The Plover: A Novel (11 page)

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Pipa hears everything there is to hear. Fish sliding beneath the boat. Spirits overhead. Stars singing. The boat groaning gently in its oaken voice. The rigging keening. The engine box yearning for the engine. An albatross, very low, a foot above the surface, waiting for that one moment in a thousand when a fish has risen too close to the glittering night. The flitter of water against the boat. The keel yearning for motion. The infinitesimal shifting of stale almonds in their hidden bags and corners. The keen atomic whine of the steel belts with which she is belted in place. Her mother’s gasp as her father made love to his wife slowly silently slowly in their room down the hall which they did not think she heard but yes she did and knew it for a rich ancient sound, not fearful but densely mysterious, a summer night forest sound, thick and moist. The sigh of their grizzled dog by the fire. The plummeting of woodcocks in love. The probing tongues of flickers. The thump of an owl against a vole. The shimmer of snakes. The roil of squid far beneath the boat. The infinitesimal dissolution of the pages of Declan’s six-volume set of sight reduction tables. The shimmer and slosh of fuel in the tanks. The clench of barnacles against the hull. The shriveling of the last oranges and lemons and limes. The infinitesimal rocking of Piko’s cigars in their redolent box. The sizzle of the match he used to light his cigars on their porch in the woods at the end of the day when he sat barefoot and weary with Pipa on his lap and told her stories of the seethe of the sea. The plop of her mother’s tears on the furl of ferns as she hung the laundry after she knew she would die during the summer the osprey came and sat every night in the trees outside Pipa’s window which osprey never do Papa said so but they did that time. The hiss of a cigar doused by the sea; two splashes deep in the dark not far from the
Plover;
and then a third splash, quieter but more thorough, as if something larger but more familiar with water had entered the sea; something that knew the sea and the sea knew that something; something that spoke the language of the sea and knew what song to sing on entering; so that the sea accepted it gently, and knew it as a native child with salt in the blood.

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The
Plover
slides away through the epic dark. Piko dripping in the bow with Pipa in his arms. Declan steering, one eye on his charts, one ear for any hint of a hint of pursuit. Wavelets murmuring lapping licking the boat. Boy, it is
dark
. Thank God it’s so dark. No one can find us if we stay quiet and slide out of the picture. South by west. Am I bleeding? Feck. Fecking feck. Don’t bleed on the charts. All right. Minor hole. A dent in Dec. Had worse holes. A hole man. Holistic. All right. No stars no moon no fecking comets we might just make this. We might just pull this off. Jesus blessed Christmas. Assault and fecking battery on the high seas. Kidnapping. Armed kidnapping. Jesus. A guy sets out on his boat for a little solo voyage and it turns into a fecking adventure novel. All right. Check charts again. There’s a glob of little tiny islands and atolls and such southwest of here, Declan had explained that morning to the gull on the roof, who looked interested but noncommital. We could get good and lost in there if we pull this off. We get Piko back, we slide away into the endless, we’re golden. No bigger boat will ever find us if we just stay low. There’s a million little islands out here. We could hide out awhile. We get good and lost and then slide east. He doesn’t know which direction we went and we get lost and then cut east. You with me? North we hit weather we don’t want, west we hit countries we don’t want to hit, south we hit countries we don’t want to hit, east is good, man. East is water followed by water. Water is the country we want. You with me here, bird? You know, if you were a
good
traveling companion, you would
say
something sometimes. Didn’t you ever read books where birds can talk and things like that? Maybe the pip can talk to you. Maybe she can talk to birds. Are gulls like the silent punks of the bird world? Are you guys all in a gang or what? Is that the deal with the red dots on your beaks? Like tattoos? Man, you can talk to me—I won’t tell anyone you squealed. No? Yes? No.

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They ran all night, Declan at the wheel; he wanted to be as far away as far away could be when the sun came up. If it came up. You never know about the sun, you know. People get all cocky about the sun coming up tomorrow,
I
don’t get cocky about the sun coming up. The sun comes up,
then
you can say the sun came up, but don’t be getting all expectatious about it, one thing I have learned is to have no expectations and assumptions, man, that’s the road to hell. Whatever you are sure of, don’t be. Can’t be crushed if you never expected anything. Vote for the man who promises least; he’ll be the least disappointing, says old Ed.
There’s
a guy who never expected anything. Born on one island, died on another. That’s what I’ll expect, to die on an island. Some tiny island out here in the endless friendless. Bleached bones a harbor for coconut crabs. That’s about right. Something will use me for shelter. So I’ll be useful at last. The old man told me enough fecking times I would never be useful but how wrong he was, the old shark. I caught a lot of fish from old mother ocean, didn’t I, and I own the fecking boat free and clear, and no one owes me a penny, and I owe no one, and we got Piko back on the boat, and I am so tired I couldn’t spit if you gave me the spit and a running head start.

Toward dawn he saw dimly ahead what he so wanted to see, a welter of tiny islets and atolls, some baked naked and some dense with low trees and bush; he eased the boat into a particularly bushy one, slid into a tiny inlet, and tied into some trees. He was so weary he could not move, and he stood there, head hanging, unable to even run through the automatic closing-up-shop checklist in his head, the one he had run through every night for years, depthtideanchorsenginehousedpee. For an awed moment nothing moved, not the sift of the sea beyond the inlet, not a leaf, not a grain of sand, not a crab on the beach; and then everything moved gently all at once, a swirl of sand, a crash of surf, a clash of crab, a quiver in the thicket of trees; Declan shivered awake from his standing sleep, and gaped as a bird with a titanic wingspan floated silently across the mouth of the inlet; gray above and white below, wings easily six feet wide, a pink bill, hooked at the very tip; an albatross! But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. Declan turned to go below, but turned again to see if the gull was still sitting there on the roof; and there it was, wide awake, startled, staring at the air where the albatross had been.

