Finn hooked himself into the harness and waited, his eyes trained on the area right behind the bait. A few minutes later, a black fin broke the surface. “Marlin tailing!” he called to Jonah. “Keep her at four knots.” Finn clipped himself to the starboard rod. The marlin swam up and struck the bait with its bill. The line jerked from the outrigger clip, and suddenly went slack. Jonah cut the throttle. “Take it, take it,” Finn whispered as the bonito disappeared below the surface. The marlin turned and went for the bait. “He’s got it,” Finn cried out. The line fed out as the fish swam off, giving it enough time to swallow the bonito. Finn counted to ten and then struck.
“Go!” he yelled. Jonah gunned the boat forward. The hook set, the line whirred. Finn let the fish run for a few hundred meters, and when half the line was out, he started reeling it in, guiding it onto the spool with his thumb. The marlin let itself be pulled in a few meters and then ran again.
“Shit,” Finn said. It ran a hundred meters or more before he started pumping it again. The fish came in slowly: it was at least three hundred pounds. When it jumped, Finn tightened the line as soon as it started to come down, throwing it off balance so that it landed with a whack.
“Try that again,” Finn murmured. “It’ll make this faster.” The line went slack and the rod jerked to the right. “He’s circling,” he called out, pumping the line in quickly. “C’mon, up you come . . .” He held the fish on a short line, so it could feel the pressure. The marlin jumped to the port side of the boat. Finn tightened the line again while Jonah tied a slip noose in a heavy rope and put it around Finn’s legs.
When the fish was played out, Finn pulled the leader toward him, hand over hand. Jonah grabbed the flying gaff. The marlin’s bill surfaced again and Jonah pulled the slip noose up Finn’s body and over the rod. It slid down the leader, onto the bill and over the fish’s head. Jonah laid the gaff over the head and pulled it tight. The fish was lifted and suspended. Keeping the rod tip high, Finn pushed the rope over the dorsal fin to the tail and yanked it tight. Then, together, they pulled it over the deck.
It was a magnificent fish. Ten years ago, they would have taken it with them. Now it was against the rules. Some white man had taken to calling it a “sport fish,” and now it was something you caught for competition. A fleet of boats cruised the coast for these sport fish so they could capture a title. The competition, the title, had meant nothing to Finn at first, but since Wicks came to the island, that had changed.
“Quickly, Jonah,” Finn said. They tailed and measured the fish and let it go.
The next day they refueled in Malindi and headed south to Turtle Bay. They kept along the continental shelf, a couple of kilometers offshore. Finn dropped the anchor at the edge of the shelf and fastened a buoy to the top of the anchor line. They cast two lines and pulled in a kingfish and two tuna. The sea was ragged with wind.
“Do you see what I see?” Finn said.
“Of course.” Tarkar was coming toward them at high throttle, smooth as silk. Finn and Jonah pulled in their lines. Nelson sidled up alongside Uma, a Walkman on his ears. “Take that thing off!” Finn yelled. Nelson slid the headset to his neck and leaned over the side to look at Uma’s deck. He pointed to the buoyed anchor line. “Expecting something big?” he shouted.
“Never know,” Finn said.
“Any luck?”
“Some.”
“We hit a shoal of snapper fifty kilometers north on the way down,” Nelson said. “Sailfish. Couldn’t bait it.” He grinned and spit. “They’re out there, all right. A boat in Malindi got two marlin last week—two- and three-hundred-pounders.”
“Should be a good season.” Finn took off his hat and adjusted it. He saw only one crew member on deck. “How many do you have on board?”
“Four. Need every one. We’re running up to five lines.”
“I guess she’s big enough to handle it.” He put his foot on the edge of the boat and leaned into it with his knee. “What are they doing down there?”
“Wicks got us some high-tech rods. They’re putting them together.” Nelson grinned. “We’ll be hauling some big ones.”
“Uh-huh. Don’t get all those lines tangled. You using wire?”
“No, not this time around.”
“Good.”
