Part 5: the Fisherman

1981INo. 18 by Richard Critchfield THE CHANGING PEASANT Africa [RC-1-'811 Part V: The Fisherman

"Riders on the earth together, Qui circule dans l'air et rn'enfle la insects, and reptiles evolved here, brothers in that bright loveliness in narine including the now-extinct dodo, that the eternal cold, . .. " Se rnbe dans rnon arne aux chants plump, round-bottomed bird with des rnariniers. twisted beak who danced the quad- On Christmas Eve, 1968, A!merican rille with Alice. astronauts had sent back man's first By an accident of history Mauritius' televised view of the Earth from the 950,000 inhabitants include Indians, It was not until the development- Moon, inspiring poet Archibald Chinese, Africans, Arabs, and Euro- with the muscles of African slaves- MacLeish to write the words that peans, all the major races and re- of sugar plantations in the Carib- would equally have described the ligions of humankind. As Egypt's bean that Europeans settled Mauri- island of Mauritius. Small, finite, Nile seems to symbolize human his- tius. The Dutch and Portuguese fragile, its airs and climates, oceans tory, Mauritius is the world in cari- came first but were driven away by and waters, the great swirls of white cature. It has the same gaps of rats, unintended fellow immigrants thin atmosphere on its bright blue money, race, power, and ideology on their ships which, unchecked by surfaces conferring on the planet an that divide the planet itself and its natural enemies, fast multiplied. inescapable unity. hopes of survival are rooted in the Then came the French-who same need to curb births, reshape brought mongooses. After 1789, An island fisherman once told Mark the economic processes, and when many nobles fled from Paris to Twain, "Mauritius was made first remedy the grosser inequalities. the island, then called Ile de France, and then heaven; and heaven was the population there declared it an copied after it." Tiny (38 miles long, Like the earth, it is not making too bad a job of it. independent colony of about 10,000 29 miles wide) and remote (1,200 Frenchmen and 30,000 African miles out in the Indian Ocean from The rich, who are almost all white, slaves. The British seized it as a the southern coast of eastern have their golf, theater, cars, upland crown colony in the early nineteenth Africa), it is one of a scattered group chateaus, and coastal beachhouses, century. They renamed it Mauritius, of islands known as the Mascarenes. read Le Monde and The Economist, ruled it, and demanded a share of Justly celebrated for its waterfalls, buy their clothes, books, and art in the sugar profits, but they never shooting stars, and frequent rain- London or Paris, and have every settled it. They left it to the French bows, there is an eerie spaceless- modern luxury. The poor-black, and their black slaves to transform ness and timelessness about the brown, or yellow-exist often at the rocky plateau into great sugar place, with its fog and mists swirling bare subsistence and, in their small plantations, which, despite rats, slowly about green volcanic moun- stone or wooden huts, maintain fires, hurricanes, epidemics of small- tains. Charles Darwin, another visi- Indian, Chinese, or African cultures. pox, cholera, influenza, bubonic tor, noted in his Beagle diary that Yet all the island's people share the plague, enteritis, and dysentery, "masses of white clouds were col- same TV, the same network of somehow prospered. lected around these pinnacles, as if roads and communications, the merely for the sake of pleasing a same schools, the same jet airport Slavery was abolished in 1808 in all stranger's eye," and Baudelaire and the economic interdependence the British colonies. The freed wrote of Mauritius in Parfurn that has made the entire earth such slaves, now mostly Creoles (criollos, Exotique: an intimate and vulnerable place to colony-born) of mixed African and Guide' par ton odeur vers de live. French blood, deserted the cane charrnants clirnats, fields forever, creating fishing vil- How did this happen, so far away lages along the coast or working as Je vois un port rernpli de voiles et de from anywhere? rna"ts artisans or dockers. The French Encore tout fatigubs par la vague Until the Age of Discovery, Mauri- were forced to import indentured marine, tius was unpeopled. It was so cut off Hindu and Muslim workers from Pendant que le parfurn des verts that its ecosystem developed sepa- India. By 1860 the population tarnariniers rately. Unique species of birds, reached 160,000 and Chinese and Arab traders swarmed in to cater to In Grand Gaube-the island's largest Dutch explorers; exiles from Ver- its needs. fishing community, with about 500 sailles; bourgeois French colonists; fishermen-near Cap Malheureux, prim English civil servants; bearded After World War I, as sugar prices the old men spoke of coming starva- Arab traders; paunchy Chinese soared, the French plantation tion and the Apocalypse and the hoteliers; the great-grandchildren of owners grew very rich and built young of revolution. A new Move- slaves from Abyssinia, Mozambique, fabulous estates wifh deer parks and ment Militant Mauricien (MMM), led and Zanzibar and indentured cane high bamboo hedges in the upper by Paul Beranger, a young white of workers from Bombay, Madras, and reaches of the island. The British French descent who had taken part Calcutta; and all the human flotsam built roads, schools, hospitals, in the 1968 Paris riots, was calling washed up with the driftwood from water and sanitation systems, and, for violence to "sweep all the capi- the seven seas. Above the port still with DDT, eradicated malaria, the talists aside," and some of the rich rise the sooty ramparts of an English main cause of death. As the mor- were moving to South Africa. fortress; there is a staid Anglican tality rate fell, the population rose cathedral and a statue of Queen from 420,000 in 1944 to 800,000 a In his chateau atop the plateau, a Victoria, glaring stonily from her decade ago. It was projected to proud aristocrat of French noble pedestal in front of the old Govern- reach a "catastrophic" two million ancestry spoke of dispensing charity ment House at coolies unloading by 1982. to the poor. "Five years ago there cargo in the harbor. The back was a gulf between us," he said. "I Britain hastily granted Mauritius in- streets are narrow and twisting; hated the blacks and they hated me. along the lanes, the forbidden dependence in 1968-setting off But when we came down from our riots because few wanted it. A mosques and tottering houses of castles into the streets we found the Muslim medina cling to the hills Hindu doctor who had lived 14 years they were just like us. Better than us in London and had attacked "British like fungus; the Evil Eye is still in some respects." His blonde wife, potent; and a hundred taboos and imperialism," Seewoosagur Ram- pouring tea, said sadly, "My children goolam, was knighted by Queen incantations restrict the course of are