The Captive Condition (16 page)

In the end he convinced Emily to make the journey with him. Known for its ecotourism, Delacroix Cay catered to scuba divers from around the globe eager to explore the virgin coral reef, but of late the island had garnered a reputation as an international destination for big-bellied, married American men who came for weekend getaways to take full advantage of those notorious beachside “fish markets” found nowhere else in the Caribbean. The government was tolerant of even the most shameful of professions.

On the island there were no big resorts or casinos or chain restaurants, and during the shuttle ride from the airport through the eerily quiet streets of an old port town, Charlie and Emily glimpsed packs of starved dogs trotting through evil-smelling alleyways. Groups of tense young men dressed in military fatigues stood on every corner, submachine guns at the ready. The soldiers waved the shuttle through a series of roadblocks, and in the whole of that dreary shantytown Charlie didn't see a single white face.

After crossing its mountainous spine, they came to the leeward side of the island, where large trees darkened the dirt road, their dead leaves falling to the ground and crackling like fire under the tires. Here there were very few enchanting details of landscape, and upon reaching a village near the beach, the stone-faced driver, who only spoke a patois of French and Carib, pointed to a small, whitewashed cottage with a pyramidal roof of corrugated iron lit by the afternoon sun. He gave the American couple an odd look as they collected their luggage and disembarked.

“Missionaries?” he asked.

Charlie shook his head. The driver closed the door and sped away.

Emily stood in the middle of the road and watched hummingbirds of iridescent green darting through tall clusters of trumpet flowers. Charlie took her suitcase and walked doubtfully down a muddy path bordered by palm trees and bougainvillea and past a rusty cistern on stilts entangled in creeping vines hungry for sunlight. Through a fire-red door glazed with rain they entered the cottage, and inside they found three concrete rooms, including one with a toilet and a shower. Except for a few pieces of wicker furniture and a bed draped with a stiff mosquito net, the rooms were bare.

Charlie had expected the accommodations to be a bit rough, a condo in need of updating, a fresh coat of paint, new appliances, modern decor, but the condition of the cottage shocked him; it was little more than a crude hut with running water, and he felt an urgent need to apologize to his wife. He waited for a sharp rebuke, or at least some show of disappointment, but Emily threw open one of the frosted windows in the kitchenette and looked out at the ocean. The air smelled vaguely of the bright masses of rhododendrons and hibiscus surrounding the property, and in the tidal winds the cottage began to creak.

With tears in her eyes, she turned to him and said, “Oh, thank you for this, Charlie. Thank you. It's lovely.”

He smiled with a sense of accomplishment, and it took him a moment to register the subtle note of sarcasm in her voice.

They spent most of the week in bed, violently ill from eating fried fish, burned plantains, and cold rice and from swimming in the polluted bay after the rain-swollen streams came pouring down the mountainside. A plague cast down from heaven, Charlie was sure of it, but during their last day on the island, determined to enjoy himself, he threw off the soiled sheets from their sickbed and left Emily to convalesce on her own. He staggered over the dunes toward the ocean, and like a haggard beachcomber on some forgotten atoll, he searched the shore for souvenirs, for whelks and rayed shells and creamy pink stones polished smooth by the ocean. Every time the gentle waves foamed around his ankles and the warm sand enveloped his toes, he caught a whiff of raw sewage, a powerful and persistent reminder of the disease and crushing poverty that bedeviled this small island nation. By then the sun was already sinking toward the horizon, and a strong wind kicked up whitecaps on the lagoon. Dry coconuts and mango flowers and bright pomanders tumbled in the hissing surf.

Aside from an ugly, colonial-era church of faded yellow brick, the palapa bar at the end of the beach was the tallest structure in that sorry village, where tourists could, for ruinous prices, buy key chains, bottle openers, small figurines carved from the wood of the native nutmeg trees, and, according to the guidebook, “certain attractions that leave very little to the imagination.”

