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Early in the morning of their fifth day at sea, the first mate interrupted Boris’ coffee. “Boss, there’s a fishing vessel to starboard. Looks like it’s floundering.” It had been a stormy night, nothing Boris’s ship couldn’t handle, but maybe this fisherman lost his way.
“Are they looking for help?” Boris asked him.
“Yes they are, boss,” the first mate answered.
“Well board them and see what’s up,” Boris said. He put on a jacket and his captain’s hat and indicated that the first mate should go on down.
“Anybody have any idea what they’re saying?” Boris asked, leaning on the railing and listening to the frantic-sounding chatter carrying up the side of his ship.
“None,” was the first mate’s answer. “However, my guess is he’s talking about the fact that his boat sinking,” he chuckled.
Boris looked at the first mate. “A man’s boat sinking, no matter how small it seems, isn’t a laughing matter. Get down there and find out what’s going on.”
A quarter of an hour later the first mate was back with the status. “He’s not leaking anywhere, as far as we can tell, but he’s got a hold full of fish and took a lot of water on overnight during the storm. His sump pump is shot,” he said, waiting for Boris to process it.
Boris waited for the first mate to finish the report. He knew there was more.
After a minute, the rest came through. “It seems they also caught a swordfish. Big money those, if he can get it back and sell it to some tourist or other. Unfortunately, it slashed one of the guys pretty bad. Guts hanging out…I don’t think he’s gonna make it.”
“Okay, get a pump down there and dry them out quickly. If his can be repaired fast, do it.” Boris knew what being an independent boatman was like, always scrambling for money for repairs and fuel, hoping the next catch would get you caught up. He’d do what he could for the man. “Lighten his load by as much tuna as we can eat. He can keep the swordfish. Those things are a pain in the ass anyway.”
It wasn’t long before Boris’ ship released the fisherman’s boat and the two pulled apart. The fisherman wasn’t thrilled that Boris had relieved him of half of his tuna, but he was alive, his bilge was emptied and his sump pump was working again. Plus, he’d gotten to keep the swordfish.
It would be about six days yet before Boris would hit Singapore, and there was a lot of open sea ahead of him. He would cross the Bay of Bengal and then crawl down between Sumatra and Malaysia to Singapore. Being a native of the Philippine Archipelago he was used to—well, he actually preferred—being boxed in by islands. He enjoyed the combination of relative safety among them, as well as the hidden dangers their associated shelves, rocks and coral beds created.
On the other hand, as his experience as a captain grew, along with the size of his boat, the open sea gave him a feeling of freedom, as well as the challenge of the unknown. A sea this large could change from calm and cloudless to three-meter chop and twenty-five knot winds in a matter of hours. With no place to run, a captain’s knowledge of his vessel and crew’s capabilities was the only thing between disaster and a continued career. Boris knew that, in his case, the open sea wasn’t the most intimidating threat to a long and productive career, but he took it as a challenge. He plotted course alternatives and listened to every report of mishap or weather that came his way.
The last couple of years were lonely ones for Boris. He continued to grow his business after Julia died. In fact, her death sparked expansionist activity in him he might never have pursued. By now he had his primary ship, the one he always sailed, but instead of working mostly north, between the Philippines and China, he covered a circle that had grown ever wider. He was traveling from the west coast of India all the way to Northern Japan. He had contacts in every port and ran small—he called them subsidiary—vessels around several of them. Subsidiary distribution pipelines. Garden hoses off the main pumper engine.
Today he was rereading Julia’s letters to fill the time. Even though Boris wasn’t much for written communication, Julia had sent him letters faithfully every month when she was in China. They were missives filled with excitement and dreams. He got the feeling she sent the same information to everyone in the family but spaced it out so each got a different week. However, in this particular letter Julia said, “I’m sending you a copy of lyrics I’m writing. I hope to put them to music in the future. This is one dream I am only telling you. I know you won’t tell anyone, because…well, how could you? You never see anyone.”
In a Crowd of Strangers
Aren't we all,
At our core,
Strangers?
On the chair,
Thigh to thigh,
Caught?
Eating and
Drinking and
Buzzing with talk.
Listening
Long enough
To prep the next thought.
Smile and hope
To dazzle
Close by.
To show the true
Self that we’ve
Made up this year.
Keeping the walls
Tightly in place
Even if lids loosen.
Sewing broken seams,
Repairing cracks
And oiling locks.
Happy to share
What we want them to know
And glad of the time to go.
It was after this letter that Boris’s understanding toward his baby sister shifted. He’d never realized how similar they were. Boris felt alone his entire life. Generally, he made sure he was alone in body, as well as in spirit.
After the letter he knew Julia felt the same, but she played the scene a bit differently.
Boris kept people at arm’s length by acting, and being, the tough guy. He was the boss and he made sure you knew it. If he wasn’t the boss, then you must be worth something to him or you wouldn’t be around.
Julia kept people at arm’s length by concentrating on herself. The most important thing in her life was her career and her song. Her focus might not have been as razor sharp as Boris’s because she did let family and the occasional friend, Orlando for instance, within her sphere.
