The Girl of the Sea of Cortez (14 page)

They would tell each other (and believe the words) that fishing with nets was fine and just, because God had given man dominion over all the animals.

“What about it?” Jo said. “Do we have a deal?”

Suppose she said no. Suppose she declared open war on them. It was possible that she could make their days on the seamount so miserable that they would leave. It was more likely, though, that their response would be to confide in a few of their friends and bring two or three more boats out with them. Paloma would be overwhelmed. They would begin to use nets; life on the seamount would end even sooner. She had no choice. By agreeing, she might buy time.

“Okay.”

“Smart,” Jo said. “Very smart.” Like a military commander ordering his troops to advance, Jo gestured at Indio and Manolo, telling them to start fishing. Obviously, he was enjoying himself enormously: He was the leader who had negotiated a favorable truce that exploited his enemy’s weakness, and now he would deploy his forces to reap the rewards of his wisdom.

Paloma watched as Indio and Manolo baited hooks and dropped their weighted lines overboard. She put on her mask and leaned over the side of her boat and looked down into the water.

The manta was still there, still immobile, ten feet below the surface. The fishing lines passed four or five feet in front of the manta’s left wing. If the manta were to decide suddenly to leave, and if, as usual, it gained momentum by slowly raising and lowering its wings and gradually flying forward, its left wing would collide with the fishing lines. It might brush them aside and proceed unharmed. But if the wing were to strike the lines solidly, and if there were tension from above and below—preventing the slack that would be needed to
permit them to buckle and slide aside—the lines might slice through the flesh. Or they might lodge in the flesh, as the fisherman’s nets had, and bite deeper and deeper as the manta struggled.

The injury would be similar to the one Paloma had just treated, but more severe, for the thin monofilament line could cut through the flesh and, perhaps, even amputate part of the wing. The outcome then would be certain death.

Paloma put on her flippers and slipped the snorkel through her mask strap.

“Where’re you going?” Jo asked.

Manolo called out, “Stay away from my line.”

“Don’t worry,” Jo said to him. “We made a deal. She knows she better not fool with me.”

Paloma said nothing. She rolled over the side of her boat, breathed deeply, and dived to the manta. She checked the wound and saw that the flesh she had packed in was staying firm; it had not begun to unravel and shred. Perhaps it would heal and grow. Without the constant abrasion of the ropes, probably it would not get worse.

There were no predators or parasites nearby, which told Paloma that the manta was not emitting distress signals. Its mechanisms must be gaining confidence of survival. And that made her feel good.

What the manta did not need, however, was a new injury. So, after Paloma had examined the wound and patted it and gently stroked the flesh around it, she hovered above the furled horn on the right side and reached down and pressed on it. She wanted to guide the manta, and since it had responded once before to her touch on one of its horns, she was guessing that the horns were as sensitive as a horse’s mouth and that the manta would react to pressure on its horns by moving in a way that would relieve the pressure.

When the manta did not respond at once, Paloma pressed harder, bending the horn toward the bottom. She felt a shudder as, somewhere deep in the core of the giant, a message was received, almost as if a command had been given for the boilers to be stoked, the engine to be started, the vessel to be moved. Silently, the right wing dipped, the left wing lifted, and together they heaved once up and down. The pressure pushed Paloma away and forced an explosion of bubbles from her mouth. When the bubbles cleared, she saw the manta bank to the right and keep rolling, like an airplane in a spin, as it flew toward the bottom.

Jo had watched this through his viewing box on the surface. Now, as the others held their lines, he took up a honing stone and began to rub it in tight circles against the point of a harpoon.

“What are you going to do with that?” Manolo asked.

“The deal just said no nets.”

“But what you gonna stick?”

Jo gestured at the deep water where the manta had gone. “He’ll be back.”

Manolo whistled. “
There’s
a few pennies.”

“I
told
you I’d take care of you.”

“You did?”

“Sure. Remember? I said all you had to do was tell me where she’d gone, and I’d take care of the rest.”

“Oh.”

