Dancing on Coral

by Glenda Adams

  “You think I make everything up? You think I lie about what I’ve done, whom I’ve met?” Donna smiled happily. “You see, there are thousands of names, including the Queen, which was during the war when I was a little girl in England and she was a Girl Guide. You’ll see there’s the Prime Minister, and of course Margaret Mead. One actually does meet thousands of people in a lifetime?”

  Toward the end of the list Lark saw Lark Watter, Tom Brown, and farther down, Paul Crouch. As she held the names she felt trapped, caught in some kind of game whose rules she did not know. “You should try it yourself. You, too, Herr Crouch. Please do it. I’ll be happy to analyze your list for you. It’s one way of understanding your personal history, Manfred says.” She smiled. “You know, river of life, et cetera. And by the way, I went snooping during dinner last night. Everything is locked. But I can tell you, we’re not carrying much cargo. We’re riding pretty high in the water.”

  Paul cleared his throat. Donna hesitated a moment, then said, “My skin,” and she backed down the ladder, supposedly retiring to her cabin for the rest of that day, too, leaving Lark with the names of thousands in her hands.

  Paul rolled back to Lark. “She’s batty,” he said.

  Lark stuffed the sheets of paper away, resisting the impulse to let them fly off over the ocean. She imagined them fluttering off, getting caught in the rigging, littering the ocean. Paul lay beside her, his eyes closed, and he seemed to be smiling at the heavens. The airplanes were flying closer to the ship than usual. Lark saw that Paul was not smiling at the heavens but merely bending his mouth in order to crease his eyes against the sun. He turned onto one side to look at her. His face was almost directly over her and shaded her face. She could open her eyes and look at him, at the blue eyes and brown skin.

  Then the airplanes were suddenly upon them. They roared down at the ship, the noise so loud that Lark could compare it to nothing she had ever heard. There were four planes swooping down at them, coming so close to the top deck that Lark felt she had only to reach up to touch them, if she had not been holding her hands over her ears and screaming. She could see the faces of the pilots and crew pressed against the glass of the cockpits, fair young men, looking like Paul himself—blond, brash, and weak. Weak. That she thought Paul Crouch was weak surprised her.

  One after the other the planes swept by. Lark thought at first they were intent on bombing the ship. Her view was that of an artistically placed camera in a war movie. And who knew what had been happening in the rest of the world these past few days? Who knew whether these planes had been ordered to begin a new war by strafing and sinking merchant ships in the Pacific?

  The planes flew off. Paul, who had got as much of a fright as Lark, put his arms around her. As the planes receded he turned her head to him and kissed her.

  And then the planes were back. The four of them again. Paul and Lark kept holding onto each other. Lark had never been so frightened. Paul half turned over to watch them. Again it seemed clear that they would damage the ship, so close did they fly. And so loud.

  “Bloody Americans!” Paul yelled. “Crass, crude Americans, wrecking civilization.” He had discerned the markings on the planes. He shook his fist at them, while Lark trembled against him. “And you’re actually choosing to go and live among them.” Paul was now shouting not at the planes but at Lark. She saw that those young faces in the planes buzzing her deck were roaring with laughter. They were pointing at Paul and her lying on the deck and laughing at them. She could imagine their raucous voices. Paul picked up one of his sneakers and threw it at the last plane, which made that pilot laugh in an even more exaggerated way. The sneaker fell back, hitting Lark on the shoulder. Paul threw the other sneaker, which sailed over the rail of the little deck and disappeared.

  Lark sat up. Paul pulled on his T-shirt and, muttering about work, climbed down the ladder. And then came Donna Bird’s voice, at the foot of the ladder. “Perhaps you saw my pen, Mr. Crouch?”

  Lark stopped by the bridge. The Captain was examining the chart. “So, coral,” he was saying. Donna stood next to him.

  “We’re not going to walk on coral,” said Lark.

  “Of course you walk,” said the Captain. “Life is short. I give you adventure, non-bourgeois adventure.”

  “Bravo!” cried Donna softly. Then, while looking at Lark, she addressed the Captain. “Those planes were certainly taking a close look at something.”

