A Dolphins Dream (18 page)

There came a dread borne from some inner place he had never known that to waste its death would be tantamount to committing a mortal sin. He dove to the cave and paused for a moment at its entrance. This cave bent into a black hole for a considerable distance inside the reef. To be under the water on a breath-hold was one thing. To be deep inside a cave under the water on a breath-hold was another. He glided in. Fifteen feet into the passage it began to narrow, darken and turn, and he stopped to allow his eyes to adjust. Big-eyed squirrel fish hung in the dimness as if strung on a mobile that slowly spun on some invisible thread, their scales catching the angel hair light that filtered through the dense coral ceiling. He moved forward again until the tunnel funneled down and began to compress from either side. With no room to move and no fish to be seen, he backed out hurriedly, breath squeezing him, his fins kicking up the sand, churning the clear water murky and cutting down visibility. When the space in the tunnel permitted, he twisted around towards the entrance twenty feet away. Abruptly, the light dimmed and in the murkiness he realized that a shark had entered the cave, drawn by the blood spoor of the wounded fish. Adrenaline spiked his body, and the shark, sensing rapid heartbeats, came directly for him. When it was an arm length away, he thrust the gun into its nose and it wheeled violently in the tunnel and burst back out of the entrance. The adrenaline had consumed the last of his air and desperate for a breath, he all but caught the slipstream of the shark to the daylight that was the entrance. Outside three more white tips twisted in agitation and he launched himself into their midst, scattering them in all directions while kicking frantically for the surface. On top and blowing in explosive blasts out of the snorkel, he watched the sharks regroup at the entrance, engaged in a macabre dance that grew more frenetic by the moment. A wave of sickness came over him and he turned into the current and let it carry him back down the island toward the beach.     

  Compton heard the whistling in the blackness of the jungle long before he saw the light of the lantern. Moses broke out on the steep path that led to the beach, lantern light reflecting off his always smiling face and a radio that he held up for Compton to see. “Bula Keli, tonight we listen to the Fiji news. Hear how the coup is getting on.”

Moses hadn’t seated himself before Compton unleashed his shark encounter.

“There is fear in your voice, Keli,” said Moses when Compton had finished.  “It is on your face and in your eyes. Do the sharks frighten you that much?”

“Well I …I didn’t think so. Maybe, sometimes. It depends on the situation, I guess.”

“Why is that? You will soon dive in the deep water where the sharks swim, what then? You have seen sharks before?” Moses spoke directly into Compton’s averted eyes.

“Sure, I’ve seen sharks, plenty of sharks. Normally they don’t bother me.”

 Moses maintained a steady gaze and waited.

“Okay,” relented Compton, unwilling to descend any further into the deception. “Sharks have always bothered me. I don’t know why I’ve never gotten use to them. Even on scuba, which is much safer because you’re on the bottom, more protected. Doing this free diving, I really feel at a disadvantage, so helpless floating on the surface or in mid-water, so vulnerable.”

Moses sipped his tea, his eyes never leaving Compton. “Maybe it’s not the sharks, eh.”

Compton became defensive out of his uncertainty.

“What do you mean? Of course it’s the sharks. What else could it be?”

“Maybe it’s your own death that troubles you, Keli.”

Compton felt cornered for reasons he could not explain. “No one wants to die, if that’s what you mean.”

“Only the very sick and the very old want to die, eh. But the fear of dying stops life from being lived. It brings a sickness of its own that is worse. Fear makes the body stiff and sickness enters. I have seen it happen many times.”

“And you, no doubt, have overcome this fear of death,” replied Compton pedantically.

Moses laughed. “I have overcome nothing. I am too busy being foolish and trying to live. But I have known the sickness of death and I smiled it out. I rid myself of death by laughing at it.”

The honesty with which he spoke shattered Compton’s conviction and was replaced with a truth of his own. “A few months before I came to Fiji I was in the hospital. Laid in a coma for twenty-three days. It was no laughing matter.”

Moses scrutinized Compton in a curious way and was about to say something but thought better of it. Then, “Sometimes death comes quick with no time to think. Fear is a disease that comes from too much thinking.”

Decidedly uncomfortable, Compton, through old habits assumed a smile that was in keeping with his discomfort. “Well, I’m quite sure that everyone who isn’t brain dead thinks about their death after a certain point in their life.“

Moses shook his head in frustration and began to gesture wildly with his hands.  

