He was the uninvited early morning guest. His melancholy expression and downcast eyes reminded me of the Hush Puppies cocker spaniel. A puffy red nose above a bushy mustache added no charm to the face of this curious fisherman. I tried to recall if his name was on Allie's list of neighbors. I couldn't remember.
"It's okay," I said. "I can manage."
I climbed out of the jeep, assuming a more advantageous position in case he should show hostile intent.
"Those tires need aid," he stated.
"No kidding."
"If you're not comfortable going to a gas station," he added, as if reading my mind, "I can lend you a hose. All you have to do is unscrew one of the spark plugs, attach one end of the hose in its place, and hook the other end to the valve on the tire. The air pressure from the engine will do the job for you. An old US Army trick."
I kept silent.
"I live at the bottom of that path," he said, pointing to a small, well-kept cottage. "I came up this week, for the oysters. I usually go after mackerel and lobster when I can get them. But it's oyster season now, for the next six weeks. If you and your wife get up early enough, no later than six, you can come along tomorrow morning and see for yourself. I tried you this morning, but you must have been sleeping very soundly. Then it rained, so I didn't go out either."
You and your wife. How did he know? He seemed altogether a little too friendly, particularly considering his melancholy face, which hadn't perked up once through the whole conversation.
"Thanks," I said. "We weren't expecting..."
"I can't imagine why not. Any friend of Allie is a friend of mine."
In my wildest imagination, I couldn't picture Allie on friendly terms with such a dejected fisherman.
"We'll think about it," I thanked him. As he turned to leave, I suddenly remembered: the consul!
"The phone's disconnected here. Maybe we could use yours to call Boston?" That would also give me a chance to see inside the cottage of my fisherman friend. From one look at their homes or offices you can sometimes learn a lot more about people than they're willing to tell you.
He glared at me suspiciously. "Come down in a half hour," he muttered. "I’ll have to clean up a little." He turned, spat on the ground and moved off toward his house. I stood there watching him. After a minute he looked back, our eyes meeting. He waved, and then turned and continued on his way. Undoubtedly a curious man.
I went into the house and got out Allie's list. To my surprise, his name was there. I read it loud: "Thomas McDiarmid. A simple, good-hearted man. Army veteran? Not usually in residence." That made me feel a little better. I told Kate I was going out to look around. To be on the safe side, I gave her a portable fog horn I found in the "sailing equipment cabinet," as Allie dubbed the white entrance hall closet on her list. The fog horn worked on compressed air, and was used mainly for sailing in bad weather. I tried it for a split second and was convinced. Not only its range - about four miles - but also the stunning effect of the wailing siren would be serious protection for Kate until I got back. She didn't object.
"I saw that guy from the window. He doesn't look like a dangerous character," she remarked. "Just gloomy, like most Scots."
I didn't tell her about the phone call I was planning to make. There was no doubt in my mind that mention of the telephone would bring her back to the shadow world of the dying spy ring, that same whirlwind she'd finally put behind her.
I didn't learn a single thing about Tom from his house. The furniture was just a collection of ugly junk scattered around the living room and the attached kitchen. In contrast, the electric appliances were all new - except for an old gramophone. He had a sophisticated tape recorder, a TV, a giant refrigerator and a fancy dishwasher. He liked his comfort, our friend, and seemed to have a lot of guests - male or female - maybe even overnight. There were no books, which could have told me something about his interests.
"The house has been in my family for nearly eighty years. If it was up to me, I'd live here year-round, but I have to live in the western part of the state, in Springfield, for tax purposes and because we're still fighting over the will."
Tom poured himself a quarter of a glass of Jack Daniels, offered me one, and was somewhat surprised when I refused.
"The phone’s all yours," he said blandly, and went back about his business.
The consul's secretary answered. After a short consultation, she told me he was busy and asked to get back to me.
"Tell him I think that's very funny. I'll call again in ten minutes, and if he doesn't talk to me then, that's it."
