An Obvious Enchantment

by Tucker Malarkey

  “Have you gone and bought miraa?” Stanley was appalled. “Lord, Daisy!”

  “Oh, don’t be so pious. At least it’s a natural high.”

  “So is heroin.”

  “Oh, please, it’s not as if you can OD on it. It’s a native ritual—right, Jackson?” Jackson had been extricating himself slowly from the room. He had almost reached the kitchen door, poor fellow.

  “Leave Jackson out of it,” Stanley said.

  Daisy was unwrapping the banana leaf. She held the bundle of sticks to her nose. “Smells perfectly harmless.”

  “I can’t smell anything but body oil in here,” Stanley lied. “I just hope its not affecting Harry.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Come, Adolpho.” Adolpho had posted his bulky frame at the window, where he stood with military stoicism. This was just another “operation” for Adolpho, the professional masseur. At the sound of his name he came to life and lumbered like a mastiff to his owner. After he had heaved himself up the steep staircase, Daisy glared at Stanley. “We’re not doing it, you know. I’m sure you’d like to think so.”

  “I don’t think about it at all, Daisy.”

  “Ha! I know you think about it because you talk about it, Stanley. Do you think I’m a complete noodle? To your friends at the bar, ‘Oh Daisy, she’s off bonking her masseur.’ It makes hating me easier, doesn’t it. Well, I’m past caring what you think, Stanley. I’m just grateful to have a companion who values my company.”

  It was the moment for rebuttal, but Stanley was mute. Did he want to hate his wife? What sort of husband was he? Daisy stood across the room from him, seething. Looking at her, he realized she was angrier than he’d thought. Attempting reconciliation now would be like tangling with a wounded ferret. He could get hurt. “I suppose it’s not the worst thing that could have happened,” he said, more to himself than to her.

  “What?” He watched with some anxiety as the color in his wife’s face deepened. “What did you say, Stanley?” She seemed to tremble, like a volcano. She’s going into pulmonary distress, Stanley thought. The best thing to do was leave, immediately. Remain calm, he told himself. Move slowly. He collected his book and his mail and rose, yawning as if he had all the time in the world. “Lovely letter from Dad,” he said easily. “Seems the weather in England is unseasonably warm.” Crossing the room, he gave himself some distance from Daisy because it occurred to him that, if she could, she might kick him.

  Once out of the house, Stanley felt light as a cloud. He decided to go visit Harry on the beach. He spotted the little tyke from far off; a lonely little form sitting on the sand. A few yards away was a slab of horizontal flesh that must be Melissa. As he approached, he saw that Harry was playing with a dead jellyfish while Melissa tanned on her stomach, topless and asleep. “Crikey, what’ve you got there, Harry?”

  Harry gurgled and flung the jellyfish to the sand. Stanley noticed a number of jellyfish in the vicinity of his son. He bent to pick Harry up and considered dropping a jellyfish onto Melissa’s bare back to wake her. Impulsively, he decided not to wake her at all and instead took Harry to the hotel bar for a juice. That would teach her a better lesson.

  Things were astir at Salama. The veranda was filled with lounging hotel guests. Stanley pulled up a chair to the small, familiar crowd in the corner. He and Harry were greeted warmly by Onka, who was extremely pregnant, and Lady Emily, who didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. Stanley had known her in England, where her family and his attended some of the same parties. She petted the top of Harry’s head abstractly and lit a cigarette. Danny arrived with a trayful of drinks from the bar. “Splendid!” said Lady Emily, extending a long arm for a glass. “Don’t give any to Onka, she’s about to burst.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Onka said. “He’s all finished in there.”

  “Aren’t you terrified?” Lady Emily asked. “I would be. I mean, what sort of real painkillers do they have here?”

  “We’re going to try to do it in the water. Sabo read a book about it. He says babies can swim right after they’re born. It’s supposed to be less traumatic.”