IV

0° SOUTH, 169° EAST

IN HIS OFFICE
on Tungaru the minister for fisheries and marine resources and foreign affairs is being interviewed by the editors of the three largest newspapers in the islands; both radio stations are also represented, and there is a man with a stylus drawing pictures of the event in wax for reproduction on cloth and paper, and there is the single television station’s single television camera, operated by a man standing on a box that once contained bullets, and there is a man with an ancient camera that may or may not be loaded with film, and there is such a crowd of clerks and secretaries and shopkeepers and burbling children in the building that the staircase outside his open office door groans with the weight of their quiet dreams. The minister for fisheries and marine resources and foreign affairs is today announcing his candidacy for first minister, minister of
all
affairs, minister to whom all other ministers must report and apply, and his announcement is remarkable news for many reasons; he is respected and liked by everyone, and so all would wish him well no matter what he wished to achieve; he is attempting to leap, in one electoral day, from the populous third tier of the ministry to the lonely pinnacle of the first, disregarding the tradition of years spent in the Kabuki theater of the second, where ministers pose and preen and take mistresses and conduct quietly savage campaigns against one another as they jockey for the final prize; and he is announcing not only his candidacy, which is a surprise but not a shock, but his platform, which is stunning.

I wish to make all the poverties die, he says, to the scratchy music of skittering pens and slowly revolving ceiling fans. I wish to establish a republic of free people beholding to no fading empire or nation or country at all. I wish to establish a republic where every tenth person, male or female, young or old, is chosen a National Dreamer. I wish to catch every drop of rain that falls on every island in such a manner that we do not ever again have to purchase water or pay for other nations to construct factories for the cleaning of the water of the sea which is our mother. I wish to teach every child to read and write starting at the age of one, and have annual competitions for the most amazing stories written by children between the ages of one and nine. I wish to make the use of automobilities in the islands an enterprise so burdened with onerous taxes that eventually automobilities are used only for a national taxi service. I wish to file judicial cases in the courts of various former empires and nations and countries for the repayment of one-fifth of the profits accrued by commercial endeavors over the last three centuries, such funds, if collected, to be stored untouchably in the National Dreamer Bank until further notice, the other four-fifths of the profits acknowledged to be our contributions to the health of their children over the last three centuries, our best wishes. I wish to establish a new ministerial position, the ministry for children, such position to be held by a child between the ages of seven and eleven. I wish to establish a police force with two boats for every island of whatever size or nature, including atolls. I wish to establish an army of thinkers who will imagine and execute ways for the republic to borrow the energy of the sea which is our mother. We
can
use our mother’s muscle; that is
not
silly talk. Do we not each of us use our mother’s energies every moment of our lives? Are we not in fact made by and shaped by and consist of the energy of our mothers? Well, then. I wish to establish many more things, gently and respectfully, without guns or shouting. I think we are all children even if we have old bodies and we should make a republic that runs on the wonder of children whether we are old or young children. I think because we are poor and tiny that we are out of the way of war finally and so we can invent new ways to live that bigger countries cannot invent yet because they still are in the way of war. I think we could be such an amazing place that people all over the world will come to see what we became. I think many people who live here agree with me in the chapels of their hearts. The symbol of my candidacy is the lorikeet, which as you know is a most beautiful little bird, friendly and gentle, which used to be everywhere here but was wiped out, but now there are a few living here again, and if Atua is gracious to us, and we work hard and gentle together, the lorikeets will come back and be everywhere here in the trees like they used to be. We will be like the lorikeets, almost dead but coming back amazing! That is all I have to say this afternoon. Thank you for the gift of your ears. As my gift to you, we have water here for anyone who is thirsty.
Ti abu,
farewell.

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Enrique heard all this, from the bottom of the stairs; he had come to the ministry to make inquiries about this and that, in particular if anyone had seen a green fishing boat with red sails, and been caught in the crush of people cramming onto the staircase to hear the minister’s announcement. He had quietly wandered the halls listening for news of potential crew members, union halls, shipments he might be able to be of assistance with as they perhaps languished between inspections and licenses and stamps of approval; one thing he had learned in his maritime career was to drift productively on land as well as at sea; a man could hear a great deal by wandering purposefully with his ears open and his mouth shut. Another thing he had learned on land was to dress well and stand up straight and walk briskly and speak clearly and ask friendly questions and then just listen with a smile; people would tell you much more than they expected to if you were generically presentable and left silence next to them like a friendly stranger; it was like they were waiting for some friendly silence so they could fill it up with words; and words were useful, words were hints and intimations, words were fingers pointed in certain directions, if you listened carefully; more than once he had listened carefully to clouds and thickets of words in offices and agencies and stations and union halls and old sailors’ homes and hotel lobbies and bars and then set his course toward where he was sure money was hiding. And money was hiding everywhere; in words, in numbers, in the way people said things that meant other things; sometimes Enrique thought that the larger the lie the more likely there was money hidden nearby. And you could change money into any form you could imagine. It could be changed into sand, fish, wood, cloth, houses, boats, animals, books, machines, even people; one thing he had learned was that you could actually buy and sell people, despite all the laws that said you could not do so; and indeed everyone, if you looked at it from the right angle, sold himself or bought someone else; and the people who were most vociferous about freedom and rights and independence were often the ones who were quietly buying and selling the most people. So he listened carefully to the minister for fisheries and marine resources and foreign affairs announcing his candidacy for first minister, and did not believe a word he heard; but he saw the thrilled faces on the staircase, the sheen of their excitement, the throb of their collective dreaming; and he concluded that there must be a very great deal of money hidden behind all this, which he resolved to find.