Singapore Fling
When they arrived at port in Singapore a few days later Boris set aside his melancholy long enough to make sure his goods were delivered. He unloaded enough cigarettes for each citizen of the city-state of Singapore to get two cartons.
This many cigarettes and they’re a drop in the bucket. Up in smoke in a week, I bet, he thought. The truth was, many of the counterfeit Camels he unloaded in Singapore would find their way to Malaysia. Who knows? Maybe farther. He didn’t care; he got his money. Damn good money, too.
He was going to spend a couple days here. He paid his sailors an insignificant portion of their salary and said there would be no bailing anyone out of jail. “If anyone gets arrested, I get to keep the rest of your paycheck and you get to take whatever caning, or other corporal punishment, you’ve brought on yourself.” His men were a bit miserable about that. There were certainly more fun ports than Singapore for a sailor to go wild in.
Boris didn’t care. Singapore was his favorite port at the moment. It was where Cecilia worked her healing magic on his heart.
There were few women in Boris’s life that told him what to do and fewer still that he listened to, but when Cecilia told him not to knock on her door before noon, he didn’t knock before noon.
It was fine. He wanted some high quality ramen. Something with octopus, shrimp, scallops and mussels and lots of red peppers. Just no tuna. He was totally sick of eating tuna. He thought he knew every way there was to prepare it, but his ship’s cook had come up with a couple new ones. Tuna pie had been the worst. He’d spent most of the morning after that breakfast outdoors because he thought if he smelled baked tuna and onions one more time he’d barf. He’d paid one of the sailors two hundred pesos to pitch the remaining tuna overboard while the cook took his b
reak between breakfast and lunch. That lunch consisted only of rice and beans, but it was worth it.
Near the famous Singapore Merlion that guarded the river entrance, there was a restaurant he remembered from his last visit which was famous for their ramen. It was a few kilometers from Cecilia’s place and the sky was deep blue. He’d just walk to her place after eating.
He chose to sit on the second floor of the restaurant at a lacquered plank bar which faced the park itself. He looked out at beautiful asul water, the proud Merlion, and all the people roaming the paths and steps. Boris took in the view as he waited for his ramen. The park was a popular tourist destination with lots of photographic opportunities and many vendors selling trinkets and things to eat and drink.
He watched all the families with kids, his mind wandering back to the days when it was just his mom and dad and his two siblings. Before Julia came into the picture and his mom was ripped out of the picture. He guessed they’d had some fun. His mom had loved to travel around the islands. Of course it was nothing like what he did now, but still, he thought he remembered some good times. As he waited for his meal he absentmindedly fingered the lucky gold coin he carried everywhere in his pocket. In the past twenty years he’d nearly worn it smooth.
“Your ramen, sir.” The waiter set the steaming, beautiful bowl before him. The contents looked like they had been arranged by a food stylist, with seafood playing hide and seek among the noodles, herbs, seasoning and red pepper seeds coloring the contents, and a savory steam wafting off the meal that made his mouth water.
The same waiter then arranged a number of small side dishes just above the main bowl with various accoutrements he could use to modify and enhance the flavor. He told the waiter to bring him a beer and then he went to work on personalizing the dish.
Boris finished up around noon and briefly thought about dessert. There was an ice cream shop in the same block just a few doors toward the river, but after a moment he decided dessert might be better with Cecilia.
Back on the first floor of the restaurant, he turned away from the river and headed to see the singer that healed his heart.
Cecilia
He rang the bell to Cecilia’s apartment twice and waited for thirty seconds before he heard noise and saw a vague shadow in the door security eyehole.
“Eeee!”
That response made Boris smile. There wasn’t much that made him smile, so it was significant.
When she got the door open she grabbed him and pulled him into the room, kicking the door shut behind them.
“Hi, Cece,” were the only words out of Boris’ mouth before Cecilia’s arms were around his neck and her lips were locked on his. When it was clear she wasn’t going to quit, he backed her up to the walk and entered her warm mouth with his tongue.
She let out a soft moan and said, “Let’s say ‘Hi’ in bed, then you can ask me how the last six months have been.”
She started nibbling on his ear lobe as he lifted her off the ground and carried her to the far wall, gently rolling her back into the bed that was still warm with her sleep.
Cecilia was correct. It had been six months since Boris had been with a woman, and that last woman was her. He hadn’t said anything about a committed relationship, but he’d had no desire to find anyone else, either.
When Boris was young, power had played out sexually a few times for him…with both women and men. One of these incidents had turned into a wedge between him and his brother, Steven. Boris and his friends were planning to teach a Japinoy[i] a lesson he wouldn’t forget and as the lesson veered toward a brutal rape, it was interrupted by Steven. As it turned out, Boris had known neither his target’s capacity nor about his friendship with his brother. Boris’s appetites were a mixture of anger, ambition and hormones at the time, but he’d learned a significant lesson about patience and planning. Indeed, the incident also cost him what was left of his relationship with his brother.