  “In the ocean?” Stanley wrestled to get his son comfortably situated on his lap. Harry pulled his hand out of his mouth and reached, trancelike, for Onka’s protruding belly. Onka squealed and pressed a hand to her side. “He’s kicking! I think he wants to talk to Harry.” Onka was Danish-Kenyan and had been on the island for ten years. To Stanley, she looked like she was sixteen. He found an enormous belly on an otherwise nubile body somehow obscene. He shifted Harry away from her bulge and turned to Danny, whose face was all but hidden by an absurd-looking lady’s sun hat covered with pink flowers. Stanley could think of nothing to say to Danny, who could be unpredictably acerbic, so he turned his son around to face him and, affecting deep involvement, bounced him on his knee.

  “How’s married life, Stanley?” Danny asked. “Daisy getting along all right?”

  “Managing nicely, thanks.”

  “You know, I don’t think she likes me.”

  “Who, Daisy?”

  “Yes, I get that distinct feeling.”

  “I’m sure you’re wrong. Daisy’s a very nice girl at heart.”

  “To me she seems a bit hostile.”

  “Well, maybe a bit of postpregnancy temper, that’s all.”

  “Did you hear that, Onka? You should prepare your husband for some postpartum bitchiness.” Onka smiled serenely and put her hands on her belly. “We’re lucky not to have to go through that, aren’t we, Stanley?” Danny asked.

  “I think it’s terribly unfair that you can’t go through it,” Lady Emily said. “It would help gender relations considerably. I wish Staz could have my baby. I have no interest in going through the ordeal myself. Yuck and double yuck.”

  “Besides, you’d lose your fabulous shape, like Daisy did. It would become an epidemic,” Danny said. “Can’t have a bunch of fatties lying around in bikini land. It would ruin all the fun.”

  Stanley looked around the veranda, wishing he could talk to the hotel guests instead of being mired in another inane conversation with this licentious group of dissolutes he called his friends. It wasn’t that he disliked them, it was that everything they spoke about was contaminated by fiendish contempt. He wasn’t sure how the malice crept in, but it did, always. He motioned to the waiter and ordered a mint julep for himself and some diluted papaya juice for Harry. He held his son close to him.

  “Where’s your new friend, Danny?”

  “Oh, yes.” Onka clapped her hands. “I heard you have a crush.”

  “Miss Muffet? I imaging she is reading her books. Anyway, I wouldn’t think of subjecting her to any of you. She’s far too innocent.”

  “Well, sometime you’ve got to introduce us properly,” Lady Emily said. “Have a party or something. So we can observe her.”

  “She’s not nearly as beautiful as you, Emily, so no need to be vicious. She’s actually quite awkward-looking.”

  “Vicious?” Lady Emily laughed. “I’ll be sugar sweet, as always.”

  “Is this the American girl?” Stanley asked. “I rather like the way she looks.”

  “Well,” Danny said. “May the best man win.”

  “I think you misunderstood me,” Stanley said, focusing on tipping juice into Harry’s tiny mouth.

  “Did I? Well, I’m not surprised she hasn’t captured your fancy. She’s not exactly dripping with sexuality. She prefers to read.”

  “Like you,” Onka said.

  “Yes, like me.”

  “Now I do want to meet her,” Lady Emily said.

  “You’d only scare her, Emily.”

  “More than you, Danny? I doubt it. Let’s have a party. When Staz and I get back from safari. It must be somebody’s birthday this month.”

  “Stanley, I think your nanny has arrived,” Danny said. “She looks like a mad cat.”

  Melissa was stalking toward them, inflamed with sunburn. She stood behind Stanley and p
ut her hands on her hips in her now familiar stance of domestic rebellion. “You might have told me where you were off to.”

  “You seemed quite peaceful there,” Stanley replied. “I decided not to wake you.”

  “I nearly fainted with fright.” Quite suddenly, Melissa burst into tears.

  “Oh, now, it’s all right,” Stanley said, relenting. “Here, take Harry. You see, he’s happy to see you.” Melissa buried her face in the child’s neck. Stanley was quietly pleased with himself. His plan had worked. “He’s had a little juice but he’s probably ready for some lunch.”

