Off the Grid - Chapters 1 and 2 - by Doc Shoot

Chapter 1

The Threat of Redemption

The promise of relief has been swelling and hovering for more than a week, and now an early morning Darwin September light glitters red streaks across a black sky.

A wall of rain claws its way from the distant Arafura Sea toward the city. A relentless giant storm painting the green waters grey with skyscraper nimbus shadows that reach from the ocean surface into the ocean of cloud above.

Two are men waiting, rolling gently, patient on the humid stillness of a moored boat.

The jade-coloured sarong of Kopu-Nui Hokitika rises and falls as his huge body softly sings.

At the other end of the padded wooden bench an athletic younger man listens. “What does that one mean Punga?” he asks.

Kopu pauses and rests his guitar across his chest.

“Battle ahead – before a war there must be consultation – before a storm.” Then he laughs and says “means many things –words really saying that the gods are thoughtless in their fierceness and their intent –an ending will rip through shadows with spears of rain and painful air to breathe– but who can know what really is ahead and what are the sacrifices for freedom.”

The younger man shrugs and looks upward, his trained eye following the grain of the Douglas Fir mast. “I don’t always know what the hell you are talking about.”

Kopu laughs loudly and freely and follows the young carpenter’s gaze up the polished tree trunk to the rigging high up the mast. There is no breeze to rattle the metal cleats, and yet the entire sky is full of cloud and angry morning darkness from the distant Northern horizon of the Arafura Sea all the way above Darwin City in the East and South over the treetop rainforests and red soil jungles. The world is clattering tumult deep inside itself in a monstrous heaving blanket.

They both look out to sea as the tropical sky rips out thunder on thunder, spilling waves of lighting downward through the heat into the water below.

Kopu continues “Just got to get hold of the feeling” he looks back at the other man. “It's also about a journey in a boat you know - like that without knowing where to, but it is old times you know…. two great kings and the people must decide who to follow in their journey – an old story.”

He pauses, then strumming again he talks and sings in small snatches of words amongst the chords

“we all follow in the

pathways of the water…

great knowledge of the ancient ones…

hara mai te akaaka nui

hara mai te akaaka roa

hara mai te akaaka matua

hara mai te akaaka na

Io matua taketake te waiora…

and great heart strengthen your arms and axes

and your love of your ancestors makes your enemy weak…

and cuts apart the water for the land…” he sings on quietly as though half asleep.

The two men are on the deck of a large wooden sailing vessel, watching through the haze of breathless humidity, knowing at last it is coming.

A crackling exhaust pierces the wallpaper of cicada song, and both men stir. The crackle eases to idling gasps and rumbles as the machine comes to rest on the concrete apron of the wharf.

The sound of footsteps and then the square bearded face of Toby Armstrong appears.

The men on the boat look toward him. Kopu puts the guitar aside and gathers his sarong around him as he rolls onto one elbow and nods. The effort of moving makes the tattoos twitch over his massive neck and shoulders like a flag rippling its pattern over the shell of a giant turtle.

The other man on deck, Mick Tasakrios, flicks his long knotty Rasta hair, and throws his legs over the wooden edge behind him and tumbles up onto the deck in a roll. He sits up grinning and half waves, then casually brushes a fly from his knee.

Toby puts a foot onto the edge of the vessel “The famous navigator and the famous carpenter then” he says. Silence. Then he produces a rolled newspaper from his vest and holds it above his head. “Well, it’s just another croc story boys” and he hurls the paper in a high arc. It lands at Mick’s feet. Mick carefully removes the rubber band which he puts in his pocket. He unrolls the newspaper and reads, then flashes the front page to Kopu with its photo and trumpeting headline 'CROC STORY A CROCK'. Then he crosses his legs and spreads the paper and reads out loud "September 28. The amazing story of a savage crocodile attack along the North Arnhem Coastline played out in Darwin court this week when..."

Thud! Toby throws a package onto the deck from one hand and it lands inches from Mick's knee. Mick stops reading and looks up. Toby's face looks suspended, hesitating as it always does, if there is something to say but too many ways of saying, “Package for skip” he announces at last “from person or persons unknown… interesting” and his intense face informs Mick that he does not want to hear any more of the newspaper article. 

Mick looks back down and reads on in silence. 

Toby reaches inside his vest again and pulls out a thick parcel. Thud! The parcel is thrown onto the deck from the other hand and lands next to Kopu. “Provisions from treasury for the next chapter…. You can open that one.”

