His favorite meal was one he cooked himself. A simple pork dish sautéed in fish sauce with a little sugar and pepper and minced ginger. After eight days at sea, when none of us had eaten or drunk anything for days, after we had lost three more people, two of them babies that had to be thrown overboard, our boat stopped dead in the water. We had no more oil or grease for the engine, so the captain mixed some pork fat with gasoline, which got the engine run ning again except the oil smelled so good that people could hardly stand it.
You said, That smells like Father.
This is the part I’ve never told anyone. I swear it is all true.
We met a man on the island. He had been on our boat. A man named Son, whose presence you might remember even if you’ve forgotten everything else about him. On our sixth night at sea, a storm rocked and flung us against each other for hours, thrashed us with blinding choking rain, and in the end took his wife. She had been thrown from the boat when it heeled and nearly capsized, and in the calm after the storm’s passing, whispers traveled of how he had tried to save her but she had slipped from his hands and tumbled into the sea. He was still onboard somewhere with their young son. We heard no moaning or crying of any kind. I imagined him staring silently at the tranquil sea and reliving his last glimpse of his wife as she vanished under the waves.
She was the second woman drowned in less than a day. She had not flung herself and she had not gone willingly, but she and the other woman quickly became one person in my mind. At that point, there was no room left in me for separate tragedies.
Two months into our stay at the camp, with nothing to do one afternoon, I decided to take you to the untainted beach on the other side of the island. The main beach at the mouth of the camp was always crowded with swimmers and barterers and supply boats from the mainland. But this other beach was over an hour’s walk from camp and cut off from all facilities, so few people went there unless they were young, in love, or in need of time alone. The easiest path there was along the base of the mountain, which skirted the shoreline, and we were walking the path that afternoon, about halfway to the beach, when we came upon a wall of trees. You saw something and stopped us, and when I followed you through the trees, I saw that we had discovered a small promontory that overlooked the shore.
You pointed him out to me. We stood at the edge of the promontory, with a quiet view of the untainted beach in the distance and a steep path below us that led down to a small rocky cove. There was a platform of rocks at the bottom, and he was sitting on one of the rocks with a fishing pole he’d made from a tree branch. I’d seen men in the camp sneak out into the open waters on makeshift rafts, or with nothing but a life vest made of empty plastic bottles, risking their lives to catch fish they would then barter around camp. Son’s brand of fishing had no industry. He was there for the silence.
You asked me who he was, and though I had never actually set eyes on Son, not even on the boat, I knew immediately. You can’t live elbow to elbow with thousands of people without hearing stories. Son’s boy was only a few years older than you, and in their first week on the island, some man had improperly touched the boy and threatened him with a knife, so Son confronted the man with a cleaver and hacked off three of his fingers. He left him the thumb and part of the pinkie. That’s what I heard. The man deserved it, I suppose, and everyone agreed that Son was merely protecting the one thing he had left in the world. But still, people kept their distance. The Malaysian police jailed him for two weeks, and some said they shaved his head as punishment. We knew he had already done it himself to mourn his wife’s death.
Let’s go down there, you said.
I hushed you, afraid that he might hear us. But you kept tugging my hand. It had been so long since I’d seen that kind of recognition and vigor in your eyes. Your father, of course, had also shaved off all his hair months before we left, lest you see him lose more and more of it every day.
I want to fish! you insisted.
I was about to cover your mouth when Son turned and saw us. He yanked his pole out of the water and marched halfway up the path until he was a few meters below us. I wanted to flee but stood transfixed by his childish outrage. He seemed embarrassed for some reason, and angry that he could not hide it.
Why are you watching me? he demanded. His voice rang across the empty promontory.
I pulled you close to me, behind me a bit, as you squeezed my hand. I shot back at him, This is not your island! We can be here too if we want!
You were watching me, he insisted and glanced accusingly at you too.
Why would we watch you? We’re here for the same reason you are.
He was taken aback, unsure of what I meant.
I added, And we’ll come back here as often as we want, whether you like it or not! I pulled you from the edge and decided it was better to return to camp. We would save the beach for another day.
As we rushed away, me pulling you along, you kept glancing behind us.
The next day you said you wanted to visit the beach again. I knew why. And I admitted to myself that I was drawn back too. We were poking a wild dog, but something about him felt familiar to me as well. It might have been his recent loss, or simply the frightening loneliness in his anger.
He was fishing at the same spot, accompanied this time by his son, who, like his father, was shirtless and had a pole in the water. They each sat on a separate rock without talking or acknowledging one another.
We watched them in our own rapt silence, though this time from a more concealed spot beneath some trees. It felt strange, the fact that you and I were finally sharing something. I was pleased by it, but also saddened.
The boy jumped to his feet. He had a bite on his line and was trying to lift it carefully out of the water. Son watched him without saying anything. The boy struggled with the pole and seemed on the verge of success, but when he grabbed the line with his hand, it went limp. He turned immediately to his father, who came over to inspect the line and promptly rapped his knuckles on the boy’s crown and admonished him loudly.
The boy sat back down, rubbing his bowed head.
I felt sorry for him. He had seen his mother drown and watched his father lop off another man’s fingers. What must have filled his head at night?
Son returned to his spot and to his fishing and seemed, once again, absorbed in the deep waters of the sea, oblivious again to the boy.
Their bare backs looked bronzed in the sun, the son’s a smaller and more delicate facsimile of the father’s.
We visited the promontory twice more that week. Son and the boy never seemed to change. It was as though we were returning each day to look at a painting.
They fished mostly in silence, but every now and then Son’s loud voice broke upon the air and he’d begin talking at length. He could easily have been talking to himself. I understood very little from our distance, but I could see that the boy, who hardly spoke at all, hung on every word. He clearly feared his father and might have loved and admired him too. How much of that had he inherited from his mother?