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 merchants profiting from the lucrative East-West trade route. Adventurous voyagers stood to reap fortunes from finding a viable passage. The Portugese sailed south down the coast of Africa in search of a navigiable passage to the Spice Islands.
In 1493 Christo Colon returned from the New World with tobacco and slaves, but the absence of spices disappointed the Spanish monarchs. Slavery and extermination was the future for the Caribs and Arawaks and all the tribes of the New World. Gold and silver for the Spanish Crown to pay for a war against the Protestant Netherlands, but not spices. Tobacco, yes. Spices, no. Gold yes.
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. Failures were many.
Their commander was killed in a battle on the Philippines and only fifteen members out of the original 237 crew completed 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, Portuguese, and Spanish warred for control of these islands. In the end the people of Indonesia were free of foreigners, but not of themselves.
In December 1991 I sold a 5-carat FSI1 diamond to a well-heeled woman 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. Manny, my boss, once more warned that I was going to be replaced by a broom. He had said the same thing the previous year. The Brownsville native slipped me $500 on my last day and said, "Be careful. It ain't safe anywhere."
Saddam took those words as a green light. Two armies of almost two million soldiers faced each other on the Kuwait border. Saddam had promised 'the mother of all battles' to the the Army of the Willing assembled by President Bush. My friends and family considered my voyage foolhardy and dangerous. I was 39, strong, and free with money and a stack of Traveler's Checks. I thought otherwise.
During the last decade's Iran-Iraq War Kuwait had been slant-drilling into Iraq's Rumaila oil field. Its despotic ruler Saddam had demanded compensation for this theft. Kuwait's emirs refused and Iraq amassed 300,000 troops on the border. At a July meeting with the US ambassador, April Glaspie had said, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts."
Saddam took the Ambassador's words as a green light from President Bush. In August 1990 his troops overwhelmed the Kuwaiti army in two days and occupied the emirate. America was not pleased and President Bush called for military action. A half a year later two armies of almost two million soldiers faced each other on the Kuwait border. Saddam had promised 'the mother of all battles' to the Army of the Willing. My friends and family considered my voyage foolhardy and dangerous. I was 39, strong, and free with money and a stack of Traveler's Checks. I thought otherwise.
During a farewell dinner at the Villa Rosa over my hometown line on the South Shore of Boston, I spread a Nelles map of Indonesia on the table and explained the great distance between Indonesia and Iraq. Over four thousand miles from Banda Aceh on Sumatra to Baghdad. 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. There could be anywhere on Earth for most people everywhere.
Up in Westbrook, Maine the closet in my grandmother's attic had been crammed with every issue of National Geographic. I had read them all, imagining me here, there, and everywhere. My geography grade at St. Mary's of the Foothills had been an A+.
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. He never understood my wanderlust. Every siblings had settled down around 128. Spouses, children, houses, steady jobs. His dream was for me to also settle down in the suburbs with a wife and children. That ship had left port a long time ago.
My mother wanted the same for me, but she loved to travel. So did my father, but to safe places like Bermuda, and Ireland. I had once traveled with them to Key West. Noting my resolve, she 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.
My Great-grandaunt had sailed through those islands in 1968. Her father had been a whaling captain in the 1870s. At Bert's 100th birthday in 1960 on Cape Cod Aunt Bert had recounted how my great-great-grand uncle had harpooned a right whale off the coast of Madagascar on her eighth birthday. She had also recounted that all the women in Indonesia had black teeth from chewing betel nut. Only older women chewed that now, as I discovered in Bali the previous year.
My grand-aunt Marion had visited Bali in the fifties. Africa too. She brought back a mahogany statue of a bare-chested Legong dancer. It stood on my desk back in the East Village
"I'll be safe."
"There wasn't a war on the horizon in 1868. Not last year too. I was worried then, but not like now." My mother wanted nothing bad to happened to her second son. Her mother had left County Mayo in the Year of the Crow. After a horrible Atlantic crossing, Nana vowed to never to go to sea again. She never left Boston either.
