by Alex Garland
Anybody could start the game off and there was no order to the names called out. When there were only a few names left it got difficult remembering which people had been mentioned and which hadn’t, but that was part of the game. If you screwed it up, then there’d be loud tuts and exaggerated sighs until you got it right.
Although the ritual was sort of taking the piss, in another way it wasn’t. No one’s name was ever passed over and right from the first time we heard it Étienne, Françoise and I were included.
The nicest thing was when you heard your name but you couldn’t recognize the voice. I always found it comforting that someone unexpected would think to choose me. I’d fall asleep wondering who it could have been, and who I’d choose the next time.
Negative
On the morning of my fourth Sunday, all the camp were down on the beach. Nobody worked on Sundays.
The tide was out so there was forty feet of sand between the tree-line and the sea. Sal had organized a huge game of football and just about everyone was taking part, but not me and Keaty. We were sitting out on one of the boulders, listening to the shouts of the players drifting over the water. Along with our enthusiasm for video games, an indifference to football was something we shared.
A flash of silver slipped past my feet. ‘Gotcha,’ I muttered, flicking an imaginary spear at the fish, and Keaty scowled.
‘Easy life.’
‘Fishing?’
‘Fishing.’
I nodded. Fishing was easy. I’d had the idea that as a city-softened westerner I wouldn’t be able to manage such an ancient skill, but actually it was as simple as anything. All you had to do was stand on a rock, wait until a fish swam by, then skewer it. The only trick was in snapping the wrist, the same as in throwing a Frisbee. That way it span in the water and didn’t lose momentum.
Keaty ran a hand backwards over his head. He hadn’t shaved it since I’d arrived, and now his scalp was covered in a fortnight’s worth of stubble.
‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ he said.
‘Mmm?’
‘It’s the heat. Fishing you can cool off any time, but in the garden you just bake.’
‘How about the waterfall?’
‘Ten minutes away. You go there, swim, and by the time you get back you’re hot again.’
‘Have you talked to Sal?’
‘Yesterday. She said I can transfer if I find someone to swap with, but who wants to work on the garden detail?’
‘Jean does.’
‘Yeah. Jean does.’ Keaty sighed. ‘Jean de fucking Florette.’
‘Jean le Frogette,’ I said, and he laughed.
A cheer erupted from the beach. Étienne appeared to have scored a goal. He was running around in circles with his hand in the air and Bugs, captain of the other side, was yelling at his goalkeeper. Up by the trees I could see Françoise. She was sitting with a small group of spectators, applauding.
I stood up. ‘Feel like a swim?’
‘Sure.’
‘We could swim over to the corals. I haven’t really checked them out yet. I’ve been meaning to.’
‘Great, but let’s get Greg’s mask first. There’s no point swimming to the corals without the mask.’
I glanced back to the beach. The game had started again. Bugs had the ball and was weaving down the sand, looking to make up the deficit, and Étienne was hot on his tail.
‘You want to get it? I’ll wait here.’
‘OK.’
Keaty dived off the boulder. For a few strokes he stayed underwater, and I followed his shape along the seabed until he was lost from view. He finally resurfaced an impressive distance away.
‘I’ll get some grass too,’ he called.
I gave him the thumbs up and he ducked back under again.
I turned away from the beach, towards the seaward cliffs. I was looking for a split in the rock-face that Gregorio had pointed out a few days before. According to him, the most spectacular of the coral gardens lay in the waters directly beneath it.
At first I was confused. I was sure I was looking in the right place. Gregorio had indicated the split by making me follow a line of boulders that stretched across the lagoon like stepping-stones. The boulders were still there, but the fissure had vanished.
Then I found it. Gregorio had shown me the spot in late afternoon. The cliffs had been in full shadow, and the split had been dark. But now, caught in the low morning sun, the jagged edge of the fissure glowed white against the black granite.
‘Like a negative,’ I said out loud, smiling at my mistake.