Then Toby leaps aboard the vessel which rocks slightly to accommodate him. He stands legs together like a tree which has grown out of the deck. His legs are as brown as gnarled wood and the oil-stained shorts seem to sit like an afterthought at his thick waist.

Stained ragged shorts then a hairy belly-gap, and then a big loose leather vest out of which grow thick arms in an awkward clutter of too many torn muscles. He stands for a long pause looking at both of the men. “Just another croc story” he repeats.

“Just another crock of shit if you ask me” says Mick still reading.

Toby gestures to the newspaper “She sold us out, sold the skip out.”

Kopu laughs out loud “She sold us out” he repeats laughing again with his peculiar high pitched almost hysterical laugh for such a big man “She sold us out – oh love where is thy sting?”

Mick looks up “Isn’t that death – death where is thy sting?”

“Exactly exactly that” Kopu says and laughs and shakes his head as if nobody really will understand anything about love or death. “End of story, and beginning of story” he says.

Toby waits for a break in the rise and fall of the cicada shrieking to speak again “You blokes going to get a wet arse for sure – you staying on?”

Kopu and Mick both nod - They look toward the approaching storm.

“Got to keep her alive” states Kopu. Toby nods.

“Skip wants you at Buffalo Creek 0530” says Toby. “She’s all fuelled and gassed and there’s spare fuel for the reach next to the chiller.”

Kopu and Mick nod again “Thank you the famous mechanic” says Mick, and Toby scowls at him, not enjoying his own little joke being sent back at him.

“Any news of the apprentice boy?” asks Kopu

Toby looks up and down the length of the boat, running his eye over the winches and the trimmings “Sent him his first set of spanners” he replies at last.

“Mum will be pleased” says Kopu. Then there is a long pause as the three men turn toward the thunder.  “Where to?”

“Skip didn’t say – anywhere I guess – there’s more you know – court was bad enough but that’s nothing compared to what else - I told him piss off skip - to Zanzibar for a couple of years or go fishing off Lebanon coast or something – I told him to get the hell out – maybe he will listen to me for once.”

“What do you mean there’s more – more than this crap?” said Mick shaking the newspaper in the air.

Toby seemed to stop his inner emotional motor as he often did at a time of great crisis, and his face became like stone. He stood there looking from Kopu to Mick and back again. “I’m not coming boys.” He paused and took a deep breath and the stone cheeks seemed to relax a little and life flowed back into him as his thoughts crystallised. “Business to run – you know – kids to run – skip will tell you all about it.” That was all he would say, though it was a lot coming from Toby. “Love to know what’s in that parcel” He turned abruptly and leapt off the vessel onto the walkway. The vessel rocked more violently this time. “Good luck boys – how’s Mary?”

“She’s fine, safe back with mum in Omokoroa” said Kopu and with a wave to Toby he rolls his body onto the deck mattress and looks away.

Toby stands on the walkway, seemingly smaller than he had looked on the deck. “Love to grandpa” he says to Mick as he turns to walk away. “Worst of it should blow over by morning.... you can motor all the way if you want – tell that old Greek he owes me” and his voice begins to trail away “about time he took her back to Mykonos...”  Then he is gone with the click of the walkway gate, and a few minutes later the bike revs fiercely and swirls away.

And so the two men hold onto their promises as they listen. They are thrown together in their waiting, each filled with thought and memory and untangling the lies and truth of their wretched predicament, each in their own private sweaty breathing. They listen as the angry exhaust fades and rises and fades again into the distance and are enveloped once again by the silence of heavy tropical air, a silence accompanied by cicadas so constant and loud they are impossible to hear. Underneath their noise, and through the relentless thunder, the men can feel the nervous melody of thick lapping water whispering the answer, offering up to the carved arc of the wooden hull the knowledge of what happened at Yalingimbi inlet.

The whistle of a kettle rises innocent in the face of the nearing ocean stormfall.

Kopu rises from the deck and carefully picks up the package and the parcel. He tosses the parcel in the air and catches it. He throws it to Mick who holds it to his ear and shakes it as if to hear a rattle. “No change” he quips.

They both laugh, Kopu laughing his open free laugh of worldly irony, and Mick more nervous and questioning.

Mick tosses the parcel back to Kopu who then edges past him and eases his giant body down into the companionway and like a great black shark squeezing into a small cave takes the package and the parcel below.

Kopu reappears with two mugs of hot tea and the men sip on their drinks, both deep in thought.

