A Dolphins Dream

by Carlos Eyles

  Moses did not laugh as Compton had expected. Solemnly, he gazed out to sea, then turned to Compton. “I wouldn’t want to be any man’s God. Soon they would want to kill me because nobody likes to have a God around where he can see their foolishness. I only know God when I fish. When my mind is not working and I hold the line. Everything goes still, even though I know it is moving. When everything is still, that is when God shows up.”

  “I’ve never known God but I do know that something very different happens to me when I’m under the water. A quiet comes over me and slows everything down. Like I can see with something other than my eyes.”

  “Yes, yes, when I hold the line, it is that way. The ocean runs up the line and into my arm like a river. It feels like church should feel, very holy, very peaceful. The ocean is my church. The Open Ocean Church, eh.”

  “You sound like someone who has spent more than a little time in church.”

  “I went. It was between times of drinking and whoring in Suva. I didn’t know what to do after carrying on that way. Which direction should I take? I ask my uncle and my aunt and the other relatives in Suva. The women told me to go to church. My first day in church the Methodist minister said, ‘There is one soul here today that is here for repentance.’ I knew he was talking about me, so I stood up and he received me and I was forgiven. But it wasn’t enough that he forgave me. What did he know of me? So I went to church two and three times a week waiting for something to happen. They talked and I listened and they took my money. Then a job came up in the church and I thought I would test God for the job. I waited three days. I thought if the job is for me then it will be waiting. When I went to the church, I was the only one who came for it.”

  “Not a very popular job?”

  “I was to watch the money and see who was coming to church and who was staying home. If someone didn’t show up after two weeks, I tell the minister and he goes off to the house. I kept things running, eh. The money was going for a newsletter and it paid for the minister’s travel. But nothing was going to the poor. I told him this. He say it was a business and that other things were more important. I spoke my mind. ‘What’s more important than helping others, isn’t that what a church is suppose to d’ He say, ‘We help them spiritually, that’s what a church is suppose to do. We help them in ways you can’t understand.’”

  ‘I understand enough,’ I said, and quit the job. I haven’t gone back to church.”

  “Well, he was honest with you. Religion is a business.”

  “This is it, eh, a business? But God is not a business, eh.”

  “No, God is not a business. But can you tell me what life is all about, how does it work, in the grand scheme of things?”

  Moses understood the depth of the question far better than Compton and he waved a tattooed arm at the jungle. “One day I lie on this beach. My mind very still. A leaf fell from that tree and the wind from the sea pushed it back into the jungle. I watched it and knew that it was me. It showed me how life happens over and over again.”

  Compton bent, listening.

  “Our lives are like the leaves on a tree in a great forest. Many different trees, many different leaves. We sprout and grow and turn to the sunshine and drink the rain. We are happy and because we are high above the ground we believe that we are superior to all things below us. We think our branch is the only branch of worth and that our tree is the most important tree in the forest. But we are many and our thoughts are very small. Life is long and we turn colors and then we begin to dry up and a wind comes and blows us to the ground. That is our death. But we do not end. We dry up to small pieces and then to dust and the rain sends us into the ground where we feed a new and different tree. We go up through the roots and very slowly climb to the branches and then to the twigs, waiting to become another leaf.”

  “And so it goes,” interrupted Compton. “From tree to tree, from life to life.”

  “Yes, and each time we think our tree is the most important tree in the forest.”

  11

  The veined sea lay like a marble slab that reflected the sun onto Taveuni, and the glimmering tufts of the coconut trees quivered like wind blown flaxen in the balmy morning. Moses would not be here this day, the chores of the farm had been neglected of late and Compton lay beneath the fallen tree and contemplated the new leaves that had doubled in size since he was last aware of them. One could read time by this tree, he realized. At least by the week, perhaps even by the day. And the tides keep a precise hourly watch both day and night. The galactic hourglass of the moon and sun preside over it all. Removing his watch from his wrist he had the urge to throw it into the water. Instead he dug a deep hole under the tree and placed it there and then covered it up. I’ll dig it up the day I leave, he promised himself.

  The sun crept higher and exploded through the jungle’s capillaries of canopy and into the shallow water transforming coral heads great and small into prismatic jewels. A voice from the sea, whispered in the soft sounds of the shore break, beckoned and he slipped on his diving gear and entered the water.

