Brothers of the Sea

  To Clarice and Dorothy Clayton,

  my grandmother and my aunt

  THREE concrete steps led from the doorway of the small wooden-shuttered porch to the ground outside. Seated on the topmost step was a man, his left leg stretched out awkwardly in front of him. It was cased in plaster, from the foot to halfway up his thigh, and the white color of the plaster was no longer white but a dirty gray, and in places it was splotched and stained with other colors which had come from all the different things which had been a part of living since he had broken the tibia of his leg.

  For a long while the man did not move. He sat motionless, the palms of his hands flat on the concrete behind him and his arms straight and taking most of the weight of his upper body which was inclined backwards. The veins in his stringy muscled arms stood out like cords tinder the dark skin which had been burned even darker by the tropic sun.

  He wore a pair of faded shorts and nothing else. They were frayed and patched in places, and they were so old and worn with washing that now the patches were the only parts with any true color left in them.

  The man moved suddenly. He eased the weight of his body forward and then brought his hands round in front of him and rubbed the palms together briskly. When he felt the blood coming back into them and the cold tight tingling left the flesh beneath the callused skin he leaned back again and took up his former position, which was the way he had grown to like most since his leg had been broken.

  He stared out to sea again, watching the water break on the reef. It was a dull sea, reflecting the color of the clouds which blanketed the sky, and he knew from the way the small waves broke and tumbled that the shoal waters would be murky with sand.

  It is not a good way for the sea to be, he thought, because there is much food in it and the fish will not be bothered to take a man’s bait.

  From where he sat he could see the humpbacked shape of Praslin Island lying far across against the horizon. It was twenty-five miles away, and the weather and the distance combined to make it dark and featureless. It was not the way the man liked to see it. He liked it in the late evenings, when the sun was going down, because then the patches of red soil that the rain had laid bare showed like raw orange scars against the green of the trees. It looked good to him, the bright orange with the dark green, and looking at it always made him feel good.

  He watched the restless water a little longer, staring down on it from the side of the mountain where he lived. He did not see it as an unbroken stretch. Tall casuarinas and fat-leafed takamakas hid it in parts from his view, and the coconut palms which grew more thickly on the narrow belt of flat land which bordered the sea spread their green rustling fronds in a dark umbrella which obscured all but patches of the golden-white coral sand of the beach.

  He switched his glance, suddenly to the leg which was stretched out clumsily in front of him. He regarded it impassively, feeling neither regret nor annoyance that this thing had happened to him. It had been his own fault, for not going down the mountainside carefully enough, but it was hard to walk with caution and without haste when the early morning was fresh and bright and when the sea was smooth and full of fish that you hoped were going to bite. It had happened, and that was all there was to it, but he had wished many times that he had been more careful, because it was more than a month since he had fished and now there was no money for rice or sugar or tea and all the other little things which made life sweeter and more bearable.

  He began to think of his son then, and he knew that without him this last month would have been even more difficult. He caught the fish for their food every day now, sometimes with a line but most of the time wearing the glass mask and using the harpoon gun he had been given for his last birthday just over six months ago. He carried water from the stream, the weight of the brimming bucket making his ever-present limp even more pronounced, and he foraged far and with great stealth to bring back bananas and pineapples and sometimes even a huge jackfruit.

  Oui, the man thought, though he is not the son of my own flesh, I do not think I could have made a better boy myself.

  Then in his mind he went back again to the night which had brought them together. It was a long time ago, but the memory of it was as fresh as if it had just happened. He was lying in bed, awake in the dark, flinching at the ear-shattering thunder which followed every crackling bolt of lightning. Once the lightning struck very close, and the whole house rattled and he saw the searing flash of brilliance through the crack between the wooden window and its frame. In the awful silence which followed the thunder he heard a sudden clamorous banging on the front door. His scalp prickled, and his hair stood on end. He sprang out of bed and lit the lamp. He lifted it high in his left hand, and with his right hand he snatched the heavy killing harpoon off its bracket on the wall.

  He padded out of the room and across the veranda. He paused before the locked front door. He altered his grip on the harpoon and with the same hand he began to slip the bolt. When it was free he braced the sole of his bare foot against the door to keep it shut, feeling the force of the gusting wind. He took a fresh grip on the harpoon. He put his shoulder against the door to hold it, and then he eased his weight a little and allowed the wind to inch it open.

  He peered out cautiously into the ragged night. He saw nothing, and his hair began to stand on end once again. The small flame behind the glass of the lamp flickered and bent double and almost blew out. He wanted to cross himself, but his hands were full. He was putting the weight of his shoulder against the door to close it when he heard a strange, wailing cry. It came from low down and very close, and he almost jumped with the fright it gave him.

