As was will be
360 degrees of darkness
SEA LEGS by Peter Nolan Smith
The oriental lore of processing roots, seeds, and bark into spice inspired ancient western travelers to seek various detours around the Arab middlemen profiting from the lucrative East-West trade route. Adventurous voyagers stood to reap fortunes from their success. Failures were many.
Adventurous voyagers stood to reap fortunes from their success. Failures were many.
In 1493 Christo Colon returned from the New World with tobacco and slaves, but the absence of spices disappointed the Spanish monarchs. Seven years later Vasco de Gama rounded the Horn of Good Hope for the King of Portugal, however the Arabs retained the monopoly on the Spice Trade. In 1521 Ferdinand Magellan and a fleet of five ships sailed west from Spain destined for the Spice Islands of the Moluccas. The voyage across the Pacific tested the sailers' endurance, as scurvy, starvation, and murder ravaged their ranks.
Their commander was killed in a battle on the Philippines and only fifteen expedition members out of the original 237 crew survived the circumnavigation. The two returning caravels were wrecks, yet the cargo of spices enriched the survivors, because they had reached the famed spice isle of Tidore as well as Ambon in the Moluccas.
Over the next centuries the Dutch, French, English, Portuguese, and Spanish warred for control of these islands.
Manhattan was exchanged to the Netherlands for a small island in the archipelago and considering that the Dutch had acquired that foothold on North America for 60 guilders or the price of several thousand tankards of beer, the trade seemed like an even swap at the time.
In 1991 I sold a 5-carat diamond to a well-heeled couple from the Upper East Side. My commission bought my second round-the-world ticket from PanExpress on 39th Street for a one-way journey of JFK-LAX-HONOLULU-BIAK-AMBON-BALI-JAKARTA-SINGAPORE-BANGKOK-PARIS-LONDON-JFK. My friends and family were worried about this voyage.
During the Iran-Iraq War Kuwait had been slant-drilling into Iraq's Rumaila oil field. Its ruler Saddam had demanded compensation for this theft and massed 300,000 troops on the border. The US ambassador had said, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts."
My friends and family considered this global circumnavigation foolhardy. At a farewell dinner at the Villa Rosa over my hometown line on the South Shore of Boston, I attempted to explain that there was a great distance between Indonesia and Iraq. Over four thousand miles. Few had left the USA and their sense of geography had been ruined by the IT'S A SMALL WORLD ride in Disney World. Iraq, Iran, Israel, India, Italy, and Indonesia were all I-nations. None of my friends could finger Indonesia on a map.
Up in Westbrook, Maine my grandmother's attic was crammed with every issue of National Geographic. I had read them all, imagining me here, there, adn everywhere.
My father was familiar with the region. His ancestors were New England maritime sailors and whalers. They had voyaged through the Seven Seas in the 19th Century. HIs grandfather had died at sea off Brazil orphaning my grandfather. His father. Mine didn't approve of his second son's travels. His dream was for me to settle down in the suburbs witha wife and children. That ship had left port a long time ago.
My mother wanted the same for me, but she understood my wanderlust and said, "I want you be my eyes and ears on the world. Tell me everything when you come back."
Her everything meant the PG version.
"Your Aunt Bert sailed through those islands at the age of eight." Her father had been a whaling captain in the 1870s. I recalled Aunt Bert at her 100th birthday recounting how all the women in Indonesia had black teeth had black teeth from chewing betel nut. Only older women chewed that now.
"There wasn't a war on the horizon." My mother wanted nothing bad to happened to her second son.
"That war, which isn't a war yet, and has nothing to do with Indonesia."
"It's a Muslim country. They're all connected same as the Irish." My mother's family came from the Aran Isle. She was a Catholic and even more so a devout Hibernian. We understood fights.
"Iraq is thousands of miles from Indonesia. Don't worry, I'll be fine." Jakarta was not even close to Kuwait. "Biak will be my first stop at the far eastern end of the archipelego."