  Melissa was tenderly stroking the back of Harry’s head. “Well,” she said wearily, “I’m off, then.”

  “Good-bye, Melissa!” Danny boomed as she walked away. Melissa spun around, confused. The baby started to cry.

  “See what you’ve done, Danny,” Lady Emily said. “Big ogre.”

  Stanley rose. “Well, I’m off too,” he said, not yet knowing where he was off to.

  As he left the hotel, Stanley spotted Tarkar coming in and went to the beach to signal Nelson. He sat on the sand and waited for Nelson to ride in to shore. Scanning the beach, he looked out for the American girl. If he saw her again he would approach her, if only to save her from Danny. She read books, damn it. Why couldn’t Daisy read? Books alone could save a failing marriage; he was suddenly and wildly certain of it.

  Stanley watched as Nelson neared the beach in Tarkar’s dinghy. Nelson held both sides of the boat as he teetered to his feet and launched himself into the shallows, dragging the dinghy behind him. He stumbled, dripping, onto the sand and settled himself next to Stanley.

  “I think you should take more men next time out,” Stanley said. “Tarkar can handle it and that means more lines, and more fish.”

  Nelson seemed unusually pensive. “If you think so,” he said reluctantly.

  “Why not?”

  “Finn only has Jonah. Seems like enough. Don’t want to overdo it.”

  “Finn couldn’t take another man if he wanted to. Doesn’t have the room or the engine.”

  Nelson looked a bit happier. “True.”

  “I’d like to keep a gun on board.”

  “A gun?”

  “In case of emergencies. Say you hook a wild fish, or if you get in trouble and run out of flares. You can hear a gunshot for miles.” Stanley paused. “Maybe the crew takes a swim and the sharks are out.”

  Nelson was nodding his head. “I can see that.”

  “For safety,” Stanley confided. “Can you shoot a gun?”

  Nelson’s face peeled into a smile. “I’m Kenyan. I can kill a bull elephant with one bullet.”

  “All right, then, great white hunter. I’ll bring one out this afternoon. I’ve got a derringer.”

  Nelson was impressed. “I wonder what Finn will think of a gun on board.”

  “I don’t think you need to tell Finn, Nelson. This is Tarkar’s business.”

  Part Three

  CHAPTER

  14

  A Night Swim

  Three days passed like one long afternoon. It was as if the heat had softened the shape of time, resculpting its passage. Ingrid’s clothes were always damp, either with sweat or from washing. She no longer knew what was clean and what wasn’t: everything had started to smell the same. She sat cross-legged on her roof as the muezzin’s call sounded for the third time that day. Time, she decided, was broken and divided and reconnected by calls to prayer. Odd, dissonant melodies five times a day, more than any one thing she had ever experienced in a twelve-hour period. It was a day shaped not by the customary peaks of breakfast, lunch and dinner, but by many rolling hills in between.

  Like most of the island, Ingrid rose and fell with the sun. Only the bar at Salama defied the rule and rhythm of the days. The bar ran contra natura, as Templeton would have said. Against nature. But above nature on this island was God.

  God causes the dawn to break,

  And has made the night for rest,

  And the sun and moon for reckoning . . .

  Ingrid put down the Koran. It was Christmas Eve. Soon, she allowed herself to hope, Templeton would be available to discuss this God, among other things. They would have a drink and she would tell him about the trouble she’d had in tracking him. He would rant about the dangers of an overactive imagination and she would settle back to listen to a long story.

  Ingrid stared across the bay at Tomba Island and decided she would swim the channel to its beach. It was safe; Ali had done it many times. “You see these arms?” he had said. “You can’t get arms like this just from walking in the sand.” Ingrid had pretended to ignore his arms, but they were noticeably well-formed. She circled her own upper arm with her fingers and decided she wanted to be stronger—wanted to make herself do something hard. Besides, her body’s temperature had begun to annoy her; it was first too hot and then too cool. Physical exertion might excite her nerve endings into some kind of release.

