Reefdog

by Robert Wintner

  What is she doing now, this minute?

  •

  A man settles in. All who wander are not lost, except in brief, difficult moments. He finds a postcard showing a naked woman with a pretty face, huge melons, a flat stomach, small waist and luscious hips. He stares and laughs. “She doesn’t exist.”

  The clerk assures that she does, but she lives in Brazil, not Tahiti. Rubbing a red bump on his face, he says Tahiti women don’t look like this. Ravi wonders if Brazil has decent reefs and laughs again at the foibles of men. Minna, Cosima, and Hereata look great. Ah, well; and so he writes on the message side:

  Ia Orana Skinny,

  How are you? I am doing fine. I found a nice place to live. You can write to me at Le Chien de Bonne Chance, BP 1121, Maharepa, Moorea, Polynésie Française.

  Please let me know how you are doing at Gene’s. Okay?

  Yours,

  Ravi

  He’s hardly had time to ask about an attorney or a divorce or annulment, but he will. Won’t that be a relief? Meanwhile, she can forward his mail or legal documents. And he wants news of Skinny.

  Okay, where was I? Too skinny, even for a wafer thin fish seeking camouflage on minimal profile. Nature is dynamic, but the wafer thin view misses the flourish, even with two eyes straddling a snout and pectoral fins fluttering like petticoats. A better shot would flirt with the viewer—would show color and pattern as part of the movement. But a side shot with a mug shot would be clinical.

  Breakthrough is simple but tough. Many fish approach and peer into the lens. The face shot seems obvious, but few divers get the shot. Ravi gets it but sees that the money does not come before the turn or after; it comes during. In turning, the fish bends its body, changing direction. The pose is not head-on and not a right angle but oblique, a forty-five-degree curve showing one or both eyes and the snout, along with pecs, shape, and coloration—and a certain contact. Dorsal flair is a bonus, with translucent membrane spanning erect spines. It becomes a signature shot, with drama and flourish.

  The lateral line along each flank parallels the dorsal contour and is the hub of neuro-sense in a fish. Dorsal spines rise with emotion, and that’s the shot he wants. Some fish are shy, others gregarious, defensive, amorous, curious, hungry or hambones seeking discovery. Ravi captures essence, panache, and charm. He secures them for art. With luck, two subspecies pose in the same frame or a matched pair or a symbiotic duo. He follows a puffer and coronet for so many days they become a trio. He doubts his contribution to more efficient survival till his teammates scoot to his far side when a grouper comes on strong.

  The next phase is vision, the elusive mode of framing a shot that he used long ago on a jack and a moray over a tourist’s shoulders. Great composition can’t be called up. It’s a gift. So he waits. He sings into his regulator the tune about the mountain that was, before it wasn’t, and then it was. He tries not to get it. He lets it come, but it doesn’t, so he strives to stop striving, which is a laugh with no laughing. Finally, with repetitive failure, the bell rings, and he laughs out loud. Wasting so many shots isn’t the waste it used to be. Come on: it’s digital. No film to buy or processing to pay. How can he know what to do without mastering what not to do? Less is more at the base of a non-mountain, as art oozes through the birth canal. Pardon my mixed images of fetal mountain and failure reborn, but I think we have lift off!

  So comes the second verse, in which the butterfly emerges…

  Shots of Moorish idols head-on, as well as frontal-at-forty-five curvature, show clarity and drama, highlighting Bette Davis eyes, exquisite lashes, and the pout. He senses the rabbit hole in which down is up in a mental maze to confuse a weaker mind. And he searches harder to find the way. Focused on idle idols or cheeky wrasses, he leaves tourists on their own. They complain and don’t tip.

  He shrugs. They don’t tip anyway, and people led by the hand will never figure anything for themselves. But tourists not led will get lost. He wants to be a good dive leader but lapses again on Moorish idols, a tiny infant too small to curve with a blunt snout, a dorsal stub, and baby-face. It hovers in the curvature of an adult idol casting motherly suspicion, one eyebrow raised…

  Oh, yes!