  He stared fearfully into the darkness at the bottom of the steps, and what he saw in the dim glow of light widened his eyes with astonishment. He bent quickly and laid the harpoon and the lamp on the floor beside him. He opened the door wide and clipped it back. He ran down the steps and picked up the basket of woven palm leaf. It was lined with cloth, and lying naked on the cloth was a boy child, its eyes wide and intent in the turning, flopping head. The small hands which lifted towards him were clutched into fists.

  He walked back inside with the basket in his arms, just as the first large drops of rain began to fall again, wondering what to do. During the long stormy night while he stayed awake and watched over the child he made up his mind.

  The man sat up once more and rubbed the circulation back into the palms of his hands. He closed his eyes, shrugging the mental cobwebs from his mind before opening them again.

  It had, he remembered, taken him a whole week to find a woman in milk who was willing to look after his son and give him her breast while he was fishing the seas for their livelihood.

  “A little over fifteen years ago,” he murmured aloud to himself. “And I have fished the same seas and lived in the same house, and nothing has changed much since that day.”

  And what of the boy, he rebuked himself silently inside his head. Has he not changed?

  “Yes,” he said, answering himself aloud once again. “He has grown up well, and he is strong and quite tall, and it is a pity only that he has that one leg shorter than the other.”

  The man shook his head, fighting the sudden ache which filled him.

  It is a good house that we live in though, he thought quickly, consciously changing the direction of his thinking to something that would give him happiness and not pain. The thatched roof does note leak during the heavy rains and it is not too far from the stream, and in the months of the wet heat it catches the breeze and is cool and more bearable than those big houses which the propriétaires build for themselves on the edges of the sea.

  No, he thought, I would not change it for another.

  It was then that he remembered t
he rent for the house. It was due at the end of the month, which was in another ten days, and because he believed in work and not in miracles he realized once again that he would not have the money to pay it.

  The third month, he reflected, and we are living on charity, which is not a constant and dependable quality.

  He shrugged abruptly, trying to push the whole thing from his mind, because there was nothing else that he could do about it. But the knowledge of the matter did not leave him so easily: it was a humiliating thing for a man to be unable to pay his way, and it was a situation for which he had no stomach.

  I wish it were very near the time of my son’s birthday, he thought suddenly, longingly, because then we should have the money to pay for all the rent which I owe.

  Thinking about it now made him shake his head in wonder. It had happened fourteen times already, but he knew he would never get accustomed to it or be able to understand it. On the twenty-fifth of February each year he found an envelope containing two hundred rupees lying on the veranda just inside the closed front door. He always found it there in the morning, and always without any note or explanation.

  The boy had been five years old when his curiosity and mystification got the better of him. In his superstitious heart he knew that what he contemplated would be tempting the fates, but even the thought of never again receiving the white envelope did not deter him.

  The night on which it usually came he climbed into the jamalac tree which grew a little way from the front of the house. His muscles cramped with the waiting, and three times he had to fight an almost unbearable tickling inside his nose which made him want to sneeze. It was two hours past midnight when he heard the soft scuffle of approaching footsteps. He tensed, and with his eyes he strained to pierce the darkness of the night, and then just when he made out the vague outline of the figure which stole up the path his nose began to burn again. Before he could stop himself he closed his eyes and sucked a great breath of air in through his mouth and it hit the bottom of his lungs and came up again with an explosive roar that shattered the stillness of the night.

  The figure on the ground below him froze. It remained motionless for a second, and then with a startled cry that rang with fear and despair it turned and fled down the side of the mountain and into the sanctuary of the distant darkness.

  He swung himself off the branch on which he had been sitting. He hung full-length for a moment and then let go. He felt the rough bark scraping the tips of his fingers and then before he expected it he hit the ground with a bone-rattling impact. He stumbled, almost falling, but then he regained his balance and sprinted forward in pursuit. He had not run ten yards when he tripped and fell. He crashed headlong to the ground, and the force with which he landed knocked the breath right out of him.

  He lay still for a moment, too stunned and bewildered to move. When he got his breath back he pushed himself up off the ground. He peered into the darkness. He saw nothing, and the only sound he heard was the noise of his own gasping.

  He turned away, cursing silently, and it was then that he became aware of a faint and tantalizingly sweet fragrance. He moved in a small circle, head held high and sniffing at the air. He lost the scent for a while, but then it came back again, even more faint and elusive than it had been before. His nose twitched delicately, and his heavy eyebrows drew together in concentration as he tried to identify the source of it. There was the piquant sweetness of mountain flowers in the scent which he smelled, of ylang ylang and coffee blossoms, but he knew just as surely that it did not spring from any of these or the trees and plants which grew on the side of the mountain.

  He started down, his head turning from side to side as he sniffed rapidly like a dog sampling in his nose the flavor of the air. He lost the scent completely for a moment, but then an instant later he caught it again. He took three more paces and then he halted suddenly. He sniffed tentatively once or twice, and then he drew in a great lungful of strongly scented air through his quivering nostrils. He breathed out with a sigh of understanding and satisfaction. There could be no mistaking its origin now: it was perfume, with the bouquet of it released and made even more fragrant by the pulsing animal warmth of a woman’s body.