Kopu taps his fingernail against the metal rim of his cup “We have the key” he says in his deep sing-song voice. “Now let’s see if it fits the lock” and again he laughs out loud, laughing into the face of outrageous fortune and daring what is to come, to come. As always Mick eases his thoughts into the strength and comfort of the big man’s well of determination, and laughs too, more quietly, finding strength there to allow destiny to chart the outcome of what they now have to do.

The red air fades into the morning blues and greys around the two men who are etched like sacrificial soldiers in the pale tropical light of the marina. The sun lifts itself off the horizon to be swallowed by the day, and all that remain of the crew of the Saint Augustine, those unwilling survivors and witnesses, are imprisoned and uneasy above the creatures of the water beneath them.

Shortly they will go below and batten down in preparation for tomorrow morning’s rendezvous.

Chapter 2

To The Lighthouse

The Saint Augustine is a silhouette between the jaws of an inlet as night creeps toward her. The huge shape of the vessel fills a splash of distant ocean beyond the narrow channel.  Her larch planks moan quietly at anchor in the inlet under the last colours of a setting late August sun. In front of her a dense fringe of mangroves seem to close up and draw nearer around her as their branches and leaves disappear from green into reddish blue, and gradually dissolve into a darkening wall of black shadow shapes.

On deck, sitting on the edge of the deck, a figure pulls an arm free from a makeshift sling and rubs the shape of an injured shoulder, then, with deep rubbing, feels satisfaction in the density and definition of toned sinews and muscle.

The evening is growing and a half moon, tracked close by Venus, gashes a celestial image into the face of  the sky creating a silent pathway for the carpet of milky way lights emerging behind.  Hints of redness are still spilled across the warm horizon, but the only meaning for this nervous person is sufficient light to make out the lighthouse shed. “Two hundred metres – not too far - swim it in fifteen or twenty - no problem no problem mother – do the necessary – do the necessary.”

Only the tin roof of the lighthouse gleams out against the wall of mangroves. The inlet has now become a black cave.

The figure climbs down the rope ladder which hangs over the planks of the swollen hull. Dangling a foot into the water it is pleasantly warm and soft. “Not too deep” and then startles as a bird cries wheeling overhead.

Pausing, remembering a dream from last night where flocks of petrels, thousands of petrels which being hatched but were out of control, attacked swarming all over, but fluffy and warm but choking. “Did I die?” the casual thought is murmured. Hard to remember although the feeling of the warm feathers around the skin is mirrored by the skin of the water

The figure slides into the darkening water and beneath the surface it is cool against the legs.

The moonlight is beginning to make the tin shed of the lighthouse glow white – the tall bamboo poles of the shack are in darkness and hard to make out, but the roof is shining clear like a beacon and the water is a pulsing silver sheet.

“Be with me god and keep me safe” out loud, floating beside the comforting power of the wooden boat edge, and the child inside prays again and again. Pushing away and beginning to stroke the body through the clear stillness, pushing through the warm surface and the gentle coolness of the water.

The shape of the boat has now receded behind, and the black box shape of the wooden shack looms ahead. Tiring a little, feeling the ache growing in the sore shoulder. The tide is mild but it is coming in and helping, rubbing the shoulder while floating, rubbing gently.

Then a gentle bump against the left calf. The urge to shout leaps into a silent throat, a freeze rushing through veins rushing it to the heart. The moon watches passively as the shout of surprise is a silent alarm.

Taking a deep breath the figure now floats unmoving on the surface of the inlet water, like a log, feeling the soft swaying of the incoming tide beneath. Now edging closer to the mangroves in stillness and suspension. The reality of the bump against the leg fades into disbelief but then the reality of it cannot be denied. A look across to the glowing roof of the shed then back to the empty safety of the boat. The big hulk of floating black wood seems closer. “Do the necessary god – look after me – look out for me” quietly, and then propelling onward toward the shack. Not splashing or breaking the water, only gently breast-stroking.

Bang! This time the bump is harder. The victim tries to swim hard but now going side-ways and only one leg will work. Suddenly dragged beneath the water there is struggling and kicks with a free leg. The leg kicks against something huge – some monster – more kicks and twists with urgency and desperate anger. Then the figure bobs to the surface like a bloody cork.

The surface of the water is calm, lit softly as the moonlight picks out the detailed patterns of the tide like thousands of intricate scales moving and breathing in a glittering gown.

