The Dragonfly Sea

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Ayaana froze.

  Nobody seemed to notice except for Teacher Ruolan, who skewered her with a hard look as she pointed out the food: “Roast-duck noodles with green pepper, century eggs with ginger…for you…” Ayaana’s eyes widened—those black, vile-looking things with green centers emitting unholy fumes were eggs? “Boiled peanuts with soy sauce, cucumber-stick pickles, and, especially for you, honored guest, duck leg.”

  Ayaana informed herself that, should she give in to the impulse to cry, she would betray her island, and her nation. She was hungry. She studied the meal. Lai Jin thought that describing its meaning would help. He said, “Century eggs—pidan. Duck. Prepared for months.”

  Words. They had the strength to shut doors that would never be opened in this lifetime. Ayaana stared at the eggs, half expecting them to detonate. Lai Jin turned from her to dip his chopsticks into his bowl and in one movement captured a portion of an egg and brought it to his mouth. Ayaana wielded her chopsticks as a pitchfork. Lai Jin watched Ayaana’s impending battle with the meal, eyes gleaming. Ayaana glanced at him. Their eyes locked, and for half a moment she was again a little girl on the edge of the mangroves, in awe of home-comers. On childish impulse, she waited for the captain to look away first. He was again surprised by the familiarity of her otherness—complex, balanced, like the scents of pear and wood. Like her cryptic rose scent. He blinked. Was that his mind calling forth fragrances? He grimaced.

  Ayaana’s hands hovered above the bowl. Her stomach rumbled. She wanted to plow fingers into the bowl to pick out its substance. Ayaana watched Teacher Ruolan’s dainty consumption of the duck, her chopsticks working like knitting needles, with not a peep from her mouth: no slurping, not even the sound of chewing. The steward then brought the bowl of steaming dumpling soup with even more noodles. Ayaana despaired. So it was for this that the spoon she had dropped was intended. Ayaana turned to tackle her bowl. She speared a piece of duck and rushed it into her mouth. New textures. Soft. What flavors. She tried with the noodles, but they successfully wriggled away from her chopsticks. Ayaana rested her chopsticks against her plate and watched her soup. She reached for the enemy chopsticks again, aiming them at the vegetables. She tried to use the wooden sticks as mini-shovels. Peanuts, pickles—sweet-sour, hot-cold, bitter-sour reached her mouth in whiffs, not substance. She glowered at the food.

  “Perhaps a fork? And, yes, another spoon.” The ship leader gestured to the steward. Teacher Ruolan fluttered her pretty eyes at the ship leader, moved by his consideration. In seconds, the cutlery was delivered. Ayaana turned to the captain. “Thank you,” she said. Now he held her look, and she was the first to look away. He smiled when he turned to his bowl.

  [ 38 ]

  Zar. The murmuring cry made by djinns at night. Past the engine roar, with the stench of diesel clinging to the nostrils, the straining of metal above and beyond, the creaking shadows, and the toil of unseen men, she heard the warbles from beneath the water. Now, if Ayaana were to carve these in the new language she was being asked to inhabit, it would emerge as “memory”: 记忆.

  * * *

  —

  Shu Ruolan was implementing a curriculum to prepare Ayaana for her “auspicious arrival.” In forty days, the Descendant should have knowledge of at least fifty characters. That first morning, Teacher Ruolan smiled at Ayaana, her neat teeth showing. “Now I show you.”

  The ideogram: 非洲.

  Sound: Fei zhou.

  Teacher Ruolan formed 非洲. She broke it down for Ayaana: Fei: nothing, wrong, lacking, ugly, not. Zhou: being, state, country. Put together: Not Existing. A teensy giggle bubbled forth. “Oh dear.” A pause. “We continue.” A bold sequence of strokes produced 中国. Zhōngguó. “China!” she exclaimed. “Middle Kingdom. True. Beautiful.”

  Ayaana watched. Ayaana listened. She imaged “Teacher” in Kipate: Ujinamizi. Nightmare. Noun.

