Three Views of Crystal Water

The box was perfect, square at each end, with thin paper screens dividing their sleeping section from their eating section, and a hearth in the middle. Vera liked the neatness of it and the sense she had of being small inside it, miniaturised by the house that was itself like a toy house in its simplicity.

She stumbled outside and saw that the sun was turning the sky pink and gold, highlighting the stray clouds that wandered across the great empty dome above this flat floating land. As the sun came up, birds began to fly in circles over the houses. Vera imagined them living all through the dark night on the bare rocks, or roosting in the cliff in this comfortless volcanic ruin without a safe leafy tree to be seen.

She wished she had been the first up, but greeting the day as it dawned was a custom here, and others had been up before her. The village was coming alive creakily and with good cheer. She went along the street; the doors were open. Vera heard screens sliding, and water buckets clanging. The men stood and scratched and looked out at the water.

Vera had to stare to recognise these people, although she had seen them in Toba and even sailed with them the day before. They had shed their stiffened look, and the wooden gestures that made them strange all winter. They might have been coming out of hibernation. They had the alert and avid look of hunters whose season had come. This was home, their faces said; the long sojourn on the mainland had been just a waiting.

And, Vera thought, there would be no whistles and men in black uniforms here. This was a safe place.

The water lay all around, everywhere you looked. Vera watched as men stretched their arms, barked directions and trotted down to the water. There was much groaning and heaving as they lifted the fishing boats down from the wooden stands where they had spent the winter. Their words, though still indecipherable, sounded exuberant. The men shouted to be heard over the surf. They looked bolder and bigger than they had in town, stripped down to the skin, like people who had been freed.

But the women, especially, were changed from the huddled souls Vera had seen on the mainland. Gathering around the well, they laughed together. They had removed their bonnets. Faces open, they filled their buckets, one after the other. They stripped to wash, and then went bare-breasted through the streets, old and young. It was a matter-of-fact and purposeful nakedness. They took no notice of themselves or each other in this state, but trundled back to their houses, each one nearly the same as the next.

The children were in the sea immediately. Mothers set down even the toddlers at the water’s edge, where they began making curious, rocking steps outward.

As she looked at the easy working swing of the other women’s bodies, Vera was envious. She imagined herself the object of stares and curiosity. One old woman with tiny wizened breasts stopped Vera in the path. She pointed overhead to the brightening sky and rows of narrow clouds. It was a good sunrise; it had fish scales in it, the woman seemed to be saying.

Vera was so astonished to be greeted that she could do nothing but stare. But the woman went away smiling. Vera resolved to do just what the others did. If she went around bare in the sun her pale skin would burn and peel and freckle. Then maybe – she hoped – she’d turn the same colour as they were.

She continued on the path through the village, past the harbour and along to the far end where there was a little height and she could look down on the water and see the shaded scrawling on its surface. Like the pattern on a huge tapestry, it was repeated as far as Vera could see. She wondered what those long lines of bubbles were, if they were foam that came with an overnight wind, now diminished.

Vera counted four different birds. There were terns, gulls, plovers, and cormorants. She paid special attention to the cormorants because they were the best divers. They had necks like black snakes: she could see one out on the water; his head went full circle around. His eye was like the eye of a needle. Their fellows flew low over the water in squadrons with serious intent. Vera saw just one goose, far overhead, and thought perhaps he was lost. Turning on the spot in her high place, she looked back into the heart of the village to see how far advanced the morning was. People were still emerging from their houses with water buckets. She saw the smoke of a cooking fire coming from the house she thought was hers. But she did not want to go back yet, she wanted to go on and explore.

She could see the mountains of the mainland, distant and small off the side where the harbour was. The other side faced away into the open sea. The island was not large, maybe four times as long as it was across, a distance Vera could walk in half an hour, and shaped like an elongated figure eight.

It had taller cones on each end, and a marshy place in the middle. It must have been two volcanoes once; the remains had been stretched as if someone had tried to pull the two sections apart. The narrow middle had nearly disappeared under water. A bridge of boards lay across it in several places. She stepped down on the boards and a white snake shot out from under, hissing. She stepped off the boards and waded through the water, which had eelgrass in it, and noticed tiny fish darting right up onto the land.

Butterflies and moths, the names of which Vera had not learned, some pale blue and some pink, stopped on the pale wild flowers that spotted the grass. There were orange butterflies too that she recognised from home; they were named Monarchs. Vera pulled out a clump of bamboo grass; it was as fine as green hair and it cut her. There were many kinds of moss: the thick velvety green, the red, dry, wiry moss, the moss that consisted of tiny stalks each with a minute yellow head.

She heard the great honking, almost barking sounds rise from the misty beds of bamboo grass.

She stopped, terrified.

Wild jungle animals – lions or rhinoceros?

She was suddenly blind. The flat lines of the rising sun had got entangled with the grass, and there was mist too, caught probably because the shallow water was warmer here than elsewhere. Vera squinted and shaded her eyes. She could see large brown-backed shapes in the tall grass of the marsh. Like great dogs or coyotes, barking. Then one of them unfolded its wings and flapped messily into the air. They were giant, unruly birds. When she approached the grasses where they waded, bending and snatching little fish for their breakfast, two more flew up and the rest stalked away, out of sight. They made her laugh with joy.

She turned back toward the house. At home, breakfast was ready. As she drank her morning soup, Vera told Keiko about the huge birds.

‘You are lucky!’ Keiko said. ‘You have seen the cranes.’

She told the old people Vera had seen the cranes.

They smiled and nodded and looked very impressed.

Lucky, Keiko repeated. She told Vera they danced too but she had never seen them.

Suddenly, everyone was working. Keiko had taken her goggles and her lunch box and her fishing basket and had gone down to meet the other divers. The young boy, her nephew, with whom Vera had been steadily avoiding eye contact, followed Keiko. The old aunt had gone out to dig in the soil and the uncle to mending boats with the other older men. No one said anything about what Vera should do.

Vera walked along the path and stood and watched the ama boats go off. There was an oar in the back at the centre, pulled up so that the rudder didn’t hit the sand. The women came splashing aboard, all exclaiming about the water, which Vera understood was cold. The men and boys ran alongside, pushing. Then they hopped aboard, and an ama woman took the oar. She began to sway, rowing the boat, and they were gone, without looking back. Vera was left alone.

She headed in the opposite direction she’d walked earlier. Here too, the ground rose a little, unevenly. The street petered out at some houses, which looked older and more dilapidated than the others. A few old women and men scratched at the dirt with hoes.

She came to the end of the village. There was a path that continued: it went to a shrine, probably. There were always shrines, with wooden arches painted red, with stones that were mossy and covered with lichen. Long tapes hung in these shrines, from the branches of trees, and papers were tied on them, or amulets or dolls. Vera did not understand these shrines; she had seen them in Toba and always turned away as if they contained something she should not see. She went onward from the path to the shrine, and discovered a square house, taller than the others. Its door was shut. She peeked in the cracks. But she could see only darkness. There was straw on the ground in front of it, and a horrendous chill around it. She thought it might be a tomb. But no, now that her eyes adjusted, she could see there were huge, square, straw-coloured, dirty blocks of ice inside, packed down in a hole. How had it got here? Some of the men must have come out in the winter, and cut the ice and saved it.

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