I called back two minutes later. There was no reason to give him too much time to think.
"I hope you're calling from downstairs, although I assume, if that were the case, you'd be here in person."
"I need two more days."
"No chance."
"I've got to have some time. It's not over yet. Another two days. Ofer will cover for me, I'm sure."
"Don't be so sure about Ofer. Everybody's got their limits. I'm certainly not going to risk my neck for you. If you get back tonight, we can work something out."
"And if I don't?"
"Before you do anything else, you've got to hand in your gun. In the eyes of the locals, starting tonight, you'll be considered armed and dangerous."
"What about the woman?"
"We have to talk to her."
"Before, you wanted to get rid of her."
"I never said I still don't, but we have to talk to her first. You've got us in a mess here. Can I give you some advice? Forget all about it and get yourself back here in a wild dash. With or without her."
"I need some time to think," I said, hanging up.
CHAPTER FIVE
Fortunately, I never heard the wail of the fog horn I'd left with Kate. Instead, I was welcomed back to the house by the sounds of a piano playing. Kate had found an old upright in a small room and was engrossed in her music.
"Sorry about the wrong notes," she apologized. "Some are the fault of the piano and some are the fault of someone who hasn't touched the keys in God knows how many years."
"What wrong notes? To me it all sounds like birds chirping."
"Thanks a lot. Was that a compliment?"
I kissed her neck. "I only compliment people for things I understand," I said. "You were wonderful last night."
For hours, her fingers floated over the keys. I checked out the bookshelves and found a lot of mechanical stuff. There were highly technical maintenance manuals for the Wagoneer, a 1954 Plymouth, and a twin-engine boat that Allie must have owned at one time.
Several times that day I felt I was losing my grasp on reality. We ate at weird hours, slept in each other's arms for an hour in the afternoon, and tried to forget the outside world - just as Kate wanted. At dusk we went for a long walk on the beach, chasing crabs and heckling the cheeky sea gulls. After several hours on the sand, we watched the fleet of mackerel boats as they sailed out to sea, and pondered the changing colors of the sand as the sun moved across the sky. Kate was excited by the mirages of phantom pools created by the light on the slopes of the sand dunes.
We went almost as far as Provincetown. An awesome carpet of grass, sand and bushes marked the end of the dunes and protected the town from the encroaching sands.
"It's so beautiful," said Kate, putting on Eric's sweatshirt, several sizes too big. Her cheeks were red from the cold and her eyes were bright. "Just gorgeous."
It was indeed. The carpet of grass was the yellowish green of a thicket of oak, the reddish brown of gooseberries, and the bright red of cranberries. Provincetown, surrounded by deep blue water, looked peaceful and inviting.
"It's almost as pretty as Rishpon," Kate declared, surprising me again.
"What are you talking about?" I asked in astonishment.
"A wonderful place in Israel, near Herzliya. Have you ever been there?"
"Yes, but it didn't make much of an impression on me."
"I've never seen it
, but that's not important. You have to know how to look. You know...sometimes I can see the deep blue of the sea at Rishpon, not far from the desert." She closed her eyes and went on, almost talking to herself. "I can feel the breeze blowing gently, a hot desert wind...and then I can feel the salt in the air...you know what I mean? Don't you ever feel like that?"
She stood there, waiting for my answer. I didn't know what to say, but I thought I understood. One of those American girls bitten by the Israeli bug, suckers for anything Israeli, including the smallest details of enchanted places that exist only in their heads.
"Yes, I think I know just what you mean," I answered with a sigh. Kate seemed very pleased.
On the way back she was still in that same dreamy mood. We were sitting and watching the boats move farther away until they disappeared over the horizon, when she said, "We could rent a small house. I have some money in New York. We could support ourselves from fishing, grow our own vegetables, keep some chickens in the backyard." She sounded utterly serious. "The outside world is so frightening and ugly, isn't it? We'll live here. I'll be a farmer and you can be a soldier."
