I remembered the way Sal had teased me to realign my expectations. ‘You’ll see that this is a wonderful place, as long as you appreciate it for what it is,’ she’d said. I pushed my shoulders back and closed my eyes against the hot sun, and thought how right she was.
I was broken out of my reverie by a sudden cold splash of water against my legs. I opened my eyes and looked down. It was the fish in the bucket, getting close to the split second before Game Over. I watched them for a while, impressed by their tenacity. It often surprised me how long it took for fish to die. Even speared right through their bodies, they still flapped about for as long as an hour, working up a bloody lather in the water around them.
‘How many do we have?’ said Étienne.
‘Seven. A couple are big ones. That’s enough, isn’t it?’
Étienne shrugged. ‘If Gregorio and Françoise also have seven, it is enough.’
‘They’ll have seven at least.’ I checked my watch. It was exactly midday. ‘I think I might go back early today. I’m meeting up with Keaty and he’s going to show me this tree.’
‘Tree?’
‘Some tree by the waterfall. Want to come? We could leave the bucket here.’
He shook his head and pointed to Gregorio and Françoise. Gregorio had his mask pushed up on to his forehead. ‘I want to see the corals. They sound very beautiful.’
‘Yeah, they are. Maybe I’ll come and find you after this tree thing.’
‘Good.’
‘Tell the others for me.’
‘Yes.’
I dived into the water, shooting down at a steep angle then levelling out to skim over the seabed. The salt stung my eyes but I kept them open. Even without Gregorio’s mask, the blurred colours and scattering fish were a sight to see.
There were two ways I could get to the garden. The first was the direct route that Keaty walked every morning. It was the quickest way, but I’d only done it a couple of times, and that was with Keaty. I knew if I tried to do it alone I’d only get lost; once in the jungle there wasn’t much that could be used for orientation, apart from distinctive trees and plants. Instead I chose the second route, which was to follow the waterfall stream to its source. Once there I could turn left and walk along the cliff, which eventually led to the garden.
After about ten minutes’ walking I began to empathize with Keaty’s complaints about his work detail. Without a sea breeze and cool water, and stuck in the greenhouse forest, the heat was incredible. By the time I reached the waterfall my whole body was greasy and prickling with sweat.
Since arriving at the beach, I’d only been to the waterfall a couple of times, and never on my own. It was partly because I had no reason to go there, but also, I now understood, because the area made me feel uneasy. It represented a link between the lagoon and the outside world, the world I’d all but forgotten, and as I stood by the pool I realized that I didn’t want to be reminded. Looking up through the fine mist of water vapour I could see the spot where I’d crouched before jumping. The memories it brought back were uncomfortable. I didn’t even pause to cool my face. I found the path that led towards the garden and headed straight down it.
Quarter of an hour later I found Keaty on the outskirts of the vegetable patch, disconsolately poking at weeds with a Bugs-made trowel.
‘Hey,’ he said, perking up. ‘What are you doing down here?’
‘You were going to show me a tree. I got off work early.’
‘Right. I forgot.’ He looked over to where Jean was growling at one of the other gardeners. ‘Jean!’
Jean looked round.
‘Gottataketimeoff.’
‘Heugh?’ Jean replied.
‘Backlateriftherestimeok?’
Keaty waved, and Jean waved back uncertainly. Then Keaty propelled me out of the garden. ‘If you talk quickly he can’t understand,’ he explained. ‘Otherwise he would have tried to make you wait until the detail stopped work.’
‘Smart.’
‘Uh-huh.’
It was a rocket-ship tree about twenty metres to the right of the pool. I’d noticed it before when I’d been wondering how to get down from the waterfall. Some of its branches grew near to the cliff, and I’d considered an Indiana Jones-style leap into its lower canopy. Standing at its base, I was glad I’d had the sense not to try. I’d have jumped on to a deceptively thin layer of leaves and fallen forty feet to the ground.