Another cheer floated over from the football game. Bugs’ team had pulled one back.
Corals
Under the weight of two grapefruit-sized stones, I drifted down to the seabed and sat, cross-legged, on the sand. Then I rested the stones on my lap so I wouldn’t float back up again.
Around me were banks of coral, brightly coloured pagodas, melted and sprawling in the hot tropical waters. In the recesses of their fans, something recoiled at my presence. It was almost imperceptible – a slight ripple of light spreading across the colours. I gazed harder, trying to pinpoint the strange effect, but once the change had happened the corals looked no different to before.
A strange creature was lying in front of me. A name popped into my head – sea cucumber – but only because I’d heard that such things existed. It could have been a sea marrow for all I knew. The creature was just over a foot in length and about the thickness of my forearm, and at the end nearest to me it had a nest of tiny tentacles. Using a snapped finger from one of the fans, I gave it an exploratory poke. The cucumber didn’t move or flinch so, emboldened, I touched it with my own finger. It was the softest thing I’d ever felt. Only the barest sensation of resistance was offered by the silky flesh, and I pulled back for fear of tearing its skin.
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ I thought, smiling. Holding my breath was getting me high. From the blood humming in my ears and the mounting pressure in my lungs, I guessed I had less than twenty seconds of air remaining.
I looked up. Six or seven feet above me, perched on an overhanging rock-shelf, I could see Keaty’s disembodied legs. He was swinging them gently like a kid in a high chair and had attracted the attention of a little blue fish. The fish was mainly interested in his ankles. Every time they swung near, it would dart forwards as if to take a bite, but stop abruptly an inch or so away. Then, as his ankles swung back, the fish would flick its fins and retreat, perhaps cursing itself for its lack of courage.
A cold trickle of water eased past the hollow of my temples. With my head pointed upwards, the trapped air was pulling the mask away from my face. I looked down quickly, pushing at the glass to reestablish the seal, but it was no use. Too much water had worked its way in. I rolled the stones off my lap and let myself float back to the surface.
On impulse, I nipped Keaty’s ankle as I passed it by, using my bunched fingernails like a row of teeth.
‘What did you do that for?’
I rubbed away the itch from where the mask had been gripping my face. Keaty was rubbing his ankle.
‘There was this little fish,’ I began, then started laughing.
‘What little fish?’
‘It wanted to bite you but didn’t have the nerve.’
Keaty shook his head. ‘I thought it was a shark.’
‘There’s sharks here?’
‘Millions.’ He jabbed a finger at the cliffs behind him, indicating the open sea, then shook his head again. ‘You made me jump.’
‘Sorry.’
I hauled myself out of the water and sat next to Keaty on the rock-shelf. ‘It’s amazing down there. It would be so good to have aqualungs or something. A minute isn’t really long enough.’
‘Or a hose-pipe,’ Keaty said. He pulled a plastic film carton from his pocket. Inside were loose Rizlas and grass. ‘I went to Ujung Kulon two years ago. You been there?’
‘Charita.’
‘Well, in Ujung
Kulon there were some corals and these guys there used a hose-pipe. You could stay under for a while, but you couldn’t really move around. Still…’
‘I don’t suppose we’ve got a hose-pipe here?’
‘Nope.’
I waited while Keaty finished rolling the joint.
‘… So you’ve done a lot of travelling.’
‘Sure. Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia, Turkey, India and Nepal. Oh, also Pakistan. Sort of. I was in Karachi for three days on a stopover. You count that?’
‘Uh-uh.’
‘Me neither. How about you?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve never done any of the Americas stuff, or Africa. Just around Asia really. Europe too, I suppose. How about Europe? Does Europe count?’
‘Not if you won’t count Karachi.’ He lit up. ‘Got a favourite?’
I thought for a couple of moments. ‘It’s a toss-up between Indonesia and the Philippines.’
‘And your worst?’