The previous year on that island I had free-dived its pristine reef cliffs with Larry Smith, a renown industrial diver the previous year. A cleasr sky and pristine sea. About three hundred yards from shore a Japanese destroyer lay on its side. It was visible from the surface and dropped off the side of the inflatable Zodiac and swam within fifty feet. A wreck from World War II. I popped to the surface and smiled at Larry.
Biak was completely different to my previous destinations from the Mexico, Canada, the USA, and Europe. I had been greeted off the Garuda Air flight by two near-naked Melansians playing BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON on guitars. They were only wearing gourds over their penises and I had asked myself, "Why had I ever gone to Paris?" until remembering thinking the same thing sitting at a cafe in Les Halles in January 1982.
"In World War II I was on a destroyer during the Battle of Biak. General MacArthur thought there were 2000 Japs on the island. He was wrong. There were 11,000. Japs wouldn't surrender. Cruisers, planes, and destroyers shelled them wihtout any sign of giving up. 4000 were trapped in a cave fortress. Begging the marines to come and get them. The marines poured in diesel fuel and burned them out of the caves. Nasty business," my Uncle Dave said at a goodbye dinner at the North End restaurant. "There ain't nothing there. At least after the Navy and Marines got through with it."
"That's what I like about it. So far away from everything else, but they have cold beer and a nice Dutch colonial hotel and great diving."
Uncle Dave coughed hard. He was seeing doctors for a chronic cough. His cigarettes of choice was Pall Mall.
"You be careful. Those people don't value life the same way we do."
Americans pointed their fingers at everyone else in the world, so they didn't have to look in the mirror and see what they saw in others was just themselves.
"I'm a lover not a fighter." I had been a peacenik throughout the 60s. 70s, 80s, and 90s.
"I know different." Uncle Dave had bailed me out of a Quincy jail after a fight with a gang from Southie. Boston in the late 60s belonged to many tribes, most of them Irish.
"I've changed now. All peace and love." I couldn't remember that the last time I fought someone. "Plus those people are nice."
"All headhunters and cannibals, if I remember correct."
""They don't eat people anymore."
"They'll eat anything they can get their hands on, if they're hungry, but have a good time." Uncle Dave cuffed me $20. "Have a good drunk on me."
The next day I returned to New York and packed my bags for my trip. Two days later I arrived at JFK three hours before departure and the Pan-Am 747 flight took off on time. My friends in LA and Hawaii expressed their concern about traveling to the world's most populous Islamic country. Hollywood tended to portray all Muslims as terrorists. I told them in Bahasa Indonesian, "Tidak apa-apa."
It meant no problems in Bahasa Indonesia, which I had learned on last year's trip . They were impressed with my knowledge of the local language, even if I spoke with a Boston accent. The next leg was from Honolulu to Biak.
In Biak no tourists offloaded the Garuda flight from LA. I booked a room in the Dutch hotel across from the airport. I was the only guest. I learned that Larry Smith had flown to Surabaya to fetch an engine for the boat for his diving enterprise. I knew no one and ate nasi goren in the market. That night I listened to the news on the BBC World Service and drank cold Bintabg ber. My Sony World Radio received news of US troops and their coalition allies massing on the border of Kuwait. I was betting on the West. We had better tanks.
The next day I sat at the hotel and then walked to Goa Jepang, the cave fortress for over 4000 Imperial soldiers in the Battle of Biak. They had refused to surrender and the Marines oured countrless barrels of fuel into the cave and then lit them all on fire. Scarred Japanese survivors of the Pacific War wandered through the graveyards of their fallen dead. They stayed one day and flew back to Tokyo. None of them spoke English. I nodded with respect.
At night days I sat on the balcony lit by a 40-watt lightbulb circled by all many of insects, reading Jospeh Conrad's VICTORY set in a fictional island off Borneo. Beyond the beach Cendrawasih Bay stretched out under a starry sky to the southern horizon with black islands breaking the hotizon. I put donw the book I had a compass and read their names from a Nell's map. Japen and Num. I drank cold bottles of Bintang and smoked kretek cigarettes laced with cloves. The aroma lingered on my fingers. The cough lasted a little longer.