  * * *

  —

  Spattering raindrops created small, furious streams in metal furrows: above, the slate-gray sea; below, white-topped waves. Dissipating mist and Zar. The sobbing of djinns before dawn. Ship bump and creaks. Footsteps echo. Movement shadows. Used to the life of restless shadows from her island, Ayaana did not react to the ship’s inexplicable sounds, or to the strange silhouettes it spawned, which traveled down narrow corridors unaccompanied. Light tread, restless traveling within small spaces. Footsteps below the deck. Ayaana ducked, nervous about being caught. She was supposed to be memorizing new ideograms. She leaned over and saw the ship leader prowling, hands behind his back, eyes on the water. His crew danced in wide circles around him. He never shouted orders. He showed up as an apparition, and left before the certainty of his presence had registered. Ayaana thought about the fire marks on his face. They were like etchings, a message carved into skin. Ayaana backed away from the railing. Walking backward, she slipped down the corridor to her cabin door. She slid it open and disappeared inside.

  Ping!

  Muhidin’s watch.

  Ayaana stiffened.

  Footsteps receded.

  * * *

  Inscrutable seas. In the morning, the passengers found that the crew had woven coils of razor wire all around the weather deck: a precautionary public performance of a ship’s defense against pirates. “Safety Measure” was all the sign said. The passengers were obliged to undertake a fire-and-lifeboats drill that afternoon. When the alarms went off, all souls on board rushed to their meeting point to rehearse survival. They wore bright orange life jackets armed with whistles and lights. Flying fish soared out of the sea, glistening with reflected sunlight, then fell back with small splashes. They distracted Ayaana. Swallows roosted on the containers, to rest before resuming their migratory journeys. Halcyon moments. Disaster was far from Ayaana’s mind. Teacher Ruolan and Ayaana were assigned the same lifeboat. They stood close together. A different alarm clanged to prepare them for a “man overboard” exercise. The buxom woman, who was in pink mules, huffed and offered for consideration the phrase “woman overboard.” No one paid attention. The instructing crew member recited by rote: “To survive, you must guard each other’s lives.” The drill ended. The passengers scattered and returned to their private cocoons.

  * * *

  —

  On that second night, after dinner, passengers were told to secure themselves in their rooms for their own safety while “an operational check” was being advanced. No one asked why. They would dutifully wait for the “all clear” alarm. After passengers retreated into their cabins, when the MV Qingrui/Guolong had slowed down to virtual stillness, Ayaana listened to the sounds, trying to build a picture of what was happening. She heard the growl of fast engines, muted voices, and the clung, clung of items being dragged on board. Above the clamor of the ship’s engines, and the creak of its machinery, she also heard the suddenness of human silences. Soon after, she felt the MV Qingrui/Guolong recover its previous speed. What was happening? No one spoke. The absence of chatter on board mirrored the solitude of the iceberg captain. His aloofness was reassuring, as if everything were in the hand of an unmoving and unmoved deity.

  * * *

  Now. Ping! Ayaana was inside her cabin for the dhuhr prayers. She processed her impressions and clung to the robe of God-still-on-Pate. She breathed out the afternoon and her confusion. Head to cabin floor, head on her mother’s prayer mat, rubbing her face in the scent of this, its rose scents, and the unresolved thing lurking between them.

  When Munira shook Ayaana awake on their last evening together, on Lamu, the night had been on her mother’s skin. Munira had hugged her, rocking her. “Become big, lulu.” Ayaana’s fingers had pressed into Munira’s skin. Feeling the shame of that Thursday evening. Ayaana then spoke into her mother’s ear: “Paint me.”

  “Now?” Munira had asked.

  Ayaana had dragged off her nightshirt, baring breast and back.

  Munira had r
ushed for her henna. She had blended in herbs and added rose attar. It would have to do. She returned to stroke small, intricate patterns on her daughter’s body. Munira at last touched those Thursday-evening burn marks for the first time. Tears, as she painted brown lace into her daughter’s skin. They had cried together.