  The Captain slapped his thigh and laughed, as if Donna had just told a joke. “Those Americans, they think they can do that to Germans, to everyone in the world.”

  Donna left the bridge. The Captain, without looking up, said to Lark, “So, we see that you and Mr. Crouch are good friends.”

  Lark blushed.

  “Too good, perhaps,” said the Captain. “He is the cabin boy.”

  Lark could say nothing. The Captain, who had begun to alter a few points around the spot he had marked for the coral walk, now looked up at her, his hands at the same time continuing to rule a line. Lark found herself looking back into the bright blue eyes in the soft head, fixed by them, and seeing peripherally his hands continuing to work. She wondered if he had some kind of periscope that had enabled him to watch her on the deck with Paul Crouch.

  “Mr. Crouch is the cabin boy, only. Only that.” The Captain went back to his charting. “We have him on board only since Perth.” He swept his hand over the Pacific Ocean on the chart. “We used to own all this. And now,” he snapped his fingers, “nothing. They ruin their islands.”

  Sometimes it seemed that the Captain, encased in his ship sailing round and round the world, had not heard that the war was over. Lark frowned and backed away, noticing on the way out that Paul’s sneaker had been tied to the fire axe that was fastened on the wall of the bridge and was dangling there, bobbing at her.

  “Beware of liaisons,” said the Captain.

  The Avis Maris came to a stop. The shuddering of the engines, then the absolute silence, frightened Lark. This was so stupid.

  “I can’t see any coral reef,” she said.

  “It is good to test equipment, and we make very good time so far.” The Captain was rubbing his hands together as he ordered one of the boats to be uncovered and the winches started up. “Go now,” he said to Donna. “Get in the boot.”

  He put his arm around Donna’s shoulder and started to lead her to the boat. His grip was firm. Donna, her visor crammed low on her forehead, her scarf muffling the lower half of her face and her khaki trousers rolled up with the lolly-pink sneakers at the ends of her white legs, held onto Lark’s arm. And the three of them stumbled across the deck, as if they were chained together.

  “You’ll get burnt?” said Donna, looking at Lark who was wearing shorts and suntop and espadrilles, with no hat or shirt, and she wriggled out of one of her several layers, a T-shirt she was wearing under her long-sleeved sweat shirt, and made Lark put it on.

  “You’re all mad,’’ said Lark. She still believed the Captain was joking.

  Half a dozen crew members were standing beside the uncovered lifeboat and helped the two women in.

  “Don’t push me,” Lark yelled, refusing to climb up. She saw Paul Crouch on the top deck above the bridge, leaning on the rail, smoking and watching the sailors prod them into the lifeboat. She felt he could hurdle the rail of the deck, if only he wished to or dared to, and soar through the air and land lithely at the lifeboat. He could stand with his legs apart, his hands on his hips, blocking the Captain’s way, and order him to halt, desist, and when the Captain refused, strike him a solid blow. He would then scoop the two women in his arms and fly off with them. He somehow should save these two helpless women from something terrible.

  The men lifted Lark off the deck and placed her in the boat. Donna got in on her own. The men climbed in after them. Then Mr. Fischer got in, carrying two large glass salad bowls. The boat was lowered down the side of the ship, something Lark had seen only in the movies, in an emergency, as when the T
itanic hit the iceberg. As they disappeared over the edge of the ship, Lark looked up at Paul. He moved his hand slightly, just lifting one or two fingers to acknowledge her. One foot remained on the lowest rail, both elbows on the top rail. Having lifted his fingers, he took a drag on his cigarette.

  When the boat hit the water, the sailors started pulling away from the ship, with Mr. Fischer sitting in the bow giving orders. The sailors were silent, no joking among themselves. But as they rowed they studied these two women sitting in the stern facing them, the two passengers they knew were on board yet rarely saw, just the glimpse of a scarf here and there, or a bare brown leg disappearing up a ladder.

  “But why did he make us do this?” Lark asked Donna. “Just to impress you?”

  Donna laughed. “We shall learn something new, perhaps?”

  “That foolish man is in love with you. The whole thing is the centerpiece of this voyage.”

  “And there is no foolish man in love with you?” Donna said.

  Mr. Fischer ordered the men to stop rowing. They were now a mile or so from the ship.