  Drifting out past the coral head that housed the pulsating fish, then gliding down the reef over polychromed fish that fluttered like other-worldly hummingbirds, he caught the current moving east towards the point.

  Into slow, fluid, descents he soared towards the bottom catching the joyful sensation of underwater flight. The fish peeked out from their caves to watch, then darted back when he turned for the surface. Ascending from one such dive, hugging a high, breaking reef, he spied the large tail of a fish extending over the edge of the reef and halted his ascent. Half hidden by coral, he slowly lifted his head over the top of the reef and, not five feet away, finned a barracuda nearly seven feet long and as big around as a file cabinet. It was the largest fish he had ever seen. Its mouth was open and a cluster of blue wrasses were picking food from between its stiletto teeth. The wrasses worked diligently and when the barracuda twitched violently they darted out from its jaws, returning moments later to continue their task. The gun with its single wrap of shooting line was pointed at the barracuda’s spine. From this distance he would never have a better opportunity for a kill shot. Would Aprosa take this shot? What, he wondered, would a barracuda this size do if he didn’t kill it instantly? Would it rip the gun from his hand, or worse? It was foolhardy to consider spearing it. Compton had been impressed with the skills of Aprosa, now he admired his courage. The gun remained pointed at the spine of the fish as if it knew what to do and was waiting for some final authority to release the trigger finger to its task. When the barracuda caught sight of the gun it instantly slid off the reef and circled in wary, agitated movements. Perhaps it was angry, thought Compton, to have allowed a man to come so close. He surfaced for a breath and the fish retreated to the blue expanse and was absorbed.

  The sighting of the barracuda stirred his blood and he began to search out a fish for dinner. He dove into caves, waited at outcroppings and hid in the recesses of coral ledges, looking for the perfect shot on the right fish. But the fish were always too quick or, more precisely, he was too slow to pull the trigger in those instantaneous moments they would appear and the shot would present itself. When the opportunities did present themselves, a thought would enfold the sighting, “a big one,” or “be quick” or “fish,” and the moment would be lost.

  When finally he let the spear fly more out of frustration than a clear sighting, it was hurried and poorly placed. A small coral trout weighing no more than five pounds fought wildly against the spear and tore itself apart in breaking loose. It swam to a long cave at the bottom of a fingered reef and disappeared.

  There came a dread borne from some inner place he had never known that to waste its death would be tantamount to committing a mortal sin. He dove to the cave and paused for a moment at its entrance. This cave bent into a black hole for a considerable distance inside the reef. To be under the water on a breath-hold was one thing. To be deep inside a cave under the water on a breath-hold was ano
ther. He glided in. Fifteen feet into the passage it began to narrow, darken and turn, and he stopped to allow his eyes to adjust. Big-eyed squirrel fish hung in the dimness as if strung on a mobile that slowly spun on some invisible thread, their scales catching the angel hair light that filtered through the dense coral ceiling. He moved forward again until the tunnel funneled down and began to compress from either side. With no room to move and no fish to be seen, he backed out hurriedly, breath squeezing him, his fins kicking up the sand, churning the clear water murky and cutting down visibility. When the space in the tunnel permitted, he twisted around towards the entrance twenty feet away. Abruptly, the light dimmed and in the murkiness he realized that a shark had entered the cave, drawn by the blood spoor of the wounded fish. Adrenaline spiked his body, and the shark, sensing rapid heartbeats, came directly for him. When it was an arm length away, he thrust the gun into its nose and it wheeled violently in the tunnel and burst back out of the entrance. The adrenaline had consumed the last of his air and desperate for a breath, he all but caught the slipstream of the shark to the daylight that was the entrance. Outside three more white tips twisted in agitation and he launched himself into their midst, scattering them in all directions while kicking frantically for the surface. On top and blowing in explosive blasts out of the snorkel, he watched the sharks regroup at the entrance, engaged in a macabre dance that grew more frenetic by the moment. A wave of sickness came over him and he turned into the current and let it carry him back down the island toward the beach.

  Compton heard the whistling in the blackness of the jungle long before he saw the light of the lantern. Moses broke out on the steep path that led to the beach, lantern light reflecting off his always smiling face and a radio that he held up for Compton to see. “Bula Keli, tonight we listen to the Fiji news. Hear how the coup is getting on.”

