East of Suez

by Howard Engel

  I could feel our descent down to water level long before I glimpsed the docks.

  Then suddenly there it was: the sea. A cool scimitar slice of blue against the mountains and the sky. Now I began to comprehend this place. Now I could understand people like my clerical friend from the taxi. It put Grantham, Ontario, Canada, into a context I never could have imagined without this glimpse of sun reflected in the marvelous horseshoe harbor.

  It was a straight, unbroken, downhill run now, and the vista opened up as we descended to it. Then, almost in the middle of the road, half blocking our way, was a derelict ship, an old freighter by the look of it. It was just lying there in the street. Black and white, with rust-red stains above the keel. It was an easy two hundred meters from the jetties and about thirty or more meters above tidewater. I thought of the beached ship in the poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” That one was called the Alice May; this one was the something-or-other Maru. As we rounded it, I tapped the driver on his shoulder and pointed to the wreck. He looked at me for a moment, then at the wreck, now in his rearview mirror, and said one word: “Tsunami.” As we drove on, I looked around to see the rest of the ship. It was like a beached whale, being chipped at by acetylene torches on the ocean side. Somebody was trying to break up this monster. Blue light from cutting torches drove slanted shadows up the sides of the hulk, even under this burning sun. It was like watching men scoop away at a modestsized mountain with spoons. I scribbled the word “tsunami” in my Memory Book, with my own version of the spelling.

  The harbor was fretted with jetties, sticking out into the water. The docks were black breaks, giving dock space to several craft each. Patches of fresh, light-colored wood showed on some of the darker-colored planks. There were several signs of recent building. Along both sides of each of the piers, small boats, fishing and sports craft by the look of them, were moored to stanchions with ropes, some of them colorful nylon in yellow, red, and blue. This was tidewater, so there were various contrivances for keeping the boats secure as the water came and went at the whim of the moon, twice a day. Signs of lazy activity appeared along the length of the jetty in front of me: a few figures moved back and forth, but with no committed determination as far as I could see. One man was feeding nylon rope into a greedy plastic barrel, another hosing down some nets spread out on the tar-surface of the dock. The boats themselves were a jumbled lot, but a few trim yachts were tied up looking yar, their masts jingling as they bobbed in the water that dimpled with reflected sunlight.

  The taxi driver pointed out a building that faced this view from behind the spot where we had stopped. It was a weathered wooden structure, two stories running for most of a block, backing into the hill that rose sharply from the water, giving the outfitters an apparently precarious purchase on the edge of the water. The bottom floor disappeared into the hill; the floor above ran another few meters into the slope. Directly across the street, on the water, a sign announced that the building on this side of the road was a continuation of the bigger place across the street.

  My driver was watching as I took all this in and grinned like he’d done it all himself. I shuffled the money I took from my wallet and fanned the bills out so he could make a selection. When I added another to the ones he had taken, he gave it back, his conscience already stretched to breaking. He gave me a card and pointed to the number on the back. The original printed number had been crossed out. I didn’t attempt to read it, but pocketed it for further study in private.

  A wooden veranda ran along the length of the front of the building, which looked as though it was still at least partly a warehouse. Several doors opened on to it, each with a sign that was no great advertisement for local arts and crafts. When I found the sign I was looking for, I pulled a rope that rang a bell inside. When nothing happened after my second try, I opened the door and walked in. Inside, it was dark, dusty, and cluttered, but maybe a degree cooler than outside. I could make out some shipping posters on the wall, as well as a naughty calendar showing a leggy young woman’s skirt being pulled by her badly cast fishing line. It looked at least fifty years old, and shiny with grease from a camp stove set on a wooden crate. Chinese dishes and a jar of chopsticks stood on a shelf nearby. The showpieces of this anteroom were a pair of mounted diving suits dating from the 1930s. They could have come right out of Trader Tom of the South Seas, an old Saturday matinée serial I saw as a kid. But this was more than a few blocks away from the old Granada Theatre at home. The diving suits were dusty and looked like they hadn’t been moved in decades. Nearby was an air-pumping unit, again right out of the movies and comic books of my youth. I suppose that in a strange place like this, a newcomer makes friends with the things he recognizes from his earlier life. These old diving suits were helping me smooth the way into an unnerving and, I admit it, scary place.