  Ayaana lifted herself off the mat and touched the mother-made whorls on her skin. These were words. Glancing through a porthole, Ayaana glimpsed the arrival of an impressive flock of small chattering brown-and-white spotted birds, which settled on the ship’s cranes, rails, and radar. Visiting flowers. Outside her cabin, a mincing tread like emphatic little commas on a steel sheet. Teacher Ruolan. Ayaana braced herself for a fresh litany of complaints. Recent ones. Ayaana was too loud, gestured too much. Her borrowed eyes often bulged like a frog’s. Ayaana frowned. A lady never frowned. Her skin was the color of burned pork. Her man-voice would not help much. Ladies did not emit such pungent smells. She, Ayaana, was undereducated. Teacher said that when her Chinese relatives saw her they would be ashamed. Teacher, clever Teacher, packaged offense in polite questions: “Is it not barbaric to write on skin?” Teacher attempting thoughtfulness: “What kind of soap can freshen your body?” Political Teacher: “The achievements of your country are few and invisible. Are you ashamed?” Teacher the philanthropist: “You are very familiar with hunger?” Teacher the philosopher: “There are houyis and there are houyis.” Aesthetics lessons: “Why, you are taller than a man, but not as good-looking.” Introduction to the Orient: “When I see you, I think, ‘Hundun.’ ”

  Pause. “Hundun. I tell you what it means?” Teacher Ruolan asked. She was smiling. “Okay, I tell you.” The word described primordial chaos, she said, a manifestation of disorder arising out of abysmal darkness. “It is a particular madness.” Teacher clapped her hands and studied Ayaana’s reaction.

  Ayaana shrank inside. Her gaze became hunted. An unspoken battle declaration, but Teacher Ruolan had the advantage; she was the bestower of words. Like “Hundun.” Ayaana could not unsee words. Picture words. Reforming the silhouettes of her own world. “Prayer,” she informed Teacher Ruolan, adjusting her veil to cover her face. She fled her desk to retreat into her cabin to breathe. Teacher Ruolan read about “Africa”—the better to understand Ayaana. Today it was Ryszard Kapuściński: The Shadow of the Sun.

  * * *

  —

  Late lunch gong.

  Ayaana stared at the steward’s dragon-and-skull tattoos on an exposed upper arm as he delicately laid out dishes for the passengers, who received the food in silence. Steamed fish with rice, a plate of sautéed greens decorated with peppers cut into flower shapes. A fishy broth. Rice: Ayaana’s new torment. Naturally, she sighed inwardly, there were rules for eating these as well. Teacher Ruolan: “Eat rice with bowl up, and do not make a noise.” Her little nose wrinkled at even the thought of noise. A speck of rice dangled at the end of Ayaana’s black chopsticks, waiting for her to try to lead it into her mouth. Halfway there, it escaped.

  Teacher huffed. She squeezed Ayaana’s fingers into the chopsticks, refusing her cutlery, and slapping her hand when she tried to sneak some food into her mouth with her fingers. “We don’t have time,” Teacher hissed.

  “I need to eat,” Ayaana said.

  “Learn or starve.”

  Waves rocked the boat. Captain Lai Jin strolled into the mess. He paused and bowed to the passengers, murmured something to the buxom woman in a neon-green dress. She was still wearing her sunglasses and picking at her plate. The captain glanced over at Ayaana’s table. Chuan zhang, Ayaana remembered, bargaining with her meal, summoning a pictogram—船长—ship leader, remembering last night. Ayaana had stepped out of her cabin to experience the night sea. When she looked upward, she had glimpsed the captain on his watch, face forward, gaze fixed on the water, body straight and tall and still. The call of the deep: she watched a man whom the sea transmuted.

  [ 39 ]

  From his armchair, Ship Leader Lai Jin folded and refolded a white napkin. On its blankness, he projected a reflection of a blurred image. Before the girl boarded his ship, he had practiced saying, “We are friends from long ago,” as Shanghai Accent had instructed him while communicating the sense of pride, grandeur, and cosmic continuity that was China. It had meant nothing to him. Shanghai Accent had inserted, “This is your duty to history.” “We are friends from long ago,” Lai Jin had dutifully repeated to himself until he had worked the resentment out.

  When the Descendant had approached his ship—shrouded in black, emerging from the gangway as if from hazy memory—her fragrance, a multilayered scent of rose, had reached him before she had. A black-and-silver buibui with silver trimmings covered her, molding itself to her body contours. Her half-veiled eyes scanned the world. Her presence: its distance. He noticed the single slim gold bracelet and a clunky man’s watch on one wrist. Her other was bare. Both arms were marked with lacelike shapes and lines that gleamed red, brown, and orange under light. He thought of the xi geng qiang wei—slender stalked rose nurtured by secret solitudes. Then she had stopped before him. She reached his chin. He had stooped and forgotten to speak. He had sought out eyes framed by black cloth, and though he had been prepared, he was startled to find China’s gaze tilted back at him. There was an enigmatic wistfulness written in her pale brown eyes; this surged toward him like a wave, before eddying back. He looked at her for four seconds too long, and a distant gong went off. He had wanted to exclaim, What are you? Then he remembered to declare in haste, “We are friends from long ago.”