  Moses hadn’t seated himself before Compton unleashed his shark encounter.

  “There is fear in your voice, Keli,” said Moses when Compton had finished. “It is on your face and in your eyes. Do the sharks frighten you that much?”

  “Well I …I didn’t think so. Maybe, sometimes. It depends on the situation, I guess.”

  “Why is that? You will soon dive in the deep water where the sharks swim, what then? You have seen sharks before?” Moses spoke directly into Compton’s averted eyes.

  “Sure, I’ve seen sharks, plenty of sharks. Normally they don’t bother me.”

  Moses maintained a steady gaze and waited.

  “Okay,” relented Compton, unwilling to descend any further into the deception. “Sharks have always bothered me. I don’t know why I’ve never gotten use to them. Even on scuba, which is much safer because you’re on the bottom, more protected. Doing this free diving, I really feel at a disadvantage, so helpless floating on the surface or in mid-water, so vulnerable.”

  Moses sipped his tea, his eyes never leaving Compton. “Maybe it’s not the sharks, eh.”

  Compton became defensive out of his uncertainty.

  “What do you mean? Of course it’s the sharks. What else could it be?”

  “Maybe it’s your own death that troubles you, Keli.”

  Compton felt cornered for reasons he could not explain. “No one wants to die, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Only the very sick and the very old want to die, eh. But the fear of dying stops life from being lived. It brings a sickness of its own that is worse. Fear makes the body stiff and sickness enters. I have seen it happen many times.”

  “And you, no doubt, have overcome this fear of death,” replied Compton pedantically.

  Moses laughed. “I have overcome nothing. I am too busy being foolish and trying to live. But I have known the sickness of death and I smiled it out. I rid myself of death by laughing at it.”

  The honesty with which he spoke shattered Compton’s conviction and was replaced with a truth of his own. “A few months before I came to Fiji I was in the hospital. Laid in a coma for twenty-three days. It was no laughing matter.”

  Moses scrutinized Compton in a curious way and was about to say something but thought better of it. Then, “Sometimes death comes quick with no time to think. Fear is a disease that comes from too much thinking.”

  Decidedly uncomfortable, Compton, through old habits assumed a smile that was in keeping with his discomfort. “Well, I’m quite sure that everyone who isn’t brain dead thinks about their death after a certain point in their life.“

  Moses shook his head in frustration and began to gesture wildly with his hands.

  “That is your problem, Keli, you think about it! The thinking makes you sick!. It is your thinking of the sharks that make you afraid. Jes’ dive, jes’ live, and when it is time for you to die, then die! Stop all this thinking before it kills you!”

  Compton had never seen Moses so animated and the force of his words nearly blew him off his lofty perch. Yet still clinging to its edges, he argued weakly, “Sharks are a reality of the ocean, a dangerous reality.“

  “They are the guards, that is all.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The big fish is a warrior, same as you. You have the spear and it has its power and the ocean. It can use its power and the ocean to kill you and that is proper, eh. But that’s not why you hunt it. You must take the fish from the guards of the sea, the sharks. It is what all true men must do. They must hunt in their worlds and challenge the guards of that world. Differeguards for different men. For you the sharks are in the sea to keep you honest so that nothing of worth is taken without risk. You must have the skill to trick and not make the mistake. The sharks see to that, eh. They make you better.”

  Compton shook his head, overwhelmed by the strange, illogical sense of Moses’ words. He could offer no rebuttal other than, “I’ll have to think about that.”

  Moses slapped his thigh and laughed. And was laughing so convulsively that Compton, in his discomfort, shifted in his seat as though he were sitting on a bed of eels. Through his tears Moses saw Compton’s unease and regained himself and patted him on the shoulder. “If you must think, then we think together. What time does your watch say?”

  “I don’t have it anymore. I buried it.”

  “That is good, no need for a watch in Fiji, except for the news.”

  Moses turned on a radio that was static-filled, and turned to a woman’s voice speaking in Fijian. He leaned over and put his ear close to the radio. As she machine-gunned her words out, he nodded in agreement. Occasionally he lifted his head to say, “That is good.” The broadcast lasted a half-hour and when it was over Moses announced confidently that, “It is going well for Sambuka. There is no violence. The Indians are behaving themselves.”

  “How do we really know what’s going on?” questioned Compton. “It’s Sambuka’s radio. He can say whatever he wants. He won’t report the truth unless it puts him in a favorable position.”

