Left at the Mango Tree

by Stephanie Siciarz

  As Gustave’s men swept through Dutch’s bandits, Raoul did what he could to save the operation. All around him blows and blades sliced the air, shouts and grunts washed away in the splash of the knee-deep water that hosted the maelstrom of fighting men. His hands and knees in the tide, Raoul used his body to protect that of Gustave, who still breathed, if laboriously, and still held the answers to Raoul’s questions—not least of which, now, why had Gustave risked his life to save Raoul’s?

  While Raoul sheltered Gustave, simultaneously bobbing and leaning to keep his own body whole as well, he fumbled to keep hold of his radio long enough to call for help, the back-up required now on shore. But neither Gustave’s men nor Dutch’s were eager for the help Raoul might summon, and so they knocked the radio repeatedly from his hands.

  Meanwhile back at the mango tree, Nat did some bobbing and leaning of his own as he strained to get a glimpse of the bigger picture through the squall of arms and legs and blades that unleashed itself on the beach. He contemplated nearing the fight, but before he could muster the courage to do so, the fight came to an end. Like birds scattering at the shot of a pistol, the men that had encircled Gustave and Raoul took abrupt flight and were gone. Raoul had at last managed to keep a firm grip on his radio and help was on the way. Before the beach should teem with policemen and excisemen (and possibly men in locked cuffs), both Gustave’s posse and Dutch’s fled the scene.

  With the beach quieted, and the shore emptied, in the clarity of the moon’s glow Raoul took stock. Gustave was unconscious and breathing still, if barely, but Raoul feared for his survival. If Raoul’s own perishing was an unsuitable and unacceptable end to a too-long quest for answers he owed his Almondine, equally unacceptable was it that Gustave should perish when Raoul was so close to getting a confession from him. Though Raoul wished to remain on the shore and await the reinforcements he had called for, though he longed to oversee the clash of crescents in the cove, he knew he must leave the scene and seek out a doctor, or all his efforts would be for naught. Delicately he pulled Gustave’s fading body from the shallow water and onto the dry sand. He turned and looked around, examining the beach for something on which to prop Gustave’s head, but he saw nothing that would do. No rock, no shell, no debris. Under the mango Raoul had left his copy of the story of Mr. Stan Kalpi (yes, he still carried it with him), and so he ran to get it and make of it a makeshift pillow.

  At the mango tree, Raoul found Mr. Stan in the company of Nat, who was so startled by the sudden departure of the men from the beach, and so frightened by the bloody clothes of the two men left behind, that he stood rooted to the soft, green brush, his arms hugged around the tree’s trunk.

  “Nat! What are you doing here? I told you to go to the Belly!” Raoul shouted at him.

  Nat didn’t answer. He looked at Raoul’s shirt, red with Gustave’s blood, and sunk to the ground, whimpering.

  “Nat!” Raoul insisted. “Get a hold of yourself and go – to – the Belly!” He jerked Nat to his feet, but still Nat said nothing. “What’s wrong with you?” Raoul spat. “Come on! Snap out of it! The police are coming. Get out of here!”

  Nat slid to the ground again, his whimper turned to tears, his hands over his face. “Raoul, are you alright? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I shouldn’t have, I know.”

  “Nat, listen to me.” Raoul pulled him from the ground again. “I have to get help. I have to get a doctor, and the police are coming. Do you understand me? You have to get out of here or they’ll find you and arrest you.” Raoul gripped Nat’s shirt tightly, keeping him on his feet.

  “They should arrest all of us!” Nat screamed. “We deserve it. We tricked you!” Nat was hysterical, alternately crying and screaming, falling to the ground and letting himself be pulled to his feet by Raoul.

  Raoul looked to the beach, worried. If he didn’t bring a doctor soon, Gustave would die. And if Gustave died, the truth Raoul sought would die with him. But Nat was blubbering under the mango tree, and if Raoul left him there alone, he would surely be found and charged. If only time had stood still in that minute, that fistful of still, dark seconds when Raoul balanced the weight of his friend’s life against that of his enemy’s, when he chose between Nat’s freedom and his own.

  Time did not stand still (I told you it almost never does on Oh) and whether in those few seconds Raoul “chose” or simply “did,” moved—agitated—by years of island friendship, I doubt if even he himself could say.