This was the tropics. The water was clear and warm. The coral cliffs began twenty feet beyond the shore. Sea turtles and parrotfish fed off the bounty of the current. I snorkeled for two weeks. I tried calling my Uncle Dave twice. There was no answer at his house in Quincy.
Ambon, the capitol of the Moluccas, was my next stop. After a 17th Century war with England the Dutch paid a large sum and the island of Manhattan for Ambon and its spice trade. I lived on Manhattan. 8 million people. Ambon was thirty-five times the area of Manhattan with a sixteenth of the population. No skyscapers. No traffic. Provincial living once the center of the Spice trade and the world.
Ambon means a light rain in Tagalog. Indonesia was the second most polygot nation on the planet after Paupua New Guinea. A diplomat attached to the Indonesian consulate in New York had suggested a lay-over with his uncle, a government official on the Christian Island. Upon arrival I gave the old man a bottle of Johnny Walker Black. No one in Asia drank Johnny Walker Red, unless there was no Black.
"You have wife?" James asked with an unsparing directness.
"No."
"You have baby?" Asians regarded bachelorhood as a unfathomable curse. A man with a family was normal. Same in the West. I was an anomaly here and there, a traveler. A drifter. No place to call home.
Both my father and mother agreed with their opinion and I replied 'no', wishing my answer could have been yes, but then said, "Maybe one day."
Indonesia was 95% Muslim. Ambon ran against the grain with its Christian majority. Everyone on Ambon was a mixture of Malay and Papuan, except for the Javanese forcibly deported from their overpopulated island to much less populated islands in the archipelego by the Sukarno transmigrasi policy. They worked as pedicab drivers. A few jeered at me. I was the only white person within a thousand miles. The Gulf War had killed tourism around the world.
"Saddam # 1. Bush no good."
I agreed with their second sentiment as an exile from the land of the GOP.
James lent me his car and driver for a tour of the island. Martin and I visited an old Dutch fort, giant eels trained to eat eggs in a river, and a beach on the north coast of Ambon. The driver pointed to mountains across a broad channel.
"Seram. Have big magic. Men fly in sky. Bad magic."
"Magic?"
"Bad magic. No tourist go Seram."
"Tidak pagi. I not go." Bahasa Indonesian was an easy language. No articles. No tenses. Bagus was good. Bagus-bagus was very good. "Pagi ke Tidore."
"Tidore. No mistah go Tidore. Banyak Muslim. Go Bali. Hindu bagus." The driver was dumbfounded by my choice of a Muslim island. The young Ambonese wanted off this island, but not to another distant island. Jakarta was their Manhattan. Not another island forgotten by time.
"Saya ke Tidore." Dropping the verb to go was a common linguistic trait in Bahasa.
"Semoga berhasil." Good luck always trumped magic.
We returned to the city to drink the Johnny Walker with James. He mixed it with honey and ice. It was their way.
Afterward James took me to the chicken farm. Young girls served older men beer. This scene was played out everywhere in Asia, Europe and the USA. We drank to Rambo. No one toasted Saddam or Bush. Religion and politics were off-limits in brothels. I showed the girls pictures of Manhattan. None of them believed the pictures were real.
Around midnight I walked by the harbor to my hotel. The Bugis sailors prepared their wind-driven Phinisi or sailing crafts for morning departures. Two lightbulbs hung from the lines. Ropes creaked on the bare masts. The design dated back centuries. Indonesia had thousands of islands. These ships were the connection. I was overcome with deja vu and blamed the honey and then the whiskey, then remembered seeing RINGS OF FIRE, an amazing documentary about two young Enlgish men traveling through Indonesia on a sailing boat. Maybe one like there. I had only been on ferries; Newport, Staten Island, and the Dover ferries. My Irish grandmother had come to America on a ship. A horrible voyage in steerage. She never stepped foot on a boat again.
Still the sea was in our blood, especially that of my father, whose family had sailed the seas as shippers and whalers. No more.
I entered the quiet lobby. The hotel staff watched the local TV news. US and Coalition soldiers loaded bombs onto jets. Saddam had been our ally during the I-nation War between Iraq and Iran. The dictator hoped for a reprieve. He should have been packing his bags for exile in Switzerland. I tried to call my parents. No one answered the phone on the South Shore. I thought about my parents. They had to be worried about me. I hung up the phone and returned to the hotel. I didn't dare ask why I was here.
