The Sea Bed Read online

  A bag was placed on the f loor, a large cloth one, blue with white birds, and two large rings of bamboo for handles. It bulged with soft and malleable things.

  ‘Do you want to try them on?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’

  Yugen heard the rustling of tissue paper. A shoe box was placed on the ground. ‘You want me to put them on your feet, like the prince in Cinderella?’

  ‘I don’t think he did that job himself. He would have had servants.’

  Although the monk had made himself unremarkable, drawn himself in so that he had no more presence than a sheet of paper, he was intensely aware of the women, as if springing from every pore of his skin was a feeler sensing them out. His eyes hovered around their feet. He recognised the bruise above the ankle of the one in blue thongs. The sea woman. Her bruise seemed to have faded out here in the dry air, less bright than it had appeared underwater. He narrowed his focus so that he could see only the mark of the bruise and the immediate surrounding of unblemished skin. It became a cloud, a rock, a lake, a patch of moss.

  The feet stepped out of the blue thongs. A hand came down holding a shoe—black patent-leather strap across the front, a pearly white button in the middle of it. The heel was a shiny black spike, like the one he’d touched at the Blue House. The right foot arched as the hands slipped the shoe on and crisscrossed laces around the ankle, finishing in a bow. The same movements were repeated with the left foot.

  ‘Hmm, quite comfortable—while I’m sitting down.’

  ‘But great to walk in, too. There’s padding under the ball of the foot. It’s this little transparent thing called a jellyfish. Have a go.’

  She stood up. ‘So far so good.’

  ‘Walk over to the railing, Chicken.’

  ‘You make it sound like I’m a paraplegic.’ Chicken began, one tentative foot after the other, and made it all the way to the railing. ‘Keri, I’m walking, it’s a miracle. Hey, fish, look.’

  Yugen imagined the fish thronging, the way they did at the feed basket. He heard Keri clapping her hands, saw her feet slapping the green thongs up and down, keeping rhythm.

  Chicken made her way back to the bench, exaggerating her movements, threatening to fall. When she undid the laces the monk could see the marks they left in her f lesh. He wanted to touch it, soothe the marks away.

  ‘Chicken, these aren’t just any shoes.’

  ‘I know, they cured me.’ Chicken laughed but her friend remained silent.

  Yugen felt the weight of the pause.

  ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  Chicken’s feet slid back into their own blue thongs. ‘Of course.’

  ‘These are my shoes for going to the city.’

  ‘Well, there aren’t a lot of places round here you could wear them.’

  ‘No, I mean going and maybe not coming back. I’ve been accepted into beauty school.’

  Everything about Chicken’s feet stopped still. ‘That’s great, really good. When?’

  ‘It doesn’t start till autumn. So I’ll be able to finish the summer with Oceanworld.’

  ‘You haven’t told them yet?’

  ‘No, I said it was a secret.’

  ‘Am I the only one who knows?’

  ‘You and my mum.’

  ‘What does she think?’

  ‘That it’s for the best. Things aren’t like they used to be when she was young. The diving season is so short now.’ Keri laughed. ‘I can’t see myself swimming round in this ring forever, can you?’

  Chicken didn’t answer. A deeper space opened, as if the earlier conversation about shoes had only been the idle skipping of stones across the surface. Whereas the silences before seemed comfortable, now it was thick with unnamed things.

  Chicken rubbed her ankle. Yugen withdrew even further, in case it was the breeze from his breath that she felt as a soft moist disturbance. He should meditate, try to detach himself from what was being said, but he was riveted. It was as if the sea women had become naked before him.

  ‘Hey, you can come and visit me. We can go and see your sister.’

  Chicken raised her heel off the ground. Her water-washed toes were poised delicately. They were long toes with short clipped nails. There was a line on the sole of her foot, a scar. The monk saw her calf muscle clench.

  ‘She’s always off travelling—in the Kalahari, the Amazon, the Great Barrier Reef.’

  ‘What a dream life! Aren’t you tempted?’

