The Origin of Species Read online

  Alex emerged from his room the next morning girding himself to wrestle Mara for his breakfast only to find her busy at the front desk with a new arrival. Someone from the research center, Alex figured, because he was wearing a rumpled blazer and had actual luggage, a duffel bag, a battered valise, a funny black case that was almost a perfect square. A local boy trailed him hauling more luggage still.

  “Careful with those!”

  A fucking Brit. Alex knew the type. Probably some low-level bureaucrat back home but the last bastion against the wogs in the colonies.

  He handed the boy a coin.

  “Go on, then.”

  He must have come in on a cargo ship, to judge from the look of him. His hair had the matted sheen of having gone unwashed for many days; the tail of his shirt was poking out beneath his blazer. There was a general air of unwholesomeness to him that made Alex think of damp, chilly rooms and of fish and chips that tasted like they’d been cooked in petroleum.

  He was relishing the thought of how Mara would deal with this man.

  “One night,” he said loudly, and then added, in an execrable accent, “Una noche.”

  “Sí, sí,” Mara said irritably, but turning from him as if not to look him in the eye.

  She picked out a key and started toward the rooms.

  “You can bring the bags in after,” the man said, taking only his valise and the funny black case.

  Alex had already vowed to himself to have nothing to do with this ass, though he sat waiting there on the patio taken with the spectacle of those abandoned bags, which Mara proceeded to collect one by one and carry off in the direction of the rooms. Then before Alex had even had a chance to order his breakfast the Brit had come out and plopped himself at his table, still in his blazer and untucked shirt.

  He actually snapped his fingers to get Mara’s attention.

  “Would you get me some eggs or something? And coffee. And don’t break the yolks.”

  In a matter of minutes he’d got more service from Mara than Alex had managed since he’d arrived.

  “I suppose you’re going out to the islands,” the Brit said grudgingly, as if this were a question Alex had forced him into.

  “I dunno.” He ought at least to be civil. “I was going to. I can’t afford a boat.”

  “You should come out with me.”

  He threw this out with such an obvious absence of anything like real intent that it was clear he was merely trying to switch the topic of conversation to himself.

  “You’ve got a boat?”

  “I’ll get one. Soon enough.”

  “Oh.”

  “Research trip. A little project I’m working on.”

  So Alex had been right. And yet he didn’t want to satisfy the man by pursuing the matter.

  “American?”

  For some reason Alex flushed. “Canadian, actually.”

  “Ah. The last dominion.”

  Their breakfasts arrived. Mara set the Brit’s eggs before him, perfect, intact, then lingered beside him an instant as if for further instruction. He ignored her.

  “It’s Desmond, by the way. Desmond Clarke. University of London.”

  “Oh.” Alex wasn’t sure how impressed he was supposed to be by this. “I’m Alex.”

  “So I guess they didn’t warn you,” the Brit said, between mouthfuls of egg. “Everyone tries to gouge you here now, not like the old days.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “Mmm. Once or twice.” He mopped up a bit of yolk. “Out of money, is that it?”

  “Not exactly. A little low is all.”

  The Brit gave him a quick once-over.

  “I could use an assistant,” he said cagily. “Carrying equipment and so on. If you’re up for it.”

  Alex’s resolve to avoid the man weakened before the prospect of passage.

  “How long are you going out for?”

  “How long have you got?”

  This wasn’t a question Alex had an answer to.

  “A couple of weeks, I guess.”

  “That sounds about right. Three at the most. You’d go batty out there, any longer than that.”

  The guy probably had some whopping research grant. He might even be meaning to pay him, though Alex couldn’t bring himself to ask.

  It was either this or five more days with Mara.

  “It’s not as if I’m doing anything else,” he said.

  The Brit wiped up his last bits of egg. Now that Alex had more or less turned himself over to him, the man seemed to have grown weary of him.

  “Just show up here tomorrow morning,” he said. “Crack of dawn.”