Now swimming furiously and splashing arms wildly but one leg is not working. The shack is looking closer, nearer “Please god let me...” Bang! hit again at the hip this time, and beating wildly silently screaming above the water and under again against the great jaws that have closed. Punching punches, punches, punching wildly at the huge head, searching for eyes to strike. Then released again to see the moon, but the sound of bone cracking is like a horrible signal of approaching doom. “Not me not me not yet god please” and a thrashing hand at last closes on the rung of the ladder of the shack and the figure begins to drag itself upward.

Then struck again and slipping under the water, only the silence of the inlet is restored, broken by occasional swirling as the great beast rises to shake and roll its prey.

Some Carol-Singers!

(best in full screen)

for the Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking lost and survivors -- by Doc Shoot

of stone and dust we are born

of water and air

and each to our mother breast

and then a single breath

drawn in and out how many times

each one a gift

until again the earth draws near

and claims us altogether made finite.

seen briefly as seaspray,

as the shadow of a dream we should have made,

we are finally etched into stone then dust we are

water and air

and the breath of children reborn

While you're waiting....

.... for the blog to wake up again, here are the very wonderful Playing for Change once more.

Being happy -- by Mimitig

Days to remember
Days to forget
These last few years have held
More days of sadness than of joy.
Sometimes I find it hard to smile
To laugh
To be the person I am paid to be
The cheery one.
Sometimes I want to curl and cry
Lock the doors, shut out the world.
Then one thing happens – someone makes me laugh
Makes me chuckle, snigger, choke with tears
Of laughter.
It happens when I expect it least.
When all I learn is of sadness,
Sometimes it’s people that I meet
Sometimes it’s emails from people that I greet
Sometimes it’s people that I meet and greet
Sometimes it’s people who make me greet.
That’s Scottish – look it up.
Life is never fair and not often funny
Life tends towards the struggle.
Sometimes though, life just is a joy.
Seize that, love that, laugh at that.
Don’t dwell on why the Angelus went bad.
Dwell on why there is an Angelus.
All of life is a reference
Most people don’t know our own personal references
You, my reader, don’t know who I mean
By the Angelus
But it is real, in my frame
Of reality.

 

Abridged -- by File

 photo "Hopscotch to Oblivion"  by Andy Wright

 

Bridge Building for Beginners



How princesses and pirates were press-ganged from plastic
cutlery, paper cups, papier-mâché,
newspaper hats, patches, paint.
The headlines, the cover-ups! How we as kids
recycled wonder from waste.

How our kids still rattle packets, heckle boxes ‘n sniff
‘n sneak, happily peeking illegally
into wrappers under our trees.
The reach of our trees exceeds our long arms! Now our kids
whisper-up worlds in their sleep.

How our kids use books to build houses and bridges
with walls ‘n floors ‘n rooves ‘n all,
‘n angles ‘n arches ‘n eaves.
It’s what pulped wood’s good for! How our kids
build bridges with leaves.

Engineering wonders; how pirates evolve,
as recycled love via bridges, from nerds.
How our kids grow out of ourselves, off our shelves
and into our lives. How the internet lives! How our world
grows out of our words.



Bridging – The Gap


Life under a hard hat, the constant
cacophony of construction, percussive
tools ‘n tool belt, tool box, pick-up truck and
heavy callused hands try to touch softest skin, can’t
sand down thick skin enough
to allow contact.

Tries like a nail gun,

can’t, can’t, can’t.

Autumn and Spring -- by Mimitig

from anime 'Windy Tales' (風人物語): 'Cherry Blossom Time' (櫻のころ)

Such a dichotomy of emotion
Is April the cruellest month or is
Autumn the Keatsian rich season?
For me both are full of riches
And the ultimate sorrow
Both are death

Teenage death with cherry blossom
Sudden death – like blossoms falling from the trees
Autumnal sorrow as slow death approaches
Life failing, breath shuddering as leaves fall
As the night closes in so slow death arrives

Funerals so different too
Springtime with soft rain
Gentle tears to say goodbye
Autumn with sudden gusts of
Gale and storm
Tantrums to rail against the loss

In springtime, for youth, a tree was planted
In autumn, mourners fought umbrellas

In the end all is equal
On the first day a teenager
Cried for her first love
Later a young woman cried for her father
Spring or autumn, both seasons bring sorrow
And both bring joy

 

.

Happy New Year!

Time for Some Christmas Music Again

and a Merry Christmas to all OtherStuffers and Lurkers worldwide!

Some Chap-Hop for the Week Before... Anytime -- by Professor Elemental

This remarkable chap-hop ditty, a challenge from the Professor to the upstart Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer, has become the unofficial anthem of the Guardian cricket bloggers (a very amiable and non-fighting posse). A plot is afoot to make it no.1 for Christmas. Enjoy.

