cooking. It was understood that if anyone was in the jail cell, they would be let out for the occasion, and any hospital patients were wrapped up and wheeled out under the night sky, some even on oxygen. The cleaning tables from the fish factory were carried out and laden with bowls of salads, and breads, and nuts and fruits brought from the mainland. Jojo Schoones’s hi-fi was cranked up until the volume of the music competed successfully with the noise of the generator, and young and old joined in to celebrate after two months of hard work: eating, dancing, singing, flirting.
There was only one rule. Everyone, from great-grandparents to great-grandchildren, was required to wear a mask. Some spent the whole year making their masks spectacular, not only in an attempt to win a prize, but also because they needed to believe they could spend one night each year incognito on this island where everyone knew practically everything about everyone else – even though you could easily hear it was Cyn Peters’s high staccato laugh, or spot at a glance Elijah Mobara’s loping gait or Mr Bacon’s potbelly. Masks allowed for some abandon. As a result, an unusually high proportion of the islanders had their birthdays nine months later, in September – another busy month for the doctor – and the fathers of September babies would look closely at their offspring, trying to discern familiar features.
* * *
Dorado Bardelli glued the last few strands of dried seaweed onto her papier-mâché mask. She was pleased by how she had managed to crimp and plaster the forehead and cheeks the previous night into a fierce, rugged face with heavy brows. The seaweed created a ragged beard, adding to the effect. But she was annoyed with herself for having left it so late: there was a danger of the glue not drying adequately by the evening. She placed the mask next to the crown, then started on the trident, fixing a parabola of wire to one end of a broom handle to create the fork, then padding it by winding strips of sea-green cloth around it. Clarence knew what she would be wearing; they would find each other in the throng that night, and he would surreptitiously cup her buttock in his hand and press himself against her. Later they would find a way to be alone; they would wash up together in a delicious, cocooned island moment. For a while she could pretend it was just the two of them, marooned in each others’ arms, falling into paradise.
She glanced at the clock. She was almost late for work: signing out the goods for export, calculating the export duty and harbour tax, and stamping the crew’s passports. She was meeting with Clarence at two to discuss the adequacy of the fire extinguishers in the co-op; their attention to business would be punctuated by their hands brushing occasionally in anticipation. Her days were organised around these moments, these brief encounters that made her thrill with a painful pleasure.
By two-thirty he had not arrived. This was unusual. Dorado sent Absalom Pelani’s youngest son, Harry, to look for him; he came panting back to say that the mayor had last been seen in his boat early that morning, heading off in the direction of Impossible. Something tightened in Dorado’s chest; what on earth was he doing? Some time ago, Clarence had taken to going fishing: something he had come to late in life, a solitary pleasure he insisted on despite Dorado’s concerns for his safety. But today was one of the busiest days of the year, what with the ship in and the preparations for the Ball; the mayor should be available to be consulted about any attendant problems. Dorado went outside and felt how the wind was picking up and swinging round from the south, scrubbing the surface of the sea into a corrugated washboard, feeding her own turbulence. She locked up the police station and went to check herself. Clarence’s boat was not in the boat shed. She went to Jerome Peters, Clarence’s elder son, for help. The factory was closing early. The ship had been loaded in record time, and men and women were hurrying home to wash and change for the festivities ahead. Jerome checked with his mother; it transpired she was unaware that her husband had gone off in his boat.
Dorado prepared the police launch for the search with a double dread. In living memory, there had been three occasions when men had gone missing at sea – but none had been found. Also, why had he not told her of his plans?
Jerome and his brother Nelson came with her. The launch ploughed through the ruck and chop, heading for Dead Man’s Cove on Impossible, where the fish were so plentiful they almost jumped into the boat. By the time they reached the cove, the sky was heavy with grey constellations of cloud, and visibility was becoming poor. There was no sign of Clarence’s boat, so they put in at the landing beach and went to interrogate Sophia, her young son crawling at her feet. Three hours later, when they could not get Sophia to admit she had seen Clarence or knew his whereabouts, they were forced to sleep over in the fishermen’s cottages.
* * *
Nelson lay in the darkness listening to his brother’s breathing, his body tight and cold, his father lost, perhaps forever. This woman Sophia had something to do with it, he knew; he remembered his father’s scratched face on his return after he had escorted her into exile.
Jerome thought this idea far-fetched. “He should never have gone out alone,” he said, raising his voice above the wind’s whine.
“The sea was calm enough most of the day,” Nelson pointed out, wanting his wife’s warm arms around him, angry with his brother for not seeing the obvious.
“You also don’t know the sea, Nelson. It’s not only storms can wreck you.”
Nelson did not sleep much that night, not having brought his tablets with him, and with his father’s ghost already sitting on his chest, whispering disparaging comments in his ear. The past could not be changed; certain memories stood solid and immutable, set in stone amidst the flux and wash of vague recollections. Certain events called him back, back, pulling his attention away from sleep, from life itself, refusing to let him go despite his best efforts to put them behind him and not look back. He was Lot’s wife turned to salt, mesmerised, punished, pointless.
Had he pushed his father? He gasped at this notion, this mad idea sprung from the dark, ambushing his brain. Had he been a good enough son? His father leaving, always leaving, since he could remember. He had not managed to make him stay, even for his mother’s sake; he could not bring her relief by staying with her himself, then or now. He had to make it up to her somehow.
The trapped fish of his thoughts revolved without respite in the dark bowl of his skull.
For Dorado, too, there was no chance of rest. The walls of the cottage were false shelter; she needed to feel the rip of the wind on her taut skin, she needed the tumult of weather to wrench the horror and grief from her mouth. Most of the night she was out on the cliff, her body wired and waiting, trying to pick up any trace of hope in the salt air; then plunging into despair like drowning, wanting to throw herself off the earth and down to Neptune’s feet, joining her Clarence in one last act of immersion. But perhaps, perhaps he wasn’t drowned. After all, he’d recently come to an agreement with Minister Kohler about the last gravesite at the church, claiming it for himself so as not to lie one day in the stony, cold cemetery near the sheep pastures. Clarence would’ve hated the thought of his flesh soaking off his bones in the freezing deep, his remains dancing to the tug of shark bites with the cold eyes of fish watching. It just wasn’t possible. She had to know the truth, she had to stay alive until she’d found out what had happened.
Those moments when the wind tore the mist to woolly shreds, allowing glimpses of Ergo, she could see the lights of the village, where the Ball was in full swing. Or was it? She had radioed back to Mannie, who was doing duty at the station in her absence, reporting that they were safe but marooned by weather. The villagers would all know by now about the disappearance of their mayor. How could he do this, on the day of their celebration of life?
The following day, the weather had abated sufficiently for the three to continue their search. They found nothing: no boat, no body, nothing. When they arrived back on Ergo with the news, there were those who were dazed; there were those who made the sign to ward off evil, silently vowing not to voyage near Impossible again.