It was, like all the other rocket-ship trees, an impressive sight, but that wasn’t why Keaty had brought me to see it. He’d brought me to see the markings cut into one of its twelve-foot stabilizer fins. Three names and four numbers. Bugs, Sylvester and Daffy. The numbers were all zeros.
‘Sylvester?’
‘Salvester.’
I shook my head. ‘Sal.’
‘I tawt I taw a puddy tat.’
‘So they were the first?’
‘The first. Nineteen eighty-nine. The three of them hired a boat from Ko Pha-Ngan.’
‘They knew about this place already, or…’
‘Depends who you talk to. Bugs said he’d heard about a hidden lagoon from some fisherman on Ko Phalui, but Daffy used to say they were just island-hopping. Found the place by chance.’
‘Chance.’
‘But all the camp and stuff. That didn’t start until ninety. They spent the second half of eighty-nine doing the Goa thing, then came back to Ko Pha-Ngan for the new year.’
‘And what, Ko Pha-Ngan was on the way out?’
Keaty nodded. ‘Well on the way. That’s when it clicked. The thing was, those three had been going to Ko Samui since it was a secret, so when they saw Ko Pha-Ngan had maybe a year left…’
‘A year left at best. I heard by ninety-one it was already fucked up.’
‘Right, so they’d seen it all before. Especially Daffy. Daffy was completely obsessed. You know he wouldn’t ever go to Indonesia?’
‘I don’t know anything about Daffy.’
‘Boycotted because of Bali. He went there only once, in the late eighties, and wouldn’t ever go back. Used to talk all the time about how sick it made him.’
We sat down with our backs against the slab of root and shared a cigarette.
‘I mean,’ said Keaty, exhaling hard, ‘you’ve got to hand it to them.’
‘Definitely.’
‘They really knew what they were doing. Most things were set up by the time Sal took me here, which was… uh… ninety-three. The longhouse was up and the ceiling was sorted out.’
‘Two years.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He passed me the cigarette.
‘So when you came, were there this many people?’
Keaty paused. ‘Well… Pretty much…’
I looked at him, sensing that he was being cagey. ‘How do you mean, “pretty much”?’
‘… Everyone apart from the Swedes.’
‘In two years the only new people were the Swedes?’
’.. And Jed. The Swedes and Jed.’
‘That’s not many. Well-kept secret.’
‘Mmm.’
I stubbed out the cigarette. ‘And the zeros. What are they about?’
Keaty smiled. ‘That was Daffy’s idea. It’s a date.’
‘A date? The date of what?’
‘The date they first arrived.’
‘I thought that was eighty-nine.’
‘It was.’ Keaty stood up and patted the stabilizer fin. ‘But Daffy used to call it year zero.’
Revelations
Set up in Bali, Ko Pha-Ngan, Ko Tao, Borocay, and the hordes are bound to follow. There’s no way you can keep it out of Lonely Planet, and once that happens it’s countdown to doomsday. But set up in a marine park, where you aren’t even supposed to be…
The more I thought about it, the more the idea grew on me. Not just a marine park, but a marine park in Thailand. Of all places, backpacker central, land of the beaten track. The only thing sweeter than the irony was the logic. The Philippines is an archipelago of se
ven thousand islands, but even in that huge fractured landscape, an equivalent secret would be impossible to contain. But amongst the legions of travellers passing through Bangkok and the southern islands, who’d notice when a few slipped away?
Strangely, the thing that least intrigued me was how they’d actually managed to get it all done. I suppose I sort of knew. If I’d learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.
From Keaty’s few words, I pictured the scene. January nineteen-ninety, maybe New Year’s Eve, Ko Pha-Ngan, maybe Hat Rin. Daffy, Bugs and Sal, talking as the sun starts coming up. Sal’s found a boat to hire or even buy, Bugs has some tools in his backpack, Daffy’s got a sack of rice and thirty packs of Magi-Noodles. Perhaps bars of chocolate have melted and moulded around the shape of his water bottle.
