Improvisato

by David Crossman

  It didn’t. He wasn’t surprised. He probably couldn’t have heard it if it had. His attempt at drowning—an impromptu act—hadn’t been successful, but it had left his ears clogged.

  He studied his hands, turning them this way and that.

  “Kia ora,” said a voice, not from his hands. Albert knew before he looked up that the speaker was Tipene Patuai, the Constable.

  Albert echoed the Maori greeting. He slid sideways to make room on the bench.

  “Ah! You speak Maori!”

  “Just that,” said Albert. “Good day, right?”

  “Spot on,” said Patuai. “Good on ya.”

  Albert nodded. “That and puha and pakeha.”

  “Ah, the Maori menu as well! I’m impressed.”

  “Ah’m umpreesed,” Albert repeated phonetically.

  “Spoken like a native, Al,” said Patuai. He was about to slap Albert on the back, but thought better of it mid-swing, and reeled in his arm. “All dried out, are we?”

  Albert studied the constable with a glance. He seemed to be dry, but why shouldn’t he be? He wasn’t the one who had taken a plunge into the ocean. “You mean, am I dry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Milly taking good care of you?”

  “The fat woman?” Albert said.

  “Traditionally built, we call it,” said Patuai with a grin, but not loudly. “Though Milly may be more traditional than most.”

  “Yes. She’s taken care of me.”

  Patuai poked a note on the piano. E above middle C.

  “Do you play?” Albert asked.

  “You just heard my entire repertoire, Maestro. That and this.” He poked another note and chuckled. “I’m surprised we haven’t had the pleasure of a tune or two from you?”

  Albert had been wondering why the constable wasn’t saying what he had obviously come to say. “What do you want, Tipene?”

  “Want? Oh, I just wanted to know how you’re getting on. Make sure there’s no . . . no residual effect.”

  “You mean you want to make sure I’m not going to jump into the ocean again?”

  Patuai smiled. “Not to put too fine a point on it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good,” said Patuai, fiddling a few more keys, put not pressing them. “Good. We, none of us, would want anything to happen to you.”

  The policeman was nervous. “Why are you nervous?”

  “Nervous? Me? Not a bit of it,” said Patuai nervously. “Too much caffeine, I guess. It’s just . . .”

  He was about to say why he was really there. Albert looked at him and waited.

  Patuai had not been prepared for Albert’s eyes: dark, pupil-less pools from the bottom of which a guileless and otherworldly being was seeking to make sense of life on earth. He felt like an amoeba looking up at the business end of an electron telescope, and perceiving there a huge, all-seeing eye, full of questions for which the amoeba had no ready answer. This little salad of metaphors formed so immediately and powerfully that, had the constable’s fingers not reflexively gripped the piano, he might have fallen in. He stammered. Albert continued to wait, and to stare.

  “I . . . well . . . you . . . I mean,” Patuai drew his breath and marshaled his thoughts. “You remember, yesterday, you mentioned a ship called the Venice Regent.”

  “That’s what the ocean said when . . . when I was in it.”

  “Yeah. Right. What the ocean said,” said Patuai. Suddenly he believed that the ocean was capable of saying anything it damn well pleased, and if anybody could hear it, that person sat before him. “Anyroad, I let the name slip down at the dock, and a couple of lobstermen—Sam Patuwai and Chalky Spud—said they saw her off Pitt, about twelve to fifteen kilometers south southeast, early last week.”

  “They saw the Venice Regent?”

  “So they say. Making south and east, well clear of the islands.”

  “Here?”

  “Well, more or less. Off Pitt some distance, like I s . . .”

  “I mean, out here.” Albert made a circling motion with his hand that, Patuai interpreted correctly, was meant to incorporate all the islands in the area.

  “Yes.”

  Albert released the constable from his gaze, much to Patuai’s relief; he’d been about to confess his sins.

  “But there’s no girl missing from Chatham island?”

  “No.”

  “Or Pitt?”

  “No. Believe me, the disappearance of a large percentage of the population wouldn’t go unnoticed . . .”

