Absolutely Galápagos

by David Fletcher

  Brian thought this all a bit silly. But rather than being churlish – again – he first composed a note and wrote this on his card. It read:

  If you bring this postcard home

  Pristine, torn or slightly creased

  Then you’ll earn a worthwhile drink

  (If, by then, I’m not deceased)

  Then, with Sandra and her card, he joined the other Nature-seekers for a short panga ride to the post office facility. Happily, the post barrel, which was just beyond the wet-landing beach, did not have, in attendance, the normal post office queue. Accordingly, the party of posters were soon able to sift through the contents of the barrel and locate a couple of cards that could be delivered back in Blighty and then leave their own cards for a similar process in the future.

  Yes, Brian had been right. It was all a bit silly, but at the same time it was all very harmless. Even if the ‘200-year-old barrel’ was only 200 years old in the same sense that Trigg’s broom had been twenty years old. It and its post must have needed replacing every two or three years. Furthermore, the people who posted Brian and Sandra’s postcards when they returned to England just two weeks later – rather than delivering them by hand – must have needed a clearer instruction as to how the whole process was supposed to work…

  Talking of which, the truck on Floreana apparently wouldn’t work at all. This was the one and only truck on the island that had been booked to take the Nature-seekers from Puerto Velasco Ibarra, which was just a little bit further along the coast, up to the heights of Cerro Pajas. This was the planned mid-afternoon excursion. However, word came through to the boat that the truck was currently unwell and wouldn’t be mobile again until a spare part had been brought in from Santa Cruz or even from mainland Ecuador. And no way was it possible to walk to Cerro Pajas (at 640 metres).

  That meant that the excursion was cancelled and it was decided instead that Captain Guillermo would take the Beluga directly to their next day’s destination, which was Puerto Villamil, the capital of the fourth inhabited island in the archipelago, otherwise known as Isabela Island. This would mean quite a long voyage west at Guillermo’s normal super-fast speed. And this would mean an ocean transit where, in the interests of safety, one was advised to lie on one’s bed. Standing up or walking around was something of a challenge and one that Brian thought he would eschew. Instead he would remain essentially horizontal on his berth – with his wife in her berth – and he would resort to some poetry. Well, in fact, following that encounter with the hammerhead shark, an encounter that had reminded him of his enormous contempt for all those bastards who cause the death of one hundred million sharks every year – and just for some fucking soup – he recalled some poetry that he himself had composed only a few years before. It was:

  The shark is a creature of beauty.

  He’s as sleek and as lean as a cat.

  And in water, as lithe as a leopard,

  And in menace, as mean as a rat.

  We kill him for kicks and for pleasure.

  We kill him to ‘harvest’ his fin.

  Which is why, when we meet him while swimming,

  He’ll be wearing a great, leering grin.

  At last he has found his oppressor

  In a place where he can’t do him harm.

  And the only decision he’s faced with

  Is to bite through a leg or an arm.

  It can’t be a pleasant sensation,

  A deep, tearing wound to incur.

  And to realise that after that mouthful,

  You’re not now the man that you were.

  But really there’s no need to worry,

  Cos that mouthful will not be his last.

  In a minute he’s back for another,

  And from there on it’s downhill quite fast.

  While you started with all your components

  And with everything working quite well,

  You’re now just a soup in the ocean,

  With bits washing round in the swell.

  So when you next swim in the ocean,

  Remember those sharks are there too,

  And the soup of the day won’t be shark’s fin,

  But it might be a soup made of you…

  OK, so it was doggerel, not poetry. But who cares? And who, other than those revolting fellows in the Far East, could argue with its sentiments?

  Brian was still mulling this over when the Beluga began to slow down. After three and a half hours of all too literal rock and roll, the movement of the boat betrayed that its breakneck speed had been abandoned in favour of a more sedate pace, and this might mean that it was now nearing its destination. So Brian and Sandra decided to risk a walk in order to discover where they were, and the best place to walk to was the flying bridge. When they got there they discovered that Josh and Madeline had beaten them to it, and it was Josh who pointed out Puerto Villamil. It was off to the right, a mile or so along a rather featureless coastline, and it looked a modest sort of place. As the Beluga drew closer, its modest credentials were confirmed, although in common with the other two puertos visited in the Galápagos, it had moored about it a whole congregation of little boats. Soon the Beluga would be amongst them.

  When it was, and on-board stability had been re-established, Brian and Sandra returned to their cabin to prepare for a relaxed evening of drinking, eating, talking and listing, and on this occasion some rather serious debate.