"So who'll do the fishing?"
"That guy, Tom, and he'll also watch the kids when we go into town."
Kids! Good God. That was too much already. I wasn't even ready for the vision of a house with Kate. I put my arms around her and she clung to me joyfully.
*
Tom was not an Army veteran. He had been a captain with the Newfoundland Co., in command of a fleet of tugboats for forty years. Since he'd retired, he’d lived a quiet life back home. For Tom, "a quiet life" meant getting up at six in the morning, feeding the chickens, cleaning the house, fixing himself some breakfast, and then going out to take care of whatever needed taking care of - a little fishing if possible, chopping wood, working in the garden. That's the way he lived in Springfield, which he didn't want to talk about, and that's the way he planned to live here for six weeks.
I learned all this from him when we accepted his invitation and joined him on his fishing boat. It was a magnificent Sunday morning. We'd decided to go after mullet, so we got up at five-thirty, only three hours after we'd gone to sleep, to make time to admire his boat from the roof of the cabin to the tip of the keel, as he thought only proper.
Kate, unlike me, was already enchanted by the fisherman, so she left me little choice but to join him on his boat. He welcomed us doubtfully as we came aboard, ignoring the fact that we still looked half-asleep. He helped Kate with the picnic basket and said, "You can sit anywhere, as long as you don't get in my way." He refused any assistance whatsoever, claiming a man should be able to handle a boat of that size by himself or he'd be better off staying on shore.
"Mullet are strange creatures. Some years you find them by the thousands, and other years they just disappear. Some people say it's a fifteen year cycle - they go far down south and then come back. When they're gone, people start to lose faith and don't think they'll ever see mullet again, but then the first two or three get caught in a net and everybody gets excited. It's a real celebration. See?" He drew furiously on his pipe.
"Fifteen years isn't long enough to forget, but it is long enough to become a pessimist. It's only the old-time fishermen and the pros who shrug their shoulders and mutter: `The mullet will turn up when they're ready to.’ You see, they bring a good price at the restaurants where they serve them fried. But me, you see, I never eat mullet. The flesh is too soft and too dark for me. It's fun to catch them, but not to eat them - especially when there's good firm flesh in fish like cod, swordfish, or tuna."
"And mackerel," I said.
"Yeah, mackerel too. It’s too soft and dark, but everyone eats mackerel, don't they?"
We headed back to shore for lunch, like a lot of the sailors around us. The men dug for oysters in the shallow water while the women made fish chowder. It was thick, hot and delicious. Kate rolled up one of Allie's colorful silk scarves and tied it around my neck, mussing my hair and examining me with pleasure. "Oh, moncheri ," she said in a nasal accent, "you look so ‘andsome...so French."
When we went out again, Tom took up his complaints about the psychology of the fish. "It comforts me to know that most people aren't as dumb as fish. People never rush blindly into the unknown, and it's pretty easy for them to find their way out of a trap. When a person goes out to explore a new land, he leaves a trail behind him. If he goes into a cave, he makes marks in the wall."
I wasn't sure if Tom really believed what he was saying. He didn't sound convinced. Maybe he was trying to tell me something. I still didn't know what he wanted with us. I remembered my last conversation with the consul. "Armed and dangerous" – that was me-words that usually went together with other cheery expressions, like "fire on sight." But I wasn't really worried. The consul knew me well enough to know I wouldn't come out shooting, and he wouldn't send the feds after me. And even if he did, I knew I could take care of myself.
Kate was staring at the water, mesmerized, and speaking to Tom. "You remind me of the story of Ariadne. It's the most beautiful story, maybe the only one I remember from high school. Her beloved Theseus had to go into the labyrinth where the Minotaur lived, from which no one ever came out alive. I can picture all sorts of monsters in that cave. Ariadne gave him a ball of string that he tied to the entrance. He went inside fearlessly, fell upon the Minotaur and killed him, and then followed Ariadne's string back out."