When the Night has Come and the Land is Dark.... -- by Playing for Change

Thanks to DocShoot for recommending this clip:



More Playing for Change videos at

www.playingforchange.com

Recipe for a Perfume of Autumn -- by Zephirine

      

Mushrooms, of course

Ferns

Crushed grass

Rotting apples

Damp leaves smouldering

A last honeysuckle

A tattered rose

Is that incense or only woodsmoke?

Out of nowhere, butterscotch

And, ah yes

Fireworks

  

Nohu -- by OffsideinTahiti

(translated by Zephirine)



Captain Terenui parked his car in the Moorea gendarmerie compound. He left his wife to go and open the door of the commanding officer’s house, and made a detour to the guard-post to look in on the duty officer and check that all was well before going to bed. They had just come back from an evening spent with some friends, which had made a very pleasant ending to the week. He liked Sunday evenings. The excitements of the weekend had calmed down, the drunks went to bed early, and calls to the station switchboard were rare.

However, he found the duty officer taking a phone call. Captain Terenui waited until he had hung up and then looked at him questioningly. The duty officer explained as he noted it down in the register.

“The undertakers. Something irregular about a burial permission. They want us to send somebody, who shall I wake up?”

Captain Terenui glanced at the wall clock. Past eleven o’clock. There’d be trouble. And he needed everyone to be fresh in the morning for the co-ordination meeting with the coastguards. He drummed his fingers briefly on the counter and then decided.

“Let them sleep, I’ll go. Apart from that - quiet?”

The duty officer nodded reassuringly.


He got back in his own car and drove at a steady pace through the darkness. The wind was stirring the palm trees above the deserted ring road. Twenty minutes later, he was parking in front of the building which served as a combination of mortuary, funeral parlour and coffin-making workshop. There was only one other vehicle in the parking space. Captain Terenui checked his reflection in the window of the car. The yellowish light of the street lamps wasn’t flattering. He had put on some more weight. He smoothed down the tails of his flowered shirt, thought to himself that it wasn’t the most appropriate outfit, and headed for the side entrance, where a ray of light showed around the door.

The undertaker, an abrupt, angular Chinese, was waiting for him in the large, completely tiled room. Captain Terenui absorbed the double shock of the harsh light and the strong smell of formaldehyde, behind which floated other, less definable odours. There was only one body, laid out face down on a stainless-steel table at the other end of the room. He didn’t feel like going to look at it straightaway. A brief glance was enough to tell him that it was an elderly woman with grey hair. A green surgical sheet covered the lower part of the corpse from the small of the back downwards. She had her head turned to the side. Towards him.

“We don’t normally work this late. But we got the body in during the evening, and we thought, with the heat…”

The undertaker handed him the death certificate. His eyes went straight to the bottom of the document. Referring to the item ‘Medical or legal obstacle to burial’, the ‘no’ box had been ticked. He immediately looked for the doctor’s signature. The name meant nothing to him.

“Delpierre, who's he?”

“The new GP. I’ve called him too.”

At that exact moment, Doctor Delpierre pushed the entrance door open, stood still for a moment on the threshold and then walked rapidly towards them. He was very tall, pale, the completely bald top of his head surrounded by a coronet of grey hair. He was obviously far from pleased to have been disturbed on a Sunday evening. The undertaker made the introductions and then led them over to the steel table, continuing his explanations:

“My assistant called me. He was just starting the embalming…” He turned toward Captain Terenui and took on an expert tone. “That means we draw off the fluids and gases…”

Captain Terenui interrupted him with a gesture. He knew. As he walked towards the corpse, he was trying not to look at the shelves of glass jars. He hadn’t had a drink, because he was driving, but he had had too much to eat.

The undertaker continued. “We clean the body at the same time. That was the point when he saw the marks. I thought it was better to call you.”

“What marks?” The doctor interrupted brusquely.

The undertaker indicated the woman’s back. In the muscle running alongside the spinal column, a little lower than the left shoulder blade, there could clearly be seen a little round black mark, with a second one, even smaller and less noticeable, just underneath.

The doctor was already leaning over the body, adjusting his glasses.

“Shit.” He rolled his sleeves up. The undertaker went to get him a pair of latex gloves.

Captain Terenui cleared his throat. “You hadn’t seen them?”