Nelson rearranged the pouch of tobacco in his cheek. “Got a new girlfriend, Finn?”
“No.”
“Word is you’re sweet on someone.”
“Not unless she’s got dorsals.”
Nelson grinned again. “You tried that konahead?”
“Not yet. Just bait so far.”
“Wait till you see how fast those konas are picked up. Easier to swallow too, they slide right down.” Nelson took off his hat and scratched his head. “Seems this area is being fished pretty well. We’re headed down to Kalifi, stop at Mnarani, see what’s doing. Wicks is primed for this season, wants to keep the title. Where you headed?”
“Blue water. No farther.” Both men looked around. It seemed to Finn that Nelson was imitating Wicks’ accent. “Good luck, then. See you back on the island.”
Nelson was right, the shelf was being fished and Finn preferred to stay clear of other boats. When they lost sight of Tarkar, Finn’s mind started to calm and he was able to think about Nelson with less anger. High-tech rods, wire lines, Walkmen. Like Finn’s father, Nelson was unconsciously dangerous. The thoughtless actions of such men offended God’s order, if there was one. Fatima’s voice sounded in his ears; it was her thoughts he heard when he considered the question of God.
You are luckier than your friends, she often told Finn. Am I? He asked. Of course, she said incredulously. They know nothing of God.
And what do I know?
But Fatima had long stopped answering such impertinent questions.
Finn had never known his mother, but Fatima said she had died for a reason: Finn was meant to know God and Fatima was the mother Allah had sent to teach him. But there was a great distance between God and Finn. Occasionally, God came to him at sea, when Finn had both the time and space to consider him. The rising pulses of the waves lulled him, and for a moment the aggravated majini were expelled and a larger presence settled in. Something like peace came over him as the sound of Tarkar’s engine grew distant. He held the wheel lightly, and the boat moved ahead on her own. Every time he thought he might bring God back with him to the island, and every time God deserted. With each kilometer that brought Uma closer to home, he shrank inside Finn. By the time they were anchored in the bay, God had been reduced to a wisp of an idea that he could only sometimes grasp. Then Danny was there at the hotel bar, ready to escort him straight to hell.
Jonah yelled. Finn closed his eyes. Then, over his shoulder, he saw a marlin tailing the bait. He kept Uma steady until the fish struck. Jonah, bare-chested and smiling, was hooked in and ready. Finn slowed the boat and the line fell away. “Wait,” he said. Jonah was an early striker. They waited. The line continued to sink. “Has he taken it?”
“Not yet.”
“Just wait,” Finn said. “He’s deciding.” Jonah was poised, legs and arms tense.
“Damn fish,” he said. “He doesn’t want it.” Then the line started to move.
“He’s taking, don’t strike yet,” Finn said. By now the line had fed out a few hundred yards. “Now!” Jonah struck. Finn pushed the throttle forward. The line sang as it spun from the reel.
“He’s a big one,” Jonah said through his teeth. “Very big.” As soon as he turned it, the marlin jumped. “Finn!” Jonah gasped. “Five hundred at least.”
The fish fought for an hour, jumping, arcing, tailwalking. Jonah, drenched with sweat, started pulling the fish in. Then, thirty meters out, the line went taut.
“He’s moving again,” Jonah said.
Finn went back to the wheel. “Where’s he going?” he yelled.
“I don’t know!” Jonah’s rod bent down into the shape of a hook. “He’s sounding!”
“Oh, Ch
rist. We’ll plane him!” Finn gunned the boat forward. Jonah fed the fish line until it was far behind the boat. As Finn slowed Uma down, Jonah stopped feeding the line. “Don’t break too much,” Finn warned. He pushed the throttle forward to pull the fish up from below. Jonah’s rod bent low. “Is he coming?”
“I think so.”
“Hang on to him.” Uma moved forward against the weight of the marlin. The angle of the line evened until there was no resistance, no fight at all. A fin broke the blue surface of the water. “Shit,” Finn said. “He’s playing dead.”
