Under Radar (16 page)

“Not the first.”

“I can't imagine how many times people have told you that you and your mom and dad are the Swiss Family Robinson, that you're the child boy Friday, or Peter Pan in never-never land, or Huckleberry Finn. I can't imagine. And until tonight, no one has ever said so to make fun of you, have they? What'll you write in your journal tonight? ‘Dear Diary, she was making fun of me and she was mocking my mother and father.'”

Alan said, “Well, the island is all I've ever known.”

“I know who you are. You don't have to be so polite.”

Alan was quiet. Tom knew the use of silence as a weapon in these latitudes, letting the atmosphere fill in the spaces. Warm breezes muffle the need to say whatever is on your mind. Tom hoped the nurse wouldn't use the silence to excuse herself, to get back to the bar.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I'm sixteen.”

“You know who you remind me of?”

“No.”

“Of course not. You don't know who I know. But I'll tell you. My husband.”

“You're married?”

“We're getting a divorce. As if there's any other reason for me to be here alone. I could have a boyfriend if I
wanted. But not now. Maybe you, though? Huh? Are you my new boyfriend?”

She stood up from the bench and walked into the water, up to her knees. A coconut fell, pushing dry fronds aside and then landing with a thump. Overhead, fruit bats whistled.

“It's so disgustingly what it's supposed to be,” she said, “but this isn't a pretty island. It's not like Bali.”

“That's what people say.” Alan joined her in the water.

“Oh, I insulted your pwetty pwetty island. I made a big insult. So sorry. Have you been to Bora-Bora?”

“No, but people say that's prettier, too.”

“Now, that's a beautiful island. That's a classic. There's no grandeur here.”

“These aren't volcanic islands. Bora-Bora was a volcano.”

“Whatever.”

“I'm sure a lot of places are prettier than Fiji. I've seen the pictures.”

“And your mommy and daddy haven't taken you to any of them.”

“Not yet.”

“Ah, yet. Yes. So there's hope.”

“Someday. When I'm older. My parents don't like to travel.”

“You've never left the island.”

“Yes. I've been to Suva. I've been to Viti Levu. I've been to the Yasawas.”

“Those are all islands in Fiji. You've never been to New Zealand or Australia?”

“No.”

Silence for a moment, and then she asked, “Do you know why I left my husband?”

“Maybe you'd better tell me.”

“Because he's just like you.”

Up at the lodge, a man began to shout, “No, no, no, no, no.”

The woman asked, “Why are you smiling?”

“It's a nice night.”

“It's always a nice night here. That's not why you're smiling.”

“I don't think you're being very fair to me.”

“Fair? Was my husband fair to me?”

“I don't know. I never met him.”

“He loved me, but there was someone else. Of course there was, but otherwise he was perfect.”

“I'm sorry.”

“What were you doing with my book?”

“I was reading it.”

“You're lying. I don't know what you're up to, but you're lying. My husband is like you. You have the same aura he did at your age, and I know because I met him when I was your age. We were together for a long time. I'm going to try not to let those years turn into a waste because of the way they died. It actually doesn't matter to me, really, whatever it is you're up to. Just remember
this moment for the rest of your life, that someone busted you for who you are.”

“Why are you saying all of this to me?”

“As if you didn't know,” she said, and she slapped him across the face. The noise surprised both of them, and she said “Ah” as though she hadn't known her rage until she felt the sting on her palm. Tom could feel the pain in the noise, and then Alan cried.

“Shut up,” said the nurse.

“It hurts.”

“What do you know about pain?”

Alan ran up the steps to the lodge. The woman yelled after him, “Don't play your little game, you son of a bitch. I know what you're doing. I know who you are.” She yelled that thought a few times, and then returned to the water, and sat down. The water came to her breasts. She muttered to herself, “I know who you are. You can't fool me.”