The doctor answered sharply, defensive. “I didn’t have any reason to undress her. Eighty-three years old, history of serious heart problems – the nephew showed me a prescription as long as your arm - and all the symptoms of an infarction. She was found sitting with her head on the kitchen table.” He spread his hands as if to say “you know what I mean,” looking at him over the metal frame of his small half-moon glasses.

Captain Terenui took a quick look at the death certificate which he still had in his hand, to check if infarction was given as the cause of death. The name of the deceased caught his eye, and he stood very still for a moment.

While the doctor was putting on his gloves, Captain Terenui leaned round to see the woman’s face. Her eyes were closed, her expression set. He hadn’t recognised her. It didn’t surprise him. It was years since he’d seen her. He stared at her face and still had trouble believing that it was the woman he’d once known, there, underneath the mask of death. On the certificate, the name, address and age left no doubt. It really was Auntie Moea.

The doctor’s voice distracted him from his thoughts.

“What the fuck is this thing?”

The two other men were leaning over the wound. The doctor spread the skin with the palms of his hands in order to examine the marks. The undertaker ventured: “Insect bite?”

“If it’s a spider, it’s not a species native to here… anyway I hope not.”

Captain Terenui joined them and leaned over too, nudging the undertaker aside with the imposing bulk of his shoulder. There were two holes, like two vaccination marks. The flesh at the edges of the holes was black and rotting. The skin around the injury had red marks and some visible, but not pronounced, swelling. For a moment he was silent, perplexed, then he suddenly remembered where he had seen this before. Before he had the time to think, the word escaped him on a quiet breath.

“Nohu.”

Still leaning over the wound, the doctor asked: “Nohu? What’s that, nohu?”

As there was no answer, he lifted his head towards Captain Terenui. His gaze met only a row of glass jars on shelves. The Captain was already halfway to the door. As he went out, he heard the undertaker say to the doctor:

“Nohu, in Tahitian, means scorpion fish.”


Captain Terenui slid in behind the wheel and set off northwards on the ring road, thoughts whirling in his mind. The nohu was an extremely ugly fish, which spent most of its time sitting at the bottom of the sea on the coral, and could even bury itself in the sand and live without water, between two tides, its poisonous dorsal spines ready to strike down anyone rash enough to step on them. That was what had happened to his father when he was a child. And he had seen his father – a big bruiser of a man - weeping with pain. He could still remember the look of the wound, the black trace of the poisoned tissue. The affected limb had swollen up enormously and turned first red, then blue. His father had survived, after two days of fever and agonising pain. He had completely recovered, but for an elderly person with a weak heart…


Auntie Moea had been a neighbour of his parents, back in the day. He hadn’t seen her since he had come back to take up his new post on his native island. He’d seen Alphonse, of course, her nephew, his childhood friend. But the space which had grown between them had left him feeling depressed. He himself had gone off to the lycée, in town, then to France and the army. After that, the gendarmerie and the slow climb up the ranks through a succession of provincial barracks. Now he was in charge of the brigade, at home, on his island. The island that Alphonse, on the other hand, had never left. He had been left with Auntie Moea as a kid, she had brought him up. She had no other family apart from some distant cousins on another island, Terenui couldn’t remember which. She was a tough woman, harsh and authoritarian. He dragged a picture of her up out of his memories, and it seemed to him that she had always been old. He and Alphonse were inseparable back then, and they’d both had a good share of scoldings and smacks round the ankles with the broom from the old woman; but he had also spent, on their bit of land next to the beach, the sunniest hours of his whole life. He and Alphonse were cousins without having a drop of blood in common, except from the shared cuts and scratches of childhood.

He had slowed the car down well before he got there. He realised he wasn’t sure where the place was, and that gave him a shock. He put it down to the darkness and the fact that Moorea had changed: more buildings, more fences… He found his way at last by the tall silhouette of the big badamier tree which had provided all the cool shade of their early years, and parked the car. It seemed to him that the wind had strengthened again.

He walked past Auntie Moea’s house, a plywood and corrugated-iron cabin built at the edge of the water. It was closed, dark and quiet. One could have believed that the old woman was sleeping peacefully inside. Alphonse no longer shared the house with her. He had built himself a wooden shack a bit further along, on the beach. He lived on the fish he caught and what he grew in the small vegetable patch that he cultivated for them both.

Terenui approached the shack, the sound of his footsteps on the sand covered by the rattling of the palms in the wind and the deep bass of the ocean rollers breaking on the reef. An oil lamp was burning inside. The shelter had no door. Terenui went in without announcing himself, and found his friend sitting at the table, a bottle of rum in front of him which he had already made a good start on. He noticed that Alphonse seemed surprised to see him.