strange; they do not want to daily life. In front of a cheap cinema, Elizabeth and became the island's grow up." Her husband observed first prime minister. The Indian cane curly-haired Arabs in skull caps that if it came to it, the whites could smoke hashish. In a Chinese street, workers now had 52 percent of the muster only a small strike force. vote, an irony in a society to which a no-man's land of pagodas, Mao the French had brought their lan- In a Port Louis slum a brown-skinned posters, and watchful neutrality, guage, culture, and miscegenation revolutionary told me, "Now there is merchants who will sell anything and the British their ideas of liberal talk of rising up and killing all the look at one with cold dead eyes. government, racial prejudice, and whites. But our men say, 'The Near the harbor the African dock the color bar. moment is not yet.' We will revenge workers' quarter throbs with the years of slavery by the white capi- sound of jazz, the beat of sega Mauritius became the United Na- talists and wipe out this corrupt drums, laughter, oaths and curses. tions' fifth smallest member. Its government which betrays the I returned to this world-in-miniature strategic location in the Indian people. I know it will destroy the Ocean was noted in Moscow and after more than 10 years traveling island and I do not wish it but when the world, hopeful and encouraged Washington and even the Chinese, the night comes, I will join." Libyans, and Egyptians opened em- by the declines in fertility and rises in bassies (creating an air of intrigue I lived for five months in Grand productivity evident almost every- that makes Port Louis, the harbor Gaube. Each morning five of us, where in the rural villages. Mauri- and only town of any size, a locale in three young Creole fishermen- tius, a microcosm (of sorts) of the search of a Graham Greene novel). Octave, then 25, Karl, 19, and bigger reality, still reflects this world. Geroge, 17-and my Hindu inter- Its rate of natural annual increase In the late 1960s the World Bank preter, Prem, sailed into the lagoon has fallen from 3 percent to 1.6 per- described Mauritius as perhaps to dive for octopus and spear fish. cent, its crude birthrate from 49 per "facing the first true Malthusian Today Octave is married, has two 1,000 to 23 per 1,000. The current breakdown." It then numbered children, has moved to another projection is that, far from reaching 420,000 Hindus (who controlled its village down the coast, and no the two million predicted in 1969 for politics), 10,000 white Europeans longer fishes, able now to work as a 1982, it will pass the one million (who controlled its economy), and mason. No longer swimming under- mark only in 1987. Contraception, 134,000 Muslims, 25,000 Chinese, water often against strong currents mostly "the pill," has won wide and 230,000 Creoles of French- for three or four hours each day, acceptance. African descent. Aside from 70,000 Octave has grown quite fat. George The island has been made another jobs in the cane fields, there was has moved away and Prem lives in little employment outside fishing. tax-free Hong Kong, luring foreign London, studying criminal law. Karl, capital with tax concessions. Im- now 29, alone has not changed, ported wool, for example, has In Washington about ten years ago either physically or in his way and when I asked the World Bank's enabled tropical Mauritius to be- view of life. He still sets forth each come the world's eighth largest newly created population division morning to dive for octopus. I go where to go to learn something with him, repeating but not recap- sweater manufacturer, though ab- about the world population prob- turing the past. senteeism, rising wages, and a high lem, I was told Mauritius. I had turnover of employees have blighted never heard of it, but I went and it The faces of Port Louis still tell the a promising electronics industry. was the right place. island's history: the descendants of Tourism is rapidly developing; luxury hotels have sprung up all along the It is not a happy ending-but it is told Ada, who was pleased, one coast and air bookings in and out unimaginably happier than anyone could eat off the floor. I have to be made well in advance. could have expected 10 years ago. It Most tourists still come from is not really even an ending. For life A half-mile inland, where the Indian France, the nearby French island of is a matter of time rather than space; cane workers lived, Prem, then a Reunion (which has no beaches), it is not position, it is change; it is Hindu student lacking money to and South Africa, but as global not quantity as much as quality. It is, finish his studies, also awoke and travel increases the still largely un- as French philosopher Henri Berg- hurried to gather his diving gear to touched attractions of Mauritius son said, not mere redistribution of meet Octave at the cove. Prem's home was a tin-roofed shanty of should draw more and more Euro- matter and motion; it is persistent peans, Japanese, and Americans. and fluid creation. Share a moment cheap lumber. Prem alone-the only one of his father's children to of the flow of time-a morning's A sugar boom in 1973-74, when graduate from high school-was record crops happily coincided with journey on New Year's Eve 1969 into allowed a small cubicle of his own; the lagoon near Cap Malheureux, record world prices, fueled the here he kept his Boy Scout uniform, entire island economy. While the the Cape of Unhappiness. The his Junior Lifesaving Certificate, and worldwide recession of the late fishermen were very young and their his library: the works of Shake- seventies has affected Mauritius, island was beautiful and vulnerable, speare, a New Testament, Saint too, new houses everywhere, heavy like a sea bird resting on the waves. Joan, Tom Sawyer, Coral Island, traffic on the roads (the island has The 39 Steps, a Milton anthology, banned further car imports), and a and Bernardin de St. Pierre's Paul et generally voiced feeling of well- Virginie, the most famous literary being are a stark contrast to con- Always, when the day began, work about Mauritius. Octave rose from his bed and went ditions a decade ago. to the open door of his family's Prem's mother was in the hospital; Politically, Beranger's MMM has thatched hut to look at the sky. This she had fainted while peddling fried transformed itself from a group of morning the air was fresh and cool, cakes at the schoolyard; the doctor hot-eyed young revolutionaries into swept by a slight southeasterly trade said she was suffering from severe a "labor party" which now controls wind, perhaps moving up from malnutrition. Prem's father, a worn, the ports, buses, and many sugar Antarctica. The village was already sad-faced little Hindu, was near plantation unions. In the last general stirring even though only the sky retirement age; after working in the election (19761, the MMM got the showed the approach of dawn. fields all day he took his bicycle to most votes of any