  For a moment both of Chicken’s calf muscles clenched then relaxed. ‘And who would be left to feed the fish? I’m staying put. Somebody has to show the tourists what we do, especially now that you’re going.’ She nudged her friend playfully.

  The two women laughed. They had returned to the surface, skipping stones.

  ‘Hey, do you want some of this?’ Chicken opened the blue and white bag and pulled out a snack bar. In so doing she dislodged a small cloth item, perhaps the bonnet she wore underwater. The monk saw a purple star drawn on the white cloth.

  ‘Yum,’ said Keri, crunching into the bar. ‘Do you need a lift to Boat Harbour? My cousin is picking me up.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m meeting Mum.’

  Yugen watched their feet walking over to the ring of fish. Keri and Chicken swung their legs over the railing. ‘Good night, girls and boys,’ they said. ‘Sweet dreams.’ The sea women kissed the glass several times, soft little lip prints, like kisses on a child’s head. ‘And look, here’s Mr Groper. A special slobbery kiss for you, big boy.’ They placed moist pouting lips on the glass, and sighed as if in the embrace of a lover.

  A final wave, then they were gone.

  The monk needed air. He was about to come out from under the bench when he heard yet more footsteps, a lighter then heavier tread, the weight on one side, like a bird with an injured leg. A vacuum cleaner came into view, followed by feet in comfortable slippers, and stockings that ended at the knee.

  The vacuum cleaner started its drone. The woman pushing it mechanically backwards and forwards was quite small and thin. Her whole body hung loosely from her shoulders. She passed in and out of the line of Yugen’s vision, going around the room in ever-decreasing circles, towards the centre.

  The mouth of the vacuum cleaner came towards him, a hammerhead shark prowling for food. It made contact two or three times, bumped up against him as if trying to provoke a fight, but Yugen did not respond. He thought of coming out from under the bench, of leaving, but it had gone on too long now and the cleaning woman would get a fright.

  Eventually the droning stopped. Other sounds became audible—a creak, a soft nestling, then the scratchy shuff ling of the cleaner going back down the stairs.

  The steady whirr of a fan, the general hum of electricity, the stream of air bubbling into the water, these settled into the silence. Everyone had gone.

  Yugen rolled out from under the bench onto the freshly vacuumed f loor. His body lay inert, stretched out like a starfish, his busy mind siphoning off all the energy. No longer did it let thoughts arise and pass on, it wanted to hold onto them, even though those thoughts were as slippery as fish. They would not stay still. He had listened in on women’s private conversation, been the silent partner to their intimacy, sensed obscure yearnings, hopes and disappointments that they had not even shared with each other.

  He saw the dull gleam of the chrome railing, the concavity of glass enclosing the fish, his companions for the night.

  He stood up, felt his body adjust itself to the vertical plane after being horizontal for so long, his parts coming together in a different arrangement. He went over to the kisses. He could see the impression of lips on the glass, the small pursed traces and the soft open ones. The monk closed his eyes, placed his lips on the kisses, fixing his mouth to the traces of the sea women, to the particles of their DNA.

  The coldness of the glass yielded under his living warmth and became the same temperature, reached equilibrium. It was as if the glass was melting into water. He saw women swimming na
ked, the movement of their breasts, their frilly bivalves.

  ‘Ah.’ A sigh from his own body. Yugen opened his eyes. Mouths were clamouring for his, a conf luence of fish. He suddenly felt embarrassed, pulled away, and resumed his position under the bench.

  Normally the monk’s sleep was light, a feather over the eyelids, but tonight he was sinking into oceanic depths, to come to rest on the seabed. He imagined the whole space filled with water, the domed ceiling the night sky. The words of the sea women f loated down like fish meal and settled on him. He breathed easily on the f loor of this watery yin world, tiny breaths, warm rhythmic moisture around the edges of his nostrils, the soft imperceptible opening and closing of gills.

  8

  To the island

  Chicken sat in the station staring down at the display of ropy old fishing net scattered with knobbly starfish and shells made of plastic. Through the mesh she could see the beginning of the railway track that went all the way to the city.

  So now Keri was going. One more. Chicken felt the emptiness inside her expand, push tautly against her skin.

