“You guys. You really missed it. There was some quite extraordinary material there.”
“Yeah. Well.”
“Okay, what do you say we stop at a coffee shop? See what girls are around? Huh?”
We plead exhaustion. Ed says he doesn’t feel we’ve had a good enough night. We assure him we have. We manage to get back to Davis’s house. I walk into my bedroom with my head down so as not to be higher than the Buddha and I fall immediately asleep.
The next night I went to dinner at the house of a man who ran an advertising agency in Bangkok. He was an Australian known for his cooking; everyone coveted an invitation to his meals.
Before dinner, someone unrolled a Thai stick of marijuana, made a joint, and passed it around. Some guests smoked it; others didn’t. I smoked some. How could you go to Thailand and not have Thai grass?
When the joint came around, I had some more.
“Better be careful,” Davis said. “That stuff is strong.”
“Hey, don’t worry,” I said. “I’m from L.A.”
Davis shrugged. I had a couple of vodkas before dinner, too. I was feeling pretty good, sitting around, talking to people. In fact, I was glad to be feeling so good, because for a couple of days I had been having this undercurrent of feeling that I was far from home. Meaning that I was overextended, lonely, stretched a little far, having more anxieties about my new experiences than I was admitting to myself.
But then, when we got up to go to the dinner table, I realized that I had misjudged my consumption. I was very high. I was even having a little trouble coordinating things. Oh well, I thought, I’ll be okay when we sit down again. I’ll be okay once I eat something.
We sat at the table, and there was an Indian woman, the wife of a diplomat, on my left. A Thai advertising account executive on my right. The food was passed around; the conversation was very pleasant.
And then, suddenly, I began to see gray. The gray got darker. And then I was blind.
It was odd. I could hear the conversation, and the clink of silverware around me, but I was completely blind.
The Indian woman asked me to pass something.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this is going to sound funny, but I’m blind.”
She laughed delightfully. “You are so amusing.”
“No, seriously. I’m blind.”
“You mean you can’t see?”
“No. I can’t.”
“How extraordinary. I wonder why?”
I was wondering that myself. “I don’t know.”
“Do you suppose it was something you ate?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Can you see me now?”
“No. Still blind.”
“I wonder what we should do,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The host was notified. Plans were made. Everyone seemed to be treating this as a normal occurrence. I thought, Have other people been blind in this house before? Next I felt myself carried by several people upstairs to the second floor, and put on a bed in an air-conditioned bedroom.
Some time went by. I opened my eyes. I couldn’t see anything.
For the first time I began to worry. It had been okay to be blind for a while, but it wasn’t going away. I wondered what time it was, and felt my watch with my hand. Was this going to be a permanent condition? Was I going to have to get a Braille watch? What kind of room was I in?
Some more time went by. Someone touched my shoulder. I looked over and saw an elderly Thai woman smiling at me. She gave me a glass of water, giggled, and went away. After a while, she came back. By then I could see all right, but I felt terrible. After that I went to sleep. Much later Davis came up, clucked his tongue, and drove me home.
In the morning I told Davis that I wasn’t going to go sightseeing, I was just going to take it easy, maybe sit in his garden by the pool. Read a book. Get over the strangeness of things.
“Good idea,” he said. “Just keep an eye out. The gardener saw a cobra in the garden last week.”
Davis announced that we were going upcountry for a couple of days. He had to check on sales for the pharmaceutical company he worked for. Prescription drugs were legally sold over the counter in Thailand at that time, and all the international drug companies treated Thailand as a major market.
The countryside was flat and green and beautiful. We stayed in Chinese hotels and had a wonderful time. Finally we got to Ayutthaya. Davis said he was going to check his stores, see how they were doing. “But there’s a large open market around the corner,” he said. “Big upcountry market. Have a look, you’ll find it interesting.”
I went around the corner.