By seven that morning they’re walking down the beach. Behind them they can hear the rumble of a portable generator through the thump of a sound system. They don’t look back, they just push off from the sand and head for the hidden paradise they found a year before.
As I walked back towards the camp, on the way to find Étienne at the coral garden, I found myself almost hoping for another meeting with Mister Duck. I wanted to shake him by the hand.
I never did find Étienne and Françoise. I bumped into Gregorio on the beach. He was carrying our catch back to camp, and when I told him I was going to the corals, he looked doubtful.
‘I think you should wait,’ he said. ‘Wait for… maybe one hour.’
‘How come?’
‘Étienne and Françoise…’
‘They’re having sex?’
‘Well… I do not know, but…’
‘Uh-uh. An hour, you reckon?’
‘Oh…’ Gregorio smiled awkwardly. ‘Maybe I am too generous to Étienne.’
I shook my head, remembering my first night in Bangkok. ‘No,’ I replied, irritated to hear a sudden tightness in my voice. ‘Spot on, I’d say.’
So I went back to the camp with Gregorio.
There was nothing much to do there except compare fish sizes with the other details. The three Swedes, as usual, had caught the biggest and were swaggering about, telling the cooks about their fishing technique. I got pretty pissed off listening to them, but even more annoying were the images of Françoise and Étienne that kept popping into my head. Eventually, craving something to occupy my mind, I went to Keaty’s tent and dug out his Nintendo.
Most bosses have a pattern; crack the pattern, kill the boss. A typical pattern is illustrated by Dr Robotnik during his first incarnation in Sonic One, Megadrive version, Greenhills Zone. As he descends from the top of the screen, you jump at him from the left platform. Then, as he starts swinging towards you, you duck under and jump at him from the right. As he swings back, you repeat the process in reverse until, eight hits later, he explodes and runs away.
That’s an easy boss. Others require much more manual dexterity and effort. The last boss on Tekken, for example, is a relentless fist-swinging nightmare.
The boss that distracted me from Étienne and Françoise was none other than Wario, nemesis of Mario. The problem was that to reach him, I had to struggle through several tortuous stages. By the time I arrived at his lair I’d taken too many hits and had lost the vital power-ups I needed to finish him off.
Every now and then, Unhygienix would take a break from cooking and wander over to inspect my progress. He and Keaty were the only two people in the camp who’d ever completed the game. He’d say things like ‘Donta pausa on thata platforma.’ (I’m abandoning his Italian accent from now on. You’ll just have to imagine it.)
I’d scowl in frustration. ‘If I don’t pause I get spiked by the falling block.’
‘Si. So you jump more quickly. Like this.’
He’d take the Gameboy, guiding Mario with amazing skill considering the size of his fat hands, and show me how the trick was done. Then he’d wander back to his cooking, fingers drumming a rhythm on his giant belly. The Gameboy was always slippery after he’d used it, and smelt of fish, but I considered that a fair price to pay for his expertise.
It took an hour and a half, but eventually I was able to reach Wario with a full complement of power-ups. Finally I could start trying to crack his pattern. Or so I thought, because at that moment the monochrome screen began fading away.
‘EverReadies!’ I yelped.
Keaty, who’d returned from the garden while I’d been playing, poked his head out of his tent.
‘That was the last batch, Rich.’
‘There’s none left?’
‘None at all.’
‘But I’ve nearly cracked Wario!’
‘Well…’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘Leave it alone a while. If you turn it off for twenty minutes you might get another five minutes’ playing time.’
I groaned. Five minutes wasn’t nearly enough.
It was a bitter blow, running out of batteries. I could live without completing the Mario game, but Tetris was another matter entirely. Since Keaty had told me his record of a hundred and seventy-seven lines, I’d been trying hard to beat him. The closest I’d made was one six one but I was improving every day.
‘This is ridiculous,’ I said. ‘Walkmans. What about them?’
Keaty sighed. ‘Forget Walkmans.’
‘Why?’