Beryl Poole was running down the steps to the beach as Tom was about to leave his hiding place. Alan was with her. The nurse heard them but stayed where she was. Beryl walked through the water and faced her. Alan followed.

“Alan, tell me again, what happened?”

“She hit me,” said the boy. He fell into his mother's arms for a hug.

“That's disgusting,” said the nurse.

“What did you do to my son?” asked Beryl.

“It's between us.”

“That's not an acceptable answer.” She asked Alan, “What did you do to start this?”

“I didn't say anything. She's crazy. She says I remind her of her husband. And she slapped me.”

His mother said none of this made sense. She looked down at the nurse. “Why did you slap him?”

“You can lie to me, you can lie to him, but you can't lie to yourself.”

“I don't know what happened, but you're drunk. Go back to your room. You're not happy, and we want our guests to be happy. We'll put you on the morning plane and pay you back for the days remaining.”

“Why was he in my room this morning?”

Beryl asked Alan, “Were you working?”

“Yes.”

Beryl explained. “Is that what this is about? My son works. He's not like the boys where you come from. He works. He has a key and does a job here.”

“Why was he tearing the pages from my book?”

Beryl had no answer.

Alan looked down the beach and saw Tom in the moonlit shadow behind the tree.

When Tom returned to the boat, he told Jan and Eddie what he had seen and heard. No one could make sense of it.

“He'll be here soon enough,” said Tom.

In an hour or so, the boy paddled his blue kayak to the
Mimesis
. Eddie tied the line to a cleat, and the boy was with them.

“What was that about?” asked Tom.

“It's impossible to explain.”

“If it really was impossible,” said Eddie, “then you wouldn't be here. You want to tell us. So tell us.”

“You don't know about my parents,” said Alan. “What would you think of them if I told you they came here to kill the Fijians?”

Jan said she wouldn't know what to think. “I might think hard about why their son would tell such a story.”

“It's the truth,” said Alan.

Tom said, “I think I believe you. Why don't we just listen and decide for ourselves.”

“Based on what?” asked Eddie.

“Based on what he tells us,” said Tom. “If it fits what we already know or what we already suspect.”

“All right,” said Jan. “I won't interrupt.”

Jan made tea, and the three gathered on the soft hammock between the boat's hulls.

Alan waited for them to settle and began his tale. “Killing the natives. That's what they expected to do. There was no date. Something had to happen in the world first, an apocalypse, the war of all against all. And this anticipation didn't begin with my father, it was a family tradition. My father's father was American, like you, and he came to Australia to escape everything that was evil at home. He wasn't looking for a farm and self-sufficiency, he just hated the Jews and the blacks. He was disappointed in Australia. It wasn't different enough. When he died, he said it hadn't been worth the change.

“My mother and father met in university. They fell in love because they were both politically right-wing.
There weren't many like them. They believed in the gold standard and in a flat tax. The flat tax was everything. They set up card tables outside campus events, asking people to sign petitions in support of the flat tax. Next to the signature you had to put your phone number, and later, one of my parents would ring you up and ask to see you. They wanted converts to join them in the Australian Flat Tax Association, AFTA. I think they finished with about twenty people in the group. They all wrote letters to the newspapers, offering the flat-tax solution to every social problem. The AFTA men wore a white shirt, a tie, and pressed pants. They were careful to turn at right angles when walking in public. Everyone knew they were crazy.

“My parents' inability to register enough new members to the group convinced them that the message of truth would never spread, because people don't want to save themselves, because people love being slaves to a progressive tax system that punishes the people who work the hardest. That a nation could live in slavery to such an unjust system was proof to my parents that the end of the world was coming, a political end, not a religious end. They finished university and had to make a living. They bought a map store from a woman whose husband had built the business but died suddenly, at fifty-one. My parents didn't know much about maps, but they saw possibilities in the business. The store did well, actually, better than they expected, because they hated it. They hated getting up in the morning and hated closing the shop at
night. They hated all of the mail. They hated paying bills. They hated it so much that they worked harder to save the business from their contempt for it.