“Celebrating already?”

Alphonse answered him in Tahitian, asking why he wasn’t speaking in their own language, the way they always had.

“Tonight, I’m speaking French, and so are you.”

Terenui lowered his heavy bulk onto the bench on the other side of the table. He put his big hands on the greasy oilcloth.

“You playing policeman, then?”

“And you, what are you playing at?”

Alphonse shrugged. He poured himself a shot of rum and then reached over to take a dirty glass from beside the sink. He put it in front of Terenui who pushed it away at once.

“I’ll tell you what you’ve been playing at today. You’ve been playing fisherman, and you caught a nohu.”

Alphonse took a gulp of rum. Then he clicked his tongue, looked down and sighed.

“How you know? I said to the doctor it’s her heart. I showed the medicines, he signed the paper that they can bury her. Didn’t undress her.”

“Chinese, he saw.” Terenui ran his hand over his face. Talking to Alphonse was making him forget his French. He started again, making an effort. “The Chinese guy, the undertaker. He saw the marks when he was cleaning her up.”

Alphonse shook his head, seeming disappointed. He spat on the ground.

“Why did you do it?”

Alphonse shifted on his chair, uncomfortable. “We have a row.”

Terenui waited. But there was nothing further.

“That’s all?”

Alphonse made a movement with his chin, impossible to interpret. It could have meant yes, no, or fuck off. He folded his arms defiantly.

Terenui raised his voice. “Come on, you’ve been having rows for fifty years! What happened?”

Alphonse avoided his gaze. He cleared his throat, and started again, more hesitantly. “This time, we have... bad row. After, she shows me this.” He sighed and leafed through a pile of old papers on the table. He pulled out a yellow ticket. A ferry ticket.

“She says tomorrow she’s going to town.”

Terenui lowered his head and stared harder, to make him carry on. A note of anger crept into Alphonse’s voice.

“To change the will. Give everything to them from Huahine!”

Terenui sank his face in his hands. A gust of wind, stronger than the others, shook the hut, which creaked all over. Terenui opened his mouth to speak, but Alphonse didn’t give him time.

“Fifteen years! Fifteen years the doctor says it’s her heart, she’s going to die from her heart. Every morning I wait to see. And every morning, five o’clock, she gets up and calls me to go buy her bread.”

“And she gives you the money to buy yours.”

“Yeah, yeah. And every day I go catch her fish. And open her coconuts for her. You know how long I'm doing this.”

Terenui made a tired gesture. He was feeling his own anger fade, even while the fisherman‘s was swelling up like a sail in the wind. Alphonse pounded the table with his index finger.

“Suppose the cousins from Huahine come. Where I live? Your place?”

Terenui had no reply. The corners of Alphonse’s mouth went down in a rictus of contempt. He shook his head slowly and then pointed to his own chest.

“Fifteen years, heart…” His hand cut the air with a stab from an imaginary dagger. “So with nohu, I sting! Like that, pffft, quicker.” He rubbed his palms together as if to clean them.


Terenui shook his head as if he refused to believe it. He looked Alphonse straight in the eye. His old friend held his gaze. A spark of malice suddenly lit in Alphonse’s black eyes.

“At least, she never piss us off again with her flower garlands.”

The two men both burst out laughing. Terenui took the glass he had pushed away and placed it in front of Alphonse so he could pour him a drink. They clinked glasses and downed their drinks in one go. Terenui let the searing mouthful make its way down into him. He was thinking about that time in their childhood when, to punish them, she made them sit out in the garden in the full heat, in view of the whole neighbourhood, and made them thread flowers on fishing line, for hours. Girls’work. The other boys were going off to play football, and laughed at them as they passed by. He realised that the pain of it was as sharp today in his memory as it had been at the time.


He took a deep breath and began to speak quietly, in Tahitian. Steadily, calmly, he explained it all to Alphonse. He told him they would be here in the morning, that they would ask a lot of questions. So many questions that they would quickly get his head mixed up. That they would do tests on the body and would find the nohu poison, and then they’d understand everything, because they would be pretty sure she hadn’t gone swimming, especially as her dress was dry and she was in her kitchen. And they’d find out from the neighbours that Alphonse was there when she died.

