by D R Sherman
The man had laughed about the girl, but the boy saw that he was also pleased. The fish had been a different matter. At first he had been incredulous. He came to accept it finally, and when the full import of it reached him his apathetic resignation vanished. Hope lit a fire in his eyes. Instantly and unconsciously they sought the big killing harpoon. They swung back to the boy, with the fever in them burning brighter, and then suddenly, as quickly as they had kindled, the fires burned out and left them dull and hopeless once again.
True to his word, the man made no mention of the thoughts which had been in his head. But the boy had read them, and he knew that the harpoon he was carrying now was his father’s prayer that his son would change his mind and think of himself once more as a fisherman.
The boy crossed the road, and he walked swiftly through the grove of coconut palms. He remembered the meeting with Pierre Vigot yesterday, and the degrading servility of the big Creole. It angered him, and at the same time it saddened him, and he did not think he could face it all over again. He looked about warily, but nothing moved in the sunlight and in the shade, and the oppressive sadness in his heart became a little more tolerable.
He reached the seawall and climbed over it. He saw the anchored pirogue, and the smooth stretch of the blue sea beyond it. He thought of the big fish who was his friend, and of how he would soon be riding on its back, and it jolted him from his mood of melancholy. He glanced furtively to his left, hoping to see the girl, wondering whether or not she still wanted to go fishing with him. He saw no sign of her. He climbed back onto the wall, and he stood up on the tips of his toes and tried to see over the crest of the sloping land which flattened out into the terrace which fronted her house.
He was a little low down though, and he could see nothing. For a moment he was tempted to walk along the wall till he was far enough along it to be able to see over the rise, but he discarded the idea angrily and almost immediately. If she did not want to go fishing, it was all right with him. He certainly was not going to run after her and beg her to come. It would be a kind of victory for her, and she would know it, if she saw him walking along the wall towards her house.
He stifled his disappointment and jumped down onto the beach. He pulled the small bag of candy out of his pocket. He opened the mouth of the bag and studied the candy un-decidedly. After a moment he reached into the bag and picked out one of the sticky candies. He put it into his mouth, almost regretfully, and then he closed the bag up and stuffed it back into his pocket. He started forward, his cheek bulging. He sucked greedily, and he told himself, not without a little spite, that he was eating one of the pieces he had saved for her.
The girl saw him when he was a little way down the beach. She had been waiting half an hour for him, pacing fretfully up and down the lawn between the wall and the front of the house, telling herself that really she did not care whether he came or not. She paused briefly at the wall each time to scan the beach and the line of palms from which she knew he must emerge. She was furtive about it, and she did not stand for long beside the wall because she did not want him to see her standing there. He would know that she had been waiting, and she did not want him to have the satisfaction of knowing such a thing.
She was wearing a bathing suit of black crepe nylon. It was a severe one-piece, but its very simplicity only served to emphasize the young body it was meant to conceal. It fitted her snugly, even more so when it was wet, and she was not unaware of the fact.
She felt a surge of excitement the instant she saw him, and all her doubt and apprehension vanished. He had come, after all, and he would, take her to that wonderful fish which allowed him to ride on its back. She cupped her hands to her mouth.
“Paul!” she cried, shouting out across the distance between them.
She saw him pause, and then he turned slowly. He raised his arm and waved it briefly, and then he went on down the beach, moving with that funny limping walk of his. She snatched her mask off the wall angrily, and then she turned and ran for the steps which led down to the beach. She took them two at a time and sprinted after him.
She had planned how it would be while she paced up and down the lawn. She would call out to him, and when he saw her she would wave with decorum and restraint. He would hurry to meet her then, and she would walk to the bottom of the steps and wait for him. At the very outside, if he merely stood and waited for her, it would be permissible for her to make the initial advance. She would walk down the steps, taking her time, and then she would saunter indifferently across the beach towards where he was standing, holding her mask by its strap and giving it a casual twirl now and again. That was the way she had thought it would be.
It had never occurred to her that he might not even wait, and his actions had thrown her into, confusion. She was furious with him for having left her no alternative but to pursue him, and the fact that she was complying with such shameless abandon mortified her.
She caught up with him when he was knee-deep in the water and twenty yards from the pirogue. She splashed through the sea, wading strongly, and then she fell into step beside him.
“Why did you not wait for me, Paul?” she said angrily, her breath coming in quick gasps.
Her rebuke was unexpected, and it took him by surprise. He faltered but then he resumed his steady wading, He had wanted to run to her when she called out, but some obscure and nameless obstinacy in him precluded it. He thought about it now, trying to rationalize his actions. He gave up after a while, because he could not find the words to define the awareness that was in him. He knew he had done the right thing though, because if he had gone to her he would have felt the way Pierre Vigot must have felt when he offered to carry the handline and the fish. He did not think it could be a good way to feel.
The boy shrugged his sinewy shoulders abruptly. He glanced at the girl pacing beside him, and his eyes strayed from her face to the bumps of her young breasts which appeared almost naked, to his eye beneath the wet film of her clinging suit. He saw the thrusting outline of each pointed nipple, and the sight fascinated and intrigued him. He looked away quickly when she turned her head and saw him watching, but the memory of what he had seen was burned into his mind.
