Ghosts of Infinity: and Nine More Stories of the Supernatural (13 page)

“Even before I was near enough to see with my bare eyes, the singing had stopped and I knew the mermaid was gone.”

“What did you see through the glasses?” I ask urgently. “Did she have green hair?”

“I could tell that she was tall and graceful and her hair cascaded around her body to reach well below her hips, perhaps to her knees. But I could see no colors in the moonlight, only light and dark. Her arms gleamed white in the moonlight.

“I knew she had hidden herself nearby. I was so enchanted; I recited to her love poems straight from my heart. I had never been so inspired in all my life.”

“Perhaps what you saw was a ghost. Ghosts are commonplace to us and they float over land and sea, alike.” I try to be down-to-earth.

“May I, then, be always haunted,” Mike smiles.

He admits that it was the first and only time for him to have seen the mermaid though he has heard her singing during several of their meetings.

“Most of the time, I read the poems I write for her alone. Sometimes, I read Kahlil Gibran to her in the original Arabic.” He flushes as he catches me trying to keep a straight face.

“And, yes, once she spoke to me. When I asked her name. But she hid behind a boulder as she told me her name was Serenata.”

Mike is new to the place and, although a Muslim, he is a foreigner. Could he be suffering from culture shock? I bring him to Maas Alam, the oldest man in our community, who has firsthand accounts of love affairs between mermaids and mortal men. I do not know who, between Mike and me, is the more curious. We amble on a sandy trail beneath the coconut trees and cross, single file, a spidery bridge which seems to go on forever on slender mangrove trunks thrust into the sea bed. Finally, we reach the house which is a bamboo and thatch affair, made larger by verandahs around the hut: three are roofed, one is just a stretch of bamboo floor with railings to keep the children from falling off. We are welcomed by our hosts with fragrant black coffee and sizzling banana fritters.

Maas Alam is a vigorous and regal sixty-year-old with an air of great dignity. He wears a turban with a hound’s tooth pattern in black and white. His brown seamed face is still handsome, with a straight narrow nose and a wide mouth clamped around a pipe. The most arresting feature is his eyes which glint with a shrewd light between lids narrowed from squinting at the sea.

Deliberately, he removes the pipe and places it on a shallow copper bowl beside his knee as he sits cross legged over a beautifully woven mat. Mike and I face him, sitting on the other end of the mat. The mat is wide enough so we are free of the tobacco fumes from the pipe. But the roofed veranda is so large that we can see the sea through the bamboo floor at the periphery of the mat. The waves roll gently in a hypnotic way and the house on stilts sways lightly. I feel a rush of vertigo which I try to shake off as I listen to Maas Alam. Not so with Mike: he listens raptly to the old man.

“I had a cousin who was brought by a mermaid to her cave under the sea. He said it was like being in Paradise but eventually, he grew weary of the water and he missed the land. Before she set him free, she blinded him so that all his life, he would never see anything except her image.” Maas Alam says gravely.

“And there was this case of a young and handsome datu. From the time he was a toddler until he grew up, he had always been bathed naked by maiden slaves. He liked to bathe under the stars on the open porch of their astanah built over the sea. One night, when his bathing attendant went inside to get more hot water, he felt soft, cool hands reaching from behind to soap and rinse him with warm, perfumed water. The datu’s skin was white, smooth, and hairless from rubbing bat’s blood on it during his adolescence. But the hands and arms that reached around to caress his chest and belly were fairer than his, with skin so translucent, he could almost see the blood coursing through the fine capillaries on the wrists and the fingers. He dared not turn to face his strange attendant though she crooned to him as she bathed him. She wooed him in a soft mellifluous voice, telling him of unheard of delights under the sea. Though he enjoyed her ministrations, not once did he look at her or talk to her during her many visits. Eventually, she grew tired of courting him and left him alone. But his longing for her remained till the end of his days.”

Apo Sofiya, the local shaman, cackles from her corner. She is the witch in every childhood fairytale, with white and gray hair in a loose topknot so that long strands fall about her thin face. She is clad in a long-sleeved
sablay
which is closed in front by three round pins of real pearls set in gold of intricate design. Below the blouse, she wears loose, cotton pajamas called
sawwal
. She has been quiet so far though she listens intently, her sly, beady eyes focusing on the men. Now, as she speaks, we can see a perfect set of shining black teeth from chewing betel nut.

“It’s the men who are afraid of the weird and the mysterious. That’s why they’re afraid of mermaids. But just because a mermaid is half human, half fish does not make her less of a woman than a mortal. Time was, when my husband and I had the whole Mauboh to ourselves, one could take a walk at midnight under a full moon and see many mermaids on the beach, gossiping and playing like ordinary women. They love sugarcane, you know. Some could be seen washing clothes, and yes, even diapers and menstrual cloths, whether theirs or some mortal friends’, I never knew.”

At the mention of these female functions, the men look uncomfortable and Mike stands up abruptly to make his departure.

Mike is deep in thought as we leave the old man’s house-on-stilts over the sea. I have to take his elbow and propel him over the spidery bamboo bridge swaying with the waves lest he fall into the sea. When we reach my house, we discuss his plans for the
turol taymah.
I have the feeling that he is having second thoughts about the whole thing; he is struggling to come to a decision. As we sit down over some more banana fritters and hot, black coffee, Mike rambles on.

“My heart tells me that this is real, and beautiful and true while my mind questions if I didn’t imagine it all?” He bows his head and covers his face with his fine, elegant hands. Then he stands up suddenly, nearly spilling the hot coffee, and waves those hands in the air. I do not take his dramatics so seriously; Mike, after all, claims to be a poet.

