A Dolphins Dream (15 page)
“A discipline?”
“Yes, it is a discipline. To see only the small spot and nothing else. Even when the fish is very big and beautiful and even when you know that if you miss it will take the gun away. The mind wants to see everything but you cannot let it.”
“Is there nothing easy about spear fishing?”
“No, it is not supposed to be easy, eh. It cannot be done unless you are relaxed in the mind and in the breath and in the body, also the eyes, relaxed but alert, eh.”
Aprosa picked up the gun and showed Compton how to cock it by putting it into his gut and pulling back each band. Then how to fix the point, which was detachable so there would be no pressure on the spear shaft and thus work off the fish if there was a fight. He showed him how to hold the gun and sight along the barrel. Compton practiced by aiming on a tiny spot on the orchid tree. “Do not see the tree or the bark or a leaf. See nothing but the spot on the tree. When you are in the water your body must be a part of the gun, not bent, but even with the barrel, so you and the gun are all one thing. When you pull the trigger it does not come from the mind, it comes from the body. The body will know when everything is lined up, the mind is always adding up too many things and you will miss the spot or you will act too late. Do not listen when the mind speaks, trust the sense of the body. The body does not speak. It acts. Let it be free to act. When it is the right time to pull the trigger, the trigger will be pulled.”
Compton nodded in understanding but all he wanted to do was go into the water and stalk fish. “Well, lets go out and give it a try. I have to start paying my rent.”
Aprosa shook his head. “I will not go with you. The sea will teach you the rest. Begin with the small fish and when the body is sure of itself then go to the big fish on the outside reefs. The reef and the sea are living things and each fish is like a part of the sea’s blood and a piece of its brain, all connected to one another by the thickness of the water. For you to hunt you must become as the fish, a part of the sea/brain, or you will not be equal to the intelligence of the creatures. One thing also, do not give the sharks an easy meal or soon when they see you they will come to expect it, more dangerous then, eh.”
They both shoved the boat off the beach and with spear gun in hand, Compton watched Aprosa pole his way over the reef and head out for Taveuni.
After entering the water he cocked the gun in the sand strip and it required all the strength he could muster. On the last band his arms quivered with muscle fatigue. Moving slowly along the edge of the reef inhaling deep breaths, he sucked in a final breath, pulled the snorkel from his mouth and bent into the water. With scarcely a kick he freed himself from the inverse gravity of the surface and glided down to the base of a reef, settling on a patch of sand. The distant sounds of snapping shrimp and the clicks and snaps of fish became an indecipherable music. The pressure of the water, tight and womb-like, gave a pleasurable sense of assimilation. He remained motionless on the sand and the fish, which had shifted in their awareotheof him at his descent, returned to their tasks and he was forgotten.
Behind the glass of the facemask his eyes moved from periphery to periphery, beyond the dancing fish out to the edge of vision where the snapper and coral trout would come. Lying in a state of relaxed alertness, he felt no need for air nor did his next breath concern him. He waited nearly a minute and a half and when no fish of size appeared he rose unhurriedly to the surface.
He worked his way to the outside edge of the reef, diving in deeper water with each new descent. At the end of the reef the depth was sixty feet and the current, invisible as the wind, moved like a force within a force, a river growing wild from an unrealized source. He dropped down again, more for shelter from the current than for anything he saw. Near the bottom was a large cave hidden beneath a jutting lip of coral. From inside the cave came the sound of a thunderclap and a ball of rising sand gave evidence of a large fish fleeing into its recesses. Gliding into the dim mouth of the cave, which had a jagged diameter of six feet, he waited a moment for his eyes to adjust. Two tunnels branched off to a Y, each occupying thin beams of sunlight which flickered through the coral ceiling like tiny suns held captive in a dark castle of cloud cover. Into this singular illumination he drifted, electing the tunnel to the right, pulling himself along by hand until reaching its narrowed end where, glowing with the supernatural light of an apparition, hovered a large grouper. He slowly brought the gun down and sighted along its barrel. In the low light he could not find the kill spot with any degree of certainty, and hesitated. If he shot and missed the kill spot the speared fish in all likelihood would retreat deeper into the cave and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to extract. He could lose his spear and even the gun. Back-tracking out of the cave and into the light, he glided upwards to the surface growing more comfortable with his decision.