  This far from flippant stuff started when, at the dining table, Brian overheard a remark Sandra was making to Mandy. It was to the effect that it was quite ironic that the word ‘humanity’ is the term one applies both to the quality of being humane, as in being compassionate, and to human beings collectively who, as a species, are generally far from compassionate and more often capable of being mean, selfish, intolerant and cruel. Well, with this trigger, and probably with mankind’s treatment of sharks still reverberating in his mind, Brian took it upon himself to ask the seven others at the table what might be an appropriate measure of genuine compassionate humanity. And when he was sure that he had their perplexed attention, he sought to lessen their perplexity and to illustrate the nature of their allotted quest, by suggesting something that was one of the worst measures of true humanity, and this was ‘piety’. This he argued had been proven to be associated with a lack of altruism and generosity and a tendency to be overly judgemental and non-empathetic. It was all something to do with what was termed ‘moral licensing’, which is the propensity to use something ‘good’, like being pious, to justify (often without being aware of it) something bad, like being really insensitive or being a complete and utter bastard. And he attempted to underline what he meant by drawing to the attention of his fellow diners the contemptible habits of all those religious zealots who currently infect our world and who regard being sickeningly pious as the very purpose of life.

  This seemed to do the trick and Evan immediately made the observation that he’d always thought that the way we deal with people in their old age was appalling, and as a measure of humanity it sucked. He then went on to explain that he thought the desire to provide indefinite care to people who wanted nothing more than to sign off and disappear was more a measure of the self-indulgence of a pseudo-liberal society than it was a measure of humanity. Why, he asked, do we deny our fellow humans a painless and dignified death, when if it were a horse or a dog in their situation, it would be regarded as no more than a properly humane act to relieve them of their desperate and pointless suffering?

  This contribution from Evan opened the floodgates, and first to gush through with her thoughts was Sally, and her own contribution to the debate concerned an emphasis of the dichotomy between humaneness as applied to other animals and humaneness/humanity applied to others of our kind. Because what she said was that it was clear that there was more humanity associated with adm
inistering a fast-acting drug to poor old Rover who had come to the end of his happy life than with a thousand aggressive interventions by doctors in the hope that a thousand ‘remains of a human life’ remained in their terrible condition for just a few miserable weeks more. There was a disconnect here, and if it did nothing else it illustrated how the desire to prolong life at all costs was, like piety, the worst possible measure of humanity.

  This is when Horace joined the fray. He made the simple statement that maybe our treatment of other species in general was a much better measurement of our humanity than the way we treated our own kind. Possibly because our humanity towards our fellow man inevitably becomes clouded by stuff like ethics, culture, tradition and even guilt. Whereas, our humanity to all other animals is unadulterated by any such considerations and is therefore ‘honest and pure’.

  This is where Brian rejoined the debate he’d started, and what he did was to applaud Horace’s contribution and then to ‘widen’ it. And he did this by suggesting that maybe the best measure of our humanity was how well we treated not just our pets but how we treated the entirety of life on Earth. Real humanity, he proposed, was treating every animal and indeed every plant in the same way as we would like to be treated ourselves. So, if we thought of ourselves as rhinos, we’d clearly prefer not to be killed for our horns. Just as if we thought of ourselves as the remnants of a population of endangered humming birds, we wouldn’t want our last remaining habitat to be cleared – for the sake of yet another damaging plantation of coca. And whilst this all sounded maybe a little facile and maybe a little wishful-middle-class, it was true. There was, he suggested, that dichotomy between humanity and humanity’s lack of humanity, because, as a species, we were not just stupid but selfish, and we were unable to understand that real humanity and real compassion mean being compassionate in our treatment of all life. Even that life we breed to consume and especially that life which, because of our numbers, now needs our assistance.

  Well, it hadn’t been an evening for a bundle of laughs, but there had been some stimulation on offer, and ultimately, around the table, a pretty well unanimous consensus. Yes, all eight diners had concluded that rather than using just our treatment of our own kind as a measure of our humanity, it would be far better – for us and for all life on Earth – if we calibrated our humanity by reference to the way we treated gorillas, tuna, otters, hornets – and pine trees and corals – and, of course, sharks…

  Whether the measure should also include the treatment of a wife who wanted only to sleep had been left unresolved. Which was good news for Brian, because he was now back in his cabin with Sandra, and whilst she did look more than a little weary, he did have a presentation on Bolivia to deliver. And this he did by making the following announcement:

  ‘Sandra. Bolivia is one of a number of landlocked states in the world that maintains a navy.’

  Sandra looked at her husband, and in her expression there was no hint of humanity. Brian failed to notice this and carried on regardless – and on the theme of Bolivia’s maritime ambitions.

  ‘Yes, you see, following the War of the Pacific between 1879 and 1884, Chile annexed that part of Bolivia that had given it access to the Pacific Ocean, and it became landlocked. However, the country has never given up its claim on this corridor to the sea and certainly not its dream of once again having its own coastline. Which is why successive Bolivian governments have maintained a ‘maritime consciousness’ within the country, in the hope that a return to its maritime past will remain nothing less than a real and active “matter of honour”.’

  ‘But if they haven’t got any sea…?’ queried Sandra.