The market was enormous, almost an acre. It was entirely covered by white sheets to block the sun. A beautiful, vast open space, it was filled with everything from produce to clothing. I wandered around, looking at what people were selling. The sheets were so low I had to duck my head, but it was a fascinating market and I was glad to see it.
Because of my height, I caused a considerable commotion. The upcountry people stopped and stared. And, in common with most Asian people, they laughed. The laughter began in scattered places here and there, but it grew, swelling to fill the entire open market. They were all laughing at me, pointing and laughing. I smiled back, good-naturedly. I knew they didn’t mean anything. It was just an expression of embarrassment.
The laughing continued. It became a roar in my ears, like an ocean wave. People were dashing off to get their friends. The whole town was running to get a look at me. The laughter built. Now there were four or five hundred people laughing. I was on display. Everywhere I saw open mouths, laughing. Finally I looked down at the ground and saw, at my feet, an old Thai woman rolling on the ground, clutching her stomach in hysterics, she was laughing so hard. Her body blocked me; I couldn’t step over her.
I looked around and thought, What an interesting experience. Here is a chance to see how it feels to have five hundred people laughing at you. How does it feel?
And I suddenly thought, I hate it. And I turned and walked quickly away.
I went back to the shop where I had left Davis. He was grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Knew they’d get a kick out of you,” he said.
“Jesus Christ.”
“They don’t mean anything.”
“I know,” I said. “But still.”
The Thais are famously good-natured. They are called the Danes of Asia, because of their easy dispositions. A favorite expression, Mai pen rai, means—more or less—“Never mind,” and is invoked to resolve all sorts of disappointments and upsets. I frequently remarked on the wonderful quality of the Thai character, so different from what I was accustomed to at home.
One day in Bangkok, in a taxi going back to Davis’s house, I saw a Thai woman and a European woman in their separate cars, trying to pass each other in the narrow road. They were both leaning out of their cars, having a screaming argument. Nobody was saying “Mai pen rai.”
I thought, It’s time to go home. I left the next day.
All in all, I considered it a traumatic trip. Then I realized that, although I saw myself as an accomplished traveler, I was in fact terribly culture-bound. I had visited only a small part of the world—North America and Western Europe.
I began to think of all the places I hadn’t been. I had never been to Africa. I had never really been to Asia. I had never been to Australia. I had never been to South or Central America. In fact, I had never been to most of the world.
It was time to find out what I had been missing.
Bonaire
The setting sun glowed red off the ocean as we waded clumsily out from the beach with our scuba tanks and lights. We paused, waist-deep in water, to put on our face masks and adjust the straps. Behind us, at the Hotel Bonaire, people were heading for the dining room to eat.
I said to my sister, “Hungry?”
She shook her head. My sister had never been night-diving before, and she w
as a little apprehensive about it.
We had come to Bonaire for a two-week diving holiday in the summer of 1974. Kim had just finished her second year of law school, and I had completed a draft of my next novel; we both looked forward to a good rest and a lot of superb diving.
Bonaire is a Dutch island fifty miles off the coast of Venezuela. The island is actually a sunken mountain peak with sheer sides; twenty yards from the sandy beach, the crystal-clear water was a hundred feet deep. This made night-diving easy: just walk out from the hotel beach at sunset, and drop on down to a hundred feet. You could make your night dive for an hour and be back at the hotel dining room in time for dinner.
This was our plan.
My sister put her mouthpiece between her teeth, and I heard the hiss as she sucked air. She clutched her shoulders and pantomimed that she was cold; she wanted to get started. I bit my mouthpiece.
We sank beneath the surface.
The landscape is deep blue, small fish flicking like shadows over the sand and heads of coral. I hear the burble of my air bubbles sliding past my cheek. I look over at Kim to see how she is doing; she is fine, her body relaxed. Kim is an accomplished diver, and I have been diving for more than ten years.
We go deeper, down the slope into blackness.
We turn on the lights, and immediately see a world of riotous, outrageous color. The corals and sponges are all vivid greens, yellows, reds.