The next morning I boarded the morning flight to Ternate. James and the driver waved good-bye at the terminal.
"Kembali." Return.
"Rambo."
I was the only 'mistah' on the plane. The flight stopped briefly at Bata, the old prison island, which had been crowded with communists who had survived the 1965 nationwide massacre. The plane continued its flight over the Molucca Sea. Small boats cut wakes of white. Prahus. The stewardesses served sandwiches and beer too. I had two of each and showed photos of my family. The attractive stewardess asked, if I had a wife. I was once more embarrassed to say no. The pilot announced our approach. There were no delays in landing. Our plane was the day's only arrival.
After deboarding in Ternate I picked up my bag from the carousel and walked outside the terminal. It was hot. The sun strong. Volcanoes dominated the horizon. The air was fragrant with spice. The island had once been the source of cloves, nutmeg, and mace in the world. The taxi drivers were surprised to see me. Their faces were Javanese. More deportees. Several hostile words were muttered under their breath.
"Angin."
The word in Bahasa meant 'dog'. I accpted the insult without comment. $10 from my wallet bought a smile from a driver. I was his new best friend.
He took me to the best hotel on the island. The Perumahan Griya Sangaji Blok. Trpoical and dating back to Dutch rule.
"Here safe. No problem for mistah."
"Tidak apa-apa."
He was happy to hear a 'orang asing' speak his national language, although no foreigners spoke Tidore, the Papuan tongue of the Moluccas.
I was the only westerner at the hotel. The manager said, "You can stay, but please do not leave the room."
"Why not?" I had a good idea why.
"Ternate people like Saddam. He is Muslim. No one like Dutch people. Maybe people think you Dutch. Maybe American." Mohammad had been on haj to Mecca. He had seen the world. His belief was for the good of man. "Everyone remember the rule of the Dutch. Bad people."
My room was on the 2nd floor. I stood on the balcony. Minarets silhouetted the early evening sky. Moonlight bathed the volcanic cones. Magellan's successor, Juan Sebastián Elcano, had admired the same vista in 1521. Joseph Conrad had written about these islands in VICTORY. Jack London haunted his books with blackbirders, pearlers, and beachcombers. My uncle Dave might have smoked a cigarette on the deck of a destroyer off these two islands during the Pacific War. I turned on my Sony World Band radio. The BBC was broadcasting a quiz show. I was hungry. The manager was surprised to see me in the lobby.
"Mistah no go outside." "Makan-makan." Eat was an easy word to remember in Bahasa.
"Okay, but go eat fast. Come back faster. Men angry about war. Not like Bush.”
“Same me.”
Mohammad waited outside. I was the only customer. He drove us to the harbor. The fat driver knew a good harbor side restaurant.
Warungs lined the beachfront. Men walked with men. Women walked with women. The driver stopped at a stall with stools. Pop mixed with traditional Indonesian music blared from tinny speakers. I sat down and the waiter spread dozens of plates across a table. A one-armed man in a salt-stained shirt drank a beer and pointed to a plate of black meat.
"Sekali bagus."
"Terima kasi." I thanked him for his advice. The meat was a little tough, but delicious. I ordered seconds. An friendly murmuring swelled at my back. People gathered behind me. The one-armed man hid his beer. This island was 100% Muslim. More men crowded around the stall. I finished the second plate with dispatch and ordered the bill. "Rekening." "Saddam # 1." The chant of the crowd was loud on the first try and even louder on the second, as to be expected from nearly fifty men. I figured the crowd numbered about forty. Their eyes were red. Amok or 'rushing in a frenzy' came from the Malay language. The man with one arm stood at my side. Someone called him Baab. Twenty more men joined the anti-western mantra. The waiter delivered my bill and moved aside with speed. I stood slowly, as if nothing was wrong and turned around to face the odds. 100 to one. An old man stared at me. His clothes were in tatters. He had been waiting to hate a white man for decades and I was the target for his spittle. It was time to go. My hand went to my wallet and then I picked up the rekening to read the order. One word stuck out on the bill. Angin. I had seen the word before.
