Away with the Fishes

by Stephanie Siciarz

  The island cooperated nicely, unveiling for the newly arrived a spectacular sunset in bloody red, brassy orange-yellow, and, as the sun dropped out of sight, a flash of vibrant bluish green that amazed and startled even the tired translator.

  “What was that?” she asked, and all five looked to Dagmore in alarm.

  Dagmore was thrilled. He told them not to worry, that green flashes were rare but not unheard of at sundown, not on islands in general, and especially not on Oh, where—as they could see for themselves—rainbows staggered across the sky even in the near-dark, and without a drop of rain required. He beamed, prouder of his island than he could remember in a long time, and felt certain that the flash boded well for the group’s sojourn. Dagmore was excited to see what the week would bring, and he made a toast in honor of the five travelers who had come so far to see him.

  In her kitchen, Mrs. Jaymes was excited, too. Through the window she had witnessed the flash and, like Dagmore, didn’t doubt its significance on this very evening, with its visiting violinist and geometrists. Unlike Dagmore, who raised a glass in celebration, the abstemious Mrs. Jaymes downed one for courage. Her twitching instincts told her that the nay-saying Captain would soon be put in his place.

  When her pots were done stewing, she announced that dinner was served, and Captain Dagmore and company took their places at the table. The meal was enjoyed but uneventful, as was Dagmore’s concert (Beethoven, Sonata n. 14) and the dessert (carrot cake with nutmeg ice cream) served in the sitting room. Finally, after midnight, the guests were shown to their rooms, amidst a chorus of “good nights” and “buenas nocheses.” Their bellies were full, their eyelids heavy, and the night lay promisingly ahead.

  Mrs. Jaymes saw to their last wishes (towels, extra pillows, glasses of water), then set off to bed herself. She had taken up residency at the Captain’s house some year or two before, unable to keep up with the comings and goings of his visitors if she came and went herself every day. Besides which, she couldn’t be sure that whatever malicious wind was headed for the villa wouldn’t blow through it in the middle of the night.

  She said her prayers and rolled her hair in curlers, wrapped her head in a scarf, and fell asleep almost instantly. A few doors down in either direction, her houseguests were not so lucky. Though each had fallen wearily into bed, once there, they were suddenly wide awake. Whether the ill effect of the tropical clime or of the sugary nutmeg ice cream, they tossed and turned, unable to shut an eye. They felt every bump in their unfamiliar mattresses, heard the strange, unsettled rustling of the island’s nocturnal animals, grew anxious and hot, and sweated in their sheets. The strangers to Oh would have welcomed even an ill wind on that night, so long as it kissed and cooled their clammy skin.

  While Dagmore and Mrs. Jaymes snored unencumbered by heat or nutmeg, the tucks and grooves of their respective mattresses suitably snug, Juan and Daphne bickered en español, Peters and Stewart knocked and pinged on the common wall between their rooms to calculate its thickness, and Ruck tapped Irish folk songs with his fingers on his chest. It took over two hours before they were bickered-, knocked-, tapped-and tuckered-out, and went to sleep.

  Then—oh!—just two hours more before they were—again!—wide awake.

  The sun had decided that its climb required music on that particular morn and so it had enlisted more than a few of Oh’s finest chirpers. Well before dawn they took to their task with gusto, their little chests plump and proud, their beaks pointed heavenward. Because Dagmore’s house was the highest around, they situated themselves on its windowsills and sang their feathered hearts out. Any other time of day, the birds would have been quite a treat, for their music was masterful. It had melody, harmony, duets and quartets, choruses, verses, and rounds in every key. At scarcely five o’clock in the morning, however, as they lined up on the sills of the open windows and tweeted en masse their first notes in the predawn dark, “treat” was not the word that burst from the sleepy, uncensored lips of the Captain’s guests, who fell out of their beds, alarmed.

  “¡Dios mío!” cried Juan, and Daphne promptly translated, embellishing with extra decibels.

  “Bloody hell!” exclaimed first Peters then Stewart.

  “What in the world…?” Ruck began, twisting all about himself to see why he was no longer in his bed.

