by Rita Pomade
We were invited aboard the ship for drinks. The captain fussed over Dedé as an older woman, and she basked in the limelight. I hoped she’d remember this day as she always claimed to have had a miserable time after any vacation she’d been on. Things were always better in France.
A while after we had settled in, the first mate arrived with a rolledup chart under his arm. When Captain Kujinsky unrolled the paper, I saw that it was a diagram of the engine. He looked at it for a moment and then took a pendulum out of his pocket and started moving it around the diagram.
“There,” he said. “There’s the problem.” The first mate nodded and left.
“We have so little in the way of financial resources, I have to use my divining gift to keep the freighter afloat,” he explained. He added that he was sometimes called in by the Belgium police to find missing bodies.
“What can you tell us that might be useful?” I asked.
“Never live near weeping willows or your life will only know sorrow, and see that there are evergreen trees wherever you are. They give health, happiness, and a good life.”
“Thank you, Captain Kujinsky.”
Every time I see a weeping willow or an evergreen, I think of the captain. I will never live near a weeping willow as beautiful as I find them, and I love the energy of evergreens. Fortunately, I live in a country where they grow in abundance.
About six the next morning, the Santa Rita started to rock violently. A sudden squall with winds gusting about 80 miles an hour loosened the anchor of a huge freighter near us. It got caught in our mooring and was dragging us. Bernard scrambled on deck and saw we were only twenty feet from the pier. The wind was so strong he couldn’t remain on deck. The only thing we could do was sit below deck and wait out the storm. We were in luck. The mooring held.
Not willing to give in to the erratic weather we were experiencing, Bernard and I hailed a cab to take us to the American Embassy where I had a distant relative who was an attaché. The next day was Saturday, so we thought we’d invite him and his wife for a sail if they were free. The invitation was accepted and Bernard met them at the pier with the dinghy and brought them aboard the Santa Rita. We were not out very long when the swells on the open ocean were more than they could take. We had no choice but to take them back to shore. The two ladies were not perturbed. Again, I was impressed by Dedé’s resilience, as well as Geneviève’s stoicism. It was frustrating that they behaved in such a hostile manner towards me.
Anchoring in Colombo wasn’t safe for our small, fibreglass yacht, so we decided to return to the more protected harbour in Galle. All we had seen of Colombo was the uninteresting downtown section with its fair share of cars and the occasional elephant vying for road space.
The return was not easy. We again found ourselves in the middle of a violent squall. Bernard and I put on our rain slickers and went on deck to steady the boat. The weather was miserably cold. Bernard took the helm and turned the bow into the wind so that we could reef the sail and lower the jib. Once he turned the yacht back on course and gave the helm over to the autopilot, we returned below deck. Our guests were quite relaxed. Either they trusted us completely or were totally oblivious to the situation.
Back in Galle with the Santa Rita safely moored in the harbour, we decided to take a train to Kandy, the famous tea country that spawned the Lipton Tea Company. Spending a few days in a small hotel out of our cramped living conditions would be heaven. Stefan as usual was left aboard the Santa Rita. He never complained, and I suspect he was happy to get some alone time when we left him behind. He had already told me he needed time to think, to figure out his future. A boat crowded with people and constant maintenance responsibilities wasn’t very conducive for that.
Our plan was to take a bus to Colombo, and then the train from there through Kandy to Ella. We had read in several tourist brochures that the train from Kandy to Ella travelled along some of the most beautiful landscape in the world. I was a bit sceptical, having already passed through so many beautiful places. But during that stretch of railway, I realised that this part of Sri Lanka really could be called a paradise, and I wasn’t disappointed that we made the journey. Sri Lanka didn’t live up to our fantasies, but the passage through the tea country made our stopover worth it.
The railway had been built by the British over a hundred years ago to carry tea from the plantations to Colombo for export. Our train passed through tunnels that opened up to undulating green hills and broad valleys that spread out to majestic purple mountain peaks halfhidden in mist. Bridges passed over rivers with cascading waterfalls tumbling down mountainsides. Small villages sprouted up and disappeared along the train route. They appeared etched into the landscape as though an artist had painted the tableau for the pleasure of the travellers. If I had to conjure up a biblical image of the Garden of Eden, it would be the tea country of Sri Lanka.
We travelled without reservations, but had no difficulty on our arrival finding a hotel in the small town of Ella. Geneviève and Dedé shared one room and Bernard and I had another. Within seconds of settling in, Dedé banged on our door to complain they had no towels or toilet paper. Bernard rushed into our bathroom, snatched the towels and went for the toilet paper. I got to the toilet paper first and pressed the roll to my breast.
“Hold on,” I said. “I also bathe and use paper.”
I tore off a wad of toilet paper and thrust it into Dedé’s hand. I was annoyed that I hadn’t been fast enough on the towels. Bernard’s mouth dropped open at my outburst. He just stood there looking stunned. I tracked down the manager and came back with two sets of towels and three rolls of toilet paper. I threw the toilet paper on the bed.