Surrounded by a dozen or so palm-leaf huts, the palapa looked deserted, cleaned out, the shelves empty of liquor bottles, cocktail umbrellas, and fancy garnishes. Charlie panicked. Without alcohol to ease his nerves, he would never be able to summon the necessary courage to fulfill his fantasy. The bar smelled of sandalwood paste and sea air. Several coats of varnish had made a thick, uneven skin on the wood. From hidden speakers the steel drums of the ever-present calypso music produced a plump, round sound. The proprietor, a painfully thin man of Indian descent who carried himself with the regal bearing of a Brahmin, adjusted the brim of his close-fitting cork hat, which was damp with sweat, and rested his wrinkled elbows on the bar.

“Refreshment, sir?”

Charlie nodded and said hopefully, “What do you recommend?”

The man reached beneath the bar and produced several bottles hidden in a cabinet. “The Red Death. It's the unofficial drink of Delacroix Cay. An old recipe named for the legendary corsair that three hundred years ago struck the shoals on the windward side of the island during a storm and sank with all hands.” Using an old rag he polished an enormous glass goblet and served his sole customer that day a slightly frothy mixture, so syrupy and foul tasting that it made Charlie wince. “As you probably know, sir, we are not a cay at all but an island. The pirates who named Delacroix thought they could confuse the French. The colonial powers might bypass the island if they thought it to be an unprotected pile of sand without a cove or sheltering bay. Eventually, of course, the French prevailed and turned Delacroix into a penal colony for unreformed buccaneers, an overcrowded, equatorial Alcatraz crawling with sea dogs suffering from scurvy and rickets, all of them trying either to sodomize or strangle one another.”

Charlie pushed his empty glass across the bar. “Interesting.”

“I'm pleased you enjoy the drink, sir.” The man searched his pockets and handed Charlie a small yellow card. “For my honored American guests—the recipe for the Red Death. I think the pomegranate juice strikes just the right note, but the key ingredient, and the one that gives it such complexity, is the grain alcohol produced in the remote hilltop villages.” He laughed and told Charlie the lore of the hills and the ways of the people. “Local legends persist, and some of the older men and women, a few, not many these days, still practice strange and primitive rites. Whenever they become ill, they ask loved ones to behead a chicken and perform a ritual dance.”

Charlie snapped his fingers. “That's what I should have done. Killed a couple of chickens.” He chewed loudly on the crushed ice from the bottom of his glass. “I'm an old pirate myself and know all about unusual superstitions.” After only one drink he was beginning to speak with a pronounced slur. He hadn't eaten in days and was wary of ordering anything from the menu at a place like this. “My wife has been pretty sick and it's our last day on the island. I want to find a conch shell to bring back to her. The guidebook says the reef is littered with them. A ‘conch graveyard,' the writer called it.”

“Oh, no, no,” said the proprietor, “you mustn't remove anything from the reef.” Using a large wooden spoon that had turned black and green, he stirred another batch of the Red Death. “Our prime minister was quite cavalier about the condition of the coral, even after it showed unmistakable signs of damage and bleaching from the influx of tourists. A distressed reef means a distressed economy, and the business community demanded strict enforcement of all laws pertaining to the reef. Of course we never fathomed that the military would take action and depose our prime minister. I avoid politics, but trust me, friend, you do not want to provoke the new junta. If the authorities discover a shell in your luggage as you pass through security, they may detain you. These days tourists must be vigilant. For Lord Shiva has many arms with which to ensnare his prey.” The proprietor spoke in the relaxed fashion of a man used to living in a state of gentle anarchy. He topped off Charlie's glass and lowered his voice. “But perhaps, sir, I can interest you in a souvenir of another kind?” He clapped his hands and shouted,
“Maharani!”

The air moved a little faster now, becoming a steady breeze. Purple clouds piled on the horizon and billowed above the banana trees of stormy green. From one of the creaking railings, a solitary chameleon stared at Charlie and then scuttled across the bar top, vanishing beneath a pile of napkins. A moment later a young woman with big sloping shoulders and runny eyeshadow emerged from a nearby hut and lumbered into the palapa bar. She wore a turquoise-colored sari. With its silver beads and its precise sequins and stonework, the sari fairly sparkled like tropical moonlight on the water. The proprietor touched the soft fabric. Then his fingers crawled up the woman's arm, over her neck, across her lips, through her unruly mop of black hair.