"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 Isles. 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 archipelago. I've been there. I have a friend there. An American. If things get crazy, I'll cut and run ASAP."
Amok was the Bahasa word for crazy. Only one of my family had heard of Biak.
My uncle Dave had even been there.
"In World War II I was on a Navy 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 without 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 Villa Rosa. He lived down the street. "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. Remember we taste like pig, which is why they love spam and have a good drunk on me."." Uncle Dave cuffed me $20. Bintang beer cost $1. A good drunk indeed.
The previous year on Biak I had free-dove its pristine reef cliffs with Larry Smith, a renown Texan diver. Under clear skies and pristine sea. About three hundred yards off the palm-rimmed shore a Japanese destroyer sunk during the Battle of Biak lay on its side in fifty feet of water. It was visible from the surface and I slipped over the side of the inflatable Zodiac with a hunk of coral in my arms and the weight dropped me to the hull. A shell had torn a hole in the steel. Maybe from Uncle Dave's destroyer. My lungs were good. I stayed a full minute. When I popped to the surface, I smiled at Larry. I was on the other side of the world.
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 only wore beads and amulets around their necks and gourds over their penises. They were not from now and I had asked myself, "Why had I ever gone to Paris?" until remembering thinking the same of London sitting at a cafe in Les Halles on my first afternoon in the City of Light January 1982.
The next day I left Boston and returned to New York to pack 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. Only two Baptist missionaries. I booked a room in the Dutch hotel across from the airport. I was the only guest. The impending war was hitting tourism hard. I learned from the hotel staff that Larry Smith had flown to Surabaya to fetch an engine for the boat for his diving enterprise. I was on the other side of the world. I ate nasi goren in the market alone. That night I listened to the news on the BBC World Service and drank cold Bintang beer. 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 and warplanes.
The next day I sat at the hotel and then walked to Goa Jepang. in 1990 I had visited the cave fortress for over 4000 Imperial soldiers in the Battle of Biak. They had refused to surrender and the Marines had poured countless barrels of fuel into the cave and then lit them all on fire. After I climbed from its depths, I had spotted a few Japanese survivors of the Pacific War lighting incense at a shrine to their fallen dead. Same as last year they were all in their seventies. Old men. Tears fell from their eyes. They stayed one day at the Dutch hotel. A night of drinking beer and they flew back to Tokyo. None of them spoke English. I nodded sayonara with respect.
At night I sat on the balcony lit by a 40-watt lightbulb circled by all kinds of flying and crawling 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 dark southern horizon with black islands breaking the horizon. I put down 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. Clear warm water. The undersea cliffs began after twenty feet beyond coral shelf. Sea turtles and parrotfish fed off the bounty of the current. I snorkeled for several days. Biak was a quiet town. Even more so now. I was not lonely. Apart from everyone, but not alone. I tried calling my Uncle Dave twice from the Post Office. There was no answer at his house in Quincy. No one answered at my house either. The war had yet to start.
Ambon, the capitol of the Moluccas, was my next stop.
Ambon means a light rain in Tagalog. Indonesia was the second most polyglot nation on the planet after Papua 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 both here and there. A traveler. A drifter. No place to call home. Alone. Suspect. Both my father and mother agreed with their opinion and I replied 'no', wishing my answer could have been yes, 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 archipelago by the Sukarno transmigrasi or transmigration policy. They mostly worked as pedicab drivers. Muslim Javanese. A few jeered at me. I was the only white person or mistah 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 river eels lurking in holes trained to eat eggs, 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 as was sekali bagus. Speaking the language was a good thing. People didn't think you were a tourist. "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. 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.
“Good only have Muslims. Not witches. Semoga berhasil." Good luck always trumped magic.
We returned to Ambon 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. These ships connected Indonesia to its thousands of islands. I was overcome with deja-vu and blamed the honey and then the whiskey, then remembered RINGS OF FIRE, an amazing documentary about two young English men traveling through Indonesia on a sailing boat. Maybe one like here. 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 running in my father's veins, whose family had sailed the seas as shippers and whalers. No more. I was flying to Ternate.