  Do Moorish idols birth live or deposit eggs? Do idle idol fry get mothered or drift as plankton? What are the odds of a tiny idol posing with Mom? Could it be? Is the adult female? But the greatest question is: Who cares? Just look!

  The grail is not at the end of the journey but the beginning! Here is destiny and calling for Ravi Rockulz, marine photographer—here is the family portrait for the ages: Mrs. Idol and her son, for posterity, for matting and framing and spotlighting in any gallery.

  Yes, Mother, this is what I do, what I was meant to do, what you can tell anyone who needs to know.

  And in case anyone else needs to know what’s none of their business, the fact is: Ravi Rockulz may be among the top reef artists in the world—the whole wide world, that is. So allocating two thousand dollars for a printer with eight ink cartridges for extraordinary color in 17xwhatever is only natural. It’s not lavish or foolish but necessary. The expenditure postpones a rebreather. But a rebreather runs much more, and the work needs printing. A rebreather will allow depths to two fifty or three hundred, but the vision phase is shallow, twenty feet, where sunbeams dance. The rebreather will make no bubbles or noise, so fish will approach with no fear. The rebreather will come for its rightful phase: big ocean animals.

  Meanwhile, the printer sits on a table, covered against dust, salt air and dog fur with a blanket and a plastic tarp and a damp-chaser below, except when making magic of a fish or two, getting it right and righter still. Little Dog plays in the yard with others less fortunate than himself as the gallery fills.

  Moorish Mama and Baby Idol is a hit. Then comes a reef shrimp series. Banded coral shrimp are common as sand fleas, hardly of interest, until Ravi shares harsh truth on aquarium trade extraction and what happened in Hawaii. Like American buffalo, Carolina parakeet, Hawaiian Monk seal, hawksbill turtle and giant Pacific leatherback turtle, all gone or going away…

  Stop.

  Reef shrimp still ply Moorea reefs, cleaning and grooming as they did in Hawaii before dying in transit or amusing their keepers briefly before dying in glass tanks. Banded shrimp look like candy cane for an inch or two and two more inches of skinny pincers. Scarlet cleaners are golden with a scarlet stripe down the back and two white stripes to either side. Candy canes feed at night while scarlet cleaners feed in the day, and he goes for both.

  The best foresight is often based on hindsight. He shoots shrimp from every angle, as if they’re going away. They raise claws in greeting, tip their hats or stroke chin whiskers in microscopic intimacy. He splurged on the flat port because the dome would fit any wide-angle lens. But the hundred five millimeter macro requires a flat port and was only eight hundred—each, for the lens and flat port—and art calls for whatever it takes, not a budget.

  Besides, each tiny spike shows tinier barbs and hairs in immaculate detail, as the shrimp visage goes from mechanical wonder to otherworldly. The miniature universe emotes fear, appetite and comfort. Portraiture suits the shrimp clan, too.

  So Ravi the family photographer pursues the more adventurous crustaceans to their place of work. These shrimp clean, not floors but gills and teeth—long, pointy teeth slanted back for ripping and tearing, often filling a predator gob opened wide so the little dental tech can get in deep, to pluck stubborn snags.

  Dive leaders often find cleaner shrimps, hold the regulator aside and open wide for the photo op. A shrimp or two may enter the mouth hole to clean with less fervor on Spam and eggs but also to secure great good cheer and a tip. Ravi frowns on false contact; it’s not natural and not art, according to the Ravi Rockulz rules to create by. But he allows a shrimp to taste a morsel between thumb and forefinger, then ride to the nearest eel and walk on in. Many eels open wide to get their choppers cleaned. The show is compelling, with spectacular teeth of ghastl
y potential. Dragon eels are mottled orange with droopy nostrils and snaggle teeth, where tiny shrimp work with immunity. Violent potential could suggest Vicious Killers of the Deep, until a teleconverter gets close on the dazzling shrimp cleaning the icy stalactites. Intrusive proximity is another mystery: why do eels tolerate a lens within two inches? Just so, the shutter clicks.