Crossing a barren stretch of sand, he came to the eastern most point of the island, as he knew it. Here a deep canyon fell away in terraced coral to a hundred-foot bottom that leveled out and fell away again to blue infinity. Below, moving in the stilled way of objects viewed from a great height, were large coral trout, grouper, snapper and fish which man had put no names to. As Compton bent into a dive the fish moved again in choreographed escape, drifting and darting into the reef and down into the blue chasm where they vanished altogether.
The entire area revealed itself to be a vast colony of fish that converged on this single point of island, apparently to feed off the micro-organisms that swept through on the current who, in turn, were fed upon by the larger fish. The food chain made visible and Compton half wondered where he fit into its scheme. He continued to drift down on his dive to forty feet, where he lingered on a coral trout that had taken refuge in a small cave. A second coral trout lifted up from below, its brilliant reds filtered to a drab brown in the depths. Both fish were over thirty pounds, a bit more than he wished to handle on his first fish and he turned for the translucent ceiling where awaited a fresh breath.
Moving nearer to the reef, he began to explore the shallower caves for smaller fish. These caves were several feet in diameter and well concealed in the coral, generally visible only on descent, and he would glide to an entrance and place his spear at its mouth and, forgetting all that Aprosa had instructed, waited for the fish to pass. But the fish were quick and his mind was slow and his reactions could not keep their pace. At one such cave he fired and missed. However, in a cave full of fish the spear hit another. The fish whipped wildly inside but he could not contain it, for the opening would only accommodate his head and one arm and, unable to reach the fish and out of breath, he abandoned the spear gun, leaving it floating off te attached line and swam to the surface. He had speared his first fish and was already well into a dilemma, which quickly compounded as two white tip sharks swam out of the deep and began to turn with agitation on the blood spoor that leaked from the cave. Regaining his breath, he cautiously dove and retrieved the floating gunstock, then proceeded to the mouth of the cave. The sharks eyed him and moved off, turning in tight circles in open water twenty-five feet away. He reached blindly into the cave and followed the spear with his hand until coming to the fish that had wedged itself in a corner by opening its gills. With a good handhold on the base of the gills, he was able to pull the fish free. It burst out of the cave thrashing in a spray of blood, which appeared green in the sun filtered depths. Turning to the sharks, which had moved considerably closer, his first reaction was to simply hand them the fish and move away. Remembering Aprosa’s words of an easy meal and the danger that would bring in the days and weeks to come, he held fast and kicked for the surface. The sharks scattered and then returned to the cavern’s blood spoor, circling madly on the scent. Compton caught the current west that pushed him with ease towards the beach, leaving the sharks to smell out an empty sea.
Drifting on the quick rails of the current, he passed a school of yellow-tailed snapper cruising as a single entity along the sandy bottom, flowing like liquid over a solitary boulder. A large napoleon wrasse, over a hundred pounds with its enormous head and gargoyle-like mouth and lips, sunned itself atop the shallows of a finger reef in four feet of water. Upon Compton’s appearance, it slipped over the opposite edge of the reef and out of sight.
Lifting his head from the water to locate Orchid Beach, he found instead, not twenty feet away, a large wooden boat overflowing with Fijian men and women, all smiling broadly.
“You catch fish?” asked the headman in English who manned the tiller.
Compton held up the fish. “Is this a good one to eat?”
“Io, yes, that is a good one.” He said something in Fijian to those in the boat and everyone laughed. Compton came alongside and held onto the gunwales. All the men in the boat had ancient goggles hanging from their necks. Some wore tee-shirts and others were bare-chested. They all wore ragged, ill-fitting shorts and each held a thin, rusty spear close to his body in the way of the old Masai. The women were fully clothed in cotton dresses of flowered prints. The older women wore bandanas around their heads and in their laps rested large spools of fishing line. A few of the younger women had goggles as did several boys. Compton caught the eye of a beautiful woman with a wonderfully shaped face set with almond eyes and a full, sensual mouth holding perfect teeth. Seeing her, Compton reflexively lifted his facemask for a better look. Her brown eyes smiled and returned his gaze and then she shyly lowered her head. The headman gave a gesture of goodbye and Compton released the boat. All turned and waved as they motored around the East Point, Compton lowering his hand as the woman lowered hers.