  Albert thought about this. “You mean there aren’t many people on Pitt Island,” he said at last, “and if one of them went missing, everyone would know?”

  “That’s what I mean exactly,” said Patuai. It had dawned on him that conversation with Albert was like dancing without being able to hear the music. He decided to be direct. At least one of them should know what he was talking about.

  “That was what, five days ago you found the girl on the beach?”

  “Seven.”

  “And you think she’d been on the Venice Regent?”

  “The ocean . . . “

  “The ocean said, right. So, seven days ago. And she was here the week before that—the ship was. Which means the girl must have been, as well? Unless she was taken from some ship between here and the mainland.”

  “Someone would have said,” said Albert.

  “True. So, the question is, what was the Venice Regent doing out here where only fishermen are daft enough to tread?”

  Albert thought “why” was the question only if you didn’t already know the answer, which he did. The ocean had said, and if you couldn’t trust the ocean, well . . .

  Chapter Twelve

  “Do you think he’s all right?”

  Jeremy Ash looked up from the cribbage table. Trying to explain the game to Wendell was hurting his brain, and he was glad for a conversational respite, even if it was only to answer a question he’d answered at least three times that day—all from the same source.

  “We know the ship came through the earthquake okay, Angela. We know it resupplied in Napier. We know he was on it, and we know it got where it was going.” She inhaled to interrupt but he held up a forestalling finger and continued. “It would have been news if it didn’t. And it would’ve been news if half the passenger list—Albert by name—didn’t get off the boat when it docked at Chatham.”

  “Wharekauri,” said Wendell. After long calculation, he played a seven on Jeremy’s eight. “Eight and seven is fifteen. That’s two points?”

  Jeremy tossed the board a sideways glance and nodded. Wendell carefully moved his peg two holes in the wrong direction. “Other way,” said Jeremy. Wendell moved his peg four holes in the opposite direction.

  “I keep forgetting,” he said.

  Angela was wringing her hands, and it bothered Jeremy. Truth be told, his attitude toward her had undergone a drastic revision since their first meeting at the Cadogan Hotel in London. Finally his suspicions—not unfounded, based, as they were, upon the fact that she was known to be a practiced impostor and accomplished liar, as well as a fair violinist and, by her own admission, not unfamiliar with madness—had been overwhelmed by the fact that she had proven herself unflinchingly loyal to Albert. At some, yet undefined, level he knew she loved him. He didn’t like the way she flirted with him but, he had decided, it was what she did because she didn’t know how else to express that love.

  Once Jeremy had become comfortable with Angela, he found himself liking her. She had a good sense of humor. She was street-smart, though you’d never know it to listen to her—which showed how street-smart she was. She was adaptable and not hard on the eyes.

  The awkwardness between them, which had intensified rather than diminished over time, resulted from the fact that, while each had embraced the other at an emotional level; that embrace had failed to find expression in their conversational intercourse, which followed the prickly template they h
ad established in the early days of their relationship.

  “He’s okay. People will watch out for him.” Jeremy unthinkingly played a six on Wendell’s seven. “Twenty-one for three.”

  “Ha!” Wendell erupted in triumph, slapping a five on the six. “Twenty . . .” he consulted his fingers, “six for four!?” It was an interrogatory exclamation. His eyes appealed to his mentor for affirmation.

  Jeremy Ash dropped a three on the four. “Twenty-nine, for five,” he said slyly. “Some people never learn.” He pegged his points.

  “That’s so,” he said, turning over the last card in his hand. A two. “Thirty-one for eight.”

  “You planned that!” said Jeremy Ash. He slapped the arms of his wheelchair. “Can’t you see I don’t have any legs? I’m handicapped!”

  “Try being a Maori,” said Wendell without expression as he carefully and emphatically pegged his eight holes. “I’m ahead—and it’s my crib.”

  Jeremy Ash absorbed the fact. “Thanks for proving what an amazing teacher I am.”

