PART ONE
Creation (1979)
Human Moments in World War III (1983)
CREATION
It was an hourās drive, much of it a climb through smoky rain. I kept my window open several inches, hoping to catch a fragrance, some savor of aromatic shrubs. Our driver slowed down for the worst parts of the road and the tightest turns and for cars coming toward us through the haze. At intervals the bordering vegetation was less thick and there were views of pure jungle, whole valleys of it, spread between the hills.
Jill read her book on the Rockefellers. Once into something she was unreachable, as though massively stunned, and all the way out I saw her raise her eyes from the page only once, to glance at some children playing in a field.
There wasnāt much traffic in either direction. The cars coming toward us appeared abruptly, little color cartoons, ramshackle and bouncing, and Rupert, our driver, had to maneuver quickly in the total rain to avoid collisions and deep gashes in the road and the actual jungle pressing in. It seemed to be understood that any evasive action would have to be taken by our vehicle, the taxi.
The road leveled out. Now and then someone stood in the trees, looking in at us. Smoke rolled down from the heights. The car climbed again, briefly, and then entered the airport, a series of small buildings and a runway. The rain stopped. I paid Rupert and we carried the luggage into the terminal. Then he stood outside with other men in sport shirts, talking in the sudden glare.
The room was full of people, luggage and boxes. Jill sat on her suitcase, reading, with our tote bags and carry-ons placed about her. I pushed my way to the counter and found out we were wait-listed, numbers five and six. This brought a thoughtful look to my face. I told the man weād confirmed in St. Vincent. He said it was necessary to reconfirm seventy-two hours before flight time. I told him weād been sailing; we were in the Tobago Cays seventy-two hours agoāno people, no buildings, no phones. He said it was the rule to reconfirm. He showed me eleven names on a piece of paper. Physical evidence. We were five and six.
I went over to tell Jill. She let her body sag into the luggage, a stylized collapse. It took her a while to finish. Then we carried on a formal dialogue. She made all the points Iād just made talking to the man at the counter. Confirmed in St. Vincent. Chartered yacht. Uninhabited islands. And I repeated all the things heād said to me in reply. She played my part, in other words, and I enacted his, but I did so in a most reasonable tone of voice, and added plausible data, hoping only to soothe her exasperation. I also reminded her there was another flight three hours after this one. Weād still get to Barbados in time for a swim before dinner. And afterward it would be cool and starry. Or warm and starry. And weād hear surf rumbling in the distance. The eastern coast was known for rumbling surf. And the following afternoon weād catch our plane to New York, as scheduled, and nothing would be lost except several hours in this authentic little island airport.
āHow neo-romantic, and how right for today. These planes seat, what, forty?ā
āOh, more,ā I said.
āHow many more?ā
āJust more.ā
āAnd we are listed where?ā
āFive and six.ā
āBeyond the more than forty.ā
āPlenty of no-shows,ā I said. āThe jungle swallows them up.ā
āNonsense. Look at these people. Theyāre still arriving.ā
āSome are seeing the others off.ā
āIf he believes that, God, I donāt want him on my side. The fact is they shouldnāt be here at all. Itās off-season.ā
āSome of them live here.ā
āAnd we know which ones, donāt we?ā
The plane arrived, from Trinidad, and the sound and sight of it caused people near the counter to push in more closely. I went around to the side and approached from behind the adjacent counter, where several others stood. The reconfirmed passengers began filing toward the immigration booth.
Voices. A British woman said the late-afternoon flight had been canceled. We all pushed in closer. Two West Indian men up front waved their tickets at the clerk. There were more voices. I jumped up several times in order to look over the heads of the assembled people to the dirt road outside. Rupert was still there.
Things were rapidly taking shape. Freight and luggage out one door, passengers out the other. I realized we were down to standbys. The people leaving the counter seemed propelled by some deep saving force. A primitive baptism might have been in progress. The rest of us crowded around the clerk. He was putting checks next to some names, crossing out others.
āThe flight is full,ā he said. āThe flight is full.ā
There were eight or ten faces left, bland in their travelerās woe. Various kinds of English were being spoken. Someone suggested we all get together and charter a plane. It was fairly common practice here. Someone else said something about a nine-seater. The first person took names, then went out with several others to find the charter office. I asked the clerk about the late-afternoon flight. He didnāt know why it had been canceled. I asked him to book Jill and me on the first flight out next day. The passenger list wasnāt available, he said. All he could do was put us on standby. We would all know more in the morning.
Using only feet, Jill and I pushed our luggage to the door. One of the charter prospects came back to tell us a plane might be available later in the dayāa six-seater, only. This seemed to leave us out. I gestured to Rupert and we started taking things out to the car. Rupert had a long face and a gap between his front teeth and wore a silver medal over his breast pocketāan elaborate oval decoration attached to a multicolored strip of cloth.
Jill sat in back, reading. Out by the trunk, Rupert was saying he knew a hotel not far from the harbor. His gaze kept straying to the right. A woman was standing five feet away, very still, waiting for us to finish talking. I thought I recalled having seen her at the edge of the crowd inside the terminal. She wore a gray dress and carried a handbag. There was a small suitcase at her feet.
āPlease, my taxi went back,ā she said to me.
She was pale, with a soft plain face, a full mouth and cropped brown hair. She held her right hand up near her forehead to keep the sun out of her eyes. It was agreed we would share the taxi fare to the hotel and then ride out together in the morning. She said she was number seven.
It was hot and bright all the way back. The woman sat up front with Rupert. At intervals she turned to Jill and me and said, āIt is awful, awful, the system they have,ā or, āI donāt understand how they survive economically,ā or, āThey could not guarantee I will get out even tomorrow.ā
When we stopped for some goats, a woman came out of the trees to sell us nutmeg in little plastic bags.