“This should hold her for a while.”
Ella was serene with lush green rolling hills, stately trees, and elegant homes. The tea plantations, spread out for miles over the hills, were worked by the Tamil. Several generations earlier they had been brought to Sri Lanka by the British, who had colonized the country, to do administrative work because they didn’t believe the local population was sufficiently efficient. It was during those years when Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon, and stories of the island’s serenity filled listeners back home with romantic longing for a gentler way of life.
But the reality was that once the British left the island, the Tamil lost their protection. Few jobs were available to them. One was working in the fields of the tea plantations. The work was backbreaking and their living conditions appalling. The Singhalese prejudice against these people along with the limiting of their rights made me think of the American south during the years of slavery. I wasn’t surprised that civil war broke out a few years after we departed. The wounds of discrimination had been festering for generations, and it was obvious that it was only a matter of time.
In Kandy there was an elephant orphanage, one of the few in the world, and the elephants are treated with respect. They’re well fed and cared for. I love animals and was happy to hear about the orphanage, but found it an irony that citizens of the country couldn’t be given the same consideration. Many Singhalese suffered from poverty. The gap between the rich and poor was enormous, and nothing was being done to change the situation. Families lived by begging or bilking the unwary tourist. It made my stomach clench every time I was accosted, which was often. Though I understood the desperation, I hated it, and was frustrated by the fact that I could do nothing about it.
Before leaving the hill country, we decided to visit the temple caves in Dambulla, a town a few hours by bus from Kandy. We got there early morning before the doors opened and had to wait. As usual Geneviève and I were together, and Bernard and his mother shared another sitting area. While Geneviève and I watched the antics of a group of hyperactive monkeys, Dedé spent the time combing ringlets into Bernard’s hair. Though I tried to focus on the frisky monkeys, intent on entertaining us, I kept being drawn to this bizarre scene of an adult man having his hair played with by his mother.
By the time the doors opened to
the temple, I had lost all interest in seeing the incredible groupings of stone-carved statues, most of them depicting Buddha’s life, and the exquisite murals covering the ceilings and walls. I just wanted to get out of there and back home. I had a hard time playing second fiddle to my mate’s mother, and I was angry at Bernard for being oblivious to how he was pushing me out of his life. Today I regret not having paid more attention to these sacred caves.
My sole consolation at knowing that our guests would soon leave us was short-lived by the horrible outpouring of venom Stefan received on our return. While we were gone, he had invited a friend for a visit. When Dedé found out, she was furious. She felt he had no right to have anyone aboard while we were gone. Since this was his home and not hers, I thought she was way out of line to chastise him. She stormed off and left Bernard to finish what she started. Bernard berated Stefan for several minutes, and when Stefan didn’t respond, he started calling him names. He finally ran out of steam and left to join his mother. I held myself back from interfering because I wanted Stefan to speak up. He was almost twenty-one and perfectly capable of defending himself.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. “You didn’t have to take that from Bernard.” I felt so much pain for what I thought he must be feeling.
But Stefan didn’t feel what I was feeling. He answered me with no hint of agitation.
“Mom,” he said. “Bernard is a very angry man who is trying to hold it all together. He was pushing me to respond so that he could feel justified in releasing that anger. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Let him carry it and deal with it.”
It occurred to me at that moment that my son was a lot more mature than I was. But it didn’t stop me from feeling that we were both being bullied. My first thought was to jump ship. I wanted to offer myself as crew on another yacht and just get away. But I wasn’t going to leave my son behind. And I didn’t want to lose the time and investment I had put into making this adventure happen. I also had no money and no place to go.
More than anything, I wanted to sell the Santa Rita. Being treated as an uninvited guest on my own boat was not what I bargained for when I envisioned this adventure. I was going to enjoy what I could of our journey, but I no longer had any illusions about a perfect life in some beautiful paradise or two happy soul mates on the same path. Wherever I was, was where I was as a single adventurous soul on a personal journey. There was no idyllic place where one lived happily ever after. I’d always be taking me with me, and it didn’t matter so much what was going on outside or who I was with, as what was happening inside. The yacht was now a roof over my head from which I planned to take control of my life. It was no longer a magic carpet.
Next morning I saw Dedé sitting alone by the pier. She looked spaced out and dejected.
“Is something the matter?” I asked.
“I had a dream,” she said. “My cat had a wounded ear, but I couldn’t heal it.”
“That’s not so bad. It’s just one of those frustrating dreams where we try to get something finished, but it never happens.”
“The wounded cat was Bernard,” she replied.
Whose fault is that? I thought.
“Maybe,” I said, taken aback by her desire to analyse the dream. I never would have guessed she had such an inclination.
Later that day, Dedé decided to go for a swim. A slight breeze came up and Bernard panicked. He called for Stefan to throw her one of the rubber tires we used to buffer the yacht from other yachts or for protection against a concrete pier. As Stefan went towards the tire, Bernard started to shout at him for moving too slowly. In truth, his Dedé wasn’t in danger, and Stefan wasn’t moving slowly. At that moment I would have been happy if Dedé drowned, or at least panicked and flailed about in the water.