He paused for a long time. Then he told him that if he took his fishing canoe and got as far as Maiao, he could maybe hide there. At least for a while. Maybe for a long time if he kept out of sight and lived on fish. The people of the island wouldn’t give him away. They didn’t speak to the gendarmes. He told him not to worry, he would get himself taken off the case because it involved a personal friend. He’d say that he had come round this evening and found the house empty and the canoe wasn’t there. Perhaps they’d believe that Alphonse had got lost at sea. But he had to be discreet and above all he had to go now, right away.


Alphonse looked outside through the open doorway. The flame of the oil lamp flickered. He answered in French:

“There’s a three-metre swell and it’s pitch black out there, mister policeman.”

He punctuated the sentence with a huge swig of rum and slapped the glass down on the table.

Terenui swept his big hand across the oilcloth and leaned on the corner of the table to stand up. He looked one more time into Alphonse’s eyes, where the anger was now swimming in rum, and went out.


Outside, Terenui walked to the edge of the plot of land and stopped facing the lagoon. The cabins were worth nothing, but the land, a fine seaside plot with a big beach of white sand, would be worth a small fortune nowadays. He was sure that Alphonse hadn’t thought about this for a single second. It was his home, that was all.

He traced a vague design in the sand with the point of his town shoe. In the distance, the waves were breaking on the reef with a deafening thunder. He thought that if the canoe’s outboard started up, he probably wouldn’t hear it from here. He thought, too, that if at this moment he were to put his heart onto the surface of these dark waves, it would sink straight down to the ocean floor, where it could torment itself in the company of the pallid venomous creatures in the immense night of the deep.

.

Not So Strictly -- by Zephirine

OtherStuffers living in the UK have probably noticed the start of a new season of 'Strictly Come Dancing' on TV... it prompted me to revisit these small poems:

Waltzing is

easy you

just keep on

one two three

twirl a bit

mind his feet

try to look

charming and

hope it’s not

Tales from the

Viennese

Woods again

next or the

Blue bloody

Danube

The tango is O

K if you’re a sexy type who

sinuously
leans back on your partner’s
arm and then steps
swiftly to one side and
does that wavy
gesture with the ankle
(tricky that one)
not to mention when you
lift your leg be-
hind your partner’s back and
try not to look
too much like a peeing dog

what
fool

called this

the fox

trot

no fox

would

move

in

this way

unless

it wanted to

get

caught

by hounds

and

ripped

limb

from limb while

fat

small

girls on po-

nies

cheered

one two cha cha cha

once so la di da

once used to be danced

at firms’ dinner dan-

ces by wives with blonde

hair like Doris Day

in tight kitten heels

and sequins somewhere

one two cha cha cha

how lucky we are

we’ve got a new car

and a hostess trolley

Waltz photo: Sigismond von Dobschutz

Tango graphic: Jorge Muscia

Foxtrot photo of Vernon & Irene Castle by FB Johnston

Cha cha record sleeve from www.baikinange.blogspot.com 

Marey and the River -- by Zephirine

 

 

You cannot, so we are told, step twice into the same river:

the water will have flowed on past.  But you too

will not be the same person stepping.

In Marey’s image, change is happening

in the space between the man who jumps,

the man who has just jumped, the man who jumped

a moment ago, the man

in mid-jump

who used to be the man about to jump

and who will soon be

he who has jumped.

The man who jumps is not the same man who lands.

He will have added some heartbeats, shed some skin

he might have sneezed

or remembered that he had to be somewhere

post-jump

or decided, in mid-jump, to leave his wife.

The man who gets up from the bed turns and looks down

at himself, yes, but the self of a moment ago

still there, an instant ghost.

Chronophotographic images made by Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) 

Storm -- by Mimitig

photo by James W Young from www.spaceweather.com

Summer

Bruised dark purple sky

Threatening violence

Flashes dark across the clouds

Lightning fuels bruises

Reel against the violence

Of the weather

Rain hurls itself

Against the window

No way out

Gutters weep, cry and echo

Inside
Blows and tears leave me weak
Crying for my past

 

The Meltonian Gene -- by Meltonian

Back in my Gloucestershire childhood,

the one thing that gave me a scare

was the two-headed lamb which stood

at the top of my granny’s stair.

It was in a plate-glass cabinet,

topped off by a castor-oil plant,

buffed like a dowager’s lorgnette

by my ancient four-armed aunt.

I gave it to the dustbin man,

but though it was totally sick,

my six-eyed uncle loved that lamb,

and granny’s eight legs were too quick.

So it stood in its usual place

with its dead eyes and its dandruff

and every time I hid my face

twelve fingers just weren’t enough.

.