  Whichever the case, it was Nat who benefited from Raoul’s immediate attention during those critical few minutes. Raoul tried to calm Nat’s screams, to stifle his repentant sobs, to pardon his admitted sins. But nothing he did could shrivel Nat’s hysteria, nothing he said could provoke even a slight diminuendo of his frenzy. Raoul nearly became hysterical himself, nearly cried as he watched Gustave whither on the beach. Helpless, he looked to the moonlit clouds, hoping that like tea leaves they would tell him what he should do.

  The clouds complied. So did the wind, who blew the clouds furiously across the moon, eclipsing the moon’s face. Raoul reached behind himself, gathering all his forces, then swung his arm and eclipsed Nat’s face in a fierce and furious slap. Not a choice, but a pure doing. The clap of flesh on flesh scattered the clouds again, frightened them back to their proper place in the sky, and exposed the moon anew. She illuminated Nat’s face, and Raoul saw that Nat was himself again. If he remembered his wild behavior of a minute before, he made no show of it in front of Raoul.

  “Go to the Belly,” Raoul told him again. “Stay there with Bang and Cougar. Stay away from the beach. Promise me.”

  “Okay, okay,” Nat said, moving slowly as if awaking from sleep.

  Raoul left him and ran back to where Gustave lay in the sand, so that he could prop Gustave’s head on the book of Stan Kalpi before running to call a doctor. Raoul didn’t know how much time had passed, but he felt certain it was less than what it seemed. There would still be time enough to save Gustave.

  As Raoul reached Gustave and knelt at his side, a breeze chilled Raoul’s body, damp from the tide and from the sweat of the evening’s trials. Hopeful, denying, Raoul lifted Gustave’s head and slid the tattered volume underneath it. Alas, Mr. Stan’s mathematics were of no use. Gustave was already dead.

  Uncertain of the disruption that would take place when the police arrived and pushed Gustave’s boats ashore, Raoul thought only of safeguarding Gustave’s remains. (As to his legacy, Raoul would reflect on that when the sting was done.) He left his book behind and dragged Gustave to the soft, green brush a stone’s throw from the edge of the sea. Raoul left Gustave’s body under the mango tree, which now sheltered my dead father as it had sheltered my dead mother some months before.

  Nat, who was still making his sleepy way out of the brush, watched Raoul compose the body and walk back toward the tide. Was Gustave wounded, or was he really dead? Was it Nat’s fault, what had happened? Though he didn’t recall his hysteria or the minutes he had cost Raoul under the mango, Nat knew that somehow he had done it, had hurt Gustave, or killed him. By conspiring, by double-crossing, by pitting Gustave against Raoul. Somehow Nat was to blame. They all were.

  Nat turned and ran. He ran from the brush all the way to the Belly without stopping, putting Gustave’s death as far behind him as he could. But there’s no getting away from a thing like that. Not even if you run.

  “Raoul! Raoul!”

  Bang, Cougar, and Nat called out to their friend as they reached Edda’s beach at dawn. They had walked the whole night (what was left of it, after Bang won the contest and played his marimba once more), listening to Nat’s sketchy story, fitting themselves into it, and deciding in the end to go look for Raoul.

  They found him seated in the sand amidst the rubbish of the night before, watching the sun climb over the water. His sting had been a huge success from a Customs point of view, less so in terms of Kalpi maths and island logic, for Gustave was never cornered and the truth about me n
ever revealed. But a dozen smugglers or more had been arrested, and Raoul was looking at a fat promotion.

  “What are you doing here?” Raoul looked up at the three of them.

  “We were worried about you,” Bang said, stooping to better meet Raoul’s gaze.

  “Did you win the contest?” Raoul asked, his eyes directed now at the sea.

  “Yeah,” Bang replied. He wanted to tell more, to say how sour had been the sweet victory he had anticipated. But he added nothing.

  “What happened here?” Cougar asked, looking at the sloppy shore.

  “All in a day’s work,” Raoul sighed. “The smugglers have been stopped. Gustave’s dead. No more magic from him.” Still he kept his eyes on the sea. “I lost my book. You know, the one with the black and white cover?”