  Ravi favors a gaping whitemouth, its needle teeth and snow-white maw perfectly framing the banded shrimp, who reaches up for a nibble and down for a nosh in a stretch that blends the whites of the eel’s mouth and the shrimp’s bands, contrasting both with the shrimp’s other bands. And we have a winner! Lens vignetting and chromatic aberration can be artistic too.

  Monique ponders gill-breathers, realizing critters she’s never considered, seeing her tenant beyond machismo to artistry. She says her little animal hospital qualifies as a non-profit on several American websites offering software for the cause at a fraction of retail. So an aspiring artist gets the Photoshop ensemble for a hundred fifty dollars instead of eighteen hundred and soars to the summit of rendering.

  Working and saving every franc for the next purchase—make that investment, in art and life—Ravi soon feels seascape, which can be tricky since particulates can haze what appears to be clear. Never mind; this too is an act of faith. The new lens is a wildlife special number that would be available as an off-brand clone at significant savings to those of limited resources and commitment, but a purist seeking perfection will wait till he has fifteen hundred dollars for the best optics in the world and another few hundred for port extensions and gear rings to support it. One day is all it takes, and then the next, till it’s done. Monique suggests Tiputa Pass at Rangiroa for a departure from up-close and personal to big fish on the move. They cruise the pass in November.

  November already? God, time flies. Well, it’s not for two months yet, leaving time enough to make the money. Ravi reads of hammerheads in extra-large to huge, cruising in great schools with no known motivation—unknown by humans, that is. The sharks know something, or feel it. Then come the rays, eagle rays in the hundreds and thousands with a few stingrays in lovely integration with the hammerheads and a few jacks and barracuda. It’s a flotilla of sea power a human navy could envy, except that the fishy armada has no destructive potential as a means to victory, to stabilize the region and secure a nation’s future. Don’t get a rowdy man started.

  The atoll barely rises above sea level on a nine-mile stretch of perimeter and seems saved from development by prospects for flooding and perfect for a diver/artist enamored of natural anarchy, but he doesn’t know the area. Monique has fantasized the show in Rangiroa for years but will never see it because she can’t dive. It is impossible, with so much to know and tend to. Ravi shows his own pout because she can know and tend to and have this fantasy because good things should come to one who helps so many. But she won’t try because it’s impossible, and she’s too young to drown. He promises to keep her from drowning. She juts a lip and trembles, seeing the possible.

  Paler and thinner at the water’s edge—her blue vein network constricts under goose bumps crowding her translucent skin. A small wetsuit is baggy—and he says she has room in there to entertain. She’s in no mood for jokes, so he says he’ll get her a child’s wetsuit for the next dive, to keep her warmer. She says it won’t be necessary, a different wetsuit or a second dive.

  Hereata watches from higher up, remarking later on the poor girl’s stick figure and breakability. Hardly generous, Hereata remains calm because Monique is no threat, not even with the giant moray lurking in her man’s skivvies. Monique shows up clothed and drops into local custom, changing on the spot. Hereata’s smile is meant to remind him of his bounty, but he can see for himself that muskmelons are bigger than kumquats. And he loves Monique’s determination.

  She does all right. Her uncertainty goes away as she sinks and breathes—underwater. She holds her own with someone to hold onto. So he gives her the book and says they’ll dive a few more times to get through the skills, and then he’ll test her on the book. She declines; it is impossible. The passes are different.

  That may well be, but she should continue till impossibility is proven. So she warms up on a few more dives and a better wetsuit and eases into prospects for the pass at Rangiroa. He emphasizes the tricky nature and hazard of currents, and that any drift dive can challenge a beginner if she fights it or panics. She’ll have her own private guide to stay near, but out of his shots.

  Stoic by nature and short-tempered in a world that abuses its dogs and cats, Monique is joyful. An adventure with wild animals makes her giddy. She hugs him, pledging to pay her way and translate and find dirt-cheap digs with her friends at Rangiroa. And so they go, bonding in a new way for both, which is not to say sexless since he consents on request. Clinical but heartfelt, she says it’s been years since she was with a man. She doesn’t miss it but wants to see. Has she not seen the giant moray of the Speedo depths? Ravi says he’s very fond of her and flattered, of course, but…

  She asks for this personal favor on the ninety-minute flight to Rangiroa. Neither taking his hand nor seeking eye contact, she coldly asks for closure on a tired subject. She has no itch to scratch and feels indifferent, and so she turns to him and says, “It is okay if you wants to say no. Oh, please, believe…” She touches him. “It is terrible. An imposition that I would hate if you would ask it of me. It is not fair, but if you would. Or would not is okay.”

