Off the Mangrove Coast (Ss) (2000) (9 page)

Sweat trickled into my eyes and I stood there, facing Limey Johnson across that narrow deck. Short, heavy, powerful ... a man who had sent me down to the foulest kind of death, a man who must kill now if he would live.

I reached behind me to the rail and took up the harpoon. It was razor sharp.

His hook was longer ... he outreached me by several feet. I had to get close ... close.

In my bare feet, I moved out away from Smoke, and Limey began to move warily, watching for his chance, that ugly hook poised to tear at me. To throw the harpoon was to risk my only weapon, and risk it in his hands, for I could not be sure of my accuracy. I had to keep it, and thrust. I had to get close. The diving dress was some protection but it was clumsy and I would be slow.

There was no sound ... the hot sun, the blue sky, the heavy green of the mangroves, the sucking of water among the holes of the coral ... the slight sound of our breathing and the rustle and slap of our feet on the deck.

He struck with incredible swiftness. The boat hook darted and jerked back. The hook was behind my neck, and only the nearness of the pole and my boxer's training saved me. I jerked my head aside and felt the thin sharpness of the point as it whipped past my neck, but before I could spring close enough to thrust, he stepped back and bracing himself, he thrust at me. The curve of the hook hit my shoulder and pushed me off balance. I fell back against the bulwark, caught myself, and he lunged to get closer. Three times he whipped the hook and jerked at me. Once I almost caught the pole, but he was too quick.

I tried to maneuver ... then realized I had to get outside of the hook's curve ... to move to my left, then try for a thrust either over or under the pole. In the narrow space between the low deck house and the rail there was little room to maneuver.

I moved left, the hook started to turn, and I lunged suddenly and stabbed. The point just caught him ... the side of his singlet above the belt started to redden. His face looked drawn, I moved again, parried a lunge with the hook, and thrust again, too short. But I knew how to fight him now ... and he knew too.

He tried, and I parried again, then thrust. The harpoon point just touched him again, and it drew blood. He stepped back, then crossed the deck and thrust at me under the yard, his longer reach had more advantage now, with the deck house between us, and he was working his way back toward the stern. It was an instant before I saw what he was trying to do. He was getting in position . to kill Bassett, unconscious against the bulwark beside the pump.

To kill... and to get the knife.

I lunged at him then, batting the hook aside, feeling it rip the suit and my leg as I dove across the mahogany roof of the deck house. I thrust at him with the harpoon. His face twisted with fear, he sprang back, stepped on some spilled fish guts staining the deck. He threw up his arms, lost hold of the boat hook, and fell backward, arms flailing for balance. He hit the bulwark and his feet flew up and he went over, taking my harpoon with him ... a foot of it stuck out his back ... and there was an angry swirl in the water, a dark boiling ... and after a while, the harpoon floated to the surface, and lay there, moving slightly with the wash of the sea.

There's a place on the Sigalong River, close by the Trusan waters, a place where the nipa palms make shade and rustle their long leaves in the slightest touch of wind. Under the palms, within sound of the water, I buried Smoke Bassett on a Sunday afternoon ... two long days he lasted, and a wonder at that, for the side of his head was curiously crushed. How the man had remained at the pump might be called a mystery ... but I knew.

For he was a loyal man; I had trusted him with my lines, and there can be no greater trust. So when he was gone, I buried him there and covered over the grave with coral rock and made a marker for it and then I went down to the dinghy and pushed off for the ketch.

Sometimes now, when there is rain upon the roof an when the fire crackles on the hearth, sometimes I will member: the bow wash about the hull, the rustling of nipa palms, the calm waters of a shallow lagoon. I will remember all that happened, the money I found, the men that died, and the friend I had ... .

*

When in Paris, I went often to a little hotel in a narrow street off the Avenue de la Grande Armee. Two doors opened into the building; one into a dark hallway and then by a winding stair to the chambers above, the other to the cafe, a tiny bistro patronized by the guests and a few people of the vicinity.

It was in no way different from a hundred other such places. The rooms were chill and dank in the morning (there was little heat in Paris, even the girls in the Follies Bergere were dancing in goose pimples), the furnishings had that added Parisian touch of full-length mirrors running alongside the bed for the obvious and interesting purpose of enabling one, and one's companion, to observe themselves and their activities.

Madame was a Breton, and as my own family were of I Breton extraction, I liked listening to her tales of Roscoff, Morlaix, and the villages along the coast. She was a veritable treasure of ancient beliefs and customs, quaint habits and interesting lore. There was scarcely a place from Saint-Malo to the Bay of Douarnenez of which she didn't have a story to tell.

Often when I came to the cafe, there would be a man seated in the corner opposite the end of the bar. Somewhat below medium height, the thick column of his neck spread out into massive shoulders and a powerful chest. His arms were heavy with muscle and the brown hands that rested on the table before him were thick and strong.

Altogether, I have seen few men who gave such an impression of sheer animal strength and vitality. He moved in leisurely fashion, rarely smiled, and during my first visits had little to say.

In some bygone brawl, his nose had been broken and a | deep scar began over his left eye and ran to a point beneath a left ear of which half the lobe was gone. You looked at his wide face, the mahogany skin, and polished over the broad cheekbones and you told yourself, "This man is dangerous!" Yet often there was also a glint of hard, tough humor in his eyes.

He sat in his corner, his watchful eyes missing nothing. After a time or two, I came to the impression that he was spinning a web, like some exotic form of spider, but what manner of fly he sought to catch, I could not guess.

Madame told me he was a marin, a sailor, and had lived for a time in Madagascar.