We move deeper, through black water, seeing only what is illuminated in the glowing cone of light from the flashlights. We find large fish sleeping beneath overhanging shelves of coral. We can touch them, something you can never do during the day. The night animals are active; a black-and-white-spotted moray eel comes out of its hole to flex its powerful jaws and peer at us with beady black eyes. An octopus scurries through my beam, and turns bright red in irritation. In a niche of coral we find a tiny red-striped crab no larger than my little finger.
On this dive I plan to take photographs, and so I have my camera around my neck. I take a few shots, and then my sister taps me on the shoulder and gestures she wants the camera. I take the strap from around my neck and hold it out to her. I’m moving slowly; with a flashlight dangling from my wrist, things seem awkward. Kim pulls the camera away.
Suddenly I feel a sharp yank at my jaw, and my mouthpiece is torn from my lips. My air is gone.
I know at once what has happened. The camera strap has caught on the air hose. My sister, in pulling the camera away, has also pulled out my mouthpiece.
I have no air. I am hanging in ink-black water at night and I have no air.
I remain calm.
Whenever you lose your mouthpiece, it invariably drops down the right side of your body. It can always be found hanging in the water alongside your right hipbone. I reach down for it.
The mouthpiece isn’t there.
I remain calm.
I keep feeling for it. I know it is down there somewhere near my hip. It has to be. I feel my tank. I feel my weight belt. I feel my backpack. My fingers run over the contours of my equipment moving faster and faster.
The mouthpiece isn’t there. I am sure now: it isn’t there. The mouthpiece isn’t there.
I remain calm.
I know the mouthpiece hasn’t been ripped from the air hose, because if it had I would be hearing a great blast of air. Instead, I am in eerie black silence. So the mouthpiece is around me, somewhere. If it hasn’t fallen to my right side, it must be behind my neck, near the top of the air tank. This is a little more awkward to reach for, but I put my hand behind my neck and feel around for the air hose. I can feel the top of the tank, the vertical metal valve. I feel a number of hoses. I can’t tell which is my air hose. I feel some more.
I can’t find it.
I remain calm.
How deep am I? I check my gauges. I am in sixty feet of water now. That’s okay. If I can blow out my air in a slow, steady stream and make it to the surface. I am sure I can. At least, I am pretty sure I can.
But it would be better to find the mouthpiece now. Down here.
My sister is hanging in the water five feet above me, her fins kicking gently near my face. I move up alongside her, and she looks at me. I point to my mouth. Look: something’s missing. No mouthpiece, Kim.
She waves at me, and gives me the high sign that everything is all right with her. She busies herself with putting the camera around her neck. I realize that in the darkness she probably can’t see me very well.
I grab her arm. I point to my mouth. No mouthpiece! No air!
She shakes her head, shrugs. She doesn’t get it. What is my problem? What am I trying to tell her?
My lungs are starting to burn now. I blow a few air bubbles at her, and point again to my mouth. Look: no mouthpiece. For God’s sake!
Kim nods, slowly. I can’t see her eyes, because light reflects off her glass face mask. But she understands. At least, I think she understands.
My lungs are burning badly now. Soon I am going to have to bolt for the surface.
I am no longer calm.
In the darkness, she swings slowly behind me. Her light is behind my head, casting my shadow on the coral below. She is picking around my air hoses, near my neck. Sorting things out. Now she is over on my left side. Not my left side, Kim! It’s got to be somewhere on the right! She moves slowly. She is so deliberate.
My lungs are burning.
I know I am going to have to bolt for the surface. I am telling myself, over and over: remember to breathe out, remember to breathe out. If I forget to exhale on the way up I will burst my lungs. I can’t afford to panic.
Kim takes my hand. She gives me something in her slow, deliberate way. This is not the time to be giving me something! My fingers close on rubber: she has put the mouthpiece into my hand! I jam it between my teeth and blow out.