  “Get out now,” he said.

  “There’s nothing here,” shrieked Lark. “We’re in the middle of the ocean!”

  “Now you get out,” said Mr. Fischer, pointing over the side. “Out get. Legs up, over, so,” and he demonstrated how they were to swing their legs over the edge of the boat.

  “Don’t do it,” said Lark.

  But Donna, having peered over the side of the boat, slipped off her trousers, under which she wore a bathing suit, and swung her legs over, twisting her body and lowering herself into the water.

  The ship seemed far off. The ocean surrounded them—there was no land, no break in the ocean surface—and there Donna stood, up to her armpits in water, next to the boat, still holding on with one hand.

  “This is wonderful, Lark. You’ll never get a chance like this again.”

  Donna let go of the boat and started to wade away from it, her body slowly emerging, until the water was at her waist, then, about fifty feet away, at her knees. “It’s wonderful.”

  Lark was holding onto her seat in the stern of the lifeboat. Then, knowing she should not panic and scream and lose control, she squinted at the sea, taking it all in, turning her head a hundred and eighty degrees from the ship behind them, scanning the water until her eyes found Donna, standing knee-deep in water, and continuing to scan the full circle, a further hundred and eighty degrees, back to the ship floating in the deep. Where Donna stood the sea was slightly choppy, with little points of miniature waves, little disturbances, different from the broader swells behind them. This subtle change in the texture of the sea marked the reef. As she peered at the water at Donna’s knees and tried to see through it, she discerned the brownish surface of the coral and the white of Donna’s legs.

  “Now you go,” said Mr. Fischer. He signaled one of the sailors to help Lark over the side.

  Donna was frolicking now, jumping up and down.

  “I’m not going.” Lark was shrieking again. She pushed at the sailor who was trying to get her legs over the side of the boat.

  “Komm, komm,” he said, encouraging her.

  “This is an adventure,” Donna called. “Once in a lifetime.” She was standing on one leg like a flamingo, one hand on her hip, one at her eyebrows, peering over the water. “You must take whatever chance you can get to do something you would never do under normal circumstances. ‘Take the current when it serves.’”

  “Get away from me,” said Lark, pushing the sailor so hard that he fell back onto the floor of the boat.

  The tide was moving fast. Parts of the coral reef were beginning to be exposed, and the water was almost down to Donna’s ankles. She started to walk about, now and then bending down to examine more closely the coral shapes and colors, and at one point she squatted right down and put her face into the water, then lifted it out again, laughing and brushing the water from her face.

  Mr. Fischer suddenly remembered the glass bowls. “You take these,” he said to Lark. He nodded at a second sailor, the first one having picked himself up, and the two, together, picked Lark up and lowered her over the side. She was yelling at them, kicking her legs. They almost threw her over. Then, when she saw she would not prevail, she stopped screaming and again concentrated on not panicking. She found her footing and clung to the edge of the boat.

  “Take,” said Mr. Fischer, holding out the two glass bowls.

  “Take them, Lark. We can view the coral better.” Donna had wrapped her scarf around her face again.

  Lark found herself clasping two glass salad bowls to her chest with one arm, clutching at the bobbing lifeboat with the other, trying to find her footing in waist-deep water on the uneven coral. She would not let go of the boat. One of the sailors pried her fingers loose, causing her to lose her balance and stagger in the water.

  “Don’t drop the bowls. They’ll float off or sink,” called Donna. “Don’t fall. You’ll cut your legs on the coral. And I happen to know that coral cuts take weeks and weeks to heal. When I was little we were told that coral cuts and oyster cuts never healed, never, never?”

  And again, Lark concentrated on not panicking and not losing balance. She did not want to cut herself on the coral, and she also remembered the treacherous pink poisonous type that Donna had mentioned.

  The boat had now drifted off a little. Donna was beside her, taking the bowls and offering her hand, which Lark gladly took, allowing Donna to lead her to the exposed part of the reef.

  “They’re thugs,” said Lark. “Why are they doing this to us? You don’t really believe there is a bomb, that they are terrorists, do you?”

