Eventually, when everyone was aboard, we set sail for Lamu.
I sat up top, lying on the deck with Mark and Jason and Stanley, staring up at the sky, as we passed the Kenya Cane back and forth, dipping with the vessel’s prow, occasionally, as we glided fast along the sea. I sat up and looked over the edge and thought about slipping off. If there were a gangplank, I’d walk it, I thought. This felt like a clean place to disappear, no one having to deal with my remains, so far away from family that it would all almost seem like a dream, and the sharks would make short order of my body, as it sank into the dark ocean.
Back in my room at Yumbe House, I waved my hand in front of my face and there were wild trails, my fingers leaving impressions in their wake, like the handful of times I had done acid as a teenager. If one good thing came out of my adolescent drug experimentation, however, it was the knowledge that if anything weird occurs with respect to your mind and/or vision and you’re on any type of drugs and/or alcohol, it’s just the drugs and/or alcohol and there’s no reason to freak out: freaking out, in fact, makes everything much worse. And if you’re in a safe place, enjoy the trip. So I got into bed, under the netting, and listened to some music.
I put on Joanna Newsom’s new album, Ys, to try and fall asleep to, but I ended up listening to many of the songs several times and finding myself occasionally a little lachrymose again, or at least choked up. I sat in the dark, my back propped up against the headboard, under the mosquito netting, listening to the music. When the album finished, I played it again, without moving, though sipping from the bottle of water on my bedside table. I listened carefully, though my mind would wander, thinking of my life back home, a life I didn’t know what to make of.
In my dreams, Osama Goldberg had me by the throat, and his head cocked back as he choked me and I saw into his nostrils, which had silver coins lodged deep inside them, shining, nevertheless, catching the sunrays, reflecting them back at me blindingly, and Osama said, ‘Hapo sawa!’ He squeezed tighter. ‘Usilie!’
I awoke gasping for air, gnashing my teeth, immediately thinking that I’d never had a dream with such tactility — I felt Osama’s hands around my neck like one feels a tabletop. I was soaking wet. My left arm was strangely stiff and my left thumb had seized up completely; I’d probably slept on it, I thought, but I started worrying something horrible was happening to my arm. The bruising had barely faded.
After chugging water, I forced myself to lie back down for a few hours, tossing around, though staying in bed.
In the morning, I got up and went down to the courtyard, and it turned out that a simple breakfast of tea and toast and mango was included with the room so I ate, took my pills, and then walked over to the seafront to Boris’s hotel.
Petley’s Inn was more upscale than Yumbe House, but I liked the simplicity of Yumbe House better. At Petley’s there was a pool, though, and a bar that looked onto the ocean. Boris and I reclined on high couches, a tea table between us, in Petley’s second-floor bar, drinking tea and bottled water, the sea air blowing through the barroom, which had no glass windows — instead it was open air, the sounds of the water-front beneath us.
‘Later this afternoon, Kenneth’s friend Osama has offered to take some of us on a boat tour of the region. He’s got a dhow or something,’ said Boris. ‘You’re welcome to come.’
‘I might sit the trip out,’ I said. ‘I’m worried about seasickness.’
I’m not sure why I said that but I did.
‘Makes sense,’ said Boris.
Between the hangover from the Christmas celebrations and whatever I was experiencing, I felt terrible, as I sat drinking tea with Boris, looking out onto the sea, the sun shining, the perfect day, the shining sea giving off a blinding, twinkling glare. Sunrays got caught up in the haze from the heat, a superabundance of sun. I was acutely aware of the vast discrepancy between how I felt on the inside and how glorious it was outside, isolated by my condition, which I didn’t feel comfortable sharing with anybody; Boris, on the other hand, seemed so joyful, vibrant, flourishing, incandescent. In other words, all the things he wasn’t back in Montreal’s wintry climate; back home he seemed, well, so Russian. Here, on this remote island on the Indian Ocean, he seemed the picture of good health and levity, the brooding, often morbid, mind now slanted toward a more don’t-worry-be-happy ease and contentment, without any cheesiness. His blissful sense of being, however, only partially quelled my distemper. My paranoia was off the charts and I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I was too embarrassed and positive it was the antimalarials; but they were in my bloodstream, I’d been taking them for days, so there was nothing I could do. Knowing that one’s psychic unravelling is the result of a drug, sadly, doesn’t stop one from psychically unravelling. I’d have to avoid people and skip events.
We lay back, Boris relaxed and elevated by the sublimity of our surroundings, me tensed up, feeling vertiginous fear like I was going to fall off the high couch.
I walked Boris down to the jetty and we stood staring at the donkeys. The donkeys were everywhere.
‘Supposedly there are over three thousand donkeys on the island,’ Boris said.
‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘I saw one carrying cinderblocks on the way here.’
Boris said, ‘Hey man, is it just me or is there something distinctly Jewish looking about these donkeys?’
We both laughed and I left him at the jetty waiting for Osama and company, and I started making my way back to Yumbe House.
I decided I’d lie low till the barbecue and party later in the evening, on Manda Island, at Diamond Beach Village.
Leaving the jetty, I walked inland, back to the mazes, trying to negotiate the city’s core. There were many beautiful things for sale — some of the nicest, more ornately wood-carved furniture I’d ever seen, for example, and plenty of jewellery, beaded and silver — but I wasn’t in the mood to buy.
Then, I spotted Stanley walking by the various sellers and he smiled at me.
‘John, man, how’re you?’ he said. ‘You’ve survived Lamu so far.’
‘Barely,’ I said. ‘But I’m all right.’
‘I’m just on my way to Jannat House, the inn I’m staying at, to drop off some papers,’ he said, referencing a full folder under his arm. ‘But then I’m going to watch some football. Do you want to join me?’
‘I’ll walk you to Jannat House,’ I said. ‘What’s the football match?’
‘Well, I’m a Chelsea fan,’ he said, ‘because of Boris, actually, and my predilection for all things Russian. Roman Abramovich, Chelsea’s owner, kind of looks like our comrade Boris and he’s a Russian Jew, too.’
‘I think that’s where the commonalities end,’ I said.
‘Maybe, ha,’ said Stanley, ‘but there’s a place that’s playing videos of the game from a few days ago, Wigan Athletic and Chelsea, and another match, too. Anyway, I missed the match and don’t know the outcome, so I bought a ticket earlier to watch it in a little theatre this afternoon.’
‘That’s really cool,’ I said, as we walked to Jannat House. ‘How’re your accommodations?’
‘Nice,’ said Stanley, ‘but I get tired of Lamu very quickly.’
‘Really, why? It’s beautiful.’
‘It is. But I get sick of the donkey shit. I’m a city guy,’ he said.
Like many of the buildings in Lamu, Jannat House was very white, with thatched roofs, and it had a courtyard with a little pool and a window where one could order drinks: Stanley ordered a beer and I ordered a bottle of water, not wanting to drink early in the afternoon.