“It does not make a difference,” he said curtly. “You are here as it is, and we are nearer to the pirogue than we would have been if I had waited for you.”
His assertion was logical, and it mollified her somewhat. “Why have you brought the big harpoon?” she asked, indicating it with a nod of her head.
A shadow passed across the boy’s face. “I might meet a shark,” he said gruffly. “Or perhaps a big fish might come close enough for me to kill it. I am a fisherman, and I have to be ready.”
“You would kill the marsouin?” she asked in alarm.
“Are you mad?” the boy growled. “I am speaking of other fishes.”
“I’m glad,” the girl said quickly. “When you spoke of killing a big fish, I thought you meant the marsouin.”
The boy turned on her savagely, his own vulnerability driving him. “Do not think of things you know nothing about,” he snarled. “It is my fish in any case, and if I wanted to spear it I would.”
She recoiled from his furious attack, staring at him in astonishment, bewildered and shocked by the outburst she had provoked. She knew that her words had in some way been responsible, but that was all she knew.
“I did not mean anything, Paul,” she whispered.
“It is nothing,” he said shortly, and then because he could see that she was still upset he became at once apologetic. “I am sorry that I spoke sharply, but the fish saved my life two days ago, and even to hear someone speak of killing him is more than I can bear.”
An involuntary shudder passed through his body and made his shoulders heave. He put on a sudden burst of speed and covered the last few yards to the pirogue. He felt the increased resistance of the water against his pistoning thighs. He took it as a personal affront, and he drove himself harder. He reached the boat well ahe
ad of her.
He laid his mask and speargun down carefully on the planking of the pirogue. He was reaching in to drop the harpoon when the sight of it suddenly incensed him. He took it in both hands, and he gripped the shaft of red takamaka wood so fiercely that he felt his arms begin to tremble. He lifted it up, and the unformed thought in his mind was that he should lift it higher and higher and then smash the harpoon down and break the shaft across the gunwale of the boat.
The harpoon in his hands was chest high when he realized what he was doing. He started violently, and then the tension ran out of him. He was a fisherman, before anything else, and no fisherman could afford to break a harpoon shaft in childish anger. It was a good shaft, one of the best he had seen, and his father had made it and fitted it to the head of the harpoon. He stroked the seasoned wood with his fingers and then put the harpoon down in the boat.
I think it must be truly the best I have handled, he told himself, and he knew his judgment was professional and unclouded by sentiment.
He turned to the girl who had come up beside him. “I will hold the boat while you get in.”
“You do not have to do that,” she said indignantly. “I have been in and out of a boat before.”
“Get in,” he said, simply and without rancor. “It is my boat, and my father’s boat, and you must do as I say.”
A pirogue capsized easily, and it was not a chance he was prepared to take, no matter how many times she had climbed in and out of one. Another boat, perhaps, but not this one which was the blood of their life.
“But, Paul—” she began.
“Get in,” he said again, cutting off her protest bluntly.
His eyes were hard, and there was a look in them that she had not seen before. “All right, Paul,” she said meekly.
She clambered into the pirogue while he held it steady, and then when she had settled herself on the forward thwart he lifted the anchor into the boat and jumped aboard nimbly.
It was then that he remembered he had forgotten to take the bag of candy out of his pocket before wading into the water. It had been in his mind to do it just before she called, but when he heard her voice it drove everything from his head. His mouth dropped open, and a look of stunned disbelief spread slowly across his face. When the shock passed he let out a startled yelp and plunged his right hand into his pocket.
“What is it?” the girl cried in alarm.
“My candy!” the boy groaned.
In that instant before his fingers made contact he was hoping that by some miracle or the other his fears would prove to be groundless. When he touched the sodden bag he knew positively that there had been no miracle. He worked his fingers around the bag and drew it gingerly out of his pocket. He stared at it ruefully, and then with great care he untwisted the mouth of the bag and peered into it. He brightened immediately. The candies were wet, certainly, but otherwise they seemed to have suffered no damage. They would dry out quickly, even inside the bag, and though they might taste a little salty at first, the sweetness would soon come up from underneath. The thing was, he wanted to offer her one, and he was afraid she might refuse, because the bag had been in the water and the candies were all wet and salty.
He thought about it for a while, weighing his misgivings against his desire to share something with her that was of his own. He made up his mind abruptly. He moved forward, and the pirogue rocked gently as the weight of his body shifted from one foot to the other. He squatted in front of her, holding out the open bag.
“Will you have one?” he asked. “They are a bit wet, but I do not think they will taste too bad.”
The girl peered suspiciously at the cheap, sticky candies inside the sodden brown paper bag. A delicate flicker of distaste passed briefly across her face. She glanced up at the boy.
“Where did you buy these?” she asked.
“At the Chinaman’s,” the boy replied enthusiastically, completely missing the disdain in her voice. “He has many different candies there, but I did not have enough money to buy the chocolate-covered ones that are wrapped in paper.”