  Bang, Cougar, and Nat looked at each other, not knowing what to say, not knowing if they should say anything at all.

  “Looks like the rain’s let up for good,” Raoul went on. “The sky’s clear.”

  “Have you been here all night?” Nat asked. Raoul didn’t answer, but stared into the waves. Bang might have suspected Raoul’s head full of private flies, had it not been for the eerie quiet that fell on the beach that morning, like a thick blanket threatening to smother them all, a quiet that couldn’t have camouflaged even the tiniest of gnats.

  “Come on, now! What’s this moping? Congratulations are in order!” Bang jumped up out of the sand and put his hand across his heart. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Raoul Orlean, Esteemed Officer of the Highest Order of Customs and Excise of the Kingdom of Oh!” Then Bang began to sing the island’s national anthem.

  Cougar and Nat surrounded Raoul, one on each side of him, and they pulled him awkwardly, unevenly, to his feet, Cougar’s side benefiting from greater muscular bulk. Raoul almost toppled over but caught himself, though not before losing the contents of his shirt pocket.

  “What’s that?” Nat asked.

  Raoul bent and retrieved from the sand the lucky harmonica he carried with him every day, ever since Bang had given it to him what seemed like ages before. He wasn’t so superstitious as to believe in its properties, don’t think that. He just never wanted to hurt Bang’s feelings, was all. It was dented now, marked by Dutch’s knife, which had stabbed and failed. Raoul rubbed his thumb over the instrument’s new notch. “Sorry about that. Guess I won’t be needing this anymore, now that Gustave’s gone.” He held it out to Bang, who was still singing the island anthem.

  “Let me see it,” Nat said, grabbing it from Raoul’s hand.

  “You can’t play,” Cougar objected.

  Nat’s rebuttal was an elaborate arpeggio that sent Bang into a cartwheel of delight. (He couldn’t state his enthusiasm, his mouth still occupied in song.)

  On Raoul’s face a reluctant smile started to break. (Bang had that effect on him.)

  “Well, well, Nat!” Cougar exclaimed. “Keeping secrets from us, are you?” The sun had risen, lightening the humors of the island and the islanders alike, so much so that Cougar didn’t notice his own risky quip.

  Likewise, Nat, who answered with a spontaneous “Never!”

  On they marched, Raoul and his three best mates, Cougar shoring up Raoul’s tired frame, Nat playing the harmonica, and Bang singing Oh’s national anthem. They crossed the sand and stepped onto the soft, green brush where under the mango tree Gustave’s body lay still, halting their procession instinctively but not their concert, for Bang had reached the verse about heroes who defended the island from threats in the night. When the verse was over, he stopped, and Nat did, too.

  “It’s alright,” Raoul said. “We can go. I’ve sent someone to make arrangements.”

  So the men took up their procession and their processional again, putting the mango tree behind them. Raoul marched. Cougar shored up. Nat played. And Bang sang.

  20

  The rest of that next day, the day after the revival of the annual marimba competition, Oh was shiny and wet. The island’s puddles had yet to dry. The wounds of the night before, those real and metaphorical, had yet to heal. But the sky was clear, as Raoul had so clearly put it, and there was every reason to believe that like the island’s puddles, so too the blood and the scandal, after their initial gush, would dry and flake, and be blown away by the wind.

  When the islanders spoke of what happened that night on Sinner’s Cove, and to varying degrees they always would, what they remembered most was the rain. The way it had come down for weeks, merciless, and then had simply and suddenly stopped, as if having drowned whatever beast, what sin, in need of drowning. The rainy scenery always began the tale, theme on which to base the variations. The rest of the story would undergo innumerable changes, be corrupted by its tellers and bent by their leanings.

  Some would say that Gustave had been long misunderstood, that he had saved poor Raoul’s life; others would say that Gustave had gotten served his just desserts—“comeuppance long overdue, that!”; still others (imagine!) would say that Raoul was a murderer, that he had stabbed Gustave in a mad and deadly rage to avenge my mother’s rape. The more salacious the reasoning and the sharper its tang, the better and broader it spread (islanders do like their spice, after all). But like passions and novelties and the moon itself, fiery tastes wane, and gentler, blander versions of the story were served up soon enough.