party. There is Some of the pirogues in the cove the cove to peddle peanuts to the speculation, if it continues to win were already heading out to the reef fishermen. One brother, Dutt, a over the poor, it could gain control and Octave could hear the dip and tailor's apprentice who would not of the government in 1981, with push of the oars. Soon he was receive pay for five years while support of most Creoles, Muslims, making his way, half-asleep, learning the trade, had already left and the younger Hindus. through the whispering casuarina the house. trees, carrying a mast, furled canvas Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, sail, and his foot-fins, snorkle, and The evening before there had been about 80, still leads the postinde- mask. An old man, his uncle Robert, an argument. Dutt had declared, "In pendence coalition of Hindu cane came up the path from the cove: he the very near future, there will be a workers and white plantation fished alone at night with bamboo revolution." Prem had seldom seen owners that has held Mauritius to- cages and was coming home. his father so angry. "Why do you gether for over a decade. Yet even put such ideas in your head? Only within Ramgoolam's own Labor "Mofine, mofine," the old man cowards do so!" Later Dutt told Party there are stirrings of rebellion, complained. "Bad luck, bad luck." Prem, "He's an old man. He doesn't and such a revolt could bring in the He had only three pounds of fish to know anything. All his life he spent MMM.The big question is whether show for the night's work. "Ena trop in the cane fields; that's all he the coalition can survive and, if it boucoup pechere, zotla rode knows." falls, would an MMM government poisson partout-et poisson try to nationalize the sugar estates, misere," he said in the patois of the Prem wondered what would be- set up state trading, and establish a Creoles. "Too many fishermen now, come of Dutt. "Manger, boire, socialistic regime on the Madagas- they hunt fish everywhere in the donne jazz," Dutt would say, car or Tanzania model? lagoon-the catch is miserable. It quoting a popular Creole saying. makes for unhappiness-bad luck." "Eat, drink-amuse yourself." Dutt For the Franco-Mauritians-who read only cheap romans d'amour keep foreign bank accounts and "Don't say mofine, Octave said with titles like Only You Know the apartments in London or Paris just almost harshly. "Don't speak of bad Secret and You Lack the Dignity to in case-much is at stake. For the luck, my uncle. It is the will of God." be a Mother. His taste in films ran to Hindu cane workers and Creole [Robert, now almost blind, no longer such as "Primitive London," which fishermen, it would matter much fishes but lives comfortably on a Dutt said was about "how hippies less. But even Karl is better off these pension and what his children pro- act, how prostitutes are being days: he gets $1.80 a kilo for his vide him. He and his wife, Ada, who strangled, and how a doctor tried to octopus, compared to 20 cents a used to cook for me-my hut was save a woman in childbirth." Dutt decade ago, an improvement, even just next door-served me iced beer went each night to watch the com- after considering inflation. this visit in a house so immaculate I munity television set, never missing "Combat" and "Mission Impos- government leaders as "vampires, Prem's parents to build a comfort- sible." He wanted to become a whosuck the blood of the poor" and able and modern house, where they secret agent. "Ali Baba and his forty thieves." live with one remaining child, an 18- Sometimes Prem would stop and year-old daughter who hopes to The family's future was bleak; in listen to the laborers' talk: study in England. After retiring, four more years his father would get Prem's father was able to find work only 20 rupees ($4) a month as a "They must start factories." at another sugar plantation as a field pension from the sugar plantation. foreman. The family has prospered. I Prem, then 22, had spent two years "They pay us four rupees a day; do you think it isenough?" writing 76 hospitals in London The day of our journey, New Year's applying for training as an orderly, "You yourself are guilty, having so Eve 1969, George, who served as as many Mauritian youths did. "No many children." Octave's boatman, and Octave and vacancy.. . no vacancy.. ." the re- "We must havea revolution." Karl were already stowing their gear plies were always the same. and ready to push off when Prem What would become of them, Prem "Hein! Some of you will say I must reached the cove. They were asked himself - hisfamily, the fisher- go and see my family, some will say I laughing and Prem thought to him- men, the cane workers, the multi- must go to fish; no one will come. self, "The Creoles take life as it tudes of children, everyone on the Words mean nothing. You must comes." Octave, trained as a mason, island? Andre, a wild-eyed Creole have a fierce, strong wind. It takes a had taken to fishing when there was fisherman so fair he could be taken cyclone to blow down a banyan no construction work to be found. for a Frenchman, had told Prem the tree." Unable to earn much with nets, lines, or cages, he had taken up the more island's predicament fulfilled the [ Today there are 30,000 industrial prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. dangerous work of diving just inside jobs; there were 5,000 in 1969; while the reef, where through open passes "The Apocalypse is drawing near," there are still just under 15,000 relief Andre had said. "Day after day, we the coral fell away precipitously workers (the same as 10 years ago), 2,000 fathoms to the ocean floor. see the people becoming more evil. they are paid three times more or 18 There is a place in the Book of Daniel Since sharks or barracuda some- rupees ( $3)a day. I where it says that, in the last days times rose from the black depths and and the last times before the end of Once Prem accompanied an Ameri- entered the lagoon, only Grand the world, God will fill all the people can woman doctor who was Gaube's youngest and most adven- with intelligence. 