  ‘Have a good day?’ Violet, her mother. Chicken knew she’d arrived before she even spoke, recognised the rhythm of her footfall.

  ‘Yes, really good.’ Chicken picked up her bag with the happy blue and white pattern and slung it over her shoulder. Mother and daughter started to walk down the stairs to the platform.

  ‘What’s that on your ankles?’ asked Violet.

  Chicken’s foot hovered over the next step. The strap marks were still faintly visible. If she told her mother about Keri’s shoes, the gentle push and prod of Violet’s questioning might find their way to the secret. ‘Maybe old age is creeping up on me,’ she joked.

  Chicken and Violet took the train back to Boat Harbour and walked quickly in the rain to the ferry wharf, both of them under Violet’s pink umbrella.

  Chisako was there with little Kimi in the stroller. Also, the twin grandfathers. All the islanders reckoned they could tell the difference between them but no-one was really sure. With their small heads on long necks the old men resembled meerkats, and always seemed to be staring into the distance. Today they were dressed in brown trousers and pale blue shirts. Each carried a plastic bag full of shopping. As they were shy, people greeted them by nodding so that they didn’t feel obliged to talk.

  Although islanders usually stepped directly from the wharf onto the ferry, even senior grandmothers and grandfathers, this time the attendant insisted on putting the gangplank down for the baby in the stroller. While the passengers waited for him to haul it out, Chicken tapped her finger on the tip of her nose till she got Kimi to laugh and do the same.

  When all were safely on board, the gangplank withdrawn and the mooring rope wound into a neat coil on the deck, the ferry set off in a churning of water and made its way across the rain-filled bay.

  Island-side, at the port, were parked mopeds, apparently identical yet sufficiently different to be recognised immediately by their owners, like parent penguins instantly identifying the cry of their young and waddling towards it.

  There weren’t many left now; most of the islanders who worked on the mainland had already returned. The grandfathers found theirs, put the shopping in the wire basket on the back and set off towards the cluster of houses and one or two shops that made up the village. They waved grandly, arms as high as they could reach, to nobody in particular.

  Yano, Chisako’s husband, opened the back of the car while his young wife released the child from the stroller which he then folded and put away. Chisako passed Kimi to his father, the baby’s trusting little arms already outstretched to him. The father nuzzled the top of his head into the child’s soft chubby neck.

  Violet folded up the pink umbrella and exchanged comments about the weather with the couple. The rain had eased now, slow and intermittent as the soft fall of petals. When Kimi was securely fastened into his car seat, Violet and Chicken got theSeaBed on their moped. Violet drove, her feet neatly placed together, with Chicken on the back letting her legs dangle loosely. Her ankles were in exact alignment with the mound of the rear hub cap, the source of her bruise.

  Chicken scanned the grandmothers’ bench. It was practically dark now and they would have gone home, but she looked anyway. Just in case. Violet kept her eyes straight ahead, body stiffening as they passed the bench, increasing speed, zooming up the hill to the house, rising higher and higher till the quiet lights of the mainland came into view.

  She stopped outside the house, a large one by island standards. In the tourist season, during the festival, and on other holidays, it became a bed and breakfast, and they rented out rooms.

  The pamphlets, in the stand at the front desk with the folded maps of the island, showed the panoramic views from the guesthouse, the interior of a room with the light from the window spilling onto the rice-straw matting. There was also a picture of a sumptuous meal—a large handsome crayfish, oysters and other seafood laid out on a platter. Four smiling people—two men, two women—sat at the table ready to enjoy this holiday abundance. After the photo had been taken the crayfish, whose name was Charley, was put back into the freezer. He had appeared in many photos and had been thawed and refrozen so many times that he was beyond eating.

  There was also a photo of the communal bathroom, with a woman smiling and reclining her head on the lip of the bath. That was Violet, a younger Violet than the one now entering the vestibule with Chicken, taking off her shoes and calling out: ‘We’re home!’

  Her husband, Nori, knew this already, had seen the ferry cutting through the panoramic view, heard the puttering of the moped. It had given him time to turn the TV off and set the table.