  At the commotion in the rooms, the birds became confused. Was their audience the rising sun or these writhing bodies that seemed to join in their dewy song? They sat on their sills and twisted their heads inside the house and out. Not knowing where to aim their tunes, they compensated with ever-increasing volume. The five visitors moaned and complained and covered their heads with their pillows, struggling to reclaim the sleep they had fought so hard for a mere two hours earlier. They were still spent from their journey and loopy from what little sleep they had managed. They needed to rest!

  The birds didn’t care that they were troubling some of the greatest minds of the Captain’s day; on the contrary, they took the moans and the complaints that came from the house as some odd form of human participation and, spurred on, sang even louder. Soon, their numbers had doubled and doubled again, as had their volume, while the sun rose higher and hotter in the sky. The triple assault on the restless guests—light, heat, noise—was too vicious to ignore. They got up, drowsy and sweaty and anxious, and began to fight back.

  They coaxed and shooed the birds, joining forces first in one room then the next, clearing each sill only for as long as the five of them shook their pillows at it. As soon as they moved on to the next sill, the birds came back, excited by the human play they inspired. The houseguests ran from window to window, room to room, waving their pillows and cases above their heads, swinging them in front of their chests. They cursed and commiserated in louder and louder voices, so as to hear each other above the birded din.

  When Captain Dagmore finally awoke and pounded on Mrs. Jaymes’s bedroom door (she had heard the skirmishing, but had pulled the sheets up to her nose and stayed in her bed), quite a callithump was under way, the birdsong mingled with the cuss and howl of the sleep-deprived quintet that ran higgledypiggledy and brandishing linens about the villa’s upper floor.

  “Mrs. Jaymes, please!” the Captain cried out.

  In her room, Mrs. Jaymes crossed herself, slipped out of bed and into her slippers, then padded over to the door. She opened it only enough to poke her wrapped and curlered head into the corridor.

  “Mrs. Jaymes, thank heavens!” the Captain said when he saw her. “You have to do something!”

  “What do you want me to do? You’re the scientist. You sort it out!” She locked herself in her room and began to sing Ave Maria, which only contributed to the noise.

  “Capitán, ¿qué está pasando?” Juan shouted, when he saw Dagmore appear in the hall. Juan held his pillow in one hand and his violin in the other, as if he might have to escape at any time and couldn’t bear to leave his instrument behind.

  “Captain, what’s happening?” Daphne parroted in English and in near hysteria. In her free hand, she held her favorite feathered handbag, into which she had stuffed what clothes and bijouterie it would accommodate.

  “Bowles, what the hell’s got into these infernal birds?” (It was Peters or Stewart. In the fuss, Dagmore had forgotten which was which.)

  Ruck said something, too, but Dagmore couldn’t make it out. One of them had just flung a pillow too forcefully, busting it, and fluffy feathery stuffing flew at their eyes and into their mouths. They swatted at the air and at their tongues, now adding to the ruckus of the island’s birds and the cook’s Ave Marias the sounds of five sleepy people spitting mad and coughing feathers.

  It took until high noon, when the sun had climbed as far as it planned to go, for the birds to abandon their singing and disappear as mysteriously as they had come. By that time, Juan, Daphne, Peters, Stewart, and Ruck were good and roused, somewhat sloppily dressed, and slumped over the dining table, awaiting Mrs. Jaymes’s somewhat sloppily prepared l
unch. When the Captain had finally coaxed her from her room, all the birds having flown away, to her was left the task of setting things aright—sweeping up feathers, remaking beds, and scrubbing window sills of the muck the excited birds had left behind—while the Captain calmed down his guests. They were weak from hunger and the heat and lack of sleep, and gobbled down in ravenous silence the fried fish (a bit too crisp) and chips (a bit too limp) that Mrs. Jaymes harriedly slammed before them long after one o’clock. Normally, Mrs. Jaymes put a pinch of love in the dishes she cooked, even those meant for the Captain’s troublesome table, but the morning’s mayhem and the birds’ droppings had put her right off her pots.