  * * *

  —

  Her gaze had lingered on the scarred portion of his face, which others pretended not to see. Her mouth opened. He had to blink twice to hear her question: “How did the fire write you?” Before he could reply, she had remembered where she was. Had remembered they were strangers. A dark flush stained her skin. Her fingers fluttered, and she bent her head. She stuttered something, and then a weighted silence waylaid them. He had at once told himself she was the most foreign object he had ever encountered. To have to engage her in English he was not certain he still had full control over amplified their distance. He had shifted, now critical. She was far too slender, too much a drooping branch on a weeping willow, an unfinished twig. She did not matter. He had angled his neck as if to dismiss her presence. But then the wind had caused her veil to slide off her face, and he had been transfixed by a translucent, unmarred visage, with high cheekbones, a pointed chin, thick, curled lashes, a pert nose, full lips on a small mouth, creating a bud, a perfect set of teeth, and warm-toned, golden brown skin.

  Later, from a niche that had kept him safe from merrymaking bureaucrats, he had watched her turn this way and that from officials, as if she were a snared deer. He recognized the second when her body tilted toward escape. Unthinking, he had stepped out to reach for her and brought her into his hiding place. From there, they watched civil servants in full frolic, and he heard her beating heart. He felt his cohere with the rhythm of hers. And he was suffused with scents of other worlds, of a youthful femininity he had not often thought about, of sudden fear, because, in spite of his choices, and his ascetic dedication to a liturgy of the seas, she fascinated him. It would not take them long to reach Xiamen, he had reassured himself then, and he reassured himself now.

  A clatter of plates. Lai Jin started as the steward set out his meal. The food was the same as the other passengers’ but in larger portions. He transferred his gaze to the broth and noted its color and density, pulling himself together.

  * * *

  The night djinns sobbed. Prickling of spine hair. Spot of heat on her back. Shadow in the shape of a person using light borrowed from the dark night’s shimmer. She did not turn to look. Lai Jin leaned against the guardrail. They listened to the sea. That shrouded moon.

  He had heard her weeping.

  He said, “Ni hao”—Hello. To his surprise, it emerged as a lon
ging-laden whisper, not the lighthearted teasing he had intended.

  She remained silent.

  He watched the sea with her. The things they shared: pretense of choice, its illusory veneer of celebration, human will set against fate’s forces, and role-playing. She a fate-commandeered girl ambassador, moving as she was told to; he ship leader of a commandeered voyage. Ni shi shei? the ocean asked.

  * * *

  Later that night, in his stark stateroom, Lai Jin dreamed of fire. He woke up. He switched on a lamp, and used its light to look at his Zao Wou-Ki, seeing oranges, rust, and red ink—blood colors. He did not return to sleep.

  [ 40 ]

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Tra-ta-ta! The sound of automatic weapons split the 2:00 a.m. sea. Lai Jin had just folded himself under the sheets in his bunk when the chief officer on navigation watch pounded on his door. Lai Jin leapt out of his bunk, threw on a shirt, and pulled on trousers as he sped out, asking, “How many?”

  “Eight, sir.”

  The fire hoses were already hooked up and shooting over the sides, and lights blazed on board. The crew’s two-way radios cackled, hissed, and sputtered strategies and secrets. Though, in moments like these, everything did become clear and defined, and Lai Jin even heard the drip of water in an open faucet in some cabin, and his body was open and ready and unafraid. Eight pirate speedboats. He did not mind; he was indifferent to dying or living. But he was now responsible for other lives. Irritation. Lai Jin had not been expecting an attack, certainly not in the time of the southerly monsoon.

  Boom!

  Lai Jin suspected a rocket-propelled grenade. But the ship was prepared. His crew knew the drill. Some of them would have roused all passengers and guided them to the below-deck passage into a safe room. Another set would implement the ship’s other arrangements.