  ‘Any sign of her?’ Violet whispered her question, as if saying it loudly might break something. Nori shook his head. Violet sighed, then went into the bathroom.

  Chicken hung up her diving uniform. Who would Oceanworld get to replace Keri? Chicken found her primary-school photo among the others on the wall. She looked at her classmates. Only in the photo were they still all together. Some had gone to the city, others had moved to Boat Harbour. Some, like Chicken, worked there and caught the ferry backwards and forwards. Except for the festival, hardly any of them dived anymore.

  Beside the photos of friends and classmates was the gracious tree of family photos beginning with Great-grandfather Norbu and Great-grandmother Iris, young and gazing into the future, into the eyes of Chicken, of the generations to come. The family tree was drawn on a large piece of white paper, the trunk outlined in black, with carefully shaped evergreen leaves which never left the tree. The photos hung from the branches like lanterns. The tree had started as a school project but Chicken continued cultivating and tending it. The photo of Norbu and Iris sat in the fertility of an abalone shell to which Chicken had added twigs and downy feathers to make a nest. Directly beneath Norbu and Iris were their daughters, Cedar and Pearlie.

  On the tree’s most recent branch were the other sisters, Chicken and Lilli. In the bloodline they were cousins but they had grown up together in this house and loved each other like sisters. The photo of Lilli and Chicken was taken at New Year, when Chicken was three and Lilli was nine. They were both in their New Year coats, Lilli’s a smart black-and-white check and Chicken’s bright blue with red buttons. They were wearing black shoes, and white socks that came up to their knees. For years Chicken hated this photo, hated it being taken, hated looking at it. She did not want to stand still and be photographed, she remembered trying to pull away from Lilli who held her hand tightly and said through her unwavering smile, ‘Just stay here, OK? It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘Chicken?’ Violet’s voice marching up the stairs. ‘Your dinner’s on the table.’

  Chicken traced her finger around the torn edge of the photo then went to join Violet and Nori.

  Even though they were only three, the table was set for four. On each plate was a savoury summer custard, perfect little creamy egg mounds filled with mushro
oms, prawns and parsley, that Violet had bought in the supermarket. In the centre of the table were cups containing pickled vegetables, and a larger plate with crispy pieces of deep-fried whitebait.

  Nori, Violet and Chicken ate all their meals in the kitchen. Now that they were taking in guests, the family had become squatters in their own home, containing themselves to a few rooms while the rest of the house remained vacant. The dining room, in which the sumptuous seafood platter was photographed, had a table long enough to comfortably accommodate twelve people, along with all the bowls, plates and presentation that were required. Violet kept the dining room clean, dusted the f lowers and swept the straw matting, wiped a soft cloth over the chest of drawers, but they didn’t eat in there, as if doing so might mess it up. Violet said tourists preferred neutral spaces, not ones that echoed with family use.

  She did on occasion allow festival committee meetings to take place around the large table, but she insisted on putting down a cloth to keep the coffee and tea, notepads and pens, elbows and hands from direct contact with the table. Afterwards, when the meeting had finished and Nori was seeing everyone out, Violet removed the cloth, bringing the corners of it together in the middle so that any traces left behind were captured.

  Nori’s chopsticks were coming to terms with the last few grains remaining in his bowl.

  ‘Get your father some more rice,’ Violet said.

  Chicken thought: Why? Is there something wrong with his legs? She went over to the bench where the automatic rice cooker was, felt the warmth emanating from it. Violet was used to it now but when they first got the cooker it was nothing short of miraculous. What a boon for the working woman! It theSeaBed was so easy to operate even Nori could do it. In the morning you poured in rice and the required amount of water, then when the rice was steamed to perfection, soft and f luffy, the cooker went into stand-by mode and kept it warm all day.

  ‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ said Nori when Chicken came back with another bowlful. He turned his attention to Violet. ‘You know, we could buy her a motorised wheelchair if she’s having trouble getting up the hill. Kobo’s mother had one. I bet he’s still got it. She’d drive right down to the water’s edge then tip herself in, do you remember, Violet? Like milk coming out of a carton.’