  With their hunger satisfied, the guests were feeling a bit more cheerful, and though they were too tired to smarten themselves up and take an island tour, an afternoon on Dagmore’s beach appealed to one and all. They collected cold drinks and clean towels, books and reading glasses, goggles and fins, and with the Captain in the lead, off they paraded to his private stretch of Oh’s coast. There they laid out their beach towels and the accessories that each had brought, and they surveyed the scenery of which they were part.

  “Capitán, es maravilloso,” Juan said, almost in a whisper, so moved was he by the blue of the water, sandwiched between that of the sky and the soft white of the sand.

  There was no need for Daphne to translate. The emotions that the island’s beauty had evoked in the violinist were felt by all of them, Dagmore included. For the first time in hours, he began to relax, and to forget about Mrs. Jaymes, who had been wagging her finger at him in warning ever since lunch. They all relaxed, in fact. They swam, and chatted, and began to get along more easily, just as Dagmore had planned and expected. Finally they stretched out in the sand and, exhausted, went right to sleep. It was half past three or thereabouts, and the tropical sun was still high in the sky.

  Dagmore was used to daily naps in the sand, and, besides that, he was an islander from birth. His dark brown skin paid little mind to the sun that danced on it day in and day out. The visitors he had entertained over the years were not so lucky. They were mostly white, and usually pale, and had to take precautions. Still, Oh’s sun had posed few problems, as Dagmore’s acquaintances, especially of late, were more likely to spend their afternoons sipping iced tea in floppy hats than sweating on the shore.

  The unlucky five that lay resting on the Captain’s beach were the rule’s exception. So tired were they from the dawn’s tribulations that they slept long and deep in the sun’s rays. Only when the sun began to dip toward the horizon, and the air slightly cooled, did they awake with a gentle shiver. Their first impression was collectively a good one: they opened their eyes and began to come to their senses, felt refreshed and rejuvenated from their nap. As smiles of pleasure tried to cross their faces, though, they realized in a flash that something was horribly wrong. Their faces were stiff, and smiling was a painful chore. They sat up to stretch, to figure out what was going on, but moving their arms and legs was painful, too. With cautious, puzzled hands they examined their afflicted limbs. Panicked, then, and fully awake, they discovered that their skin was hot, hot, hot.

  To the reliable and unfortunate Mrs. Jaymes again fell the task of sorting things out. Over a nice cup of tea, she had finally collected herself and put the miserable day at the villa behind her. Now her pots had begun to boil and hiss with the dinner she was preparing, and the evening presented itself calmly enough. But as her adept hands opened and cleaned the fish destined for the Captain’s skillet, she heard nearing the villa a hubbub not indigenous to Oh.

  Mrs. Jaymes sighed, and crossed herself. With a sense of dread, she went out to meet the clamor halfway, hoping to keep any messes from coming inside.

  “Mrs. Jaymes, thank goodness!” the Captain cried. “They’ve all burned up!”

  Behind him, Mrs. Jaymes saw the whining and moaning quintet struggling to walk, the books and towels and bags they had so neatly packed for the beach now clutched haphazardly or dragging on the ground behind them. They were all talking at once, all griping, and the closer they got to the house, the more easily verified was the Captain’s claim. Their five white houseguests were now undeniably red.

  “Don’t just stand there,” she told the Captain. “Go and find some aloe.”

  Aloe. Of course! He had pages of notes about aloe plants.

  Mrs. Jaymes took the guests inside, had them bathe in cold water and put them to bed. She brought them cool cloths and bowls with water and ice. When the Captain arrived with the fat and spiky aloe leaves, she cracked them open and applied the gooey insides to the visitors’ taut, burned skin. After that, she turned her attention to Dagmore, who, in his rush to bring the aloe home, had scratched himself with the leaves’ sharp points. Like gruesome breadcrumbs, tiny droplets of blood marked his nervous peregrinations through the villa. Mrs. Jaymes patched him up and wiped up his trail, then got back to the fish in the kitchen.