After they had it slip-noosed and gaffed, the marlin suddenly came back to life, swinging wildly from the support. Finn and Jonah threw themselves to the side of the boat to stay clear of its bill. Then a shot rang out and the fish went limp.
The two men stared at the lifeless body. Finn crouched down beside it and slowly fingered a bullet hole in its head in disbelief. “What the hell!” He looked around. Tarkar was off his port side. Finn waved her over.
“What the hell are you doing?” Finn shouted when the boat was within earshot. Nelson drifted up next to Uma and cut the motor. He stood at Tarkar’s port side, hands on his hips, legs splayed.
“That fish was going to kill you,” he said. “You were too close.”
“You could have killed one of us, you idiot.”
“I’m a good shot, Finn. I’ve been practicing. And the fish was too big. It could have sliced you in half.” Tarkar’s waves rocked Uma. Finn steadied himself with one hand on the fish. “It could have killed you both. Almost did.”
“Bullshit!” Finn pushed the marlin away from him. It swung port and starboard. “Does Wicks have you carrying guns too?”
“Relax, Finn, it’s a record fish. You should thank me. Measurements that big are hard to believe. Better to have the fish.”
“It’s against the law, or have you forgotten? Who do you think you are on that boat—Stanley Wicks?”
Nelson spit and then smiled. “Cool down, Finn.”
Finn turned away from Tarkar and stared at the planks of the boat. Nelson started the engine so that Finn had to shout over the noise. “What the hell are you doing with a gun?”
Nelson smiled and waved as Tarkar pulled away.
The marlin was strung up on the waterfront, where it was surrounded by boys and men. Behind the crowd was Ingrid with Stanley Wicks, who was saying something about the fish and gesticulating with his hands. Ingrid was listening intently. Wicks slipped his arm around her waist in what seemed to Finn like a gesture of ownership. Finn ignored them and squatted about ten meters from the fish. Its bill almost touched the ground; its eyes stared vacantly into the dirt. A boy was trying to pry its mouth open. Finn should have chased him off but he didn’t move. By afternoon the marlin would be hacked to pieces for dinner steaks. Finn stood and circled the fish until he could see the bullet hole, which one of the boys was fingering. “It was a real fighter,” he explained to his friend. “Finn went ‘bang!’ like to a fierce lion to kill it.”
Finn headed for the hotel, disgusted. Danny, who saw him coming, had a beer waiting.
“Nelson has gone mad,” Finn reported.
“Poor little pea-brain. It wasn’t long before his cranial fluid came to a boil.”
Finn drank his beer in one swallow. “Wicks has moved in on your girl.”
“What girl?”
“Ingrid.”
“Ah well, that’s all right.”
Finn pushed his empty beer bottle away. “I need something stronger.”
“You like her,” Danny mused. “Don’t you?”
“No more than you.”
“I don’t. She’s just another woman.”
Finn looked around for Jackson, who had momentarily disappeared. Annoyed, he lit a cigarette. “It’s Wicks that bothers me.”
Danny affected a Swahili accent. “And why should one such as this affect one such as you?”
“Because he makes it his business to interfere. And he’s married.”
“She’s not stupid, you know. No ingenue, our girl.”
“But she trusts people.”
“Criminal!” Danny banged the bar with his fist.
“Just dangerous.”
Two double shots of tequila arrived. Danny rubbed his hands together and nudged one toward Finn. “Drink this down and then tell me if this is protective brotherly love talking or something else.”
“Tequila, is it? You’re bringing out the big guns. Is it brotherly love you have for me, Danny, or is it something else?”
Danny tilted his glass and winked. “Wouldn’t pay you the insult of calling you family.”
Finn held his tequila to the light. “This stuff messes with my head.”
“I pay good money for that mess. Bottoms up.”
Finn closed his eyes tightly as he drank.
CHAPTER
22
The Last Visit
Ingrid had seen Finn at the waterfront. He had looked away from her before she could distance herself from Stanley’s encircling arm. Finn would misunderstand about Stanley just as he had misunderstood about Templeton. Her own judgment of Templeton depended, it seemed, on her mood. In her darker moments, she had come to suspect her professor of orchestrating the anonymous note. He was, she was beginning to realize, unorthodox enough to do such a thing.
