by Derek Hansen
When I got it up to the surface where I could get a good look at it, my eyes just about bulged out of my head. It was huge, and I realised my only hope of landing it was to climb down the pilings and somehow lift it from the water with my bare hands. I lowered myself onto one of the crossbeams and lay along it on my belly. It seemed to me the snapper had pretty well fought itself to a standstill and was beginning to wallow in the water. I lifted the tip of my rod so that it lay on its side, and gently drew it towards me. The fish was so big I was almost scared of it. But I could also see my mum’s delight, hear my dad’s congratulations and feel my brothers’ envy. I could also feel Mack’s proud hand on my shoulder.
The snapper spread its gill case and I struck. I got my hand inside its gills and lifted. But the moment I felt its weight I knew I was in trouble. The fish was far too heavy and I was lifting left-handed, lying on my belly, balanced on a wet crossbeam. The snapper settled the issue. It kicked convulsively and the gill case cut deep into the fleshy bottom part of my index finger. I let the fish go, heard the line snap, felt the splash and watched my prize snapper spiral away down to the bottom to recover. I was devastated. But worse was to come.
When I climbed back up onto the wharf, my four-pounder was nowhere to be seen. I panicked. Someone had stolen my fish! I couldn’t believe the injustice. Tears started forming in my eyes. But then gulls screeched by the covered walkway onto the jetty and I realised immediately what had happened, who the culprits were. I dashed to the walkway and there, to my enormous relief, was my snapper, poised half on and half off the wharf. I dived on it for a second time, just as it was about to topple over. My fish was no longer the beautiful thing I’d pulled from the water. The gulls had pecked at its gut and taken both of its eyes. It looked like a ghost fish.
I decided to pack up. The four-pounder stretched the flour bag to its limits. I tried to hang the bag from my crossbar as I usually did, but the fish was so big it interfered with my pedalling. In the end I wrapped the top of the bag once around the handlebars and clung onto it. It was awkward but I managed. The excitement of catching and losing the big snapper had died away, and I’d got over the fright the gulls had given me. Once again I started thinking about Mack’s story and what should happen next. Once again I became engrossed with the possibilities. I’d never tried to develop such a complex story before and my head was spinning.
I was aware of the Ford Prefect coming towards me as I was about to make a right turn but didn’t give it another thought. My mind was a giant movie screen with actors trying out dialogue. I automatically moved to the centre of the road and prepared to slow down to let the Ford Prefect pass by. But because I was holding the bag of fish, I only had my little finger left to apply the front brake and I couldn’t pull the lever hard enough. I immediately tried to brake by back-pedalling. As I jammed down with my left leg, my right leg came up. The snapper’s fins, which had burst through the cotton of the flour bag, impaled themselves in my calf. The pain was instant. In trying to pull my leg free, I pulled down on the handlebars. The next thing I knew I was sprawling on the road. I remember my fish going flying and trying to save my fishing rod. I remember a squeal as the driver of the Ford Prefect hit the brakes and swerved. The wheels missed me but got the fish.
The driver was a young woman and she was shaking like a leaf as she helped me to my feet. She saw blood on my shorts and burst into tears, but that was old blood from the finger the snapper had cut. There was blood on my leg but that was from where the fins had jabbed me. I’d lost a bit of skin off my knees but I was always doing that. I picked my bike up and it seemed all right, picked my rod up and was relieved to find I hadn’t broken it. The snapper hadn’t fared quite so well. Its brains were splattered all over the road.
The young woman offered to drive me home but there’s nowhere on a Ford Prefect to put a bike. I convinced her I was fine and rode off with my scraped knees and flattened fish. I’d put on a brave face but in truth I was distraught. My beautiful fish, my four-pounder, was ruined.
Mum thought otherwise. Sometimes she could amaze me. She washed the fish and made me fillet it and remove the broken bones in the ribs. She made me slice the fillets into chunks. I did the same with the two small snapper. Mum fluffed up the squashed bits with her fingers and cooked the fish pieces in breadcrumbs, as though they were fish fingers, and made chips to go with them. My dad and brothers thought that was the best snapper they’d ever eaten. They never suspected the fish had been mauled by seagulls and then run over by a car.
Mum had saved the day when I thought all was lost, and now I had to do the same for Mack. Unfortunately, I’d promised my pals I’d go down to Grey Lynn Park with them the following morning to play soccer and there was no way I could break my promise. Nowadays kids break promises all the time and think nothing of it. Back then a promise was binding, a test of character to which God was witness. I got stuck into Mack’s story after soccer, as soon as I’d washed and changed and had lunch. Everything I’d thought about out on the breakwater and riding home came back to me. I could see the German officer, I could feel Mack’s wariness, I could hear the dialogue as though it came straight off the silver screen. For reasons that will become apparent, I don’t have a copy of the story I wrote, but this is sort of how the ending went and that’s the important part. The dialogue was pure Saturday-afternoon matinee, but the last couple of lines were BBC radio drama. I remember feeling quite proud of them.
