East of Suez (13 page)

“Why did George call Fiona ‘Our Lady of the Drum’?” I looked into the least sodden face before me: Liz’s.

“She’s found a place to live at the old gate. You know, the one you go through coming into the Old Town of Takot? There used to be an ancient signal drum kept there. Like the one in
Kim
.”

“Wasn’t
Kim
, it was
The Man Who Would Be King
,” Randy volunteered from the depths.

“You’re both wrong,” George said, pulling himself out of the slouch he had settled into. “You’re thinking of a movie called
The Drum
. An old Korda film with Sabu, the Elephant Boy.”

“What does it matter? I always thought
that
movie was
Drums
, anyway. Plural. Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.”

I began to get anxious about getting home to my hotel because I wanted to avoid a second encounter with that toilet in the floor. Liz had a word with Tam, if that was Tam, and in a few minutes a taxi arrived out front. It was now evident from my halting gait that this was not the day I was going to investigate the Golden Mosque or the Pink Temple nearby. I’d come back, I promised myself. One day I would allow myself to be a real tourist.

I was waved off in high style by my dry-land swimming pals, each supporting part of the drunken Lanier, and sank back into the rear seat of an ancient Citroën, which wafted me off into the developing dusk.

Of course, I couldn’t tell where I was going. I had to take everything on trust. But there were a couple of times when I recognized hotel signs and movie posters on billboards and on the trunks of palm trees. The women on the posters wore red marks on their foreheads. Like everything else around here, it probably symbolized something. As my hotel came into sight, I asked my driver to stop the car while I stepped into the street to become very sick in the gutter. I could see that I was not the first to offer a drunken benediction.

Later on, I dragged myself out again to see the Golden Mosque so I could tell my kids that I had seen the famous temple. There seemed to be only one near my hotel. When I got back, I passed out on my bed dreaming of my former schoolmates Vicky and Jake. He was wearing shoulder pads and a football jersey, and she was waving pompoms.

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.