  Alex changed his mind about the matter a dozen times over the course of the day. He was exhausted, worn out, he ought to go home; except that he couldn’t, not until the next plane. Then he had spent all that cash to get out here. His mind was always doing the accounts, the profit and loss: he hadn’t learned anything here yet, hadn’t so much as an anecdote to take away to show he’d got value. But then he wondered if the guy had even been serious. There was something odd about him, with that funny black case of his. He might be a terrorist or spy, who knew in this place? Desmond Clarke. It had the sound of a code name.

  Alex showed up in the lobby the next morning just after dawn, still hedging his bets. There was no sign of Desmond yet. Alex checked out, had breakfast, a second coffee, then another.

  He wasn’t sure of it, but Mara seemed a bit less glacial this morning.

  “Have you seen that man who came yesterday? Mr. Clarke?”

  “He go this morning.”

  “He checked out?”

  “He pay,” she said, looking almost displeased at this, “then he go.”

  So the creep had left him in the lurch.

  “He didn’t leave any message?”

  She shrugged an African shrug.

  “He leave some bag. Take only one.”

  Maybe all was not lost. Now that Alex had experienced the letdown of thinking he’d been left behind, there seemed no question of his not wanting to go. He set out for the wharf in a huff, determined to track Desmond down and give him a piece of his mind. He spotted him near one of the boats and hurried over, but Desmond gave such a cursory nod at the sight of him that he was pulled up short.

  “So it’s our Canadian,” he said, hardly glancing at him.

  “I thought we were going.”

  “Right.” As if they’d never agreed to anything. “Just finessing the price.”

  The boat was an ancient fishing trawler in blue and white, of the sort that crowded the harbor, with the look of something that had been cobbled together from the discarded lumber of some other, realer construction. There was a cabin up front of warped plywood, and plywood patches spotting the hull.

  “I got him down to two hundred American,” Desmond said, which sounded outrageous to Alex. The boat didn’t so much as have a name on it. “Split between us, that’s a hundred.”

  So there was something to pay. Not a job, then, not in that sense.

  It crossed Alex’s mind that Desmond might be the sort to bump the number up to cut his own share.

  There was no sign of the owner.

  “It’s a bit steep for me,” Alex said.

  “What have you got?”

  He was foolish enough to take out his cash in front of Desmond, not sure what remained after the extortionist exchange rate Mara had charged when he’d settled his bill.

  He was down to a hundred American in traveler’s checks and a hundred and thirty and change in cash.

  “A couple of hundred,” he said vaguely.

  “There you go.” As if the matter was settled. “You’ve got your ticket back to the mainland, haven’t you? That leaves you a hundred.”

  Alex felt it would be petty to quibble. At least he wouldn’t have to be the guy’s lackey, not if they were splitting the cost. But when they went back to the hotel to collect their things, Desmond stuck him with half of his luggage for the
walk back to the wharf.

  “It’ll save us an extra trip,” he said.

  There was a man on the boat when they returned, a bearish hulk in soiled overalls with boulder-sized hands, the skin on them hardened and cracked like old leather. He was wearing a New York Yankees cap, his face beneath it bronzed to the color of roast pork.

  “El capitán,” Desmond said, with what seemed to pass as bonhomie. “Es mi amigo Alex.”

  The man looked down on them stone-faced.

  “En la cabina,” he said of the luggage.

  Some sort of discussion ensued between the captain and Desmond while Alex was left to load their things.

  “There’s a problem,” Desmond said. “He wants another forty dollars for the extra passenger.”

  “But didn’t you tell him?”

  “Of course I told him. Tell you what,” not missing a beat, “I’ll split it with you.”

  The captain wanted all the cash up front. Alex felt a moment of terror as he peeled off the bills. Here he was at the end of the world with not enough money left in his pockets to last through a week.

  “You’ll want to pick up supplies,” Desmond said. “Don’t worry about food. Our man Santos’ll take care of that.”