Hati-hati angin.
'Beware of the dog." I held up the bill to the old man. In Latin it was caveat canum.
"Saya makan angin?"
"Angin." His eyes focused on the bill. He nodded and said, "Dua angin?"
"No, I did not eat 'angin'." Two plates, and I would have ordered a third, if the crowd had not interrupted my dinner.
"Mistah makan angin," the old man announced to his followers and pointed to heads in the kitchen.
Smiling dogs.
"The crowd laughed with mirth. No mistahs ate dog. "Kamu makan angin."
The mob's blood was up. The temperature was in the high 80s. Only magic could save me and I cast a spell with my next word.
"Lezat."
The crowd of men had not expected a compliment from a 'mistah' for the cuisine of the island. They laughed and the one-armed man pulled my hand.
"We go. Now."
I exited through a gauntlet of hands clapping my back. They followed me back to the hotel singing the chorus, "Angin # 1."
I said nothing about Rambo and the hotel manager asked the mob to disperse.
They chanted 'angin, angin' into the night.
Mohammad was happy nothing bad happened to me.
It had been a close call.
Back in my room I listened to the BBC. US fighter jets were hitting Bagdhad. Awe and destruction. Allied Air superiority was countered by missile attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The next morning I took my breakfast at the hotel. Mohammad suggested a sightseeing tour for the late morning.
“Everyone away working the fields. Safe.”
I wrote a few more chapters of NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD in my room. My female protagonist was sculpted from old memories of my ex-girlfriend. I couldn't remember her phone number, but the hotel managed to secure a connection to the USA.
My mother and father were relieved to hear my voice. Uncle Dave was in the hospital. His lungs were shot. I asked if I should come home.
"No, but Uncle Dave will be happy that you asked for him."
"Tell him I'm staying out of trouble."
"He'll be happy to hear that."
Over the next few days my forays from the hotel were few.
In the afternoon I ventured around the island and then took a ferry across to Tidore, whose hills were blanketed by clove trees. The people on that island seemed to be ignorant of the war. Only a few houses sported TV antennae.
I swam at a beach at the end of the road. The current was too strong to snorkel.
The Moluccas stretched north into terra incognita.
Across the sea beyond the western horizon lay Manudo. Rough Guide said that the diving off the nearby atolls was exceptional. Tomorrow a ferry crossed the strait in two days. The next one was in five days. I booked passage. It was the end of January.
The Battle of Khafji ended badly for Saddam. His troops had been pushed back into Iraq. F-16s pounded their retreat. The men in Ternate no longer chanted his name. No one likes a loser. Only the old man carried the flag for Saddam. I called him the anti-Rambo.
That night the one-armed man and I ate dog together. He drank beer with ice. Baab was the first mate of the ferry across the Molucca Straits and took me to his ship.
"Pagi ke Manado." Baab reserved a sleeping berth of the ferry. It was in his cabin. The price of this luxury was $3. I bought beer for everyone. A big bottle of Bintang cost a half-dollar.
"You not same mistah." Baab didn't like the Dutch, but he hated the Javanese. Jakarta was far away like Amsterdam. Japan was closer. Distances still mattered on Ternate. His two wives lived on opposite sides of the island.
"You eat dog. Dog make strong. Same bull."
"I like dog."
"You have wife?"
I was tired of saying no and pulled out a photo of an old girlfriend. Candia had been the love of my life in 1985. Baab held her photo to the light with his one hand.
"Makali Indah."
The French-Puerto Rican had been too beautiful for words. We lasted over a year. I wondered why I still carried the photo. Baab thought that I was human. Maybe I was. It wasn’t a lie.
We drank until midnight and I walked back to the hotel guided by fireflies. Magic was in the air accompanied by the drift of cloves. Sleep was a maze of dreams centered on me and my children.
I woke thinking of diapers. The manager knocked on the door.
"You have phone to America."
I ran to the desk. It was my mother. She had bad news.
"Uncle Dave is dead."