  The spiny badinage that had developed between Wendell and Jeremy Ash over the days had a soothing effect on Angela. She studied the odd couple and marveled, not for the first time, at how seamlessly the mountainous Wendell had taken over the care of Jeremy Ash, and anticipated his needs before they were spoken. In fact, she couldn’t remember having ever heard Jeremy Ash ask anything of Wendell. They had become extensions of one another: a single, perfectly functioning anthropological impossibility.

  “Someone will . . . will take care of him, I suppose.”

  “Sure they will,” said Jeremy Ash.

  Never in question was the fact that Albert needed taking care of. Special treatment from an early age had rendered him dependent upon others—his mother and sister, his various managers and handlers, his agents, the School, Mrs. Bridges, Mrs. Gibson, Miz Grandy, now Jeremy Ash, Angela—even Wendell and Mr. Sweetman. To the wool coat of Albert’s obvious need, nature’s caregivers were lint. No doubt that’s whom he would attract on the Chatham Island. Still . . .

  “I wish he’d let me go with him.” She looked out the window, as if trying to will that strange and distant place into focus.

  There was no answer to this. “He’ll be okay. He can use a vacation.”

  “But what about the Venice Regent?”

  “What about it?”

  “What if he . . . I don’t know. What if there’s something to his suspicions? What if he asks the wrong questions of the wrong people?”

  “They’re a bunch of islanders,” said Jeremy Ash. “Harmless.”

  Wendell made a noise that might have been interpreted several ways.

  “I hope so,” said Angela.

  Bindy appeared in the doorway, agitated as a washing machine in the early stages of its cycle. “Miss?” she said, “Mr. Ash. Sergeant Jeffreys is . . .”

  Before she could say Sergeant Jeffreys was there, he was.

  In recent days, Jeffreys had become as much a part of the Sweetman residence as the wallpaper and the mild perfume of kippers, fresh-cut flowers, Earl Gray tea, and pipe tobacco. So his appearance was not alarming; the same could not be said of his countenance. Angela was instantly on her feet. “What is it, Sergeant?”

  “I don’t know where to start,” said Jeffreys, spinning his hat in his hands. “They found the Venice Regent, adrift this time, off Taranga Island.”

  “Where’s that?” Jeremy Ash and Angela asked in unison.

  “Bream Bay,” said Jeffreys. “About eighty miles north.”

  “That’s a long way from here,” said Mr. Sweetman who had entered the room and the conversation simultaneously.

  “The Navy’s towing it to Auckland.”

  “What happened to the crew?” Jeremy Ash wanted to know.

  “Well, Mr., . . . Albert was right about pirates. They found the original crew, the real crew, locked in a freezer.”

  “Horrors!” said Angela. “Were they all frozen to death?”

  Jeffreys demurred. “I can’t say anything more about that, Miss. Probably said way too much already. Usually do. I will say, though, that the ship had been taken over by pirates and that they, for various reasons—and that’s what I can’t talk about—abandoned ship, leaving the crew locked in the freezer and the engines engaged but idling.”

  “Good thing they found her before she ran into something,” said Sweetman.

  “That’s not all, is it, Sergeant?” said Angela. “Something about Albert?”

  “Well, no. Not exactly about him, but . . .”

  Jeffreys related the early episode of Albert’s recent adventures—as related to him by his nearer-than-a-cousin Edna, who had had it via ship-to-shore from Constable Patuai himself and, in relaying it to Senior Sergeant Hawkes, had done the same to Jeffreys, who happened to be standing beside her at the time.

  The series of events that unfolded drew conflicting reactions from his hearers. Angela clasped her hands to her neck and remembered to breathe only when her lungs grew tired of waiting. “Merciful Lord!” she said—revealing the influence of Mrs. Gibson, for whom the expression was the response to anything out of the ordinary.

  “He saved the ship!?” said Jeremy Ash who, however much he loved Albert, couldn’t imagine a less likely savior performing a more impossible task.

  “That’s nothing,” said Jeffreys, who proceeded to unfold the rest of the tale in a lump.

  Wendell, who had a noise for any occasion, was noiseless. More to the point, even Sweetman had no response. So wide were the eyes they slowly turned to one another that a newcomer entering the room at that instant could be forgiven for wondering if they’d interrupted a game of charades in which the players were tasked with imitating ping-pong balls.