  I won’t bother you with too much else of what the future held for Oh after that, just enough that my story, and my grandfather’s before it, might finish properly. Besides, unknowing, you may care to imagine things turned out differently than they did. Rosier and more brilliant, or more wretched, the whole island swallowed up by a giant wave perhaps, pushed into the depths of the sea where not even the moon’s pervasive gleam could reach it. No harm in that, that the story should be hewn by its readers. Myself, I can’t take such liberties, for neither Raoul nor Gustave would forgive me a finish as cheap and facile as a hungry wave. Like Abigail and Lullaby and Alejandro Creek, they’ve both known the resilience that only Oh inspires, that pliable spirit bequeathed by each generation to the next.

  So I, too, must bow to the fitful island winds and shape the contours of my sandy tale to the doings of the tide and moon, however accidental and undue.

  Hear.

  The Belly seemed less festive on that next day. Its floor was littered with the scraps of the marimba contest and its stage was disordered and silent. Its emptiness called to mind a wedding hall after a wedding, the confetti tossed so gleefully now mocking bits and pieces of real life to be swept away. Broom in hand, Bang shuffled along the floor arranging the dirt into neat, gritty piles, that they might be collected and disposed of more easily. Now and then he stopped to have a rest, propping his broom against a wall and puffing into his now certifiably magic and life-saving harmonica. If you arrived at Oh on that particular day, you wouldn’t have found him at the airport chopping his wares and dazzling you with his shiny, gold tooth. He was too sleepy for that, not having shut his eyes the whole night, and something in his gut said the Belly was where he belonged.

  Cougar’s gut told him the same, and so instead of dozing or doing his daily accounting in the Sincero’s cluttered office, he too spent the first half of the day cleaning in the lounge with Bang. Each found the company of the other soothing, though neither said as much, or indeed said much of anything at all. Not even Nat spoke, when he arrived soon after, not to comment on the night before, not even to relate some oddity of the passenger he had picked up that morning (and each of his passengers was odd). He simply took up a towel and scrubbed the tables. The three of them scoured and polished, dusted and wiped, a silent catharsis they hoped would wash away their sins.

  Whether or not they achieved the redemption they sought, it’s hard for me to say, and frankly I’m not sure they deserved to. But by noon the Buddha’s Belly Bar and Lounge was spotless, shinier than it had been in a very long time. As if by magic the three chums were less tired than before they had started, and they sat at the b
ar to share a drink. Anything but Pineapple Sting, they all agreed. Cougar poured and together they sipped, blissful in their easily-donned ignorance, for none had yet—nor ever would try—to grasp what Raoul had sacrificed in the name of their friendship.

  Ignorant, too, was Raoul, if truth be told, for he had no idea where the truth really lay. On that same morning he stood at the airport pondering the fact that Gustave was gone, and with him, any chance for answers about my beginnings. He couldn’t have imagined that Gustave was as ignorant as he.

  While the passengers slid through the grit on the airport floor, a distracted Raoul studied their faces and the pictures in their passports, tried to size them up, wondered to what lengths his misjudgments must stretch, to what extent his miscalculations, seeing how very far he had strayed in his jumbled appraisals of his enemy and his friends. The latter had cost him the truth (or so he thought), while the former had paid with his life. The irony of the loss, so final, so complete, might have made a lesser man bitter. But an islander knows to move with the tide, and Raoul admitted that some polynomials were simply too complex to solve. He was tired of trying to reconcile reality with Stan Kalpi maths.

  I suspect it didn’t hurt matters that Gustave—that my father—had saved my grandfather’s life. In so doing, Gustave had at least validated my parentage in Raoul’s eyes, mysterious though it remained in its mechanics. Raoul would never tell me any of this; he wouldn’t speak of it at all, as a matter of fact. He had come to no real conclusions, and had cost me a father in the process. For a while after that, he couldn’t even look me in my Vilder eyes, so great was his shame. Eventually, he would resume his visits to the library (it would soon be Tuesday again), and though the book of Stan Kalpi with its silhouetted cover had been washed out into the sea, Ms. Lila would have plenty else to show him. Raoul would give up on his variables in her company, and would relax—for a little while—his strictly plain-as-noses-on-faces philosophy.