A Dolphins Dream (11 page)

“When I am here next,” Moses chuckled wading toward the skiff. Compton watched him go and as the skiff turned the point and disappeared, a lone rain bearing cloud edged over the trees and began to deposit its cargo.

The light rain came and went as grizzled clouds blew in and out from the southwest. Compton prepared dinner and watched the clouds gather over Taveuni and then blacken it with a deluge that obscured its shoreline. Realizing that he might not eat this well tomorrow, he ate the fish with unfamiliar relish, savoring its sweet freshness with every bite. Two herons flew in and settled in the shallows of the next cove. Like gray statues, they stalked the tide pools until engulfed by a leaden sky and sea.

Night fell and the jungle unleashed its great static. He again rd the rustle of footsteps outside the bure and, chagrined by his response the previous night, lifted the netting and with a flashlight ventured out to the open doorway. In the dead leaves, in the kitchen, on the sides of the hill, everywhere he looked moved land crabs like giant insects swinging great pinchers of pain in the pale moonlight.  The surreal scene played its sickly game and with the unease of a waking nightmare, he hurried back under the netting and lay awake listening to the rustle of the crabs, awaiting their arrival.

In the moonless early hours of the morning the sound of a boat engine aroused him from sleep. The boat motored to the edge of the coral and the engine stopped. Thoughts of beatings, theft and murder overcame him. How easy it would be. Who would ever know? He lay paralyzed on the bed. Shortly the engine started up again and the boat moved on down the island. When the sound of the engine faded altogether, he went to the kitchen and removed its largest knife from the drawer, then hopped back to the bure, maneuvering around the land crabs that seemed to have doubled in number since he first witnessed their invasion.

In the morning Compton ate pawpaw at the water’s edge and threw the rinds over to the next beach. He tried to husk a coconut with the big kitchen knife he had taken to bed. Twenty minutes of sweat and fury resulted in the removal of a thin strip of husk before he surrendered to the superior will of the nut, acknowledging that if it were the only source of food on the island, he would probably starve to death. In a final act of defeat he threw the coconut against the lava cliff and watched it bounce away unscathed. Turning to the beach he spied a yellow hull skiff at the edge of the coral and a single Fijian man who had lifted the outboard and was poling the boat across the coral.  The man waved and Compton waved back. When the boat reached the sand, he walked to the beached boat and greeted him. The man said his name was Aprosa. He was not large in the standard of most Fijians he had met but was well muscled with powerful legs and a sinister tattoo of unknown totems crawled down his arms and rib cage. The tattoos, it seemed, were in direct contrast to his gentle face. Compton thought he looked like that guy who played for the Lakers, Fisher, Derek Fisher. Fish they call him. Is he the Silver Fish who…?  Jesus, it’s catching, I’m starting to sound like Mariah and Moses.

“My name is Michael,” he said extending his hand. “Moses told me you’d be coming.” They shook hands and Aprosa introduced himself and then stood gazing at Compton for a long moment before asking, “You dive with the breath?”

Compton acknowledged that he had. “Yeah, I’ve done a bit of free diving. Though it has been awhile.”

Aprosa nodded. “You know the sea?”

“Sure”, replied Compton with a degree of confidence, beginning to conclude this whole thing could well be easier than first surmised. “I mean what are we talking about here, snorkeling. I know it as well as the next guy. Spent my share of time in the water.”

Aprosa turned and walked to the beached skiff and withdrew a facemask. He came over to a white strip of sand that appeared to fall off into deeper water and when he was knee deep turned to Compton. “You put on the mask and fins and we go to the outside of the reef, eh.”

Compton went to the tree stump where he kept his gear and returned to the beach to put it on. As he did, Aprosa picked up his facemask and began to examine it, particularly the glass.

“Those are corrective lenses,” said Compton. “My eyes, I’m a bit nearsighted.”

Aprosa nodded and handed the facemask over to him.  He took it and asked, “You’re not wearing any fins?”

Aprosa shook his head. “No need. There is a way out of the coral, a path, the sea knows. It takes you on its own strength. No need for the fins, I follow you.”

“There’s no way out of here,” said Compton in weak explanation.