“How do you like it, sir? Exquisite workmanship, don't you think? Gujarati style. Regarded by many as the epitome of high Indian culture. Worn correctly it—how shall I put this—highlights a woman's figure in all the right places. Truly a timeless piece.”

The girl smiled, revealing a mouthful of gold teeth.

Charlie scratched his chin. A few of his shipmates—divorcées, philanderers, incorrigible sea dogs—had a lot more practice with this kind of thing, but he was new to the game and proceeded with caution.

“And who is this?” he asked.

“Forgive me, sir,” said the proprietor. “May I have the pleasure of introducing you to my niece, Sita. A very open-minded and, I must say, accommodating girl. If this sari is not to your liking, she would be most happy to take you to her hut and model a number of others for you. But first, if it isn't too much of an imposition, we can come to terms that would be agreeable to both parties? For your convenience, we accept both cash and traveler's checks.”

Charlie blinked in amazement, but he reached into his back pocket for his wallet, and his skeptical frown gradually formed into a wide and libidinous smile.

The walk back to the cottage was a long one, and he kept looking over his shoulder for signs of the teenage soldiers who regularly patrolled the beach at night. He spit a sugary glob of the Red Death into the surf, and the air instantly swarmed with biting sand fleas. The wind buffed and curried the shifting dunes littered with sick banana leaves. In the distance an old trawler steamed along the coast. The sky, thronging with the freakish pterodactyl shapes of cormorants, was enfolded in a blanket of tropical clouds. Behind him, in the gray-blue sweep of sugarcane fields, he could see two small figures slashing at the sharp, fibrous stalks with their long knives and heard them singing a simple work song, their voices rising in fractious harmony above the wind that played in the scorched palms. They waved their knives above the crumbling walls that partitioned the land and then resumed their work.

The wind changed direction, rolling off the land, and Charlie nearly retched at the stench of rotten bagasse that came wafting from the field. With his heavy, splayfooted walk and his arms swinging at his sides, he approached the cottage and spotted his wife waiting for him by the sea. Waves tumbled over the reef and into the lagoon where they spread along the shore and splashed against the black, volcanic rocks. Emily gazed into a tidal pool where cuttlefish and crabs hid in the shadows and fat sea cucumbers inched their way along the sandy bottom. She sat on the rocks and plunged a hand into the renewal of the warm water, unafraid of the sharp sting of sea urchins and poisonous tiger fish.

He called to her, told her it was dangerous.

“But they're such bizarre creatures, Charlie.”

Her exaggerated slouch suggested boredom, disdain, a quiet agitation building toward epic anger. How much did she know about the palapa bar, about this playground of the debauched, the perverted, the morally bankrupt? How much could she intuit from the guilty look on his face? His experience inside the hut hadn't been nearly as fulfilling as the guidebook promised him it would be, though he did learn a few new kinky tricks. Initially, the proprietor's “niece” seemed almost diffident, speaking to him in a timorous and tongue-tied language that he couldn't understand, but after a few minutes she took charge and pushed him toward a small bed. Nervous, fumbling, stubbornly limp, Charlie had to be coached, coaxed, constantly reassured, excessively stroked and fondled. The woman was patient and forgave his clumsiness and uncertainty. For her professionalism Charlie tipped her generously, but when he left the hut he saw open hatred stamped on her eyes, a look that was sharp, piercing, extraordinarily clear in its loathing for him. The same look he now saw in Emily's eyes.

He was a great dispenser of bad luck and bad feelings, and he had to remind himself never to underestimate just how miserable he could make his wife feel. Obscenely drunk, clutching the sari in his fist, he stumbled toward Emily and said in a small, strangled voice, “Look, I bought this beautiful dress for you.”

Again, he watched for soldiers, and when he turned around to face his wife he saw with upending, smothering astonishment a small yellow card in her hand.

“What's that?” he asked, and could actually feel a stupid expression coming down over his ruddy face.

“A souvenir,” she answered, and flung herself into the bay.

He rushed to the water's edge. “Come back!”

Emily blinked at the brine. “Do you want me to come back, Charlie? Do you
really
?”