  “How horrible!” said Angela when Jeffreys finished relating how Albert had found the body of Woolie-Woolie, and what subsequent inspection of the body had revealed.

  Jeremy Ash was torn. He’d always credited himself with a good imagination, but when he appealed to that apparatus for an image of Albert as a fisherman, it only shrugged and said “I got nothin’.”

  It more than compensated for that failure, however, with images of Woolie-Woolie’s eviscerated corpse so vivid he could almost inhale the miasma that would surround a body pulled ashore after a week in the ocean.

  “We need to go out there,” said Angela.

  Before Jeremy could voice an opinion, Jeffreys spoke. “There’s a special Chatham Air flight going out this afternoon with Dr. Chan; he’s the medical examiner. I’m going along.”

  He let the implication hang in the air. “We can go?” Jeremy asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Jeffreys who, not so deep down inside, was not looking forward to the trip. He’d never flown before—though he’d had several opportunities. The thought of spending three hours in a metal tube suspended over the ocean by nothing but the black art of physics did not alleviate his fear. He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice. “I don’t expect they’ll turn away paying passengers since they’ve got to make the trip anyway.”

  In truth, Jeffreys would be happy for the company. He’d much rather look at Angela—even Jeremy Ash—than several hundred kilometers of open ocean.

  “We’ll be there,” Angela declared.

  “We will?” said Jeremy Ash.

  “Can I go, Mr. Sweetman?”

  Sweetman—still shell-shocked by the recent earthquake, despite the fact that his property, together with the others on Parliament Row, had escaped intact apart from some broken bric-a-brac, a few windows, and one fallen tree that was going to be cut down soon anyway—was having difficulty digesting events. He allowed his eyes to drift toward the speaker. “Hmm?”

  “He’ll need me to push him around,” said Wendell, nodding toward the pushee. “He’s got no legs.”

  “I can manage,” Jeremy Ash objected.

  “Getting on and off the plane?” Wendell reminded. “I’d like to see that.”

 
; If nothing else, Jeremy Ash was a pragmatist. He turned to Mr. Sweetman. “Can he?”

  Mr. Sweetman nodded. “I . . . yes. I suppose. I . . . you’ll want me to keep your rooms?”

  “Oh yes,” said Angela. “We’ll be back as soon as . . . as soon as . . .Yes. We’ll be back.”

  Bindy, whose bladder was about to explode with all the excitement, was on the verge of asking if she could go, too, when any hope along those lines was crushed by the man to whom she was in the process of surrendering her heart. “That’s six then. Full plane!” said the sergeant, deriving a comfort from numbers Bindy didn’t share.

  “Not the first of these I’ve had to investigate,” said Dr. Chan. He wasn’t, it turned out, just a medical examiner, but a forensic scientist. After extracting promises from his hearers that the news would go no further—they were bound to hear it all anyway, over the next day or two—he chronicled his encounters with three victims of the Trade over the last eighteen months. “Not much left to autopsy. We’ve kept it dark for obvious reasons,” he concluded. “Panic amongst the general population wouldn’t be constructive at this stage in the investigations.”

  Thereafter, each passenger withdrew to his or her inner chambers for deliberation during which the digestive biscuits with which they had been supplied from a little bag wedged between the pilot’s seat and that of the passenger to his right, and bottles of water from the same cornucopia, received a desultory nibble or sip.

  Jeremy Ash was curious. Dr. David Chan, though both physically and nominally oriental, had traits indicating his emergence from a stew of DNA in which genomes had been mixed indiscriminately. Chan felt the surveillance and, when thoughtful silence had co-opted the conversation for a minute or two, locked his occluded eyes on Jeremy Ash. “Irish,” he said, pinching a clump of his red hair. “Norwegian.” He pointed to his left eye, which was blue. “Chinese.” He tapped his right eye, which was so brown as to appear black. “English.” He stuck out the tip of his tongue and tapped the tip. Then, concluding the inventory, pointed at the plain silver cross that suspended from a delicate chain around his neck. “Christian.”