‘Give, and gifts will be given to you, for whatever measure you deal out to others will be dealt to you in return.’
I paused for a moment. ‘… What?’
‘I went to church every Sunday until I was fifteen.’
‘You’re quoting the bible?’
‘Luke, six, thirty-eight.’
I shook my head incredulously. ‘What’s the bloody bible got to do with anything?’
‘There’s only five people with Walkmans in the camp, and I’ve refused all of them batteries in the past.’
‘Oh… Then we’re fucked.’
‘Mmm,’ Keaty agreed. ‘Looks like it.’
Invisible Wires
But as fate turned out, we weren’t fucked. Help arrived from an unexpected source.
We went over to the cooking hut to tell Unhygienix about the batteries, and as I began to explain he turned from the fire, his face an angry red and shining with sweat. I took an instinctive step backwards, amazed he was taking the news so hard.
‘Batteries?’ he said, in an alarmingly quiet voice.
‘Uh… Yes…’
‘What about the rice?’
‘The rice?’
Unhygienix began swiftly marching to one of the storeroom huts, so we followed behind.
‘There!’
We looked inside. I could see three empty canvas sacks and two more, full.
‘What’s the problem?’ said Keaty.
Unhygienix tore open the top of the nearest full sack and rice poured out; black and green, puffed up into fat clods of fungus, completely rotten.
‘Jesus,’ I muttered, covering my nose and mouth to block the appalling smell. ‘That’s horrible.’
Unhygienix pointed to the roof.
‘It leaked?’
He nodded, too furious to speak. Then marched back to his cooking.
‘Well,’ said Keaty, as we walked back to his tent. ‘It isn’t all bad news about the rice. You should be glad, Rich.’
‘How’s that?’
‘No more rice means a Rice Run. Now we get some new batteries.’
Keaty lay on his back, smoking one of my cigarettes. I was down to one hundred, but seeing as I’d finished up his EverReadies I couldn’t really refuse him.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘there’s two main reasons people don’t like doing the Rice Run. Number one, it’s a complete hassle. Number two, it means visiting the world.’
‘The world?’
‘The world. It’s another Daffy thing. The world is everything outside the beach.??
?
I smiled. I knew exactly where Daffy had picked up the term – the same place I had. Keaty noticed and propped himself up on his elbows. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing. Just… The GIs used that word in the same way, to describe America… I don’t know. I just thought it was funny.’
Keaty nodded slowly. ‘Hysterical.’
‘So what happens on the Rice Run?’
‘A couple of people take the boat and head for Ko Pha-Ngan. Then they pick up some rice, and head back here.’
‘We’ve got a boat?’
‘Of course. Not all of us are such good swimmers as you, Rich.’
‘I didn’t realize… I didn’t think about that… Well, a quick trip to Ko Pha-Ngan doesn’t sound too bad.’
‘Yeah.’ Now Keaty was grinning. ‘But you haven’t seen the boat yet.’
An hour later the entire camp sat in a circle – all except Étienne and Françoise, who still weren’t back from the corals. The news about the rice had been passed around quickly, and Sal had called a meeting.
Keaty nudged me while we waited for the talking to start. ‘I bet you Jed volunteers,’ he whispered.
‘Jed?’
‘He loves taking on missions. Just watch him.’
I was about to reply when Sal clapped her hands and stood up. ‘OK,’ she said briskly. ‘As everyone knows, we’ve got a problem.’
‘Too fuckin’ right,’ drawled an Australian voice from the other side of the circle.
‘We thought we had another seven weeks of rice, but it turns out we’ve only got enough for two days. Now, this isn’t a major catastrophe, nobody’s going to be starving to death, but it is a minor one.’ Sal paused. ‘Well, you know what’s coming. We need to go on a Rice Run.’
Several people booed; mainly, I guessed, out of a sense of duty.
‘So… Who’s volunteering?’
Jed’s hand shot up.
‘What did I tell you?’ hissed Keaty.