It’s 1953. Early morning. Mack is launching his boat from Medlands Beach. He feels someone watching him. He turns around and sees a man step out from the shadows of a centuries-old pohutukawa tree. The man has an eye-patch. (An eye-patch! Well, I was only twelve.) And he walks stiffly with an obvious limp.
‘Good morning, Mack,’ he says.‘It seems we meet again.’
It is only when the man speaks that Mack realises who it is. He is stunned speechless, too shocked to feel revulsion or anger. Here is the man who caused him to betray his country. The German holds out his hand but Mack refuses to take it.
‘You!’ says Mack finally. ‘How dare you come back here! Keeping my promise to you cost the lives of fourteen men.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says the German.
‘Your mines. They sank the Niagara. Fourteen men went down with her.’
‘Niagara?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. It sank right in the mouth of the Gulf.’
‘I’m not aware of sinking any boat in the Gulf. But even if I did, it was war, Mack, and they were my country’s enemies.’
‘They were my countrymen,’ says Mack bitterly. ‘You killed them. I betrayed them.’
‘Do you remember my name?’ says the German suddenly.
‘Of course,’ says Mack.‘How could I forget it?’
‘Then say it.’
‘Christian Berger.’
‘That’s right,’ says the German.‘I am Christian Berger from Germany, you are Mack from New Zealand, and we are no longer enemies.’
‘Perhaps not,’ says Mack. ‘But I can’t forgive you for what you made me do.’
‘Your promise changed nothing,’ says Christian Berger.
‘What do you mean?’ says Mack.
‘If I had decided to shoot you and sink your boat, would that have saved the Niagara? If I’d taken you prisoner, would that have saved those men?’
‘I don’t suppose so,’ says Mack reluctantly.
‘My priority was to keep the presence of my U-boat a secret. I didn’t take you prisoner because there is no room on a U-boat for prisoners. By rights I should have shot you. But when you asked for diesel in exchange for your fish I didn’t have the heart to do it. You presented me with another alternative, provided you were a man of honour. Mack, I made a judgement that you were the kind of man I could trust, a man who would keep his word. I gambled with the lives of the fifty men on board my U-boat. I gambled fifty lives to save one life. Your life. Think about that. And you should also consider the fact
that there is no certainty that I caused the loss of the fourteen men aboard the Niagara.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A submarine is an inefficient means of laying mines. There is no room to carry them. The German Navy had two Raiders operating in New Zealand waters in 1940. The Orion and the Komet. They were equipped to lay mines. We carried a grand total of three, which, I admit, we released. But we were not sent down to New Zealand to lay mines.’
‘No, you were sent to sink the troopship. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Ahh . . .’
‘My silence could’ve cost the lives of thousands of young men.’
‘No, Mack, that is not true. When we found you in your boat we knew it was already too late. We knew the troopship had already sailed and we had no hope of catching up with her. If the troopship hadn’t sailed, do you think for one moment we would have let you go?’
Mack is stunned by this revelation.
‘So you’d already given up?’
‘Yes, we were on our way back to the Atlantic. We needed the forty-eight hours to get clear.’
‘And you didn’t sink the Niagara?’
‘No one will ever know, Mack. But what are three mines against the hundreds laid around the Gulf by the Raiders? The chances that it was one of our mines are very slim.’
Mack slumps against the side of his boat. The German reaches out to steady him.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah,’ says Mack.‘I’m fine. It’s just that for the last thirteen years I’ve been blaming myself for the loss of those men.’
‘It was not your fault, Mack.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
Mack looks ruefully at the German.
‘Those fish I gave you, did you enjoy them?’
‘The fish?Yes, they were wonderful.’
‘How’d you like to come out with me and catch some more?’
‘I would love to. I admit I came here hoping you would ask. But I will only come with you on one condition.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You let me pay for the diesel.’
I couldn’t write down those last lines fast enough. The moment I finished the story, I raced around the corner to read it to Mack. I found him out in his backyard, on his old chair between the tomatoes and gherkins, having a beer. I pulled up a beer crate and began reading. Mack hung on every word.
‘Read it again, son,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘This time read it more slowly.’
So I read it again. When I’d finished, a smile had spread across Mack’s face. His eyes were closed as if picturing every detail.
‘Like it?’ I asked.
He nodded and opened his eyes. They were shining.
‘It’s a good story,’ he said. He put down his beer and began rubbing his hands together. It was a funny thing to do but I think it meant that he was pleased. He couldn’t get the grin off his face. I could tell my story had got to him just as my essay had got to my pals.
‘It’s better than good,’ said Mack.‘It’s really good. And you know something? I reckon you’ve hit on something there. I reckon that’s how it could’ve happened. Yeah, that’s how it could’ve happened.’
‘I wrote the story for you,’ I said.
Mack’s face lit up in the biggest smile I’d ever seen, as though I’d done him the greatest favour.
‘You wrote it for me?’ He reached across and reverently took the pages from my hand. He held them and stared at them as though they were something really precious.‘Thank you, son,’ he said.‘Thank you very much.’ He carefully folded the pages and tucked them into his shirt pocket.