Since then, simple power never felt right to him. Not right in the sense of right versus wrong, but it had never again been something that, internally, he equated with true respect. Power was one thing, but respect was more important to Boris. If he needed power to make sure his respect was upheld, so be it, but at this point strength alone was not what he desired.
He met Cecilia more than ten years after his youngest Julia died and he was wallowing between despair and frenetic work. One evening in Singapore he was so lonely and depressed that he decided to go out walking. When he heard one of his sister Julia’s favorites, ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ coming out of a jazz club he abruptly turned to enter and by the end of the evening was so taken with the voluptuous Spanish/Asian singer, he stayed a week longer wining and dining her. They had not even gone to bed until the night before he had to leave.
From that moment on, Singapore was his port of choice, even though it was one of the least profitable for him.
Walk in the Park
Steven and Konnor made landfall at the port of Singapore the same morning as Boris and Konnor stepped on the first non-Filipino soil—well, dock and then sand—in his life. He took a look around and then commented, “It doesn’t look very different than Manila, Daddy. Except maybe cleaner.”
Steven just tousled his son’s hair and kept him moving away from the ship and the crowds. “Let’s head over to the Merlion, Konnor. I bet that statue is worthy of one of your pictures, right?”
“Yes. Mommy asked me to take a picture of the Merlion for her.”
“What do you think, should we go to the National Museum, as well?” Steven asked. “I think that was a place your mom also asked about. You know how much she likes to read about history.”
“But is there anything fun there, Daddy?” Konnor replied.
“I guess I really don’t know, Konnor, but I know that besides Singaporean History they have a big section of zoological studies…that means that it’s about the study of animals,” Steven answered.
“You mean they have a zoo?” Konnor asked excitedly.
“No, it’s not the same as a zoo, Konnor. All the exhibits here would be preserved and mounted…you know…they aren’t alive anymore. They’re like stuffed animals,” Steven answered. He was having a little trouble explaining to an eight-year-old why it would be interesting to see a bunch of dead animals on display, but maybe he didn’t have to.
“Oh, cool,” Konnor said, “I’ve seen pictures of that at school. I’d love to see a stuffed tiger!”
‘Okay, well I’m not sure what exactly they have, but I know your mom wanted us to stop there, so we’ll give it a shot. After that we can try to hit a park or the beach.”
They walked to a bus stop and studied the Land Transport Authority map to figure out which bus to take to Merlion Park and when it would come. When it showed up at the bus stop within two minutes of the scheduled time, the two of them climbed on board and Steven muttered, “And that makes three.”
“Wow, look how clean the bus is, Daddy,” Konnor said, squatting down and looking under the seats for garbage.
“Yeah, I know. First, there was an actual schedule posted at the bus stop. Second, the bus we wanted showed up right at its advertised time. Third, the bus is clean and comfortable and the riders aren’t packed in like sardines,” Steven replied.
Konnor ran to a seat about halfway down the bus aisle and got on the seat on his knees to stare out the window. He stayed there, pointing out differences between Manila and Singapore, until they came to a stop close to the park entrance.
“This is our stop, Konnor. Let’s get off.”
They stepped off the bus and Konnor raced toward the big statue that guarded the mouth of the Singapore River. It hadn’t spewed water for a few years, and its view of the river was somewhat blocked by a newer bridge, but it still attracted attention. It was a beautiful day full of sunshine and there were lots of tourists, Asians and non-Asians alike, milling about. It was closing in on lunchtime and Steven began to realize just how long ago it was that he’d eate
n.
“What do you think, Sport; after you’ve taken your pictures, would you like to figure out lunch?” Steven asked.
“Yehey, yes! I want to go there,” Konnor answered, pointing to a classy building where Steven could see people eating on balconies overlooking the park. It looked really expensive to Steven, but glancing around he could see several restaurants more suited to his budget between the lion-headed fish and the budget-busting balconies. Singapore was a global business hub and, therefore, blessed by a wide variety of foods available within close proximity.
“Sure, we can head that direction. Maybe we’ll find something else good along the way, too,” Steve said, honing in on signs advertising his son’s favorite two types of food, pizza and ice cream.
“Go stand by the lion fish, Daddy,” Konnor told him. “Mommy will like this picture because you’re in it.”
Steven stood with his back to the balconies and other shops, smiled at the camera and had his first picture taken with the Singaporean Merlion.
“Okay, your turn now, Konnor,” Steven said, holding his hand out for the camera. “I’m sure Mom wants to see you in this picture as well.”
Konnor stood with a big smile on his face, hands spread at seven and eleven o’clock, as if to give even more emphasis to the large statue to his right.
When they were both immortalized, Konnor said, “Now I’m starved. Let’s have pizza!” Apparently he’d seen the pizza sign as well. Steven was more interested in noodles, but he didn’t need to spend a day’s salary to eat them, so it was either pizza or a bit more wandering to find a more cost-effective noodle shop.
One Fish, Two Fish, Big Fish, Little Fish: Silver Dawn (Smugglers In Paradise Book 2) Page 5