"Dead." The cigarettes had killed him.
Dave would have loved to hear about this trip. This sea had been part of his youth. I thought about him on a destroyer off Biak. We shared that view. Mine had been in peace. His had been in war. I expressed my condolences and told my mother that I was fine. I said nothing about tomorrow's ferry. The newspapers in the USA frequently published reports of their sinking. She didn't need the worry.
"130 dead in the Java Sea."
Better she think I was flying to Bali. Planes made more sense to her western mind. Her mother had crossed the Atlantic in a cattle ship. Boats were bad luck to Nana. Her daughter thought the same.
I spent the day writing my novel about pornography in North Hollywood. My ex-girlfriend's character was a virgin. I never fantasized her a whore.
I listened to the BBC. The outcome of the war was written by the West. The Iraqis were in retreat.
I gave gifts to the hotel staff; a baseball cap to the manager, postcards to the waitress staff, and a tee-shirt to the fat motorcycle driver. He drove me to the harbor. The ferry was warming up its engine. Baab stood at the stern. Kids jumped into the water.
A big ship was unloading cargo. Its destination was Jakarta. I climbed up the gangplank to the Ternate Star. Baab hovered over the motor. He was the engineer. Our cabin was next to the wheelhouse. The room smelled of oil and unwashed sheets. It was better than the sleeping quarters below deck. Some islanders shouted from the pier. They were seeing me off.
"Rambo, Rambo."
"Tidak suka Rambo." Baab grasped the railing with his one hand, as the ferry pulled away from the port on a calm sea under a clear evening sky. The volcanoes of Ternate and Tidore dominated the ocean. The 3rd-class passengers sought a comfortable position on the deck.
"I like Rocky better." Baab excused himself. He had duties. I walked forward to the prow. The ferry chopped a swift vee through the waves. A strong wind blew from the east.
I pulled off my baseball cap and stuck it in my jeans pocket. Uncle Dave had steamed through these waters. His ship had been a destroyer. Mine was a ferry. Joseph Conrad wrote prose in my head.
The captain studied the clouds in the sky. He shouted orders to the crew. They battened down the cargo. The volcanoes were shrunk behind us and the waves swell in size. Several passengers got sick. The sun dropped in the furrows of the western sea. The sky turned black red. Baab and the captain stood by my side.
"Bad sea tonight," he said these words in English and explained, "I work ships everywhere. Europe. America. Asia. All my life. I lose my arm in a storm. Most men stop the sea after accident. But I love the sea. She is my wife. My real wife. You must think much about your wife."
"All the time." My ex- had no idea where I was and we hadn't spoken in two years, but what I told Baab was no lie. I thought about Candida from time to time.
"Good." He looked over his shoulder at the passengers spewing rice over the railing. "Seasick. It like plague. Spread fast. Only two cures for seasick."
"What?" I was feeling queasy. My Nana must have felt the same. Uncle Dave and Aunt Bert too.
"Land and death."
The ferry buried its bow in a keel-shaking wave. Before us was a horizon of storm.
"I hope land come first."
"Land come first." Baab patted my shoulder. We were traveling friends. ROCKY was his favorite movie. His first wife's name was Bellah. # 2 was Amina.
"Good." I fought off seasickness. Baab was pleased that I wasn't like the other passengers. He was a man of sea as had been my people. A war thousands of miles away was unimportant. The sea was all that mattered and more important than the sea was land. But Sulawesi couldn't come soon enough.
Death was for someone else like my Uncle Dave and he was not looking for me to join him for a long time. Until then I was at peace. Tidak apa apa. Black below.
The Pacific Ocean. The ship. The night. Blackness and then stars.
The captain at the wheel. A kretek in his mouth. The smoke sweet on the softer wind. Waves joining a calm sea.. Stars blink on and off, on and off. Never true blackness. Only the dark. Engines slow to half-speed. The heading due west to Manudo. A glow on the eastern horizon. Not the sun. Not the moon. Maybe another ship. After a half-hour yhe light drowns beneath the horizon, leaving only me on the late night
Pacific Watch
Where am I?
West of Manudo and east of the dawn__