  ‘Well, they do have some water. I mean, their not very large navy does patrol rivers – to prevent smuggling and drug trafficking – and they even maintain a naval presence on Lake Titicaca…’

  ‘It’s hardly like the real thing though, is it?’

  ‘Ah. Well, in readiness for getting their Pacific coastline back, they also have a small but proper naval unit permanently deployed in Rosario – in Argentina.’

  ‘Good grief!’

  ‘Yes. Although I suspect it might not be much use if they came into conflict with… Argentina.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah, and talking of which,’ declared Brian, ‘it was in a town just over the border from Argentina that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid popped their clogs. It was in a place called San Vincente. And actually it wasn’t Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; it was a couple of train robbers called Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Longabough. And they weren’t killed in a shootout, but in the middle of the night – after a shootout. It’s reckoned that one of them shot the other then killed himself – to avoid being captured. Which I have to say was a successful if a rather absurd solution to their problem…’

  ‘You wouldn’t recommend it to avoid being kept awake then?’

  Brian regarded his wife and this time registered the expression on her face. It was time for him to shut up, time for him to recognise that his humanity required him to allow her to sleep. So he did. And instead of chattering on, he thought about that hammerhead shark off the Devil’s Crown. Just as he would think about it again and again over the forthcoming months. Hell, how could he not?

  11.

  Brian awoke at exactly six in the morning. It was something he often did: re-entering the world of consciousness at a precise o’clock, whether it was five o’clock, six o’clock, seven o’clock or even eight o’clock. It was as though within that disorganised muddle of his mind he had a rare Swiss-made chronometer, a timepiece that could operate under the most testing of conditions and then stir him after he had achieved the required period of sleep – but only ‘on the hour’. Minutes or even fractions of hours, his chronometer couldn’t manage. Or maybe, to withstand the environment of his mind, that’s just the way the Swiss had engineered it. But whatever… this waking on the hour was a fact. And if one did not subscribe to the involvement of the Swiss – which Brian certainly did not – it was also a mystery.

  On this particular morning, Brian paused in his start to the day to consider this mystery. However, it remained as perplexing as how he, like most other people, somehow knew more or less how long they had been asleep, even though they had… been asleep at the time. Somehow the mind appeared to be able to retain a sense of the passage of time when it was either switched off entirely or aware only of the occurrence of dreams. Yes, waking at a precise time and knowing how long one had slept were both real mysteries. And having got no closer to solving either of these two mysteries, Brian began to contemplate some others…

  Why, he thought, have academics, when interviewed on the radio or the telly, adopted the use of ‘so’ at the beginning of every response, if not at the beginning of every sentence? What was so wrong with ‘well’ or ‘uhm’? Brian was at a loss to know, and it remained a mystery. Just like why anybody in the world took seriously anything Diane Abbott ever said. Then there was the identity of whoever is responsible for infantilising a whole generation of people through the use of all those stupid computer games – and what might be his or her motive? In Brian’s opinion this was one of the greatest mysteries of all, and he would have given anybody else’s right arm to solve it. I mean, here was somebody grooming millions of young innocents into becoming essentially vegetables, just morons who would be more than satisfied with no real-world life of their own and happy to play the sorts of puerile pastimes that their forebears had discarded by the age of nine. And who was it? Putin? Xi Jinping? Mark Zuckerberg? Blofeld? Or maybe even ‘The Office of Tony Blair’? And the motive? World domination? Some sort of irresistible ideological imperative? Corporate greed? Or was it the only way that Tony Blair wouldn’t go down in history as being the most arrogant, most misguided, most deluded and (by a short margin over Gordon Brown) the most loathsome British prime minister of all time?

  Brian strongly suspected t
hat he would never see this mystery resolved. Unless it became catastrophically apparent, probably at the point where the world had run out of functioning humans and the vast majority of its population were glued permanently to the screens of their ubiquitous smartphones. However, he had to concede that there was just as little likelihood that another mystery would be one day resolved, and this was why our armed forces haven’t adopted a wheelie technology in place of their back-carried rucksacks. These rucksacks, Brian understood, could weigh anything up to ninety-five pounds, and surely, he thought, even for a strapping great marine, pulling ninety-five pounds on a set of wheels is far, far preferable to lugging it on one’s back. And we’re not talking about flimsy little wheels here that can cope only with the polished floor of an airport concourse, but big, heavy-duty wheels that could be made to cope with the very worst of terrains. Furthermore, these wheelie kitbags could be attached by a bracket to the back of a marine’s belt, and that way he could still have both of his hands free and be ready for action. Yes, Brian was convinced; the case for military-type wheelie rucksacks was overwhelming. Which made their non-introduction into Her Majesty’s armed forces a complete and utter mystery.

  However, far from mysterious was the puncturing of his futile musings on all these unresolved puzzles by Sandra’s suggestion that he got out of bed, having first of all (if he valued their relationship) paid her some attention. And so began the next day of their Galápagos adventure and their first day on the island of Isabela.