he said. ‘It’s delicious, if you have some lemon juice, some chilli, some vinegar, some garlic, some Aji No Moto.’ (Sarani used the local brand name for monosodium glutamate.) It was better without, tougher than an oyster, and as salt as the sea.
When I first heard the noise I thought it was thunder, but the sound was too percussive, too short. The sun had come out again and the clouds were white and broken. ‘Main bom,’ Sarani explained, pointing to a pump-boat far behind us. The boat closest to us had its engine going, cruising over the seaward drop-off where, in theory, the big fish lay. It would slow at intervals so that the man in the front could put his head over the side. He signalled them on until they were far in front of us. Against the glare of the sea I saw a figure stand and pitch a speck out in a lazy arc over the water. The figure sat down. A beat, and then the water near the boat shivered and rose in a spout twenty feet high. The boom came last. ‘You see? Playing bombs.’ Sarani could not tell me exactly what a fish-bomb was, but he knew the effects of one well enough. ‘All the fish die, the young fish, the small fish that the big fish eat, all the coral, all the animals that the small fish eat, dead. You see? Kurang ikan. We are hungry. Before, this canoe would have been half full already. We cannot stop them. If we fight them, they come to our boats and throw bombs inside. I have seen this happen in the Philippines. Kami rugi, we are the losers.’ He pounded a betel nut with feeling.
Four of the goatfish were prepared for cooking, Minehanga cutting them roughly into lumps with a parang, while Sarani deftly gutted the rest of the catch, splitting the head and cutting in by the backbone, opening the fish out like a butterfly’s wings. These went into a bowl to salt before being laid out on the deck to dry. Minehanga had boiled the fish. There was no lemon juice, no garlic, no vinegar, no chilli, no Aji No Moto, not even any salt in the water, just plain boiled fish. It was served with more cassava damper, made from a tuber that is almost pure starch and produces a flour that turns into a glutinous pancake when baked in a dry wok. The cassava was hard work and I wondered how Sarani managed to get through it with only gums. The fish was boiled to smithereens. Sarani at least had no trouble with that; nor did Mangsi Raya, but then she already had double his tooth count. The bones went over the side. The bowls and our hands were washed in the sea. The rim of my glass of tea tasted of salt. Sarani stretched out under the awning, chewing betel, resting on a pillow. In the heat of the afternoon only the children were active. Even the fish-bomb detonations became infrequent. We were afloat again and the boat stirred with the water, its motion acting on me as quickly as a drug. Planks of wood had never been so comfortable. I fell asleep thinking about the pillow … and lice …
I was more wakeful after the wedding. We had returned to Mabul in the evening to join in the celebration of the village nuptial. The music continued under the palms long after we had returned to the boat, past the setting of the moon, and complemented the rhythms as it rode at anchor with its bow to the wind. The waves clunked under the hull. The boards creaked as the bow rose. The loose glass mantle of the oil-lamp clinked. It was soothing, until the elements of the polyphony began to change. The creak lengthened and multiplied. I could no longer hear the oil-lamp clinking over the noise of the flapping tarpaulin. Pots rattled. A glass tankard toppled over and rolled back and forth, the handle stopping it after a half-turn either way. The wind was cold and it had come around.
No one else was awake. Mangsi, cradled in a sarong hanging from the roof-tree, was still as a plumb line. The others seemed to be attached to the deck with Velcro. The wind promised rain. Sarani stirred in response and came forward nimbly on his hands and knees. He knelt in the bow, braced against the gunwale, and began to pole the bow round into the wind. Unbidden, I seemed to know what to do. I stumbled forward to the anchor rope and began to pull. I knew when to stop so that Sarani could go aft to cast off the stern line. I pulled us up to the anchor as he came forward again, and then hauled it onto the gunwale while Sarani, standing now, punted the boat out to deeper water. He nodded and I let it go. He stowed the pole, and took the rope, setting the anchor and tying off the line over the projecting bow and an iron spike driven into the stem. The sky was dark with clouds. The first drops of rain felt sharp and cold on my back. We turned our attention to the waterproof sheet that rolled down to close off the forward opening, tying the corners to lumps of coral that doubled as net weights. It was raining hard by the time we slipped round the sides of the sheet and under cover of the tarpaulin. The rest of the family were still asleep.
The two of us sat in silence, drenched, and watched for leaks in our shelter. The wind flapped under the sides of the tarpaulin and blew in gouts of rain. Sarani tied them down. We moved all the soft furnishings away from their usual stowage along the gunwales, bundles of clothes, pillows, a plastic shopping basket full of knick-knacks and hair oil. Minehanga woke up and moved the children, though they stayed fast asleep. Sarani dried himself off with a sarong which he then wrapped around himself. He reached for his betel box. We waited grimly for the storm to pass. ‘I’m going to build a roof,’ he said.
The rain died away, though the wind remained strong. As I lay down on the damp boards I could hear the wedding organ start up again. I had to admire their stamina. Sarani spat out the betel dregs and moved aft to the bilge pump, a contraption of grey plastic waste piping that projected above the deck with a ram made from shaped flip-flop rubber attached to a stick. He set up a steady counterpoint to the music until the bilge sucked dry and he settled down to sleep again. We had gone through the whole procedure almost without comment. We had worked together for the boat, satisfied its demands with promptness; a dragging anchor is not a piece of guttering blown down in the night that can be left until the weekend. What did the people ashore know of a rough night at sea? The wind in the palms, the thatch rustling, a child moving closer for warmth. The newlyweds, asleep now maybe, would know as soon as a baby came what it is to tend a boat through the night. Sarani, who had been born on a lépa-lépa and had spent no more than a handful of nights ashore in his long life, took rest when he could in a home that needed pumping out four times a day, propping up on a falling tide, battening against weather.
The kettle was on, and Minehanga was breastfeeding. Sumping Lasa had taken over the sarong cradle and was using it as a swing. Arjan was running around on the afterdeck looking for things to throw overboard. Life did not stop because we were underway and by the time we reached Kapalai Minehanga had dealt with a tantrum from Sumping Lasa who had been pushed out of the swing by Arjan, a puddle on the planks courtesy of Mangsi Raya, and the attentions of the hungry boy as she peeled plantains for breakfast. Sarani stood in the stern, one foot on the tiller, scanning the lightening horizon.
We arrived at Kapalai as other Bajau boats were returning from pulling up their nets, Pilar’s amongst them. He anchored close in behind us and began to sort out the pile of net on the bow, paying it out again, to wash it in the shallow water. While Minehanga made up a batter for the plantain Pilar transferred his catch of blue-spotted ray into the dug-out behind our boat, some still lashing the air with barbed tails, and set about gutting them. The tails went first and were flicked over the side of the canoe. I made a mental note to watch where I walked at low tide. The eyes and gills were removed like an apple core. The ray were hung out to dry on a pole. Pilar broke off to eat breakfast with the rest of us.
The sun was already hot and its strength was redoubled by the glare from the water. I retreated to the shade of the awning, only too aware after a night on the boards of the sunburn I had suffered the previous day. I could not go fishing. I watched from the boat as Sarani poled away in the dug-out over the bright shallows until his figure, standing in the bow of the canoe, became a silhouette at the edge of the reef against the empty eastern horizon.
The fleet had reassembled around us and in this social hour of the morning canoes plied between the boats, paying calls, returning a borrowed bowl, bringing food, others heading for the fishing grounds on the falling tide, collecting a pole or a paddle or a parang. We had our fair share of curious visitors. I listened without