  He stood in puzzled silence, and his heavy brows began to draw together again as he thought about it. He stiffened suddenly at the idea which came into his head.

  Could she have been the conscience-stricken mother of his boy, he wondered, this woman who had run off into the darkness and left the perfume of her body to linger on in the airless night? And if she was, why did she leave the envelope on the same day every year and then steal away silently without so much as showing herself?

  It occurred to him then that the money might be a birthday present for the boy, but he quickly rejected the idea with a shake of his head. To him his son had been born one stormy night on the eleventh of March. Over the years fact and sentiment had become helplessly mixed in his mind, and after a while he began to believe truly that it was the real day of his birth. He found it impossible to associate the twenty-fifth of February with his son: it was simply the day the money came, and nothing else.

  If she is not his mother, he asked himself, who is she?

  A sudden shiver passed through his lean body, and the cold of all unknown fear made his hair stand up stiff and straight on the back of his neck. He crossed himself quickly and hurried back into the house.

  In the morning there was no envelope. That night he prayed that it would come once more, and he vowed solemnly that he would never again attempt to discover the identity of their strange and unknown benefactor.

  There was no envelope that year, but it came again the next year and regularly each year after that. He prayed to his God and thanked him, and then after that he did not bother to pray again.

  The man felt a numbness in his hands. He sat up straight to take the weight off them. He took a deep sniffing breath, and the memory of the perfume he had breathed that night long ago was rich and fresh in his nostrils.

  Yes, he thought again, it would be a good thing if it were near to the time of my son’s birthday.

  But it was September, so he put the wish from his mind.

  He glanced down at his belly. It was lean and flat, and his brown skin had a young healthy look about it, and only when he sat forward and the skin wrinkled was it apparent that the brown skin on his belly was no longer the skin of a young man. He studied his flat stomach affectionately. His thoughts began to wander, and he felt a sudden stirring warmth in his loins.

  He remembered the last time he had lain with a woman, and the warmth between his legs grew as he remembered the softness of her belly and the way it had felt pressed beneath his own. He went back further in his mind, to the woman before that, and then he went further and further and in his mind he saw the different faces and the shapes of the different women with whom he had slept. Some of them were beautiful, and some of them were ugly, and all of them floated in that area of vision which was just behind his eyes. One of them had been truly fat and ugly, and he remembered it even though he had been very drunk.

  His mouth curled in sudden distaste and he shook his head abruptly and exorcised the vision of it. He stared out to sea once again.

  It is a strange thing, he thought, that I have slept with so many women and never loved one of them, and that I never slept with the woman I really loved.

  It had been long, ago, long before the night he had found his son, and she had run away with the captain of a three-masted schooner out of Mauritius. Something in him died after that, and though he had tried many times the fire in him smoldered but never burst into flame. Thinking about it he felt a moment of pain, but it did not last long: the memory of it was too far back.

  It is a good thing to sleep with a woman, he thought, but when the strength and the fire have gone from between your legs and into her body there is nothing left but a terrible emptiness. It is not the way it should be.

  His eyes lost their glazed expression and be
came thoughtful.

  I wonder, he went on in his mind, what kind of seed is it that grows a strong love like the one I had so many years ago?

  He thought about it for a while, but he could find no answer, and then he thought about the love he had for his son and in a sudden bursting moment of clarity he knew that there was no such thing as love, and that all of it was no more and no less than the great hunger inside a man to be needed and also to give of himself. And he had given away all of what he had a long time ago.

  And what of the others, he thought, all the other women you have slept with but not loved?

  He had given them something, and even though it had been without any real value it had been of himself. It had been accepted though, and he in his turn had accepted the gift of their bodies. He knew then that he had loved them also, not for long, but he had loved them just the same and just as truly in those brief moments before he had given away the little he had left to give. The knowledge made him feel sad.

  The man sat up and passed a hand across his eyes. There was pain behind them, and he knew it came from the intense effort of unaccustomed thought.

  You are stupid, he told himself, thinking about such impossible matters and imagining such clever answers when you cannot even walk down the hillside without falling and breaking your leg.

  I wish the boy were here, he thought, because then we could talk together and I would not be tempted into thinking all these foolish thoughts.

  It is still early though, and he may not have been gone long, he reminded himself. The boy had already been gone when he woke in the morning.

  “Be careful and make sure you are not caught,” the man said aloud, thinking his thoughts of the boy. “And come back soon because I am feeling very much alone.”

  The first stillness of the morning is a hard time, he thought, because the quiet of it always starts a man thinking.

  I wish I had tobacco for a cigarette, he thought, and he began to wonder whether the boy would bring any.