‘This is too stupid,’ said Françoise. ‘We cannot kill fish if we do not see them.’
Étienne grunted his agreement. ‘We cannot even see the water.’
‘Yes, we use the mask,’ Gregorio replied, holding it up, and I groaned.
‘Is that what you normally do when it rains?’
‘Of course.’
‘But that means only one person can fish at a time. It’s going to take for ever.’
‘It will take a long time, Richard.’
‘How about Moshe and the Yugoslavian girls, and the Swedes? They don’t have masks.’
‘They will try to catch fish but they will kill only a few…When it rains like this, we can get very hungry on the beach.’
‘And if it rains for five days?’ said Françoise. ‘It can rain for five days, no?’
Gregorio shrugged and glanced at the sky. From the look of it, the rain wouldn’t ease up for at least another twenty-four hours. ‘We can get very hungry on the beach,’ he repeated, and dug his spear further into the wet earth.
We lapsed into silence, each of us apparently waiting for someone else to take the first go on the mask. I wanted to stand under the palm tree all day, ignoring the enormity of the work ahead, because as soon as the work was begun we’d all be committed to finishing it.
Five minutes passed, then another five, and then Étienne slung his spear over his shoulder.
‘No,’ I said, sighing. ‘I’ll go first.’
‘Are you sure, Richard? We can throw a coin.’
‘You’ve got a coin?’
Étienne smiled. ‘We can throw…the mask. Face down, I will go first.’
‘I don’t mind going first.’
‘OK,’ he said, patting my arm. ‘So I shall go next.’
‘OK.’
Gregorio passed me the mask and I set off for the water. ‘Swim deeply and look under the boulders,’ he called after me. ‘The fish will be hiding.’
It was a buzz, swimming through the thick vapour. I couldn’t wear the mask because the spray was too dense to let me breathe through my mouth, which meant I was constantly blinking to clear the water from my eyes. With nothing to see but a blurred foot of sea on either side of me, and each breath requiring a manageable amount of labour, I felt agreeably cocooned by a mildly dangerous world.
I stopped at the first boulder I came to. It was one of the smaller ones, sixty or so metres from the shore. We rarely used it as there was only room for one person to sit on it at a time, but seeing as I was alone it didn’t make much difference. When I stood up my top half cleared the layer of mist. Étienne was standing on the sand, holding his hands like a peaked cap to ward off the rain. I waved my spear in the air and he spotted me, then turned to walk back to the tree-line.
The first thing I needed to do was to find a heavy stone so I could rest on the bottom with a decent lungful of air. I put on the mask and slipped into the water, kicking out for the sea floor. The light was dark grey, deadened by the black sky and the mist, but the visibility was good. There weren’t, however, any fish to be seen, not even the clouds of tiny fry which usually wheeled around the corals.
I took my time hunting for the stone, making myself move slowly. If there were any fish around I didn’t want to scare them off. Eventually I spotted one that looked the right size and weight. I’d run out of air by that time so I stuck my spear beside the stone to make it easy to find again, and rose up to the surface.
On the way back down a few milkfish appeared, coming to inspect the new arrival to their storm shelter. I settled at the bottom with the stone on my lap and waited for their curiosity to bring them within range.
♦
I saw the shark on my third dive. I’d just killed my first milkfish so it must have been attracted by the smell of blood. It wasn’t much of a shark, about a foot longer than my leg and much the same width, but it gave me a hell of a shock. I didn’t know what to do. Despite its small size it made me nervous, but I didn’t want to swim back with only one fish. I’d have to explain why I gave up so soon, and it would also be embarrassing if the shark was seen later. It was probably only a baby.
I decided I’d have to resurface and hang around on the boulder, hoping it would go away. I did this and spent the next ten minutes shivering in the mist and rain, crouched down because I didn’t want the others to see that I wasn’t fishing. Every so often I peered underwater to check if it was still there. It always was, circling slowly near the spot where I’d been sitting, watching me – I reckoned – with its inky eyes.
A brilliant idea coincided with a blistering peal of thunder. I put my milkfish, which was still in the twitching stage of death, on the tip of my spear. Then I rolled on to my front so I could dip my head and arms into the water, and held the spear ahead of me. The shark responded at once, breaking out of its leisured pace with a crisp snap of its tail. It headed towards me at an angle that would have carried it past the boulder, but six feet away it turned abruptly and lunged at the milkfish.
Out of sheer instinct I pulled the spear back. The lunge had been so quick and threatening that my reflexes had got the better of my common sense. The shark whipped past me and vanished behind a bank of corals. It didn’t reappear within ten seconds, so I pulled myself out of the water to get some air.
I swore at myself, took a few deep breaths, then dipped back in.
The next time the shark appeared it was more cautious, swimming near but showing little interest. The milkfish was dead by now and floating limply, so I tried jerking the spear to approximate life. The shark’s enthusiasm revived. Again it began its angled approach, but this time I took care to tense my arms. As it lunged, I pushed. The point of the spear caught momentarily on its teeth or gums, then sunk into its mouth.
With a mighty wrench I pulled myself upwards, stupidly thinking I’d hoist the shark on to the boulder behind me, but the spear simply snapped. I looked blankly at my broken spear for a couple of seconds, then shoved myself completely off the rock.
Underwater, the greyness was already hanging with curiously static strings of blood. Close by, the shark wildly thrashed and twisted, champing at the splintered bamboo between its teeth, sometimes diving directly downwards and ramming its snout on the seabed.
Watching it, I realized I’d never killed anything as large before, or anything that fought so violently for its survival. As if to complement my thought, the shark increased the intensity of its thrashing, and became obscured behind a cloud of disturbed sand and shredded seaweed. Occasionally, like in a comic-book fight, its tail or head would appear out of the cloud before darting back inside again. The sight made me grin, and salt-water eased through the sides of my mouth. I resurfaced. I needed to spit and I needed some air. Then, with no intention of going near it while it was in that frantic state, I floated face down and waited for it to die.
∨ The Beach ∧
47
Hi, Man
I don’t keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once, and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as though my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason, I don’t travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots and anything I forget to record is lost. Apart from that, photographs never seem to be very evocative. When I look through the albums of old travelling companions I’m always surprised by how little I’m reminded of the trip.
If only there were a camera that captured smell. Smells are far more vivid than images. I’ve often been walking in London on a hot day, caught the smell of hot refuse or melting tarmac and suddenly been transported to a Delhi side-street. Likewise, if I’m walking past a fishmonger’s I think instantly of Unhygienix, and if I smell sweat and cut grass (the lawn kind) I think of Keaty. I doubt either of them would appreciate being remembered in such a way, especially Unhygienix, but that’s how it is.