I realised then that he’d taken my words literally and that I’d never see my story again unless I wrote another copy. But looking at Mack and seeing the happiness I’d brought him, I knew I never would. It was Mack’s story and Mack was entitled to keep it. As much as I wanted to read it to my mother and my pals, I realised I’d read it to the only person who really mattered. Mack’s burden of responsibility had been lifted.
I was only twelve years old but I was as proud as I’d ever be.
Educating Pinky
It was one of those Mexican mornings when dogs disappeared, when you could drive through any one of a hundred dry, dusty villages and not hear a single bark; when old trucks refused to start on principle and, if they did, would only overheat anyway. It was under these dead trucks, in the dark cool beneath the oil- and dust-coated undersides, that the missing dogs could be found, lying motionless on their sides, tongues lolling, tolerating the flies that crawled into ears and nostrils because it was too hot to object.
It was no less hot in the marina at La Paz where Captain Pete waited for his drunken, suffering and, doubtless, abjectly apologetic crew to return from a night off. The sun had bludgeoned the water around the quay to stillness and the mirror-flat surface amplified both glare and heat. There wasn’t even a suggestion of a breeze, nothing to cause ripples or bring relief, and no hint of the storm that had kept them in port for the past four days. The bait fish, which lived in the marina and found sanctuary in the weeds and barnacles beneath the floating arms of the pen, had also disappeared, forsaking their refuge for the cooler waters down deeper where they ran the risk of being swallowed by marauding pargo. One by one, the fish in the live-bait tank attached to the outer arm of the pen gave up and switched to backstroke. Captain Pete was not amused. He scooped up one of the dead fish and tossed it towards a pelican sheltering in the shadow cast by his boat. Being a pelican in Mexico was a highly competitive occupation and normally the bird would have seized greedily upon the offering. This time it swallowed the fish reluctantly as though doing a favour.
The boys’ non-appearance disappointed Captain Pete even though he knew better. He accepted that, no matter how much time he spent in Mexico, he would never understand the way Mexicans think and had given up trying. His skipper, XR, was as conscientious and loyal as a man could be, and his deckie, Chuy (rhymes with coo-ee), had been chosen because he possessed the same qualities. Captain Pete knew without question that both XR and Chuy would do anything he asked of them. So when the boys gave him their assurances that they would be back by dawn, ready and capable of beginning the six-hundred-kilometre crossing to Puerto Vallarta on the west coast of mainland Mexico, he had believed them and granted them shore leave on that basis. Their assurances and promises were made in good faith and they had insisted they valued their jobs too highly to put them in jeopardy. Captain Pete never doubted that. But that was then and this was now, and between the two points in time a hot night of passion and tequila had intervened. This was also the second time in three weeks that the boys had failed to return before the scheduled departure time. The captain had dismissed their earlier transgression as a product of their youth and natural exuberance, but the repeat performance following so closely on the first spoke of a pattern and a wilful disregard for authority.
Captain Pete occupied his time and attempted to dissipate his frustration and disappointment by rigging up a makeshift awning over the rear deck of his Salthouse 62. Already it was too hot to walk over in bare feet. There was no real reason for the awning because there was no reason for him to step outside of the air-conditioned cabin, other than that he was too irritated to sit still. He checked his watch. Again. By rights they should be fifty kilometres out to sea, making the most of the conditions, out in the open in a breeze or creating one of their own with their passage.
He glanced along the quay but there was still no sign of his boys. Calling them ‘boys’ was a term of affection because neither was a boy any more. XR was twenty-six and Chuy was twenty-four. But they was a his boys and he didn’t want to dismiss them because he’d grown both fond and protective of them, and he knew they’d be very difficult to replace. He paid them well and treated them well, which made their transgression even harder to understand. It was a question of respect and trust. But in the back of his mind was the advice he’d been g
iven when he’d first brought a boat down to the Sea of Cortez.
‘This is Mexico,’ a gritty old sea-dog from Fort Lauderdale had told him.‘Different rules apply. Down here, intention has a looser affiliation with action. To get by you need patience and tolerance by the bucketful. Don’t try for understanding or you’ll only get confused.’The old man had sailed into the Sea of Cortez thirty years earlier, come to terms with the place and never left.
There were other issues preying on the captain’s mind, which he’d hoped to negate with an early departure. If the conditions were good for him, they were also good for the pangeros who ran drugs over to the Baja Peninsula, and for the Armada de Mexico — the Mexican Navy — which was out on patrol trying to intercept them. Sometimes the pangeros transferred their illicit cargo from their long but basic open boats to high-speed offshore cruisers, mostly Cigarette, Danzi and Fountain boats, which ran the drugs straight up the west coast of the Baja to California. Captain Pete didn’t want For Pete’s Sake, his Salthouse 62, mistaken for one of them. On occasions the Mexican Navy had been particularly heavy-handed in their treatment of gringos in game boats, and many an owner had sweated a week or two in a Mexican gaol while misunderstandings were resolved. Captain Pete sympathised with the navy and the difficulties of their job, but nonetheless he was anxious to avoid any entanglements.