‘Probably China. I had a lousy time in China. I went for five days without talking to one person except when I ordered food in restaurants. Terrible food too.’
Keaty laughed. ‘My worst was Turkey. I was supposed to stay for two months but I left after two weeks.’
‘And the best?’
Keaty looked around, inhaling deeply, then passed me the joint. ‘Thailand. This place, I mean. It isn’t really Thailand, considering there’s no Thais, but… Yeah. This place.’
‘This place is unique… How long have you been here?’
‘Two years. Just over. I met Sal in Chiang Rai and we got friendly. Hiked around a bit. Then she told me about this place and took me along.’
I flicked the dead joint butt into the water. ‘Tell me about Daffy. No one talks about him.’
‘Yeah. People were shocked when they heard.’ Keaty scratched at his stubble thoughtfully. ‘I’m not a good person to ask. I barely knew the guy. He was a bit distant, to me anyway. I mean, I knew who he was, but we didn’t talk much.’
‘So who was he?’
‘Are you kidding?’
‘No. Like I said, nobody mentions him, so…’
Keaty frowned. ‘You haven’t seen the tree yet? The tree by the waterfall?’
‘… I don’t think so.’
‘Shit! You don’t know anything, do you, Rich? You’ve been here, what? A month?’
‘Just over.’
‘Man.’ Keaty smiled. ‘I’ll take you to the tree tomorrow. Then you’ll see.’
‘How about now?’
‘I want to swim… Especially now I’m stoned. And it’s my turn with the mask.’
‘I’d really like to…’
Keaty slipped into the water. ‘Tomorrow. What’s the hurry? You waited four weeks.’ He snapped the strap tight over the back of his head and ducked under; end of discussion.
‘OK,’ I said to the flat water, allowing dope and beach life to cloud my curiosity. ‘Tomorrow then.’
On my next turn with Gregorio’s mask I looked out for any shifting colours in the corals, but the strange effect refused to repeat itself. The coral dwellers were still hidden in their pagoda homes. Either that, or my presence no longer scared them.
Bugged
That night, just as the light was starting to fade, we were given our sea-shell necklaces. It wasn’t a big deal, there was no ceremony or anything. Sal and Bugs just wandered over to where we were sitting and handed them over. Still, it was quite a big deal for me. However friendly everyone was, being the only ones without necklaces drew attention to our new-arrival status. Now that we’d got them, it was like our acceptance had been made official.
‘Which is for me?’ said Françoise, carefully examining each one in turn.
‘Whichever you like, Françoise,’ Sal replied.
‘I think I will have this one. I like this colour on the big shell.’ She looked at me and Étienne, challenging us to make a rival claim.
‘Which do you want, Étienne?’ I said.
‘You.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘I also do not mind.’
‘So…’
We shrugged at each other and laughed. Then Sal leant forwards and plucked the two remaining necklaces from Françoise’s hands. ‘Here,’ she said, and made the choice for us. They were both much the same, but mine had a centre-piece, the snapped arm of a red starfish.
I slipped it over my head. ‘Well, thanks a lot, Sal.’
‘Thank Bugs. He made yours.’
‘OK. Thanks, Bugs. It’s a really nice necklace.’
He nodded, accepting the compliment silently, then began walking back across the clearing to the longhouse.
I couldn’t make my mind up about Bugs. It was weird, because he was exactly the kind of guy that I felt I ought to like, almost out of obligation. He was broader and more muscular than me; as head of the carpentry detail, he had obvious skills; I also suspected he was pretty intelligent. This was harder to gauge because he didn’t speak much, but when he did speak it seemed to be things worth saying. But despite all these fine characteristics, there was something about him that left me a little cold.
One example was the way he accepted my thanks for the necklace. His silent nod belonged in Clint Eastwood Land; it didn’t feel like it had a place in the real world. Another time we were going to eat some soup. Gregorio said he was going to wait until the soup cooled down – the soup was bubbling and still over the flame – then Bugs made a point of taking a spoonful straight from the saucepan. He didn’t say anything, just took a spoonful. It was such a small thing that repeating it now, I’m almost embarrassed by how petty it sounds.