"You see," Tom interrupted, "people are smarter..."
"Not Ariadne," said Kate. "She was a fool, the daughter of the king of Crete. She saved Theseus, and then he left her on an island on his way back to Athens."
I looked at Kate, wondering what she thought of Theseus. She was staring at the waves again. She had her Theseus in her life, at least one by the name of Avihu. I wasn't a Theseus, not a hero nor a cad like him. I was ready to stay with Kate forever. The invisible hand of fate had brought us together and made us partners. I hoped some other hand wouldn't come and tear us apart. But the real tests were still ahead of us.
"Take your mackerel for example," Tom went on. "He swims around, concerned only about himself - chasing a sand eel or some other critter smaller than him - and suddenly he runs into a string of nets. He can't get through, so he swims to the right and the left. When he turns left, he sees the water getting more and more shallow. Shallow water means trouble, so he turns around and swims as far as he can to the other side of the net and is relieved to find open water at last. But his joy is premature. Now there are two rows of nets. He swims along them until he gets to a small opening and he's sure it will take him to freedom. By now there is a lot of other mackerel swimming around too, and a lot of water, so this must be the right direction. But why are they swimming around in crazy circles?" Tom was laughing with joy for the first time."Now he's in for a shock - there are nets everywhere. The opening he swam through isn't there anymore. He joins the rest of the school, swimming around in circles, panicking. The next morning he's thrown into a wriggling pile of silver fish on the deck of the boat - and that's that. Get your hankies out." Now we all burst out laughing.
The lighthouse lanterns winked at us. The sun was sinking in the west into a bed of burnt copper clouds. The sea was dark, gray, and as smooth as a mirror. The sails of dozens of other fishing boats joined us as we headed for the shore. The tide was coming in, with only a light breeze blowing as we struggled to onward, making the barest progress on each wave. We knew it would be about midnight by the time we got back. The wind picked up a bit. Kate and I huddled together.
"How many mackerel do you think would have the guts to swim backwards, in the opposite direction to all the rest, and get out of the trap?" Kate suddenly asked as we stood there on the deck, our arms around each other.
"I don't think there’d be a single one. After all, they're just fish."
"That's not the reason," she muttered. "We'd all do the same. I once thought I knew people who marched to the beat of their own drum, but I'm not so sur
e anymore. Maybe that's all I was, an unlucky mackerel whose fate was sealed and is too dumb to turn back and find the way out."
It wasn't a cold night, so after we parted from Tom, we had a late supper on the front porch by the light of the moon just rising out of the ocean, and a few candles we found in a drawer. Every now and then the sounds of cars and laughter reached us from some party far away, breaking the silence. We sat there on the wooden porch chairs till very late. Finally, the noise of the party died down and the only sound was the monotonous rush of the waves. "The ocean in Mind now is much darker," she said quietly.
"Mind now?'
"That's in the Philippines, where I grew up."
I never asked her about her oriental look, nor about her childhood. But there was something she said that day in the consulate.
"Wandering between army bases?" I asked
"Yes. My father came from California and my mother is a Filipino. They met one night near Manila."
Around two in the morning, I started to feel the cold. As I went to get up, she held my arm, pulling me over to sit beside her.
"Hey," she said, "I'm terrified. I don't know what's going to happen. You're going to leave me soon, right?" The story of Ariadne was still gnawing at her.
"I'm not going to leave you. I'll stay as long as you want." At that moment I didn't want to let my own fears of our unknown future get to me. She didn't take her eyes from me. She'd been deceived many times before, but her eyes still glowed with sparks of hope, and a sign of trust. She curled up in my arms and began to purr like a cat.
"What I like about you is that there's so much room here," she said in a husky voice, stroking my chest.
*
The next day, we went to visit Tom. He'd already walked past our house several times, inquiring about the car or about Kate, and it was obvious he sought our company. So in the evening we grabbed our last bottle of wine and set out for his cottage.