The Dutch Wife (12 page)

In the crowd was a man who wasn’t an islander. He came towards Thomas. He was of middle height, looked about thirty, with long, untidy black hair tied back in a pigtail. A cigarette dangled from his lips. His shirt and trousers were yellowish-white, stained with sweat. His face was sallow and lined and he needed a shave. “Thomas Vanderlinden?” The stranger put out his hand. “Alastair Macphee, at your service.” He had kindly brown eyes with shadows, perhaps of sickness, under them.

Thomas knew the name. In Toronto, Jeggard had told him this man would take him to his quarry.

“We’ll be staying here overnight,” Macphee said, lifting Thomas’s bag. “We start for the Highlands in the morning.”

Thomas followed him along the beach towards the village. They had to make their way through a large crowd of islanders, who were watching some activity in the shallow water about twenty feet out from the shore.

“It’s a marriage ceremony,” said Macphee. “Let’s wait till they finish. It’s not polite to pass by.”

Thomas watched with interest. A young woman with long black hair and a colourful wrap was standing in the water before a line-up of men of various shapes and ages, all wearing white loincloths. She went to the youngest-looking man in the line and embraced him.

“He’s the groom,” said Macphee.

She disengaged herself from him and began to wade along the line of men, stopping in front of each of them with her mouth wide open. Each man in turn leaned forward as though to kiss her, but instead spat into her mouth. She made a great show of swallowing the spit.

After she’d reached the end of the line, she went back to the groom and embraced him again. Then the wedding party came out of the sea and joined the spectators on the beach amidst laughter and hugging.

“That didn’t seem very hygienic,” Thomas said as Macphee began walking towards the village again.

“It’s actually just sea water they spit into her mouth,” Macphee said. “Most of these people depend on the sea, that’s why they stand in it to be married. The bride actually marries all those men, even though only one of them’s her husband for the moment.” He lit a cigarette. “A lot of men here are drowned, or killed by sharks, or lost at sea. So all the groom’s male relatives marry the bride—as back-ups. If her husband dies at sea, one of the others is obliged to take her as his wife.” He said all this between long draws on his cigarette.

“How peculiar,” said Thomas.

“After you’ve lived here a while,” said Macphee, “it makes a lot of sense.”

They left the beach and walked along a sandy street of rickety bamboo houses with tin roofs. Near the end was a larger structure. It had a sun-bleached sign in flaking red paint—Equator Hotel—over its entrance.

“Here we are,” said Macphee, holding the door open for him.

Inside, a heavy islander sat behind a desk. He had bulging eyes and the loose, fleshy face of a toad, and he greeted Macphee familiarly. “So, your guest arrived,” he said.

“Yes. We’ll both be staying tonight,” Macphee said. “We’re off tomorrow.”

“I’ll give him the room next to yours,” the hotel-keeper said. He got up from his desk. He wore only a sarong, and as he stood up, he began fiddling with what looked like a matchstick that was somehow attached to his swollen belly. He fiddled with it, Thomas noticed, even as he waddled ahead. Behind the main building was a row of thatched huts. He opened the door of one of them and left, saying dinner would be served in an hour.

Thomas went into his hut and put down his bag. The bedroom hut contained nothing but an iron bed with a mosquito net hanging over it like a tattered cloud, a bamboo chair and a hook for hanging clothes.

A separate hut was used for communal showering and toilet. Thomas immediately showered. He looked at himself in the rusted mirror and saw that his own chin was as stubbly and his shirt as dirty as Macphee’s. As he shaved, he was tormented by mosquitoes and a variety of little wasps that seemed to have no trouble penetrating the bamboo walls of the shower hut.

When he eventually got to the dining room—another porous hut with a few bamboo tables and chairs—Macphee was already waiting. They drank lukewarm beer straight from the bottles till the dinner was served by the owner. It consisted of canned tuna and canned potatoes on dented tin plates.

After they’d been served, Thomas asked Macphee about the matchstick attached to the owner’s belly.

“You don’t want to hear about that before dinner,” said Macphee.

Thomas didn’t pursue the matter. The meal was as unappetizing as the food on the
Innisfree,
but he was hungry after his journey.

Macphee ate only a few mouthfuls then drank another bottle of the warm beer. “It’s the only liquid I trust here,” he said. He then lit a cigarette and told Thomas a little about himself.