“Come, I show you the way of the sea,” replied Aprosa who turned back on to the sand trail. Halfway to the beach he made a right turn into a seeming cul de sac of coral heads with Compton following. Aprosa then wove through another set of heads and reef and, without the benefit of fins, seemed to cruise through the maze without difficulty while Compton constantly used his fins to correct misdirection’s into the tight coral pathway. Suddenly the coral reefs fell away into deep water and more sand appeared and they paralleled a deep reef until they were out on the far edge where the water fell away into a bottom of sixty feet, then slid away to an abyss in excess of a hundred feet. Compton, suitably impressed, began to pull his snorkel to compliment Aprosa on his navigational skills but he had turned and was heading back to the beach through the same circuitous route. 

They reached the beach and were sitting on the sand when Compton finally spoke. “That was impressive, Aprosa. Obviously you have been here before.”

“No, this is the first time.”

Compton’s lips parted in the grin of disbelief. What is it with these people? “Then how did you know where to go?”

“The sea told me, eh. You feel the way it moves. It comes in to the beach and comes out to the deep water without trouble. It has the knowledge and gives the instruction. You learn the knowledge of the sea before you hunt it, yes?”

The grin remained on Compton’s face. Right, you follow the subtle movements of a near non-existent current, something only a fish might know.  

“I suppose so. What is the first lesson?”

Aprosa began to pick up pieces of red colored shells off the beach and as he was gathering them he told Compton to keep his equipment on. When he had accumulated two large handfuls of red shells he threw them into waist deep water. “You find each ones, eh.

“I thought I’d be diving in a bit deeper water than that.”

“We start here, teach the body what is the water. The brain thinks it knows but it is the body that needs the intelligence to hunt.”

Compton shrugged his shoulders in what could only be called a skeptical gesture and entered the water.

The shallow water was crystal clear and marvelously pleasant and in the light surge of the shoreline he used his arms to maintain position and keep steady. He felt a tap on his back and lifted up.

Aprosa stood above him. “Do not use the arms. Be relaxed in the body. Only the legs are used to move, eh. Take the long breath, not the short ones.”

Compton put his face back into the water. Taking Aprosa’s instruction, he soon relaxed and began to fe the movement of the surge and in that anticipation was plucking the shells from the sand with ease that brought a curious satisfaction. Within a half-hour he had picked up all the shells and handed them to Aprosa, who smiled in thanks then threw them back into the sea. “Let the sea have your body.”

The gesture appeared arrogant and didn’t make sense to Compton but he returned to the water without comment.

Soon he forgot Aprosa and forgot the water and forgot his body, and like a child in the center of his universe, picked shells from the bottom of the sea. The mindless chore became the smallest of pleasures, one he could not recall in all his life. Later he would think about it and realize that his body and the water were somehow communicating and that he had become an afterthought to the communication.

When he had completed the task he made his way to shore grinning like a twelve-year old boy. “That was fun, Aprosa. What else have you got for me today?"    

Aprosa smiled back. “You did well, eh. I leave now. You go back into the water many times today and find more shells. Do not go deep.  Be still so the fish they will forget who you are. I will come back when you are ready for me.”

With that he got into his boat and poled off into the sea.

Compton was left on the beach to contemplate the morning. I’m not sure what he was talking about. I’m taking diving lessons from a cryptic Fijian native who comes and goes on whim. He looked out to sea following Aprosa’s frail boat to the horizon. This did feel right, he mused, I’ll give him that. What an interesting sensation, there’s this kind of magnetic pull that’s almost irresistible. He felt a certain focus he had when he was a boy wandering up the dry riverbed behind the house looking for tracks of raccoon and rabbit and the occasional deer. There was something gloriously perfect in those pursuits.

Compton lay back in the warm sand and fell asleep to boyhood adventures. When he awoke he walked to the kitchen and sat in the folding chair that looked out across the Tasman Strait with a sense of wellbeing that was recognized in the vague way a dream is recalled. If he hadn’t just awoke from a nap and his mind not yet kicked into gear, it would have passed without acknowledgement. Instead it rested warmly in his gut and remained a knowable thing as he gazed out to sea.