'And there shall be studying birth control for the World turous fishermen hunted under- a time of trouble, such as never has Bank. Always the answers of the water. Indeed, some fishermen had been since there was a nation till that fishermen were the same: never learned to swim, and each time ... . And many of those who winter (in June or July) or when sleep in the dust shall awake, some "Are there no fish or are there too cyclones sometimes swept the island to everlasting life, and some to many fishermen?" in February, a few fishermen always shame and everlasting contempt.. . "The fish are few. We have no fish. drowned. Their boats were too small, the wicked shall do wickedly; and Long ago God gave but now he for one thing; and fishing techniques none of the wicked shall understand; doesn't." were almost as crude and rudimen- but those who are wise shall under- tary as when their ancestors, freed stand.. . .' Before and after Daniel's "There are methods to limit the slaves, started to earn their meager time this was not true, Prem, but we number of children.Do you approve living from the sea. see it in this generation, this time we of them?" live in. We are living at the point of Mauritius, almost entirely ringed "Non. If God gives one, two, three, with coral reefs enclosing shallow time, Prem." six, or even twenty, we must take." lagoons of brilliant, clear, blue- Prem thought Andre a little mad; yet "Do your children have good clothes green water, is the exposed tip of a others too spoke of a coming apoca- and enough to eat?" volcanic colossus jutting up from the lypse. Robert, Octave's uncle, ocean floor. To the young fishermen, warned of it and said starvation was "Non, misere, misere. Misere pe vini. the underwater topography of their ahead: once a fisherman might take Misery is coming." lagoon was as familiar as the island's home a catch worth five rupees, now craggy peaks, sugar plantations, he was lucky if it was worth two. Prem watched and wondered, went forests, and scattered towns. Each Prem himself felt a sense of things home and anxiously wrote more pass through the reef had its own reaching some kind of climax; many letters to England. character: Barracuda Pass deserved of his friends had joined the new its name; Kalodin was light and Movement Militant Mauricien, which [His persistence was rewarded; in shallow but attracted sharks; Ram- vowed to overthrow the govern- 1970 he received a job offer from a zan was all caves and tunnels where ment. But Prem wondered how it hospitalin Nottingham. He borrowed eels peered foully out of crevices; could do any better to help the poor. air fare. Though he found an Basmaurice was a sunken coral Violence would only ruin the island's orderly's job harsh and met unantici- island. Troualbert, named after sugar economy. Yet the same revo- pated racial prejudice in England, he London's Albert Hall, was the most lutionary sentiment was heard stuck with it, eventually enabling mysterious: a deep break in the coral, among the gangs of relief workers Dutt and two other brothers to shaped like a giant underwater am- hired to repair roads and reduce un- migrate to France. The four of them phitheater, green, misty, and silent, it employment; these men spoke of the in time sent home enough money for turned dense blue-black where the hall and jazz band in Port Louis for bals that lasted all night. Octave stood up, holding on to the mast, and began to sing: Dance with me, don't hold me tight. We will fall down and everybody will laugh.. . . "There is a woman in Beau Bassin," began Karl, "who is called Belinda. She has a beautiful liki. I met her at the bal Saturday in Tamarin. I got into a fight. There's some bad ones in Tamarin. All because I boasted of Grand Gaube." "Is she a little woman, this one you flirted with?" Karl gave a laugh. "I made her younger sister also. At the dance itself, outside in the bushes. But I had no taste to sleep with them, these city girlsfrom Beau Bassin. The older one got mad. I was a little drunk." "If I had been with you, we could have passed along that road to- gether." Karl with his catch. "Her sister sat on my lap and I squeezed her breasts. I told her, 'I stage would be as the rampart "That's not good," said Prem, must sleep with you. What do you plunged to the depths beyond the standing up for his fellow Hindus. want? A necklace?A Coca-Cola? But reef. "They are frightened." I must have you." Once the mast was stepped and the "Shut your liki," Karl, grinning, Octave laughed. "If she was hot boom rigged, the old patched sail cursed him, using the Creole word enough, who would have stopped drew the breeze and the pirogue for the female sex organ. "You have her?" He called to George, who was skimmed over the water, waves not the right to be angry. You are not holding the rudder, using the slang gently slapping at the bow. Karl a coolie from Malabar any more if word for penis: "Hey, gogot, put the began humming a tune; he was a you come fishing with us. You are a rudder to the outside." He looked small, muscular Creole, considered Creole."' around at the water. "Little Arnaud one of the toughest fighters in Grand saw a barracuda around here." Gaube. He sometimes got into fights "Look at the light coming," George, Octave began to sing again, in when he drank too much rum and who was the youngest, called from parody of Edith Piaf: had once been jailed for two months the bow "Like silver." Their faces for knifing another fisherman. With- began to lose their grayish shine. Non rien de rien, je ne regrette out nerves, strong, he was one of the Octave's face, half-hidden under a rien. . . . village's ablest divers; he increased slouch hat with a torn brim he always Karl went on. "When you go to his earnings each afternoon and wore fishing, seemed to darken with Tamarin, you must have a firm friend evening gambling over rummy. the growing light. "This is a good with you. Those people are tough time of day," Octave said, relaxing as and proud." "We'll be at the reef by sunrise," said we were under sail. "Will I get fish Octave. Spotting two Hindu boys with you, George? Will we catch 50 "Like me," said Octave. hunting crayfish near the shore, he pounds today?" Karl quoted a village saying, "Four shouted, "Hey, over there! What's "Non," muttered George drowsily. times truth, forty times lies." He that couyonade? Will you let that admitted, "She was much older than baby octopus go? You will have ,me, that woman in Beau Bassin." trouble!" He laughed and told the "I must have 20 rupees for the New Year," Octavewent on. "Now have others, "Look, I scared them." The I Octave gave a hoot. "Not much! Hindu boys, alarmed, since it was not one cent to buy my sweetheart a Only forty-five! Two old ladies and illegal to kill a young octopus near present." Octave was planning to Karl! Perhaps the two of them were the shore, scrambled out of the marry a girl in the next village of whores!" He sang again: water. Karl and Octave laughed. Poudre d'Or (which he did two years later). But a church wedding was Little woman, don't hold me too "These coolies from Malabar," Karl expensive since Creole custom tight. said, "we'll chase themaway." decreed that the groom must hire a I'm fragile; you'llmake me afraid. Octave (left), George, and Karl (stand- ing).

