At about four-thirty,
Iskra came back with Shabela. His arm
was bandaged and he had a patch over the corner of his mouth. He was trying to
smile if you could call it that.
The doctor had told him it was nothing but Iskra looked pretty gloomy. Shabela tried to make him laugh but
he refused to say anything. When he said he was going back down to the rocks, I
asked him where he was heading. He replied that he wanted to get some cooler air.
Shabela and I said that we`d go with him. Then he got even more angry and swore
at us. Shabela said it was best not to upset him. But I... followed him anyway.
We walked along the beach for a long while. The rain was beating down. Its
light crashed and scattered the sand in little pockets, like bullets ripping
away over the foreshore and peppering the sea. I got the impression that Iskra
knew where he was going, but I probably was wrong. Shabela stayed at home.
At the very end of the beach, we
came to a little hut. Behind it a stream flowed down into the sand from behind
the large outcropped rock shelter where Iskra said swimmers used to change. It
was there that we came upon two Indonesians again. They were stretched out by
the corners of the stone. They looked quite calm and almost pleased. Our
presence didn’t seem to bother them and their expression never changed.
The brother of the girl who`d attacked Iskra looked at him in silence.
The other one was blowing into a little harmonica, playing the same three notes
he could get out of it over and over again while watching us from out the
corner of his eye. All this time there was nothing but the splat splat of the
rain on the roof and the silence, and now a passing ship, broken only by the
soft sound of the flowing water and the musical notes from the silent host.
No comments:
Post a Comment