“That is your problem, Keli, you think about it! The thinking makes you sick!. It is your thinking of the sharks that make you afraid. Jes’ dive, jes’ live, and when it is time for you to die, then die! Stop all this thinking before it kills you!”

Compton had never seen Moses so animated and the force of his words nearly blew him off his lofty perch. Yet still clinging to its edges, he argued weakly, “Sharks are a reality of the ocean, a dangerous reality.“ 

“They are the guards, that is all.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The big fish is a warrior, same as you. You have the spear and it has its power and the ocean. It can use its power and the ocean to kill you and that is proper, eh. But that’s not why you hunt it. You must take the fish from the guards of the sea, the sharks.  It is what all true men must do. They must hunt in their worlds and challenge the guards of that world. Differeguards for different men. For you the sharks are in the sea to keep you honest so that nothing of worth is taken without risk. You must have the skill to trick and not make the mistake. The sharks see to that, eh. They make you better.”

Compton shook his head, overwhelmed by the strange, illogical sense of Moses’ words. He could offer no rebuttal other than, “I’ll have to think about that.”

Moses slapped his thigh and laughed. And was laughing so convulsively that Compton, in his discomfort, shifted in his seat as though he were sitting on a bed of eels. Through his tears Moses saw Compton’s unease and regained himself and patted him on the shoulder. “If you must think, then we think together. What time does your watch say?”

“I don’t have it anymore. I buried it.”

“That is good, no need for a watch in Fiji, except for the news.”

Moses turned on a radio that was static-filled, and turned to a woman’s voice speaking in Fijian. He leaned over and put his ear close to the radio. As she machine-gunned her words out, he nodded in agreement. Occasionally he lifted his head to say, “That is good.” The broadcast lasted a half-hour and when it was over Moses announced confidently that, “It is going well for Sambuka. There is no violence.  The Indians are behaving themselves.”    

“How do we really know what’s going on?” questioned Compton. “It’s Sambuka’s radio. He can say whatever he wants. He won’t report the truth unless it puts him in a favorable position.”

Moses sat forward, his eyes fixed on the radio, as if it were Sambuka himself. “If he lies, it is for the good of Fiji.”     

“Maybe,” replied Compton, “but it is difficult to know what’s behind the coup. A powerful country is often pulling the strings because they want to control a place like Fiji for its own purposes.”

“This is a poor country. What would a big country do with Fiji?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re looking for a place to dump their toxic wastes. America did that to your neighbors up in the Marshall Islands.”

“That is why we must become a republic and keep the outsiders from taking our islands, like the Indians want to do.”

“In a way you need the Indians, don’t you. If they left, what would happen to the stores and the shops and transportation? How would you get your fuel and fishing hooks?”

“This is a right thing you say. As soon as the Indians leave, the Chinese would come in. They want to come to Fiji very badly but we keep them out.”

 “The Chinese? How do they figure in all of this?”

“It is well known that they wish to come into Fiji and other islands in the South Pacific. It is the same with the Australians and the Russians and the Americans. The pressure is very great.”

“Where do you get this information?”

“My brother in the army tells me. He read the paper and we talk when he’s home for the holidays. It was he that said we must have Sambuka, a strong Fiji man to defend us against these countries.”    

 “Whoever would want to control Fiji must have the money and power to take it.”

“Sambuka will not be easily persuaded with money. He is a Fijian and lives only for Fiji.”

“I hope that’s true because if he isn’t, the outside world will come here and take anything they fancy and leave you with nothing but the garbage they make.”

Moses nodded in agreement. “I know what you say is true. I have seen the American resort owners and the Australians. They have shown a greed that the Indians do not have. I fear for the life of Fiji.  It is a place of beauty, eh. It has been left for us and we must treat it kindly because it is our child.”

Moses suddenly rose from the table and with radio in hand said a brisk good night and strode off into a jungle that absorbed him almost as quickly as the civilized world would engulf the Fijian people and their way of life once it decided to exploit them.

A light breeze blew out of the east and rippled the water into streaks of variegated blues. Compton had not seen Moses in two days.  The sharks still swam in his thoughts and he had not taken the spear gun into the water in the vain hope that Moses might appear with some fish. Now there was scarcely any food at all and it was becoming clear that Moses had no intention of bailing him out, giving him no alternative but to hunt. 