“You two stick with me and we’re going to be fine,” Jo said, smiling. “Just fine.”

Below, Paloma watched the manta swim toward the bottom. It was on its back, showing its brilliant white underbelly, and as it arrived at the rocky top of the seamount it continued its slow and easy roll, spinning and descending, like a child falling down a sand pile, until the black of its back
became one with the dark water of the abyss and Paloma could see it no more.

She wanted to follow it, to roll with it down the side of the seamount, to make discoveries with it and be part of the harmony of the sea.

Instead, her body sent her signals that told her she was very much a human being and that if she intended to continue to be a live human being, she had better ascend.

On her way up, she continued to look down, happy that she had been able to help the manta, hoping that it would survive, sad that in order for it to survive it would probably have to stay away from this seamount that was no longer a sanctuary, and—struck by this last realization—suddenly very angry.

At the distant limit of her vision, something was moving, thrashing violently. For a second, Paloma thought it was the manta—perhaps it had snagged a fishing line, or been attacked by something—but then the animal was drawn a bit closer, into her field of focus, and she saw that it was too small to be the manta.

Then, as it drew still closer, she could see that whatever it was was struggling to return to the bottom, fighting something that was forcing it to the surface. Because she had never seen such sights on the seamount, it was two or three seconds before she realized what she was watching: a fish caught on a hook, being dragged up to the boat.

And then the fish was only a few feet from her, struggling less and rising fast, and she saw what it was and felt a rush of bile into her throat: a triggerfish—exactly like the one, perhaps exactly the one, she had seen valiantly defending its egg cache.

Impulsively, she put out a hand, hoping to grab the line and free the fish, but she was too far away, and before she
could move closer, the fish had passed her. She looked up through the last three feet of water between her and the surface and saw the fish, limp now with exhaustion, splash into the sunlight and disappear into the shadow of Jo’s boat.

She reached for the side of her own boat, broke through the surface and spat out her snorkel, and, choking, shouted, “Put it back! Quick!”

Manolo looked at her as if she were mad. “What?”

“Throw it back!” Paloma gasped. “You don’t have much time.”

Manolo looked at Indio, and they smiled and shook their heads at one another.

Manolo said, “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

“But … you …” The words were a jumble in Paloma’s mind. Thoughts crossed over thoughts, and they all bunched together and blocked each other out. She wanted to,
had
to, tell Manolo that the triggerfish must be returned to the water immediately; that in less than a minute the sun would begin to harm its skin and cause ulcers; that in only two or three minutes, the fish would asphyxiate, for it could not draw oxygen from air; that it was probably already in some kind of shock from the struggle on the line but that it might survive if it could get back into the soothing salt water
now
.

But in spite of all she wanted to say, nothing came out of her mouth except, “… you don’t understand.”

Again Manolo smiled, and what should have been obvious to Paloma all along now struck her like a blow to the head: It was
she
who hadn’t understood. And what she hadn’t understood was that Manolo had no intention whatsoever of returning the triggerfish to the water, that he regarded the triggerfish as fairly caught and rightly his, and that he would consider anyone who tried to prevent the fish from dying in the bottom of the boat to be a thief.

Now that she did understand, she could say only, “But why?”

“Why what?”

“You don’t eat that fish. Nobody eats triggerfish.”

“Cats do.”

“What?”

“Grind it up, make pet food out of it. Very nourishing.” Manolo held up the twitching triggerfish and whinnied, “Here, kitty … here, kitty.” Then he dropped the fish back into the bottom of the boat.

“But … but … that beautiful thing,” Paloma sputtered. “You’d waste its life for …”

“What waste? Get a lot of ’em, they pay for ’em.” Manolo reached for another piece of bait on his hook.

Paloma knew better than to argue; it would be a waste of time—not only her time, but the fish’s time. Every second she spent trying to save it, it was dying.

“Throw it
back
!” she screamed.

Manolo gazed at her, and there was no expression in his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve convinced me.”