  A slim man was standing behind a glass counter littered with papers and what looked like boxes of well-known brands of American soap. He gave me a half-bow, showed an arpeggio of white teeth, and said: “May I help you with something?” His English was hard to place. It could have been American or British, but overlaid with the speaking of local languages and cleaned up so as to remove most of the signs of origin. There was no Scottish or Irish about it, no more could I detect either New England or the American South. A mid-Seven-Seas accent. He looked about thirty-five or forty, but I could be wrong.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you standing there. The bright light outside makes this room very dark. I’m looking for a trip out to the reef to do some scuba diving. I was given your name, this address, I mean, at my hotel.”

  “And which hotel might that be?” he asked, still smiling. I’d no recollection of the name, but I had it written down in my pocket. Fishing out the card, I read off the name as quickly as I could.

  “Ah, yes. I know it well. When were you wishing to go? How many people might be in your party?”

  Of course, I had considered none of these questions and felt as stupid as I looked standing there. “I haven’t made any solid plans. I just wanted to see if you still did this sort of thing.”

  “Oh yes. We have been taking tourists out there for many years. There is a seven-thirty morning boat and one at two in the afternoon. The divers go to two different locations at the reef: there’s the naturalist dive and then the wreck, an old ship that broke up on the reef. This is still in the season, but you should have no trouble getting on a boat as soon as the day after tomorrow, Wednesday, if that would be quite convenient.”

  “Good! Better than I could have hoped. I’m traveling alone. I’m a party of one. How long is the dive?”

  “The trip to and from the reef takes half an hour each way. You will need to have at least forty-five minutes of air in each of your tanks. There will be a compressor on the landing stage for refilling. If you go at seven-thirty, you won’t be back here until about ten-thirty or eleven. There is a canteen for light refreshments.”

  “Should I make my arrangements now?” I reached for my passport and wallet with its credit cards.

  “You may make all of the arrangements now, Mr …”

  “Cooperman.” I presented my passport.

  “You are not an American?” He said this with mild surprise.

  “No, I’m from Canada. As you see. Lots of people have to wait for the give-away words like ‘doubt’ and ‘about.’”

  “I have a degree in engineering from the University of British Columbia. I know western and central Canada very well. My name is Henry Saesui, Mr Cooperman. And I will see to all the arrangements for your visit to the reef. May I suggest the morning trip? That avoids the worst of the heat. You’ll want to get a strong sunblock for your arms, face, and neck, Mr Cooperman.”

  “How early is early, Mr Saesui?” I know he had told me, but my mind had not retained the information.

  “The dive boat leaves the jetty promptly at seven-thirty. I hope that will not be too matutinal for you?”

  “Oh no,” I lied. “Just matutinal
enough.” One thing about having a flawed memory is that I’d quickly forgotten the rude awakening that was in store for me.

  “You must arise with the sun if you are to discover our country as Sir Stamford did.”

  “Who?”

  “Sir Stamford Raffles, you know.”

  “I’m going to read up on him.”

  “Have you gone scuba diving before, Mr Cooperman?”

  “I’ve done some snorkeling in fresh water. A few years ago, I did a short open-water course on underwater equipment down in Florida. I’ve brought my certificate and log with me.”

  “Excellent!” My papers fell into well-worn fragments as he tried to unfold them. The wear came over time when I carried some of the papers along with other things in my wallet, just in case I got lucky. “You are an experienced diver. I haven’t seen papers like these in some time.”