Eventually he arose from his seat and in that seemingly insignificant act thoughts flooded his consciousness and washed away the gossamer threads that connected him to the natural world.  He went about the kitchen seeking chores. He shimmed the table leg, fixed the broken chair by wrapping a splint around its back with a thin vine he found at the edge of the jungle. He walked the perimeter of the campsite looking for any trails into or out of the jungle and found none. He worked for a time on husking a coconut, but exhausted quickly from the effort, leaving the task all but begun. For dinner he ate the coconut Moses had brought and cooked a piece of fish in a pan. He was under the net before night fell in the throes of roof brain chatter and second thoughts regarding this whole affair.

Compton dove for shells as instructed for the better part of the morning, finding it to be a source of mindless pleasure as it was the day before. When he left the water his body felt rested and at ease with itself. This he was able to recognize by way of its unfamiliarity.

Near noon Moses arrived with fruit and vegetables from the garden and Compton offered him tea.

“Look at that kitchen,” said Moses, pointing to the fine lined drag marks across the sand that appeared to have been the work of a rake.  “Those land crabs are your friends, clean the place up every night. After the hurricane we catch ‘em on the full moon. Put ‘em in a bag and boil ‘em up. Feeds everybody.”

Compton nodded, making no mention of his paranoid episy he arose

“Aprosa come yesterday, eh. Teach you the sea.”

“It wasn’t much really, just picking up a bunch of shells. He says I should keep doing it until he comes back. It seems like a waste of time. I’m looking forward to getting into the deep water and learning how to spear fish.”

Moses shook his head in amusement. “Yeah, everyone wants it quick. Aprosa teach you right. Let the sea come in and wash off the bad habits of the mind. The body needs to know what it’s up against, eh. It’s the one that takes care of you in the sea, not the mind. You do everything Aprosa say. He is the best diver on the island and the island has many good divers.” He had picked up the battered but unharmed coconut on the table while he spoke and was examining the thin strip that had been torn out. “You need a pointed stick to open the nut. Over there is one I made with the cane knife.”

Compton followed him to the back of the bure near the cliff where a cluster of boulders had broken away. Coconut husks lay strewn about a pointed stick that had been wedged into a fissure of one of the boulders. Moses jammed the side of the coconut onto the wooden spike and rolled it as if it were made of foam instead of tough, fibrous bark, and tore off a large piece of husk down to the hard nut.   In minutes the coconut was husked clean. “There is a certain spot to hit the nut, right here.” He drew his fingernail along a line an inch below the third eye of the top of the nut and hit it across a rock, splitting it open like a monkey’s skull, spilling the milky fluid over his hands. After taking a drink, he gave it to Compton who took a small sip and was about to hand it back. “No, you drink it all, it is the next best thing to the mother’s milk. Very healthy, you drink one nut a day. Fix you up.”

Compton finished it off and then Moses cut chunks of meat out of the nut and served it on the blade of the knife. “Nature’s candy, eh.”

A red-hulled boat passed the cove on its way to open sea. Three men on board waved and Moses returned their greeting. “Fijian are friendly people, eh. They wave and call your name. It is polite to wave back. A sign of friendship.”

“That’s a little difficult for me. It seems hypocritical. I don’t even know these people.”

“What is hypocritical?”
“False. It would be false for me to be friendly and greet someone I don’t know.”

“Is that how it is in America?”

Compton gestured in acceptance with opened hands. “Yeah, maybe there’s just too many people. Everyone’s a stranger.”

“It is better to be friendly than unfriendly. It is not false if you mean it in your heart, eh. In Fiji there is genuine friendship. You jes’ sit and wave and say Bula, and everyone is your friend.”

“Did you know those men in the boat?”

“I don’t know who is their name. They are Fiji fisherman.” Moses paused and looked out after the red hulled boat. “They fish with the net. Once a month they go to the reefs and get all the fish they need.”

“Why don’t you use a net?” asked Compton. “Is it too expensive?”

Moses’ eyes remained on the red-hulled boat, his cheerful countenance lost on its wake.

“It is not the net. I am a pre-mix, part European and part Fiji. My father was a German and my mother was Fiji. I am a second class citizen, same as the Indian. They don’t allow me to fish the reefs.”