His reluctance to dive was mitigated as soon as he entered the water. It embraced him like a loving thing and he was the child again in the arms of his impartial mother. He cocked the gun while hovering over the coral head of yellow fish, then swam out onto the far edge of the reef, catching the current that ran to the eastern most point. He halted at a finger reef that jutted out from the island, pumped up a breath and dove into water so clear it almost tasted of gin. A gray snapper with white spots on its back near the head showed itself on the tabletop coral at thirty feet. He drifted motionless on the current toward it but the fish had seen him and in its carnivorous way, eyed him while slipping the tabletop and vanishing into the labyrinth of the reef. Compton needed to eat and it was the empty gnawing at his stomach that, above all other demands, transformed him in those moments on the breath-hold from the casual sportier to a deadly serious hunter. He rose to the surface and viewed the panorama of hunting grounds that lay before him two hundred feet in all directions. He saw a school of six fish hovering in the mid-water column with brown and black stripes along with others that were lighter in color and knew them to be good eating, marking them as easy prey. He dove and drifted toward them as before but they seemed to move away without moving in the uncanny way of fish. No matter where he moved they always stayed just out of range of the spear gun. For nearly forty-five minutes he stalked the school before realizing they could not be approached from the surface. He had to come from a place hidden in the reef system. He dove down behind a massive coral head then swam clockwise around its base unseen by the fish, slowly moving into position with the gun straight out in front. The fish had indeed lost track of him and had swum within range of the gun. His hunger saw only the small spot on the fish and his body pulled the trigger. The spear flew true and hit the fish, killing it instantly.  With one motion, he retrieved it before it had begun to sink and turned for the surface eyeing the water below for sharks which, because of the clean kill, made no appearance. In his swim back to the beach he realized the absolute perfection of the stalk and marveled at how his body, when left to function on its own, was in perfect synchronicity with the environment. He deposited the fish in the shade of the tree and, in the throes of success, returned to the water.

That morning he speared three more fish and after each fish his confidence grew. Not so much in his physical ability, though it did, but in his understanding of both how the fish behaved in the sea and how, in the knowledge of that behavior, he was perfecting the stalk. Aprosa had left out that important element, he thought, but then he did say that the sea would teach me everything else. This, then, is the teaching. How the sea works, how different fish behave differently, and yet how it is all interrelated. It would take a lifetime to know just an aspect of it.  You could never know it all. Still, you could know enough to operate very effectively and survive.

He returned to the beach for breakfast and fried up the first fish, which filled his stomach and his soul, a more satisfying meal he could not remember. Before dinner that evening he said grace aloud which he had never done except at Thanksgiving, expressing his gratitude to the sea for its gift.

For breakfast the following morning he the last fish and in that knowledge and though satisfied, his hunger lurked and became a thing he knew would never disappear or be forgotten. It was in that urgency that he departed for the sea. He speared two small fish and returned to the beach without incident. When he entered the water a third time he discovered white tip sharks working on an old blood spoor. He lay upon the surface and watched them in their tireless pace, like confident dogs whose prey was a foregone conclusion. They paid no attention to him and moved as if he did not exist. He tried to learn something from their movements. Perhaps the shark in its cruel simplicity had no secrets to reveal. They needed no secrets. They reacted to weakness, that was all. Therefore, strength of body and mind was required at all times. When he dove upon them they reluctantly retreated to the depths. He became satisfied with himself, not so much so that he would hunt only in the area, and he moved a distance down the reef line where he dove deeper water. At forty feet he lay upon a boulder and waited out a ten pound coral trout. His breath-hold was good and the fish in its inherent curiosity tested it to his limits before coming into range. He focused on the spot and his body pulled the trigger. The fish quivered in its death throes but he had not the breath to swim over and retrieve it, so leaving the gun and the speared fish on the bottom, rose to the surface for a breath. While he regained his lungs three black tip sharks spun their way up from the deep drop off. He quickly realized that if the sharks were to descend on the fish they would take it and the spear to which the gun was attached to the far depths and he would be without the one tool needed to feed himself. He dove and reached the gun about the time the black tips arrived at the fish and as he ascended with the gun and the fish attached to the spear, twelve feet away the three sharks followed it up. They followed it right to the surface and now twitched in quick movements around the fish whose wound leaked blood.