There our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air....
We have landed. Captain Strobe meets us on the beach emerging from a picture puzzle, his shirt and pants splotched with green and brown, stirring slightly in the afternoon breeze. We follow him as he walks towards a seemingly unbroken line of undergrowth. He pushes aside branches to reveal a winding path through a tangle of bamboo and thorn.
We walk for perhaps a quarter-mile as the path winds upward and ends in a screen of bamboo. We are quite close before I realize that the bamboo trees are painted on a green door that swings open like the magic door in a book I have seen somewhere long ago. We step through into the town of Port Roger.
We are standing in a walled enclosure like a vast garden, with trees and flowers, paths and pools. I can see buildings along the sides of the square, all painted to blend with the surroundings so that the buildings seem but a reflection of the trees and vines and flowers stirring in a slight breeze that seems to shake the walls, the whole scene insubstantial as a mirage.
This first glimpse of Port Roger occurred just as some hashish candy I had ingested on the boat started to take effect, producing a hiatus in my mind and the interruption of verbal thought, followed by a sharp jolt as if something had entered my body. I caught a whiff of perfume and a sound of distant flutes.
A long cool room with a counter, behind which are three generations of Chinese. A smell of spices and dried fish. An Indian youth, naked except for a leather pouch that cups his genitals, is leaning forward on the counter examining a flintlock rifle, his smooth red buttocks protruding. He turns and smiles at us, showing white teeth and bright red gums. He has a gardenia behind his ear and his body gives off a sweet flower smell. Hammocks, blankets, machetes, cutlasses and flintlocks are on the counter.
Outside in the square, Strobe introduces me to a man with a strong square face, light blue eyes, and curly iron-gray hair. "This is Waring. He painted the town."
Waring gives me a smile and a handshake. He makes no secret of his dislike for Captain Strobe. Dislike is perhaps too strong a word since there is no hatred involved on either side. They meet as emissaries of two countries whose interests do no coincide at any point. I do not yet know what countries they represent.
Up to this moment I have been so completely charmed by Strobe's nonchalance that I have never stopped to ask myself: What is the source of his poise? Where did he buy it, and what did he pay? I see now that Strobe is an official and so is Waring, but they don't work for the same company. Perhaps they are both actors who never appear onstage together, their relationship limited to curt offstage nods.
"I'll show you to your digs," says Strobe.
We go through a massive studded door into a patio, cool and shady with trees, flowering shrubs, and a pool. The patio is a miniature version of the town square. My attention is immediately arrested by a youth who is standing about thirty feet from the entrance executing a dance step, one hand on his hip and the other above his head. He has his back towards us and as we enter the courtyard he freezes in midstep, turning his head to point towards us. At this moment, everyone in the patio looks at us.
The youth pivots and advances to meet us. He is wearing a purple silk vest which is open in front, and his arms are bare from the shoulders. His arms and torso are dark brown, lean and powerful, and he moves with the grace of a dancer. His complexion is dark, his hair black and kinky; one eye is gray-green, the other brown. A long scar runs down the left cheekbone to the chin. He makes a mock obeisance in front of Captain Strobe, who acknowledges it with his cool enigmatic smile. Then the youth turns to Bert Hansen: "Ah, the son of family ..." he sniffs. "The smell of gold is always welcome."
I notice that he can be warm and friendly from one eye and at the same time cold and mocking from the other. The effect is most disturbing. Bert Hansen, not knowing how to respond, smiles uncomfortably, and his smile is immediately mimicked by the youth with such precision that it seems for a moment they have switched places.
He ruffles the cabin boy's hair. "An Irish leprechaun." To Paco he says something in Portuguese. I recognize him as the regimental or shipboard joker and Master of Ceremonies, and Paco tells me his name is Juanito. I have no doubt that Juanito can, if necessary, back his sharp tongue with knife or cutlass.
Now it is my turn. I extend my hand, but instead of shaking it he turns it over and pretends to read the palm. "You are going to meet a handsome stranger." He beckons over his shoulder and calls out: "Hans." A boy who is standing by the pool throwing bits of bread to the fish turns and walks towards me. Wearing only blue trousers, he is shirtless and barefoot, with yellow hair and blue eyes. His tanned torso is smooth and hairless.
"Noah, the gunsmith, meet Hans, the gunsmith."
Hans brings his heels together and bows from the waist as we shake hands. He invites me to move into his room.
The patio is completely surrounded by a two-story wooden building. The second-floor rooms open onto a porch which runs all around the upper story and overhangs the ground floor. The rooms have no doors but at the top of the entrance there is a roll of mosquito netting which is lowered at twilight. The rooms are bare whitewashed cubicles with hooks for slinging hammocks and in the walls wooden pegs for clothes.
I take my gear to a room on the second floor and Hans introduces me to an American boy from Middletown who also shares the room. His name is Dink Rivers. His extraordinarily clear and direct gray eyes convey a shock of surprise and recognition as if we had known one another from somewhere else, and for a second I am in a dry streambed and he says: "If you still want me you'd better take me up soon." Next second I am back in the room at Port Roger, and we are shaking hands and he is saying:
"Nice to see you."
When I inquire as to his trade, he says that he is in physical education. Hans explains that he is a student and instructor in body control.
"He can stop his pulse, jump from twenty feet, stay under water five minutes and"—Hans grins—"go off no hands."
When I asked the boy to make a demonstration, he looked at me very earnestly without smiling and said that he would so when the time came.
There are four latrines: two for the ground floor and two for the upper floor, with toilets that can be flushed from a water tank which fills with rainwater drained off the roof. The patio contains a number of fig, orange, mango, and avocado trees and a menagerie of cats, iguanas, monkeys, and strange gentle animals with long snouts. On the ground floor there is a communal dining room, a kitchen, and a large bath where hot water is drawn into buckets. This is an Arab-style bath known as a haman.
The dancing boy are spreading mats under the portico, lighting their hashish pipes and brewing the sweet mint tea they drink constantly. Chinese youths are smoking opium. The entire crew of The Siren is housed here, and it is a mixed company: English, Irish, American, Dutch, German, Spanish, Arabs, Malay, Chinese, and Japanese. We stroll about, talking and introducing ourselves among the murmur of many tongues.
Old acquaintances are renewed and bonds of language and common places of origin discovered. There are some boy from New York who had been river pirates, and it turns out that they know Guy, Bill, and Adam. Five huge Nubians, liberated by Nordenholz from a slave ship, speak a language known only to themselves. Now word is passed along through Kelley and Juanito the Joker that Nordenholz will entertain us all for dinner at his house.
Hans looks at me with a knowing smile. "Fräuleins." He punches his finger in and out of his fist. The word echoes through the patio in many languages. Hans explains that there will be a number of women at the party who have come for the purpose of becoming impregnated.