  Donna laughed. “What I know is they think they are the Queen Elizabeth.” She had taken one of the bowls and walked off a little so that the water was up to her thighs. Lark followed her. Donna pressed the bowl into the water, just far enough for the water to come halfway up the outside of the bowl. She bent over and peered into the bowl. “Oh, Lark, you must do this. Now you can see the brilliant colors. And there are fish.” She was using the bowl as if it were a glass-bottomed boat. “How thoughtful of the Captain to give us each one.”

  Lark was standing transfixed. She had let her bowl go, and it was floating off, bobbing away with the current. She was watching the lifeboat drifting and the ship in the distance. Then, as she watched, the men in the lifeboat lowered their oars and began rowing back toward the ship. And Lark stood in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and sobbed. Donna looked up from her bowl and saw that the boat had left them. She rested her hand on Lark’s arm.

  “They can’t leave us here? They’ll be back?” Lark cried.

  Donna bent down to fossick at Lark’s feet, picking up little bits of coral that had broken off. “Here, Lark,” she said, holding up a little pale blue, branched piece. “Take this back? A souvenir?”

  Lark was looking at the lifeboat growing smaller. Donna slipped the coral into the pocket of Lark’s shorts. “You’ve let your dish go. That’s a pity. But come, you can look through mine. We’ll share.”

  She placed the bowl in Lark’s hands and then made her hands place it in the water. “Look into it, silly. You’ll never see anything like this again.” She placed both her hands on either side of Lark’s head and pushed it down, so that Lark was looking through the glass at the coral, which, underwater, was as colorful as a garden of flowers.

  “That pink coral is there,” gasped Lark. “That poisonous one.” She looked up, imploring, at Donna. “What’ll we do now?”

  Donna took the bowl. “Where is it?”

  Lark pointed, and Donna guided the bowl close to herself and peered down. Then she burst out laughing. “Oh, Lark, that’s my sneaker. Look,” and she wiggled her foot around under the bowl. Lark started to cry again, silently, the tears running down her cheeks and dropping into the ocean.

  The lifeboat was back at the ship. The tide was nearly as low as it would go and would soon turn. Several hundred yar
ds of the reef were exposed.

  “We might as well sit and rest our legs while we can,” said Donna, perching gingerly on the coral, her knees drawn up to her chin, sitting very still so that the coral would not cut through her bathing suit. She bent her body over her knees and lowered her swathed head, so that the sun struck no part of her.

  “I wish I had a camera?” said Donna, her voice muffled by her scarf.

  Lark stopped crying and sat beside her. The tears were still wet on her cheeks, her eyes were fixed on the ship. “They’re going to leave us behind.”

  “I’d reckon we have about two hours until the reef is covered and we can’t stand any more?” said Donna. As she spoke, the water was lapping again at their toes and soon was covering their feet.

  “Like those galloping tides in England?” said Donna chattily. “The shore is so flat that the sea just rushes in at high tide, like a train. People are always drowning, trying to run away from it. You have to somehow not fight it, but go with it, go with whatever is pushing at you, in order to master it.”

  They stood up and picked their way to what appeared to be the highest part of the reef. Donna had now let her glass bowl go and was leading Lark. Even at the highest point the water was at their ankles, rising steadily.

  “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, that this solid wall of coral is alive. It’s not that the coral is built by living creatures. It is the living creature itself.” Donna stamped her foot in the water. “We are actually standing on living creatures? In fact, if you cut yourself, and a piece of coral lodges in your flesh, it continues to grow.”

  The water was at their calves. It would get more difficult to stand as the currents of the deepening water began to push at them.

  The two women were standing thigh-deep in water. One was upright, in shorts and a T-shirt, no hat, her short hair, close to her head, like a bathing cap. The sun struck her face, rendering it round, flat, almost the color of her hair, without definition. The other was crouched over, her bathing suit just visible below her long-sleeved sweat shirt. Her sunhat and a long scarf, which anchored the hat and wrapped around her chin and neck, obscured her face. They stood braced, their arms outstretched for balance, their legs apart and vaguely outlined beneath the water. The horizon, dividing blue water from blue sky, encircled them. They looked into the distance, expectantly, urgently. As the water swelled and pressed against them they were forced to take little steps, first this way, then that, in unison, two women dancing on coral.