I entered the quiet lobby. The hotel staff watched the TV news. US and Coalition soldiers loaded bombs onto jets. Saddam had been our ally during the I-nation War between Iraq and Iran. Reagan's people had dealt arms illegally to the mullahs. The USA played all sides. The dictator hoped for a reprieve. He should have been packing his bags for exile in Switzerland. I tried to call my parents from the front desk. No one answered the phone on the South Shore. I left a message with the number of the hotel. 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.
"Saya akan kembali." Return was always a possibly. It was a long life and a small world.
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 arrivals.
After deboarding in Ternate I picked up my bag from the carousel and walked outside the terminal. It was hot. The sun strong. Another volcano lay across the bay. Tidore. The air fragrant with spice. The island were still the source of cloves, nutmeg, and mace. The taxi drivers were surprised to see me. Their faces were Javanese. More deportees. Several hostile words were muttered under their breath. I recognized one of them.
"Angin."
The word in Bahasa meant 'dog'. I accepted 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. A walled compound of single story bungalows dating back to Dutch rule.
"Here safe. No problem for mistah." The manager had a good smile.
"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 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."
From the room's terrace a view of minarets silhouetted the early evening sky. To the west moonlight bathed Gamalama's volcanic cone. 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 TALES OF THE SOUTH SEAS with slaving black-birders, cannibals, 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 one the first word to learn in Bahasa and any other language.
"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 young driver knew a good harbor side restaurant.
Warungs lined the beachfront. Men walked with men. Women walked with women. All holding hands. 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 blackened meat.
"Sekali bagus."
"Terima kasi." I thanked him for his advice. The meat was a little tough, but delicious. I ordered seconds. An low murmuring swelled at my back. Men 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 cry was loud on the first try and even louder on the second, as to be expected from nearly fifty men. Their eyes were red. One of them had to be amok.
Mohammad left with dispatch. I didn’t blame him. I wished I could have done the same. I rose from my seat. The man with one arm stood at my side. Someone called him Baab. His name. He was a big man for Ternate. 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. Fifty to one.
An old man stared at me. His clothes were in tatters. He had been waiting to hate a white man for decades, preferably Dutch, but 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 'angin' before on a sign.
Hati-hati angin was caveat canum in Latin.
'Beware of the dog'
I held up the bill to the old man.
"Saya makan angin?" My mother had never let me have a dog as a child, but I loved dogs.
"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 mob had not interrupted my dinner.
"Mistah makan angin," the old man announced to the mob. The muttering was more threatening. Baab pointed to hanging dog heads in the kitchen. Smiling dog heads. No way I ate dog.
"Kamu makan angin?"
The crowd laughed at my ignorance and ridiculed me with clenched fists. No mistahs ate dog. Only magic could save from violence and I cast a spell with my next word.
"Lezat."
The men had not expected a culinary compliment of delicious from a 'mistah'. 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." The one-armed man and I said nothing. Silence was our best reply and at the hotel entrance the manager asked the mob to disperse.
They marched away chanting 'angin, angin' into the black night. The last was the old man. No one had gone amok. Te one-armed man had disappeared into the night. Mohammad was happy nothing bad happened to me. It had been a close call.
Back in my room I dialed the radio to the BBC. US fighter jets were bombing Bagdhad. Shock and 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. Bacon and eggs and toast. Mohammad suggested a sightseeing tour to the north of the island. There was a beach.
“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 hadn't called Sherri in LA. I wasn't going to now. After breakfast 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 too."
I gave my parents the hotel number. I hoped they didn't call me. Over the next few days my forays from the hotel were few.
That afternoon I ventured around the island and the next took a ferry across to Tidore. The verdant 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. To the north the Moluccas stretched north into mare incognita. Across the sea beyond the western horizon lay Manudo. Rough Guide said that the diving off Bunaken's nearby atolls was exceptional. A ferry crossed the strait tomorrow. The next one was in seven 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. Sly Stallone was every man's hero. A man against the powers that be.