āWhere are we listed?ā Jill said.
āTwo and three this time.ā
āWhat timeās the flight?ā
āSix forty-five. We have to be there at six. Rupert, we have to be there at six.ā
āI take you.ā
āWhere are we going now?ā Jill said.
āHotel.ā
āI know hotel. What sort of hotel?ā
āDid you see me jump, back there?ā
āI missed that.ā
āI jumped in the air.ā
āIt wonāt be Barbados, will it?ā she said.
āRead your book,ā I told her.
The ketch was still anchored in the harbor. I pointed it out to the woman up front and explained that weād spent the last week and a half aboard. She turned and smiled wanly as if she were too tired to work out the meaning of my remarks. We were in the hills, heading south. I realized what made this harbor town seem less faded and haphazard than the other small ports weād put into. Stone buildings. It was almost Mediterranean.
At the hotel there was no problem getting rooms. Rupert said heād be waiting at five next morning. Two maids preceded us along the beach, with a porter following. We split into two groups, and Jill and I were led to what was called a pool suite. Behind a ten-foot wall was a private garden of hibiscus, various shrubs and a silk-cotton tree. The small pool was likewise ours. On the patio we found a bowl full of bananas, mangoes and pineapple.
āNot half bad,ā Jill said.
She slept awhile. I floated in the pool, feeling the uneasy suspense lift off me, the fret of getting somewhere in groupsādocumented travel. This spot was so close to perfect we would not even want to tell ourselves how lucky we were, having been delivered to it. The best of new places had to be protected from our own cries of delight. We would hold the words for weeks or months, for the soft evening when a stray remark would set us to recollecting. I guess we believed, together, that the wrong voice can obliterate a landscape. This sentiment was itself unspoken, and one of the sources of our attachment.
I opened my eyes to the sight of wind-driven cloudsāclouds scuddingāand a single frigate bird hung on a current of air, long wings flat and still. The world and all things in it. I wasnāt foolish enough to think I was in the lap of some primal moment. This was a modern product, this hotel, designed to make people feel theyād left civilization behind. But if I wasnāt naive, I wasnāt in the mood, either, to stir up doubts about the place. Weād had half a day of frustration, long drives out and back, and the cooling touch of freshwater on my body, and the ocean-soaring bird, and the speed of those low-flying clouds, their massive tumbling summits, and my weightless drift, the slow turning in the pool, like some remote-controlled rapture, made me feel I knew what it was to be in the world. It was special, yes. The dream of Creation that glows at the edge of the serious travelerās search. Naked. It remained only for Jill to come walking through the sheer curtains and slip silently into the pool.
We had dinner in the pavilion, overlooking a quiet sea. The tables were only one-quarter occupied. The European woman, our taxi companion, sat in the far corner. I nodded. Either she didnāt notice or chose not to acknowledge.
āShouldnāt we ask her to join us?ā
āShe doesnāt want to,ā I said.
āWeāre Americans, after all. Weāre famous for asking people to join us.ā
āShe chose the most remote table. Sheās happy there.ā
āShe could be an economist from the Soviet bloc. What do you think? Or someone doing a health study for the U.N.ā
āWay off.ā
āA youngish widow, Swiss, here to forget.ā
āNot Swiss.ā
āGerman,ā she said.
āYes.ā
āWandering aimlessly through the islands. Sitting at the most remote tables.ā
āThey werenāt surprised when I said we wanted breakfast at four-thirty.ā
āThe whole island has to adjust to that rotten stinking airline. It is awful, awful.ā
Jill wore a long tunic and gauze pants. We left our shoes under the table and took a walk along the beach, wandering knee-high into the water at one point. A security guard stood under the palms, watching us. When we got back to the table, the waiter brought coffee.
āThereās always the chance theyāll be able to take two standbys but not three,ā Jill said. āI absolutely have to be back for Wednesday but I think we ought to stick together all the same.ā
āWeāre a team. Weāve been a team all through this thing.ā
āHow many flights to Barbados tomorrow?ā
āOnly two. What happens Wednesday?ā
āBernie Gladman comes down from Buffalo.ā
āThe earth is scorched for miles around.ā
āIt took only six weeks to set up the meeting.ā
āWeāll get out. If not at six forty-five, then late in the afternoon. Of course if that happens, we miss our connecting flight in Barbados.ā
āI donāt want to hear,ā she said.
āUnless we go to Martinique instead.ā
āYouāre the only man whoās ever understood that boredom and fear are one and the same to me.ā
āI try not to exploit this knowledge.ā
āYou love to be boring. You seek out boring situations.ā
āAirports.ā
āHour-long taxi rides,ā she said.
First the tops of the palms started bending. Then the rain hit, ringing down in heavy splashes on the stone path. When it let up, we walked across the lawn to our suite.
Watching Jill undress. Rum in a toothbrush glass. The sound and force of the wind. The skin near my eyes feeling cracked from ten days of sun and blowing weather.
I had trouble falling asleep. After the wind died, finally, the first thing I heard was roosters crowing, what seemed hundreds of them, off in the hills. Minutes later the dogs started barking.
We rode out in first light. Nine men with machetes walked single-file along the road.
We established that the other womanās name was Christa. She and Jill made small talk for the first few miles. Then Jill lowered her head toward the open book.
It rained once, briefly.
Iād expected half a dozen people to be in the terminal at that hour. It was jammed. They pushed toward the counter. It was hard to get around them because of luggage and boxes and birdcages and small children.
āThis is crazy,ā Jill said. āWhere are we? I donāt believe this is happening.ā
āThe plane will be empty when it gets here, or close to it. Thatās what Iām counting on. And many of these people are standbys. Weāre two ...