  It was late when dinner was finally served, and Mrs. Jaymes, for the evening’s distractions, had overcooked the fish again. After slow and labored treks from their various bedrooms, the guests arrived at the table in various states of undress and disarray, both modesty and vanity at odds with their efforts to tolerate the painful sunburns. Through the open doors that led to the verandah, a cool breeze wafted in only periodically, while the mosquitoes poured in in droves. To keep them away, the Captain kept most of the lights turned off.

  Thus on the second night of their stay, Juan, Daphne, Peters, Stewart, and Ruck, in the faint light of strategically positioned and mostly ineffective mosquito coils, tried to eat now cold, overcooked fish, their arms and fingers almost too burned to bend. The meal was interrupted by yelps of pain and by mosquito-triggered slaps of skin on skin (which in turn triggered yet more painful yelps). When they were finished eating, the guests remained at the table, knackered, but wary of the heat in their bedrooms, where Mrs. Jaymes had locked shut the windows to ward off a repeat of the morning’s bad luck. Eyes closed, their heads resting on sweaty palms, they yawned in the semi-darkness and fanned themselves with floppy cotton napkins.

  “¡Ay de mí!” breathed Juan, but Daphne didn’t bother to translate.

  Things were not going gaily at the Captain’s house.

  Just how bad things would get at the Captain’s house, Raoul wouldn’t find out that day. He had had his fill of Mrs. Jaymes. Surely she was belaboring the point because it gave her such pleasure to reminisce. By the time he bid her farewell and took his leave, Raoul’s head was hurting again. His instincts still told him that Dagmore Bowles figured somehow in the Rena Baker affair; but his practical side said enough was enough. Stan Kalpi wouldn’t waste time on worthless variables and neither would he. Especially not when his equations were in such urgent need of solving. Though Mr. Stan, in seeking his path, was known to heed the songs and scents on the breeze, to Raoul’s knowledge, he had never heeded, or needed, a ghost’s story to finish his own.

  31

  Raoul returned to his office just before lunch, determined to delve into the matter of Rena Baker as soon as he had had a bite to eat. As if to scold him for his procrastination, however, for his morning of Mrs. Jaymes’s tall tales when murderers and missing girls awaited, the island hurled him headlong into the bicycle business before he could so much as unwrap his tuna.

  Madison Fuller’s murder trial was the first ever on Oh, and Police Chief Lucas Davenport had his hands full planning the ordeal. Interest in the case had flooded the island, and its citizens spoke of little else. Because so many islanders planned to attend the trial, it had been determined that the best place to conduct it was outside. Laborers had been hired to build benches and to construct a dais. Chief Davenport found himself under pressure to pull off what was becoming a national event without a hitch, and he simply couldn’t do it alone. How was he meant to fight crime if he had to get in speakers and microphones and prosecutors from other islands? There were press passes to organize (for Bruce) and securi
ty and crowd control. Public toilets, water to drink, tarpaulins if it should rain. He was the people’s protector, not a damned party planner!

  “Miss Simms,” he shouted to his secretary in the next room. “Get the Prime Minister on the phone!”

  Miss Simms did as she was told, setting off a string of official, confidential, parliamentary calls that masterfully passed the buck from Chief Davenport to the PM, to the Minister of Culture and Tourism, the Minister of Justice, and back to the Chief of Police, who in a desperate flash of buck-passing brilliance landed it definitively with the Office of Customs and Excise. If microphones, speakers, toilets and tarps were to be got in, then Customs clearance was required. Wouldn’t it make good sense, he convinced the Prime Minister, to centralize the planning? If every government branch had a hand in the affair, how would the left one know what the right one was doing? By the time the Head of the Office of Customs and Excise (poor Raoul!) found the buck on his desk, it was a signed, sealed, and delivered Prime Ministerial decree.

  “Damn it to hell!” Raoul swore. How was he meant to look for Rena Baker if he first had to round up tarps and toilets for an al fresco fiasco? The assignment had Raoul cursing with unusual oomph. The combined force, however, of the PM’s decree and Raoul’s professional integrity precluded his declining the job. In fact, he wasted no time getting started. He picked up the phone and made an appointment with the Chief of Police to discuss what articles were needed, and how many of each. An hour later he was seated in front of Lucas Davenport’s desk, pad and pencil anxiously in hand.