One afternoon when I came to the cafe, he was sitting in his corner alone. The place was empty, dim, and cold. Hat on the table beside him, he sat over an empty glass.

He got up when I came in and moved behind the bar. I ordered vin blanc and suggested he join me. He filled the two glasses without comment, then lifted his glass. "A votre sante!" he said. We touched glasses and drank.

"Cold, today," he said suddenly.

The English startled me. In the two months past, I had spoken to him perhaps a dozen times, and he replied always in French.

"You speak English then?"

He grinned at me, a tough, friendly grin touched by a sort, of wry cynicism. "I'm an American," he said, "or I was."

"The devil you say!" Americans are of all kinds, but somehow ... still, he could have been anything.

"Born in Idaho," he said, refilling our glasses. When I started to pay, he shook his head and brought money from his own pocket and placed it under an ashtray for Madame to put in the register when she returned. "They call me Tomas here. My old man was an Irish miner, but my mother was Basque."

"I took it for granted you were French."

"Most of them do. My mother spoke French and Spanish. Picked them up around home from her parents, as I did from her. After I went to sea, I stopped in Madagascar four years, and then went to Mauritius and Indochina."

"You were here during the war?"

"Part of the time. When it started, I was in Tananarive; but I returned here, got away from the Boche, and fought with the maquis for a while. Then I came back to Paris."

He looked up at me and the slate-gray eyes were flat and ugly. "My girl was dead."

"Bombs?"

"No. A Vichy rat."

He would say nothing more on the subject and our talk drifted to a strange and little known people who live in and atop a mountain in Madagascar, and their peculiar customs. I, too, had followed the sea for a time so there was much good talk of the ways of ships and men.

Tomas was without education in the accepted sense, yet he had observed well and missed little. He had read widely. His knowledge of primitive peoples would have fascinated an anthropologist and he had appreciation and understanding for their beliefs.

After talking with him, I came more often to the cafe, for we found much in common. His cynical toughness appealed to me, and we had an understanding growing from mutual experiences and interests. Yet as our acquaintance grew, I came to realize that he was a different man when we talked together alone than when others were in the room. Then his manner changed. He became increasingly watchful, talked less and only in French.

The man was watching for someone or something. Observing without seeming to, I became aware the center of his interests were those who came most often to the cafe. And of these, there were four that held his attention most.

Mombello was a slender Italian of middle years who worked in a market. Picard was a chemist, and Leon Mat-sys owned a small iron foundry on the edge of Paris and a produce business near The Halles. Matsys was a heavy man who had done well, had educated himself, and was inclined to tell everyone so. Jean Mignet, a sleek, catlike man, was supported by his wife, an actress of sorts. He was pleasant enough to know, but I suspected him of being a thief.

Few women came to the cafe. Usually the girls who came to the hotel entered by the other door and went to the chambers above, and after a period of time, returned, through the same door. To us, they existed merely as light footsteps in the dark hall and on the stairs.

Madame herself, a friendly, practical Breton woman, was usually around and occasionally one of the daughters Mombello would come in search of their father.

The oldest was eighteen and very pretty, but businesslike without interest in the men of the cafe. The younger girl was thin, woefully thin from lack of proper food, but a beautiful child with large, magnificent dark eyes, dark wavy hair, and lips like the petals of a flower.

Someone among these must be the center of interest, yet I could not find that his interest remained long with any one of the four men. For their part, they seemed to accept him as one of themselves. Only one, I think, was conscious of being watched. That one was Jean Mignet.

On another of those dismal afternoons, we sat alone in the cafe and talked. (It always seemed that I came there only when the outside was bleak and unhappy, for on the sunny days, I liked being along the boulevards or in St. Germaine.) The subject again arose of strange superstitions and unique customs.

There was a Swede on one of my ships who would never use salt when there was a Greek at the table; an idea no more ridiculous than the fear some people have of eating fish and drinking milk in the same meal.

Tomas nodded. "I've known of many such ideas," he said, "and in some of the old families you will find customs that have been passed along from generation to generation in great secrecy for hundreds of years.

"I know of one" he hesitated, describing circles on the dark tabletop with the wet bottom of his glass "that is, a religious custom followed so far as I know by only one family."

He looked up at me. "You must never speak of this around here," he said, and he spoke so sharply and with so much feeling, I assured him I'd never speak of it anywhere, if he so wished.

"In the family of my girl," he said, "there is an ancient custom that goes back to the Crusades. Her ancestor was a soldier with Saint Louis at Saint-Jean-d'Acre. No doubt you know more of that than I do. Anyway, when his brother was killed in the fighting, there was no shrine or church nearby, so he thrust his dagger into a log. As you know, the hilts of daggers and swords were at that time almost always in the form of a cross, and he used it so in this case, burning a candle before the dagger.

"It became the custom of a religious and fighting family, and hence whenever there is a death, this same dagger is taken from its wrappings of silk and with the point thrust into wood, a candle for the dead is burned before it.

"Marie told me of this custom after her mother's death when I came hurriedly into her room and surprised her with the candle burning. For some forgotten reason, a tradition of secrecy had grown around the custom, and no one outside the family ever knew of it.

"That night in the darkened room, we watched the candle slowly burn away before that ancient dagger, a unique dagger where on crosspiece or guard was carved the body of Christ upon the cross and the blade was engraved with the figure of a snake, the snake signifying the powers of evil fallen before God.

"I never saw the dagger again while she lived. It was put away among her things, locked carefully in an iron chest, never to be brought out again until, as she said, she herself died, or her brother. Then, she looked at me, and said, "Or you, Tomas, for you are of my family now." "

He looked at me, and underneath the scarred brows, there were tears in his eyes.