  Alex hadn’t even thought about food. He decided to pick up a bit of fruit, at least, and maybe a few carrots, but at the lone grocery store in town he saw shelves piled high with canned goods of every sort, but no produce.

  “Fruta?” he said to the owner. “Vegetales?”

  “Verdura,” the man said. “Sí, sí, verdura. No verdura. Mañana. In the morning, only. Early, early.”

  Sold out. Alex had to content himself with two cartons of Marlboros and a jar of Nescafé, which set him back a whopping twenty-three dollars.

  “Mañana, mañana,” the owner repeated.

  The boat was deserted when he got back. He waited fifteen minutes, half an hour, afraid he’d get left behind, then finally started searching the town. He found Desmond casually having his lunch at a nearby eatery.

  “Aren’t we going?”

  “In good time, my boy, in good time. Might as well wait out the heat.”

  It was nearly sunset before they put out. By then Santos, el capitán, had spent the better part of the afternoon loading the boat with every manner of gear, frayed nets and great hoops of fishing line, sacks of salt, a little brazier of corroded iron, a strange blackened contraption with a bolted lid that looked like some sort of hand-fashioned pressure cooker. The bulk of the load, however, was fuel. Alex lost count of how many canisters Santos brought aboard, but surely enough to blow them all to kingdom come. They were stuffed down into the engine well and strapped to the rails and wedged up against their luggage inside the cabin. Already the smell of them was overwhelming.

  Desmond was studying some maps on the wharf, crude, photocopied things patched together with tape.

  “Where are we supposed to sleep, exactly?”

  Desmond nodded toward the boat.

  “In the cabin.”

  The only accommodations Alex had seen there were the two narrow bunks along the sides, little more than benches, really, that they’d stuffed their luggage under.

  “What about the captain?”

  “I guess he’ll manage, won’t he?”

  The last thing to be loaded was a little dinghy Santos strapped to the roof of the cabin. All that remained clear of the back deck by then was a narrow aisle around the hatch into the hold and the hatch lid itself, which Desmond promptly claimed as his throne. Santos had crouched into the engine well to fiddle with the engine. It sputtered briefly then died, then sputtered and died again. Alex had a flash of every bad trip he had ever been on, the engines that wouldn’t start, the papers that weren’t in order, the ten-minute delay that turned into an hour, or three, or whole days.

  Now the engine caught, definitively.

  “Es bueno,” Santos said, the first sign he’d shown of anything like good humor.

  The sun was setting behind the top of the island when they put out. The orange light made the headland they skirted around, an escarpment of black rock and cactus, look surreal. Coal-colored lizards stared out at them from the rocks. Soon the light gave way to twilight, then almost at once it was night. Alex could see nothing more than the hundred-odd twinkling lights of the town and beyond that a darkness so big it startled him.

  He edged out a spot for himself next to Desmond. A strong odor was coming off Desmond, at once animal and vaguely medicinal.

  Alex figured he ought to make an effort. This might be his only company for three weeks.

  “You never told me what you’re researching.”

  “It’s a bit technical, to be honest. Not fit stuff for laymen.”

  Fuck you, too, Alex thought.

  Desmond seemed put out that Alex hadn’t insisted.

  “My actual specialty, if you want to know, is Mollugo flavescens. That’s carpetweed to you. A pioneer plant. Fascinating, really.”

  Alex couldn’t come up with a logical next question.

  Three weeks, he thought.

  Desmond rose, working a kink out of his neck by twisting his head around like a crotchety gull.

  “Think I’ll get a bit of shut-eye.”

  Alex glanced at his watch.

  “But it’s only seven.”

  “You can forget about your watch out here, my boy. There’s day and then there’s night. Only what nature intended.”

  He was left alone. His stomach was grumbling, but there didn’t seem to be any plans for supper. He smoked a cigarette, then another, while hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel sloshed around him. He had a moment of panic at not having brought any water, but surely Santos had taken care of that. He could have used some at the moment, but lacked the will to track it down.