He reached into the bottom of the boat and picked up the triggerfish by its tail. He pretended to examine it for a moment, then said, “Looks a little faint. Better wake it up.” He swung the fish high and slammed it down on the gunwale of the boat. The sleek body, once purple and gold, now mustard and dull gray, shivered once and was still.

Manolo looked to Indio, who was grinning, and said, “That didn’t work. I don’t get it.” Then he turned to Paloma. “You know so much about fish. Here. You try.” And he threw the fish across the water.

It landed in front of Paloma and splashed water in her face. The flat body floated on its side. The fins did not flutter, the gills did not pulse. The eye, which in life was a black so
vivid that somehow it manifested fear and fury, calm and curiosity, was now as flat and dead as a porthole into an empty room.

Paloma held the corpse, to keep it from drifting away in the tide. She said nothing, for there was nothing she could say that would make any difference—certainly nothing that could change what had already happened, and probably nothing that would change what was going to happen.

She looked at Manolo, who was baiting his hook and glancing furtively at Indio for approval, and at Jo, who had been looking at her but quickly shifted his eyes away as soon as he saw her looking at him. Now he pretended to be deeply concerned about a knot in his fishing line.

Jo is trying not to look embarrassed, Paloma thought, but he
is
embarrassed because he has no real control over these others. Even he wouldn’t be stupid enough to pull a stunt like Manolo’s so soon after trying to appear reasonable. But he could not stop Manolo—would not have tried to stop him, for Manolo would have told him to stick a fish hook up his nose and pull out his brains, and Jo’s self-image as commander-in-chief would be exposed for what it was: basically a fraud, tolerated by the others for only two reasons—the boat (which had been Jobim’s) belonged to him, and he had engineered the deception that found Paloma’s seamount.

In a way, Manolo had done Paloma a favor. Like a deft surgeon with a sharp knife, he had excised from Paloma a tumor of softness, of gullibility, of desire to be liked, of willingness to trust. Like one of the ancient pirates who used to sneak up on his victims flying a friendly flag and then, at the last moment, break out his pirate banner, Manolo had shown their true colors.

Without a word, Paloma reached behind her for her knife.
Swiftly, she cut the triggerfish in half, then in quarters. As soon as blood began to billow in the water, the tiny sergeant majors materialized and searched in frenzy for the meal that must be there.

Paloma let the pieces of triggerfish fall one by one, and through her mask she watched each one as it was consumed by the swarming sergeant majors.

She felt numb doing this, as if somehow she was compensating for the evil that Manolo had done, restoring a natural balance that had been upset by his brutality. He had killed an animal and would have let it rot in the sun until it could be ground into powder—an end that denied the animal’s life any dignity. She had at least achieved a disposition that was cleaner, quicker, and more natural. Forget that the triggerfish had died at the hands of a pig. Its body was now being returned to its home, serving to nourish the other creatures of the seamount, and prolonging the life of the community.

The blood dispersed and became part of the sea; the pieces of fish descended into the mists, shrunk to nothing by the frantic nibbling of the little fish that, from here, looked like clustered bees. Only the bones would reach the bottom.

Paloma climbed into her boat and removed her mask and flippers. In the other boat, all three were now fishing, and they did not notice her as she went forward and tugged at her anchor line to shake the killick loose from the rocks below. The killick was well caught, and Paloma had to bounce the rope several times, pulling it this way and that, hauling it tight and giving it slack, to force the iron to shift position and work loose. At last, she felt an easing of the strain on the rope, and when she pulled now, it came up at a steady pace.

Free of the rocks, Paloma’s boat drifted off the seamount. Moored to Paloma’s boat, Jo’s boat drifted with it.

Jo was the first to sense that something was wrong. The others’ lines were already down; they had been hanging within a couple of feet of the bottom. When the tide carried the boat, it carried their lines as well, so they felt no difference. But Jo was just letting his line down when the boat came adrift. He waited for his hook and sinker to strike bottom, but they kept falling, for by now the boats were away from the seamount and over a bottom that was four thousand feet away. Jo’s line fell and fell, and the deeper it went the faster it fell, until his entire spool of line was all but empty.