“But it was one step in the service of a goal. They wanted to live on an island and build a retreat for others who were like them. I don't know whose idea it was, but they settled on a resort for expert scuba divers, and they'd never gone diving themselves. A dive resort instead of a regular hotel because the guests would come bringing their own interests, and the resort wouldn't need to tell people how to have a good time. Very methodically, after my parents learned to scuba dive and became experts, they traveled around the South Pacific for three months, visiting every island that had a good reputation for diving and at least a grass landing strip for small airplanes. They settled here on Taveuni, to be near the coral fans. At the end of the second year, I was born. As my father likes to say, I'm the boy he wanted to be and he's the father he wanted to have.

“To an outsider, I'm sure my childhood looked perfect. I had freedom and responsibility. From the beginning, I had work to do at the club, and I could go alone anywhere on the island. All my friends were Fijians. There were a few white children, but I never felt part of their world, because my parents stayed out of their parents' society. The other innkeepers. That world. Rum at five. Lots of affairs. It wasn't what my parents were here for. They barely drink. When I was thirteen, my father told me, ‘We're going to kill the Fijians someday. I don't know
when. And you're going to help, you'll have to. The collapse of civilization will make peace between the races impossible. There's others we know who'll come to the island and help us. Every race is going to fight every other race until one race stands alone. I'm sad about this, I don't hate anyone. I don't hate the Fijians, they're wonderful people. If they weren't, I wouldn't let you play with them. But they have to die, otherwise they'll kill you, and me, and your mother. And you don't want that. One day the whites on this island, even the people I don't talk to, are going to wake up to their necessities, and we're going to gather all of the darks and put them in one place on the island and kill them. And you'll help.'

“I asked if my mother knew this. He said she did. My mother, in her dedication to the organizing power of the end of the world, had calculated the likely damage the island would suffer after the seas rise when the icecaps melt. On her reckoning, they built the resort up on the bluff instead of along the beach. Not that she expected tourism when the waters rose, but other white people who washed up onshore would need a place if they were fit to be kept alive.

“What my father forgot was that I was born here. He shouldn't have told me his plan, because I was one of them. I am a native Fijian. So it was my responsibility to save my people from my father.

“One afternoon when I was fourteen, while my father was on the dive boat and my mother was at the airport meeting the plane, I went to one of the guest rooms
to steal something. I found a gold Rolex hidden inside a running shoe. I watched the bungalow when the diver came back from the reef that night. It took about fifteen minutes, and then he began screaming and ranting, and called for my father and accused the staff of theft. My father said the staff was honest, but the man persisted because the watch had been in the toe of the shoe, hidden behind the sock, and the sock was on the floor. My father asked him why he hadn't used the safe, and the man said that safes are broken into. My father said, ‘And shoes are sometimes stolen,' and the man said, ‘Yes, and so are watches.' So my father called for Ako, the housekeeper, who my father was desperate to believe was innocent, because if Ako was a thief, then the Fijians were just like everyone else, and their deaths would have no tragic glory, and when he killed them he wouldn't be playing out a tragedy, he'd just be slaughtering children. So I was happy, because his vision of the world was melting. And if it wasn't, at least he was miserable, and that was good enough for me. I was sorry for Ako, that was my only guilt, when my father went with the owner of the watch to Ako's village and complained about her to the Chief. My father told him that if word got back to the tourist world about the thieves of Fiji, business would disappear. ‘And what then?' he asked. ‘And what then?'

“The chief beat Ako, and she cried, and I wanted to throw up. I ran home to the club, took the watch from where I'd hidden it, went back into the man's bungalow, and tucked the watch into one of his other shoes. He
apologized to my father in the morning and gave him a hundred dollars to give to Ako, but my father made him apologize to Ako directly, and to her chief. It was a mess, everyone on the island knew the story.