  Moses sat forward, his eyes fixed on the radio, as if it were Sambuka himself. “If he lies, it is for the good of Fiji.”

  “Maybe,” replied Compton, “but it is difficult to know what’s behind the coup. A powerful country is often pulling the strings because they want to control a place like Fiji for its own purposes.”

  “This is a poor country. What would a big country do with Fiji?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’re looking for a place to dump their toxic wastes. America did that to your neighbors up in the Marshall Islands.”

  “That is why we must become a republic and keep the outsiders from taking our islands, like the Indians want to do.”

  “In a way you need the Indians, don’t you. If they left, what would happen to the stores and the shops and transportation? How would you get your fuel and fishing hooks?”

  “This is a right thing you say. As soon as the Indians leave, the Chinese would come in. They want to come to Fiji very badly but we keep them out.”

  “The Chinese? How do they figure in all of this?”

 
“It is well known that they wish to come into Fiji and other islands in the South Pacific. It is the same with the Australians and the Russians and the Americans. The pressure is very great.”

  “Where do you get this information?”

  “My brother in the army tells me. He read the paper and we talk when he’s home for the holidays. It was he that said we must have Sambuka, a strong Fiji man to defend us against these countries.”

  “Whoever would want to control Fiji must have the money and power to take it.”

  “Sambuka will not be easily persuaded with money. He is a Fijian and lives only for Fiji.”

  “I hope that’s true because if he isn’t, the outside world will come here and take anything they fancy and leave you with nothing but the garbage they make.”

  Moses nodded in agreement. “I know what you say is true. I have seen the American resort owners and the Australians. They have shown a greed that the Indians do not have. I fear for the life of Fiji. It is a place of beauty, eh. It has been left for us and we must treat it kindly because it is our child.”

  Moses suddenly rose from the table and with radio in hand said a brisk good night and strode off into a jungle that absorbed him almost as quickly as the civilized world would engulf the Fijian people and their way of life once it decided to exploit them.

  12

  A light breeze blew out of the east and rippled the water into streaks of variegated blues. Compton had not seen Moses in two days. The sharks still swam in his thoughts and he had not taken the spear gun into the water in the vain hope that Moses might appear with some fish. Now there was scarcely any food at all and it was becoming clear that Moses had no intention of bailing him out, giving him no alternative but to hunt.

  His reluctance to dive was mitigated as soon as he entered the water. It embraced him like a loving thing and he was the child again in the arms of his impartial mother. He cocked the gun while hovering over the coral head of yellow fish, then swam out onto the far edge of the reef, catching the current that ran to the eastern most point. He halted at a finger reef that jutted out from the island, pumped up a breath and dove into water so clear it almost tasted of gin. A gray snapper with white spots on its back near the head showed itself on the tabletop coral at thirty feet. He drifted motionless on the current toward it but the fish had seen him and in its carnivorous way, eyed him while slipping the tabletop and vanishing into the labyrinth of the reef. Compton needed to eat and it was the empty gnawing at his stomach that, above all other demands, transformed him in those moments on the breath-hold from the casual sportier to a deadly serious hunter. He rose to the surface and viewed the panorama of hunting grounds that lay before him two hundred feet in all directions. He saw a school of six fish hovering in the mid-water column with brown and black stripes along with others that were lighter in color and knew them to be good eating, marking them as easy prey. He dove and drifted toward them as before but they seemed to move away without moving in the uncanny way of fish. No matter where he moved they always stayed just out of range of the spear gun. For nearly forty-five minutes he stalked the school before realizing they could not be approached from the surface. He had to come from a place hidden in the reef system. He dove down behind a massive coral head then swam clockwise around its base unseen by the fish, slowly moving into position with the gun straight out in front. The fish had indeed lost track of him and had swum within range of the gun. His hunger saw only the small spot on the fish and his body pulled the trigger. The spear flew true and hit the fish, killing it instantly. With one motion, he retrieved it before it had begun to sink and turned for the surface eyeing the water below for sharks which, because of the clean kill, made no appearance. In his swim back to the beach he realized the absolute perfection of the stalk and marveled at how his body, when left to function on its own, was in perfect synchronicity with the environment. He deposited the fish in the shade of the tree and, in the throes of success, returned to the water.