Maybe this stands up to repeating. On the Monday of my second week, I saw Bugs struggling to fit a swinging door on the entrance to one of the storeroom huts. He was having trouble because he only had two hands, and he needed three: two to keep the door in place and a third to hammer a peg into the hinge. I watched him do this for a while, wondering whether to offer any help, and as I began walking over the hammer slipped from his grip. Instinctively, he moved to catch it, and the door also fell, bashing against his leg.
‘Shit,’ I said, breaking into a jog. ‘You OK?’
Bugs glanced down. Blood was rolling from a nasty graze on his shins. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, then bent to pick up his hammer.
‘Do you need a hand holding the door?’
Bugs shook his head.
So I went back to where I’d been sitting, slicing the tops off bamboo sticks to make spears for fishing, and about five minutes later I misjudged a swipe and cut open my thumb.
‘Ow!’ I shouted.
Bugs didn’t even look round, and as Françoise ran over, her face even prettier for being so alarmed, I could sense his satisfaction – stoically tapping the peg into place while blood collected in dusty pools around his feet.
‘That really hurt,’ I said, when Françoise reached me, and made sure I said it loud enough for Bugs to hear.
While I’m on a roll, I might as well add that there was one more thing that bothered me about Bugs. His name.
The way I saw it, calling himself Bugs was like, ‘I’m taciturn and stoical, but I don’t take myself too seriously! I call myself Bugs Bunny!’ As with my other gripes, it wasn’t a reason to dislike him; it was just something that grated. The whole point was that Bugs took himself extremely seriously.
Over the two weeks I was getting to know Bugs I spent some time wondering where his name had come from. If, like Sal, he’d been American, I could have imagined that Bugs Bunny was how he was christened. No disrespect to Americans – they just do come up with some odd names. But Bugs was South African, and I couldn’t see Warner Brothers having that strong an influence over Pretoria. Then again, I once met a South African called Goose, so you never know.
Anyway. Back to the night I received my necklace.
‘’Night John-Boy.’
Silence… Panic.
Had I said it loudly en
ough? Was there a rule of etiquette that I hadn’t picked up on? Getting the necklace had given me the courage, but maybe only group leaders were allowed to start it off, or people who’d been at the beach more than twelve months…
My heart began to pound. Sweat sprung. ‘Well, that’s it,’ I thought to myself. ‘It’s all over. I’ll leave tomorrow morning before dawn. I’ll just have to swim the twenty miles back to Ko Samui, and I’ll probably be eaten by sharks, but that’s OK. I deserve it. I…’
‘’ Night Ella,’ said a dozy voice in the darkness.
I froze.
‘’Night Jesse,’ said another.
‘’Night Sal.’
‘’Night Moshe.’
‘’‘Night Cassie.’
‘’Night Greg.’
‘’Night…’
Zero
Colour-wise, progress was good. The sky had been mainly cloudy over the first few days, and by the time the sky had cleared I had enough of a base tan to avoid burning. Now I was getting close to my darkest shade. I peeked under the waistband of my shorts to check I was as dark as I hoped.
‘Wow,’ I said, seeing the creamy skin beneath.
Étienne looked round. He was sitting by the edge of the boulder, cooling his legs in the water. His tan was rich and golden, I noticed enviously. I never went golden. At best I went the colour of a recently ploughed field. Walnut brown, I would sometimes describe it, but it was much more like earth.
‘What is it?’
‘Just my tan. I’m getting dark.’
Étienne nodded, tugging absently at his necklace. ‘I thought maybe you were thinking of this place.’
‘The beach?’
‘You said “wow”, so I thought you were thinking how good it is here.’
‘Oh, well, I often think that… I mean, it was worth the trouble, wasn’t it? That swim, and the dope fields.’