He was an Australian with legal training. He’d wanted a more adventurous life than a lawyer’s office, so for the last ten years he’d acted as an agent for various shipping insurance companies and investigative agencies such as Jeggard’s. Over the years, he’d visited every island, no matter how remote, that was on the shipping routes. He exhaled and gestured around the dining room. “Now this,” he said, “may not look like much to you. But believe me, it’s heaven compared to some of the places I’ve been.” The words were wreathed in clouds of smoke, as though a dragon were speaking. “And you’d be surprised at the number of foreigners who end up in these out-of-the-way corners of the world,” he said. “I get to hear about them in my travels. I meet a lot of them too. Like Rowland.”

“So, you know him?” said Thomas.

“Quite well,” said Macphee. “He comes down to the town regular as clockwork to meet the mail boat. And I’ve been up to visit him at his place once. He knows more about the people of these islands than anyone I’ve ever met. I sent a message up to him when Jeggard got in touch with me. He knows why you’re coming to see him. He’ll be expecting us.”

“Then he’s not here, in town?” Thomas said. He’d hoped to get this over with quickly. “Does he live near?”

“Oh no. I wish he did,” said Macphee. “He lives quite a way off.”

“But we’ll see him tomorrow?”

“No chance,” said Macphee. “His place is up in the Highlands and it takes two days to get there. As I say, I’ve been up there once and I wouldn’t go again if Jeggard wasn’t paying me to.”

“Why not?” said Thomas.

“Well, it’s a rough trip,” said Macphee. “The terrain’s not easy. But on top of that, some of the natives can be unfriendly.”

THEY LEFT THE DINING HUT
and went out onto a verandah over the lagoon, where some of the islanders were fishing by lanterns—it was very dark now.

The owner brought more beer and lit a candle on the table. Thomas noticed once again how he fiddled with the matchstick on his belly. After he’d left, he asked Macphee about it once more.

“Okay, I can tell you now without spoiling your appetite,” Macphee said. “It’s a Guinea Worm.”

Thomas had never heard of it.

“It’s a worm you can get from drinking unpurified water,” said Macphee. “That’s why I prefer alcohol. The worms can grow to three or four feet. Sometimes they stick their heads out. The islanders try to pull them out by winding them round a twig and pulling a little bit each day. It usually doesn’t work.”

He saw the look of horror on Thomas’s face.

“Now you understand why I didn’t want to tell you before you ate,” he said. “Be careful with the water here. Same with fruit and vegetables—never eat anything you can’t peel. Water and food are your enemies.” He drew on his cigarette. “I only smoke these things to keep the mosquitoes off!” He laughed a smoky laugh.

Thomas was still thinking of the worms. “They sound awful,” he said.

“They say the female worms are the worst,” Macphee said. “They’re the hardest to get rid of. Down here, if a man has a dreadful wife, they call her a Guinea Worm.” He smiled. “In that kind of situation, they say the Worm’s taken charge and it’s the husband who can only stick his head out once in a while.”

As Thomas was thinking about that, Macphee launched into a monologue on the various health hazards—leprosy among them—he’d faced in the course of his work. He also spoke of the perils of voyages in leaky boats in typhoons and what he called “the unfriendly customs” of some of the people he was forced to deal with.

“Are you married?” Thomas asked, wondering what kind of woman could put up with such a life. “Do you have a wife?”

“A wife?” Macphee exhaled cigarette smoke in a fit of coughing. “Not on your life,” he spluttered and laughed. “Not unless you can call a
Dutch Wife
a wife.”

A Dutch Wife!—that expression again. Thomas’s mother had used it. The Judge, her father, had used it. Rowland had used it. But by it, Macphee seemed to have something else in mind.

“What do you mean?” Thomas said.

“You don’t know what a Dutch Wife is?” said Macphee. “It’s quite a common thing here. It’s a pillow you put between your legs at night—a thigh pillow.”

Thomas was puzzled. “Why would anyone do that?” he said.

“To stop the heat rashes,” said Macphee. “If you live in this climate long enough, you’ve got to have something between your legs at night, or you’re sure to get rashes and infections.”

“Ah,” said Thomas, understanding at last that Macphee was using the expression in a different way. “But why’s it called a Dutch Wife?”

“You’ve got me there,” said Macphee. “But there used to be some Dutch colonies in the islands. Maybe that’s how the name came about. Doesn’t sound very flattering to Dutch women, anyway, does it?”