That night the one-armed man re-appeared and we ate dog together. He drank beer with ice. Baab was the first mate of the ferry crossing the Molucca Straits and took me down the quay to his ship. A wooden ship about ninety feet long, the newly-painted hull was designed from a prahu and the Ternate Star looked sea-worthy. There were a fixed number of life preservers. I took one.
"Besok malam pagi ke Manado." Baab reserved a sleeping berth of the ferry. It was in his cabin. The price of this luxury was an extra $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 more. Jakarta was not as far away as 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 beautiful, but very language has a word for beautiful. I saw Candia last year on my last leg around the world. We lasted over a year. Now maybe just friends. I wondered why I still carried the photo. For a moment like this. 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 and diapers. Nearing dawn the manager knocked on the door.
"You have phone call from America."
I ran to the desk. It was my mother. She had bad news. I knew what it was.
"Uncle Dave is dead."
"Dead." The cigarettes had killed him.
Uncle Dave would have loved to hear about this trip. This sea had been part of his youth. He came from Newfoundland. 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.
"130 dead in the Java Sea." I had seen similar headlines more than once.
She didn't need the worry. 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 wasn't a virgin. Neither was I.
I listened to the BBC. The outcome of the war was written by the West. The Iraqis were in retreat. Victory was at hand.
Nearing sunset I packed my bag and went to the front desk to give small gifts to the hotel staff; a baseball cap to the manager, postcards to the waitress staff, and a tee-shirt to Mohammad, the motorcycle driver. He drove me to the harbor. The ferry was warming up its engine. Kids jumped into the water. Passengers tossed rupiah coins to the boys. They were always successful in retrieving the money.
At a large dock a big ship was loading cargo. Its destination was Jakarta. I climbed up the gangplank onto the Ternate Star. Baab hovered over the engine. He was also the engineer. Our cabin was next to the wheelhouse. The room smelled of oil and unwashed sheets. It was better than the sleeping on the 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. "I not like men amok." 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 sat on embroidered carpets on the deck.
"I like Rocky better." Baab excused himself. He had duties.
I walked forward to the prow. The ferry chopped a 12-knot vee through the waves. A strong wind blew from the east. The captain studied the clouds in the sky. He shouted orders to the crew. They battened down the cargo on the deck. The volcanoes of Ternate and Tidore shrank behind us and the waves swelled in size. Several passengers got sick. More joined them. The sun dropped in the furrows of the western sea. The sky turned black red. Baab 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, but what I had told Baab was no lie. I had thought about Candida from time to time. After showing her photo to Baab. Almost all the time this far from Paris.
"Good." He looked over his shoulder. Passengers spewed 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 rose a black horizon. The storm was coming our way.
"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 was weathering the storm unlike the rest of the passengers. They were landlubbers. 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 tonight and more important than the sea was reaching land tomorrow. 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.
On the sea east of Sulawesi. The ship. The storm. Then the night. Blackness and then stars.
The captain at the wheel. A kretek in his mouth. The smoke sweet on the softer wind. Waves, then a calm sea. Stars blink on and off. On and off. Never true blackness. Only the cosmos. Engines slow to half-speed. The heading due west to Manudo. A dim glow on the eastern horizon. Not a star. Not the sun. Not the moon. Maybe another ship. After a half-hour the light drowns beneath the horizon. A ship faster than ours. Where am I? On the Ternate Star heading west to Sulawesi. Alone, apart, but not lonely. I wore ghosts of the dead and the living; Magellan, Conrad, my Uncle Dave, Baab, Larry Smith, and Candia. All of us just awaiting the dawn with me as my mother's eyes.
Right before I woke this morning on the top floor of the Fort Greene Conservancy, I had a dream about trashing a billionaire's mansion by driving a small tractor through the rooms.
