direction. You should get a map.”

  “I’ve got a few maps. What I don’t have is much chance to practice my English. I don’t mind the extra expense, so long as you let me try to keep my verbs and pronouns in order.” What I really wanted was to see her to her door, because it would be the same door that led to my client’s apartment.

  “You’re crazy, Mr Cooperman.”

  “Call me Benny.”

  ELEVEN

  BEV TAYLOR GAVE ME a glass of wine and waved a few pages of notes at me about her pet project, then sent me off with a kiss on the cheek. I had just stopped rubbing the spot and was on the cusp of recognizing that I had allowed myself to get lost when I heard my name.

  “’Ello, Benny!” It was Billy Savitt coming down the street after me like a swarm of wasps. “Push off, will you!” (This last to a platoon of school kids pestering him for spare change—more for devilment than for need, by the look of them.) “Hold on there, Vicar! Where are you off to?” When he got close, his face was shining in the sun and his hair was damp where it showed under his hat.

  “Hello there, Billy. I was just on my way back to the hotel.” Another fib.

  “Can you put
that off for a couple dozen ticks?” he asked. “I want to show you something.” I felt my stomach turn like the monkey’s paw in the old play.

  “I just had a nosh down on the quay.” I found the Yiddish word just below the surface of my memory.

  “No, no, it’s not that. I want to show you the Golden Mosque, Vicar. It’s the centerfold in all the guidebooks. Around the corner. Trust me, I know the game. Chop-chop! Won’t take longer than a semi-quaver.” He grabbed my arm and we were off across the street, going downhill. That meant we were heading toward the water, but we stopped at a curio shop and went up the shadowy alley between it and a stall of some sort, where a man in shorts and a pith helmet was sitting on an up-ended box marked with the name of a feminine sanitary product.

  “That’s one of your public letter writers,” Billy said. “You want to send a message home?”

  “I owe my brother.”

  “There you are! This chap’ll fit you up. He’s a distinguished bloke. See the sign: ‘Failed B.A., Exeter.’”

  “Maybe next time. Where are we going?”

  “There it is!” Billy said, making a wide sweep with his hat at a wall behind me. It was an almost honey-colored wall with a bit of tracery around a window. I backed away from it, across the alley where I could get a better look. It was a church! Not at all what I’d been expecting.

  “Built at the end of the sixteenth century,” Billy said, taking off his hat again and fanning his face with it. As we continued up the street, I could see better, and more of the church was visible. The buildings along the alley almost boxed it in, hiding the pointed windows, traceries, and arches. To me it looked like a picture of a Crusader church I saw once in National Geographic: stone the color of halvah, and, from the high square towers, rows of pointed windows like an honor guard for the gargoyles that looked down at us like half a dozen Quasimodos.

  “Is this in the guidebooks?” I asked.

  “Some of the better ones. Come along!” Again my arm was grabbed and the rest of me followed. We went through a door cut into the side by enlarging one of the window arches down to the ground. Here six or seven barefooted locals were wetting their hands in a brass fountain. “When in Rome!” Billy shouted to me, sloughing his sandals before running his hands through the puddle of water. I did likewise and felt the chill of it, before moving into the main body of the church. Church? Where was there a church this big with a floor covered in rugs? There were Persian and Chinese rugs, and all of them big, but all of them were dwindled by the space that enclosed them. There were no pews, no posted hymns, no eagle of St James or St John or whoever. While I was an outstanding non-authority on mosques, I was as an Olympic star in what I didn’t know about churches. After I’d added up the hymns, I was lost for what to do. One thing is sure: it didn’t look like the shul at the corner of Church and Calvin in Grantham.