They finished their beers, then Macphee stood up. “Time for us to hit the sack,” he said. His speech was a little slurred at last. “It’s going to be a hard day tomorrow. Do you have a pair of boots and some old clothes for roughing it?”

“Yes, I do,” said Thomas. He got up too and he too staggered a little, partly because he was drunk and partly because his body was lagging behind his mind in realizing it was no longer on a ship at sea.

When he got to bed, he lay there marvelling at the fact he was in a bamboo hut on a minor island in a minor archipelago of islands half a world away from home. He could hear the night sounds of strange animals, as well as Macphee snoring through the bamboo walls of the next hut. He was exhausted but feared he was in for a restless night under the tattered mosquito net. He kept thinking of the Guinea Worm and how horrific it must be to be inhabited by one. But his last conscious thought was of the sweat trickling between his legs and of how nice it might be to have a Dutch Wife to comfort him.

– 6 –

THOMAS VANDERLINDEN AWOKE AT DAWN
and, through the window aperture in the bamboo wall, watched the sun spread its wings slowly like some huge bird of paradise. A thousand other tropical birds squawked their greeting to it. He got up and dressed. Macphee was already awake, so they went to the dining hut for some fruit and a foul kind of coffee. Then they walked together to the beach. Macphee carried a knapsack heavy with clanking bottles.

Near the dock, four islanders with stringy muscles were waiting for them beside two dugout canoes. They shook hands with surprisingly limp handshakes for such strong-looking men. Macphee got into one canoe, Thomas into the other, and they set off.

At first, they travelled along the coast only a hundred yards out from the beaches of black sand, which were fenced in by the inevitable palm trees, all of them stricken with some kind of tree-jaundice. The wind was refreshing and kept the mosquitoes away but left a residue of salt on the lips. Thomas dozed much of the time, comforted by the rhythmic splash of the paddles. Around noon, the rowers called to each other then headed towards the beach. They took a basket of fruit out of the leading canoe and they all sat on the sand to eat.

Thomas was impressed again by the muscles of the rowers. “They look so strong,” he said to Macphee. “But why are their handshakes so limp?”

“Partly, it’s just politeness,” said Macphee. “But also they try to conceal their strength. Especially from potential enemies.”

THE CANOES CONTINUED DOWN THE COAST
. After a while, they rounded a headland into what seemed at first like a bay but was actually the estuary of a river. The water was a brownish colour. Up this river they began to travel.

“What’s this river called?” Thomas said to Macphee, whose canoe was alongside.

Macphee, who’d been half dozing with a cigarette between his lips, threw what remained of it into the water. It sizzled for an instant before being snatched into the jaws of a long yellow fish.

“It’s a funny thing,” Macphee said. “They don’t have specific names for rivers, or mountains, or any of those things. They just don’t seem to go in for it. For example, they just call this ‘the-river-in-the-bay-that-leads-to-the-mountains.’”

Now that they were out of the sea-breeze, the air was like a huge sauna full of mosquitoes escorting squadrons of little wasps. The canoes made their way through a great swamp overhung with black, labyrinthine trees whose long roots snaked round the paddles. The air stank, and even the water seemed to release a sulphurous smell every time the paddles disturbed it. At times, the bottom was so shallow they all had to climb overboard and push the canoes through the putrescence. Thomas was thankful for Macphee’s cigarettes to burn off the swollen leeches.

About four o’clock on that nightmarish day, the journey by water was over. They pulled the canoes ashore and covered them with branches, then they walked till they reached a damp clearing where Macphee called a halt for the day. After they made camp, the rowers gathered dead, damp vegetation and made a circle of it around the area. They lit it and it began to smoulder, like a very acrid form of incense, causing general coughing.

Thomas asked if this was another one of their rituals to ward off spirits.

“That’s a good one!” Macphee said, laughing. “No, they do this to keep the mosquitoes down. Otherwise, they’d drive us crazy!” He blew a great cloud of cigarette smoke into the air as though to assist in the task.

The islanders now made a soup of breadfruit and bamboo shoots boiled together in a tin filled with murky water. One spoonful of it was enough to make Thomas gag. Macphee offered him whisky from one of the bottles he carried. Sweaty and uncomfortable as he was, Thomas was glad of a few swigs to kill the awful taste left by the soup.