headlights of that car." Karl laughed. "The hell with you, George. The hell with you. You were masturbating." George protested. "Non, non, I was not." He was embarrassed. "Shut your liki, Karl!" Octave said. "George, spit!" George leaned over the side of the boat and tried to spit but nothing came; his mouth was dry. Octave and Karl hooted with laughter. "George, don't lie," Octave said, "you masturbated." To Prem's surprise, George lowered his head and mumbled, "Well, only men do it," causing the two older fishermen to laugh at him all the more. Octave roared out "Never on a Sunday": On voit des gris sous le ciel blue Un bateau, deux bateaux, trois bateaux Sent vont chantant.. . . "Oh, Bon Dieu, oh, mo mama, will I get fish with you today, George?" Octave teased. "Will I have to tell you everything, always?" Wewere nearing the reef now (Iwas aboard the pirogue too but like Prem, who sat silently taking notes of the dialog which he would read back at home in the afternoon, I spoke little, absorbing the scenery) and saw out- croppings of niggerheads and "Buffoon. Liki of your mama," re- neither - humorous, savage, gentle, meadows of seagrass and heard the torted Karl. "That woman in Beau wise, the face of the Mauritian watery roar of the sea as it beat Bassin wrote me a letter. But to hell Creole. His feet bore small cuts from against the reef masses of broken with her. There is not one taste to the coral as did Prem's, who asked coral and sand. We passed over a them, those women of Beau what to put on his, festering from the deeper channel and entered shal- Bassin." Octave laughed and sang hours spent each day in the salt lower waters, drawing nearer to the another chorus of "Je ne regrette water. crashing surf. As the sun came over rien." "Masturbate and rub the sperm in," the horizon, we sailed alongside a advised Karl. "Rub it well. It's good little fleet, five pirogues moving into A redness was growing up out of the the tossing waves; the fishermen eastern horizon; smoke rose from a medicine." He hooted. Octave began tosing "Island in the Sun": aboard them were splashing their sugar factory; and green slopes gaffs on the water's surface, hissing, mounted to the high plateau and Oh mon lle au soleil, Paradie entre and beating batage sticks against the beyond-the strange volcanic peaks, terre ciel, wooden seats like jazz drummers to the Moka range, Corps de Garde Ou Ie flot le long du jour, change au frighten the fish into their net, which and, pointing like a rocky finger to sable fin chanson d'amour.. . . flashed, beaded with light in the the sky, Pieter Both, named after a spray. Our own gray weathered Dutch sailor who scaled the peak and "George was masturbating this canvas turned bright gold and one then fell to his death centuries ago. morning," announced Karl. "I saw could feel the sudden warmth of the Octave mopped his face with his him waiting on the road and the sun. The surf, crashing and spraying shapeless hat. His shorts and tricot headlights of a car came behind him and foaming white, glittered. were rags, eaten away by salt; one and the light caught his hand. I saw could see the hard arm muscles something shining and I said, "Alle degage!" the net fishermen's through the holes. His face was 'George, do you wear such a big patron shouted and the two net weathered a deep brown, his eyes ring?' 'Non,' says George, 'I don't boats began moving together, were a startling bright blue. Thick wear any ring.' 'Then why is your rowersstraining their muscles. In the black curly hair framed a face that finger glittering?' George wiped his sterns of the batage boats, men with was both Gallic and African and yet hand on his shirt but I saw it in the gaffs pushed fast, faster, and the drums went out over the water, bum acquiring larger boats and motors for "Cokol stepped on a poison fish but bum te dum, bum bum te durn durn Grand Gaube, where one-sixth of all when he took his foot away the fish durn durn durn durn durn dum Mauritian fishermen lived. The was dead. You and I would have durn.. . . . A roar of shouts and oaths fishermen estimated that ten such gone to sleep in the hospital." went up as all five pirogues bumped boats, costing 20,000 rupees each, together; the drumming stopped and would be enough for Grand Gaube; The wind was dying. Octave com- all hands rushed to haul the heavy with 1,200,000rupees ($240,000)you plained, "The boat is as slow today dripping net in. could buy enough bigger boats for all as a morpion (crab louse) at the funeral of a femme petain (prosti- "Pull hard!" the fishermen on the island. The FA0 was spending almost that much to tute.) Oh, George, will you give me a "Swing around!" investigate the possibilities of deep heart attack? What a gogot you are, sea fishing, though this benefited George. Rest a moment. The current "Draw it in faster!" only a few Port Louis commercial itself is moving the boat." Soon we Karl shouted at them, "Change your companies. We met with an Ameri- reached Barracuda Pass. The milky wine, Francois! That Bordeaux is too can FA0 expert several times, Prem green water turned coal black and strong for you!" acting as interpreter for a delegation rough at the rampart edge. The boat of Grand Gaube fishermen, but it tossed in the slow swells and choppy "Quickly, Pa, quickly! Pull it in." never came to anything. At the final waves. Dark gray clouds were form- ing on the northern horizon. Octave "No, not that way, Herve. I'll kill you! session, the expert told Prem, "Please tell them there are just too stripped to his swimming trunks and You are good for nothing but many fishermen and there are not dipped his fins into the water. "Wake whoring and stealing!" enough fish in the lagoon. I know up, Prem. Hand me my speargun. "Likito mama, barricade them!" they have problems but fishermen You kill me, George. Can you reach are poor the world over." After that the bottom with the gaff here? If not, "Ah, mo mama, ah, Bon Dieu, ah, meeting, we stopped in Grand use the oar." He rubbed spit on the mo mama!" Gaube to drink rum; and Octave, inside of his visor to prevent it from after downing several glasses, told clouding. We donned our fins and Everyone loved to watch the exciting masks and followed Octave and Karl spectacle when the boats crashed me, "I am very unhappy when I look to the future. Who will help us? I'm into the water. Here all was silence, together and the men pulled the save the unfamiliar sound of one's great net in. Before striking out on saving every rupee now to get married but I don't know what will own breathing. To the left, the coral his own, Octave had worked with the reef descended sharply; perhaps 15 net fishermen and he still felt the thrill happen when winter comes. Sorne- times the water is so cold, I want to or 20 feet below there was a flat of maneuvering the boats and cry out." He swayed from the liquor, tossing the nets into the heavy surf shelf, scattered with black rocks, then straightened up and said, "I do open stretches of white sand and to catch the shoals of fish. But there not live for money, Richard. I live for clumps of posidonia, a seaweed were many days of sharing a catch of common to all oceans. Unlike the 20 pounds between 15 or 16 men. dignity." Today, 12 years later, no Too little. one has helped the fishermen get choppy surface of the pass, the sea motors or bigger boats although below was calm, almost sluggish. We watched until the boats moved some of the small, lagoon pirogues apart and unfurled their sails again. now have outboard Johnson motors The underwater world of the lagoon In each pirogue a man stood in the in place of