  “I’ve always wanted to do the real thing at a place like this,” I said, to cover my embarrassment as I repacked the tattered papers into my wallet.

  “You will be wanting to rent equipment from us then?” I had misjudged his interest in my experience. It was just a way to get on with his checklist of questions.

  Mr Saesui handed me my passport back with a slight smile, adding: “We will expect your arrival soon after seven-fifteen on Wednesday morning, Mr Cooperman. I’m sure you will be able to arrange a taxi through your hotel.”

  These times were so early in the day as to be abstractions. I nodded, then remembered: “You’ll want a deposit, won’t you?”

  “In your case, Mr Cooperman, that will not be necessary.”

  “Oh, I just remembered something.” A frown replaced the smile on his face for a moment, then the smile returned. I pointed over my shoulder behind me. “Up the hill, on the road down here, we passed a beached freighter sticking out into the street. Can you—?”

  “Tsunami,” he said. As though that explained everything.

  “That’s what my driver said. What does the word mean?”

  “Tsunami is a tidal wave. Nothing to do with tides, of course. It came from an underwater eruption near Sumatra last year. Many people were killed. We had to rebuild much of the waterfront. Meanwhile, there are a dozen families living in the hull up the road, even while they are cutting it up for scrap.”

  “Of course, I remember now. I’m sorry.”

  After a short pause, a reluctance to move on from so many deaths, back to business. He led me through a long, narrow corridor to a shed, backed up against the hill. A high concrete wall was crumbling, probably from the constant pressure of the hill rising up behind. Mr Saesui turned me over to a young clerk, a darker local man by the look of him, named Ho. He brought out various bits of gear for me to try on: there were rubber flippers, rubber pants, and a similar top. Then there were weights and the Aqua-Lung itself. Ho smiled a lot, but was patient with me as I tried on one item after the other. In the end, he handed me some lead weights and two regulators: one for going and the other for coming, I guessed. His next gift to me was a “rashi.” I think that’s what he called it. From what I collected from his miming I grasped that it was to ward off some of the nastier samples of wildlife that try to sting the exposed lower neck. I caught what sounded like “jellyfish” in there someplace. I almost turned around and headed for home.

  Ho’s English was as limited as my French, but we managed the whole process in less than half an hour, during which time I was offered Chinese tea in a small cup without a handle. Such refinements will come later on, I figured. A fellow worker came by with a Coke and seemed to argue with Ho about closing down the shop that night.

  Mr Saesui himself showed me out when I had done. “When you come here on Wednesday, please go to the west building. The office on the water, across the street. You needn’t come here again. Until then, Mr Cooperman.”

  I found my way back to the seafront. Suddenly the air was thick with the cry “Taxi!” in a score of different accents and inflections. I shook my head, waved them away, and looked at the small craft tied up at the docks and others making their way out to the open sea. The odor of seaweed was rank on the air. It cut into my sense of smell, where, after the first shock, it lingered pleasantly. Mingled with this were other smells: tar, oakum, iodine, and dead fish. The sounds of shorebirds mingled with those of small motors and shouts from along the waterfront. The steady boom-boom of four-stroke engines reminded me of a long-ago trip to the harbor at Pugwash, Nova Scotia, where I first heard them.

  After filling my senses for twenty minutes or so with local color, I decided I needed to find transportation back to the upper town. Even as I did this, I promised myself a return journey. The shore seemed to be what this place was all about; the rest of the town that I’d seen so far looked like it could be anywhere. Another look was needed.

  I flagged down a proper four-door cab just unloading a fare and directed him to the part of town where I might expect to meet my clerical friend. I found the address in my Memory Book. Settling into the back seat, I felt the lift I get when I’ve managed things satisfactorily. My recent need to write things down instead of depending upon my memory had begun to convert me into a more efficient person. While all reading was difficult, my own writing was still decipherable. As long as nobody rushed me. I leaned back into the seat and watched the sights as we climbed the hill away from the water.