Water gurgles, then I suck cold air. Kim looks at me tentatively. I suck air, and cough a couple of times. Hanging in the water beside me, she watches me. Am I all right?
I suck air. My heart is pounding. I feel dizzy. Now that everything is okay, I feel all the panic I have suppressed. My God, I almost died! Kim is looking at me. Am I all right now?
I give her the high sign. Yes, I am all right. We finish the dive, though I have trouble concentrating. I am glad when it is over. When we get to the beach, I collapse. My whole body is shaking.
“That was weird,” she says. She tells me that somehow the air hose has gotten twisted around, so that it was hanging down behind my left shoulder. “I didn’t know that could happen,” she says. “It took a while to find it. Are you all right?”
“I think so,” I say.
“You’re shivering.”
“I think I’m just cold.”
I take a hot shower. Alone in my room, I have a terrible urge for sex, a compulsive desire. I think, This is a cliché—escape death and seek procreation. But it’s true. I am feeling it. And here I am with my sister, for Pete’s sake.
By the end of dinner, I have calmed down. The next couple of days are more ordinary. We make another night dive. Nothing bad happens. I settle into the novels I have brought. I work on my suntan. For the next week, we have a good time. And we do all of the standard dive spots that every diver does in Bonaire.
But I want to do more.
“I won’t tell you where it is,” the divemaster said, when I asked about the wreck. I had read there was an interesting wreck somewhere on the north shore of the island.
“Why not?”
“You’ll die if you go there,” the divemaster said.
“Have you been there?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“You didn’t die.”
“I knew what I was doing. The wreck’s deep, the shallowest part is 140 feet. At that depth, no-decompression limits are four minutes.”
“Is it really a paddle-wheeler?”
“Yes. Iron-hull. Nobody knows when it was wrecked, maybe around the turn of the century.”
I tried to
get him talking about it, hoping that he would drop enough clues so I could find my way.
“The ship rolled down the incline?” I had read that, too. Bonaire is surrounded on all sides by a steep drop-off, an incline that goes from the shore almost straight down 2,000 feet in some places.
“Yeah. Apparently the ship originally crashed on the shore—at least there’re some fragments from it near shore, in about 30 feet of water—and then sank. When the ship sank, it rolled down the incline. Now it’s on its side, 140 feet down.”
“Must be something to see.”
“Oh yeah. It is. Hell of a big wreck.”
“So there’re fragments in 30 feet of water, near the shore?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of fragments?”
“Forget it,” he said.
Finally I said, “Look, I know what I’m doing; I’ve been diving with you guys for over a week, so you know I’m okay. You don’t have to sanction what I’m doing, but it’s unfair of you not to tell me where this famous dive is.”
“Yeah?” he said. “You think you’re up to this dive?” He got truculent. “Okay, here’s how you do it. Drive east five miles until you find a little dock. Then load up, jump in with all your gear on, and swim north from the dock about a hundred yards, until you pass a green house on the shore. When the house gets to be about two o’clock to you, start looking down in the water. You’ll see a spar and cables in thirty feet of water, right below you. Swim down to the spar, and then go right over the edge and straight down the incline as fast as you can go. When you get to 90 feet, leave the incline and swim straight out into the open ocean. You think you’re swimming straight, but actually you’ll be dropping, and you’ll hit the wreck about 140 feet down. It’s huge. You can’t miss it. Okay? Still want to go?”
The directions sounded difficult, but not impossible. “Yes,” I said. “Sure.”
“Okay. Just remember, if anything happens to you, I’ll deny I told you where it is.”
“Fine.”
“And remember, at that depth you’ll be narked, so you have to pay attention to your time; remember, your no-decompression limits only give you four minutes down there. The wreck is so huge there’s no way you can see it in four minutes—don’t even try. Make sure you observe all the stops on the way up. There isn’t a decompression chamber within eight hours’ air time of Bonaire, so you don’t want to screw up. If you get the bends, there’s a good chance you’ll die. Got it?”