the old sails. The number then seemed to me (and still does) stern with a gaff, turning his boat of fishermen seems to have sta- likea fantastic dream, a world of mil- into the wind, silhouetted against the bilized. While there are many more lions of years ago. One moves sunrise. As the gaffman lifted his young divers than ever before, a through a silent misty blue-green long wooden staff and splashed the good many fishermen like Octave light, dappled with prisms of sun water, the boats seemed to grow have gone into other occupations. shafts, in a petrified landscape of wings of glittering golden spray. The FA0 today talks much about coral, sand, and shoals of fish. There Octave pointed past them to where, spending less on reports and inter- are silvered flat fish; tiny darting beyond the reef, three large double- national conferences and devoting yellow and black fish; minute, poised sailed craft had gone far out to sea. more of its budget to things like fish of electric blue, fluttering red Each was 32 feet long, twice the size better boats and fishing nets. Grand fish, slinking azure-and-green fish. of the ordinary pirogues, which had Gaube has yet to benefit.] That day I could see the reassuring to stay inside the lagoon. With blue fins of the others ahead and the motors and 10-man crews they could "Hey, Cokol!" shouted Karl at a luminescent air bubbles they left in take the heavy waves of the open passing boat. "Cokol is the premier their wake. Octave was suspended, sea. Such a larger boat, called a buffoon of Grand Gaube. One day he floating on the surface, pausing a peniche, brought home an abundant told his wife he was ill. He took one of moment to look below, and then, haul of fish every day. All three were her birth control pills and was sick." holding his breath as his snorkle owned by prosperous proprietors in Octave joined in. "One time his wife dipped below the water, he dove to Grand Gaube who hired men to do bought a milk can. He used it for a the floor of the sandy shelf to investi- their fishing for them. sega drum and cracked the side." gate a few promising rocks thick with weed. He tensed as he spotted a [Later, we tried to get help from the "Once he spent ten rupees on rum spiny-backed Cordonier fish nibbling United Nations Foodand Agriculture and started to weep about it, the liki algae from a lump of coral. It must Organization (FA01 in hopes of of his mother." have weighed two pounds and, a fish of the premier class, would fetch two large niggerhead, they stopped and dive, Octave speared a parrot fish rupees a pound. floated, their eyes scanning the then headed back toward the boat, brilliant jungle. A blue-green form with Prem a few yards behind. He Octave held his blue Champion materialized through the far mist and saw the barracuda first. The big fish harpoon gun before him and moved came toward them, a beautiful Cato moved straight toward Octave, who slowly toward the fish, flattening his Verte. It circled closely beneath them pivoted until he was face to face with body like an infantryman edging as if displaying itself, and its dark it, separated by only 20 feet of water. toward an enemy position. The har- blue eyes examined them closely. Slowly, Octave pushed the bleeding poon-a short-range weapon of The large fish began nibbling on parrot fish off his spear and began to perhaps 10 to 12 feet of killing power algae on the underside of a coral restring the harpoon. Prem stayed but best for reef fishing-was tipped rock. Octave moved toward it, slowly close to Octave's side, treading with a needle-sharp trident. Out of raising his speargun. Just as he water asslowly as he could to stay in water, it was said, the harpoon could aimed and pulled the trigger the fish place. The barracuda seemed to drift pierce the bodies of three men; I darted at a speck suspended in the forward until he was about six feet hovered just above him, waiting until water. Octave missed; he had to away. Octave kept his visor pointed he pulled the trigger to dive. When I reload the gun hurriedly, paddling right at it; he didn't look away or heard the sharp ping as the harpoon almost upright in the water. Not long move a muscle. For some seconds, was released, I dove, taking care to after he had his harpoon restrung, the three of them, the men and the glance around to see if there was any the Cato Verte circled back once fish, hung suspended in the water. big lurking shape. There was always more, and Octave fired a second Then Karl swam closer, his harpoon a danger, once Octave or Karl began time, piercing the fish with his har- gun poised, pointed at the barra- to bring in fish, that a shark or poon. Once he heard Octave fire, cuda. Karl drifted close to him; with barracuda sweeping up from the Prern looked around in preparation painful slowness, with Karl behind depths might witness the kill, or the to dive. Here, the rampart fell very never turning his back, Octave and blood of the harpoon's wound might steeply toward the black depths and Prem swam the few yards back to bring scavengers in from deep water. it was hard to see for any distance. the boat. They lifted themselves over (Once, at Kalodin Pass, Octave Prem tensed and his head swiveled the edge and kept the boat in place swam up to me and gestured to look sharply to the side, as some secret directly beside Karl until he too behind. Not ten feet away, I saw the sense warned him of danger. Now climbed aboard, having stayed in wide, flattened, shovel-pointed head he saw a black shadow, probably the water until the barracuda turned and white-tipped pectoral fins of a attracted by the threshing of the and swam off into the mist. shark. It looked evil, obscene, and at Cato Verte. least eight feet long, though every- "Let's go," Octave said, trying to thing looks larger in the water. At first Prem thought it was a shark, catch his breath. "We can't fish here Octave and I swam slowly to the but it was longer and narrower, its with a barracuda around." He told boat, being careful not to make any back as blue as a swordfish and its George to step up the mast. Water darting movement or sudden splash. belly silver. Its giant erect tail slowly dripped from his body and he sat I was reluctant [and still am] to get sliced through the water but other- hunched, trembling in delayed ner- too far from the boat after that.) wise it did not move. To Prem, it vous reaction. He lit a cigarette and seemed majestic and dignified. But seemed to feel better instantly. The This time there was nothing men- his skin tightened and he kept pinched, ashen look left his face. He acing in sight, only a pink, curious swimming toward Octave in a gentle noticed how dark the northern sky parrot fish, watching without fear, as rhythm. Then he saw that the big fish had become. "George, set sail," the Cordonier lashed its tail in reflex was moving on, ignoring them for Octave said. "We'll go to Roche aggression. Prem, who had seen the other prey somewhere beyond in the Blanch to hunt octopus