  Why would she risk her integrity and sense of self to be with a man? She assures that neither he nor his merguez have any bearing on her integrity, and she doesn’t want to be with a man—not the whole man. She only wants to feel the sausage in her vagin, to be sure. She doesn’t think she’s missing anything but would hate to find out later that all the fuss is actually warranted.

  “But you’ve done it before. You know how it feels.”

  “I told you. It was years ago. He was a mean boy. Too rough, too fast. Besides, we change, may be.” And Ravi is not any man.

  In humility he awaits praise. It comes faintly, as she calls him emotionless, except for the love of his dog and fish. She admires his focus and feels him suitable.

  “Because I’m loveless?”

  “Au contraire!”

  “What if you like it?”

  She shrugs. “Then we will do it again—I mean we can do it again if you like it too. But it won’t happen again.”

  “Why should it happen at all, with severe doubts?” She juts a lip. He says the sausage isn’t so fat. She agrees; she sees bigger anytime, at the butcher—tout à l’heure, à la charcuterie… He doubts it unless she means bratwurst, but the French don’t eat bratwurst. He doesn’t mind; she’s so good to the animals. She deserves a helping hand. Or a helping bratwurst. Will the little Colonel ten-hut for Monique? He feels confident, not so much in the chain of command but in the colonel’s singular drive. She’s too thin but has hips and loves the fuzzy species, so it should go well. Who knows?

  He doesn’t know after a minute of it. She glares as if trespassed, and so she is. “Wait!” She leans him aside and rolls on top but shakes her head. He comforts her by pulling her near to press her cool, dry lips to his. Bad idea—she shudders. But on a slight fibrillation, her eyes squeeze shut, and she endures. She waves him on with both hands. His eyes close so Cosima can take over, and it’s over. She apologizes for exploiting his weakness but didn’t think he’d mind.

  “It’s not weakness. It’s friendship. And love. And I don’t mind.”

  She puffs a lip and stands up, all done, over and out. “I like you but not it. It is not fair that men can achieve climax with anybody.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “Please.”

  But she did, which counts for something, but he’s not sure what. Awkwardness lingers to early evening and dinner at another fare, where she reaches across to take his hand and ask that he please keep their secret because Hereata is a friend she wouldn’t hurt for the wo
rld. She checks out the waitress.

  “Can you achieve climax with any woman?”

  “Of course not. We’re different. It has to be right.”

  They let it sink under two great wines and avoid eye contact. He further eases the strain with logistics and objectives for the morning dive, deep and in a swift current.

  She follows well, holding on when she can, hovering nearby when he moves to catch an angle. She checks her gauges when he does—until they level and drift. She watches him, signals okay and gains comfort among vast shoals of muscular fish who seem indifferent to the marine mammals among them. The odd one with the camera squirms for angles in a three-knot current then rolls like a seal to silhouette the traffic overhead against the shimmer a hundred feet up. He captures the pass and passing minions in sweeping displays of a food chain moving in meditation. The flow of life is a set piece, a reprieve from life and death, in grace. This is not the lion lying with the lamb but shark cruising with ray. Without hunger or fear or the drive to spawn, predators become pilgrims at the shrine of being. Framing the flow in unique perspective is a signature approach of marine photographer Ravi Rockulz. Have you heard of him?

  Realization of self merges at last with artistic potential. Scene splicing is a technique—or a trick—but a rare panorama moves past, slow enough for three frames on the fly. So he fires three in a row a dozen times at the great herds lolling and swaying from near to far.

  Hammerhead fills the near frame, her head and eye spanning the foreground, curiously indifferent. Eagle rays circle, nose to tail, in a smaller wheel of life. A cog of life?