  FIVE

  THE TAXI DRIVER dropped me in a teeming traffic circle in the middle of the Old Town. He’d followed Ex-Charpentier Avenue to where a plateau of flat ground calmed traffic and formed an oasis from the steady run up from the harbor. After taking my money from me with a bow, the driver waved his arm to introduce me to Ex-Berlioz Square, as though he were making me a present of it.

  There were café tables here and there under awnings and shade trees. I saw more Western men and women here than anywhere since the airport. Here the traffic was thick with bicycles and various two- and three-wheeled scooters. I saw a sidewalk café with people sitting at tables dangerously close to the edge of the road. Illegally parked cars were the buffer. Were the customers trying to imitate pictures of Paris in the 1920s? They bent heads together over the small round tables and were dressed in current fashions. Most of the men had briefcases either beside them or on the tables. Nearby, a large cinema was featuring a movie that had been playing in Grantham when I left town. The front of the theater had been made to look like a cave, with stalactites and stalagmites. They supported a triangular sculpture built of smaller triangles. What this had to do with caves, I never found out. A small store near a corner had a display of out-of-town newspapers outside its window, hanging in a frame. I recognized three banks as well as an enormous church with cupolas at the top, catching the light like silver foil. This was obviously the place to be in Takot, the business and social hub of the city. My mouth began watering for a chopped-egg sandwich.

  “Mr Cooperman!” I heard the cry from across the street, where I hadn’t noticed another café. This one, like the other cafés with terraces, had the same imported look. My priestly friend was sitting with a stranger under an awning at a tiny table. I waved and began crossing the street. Father O’Mahannay was wearing a dark cassock with a broadbrimmed hat. He looked spread out, as if occupying two or three chairs at once. His companion, a sallow little man with thick glasses and prominent magnified eyes, was clutching his briefcase to his body as though to protect his vitals from an expected fusillade.

  “Hello!” I shouted as I waved, overjoyed at seeing a familiar face.

  “Ah, Mr Cooperman!” he said with enthusiasm as I came up to the table. The sallow man moved to expose another chair. “You found us after all. My note forgot to mention that I can usually be found here when I’m not wanted back at the fadders’ fort.”

  “The what?”

  “When I was growing up, the young boys used to call it the ‘fathers’ fort,’ or, more accurately, the ‘fadders’ fort.’ I wonder whether it really was all that frightening.”

  �
��I should write that down; I write down everything else.”

  My new friend watched me play with my notebook. “Remarkable,” he said, shaking his head. “Remarkable.”

  “Good afternoon, Father. I’m glad to see you again.” His reply was drowned out by a passing scooter. As I settled into the cane chair, he introduced his companion. “Mr Cooperman, this is my old friend, Billy Savitt. Billy’s visiting Takot like you, but he knows the city well from earlier visits.” Savitt gave me a smile and his card, the latter with a little bow. I said my how-do-you-do and shook his cold hand.

  Funny how formal everybody was here. I have never been mistered so much in my life. Why were we all starting to sound like we were characters in Somerset Maugham or that other novelist who writes about people going to pieces in the tropics?

  For a small hand, Savitt had a mighty grip. I rescued my fingers, smiled, and tuned in to what the priest was saying. “Billy, Mr Cooperman is from Canada. This is his first excursion into this part of the world. You might win a gold star in heaven if you’ll take him under your wing until he gets the hang of the place.”

  “Royt you are. Well. I’ll troy to be useful,” Savitt said, sounding like London’s East End—at least, the way television and the movies represent East Enders. “Oy’ll show you where to get a salt beef sandwich on good rye bread. Best in this part of Asia. Can’t tell it from the Nosh Bar in Piccadilly, near the dear old Windmill.” I won’t try to reproduce Savitt’s accent further. He was easy enough to understand, once I’d bent my ear to the sound of his vowels. “You know London, Mr Cooperman?”