He filleted the fish on the beach and despite the headman’s approval, threw the head up on a rock near the shoreline for Moses’ inspection.
While he prepared lunch in the kitchen, the Fijian boat reappeared from around the point, coming back down the island on the current with only a boy and the headman on board. The others were in the water. The men were diving, the older women perched in knee deep water at the edge of the finger reefs fishing with the line. The younger women and boys were diving the shallow water atop the reefs, depositing their catches in the boat or in a purse-like bag that hung at their hips. The divers drifted with the current and slowly passed Orchid Beach as the boat picked up the women and deposited them on new reef points further down the island. In this fashion, they worked their way down the coastline.>
The presence of these divers would explain the spooky nature of the fish off the eastern most point, reasoned Compton.
Two divers made their way onto the beach, walking barefoot over the live coral. One of them was the woman he had seen in the boat. She wore a white blouse that clung to her brown breasts and she was stunningly beautiful. Compton stammered out a “Bula.”
She replied, “Bula,” and followed it with the loveliest smile he had ever seen. The boy came forward and asked in broken English if Compton had any matches so they might light a fire further down the island and cook their afternoon meal. Compton found a book of matches and gave them to the woman. She received them shyly and went off with the boy clambering over the rocks and coral as if it were fleece, disappearing behind the cluster of lava rocks that edged the far cove.
The boat pulled into shore a half-mile down the coast. Compton lay back on the sand next to the fallen tree and closed his eyes, better to visualize the woman who had stood dripping before him.
“Bula, Michael,” called Moses who startled Compton out of his daydream. “Enjoying the Fiji sun.” He carried two plastic containers of water that he placed in the kitchen and then retrieved a bunch of belle from the bow of the boat. “Picked fresh this morning by Mariah for you.”
“Please thank her for me. How about a cup of tea?”
“Will you look at that tree,” said Moses, as if he had just noticed some extraordinary feature that previously had escaped his attention. “Have you seen this trail of mud that leads up to that big mud nest near the branches?” he asked, walking to the base of the tree.
“A wasp nest?”
“Termites,” said Moses, pulling a piece of mud from the tree, spilling out white, maggot-like vermin on to the sand. “Isn’t that something. The kingfisher is the one who make that hole in the mud. It flies in and lays its eggs and when they hatch the babies eat the termites. That kingfisher come out of that hole like a bullet. Most birds have to flap a bit to get going, but the kingfisher is a bullet. The leaves on the tree turn red and fall into the water and sink. Sometimes the octopus hides under the red leaf, and he turns himself bright red. Amazing, eh.”
Compton nodded, marginally interested, eager to describe his morning.
“I speared a small fish today and saw this beautiful girl. I want you to check and make sure its good enough to eat.”
“The girl?” quipped Moses.
Compton pointed to the shade of the boulder where the fish head lay. “It’s over there.”
Moses examined it. “That’s a good one. Good eating. Who is this girl’s name?”
“I don’t know. Actually she’s a woman and she was in a blue-hulled boat filled with people. There was an old man at the tiller who spoke pretty good English. They’re camping down the island. I think you can see them from the beach.”
“I see them already. That is Jokatama. His family has lots of girls. No name, eh.”
“No, but I gave them matches for a fire. Do you think they’ll bring them back?”
“They bring ‘em back,” assured Moses.
“What makes you so sure?”
Moses pointed to the boy who was just climbing over the rocks. After returning the matches to Compton, Moses spoke to the boy in Fijian. They conversed briefly, then the boy shook Compton’s hand and left.
“Her name is Sinaca. She is the daughter of Jokatama. She is very beautiful. I watch her walk when I am in the village but she has very mean brothers, so I don’t watch her very long.”