  His stomach grumbled again. Not half an hour out of the harbor and already he was feeling privation. It occurred to him how long the night would be, with no food, no company, not even a pinprick of light to read by. Three weeks.

  For a time a shadow of shoreline was still visible in the distance beneath the moon, but then it vanished and there was only the sea.

  Alex awoke to pitch black, his ears ringing with a sound that it took him an instant to realize was silence. The engine had stopped. A small light flicked on: Desmond was crawling in the space between the bunks shining a flashlight among his bags. He pulled out what appeared to be an old shoe bag, lumpy with jangling things, then the black case.

  “Vamos,” Santos said from the door.

  There was a sudden scraping, then a splash. Alex couldn’t piece together what was happening. His head ached from the diesel fumes, his throat was parched, his stomach felt hollowed out. He didn’t know how long he’d been lying there on that awful board, an hour, five, fighting the motion of the boat to keep from tumbling off it.

  “Rápido, rápido!”

  A thunk, then a slosh of oars. Desmond and Santos had gone off in the dinghy. Alex, panicked, scrambled up and peered out through the clouded windshield. Sure enough, he saw the dinghy gliding across the water in the moonlight toward a great shadow ahead of them, humped and strange, like a monstrous tortoise or whale.

  It was one of the islands. They were making toward it at a steady clip, though the shoreline seemed a wall of impregnable cliff. The dinghy grew small and indistinct, then rounded some sort of headland and disappeared entirely.

  Alex waited what seemed hours, imagining every sort of possibility, that he’d been abandoned, that he’d been made a pawn in some nefarious scheme. His hunger and thirst gnawed at him but he didn’t dare take his eyes from the sea, afraid he’d miss some crucial clue. Then finally the dinghy reappeared, a tiny shadow against the massive one of the island.

  Desmond was already rising, clutching his case, as the dinghy slid toward the back of the boat.

  “Cuidado!” Santos said.

  Alex reached out to take the case.

  “Just leave it!” Desmond said. “I’l
l manage it.”

  He clambered aboard, nearly losing his footing, and headed into the cabin at once to stow the case.

  “What’s going on?” Alex said. “Why did we stop?”

  “Just picking up a few specimens.” As if none of this had been out of the ordinary.

  “But why did we stop in the middle of the night?”

  Desmond wedged one of the diesel canisters up against his case to secure it.

  “Let’s just say it seemed prudent.” He looked pleased with himself. “There’s the little matter of permits.”

  Alex wasn’t sure how much more he wanted to know. He’d been an idiot to set out with this man, who was now revealing himself to be some sort of outlaw.

  “Why didn’t you get a permit through your university or something?”

  But Desmond turned on him.

  “I don’t know about Canada,” he snapped, “but where I come from, you don’t sit around twiddling your thumbs while some Third World bureaucrat decides whether or not you can visit his little island.”

  Desmond crawled back into his bunk. He had managed to rig a sort of hammock, which he folded himself into like a worm in its cocoon. Alex wasn’t sure what Santos had made of all this, though from the look of him, not much: he was standing in the engine well cursing under his breath, yanking at the pull cord again and again before the engine finally growled back to life. The boat set off with a lurch that nearly knocked Alex to the floor. His thirst was still on him, but now didn’t seem the moment to be scrounging for water. The only source of it he’d seen so far was the personal supply that Santos hoarded at his feet, in a dirty jeroboam that looked as if it doubled as a drain for engine oil.

  Alex passed a wretched night, turning and tossing on his board, feeling the vibrations of the engine through the wood like a jackhammer in his brain. He was aware of Santos at the controls, hand on the throttle. Didn’t the man need to sleep? It must surely be dangerous to be driving full-out like this through the night, with only the moon to guide them and the single running light that flickered from the head of the cabin. A dozen times Alex thought to ask Santos to stop, give him water, give him food, turn the boat around and take him back to what now already seemed the incredible luxury of the Black Mangrove. But then somehow he fell asleep, and didn’t wake again until it was day.