closer to kill, broke the surface to beckon misty, moving seagrass. Octave had home. I don't like that sky. Maybe a George, who had drifted away, to seen the fish too and was moving storm is coming." bring the boat. I climbed aboard to carefully toward the boat, towing the Prem and I looked nervous, causing rest but Prem and Octave swam off Cato Verte at the full distance of the Karl to laugh. "Thunder is good for again. Prem afterward told me what harpoon line. When the fish was octopus," he said. "They look out happened: For a time they explored safely in the boat, Octave told us from their rocks. The most beautiful the caves and hiding places along the excitedly, "Barracuda! There's a sea is today when it's rough." face of the rampart, then a dense barracuda here." He told Prem to George stepped the mast, struggling mass of silvery brette fish, glinting follow him back through the water, under its weight. The tip of the sail blue and yellow in the shafts of as Karl was still swimming some dis- dipped into the water. sunlight, appeared ahead. Below, tance away. "Follow me, Prern; stay near the sandy greenish floor of the with me while I shoot a fish. Perhaps "George, topena enala vie?" Octave shelf, was another shoal of larger he'll go away." He told me to warn exclaimed. "Have you no life in black fish. As they dove after them, Karl and have George keep the boat you?" the mass divided sharply leaving a as close as he could to them, then "George masturbates too much," wide channel, then closed behind pulled his visor back on and swam joked Karl. them in a single black cloud. Prem off, Prem behind him. When Karl and Octave swam softly forward brought a fish back to the boat, I told "George is very slack today. Oh, over a carpet of sea grass, waving him what happened. He followed George, how can you make your like wheat in a rainstorm. When they Octave and Prem with his harpoon living as a fisherman? And you want came to a patch of broken coral and a gun at the ready. Soon, on his third me to take you outside the reef?" Flustered, George had forgotten in from outside the reef there," Prem kept bringing octopuses back before stepping the sail to pull up the Octave explained, "not one by one to the pirogue. A viscid mess of rock which served as anchor. He had but three or four hundred at once. En them, in their pool of sepia, grew in dropped it into the water during the bloc. In a single mass that spills over the bottom of the hull. Now the excitement over the barracuda, the reef and then separates." whole northern sky above the white trying to hold the boat close to the foam at the reef was dark purple, others. Now Karl and Octave hooted "Once I was net fishing with Bally," although it was still midmorning. in amusement, and Karl pulled the George said, " when an octopus George told me he felt afraid, though came and grabbed me around the big rock aboard, saying, "What kind we could see a dozen or so other chest. I was wading on the reef. We pirogues scattered around the of fisherman puts up the sail without were pulling in the net and the octo- pulling up anchor?" lagoon. Finally Octave swam back to pus came and jumped on me. I was the boat and climbed in, shivering With the boom rigged, the sail drew afraid. Bally shouted to dive into the with cold and calling to Karl and and the pirogue moved swiftly in the water and bite its head and it would Prem to come. "That should make rising wind. Octave told us about the let go. I was afraid but I did and it ten kilos with the fish," he said. The barracuda. "Six feet long, it was a went." morning's work would bring only $2 dog barracuda, a lichien tazar. Its "George, you are a couyon," or $3. Octave stared at the black sky mouth was very big. When it sees laughed Karl. "George is the premier and the waves toward the reef, you it follows you, moving its tail buffoon of Grand Gaube." Despite which were a strange deep green. right and left. It came and looked at their teasing, both fishermen were "The darkness is spreading every- me right in my mask and opened its fond of the boy and were teaching where, mo mama. This eastern wind jaws twice. Now why did it do that?" him the ways of the sea. [Ten years makes the sea agitated. So the hour Octave involuntarily shuddered. later George, a strikingly handsome demands we go home." Then he laughed and imitated the man with a face lined and aged When Karl and Prem were back, fish snapping its jaws. "When you beyond his years, a father with two shoot a fish the blood gets scattered both hunched over, dripping and children, invited me to his house for shivering with cold, Octave told in the water. A barracuda comes. If tea. He recalled our journey into the you have a fish on your harpoon it them, "When you find octopus, you lagoon the day of the barracuda with have a taste for fishing. But I lose my can hurt you, the liki-of-its-mother great nostalgia. I beast. It was only six, seven feet taste for it today when the sky is so away, opening and shutting its We put on our gear and entered the black. There could be heavy rains, mouth, maybe only five feet from water again. Here it was shallow and terrible." Karl. As you move toward it, it moves the floor of the lagoon was brilliant All around us the water had turned back. Very, very clever and treacher- with open stretches of white sand an intense pale green. The other ous. If you shoot a shark with a har- and yellow seaweed, like a desert boats were setting sail for home. poon it will go away. A barracuda has landscape, with rocks starred black "See the fishermen running every a grudge. HewiH always try and fight with sea urchins, the only sign of life. way," Octave said. "C'mon, George, you. A big head, thelikiof its mother. The water was pale green, only six or we'll step up the mast; the pirogues When you get cut by the coral and seven feet deep. Soon Octave, Karl, are rushing about." blood is coming out, it will attack." and Prem were paddling steadily back and forth, holding spear-like "They've all headed for the cove. We Karl asked what it was called in larfines in their hands, swimming are the last," Prem said anxiously. English and, when I said "barra- with their right arms. Their heads There was more wind every minute. cuda," he repeated the word over were down, searching the coral The sky was now midnight blue and and over, relishing the sound of each formations for a glimpse of octopus the sea unnaturally bright green. syllable. He puffed at his cigarette: eyes. Prem looked at the octopuses and "Ha!" then hastily away, perhaps remem- They did not have long to wait. A bering the legend they came from "George, you are a savage," Octave small octopus under a flat rock, the flesh of drowned sailors. called. "You are a black comic. feeling the human shock waves, Roche Blanch is not outside the reef. turned from a dark brown into a pale George was openly afraid. "lt's We'll go there on a calm day. With gray and squeezed itself into a dark growing worse," he called as the sail these