Since Dedé didn’t drown, she and Geneviève decided to spend their last day buying gifts for friends and family back home.
“What would you like, Rita?” she asked. “We want to give you with something for having us.”
“Maybe a skirt,” I said. The market had cheap, cotton wrap-around skirts that would be ideal for getting in and out of the dinghy.
That afternoon they returned with a stash of gifts to take home, including a batik sarong for Bernard.
“I’m sorry,” Dedé said. “We didn’t get you anything. The skirts were too expensive.”
I couldn’t have cared less. The best gift for me was to see their backsides as they left for the airport.
“Thank God they’re gone,” I said to Bernard as we headed back to the Santa Rita. I was so relieved to have my space back.
Bernard was offended. I explained to him how much he made me feel like an outsider when they were with us. “You only included me in a conversation the day they were leaving, and then made me appear like an ingrate when I couldn’t respond.” I went on to explain how I went out of my way for them, but the good will was never reciprocated.
I lashed out about Geneviève. “She slept in what still is my home, ate the meals I prepared, used my hospitality for two weeks and thanked me with devious behaviour and a ten cent plastic hair clip. That she has a big personal income doesn’t change the fact she sucks off others.”
“Stop the soap opera,” he responded.
His response to my obvious hurt was cruel. I sat down and wrote him a letter in the hope that I would get through: “Soaps are successful,” I wrote, “because they take their material from recognizable human experience. It’s not the other way around. By calling all emotional expression soap, you degrade humans to the level of objects and elevate the sociopath to the level of socially evolved.”
I also mentioned my concern with his drinking, and how it affected his behaviour. I know I wrote this as well as much more, because I have the letter. When I told Bernard I was writing the memoir, he handed me the yellowed, crumpled letter that I had written more than thirty years ago.
“You saved it,” I said, “Why?”
He looked puzzled. “I don’t know.”
I was touched. From everything that had been aboard the Santa Rita, this was the one thing he kept all these years. Had he been aware of the pull of his mother and its destructive effect on me and just couldn’t deal with it? He still couldn’t talk about it.
Several days after our guests left, Interpol came looking for that lovely, young couple that Dède liked so much. Apparently, they had thrown an elderly couple overboard near the coast of Columbia and took possession of the yacht. Now the international police were trying to track them down, but with no luck. They had left over a week before and no one knew where they were heading. I thought about Dedé’s ability to judge character. Perhaps I should feel grateful she didn’t like me.
Chapter 19
TERROR ON THE HIGH SEAS
Summer 1983: Sri Lanka To Singapore
We are the sea’s and as such we are at its beck.
We are the water within the wave and the wave’s form.
— P.K. PAGE
With Dède gone, Bernard slipped back into the easy relationship he’d had with Stefan and me before her arrival. I was caught off balance by his sudden shift from blind devotion to Dède to bringing us back into his life. I hoped he’d be receptive to talking about it.
“What happened?” I asked. “Why did you turn against us when your mother was here?”
Bernard looked puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“You know, yelling at Stefan and putting me down in front of her whenever you could. You hardly talked to us and behaved as though we were strangers.”
“What have you got against my mother?”
I remembered him telling me years before that his mother was a controlling and manipulative woman, and that I should be careful of her. Now he was defending her. I wondered what had changed. But then he smiled and gave me a hug, and my anger and suspicion disappeared.
Sri Lanka wasn’t the paradise Clarke wrote about, so we weren’t planning to stay long. However, the visit of Be
rnard’s mother delayed our leaving by several weeks. We now had a shorter window of time to cross the Arabian Sea before the start of India’s southeast monsoon season. A tropical storm over such an enormous body of water made sailing through one too dangerous to attempt. We had to leave soon, but needed to work on the Santa Rita before our departure.
With the yacht raised onto its cradle on dry dock, Bernard and Stefan took turns climbing a ladder to the underside of the hull to scrape the hard crustaceans that held fast. Barnacles that clung below the waterline created a drag that slowed our speed under sail and burned too much fuel under engine. The antifouling applied in Taipei should have protected the hull for a longer period of time, but the boatyard skimped on the application. Now we had no choice but to repaint the hull’s bottom before we sailed.
On one of Bernard’s trips down the ladder, he slipped and fell, cutting his shin. I had the first aid kit ready the minute he scrambled into the boat. As I was about to clean out the wound, I asked him what he thought the white stuff was in his leg.
“Bone,” he said.
“Oh,” I muttered.
I handed him the paraphernalia for dealing with the problem, backed myself into the settee on the other side of the salon, and went into a slight swoon.
Bernard quickly cleaned and dressed his wound, pulling the two edges of his cut shin together with a butterfly bandage. In less than a half hour he was back outside working with Stefan to lower the Santa Rita into the waterway leading to the ocean.
“We’ve no time to lose,” he said. “I can’t wait for this leg to heal.”