  Ali followed her to the beach and stopped her before she stepped into the sea. “There is a jellyfish tide, Miss Ingrid. Not good for swimming.” Ingrid looked down. Around her ankles lay dozens of transparent carcasses, their fringes undulating lifelessly with the tide’s pull. She stepped out of the water and saw she had walked through a graveyard of dead jellyfish. The sand showed right through their gelatinous bodies. “The water is no good for another day, maybe longer,” Ali informed her. “The jellyfish are poisonous.”

  “I have never understood how something transparent can be dangerous.”

  Ali shrugged. “Many poisons are clear. I discovered that at the Salama bar.”

  Ingrid sat on the sand and pulled her knees to her chest. Ali sat next to her. “Don’t you have anything else to do, Ali? It’s prayer time, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll pray here, with you.”

  “Why are you watching me so closely?”

  “I like watching you. In addition, you are my responsibility.”

  “Since when did I become your responsibility? In America, it’s fine for women to be by themselves.”

  “I would like to go to America,” he said, playing with a piece of driftwood.

  “It would ruin you. But at least you would learn to leave people alone.”

  “I will sit over there, on that log.”

  “No. I don’t want to stay here.”

  “You are not grateful I told you about the jellyfish?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed them.” Ingrid began walking quickly back to the village. Ali followed at a distance.

  After they had discussed the Koran and its complex instruction of both violence and peace, they would approach the subject of faith on Pelat. She would ask Templeton about the men who neglected their worship and the women who, as if governed by a different set of rules, danced themselves into joy.

  Ingrid took care in preparing herself that night. After a long shower, she drew the curtains in her room and let herself dry naturally, brushing her hair until her scalp tingled. She slipped on a skirt and blouse before smoothing her hair back from her face and fastening it with a clip. Finally, she held up her smudged compact mirror to apply lipstick. Maybe, after everything else, Templeton would explain the enigma of Finn—about whom she had achieved partial resolution. Their brief encounter had stirred her imagination, encouraging a tropical fantasy that had sprung to life in the rich soil of too many empty hours and no Templeton. When Templeton returned, these other thoughts would dissipate. Until then, she had no need to see a man whose indifference to her was insulting.

  Her position changed when she saw Finn drinking alone at the hotel bar, his broad back hunched to the room. She wanted to approach him. Instead she went to the end of the bar and stood in his arc of vision, hoping he would see what men sometimes saw in her. She told herself she would not move toward him unless he moved first.

  She paid for her drink and carried it away from the bar through the open doors to the stone terrace, where a week-old new
spaper sat on a wicker chair. She held the paper in front of her, her back to the bar. This is how strong I am, she wanted to tell him. I can wait and if you don’t come I will be fine because I don’t need you to come.

  She read an article about Daniel Arap Moi, the president of Kenya. She followed the article to the jump page, reading to the end. There was internal strife in Kenya’s government. Tribes were competing for power and position. Kikuyus, Luos, the occasional Masai. Maybe she could approach him directly, ask him if he had any news from Templeton. Ask a legitimate question and get it over with. But then it would be over and she did not want it to be over so soon.

  She had started another article about the ban on ivory when a man with pressed white pants sat near her on the terrace. She heard him order a bourbon on the rocks in his perfect upper-class English accent and kept reading. His cologne drifted toward her, finally forcing her to look up from her paper. He was fortyish and attractive in a safe way, like a well-executed painting by a cautious artist forever aware of his patron. He caught her staring.

  “It’s Christmas Eve, you know,” he said. “That’s what I love about Africa. Here it’s just another day.”

  Ingrid folded her paper. “Why do you love that?”

  “One gets a chance to do things differently, I suppose.”

  “What do you do differently here?”

  “Forget my manners, for one thing. My name’s Stanley Wicks.”

  “Ingrid Holtz.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” A waiter arrived with his bourbon, which Stanley Wicks rushed to his lips. “Dining by myself on a holiday is different. Asking a stranger to join me is also different.”

  “I’ve never minded eating alone,” Ingrid said. “I’m sorry—was that an invitation?”