dark clouds spreading every crevice-too late. Karl's barbed caught the wind. Octave told us not way it could be dangerous." larfine cut through the water, to worry "lt's nothing. The winter is pinning the octopus to the coral. A harsher." Karl was unconcerned. The northern sky was a very deep cloud of brown ink spread through "This weather is only good for blue and the wind seemed colder. the water. The creature did not die, playing rummy. You must experi- "George, you take me for a buffoon but stretched its suckered arms, ence a storm like this to be a real if you say this is Roche Blanch, but reaching, searching. The tentacles fisherman." put down the sail. At any time there clutched at his arm as Karl, holding are plenty of octopus in this place." the octopus away from his body, "Look! Look!" George pointed to swam back to the boat. George took the reef. The breakers had risen to a boiling wall of churning white foam. The water was very choppy now. it from him, beat it with a stick and "The wind is bringing cyclone-like Spray splashed into the boat; and turned the creature inside out. when an unexpected wave burst waves to the reef," said Octave. over the side, drenching us, every- For almost an hour, as George held "Like smoke!" shouted George. one laughed. "The octopuses come the boat steady, Octave, Karl, and Then thesail shipped in the wind as a sudden gust hit us. The pirogue was seemed to burst all around us. Then "The rain will last," said Karl. moving hard for the shore now. It the rain came down in a torrent, solid was as dark as dusk. All we could see straight shafts of rain, blotting out "The rain will be here until evening," George said. was a flat treeline, most of the island the shore and the reef. For some hidden by the storm clouds. To the minutes the rain pelted, settling in. Karl shuddered with cold. "You must north there were flashes of lightning. Then the thunder stilled. The wet, have a woman to get warm after The deep blue of the sky, as if it were sodden sail stopped whipping and this." He shouted at a passing boat, overweighted, seemed to bend over went slack. The water lost its vivid "Attention! La Mort! Beware! the boat and the lurid green choppy green color, the waves subsided, and Death!" Then he too began to sing in water. Waves again broke over the we could see Grand Gaube, not so a loud, hoarse voice, "My priest has side drenching us, but now no one far away now. Octave and George raped me, so I yelled to my hus- laughed and even Octave looked sat hunched deep in the hull, water band.. .. " afraid. trickling down their hair and faces. They pulled their wet tricots over Octave laughed. "Have you hus- Then a large cold drop fell on my their heads and knees, clasping their band?" knee, another on my hand. I thought legs, as if they had decided to do to put on my shirt, lying in a sodden "Go to hell. Octave is like a gogot in nothing but sit still and wait out the Paradise." massat the bow, but at that moment rain. Karl and Prem sat on the edge of there was a pelting across the water, the stern, barechested and wet, in "Karl is like a gogot in torn pants. then on the sail and the boat. The their swimming trunks. Beaten by When he fights, many to go prison squall had hit us. Suddenly, with a the heavy rain, the sea became and must pay bail and some sleep in fearful, deafening din, the sky almost still, its surface flat. the hospital." smashed just above our heads. Everyone crouched and held his Octave shook himself off. "To- George scanned the shore. "By luck Benny the Fishmonger will still be breath. A blinding bright light morrow it will be calm. Or maybe a cyclone is coming." He stood up and there." Octave was still loudly began to sing gustily! singing: "Twist again, like we did last Octave sets speargun; Prern in fore- summer.. . ." He held onto the mast ground. 0, Capri! C'est fini. . . . and started to dance in the bow. "Hey, Octave, you might get killed," Karl: You are dead; and I sail out each day to dive with George called. I'II break your liki and bury others, perhaps the adult versions of you. the swimming children, our journeys "Little by little we are going to die," subdued, ritualistic, as if we are muttered Karl. "Liki to mama, I am a Octave: Gogot, likito mama! commemorating something past, tired body." The shore was very close now, and something lost in the flow, as if past The pirogue entered the cove and little boys, scampering naked in the and present do not exist apart. (And Octave began to sing a sega, beating rain and excited by the roaring Prem, writing between classes at out the rhythm with the tiller stick. songs, came running from the sand, London University: "Do the same Karl joined in, making a thundering splashed into the water, and swam trip over again and give my love to racket: toward us. Though trembling with the sea") .I cold, water dripping from faces and Happy New Year, Happy New Year, The rain whipped down. Yet we hair, none of us seemed to want the wanted to stay as we were, rain and Grandpapa. journey to end. Suddenly every Happy New Year, Happy New Year, all, everyone taking deep breaths to second left seemed precious. It was join loudly, raucously, in thesong: Little Children. as if we were all conscious of some- 'Hou, hou, ou ou, la bas, la bas, la thing important lived through to- Happy New Year, Happy New Year, bas!" roared Karl, keeping to the fast gether that morning and wished a Grandpapa! sega beat. The two fishermen sang wall would suddenly rise from the Happy New Year, Happy New Year, back and forth, shouting out their water and prevent us from going any Little Children! improvised words, until the songs further. Then we could have held the past, the glory of the morning's Octave leaned forward, breathless turned into an uproarious cursing from shouting, his face wet and match- journey into the lagoon. Somehow we had come much closer to the glistening with rain, his voice serious: Octave: Farewell, the sun forever, truth of things: Mind, not matter; "You come fishing with me as long Farewell, my old friends. time, not space; action, not passivity; as you like, Prem. If you come with Karl: Momama, give me a gun, choice, not mechanism-the inner me in the water, you know, I am not And when I die don't weep. reality. And with it a prescience that afraid when I see something. I can we could not escape its flow- shoot it and I can chase it. When you Octave: Farewell, my island home, almost as if we could see ourselves see a barracuda or a shark, don't go Farewell, the clouds and as we would become: Octave, grown away. Stay beside me and we'll birds. fat and frowzy; George, a solemn break his liki. When a friend is with loner fishing by himself; Prem, you, you have the courage to dive." Karl: If you don't let me sing, colder, harder, in London forever. Octave, You will have trouble. [Only Karl, by some trick of fate, and the lagoon itself would stay un- Octave: You are lying; changed. Now, ten years later, Karl I'II hit you with a bottle.