Chapter 20

The sky is as gawdy blue as the bursting crystals of gin in my headache. I survey the papaya grove. Fried papaya for breakfast, and then you stroll out to the cove and catch a fish. The ravishing native girl stops by in the evening. Eventually she gives you her confidence. Time ceases to be relevant. Suddenly I know why I came.

Flocks of crane flies shift in and out of the sunlight. A swarm of swifts swoops and turns away among the trees. At the fringe of the jungle I lean in for a peek inside. In broad daylight it is dark as a tomb in there. Why does it so vehemently forbid me ? With that bamboo bayonet called a colette I try to chop down a papaya. Alvina scowls at me from her window. Papaya later maybe, I think, ambling amiably down the gravel drive to the road, a long strip of baked and gleaming asphalt with no traffic on it. A thoroughfare any taxpaying, Volvo-owning milk dud would be proud of. Who pays for this road with no traffic on it that does nothing but pass one empty cove after the next ? The wind stirs and everything speaks. Clouds like speckled animal cookies race by.

I stare out into the ruffled, parti-colored sea. The sky is blue until you look at the water : then the sky seems purple. The rocky shore is hard, rust-colored volcano spewage, rough footing. Mountain talked last night about collecting whelk from the cove for another of his marvelous stews. I don’t know what whelk are. Maybe they are gentle creatures with German accents that emit soap bubbles. I remove my shoes, peel off my shirt, set my glasses carefully on top of my shoes, and tootsie-foot over the hardened cauliflower shore to stick a toe in. The water is warm as tea. I crouch down and slide gently in.

The cove is as crazily blue with me in it as it was from a distance. I float on my back for a while and stare up into the fuzzy purple sky. I find myself oddly uninspired. A car whizzes past out on the road and I want to chase after it, find out who is inside, make them give up their secrets. I swim out about forty feet, dive and touch bottom, then return to shore. This is Eden, I think, hands on hips. The genuine article. No doubt about it. Nothing could possibly be more enchanting or naturally honest or pristine. Why am I not changed ?

From up the road north I discern a figure approaching. My glasses are still laid carefully on the tops of my shoes. I arrived with a vague hope that once removed from the artificial strictures of society, my vision would be restored to its native clarity. The figure draws nearer. I stand perplexed on the rocks for a moment, a ball of kazooing gnats like an exploded atomic diagram hovering around my head, my shoes four feet away, the steam whirling off my shoulders. All at once I make out the long knife and the pronounced bowed legs.

With gin-powered acceleration I dive behind the rocks and splash clumsily back into the cove, bumping my knee, heart slapping my ribs. Shhh, you fool. Quietly I wait with just my head poked above the surface, like a myopic turtle.

As Legion nears I prepare to submerge. He is a silent, swiveling, barefoot walker, a Scotsman who’s lost his kilt, the eyes on his pivoting head slashes of yellow neon. Tangled dreadlocks tickle his shoulders like black ropes of tar. Shreds of beard dangle from his jowls and chin. The shining machete suspended somehow in the gird of his loincloth slaps rhythmically against the bulging muscles of his thigh. He wears a necklace around his black throat, curved bits of gleaming ivory, shark teeth, or human finger bones. His bearing is diabolical. He looks straight over at me just at the moment I duck under. I open my eyes underwater to see a school of tiny electric blue fish investigating my ravaged hands. When I pop back up again he is moving up the road, mumbling something, singing perhaps. The melody sounds so eerily like “The Banana Boat Song.”