“If only Serenata were content to be a gentle muse! But she’s a force that drives me in my waking hours and haunts me in my dreams. I am afraid to surrender to her but I cannot bear to lose her. She terrifies and fascinates me at the same time.”

As Mike agonizes over his decision, I reflect on my own experience. While Serenata seems to be the eternal woman to him, I have encountered only the playful and the helping side to her. Meanwhile, Mike recites poetry.

“Mike, what a wonderful poem! Did you write it?”

“No, but I wish I did. They’re King Solomon’s words, actually.”

I tell Mike that if he feels that way about Serenata, he should go through with the ceremony and I would help him. Mike smiles with relief and says that indeed, he is set on his plan.

Although I have agreed to support Mike in his decision, I am more worried over Serenata than Mike, himself. So far, everything I’ve heard had been from Mike’s side: his love for the mermaid, and his decision to be engaged to her. I had never heard Serenata’s point of view. Did she feel the same way as Mike? Did she want this betrothal? On Mike’s behalf, though, I am worried about the cash he has given to Jamalul for the dowry. The bridal dress, the gold bracelet, necklace, ring, and the tortoise shell comb are laid out on a table of bamboo slats in the open lanai of the beach house. My gift is a jar filled with fresh sugarcane cut into eighths which I put beside the jewelry on the table. I remember Apo Sofiya saying that mermaids loved sugarcane.

Jamalul has inveigled an imam from out of town, to come for the
turol taymah
. From the way he speaks, the imam does not know that Serenata is a mermaid. He thinks he is solemnizing a betrothal between a runaway maiden and a Muslim foreigner. He waits calmly for Jamalul to bring the girl to the tryst in the beach house under cover of night. Mike cannot sit still for a minute. He keeps going from one window to another, straining to see through the faint light that casts a silvery coating over the sea. After making him sit down, I engage in small talk to calm him.

“Recite to me one of your poems that fit this occasion, Mike.”

“Only a line from Ariel’s song lingers in my mind:
Nothing of him doth fade/But doth suffer a sea-change/Into something rich and strange
. Dare I suffer this death Shakespeare is talking about?”

Mike sits quietly, brooding over his long and slender hands, an index finger stroking gently the back of the other. Only the sound of waves gently slapping against the posts of the house breaks the silence. I try to take his mind to more mundane matters.

“Mike, Serenata has never shown herself to Jamalul. How can he bring her here?”

“I have already told Serenata where I will be waiting. Jamalul only has to keep a lookout for her. As soon as he spots movement towards this house, he will alert me.”

A soft whistle pierces the night.

“That was Jamalul!” Mike exclaims and, taking his flashlight, runs through the doorway to the lanai and clatters down the bamboo stairs which lead to the enclosure beneath the lanai. As I run behind him, my flashlight picks up the shine of silver
janggay
lying on the doorway which Mike’s shoes nearly trample. I feel a flash of irritation at Jamalul’s carelessness: he must have flung them there while he was bringing in the rest of Serenata’s dowry. The metal fingernails are cold and wet, strands of seaweeds clinging to the pointed ends. As I put them in my beach bag, I can see that the other gifts are all in order, except for the jar of sugarcane which is now lying on the floor, empty. I feel an icy prickle on my nape.

I make my way gingerly down the wet bamboo stairs after Mike and stand behind him on a small landing which is just above the water level. Over his shoulder, I see movement in the water. There is a flash from the silvery scales of a powerful tail that propels a sleek body away from us to the far end of the enclosure. Mike leans forward eagerly and stretches out both arms, calling out endearments. Suddenly, he becomes motionless and silent for a long moment. From behind, I strain for a glimpse of what has frozen him in place.

“That is not Serenata,” he says, his voice holds regret but also relief. He turns and bumps into me, nearly toppling me into the sea. I hold on to the side of the ladder while he climbs it two rungs at a time. “That is only a dolphin there in the enclosure. Somehow, I knew she would not come; she could not commit herself to any man.”

He stomps away angrily on the floor above me, and drowns out my voice calling for him to come back as he loudly tells the imam that the ceremony was off, the bride had not come.

The words stick in my throat when I see a pair of white arms that reach out gracefully from the darkness of the sea. Hands with long tapered fingers like white candles hold on to a length of bamboo in the enclosure’s fence. A naked back gleams whitely through the mass of hair that falls to stream fanlike in the water.

“Serenata,” I breathe with awe. She turns her head, oh! so slowly, and looks at me.

In the half light of the new moon, I can make out her lovely heart-shaped face with its pointed chin and wide, clear eyes. Moonglow is reflected in shifting patterns over the surface of the water and, for a fleeting moment, I see in the wavering light, not a mermaid, but a ten-year-old girl clutching at the bamboo fence. We stare at each other.

“Oh, it’s you,” I finally say, in recognition. But she is silent as she looks at me gravely before she fades away in a haze of silver moonlight and I am seeing Serenata once again.

“Serenata, thank you.” She listens calmly before she turns and lifts a bamboo latch to swing a gate open. She raises an arm—is it to wave at me or to begin her swim to the open sea? For some time after she has gone, I continue to stand there, not quite believing what had happened.

Why had Mike failed to see Serenata? Or was it she who chose not to reveal herself to him? I stand on the landing, turning over the questions in my mind.

The imam clears his throat to tell me he is waiting in the lanai above. He helps me up the bamboo stairs and walks me home in the early dawn light.

Later that morning, I go to Mermaid’s Rock to hide the jewelry in secret niches and I weigh down the dress against the tide with stones. Again, I bring gifts fit for a child: a jar of cut sugarcane and another of bee honey.