From the hotel terrace, Ingrid watched Finn rowing in his skiff and drank him in without moving a limb, afraid he would see her and alter his routine, his morning worship. She wanted only to keep looking, to somehow absorb him. She had developed a hunger for him that she hated because, while she did not understand him, she understood that Finn did not think about her. She taunted herself by imagining what it might feel like to be in his arms again. They would not, she thought, try to make her feel safe. There was no complicating this man. The defeat, the anger she felt, came with the realization that his terms, the laws that governed him, were stronger than hers.
That night he came to her again and Ingrid’s heart pounded so hard she could not sleep. He was drunk and slept through the night without touching her. In the morning, he left before dawn. Ingrid said nothing, did nothing to stop him. Let him go. It was a war of attrition; soon enough he would hold her. Soon enough he would speak. Then let him go. Be strong. Stronger than he is.
The following night she waited for him and slept poorly, listening for his step. He did not come.
Then he was there again, touching her, his fingertips on the small of her back, the curve of her hip. Ingrid could not sleep with him next to her. “I’m going to talk to you,” she told him. The room rose and fell with his breath. With her head on his chest, she moved with his breathing and pretended they were at sea. “Just for a while. I don’t know what you think of me. Do you think about me at all? I don’t think you do. Here’s a confession. I think of you when you are somewhere else. On your boat. I think of you there.”
His arm moved around her shoulder and held it. He was half-asleep. “I think you think about many men,” he mumbled.
Ingrid pressed her cheek into him. “What men?” she whispered, but he said nothing more. His arm around her loosened as he left her for sleep.
In the morning, Finn sat up and put his head in his hands. Ingrid pressed herself into the hollow between his shoulder blades. He was holding a photograph that had fallen from the chair. It was the picture of him and Templeton with the marlin.
“Why do you have this?”
“He sent it to me.”
“This does not belong to you.” Finn was looking closely at the photograph. He seemed on the verge of saying something and then, thinking better of it, put the photograph back on the chair and turned to go.
Then Finn stopped coming. Uma was still in the harbor, but he did not go to the bar at night and he did not come to her room. Ingrid slept badly for two nights, waiting for the latch on her door to lift. In the day, she was weary and unfocused. She tried to nap and instead drifted into a nervous state of anxiety.<
br />
She saw him finally, at the hotel. She had told herself when she found him she would be gentle, although she did not feel gentle. He had deserted her and she was angry because she could not find him when she was sure she finally had something to say. When she saw him, all she could think of saying was come to bed with me again; lie with me in your silence. I promise not to speak.
He was eating lunch on the terrace. His face was stony, his eyes rimmed with red. Without me, you sleep badly, Ingrid thought. I sleep badly without you. He told her it was the sun that had burned his eyes. Another lie, she thought, hardening herself against him. He pairs his truth with lies.
Inside, she drank a breeze like a milkshake and waited for him. By the time he came in, she was drunk. She held out her sunglasses. “Take these. They’ll help your eyes.” He left them on the bar. Jackson gave them back to her with a quiet shake of his head and took away her empty glass.
“Where has he gone?”
“Maybe down to the beach, Miss Ingrid.”
She found Finn crouched over a fishing net on the sand. “Why can’t you take anything from me,” she demanded. “Why is it so hard for you?”
“I never asked you for anything.”
“Didn’t you?” Ingrid floundered. Hadn’t he?
“You’re drunk,” he said.
“It’s so I can talk to you.” She sank to her knees in the sand. “I want you to tell me about your god.”
Finn smiled stiffly. “Is that really what you want to know?”
“Yes! Tell me who he is.”
“Why? Because I am not acting as you want me to act?”
“Yes, I want to understand.”
“If it helps you understand, I will tell you that the god I believe in made men without shame. The fate of man’s soul is in his own hands, not God’s.”
An Obvious Enchantment Page 22