He stated it as a fact, without any sort of apology, but he felt certain that she would have preferred the sweets that were wrapped in the colored silver papers.
For a moment she wanted to scorn his offering contemptuously, to humiliate him for having made her chase after him there on the beach. But then she remembered the big dolphin, and she knew that if she did such a thing he might not allow her to ride on its back. It never occurred to her that she did not need his permission: she had come to think of it as his dolphin, obedient to the commands of no one but the boy. She looked down at the bag again, her mind in a turmoil.
“Take one,” the boy prompted her. “They are very good just the same.”
She met his eyes, and she saw the dreadful alertness which flickered in them, and in that instant she realized with a start of surprise that she could never do such a thing to him, even if he did not have a dolphin.
“Thank you, Paul,” she said.
She dipped into the bag and dug out one of the candies. She put it into her mouth, and she flinched involuntarily as she thought of the Chinaman’s store. She had passed it often, and each time she saw the dark, squalid interior with the flies buzzing in it she was glad that her mother did all of her shopping in the big stores of Victoria. She rolled the candy in her mouth and sucked at it, pretending an enthusiasm she did not feel.
The boy watched her happily. He smiled shyly and stood up. He helped himself to a piece of candy and then wedged the bag between the planking and the hull. He got the pole out and jabbed it into the water and turned the bow of the pirogue with one quick thrust and then drove it straight out to sea.
“The candy is not bad, is it?” he asked. “Even though it has been salted in the water.”
“It is good,” the girl replied, and she was sincere in her praise.
In the beginning, with the saltiness still on it, she had not liked the taste of the sweet in her mouth. But the bitterness went away after a few moments, and she found it to be quite palatable, even though it had come from the store of the Chinaman.
Her approval made the boy smile with pleasure. He rolled the candy in his mouth and nodded happily. “You did not bring your speargun?” he inquired.
The girl shook her head. “I want to play with your fish and ride on its back,” she said boldly. “I do not want to spear fish today.”
The boy’s eyes widened momentarily, but he kept his thoughts to himself. “I would have liked to have seen it,” he said. “This gun that works with air.”
“I will, show it to you another day.”
“You will?” the boy asked eagerly.
“Yes.”
“And will you show me how to use it and let me shoot with it?” he asked shyly.
“Mais oui!”
“I would like that,” the boy said.
He turned the pirogue a little, taking his bearings from the island a little way off to his right, and then he looked down at the girl again.
“You have the flippers that you wear on your feet?” he asked cautiously.
“I have them, yes.”
“You did not bring them?” he inquired politely.
“But why?” she asked innocently, knowing very well what he was leading up to.
“Well, it it is easier to swim with them, is it not?” the boy improvised hastily.
“Oh yes,” the girl replied brightly. “Then must I use them to help the fish swim when he is carrying me on his back?”
“Oh no!” the boy exclaimed indignantly. “He is a great fish, and if he needs no help in carrying me on his back, why should he require you, who are much lighter than I, to help him when he is swimming with a burden on his back?” He laughed, and then he became serious. “In any case, it is not possible to kick your legs when you are riding on his back. You must hold on to him, with your arms and with Your legs, and if you did such a stupid thing as to try and swim for the fish you would be torn fr
om his back by the drag of the water.”
”Alors!” the girl exclaimed, and there was sly triumph in her voice. “To what use should I put the flipper feet? I have already told you that I do not wish to swim after fish and spear them.”
He saw the mischievous grin on her face, and he knew at once that she had been baiting him. His cheeks grew scarlet with embarrassment. He looked away in confusion.
“And so, Paul,” the girl prompted him smoothly.
He faced her suddenly, resentment flaring in him, but he saw that there was no mockery or cruelty in her amusement. She was only joking with him, and the revelation surprised him. The hot words died on his lips.
“I wanted to try them,” he blurted out, his face blushing red again. “I have seen the flipper feet in the stores, but I have never used them.”
The girl stared at him meditatively. He is a strange one, she thought, staring into his beautifully colored eyes. In some ways he is more like a man than any of the boys I have known, and in other ways he is like a little child. She decided that she liked him the way he was.
“But why did you not ask to borrow them?” she asked gently. “I would lend them to you with the good wishes of my heart.”
“I do not like to ask,” the boy growled stiffly.
“But you asked to borrow my gun,” she pointed out. “Yes, but to ask too often is another thing,” he said harshly. “It is the same as begging.”
He snapped the bamboo pole out of the water and swung it into the boat. He sat down on the stern thwart and unshipped the oars, and then with his back to her he splashed them into the water and began to row.
She stared blindly at the long, unkempt hair at the back of his neck. It was the first time in her life that she had been confronted with such pride and unabashed honesty. It was simple and basic, without affectation, and coming from someone who had so very little made it even more difficult to understand. She was not acquainted with it, and she began to think of him not as a poor Creole, but as a person who had some indefinable wealth that not even the money of her father could match. She thought about it, trying to define it in her mind. She knew it was a good thing, of true value, but she did not succeed in really understanding it. She gave up trying after a while, and the back of his head swam into sharp focus.