‘The men do not live so long. Diving is not healthy,’ al-Farhan said, ‘but neither is living in any particular way, unless, of course you are born a woman. In that case you may stay at home and not know the world at all and die when your baby is stuck in the birth canal.’ His contempt was exquisite.
The divers dreaded the saw-fish with his flat snout with spines on it. Divers had been cut in two. But the greater risk of death came from mutinies. If the divers rose up against a ship owner, the fighting was to the death. An honest and even a lenient ship owner had no hesitation in cutting off a hand or even throwing a miscreant overboard if a pearl were stolen.
By evening of the first day, the deck was covered with oysters. Next morning the shells were to be opened. With some ceremony and at the crack of dawn, the opener set to work, but it soon became clear that he could not get through the catch although his hands flew, and the shells flew, and the poor flabby creatures inside were tossed into wooden containers from which they would be thrown away.
Al-Farhan guarded the catch. When it was finished he was in
a thoughtful mood. He explained why he thought that pearls fascinated men even more than gold.
‘Beauty,’ he said. ‘But not the beauty that you see. It’s the beauty of sadness and loss. The beauty of chance, and all those who die finding her.’
Seated with a pipe and a plate of dates, he expounded on his ideas of perfection in the pearl.
He also said something that James had never heard before. ‘There are some freshwater pearls found in the ocean, where the springs gush out. These are of the very highest quality and are especially lucky.’
Perhaps these were the pearls that he could bring back to please his father.
On James’s fifth day on board, there was a crisis with the drinking water. Stored in barrels, it had become very ugly, infected with rust from the iron nails, and alive with cockroaches. Once, having a late-night pipe on deck, he saw two divers creep out to the water barrel and scoop water to run over their various wounds, and septic sores. From then on he tried not to drink it, but in the heat, thirst drove him. He would rather drink and die of disease later, than die of thirst in the present, he decided.
It was decided that the ship must make a visit to the freshwater spring under the sea. It was called the Ighmisa Well and it was off the shore of Hasa.
No sooner had they turned to head for Hasa than the winds died; they sat, becalmed for a day and a half, the water becoming fouler as the supply dwindled. Al-Farhan was less perturbed by this than by the cool that was creeping over the sea. It was now necessary to keep the stove alight on ship all day. The divers hung a sheet of canvas they called a
barbar
behind it to keep the warmth of the flames near their bodies. As a result, the crew encouraged the divers to take more of the hubble-bubble. James watched the Bedu, who he had observed to be the strongest of all the divers, emerge from the water, and even he was staggering and heaving.
But the wind finally began to blow and it carried them swiftly in the direction of the underground spring. They arrived at what appeared to be a markless spot on the sea.
‘This is it!’ announced al-Farhan triumphantly.
James could see nothing, although the water was clear. Twelve fathoms down, the ship owner said, was a spring, and the water ran out from beneath a ledge of rock. There was a little bit of green growth around it. The sun streamed right through the deep water.
The divers were to be sent down once again on their stones with great bladders. But they did not want to go.
There was an argument.
Hizam, no doubt realising that he was the best, and had the best chance of fulfilling the dangerous task, offered himself. He went to the side. He put up his hand for his fellows to bring him his diving hood, and he put it on. It all had the air of an execution. There began a hue and cry among the other divers: James understood that they did not want him to go: he was too tired, it was too cold, and he was bleeding, which they thought would attract a shark.
But he was determined. James watched over the side of the boat as Hizam dived in the clear water, approaching the ledge with the water skin and held the mouth of it in place. The skin grew and grew and must have become very heavy, because Hizam pulled on the rope for help to lift it up: the sailors pulled from the deck. The other divers went overboard. But in the excitement one was struck on the head by the stone of another, and emerged from the sea with blood running down his face. Now the others were frightened that sharks would come. Two ropes tangled under the hull of the boat and the sailors began to fight. Meanwhile Hizam the Bedu swam around the rock ledge. He appeared to be putting shells in his hood. And once again, as he had done when he was a child in Ceylon, James remained silent.
The other divers created a commotion, and the sailors shouted to calm them, and al-Farhan was forced to intervene with his whip. Unnoticed, Hizam surfaced. He stumbled to the stove to
warm himself; there he sat, with the fire in front of him and the shadow of the
barbar
behind him, keeping the wind off. He coughed and blood began to come up from his lungs, but no one paid any attention. It was normal, and would be considered normal, until one day he succumbed.
Al-Farhan withdrew to his pipe and his carpet in a corner of the deck.
It was then that Hizam took the shells out of his hood, and threw them in the heap of other oysters, but not without giving a slightly gaping shell a quick investigation with a fingertip. If James was not mistaken, he saw a flicker of surprise on the Bedu’s face.
Al-Farhan’s face had gone slack: he did not move an inch, nor express the slightest emotion.
It was hours later when he spoke. ‘The divers have tricked me. I believe they have scoured the bottom.’
‘Are you certain?’ James asked. ‘There was much confusion at the time.’
‘No, I am not certain. But I have suspicion. That is enough.’ Al-Farhan stepped back and pulled his whip from his holster.
The sailors cried out a warning.
With a roar al-Farhan leaped to his feet and over to the fire, where he fell upon Hizam with a fury, beating him on the shoulders and shouting in words the meaning of which James could only imagine. Hizam sat unmoving, withstanding the blows.
The other divers moved as one to the water barrel which was freshly full, and made as if to tip it. Al-Farhan bared his teeth and snarled, his features twisted in their nesting of black hair, but in the end he went still, and let his hands fall to his sides, after delivering Hizam one last cruel blow to the cheek.
Hizam still did not move, but sat wiping the blood from his mouth.
Now Ahmad invited James to sit on his carpet. He was morose, but calm. He snapped his fingers for tea, and in a few minutes, a sailor brought them each a cup.
‘Do you understand what happened? It came to me. I saw it
in an instant, the way the Bedu offered to dive, and the others created a diversion, the fighting and shouting that occupied my attention. The whole ship is against me. They have stolen the most valuable pearl. Someone has eaten it, or hidden it. I will not know. But they will go to port and before too long, in not too many days, I will hear tell of a priceless freshwater pearl that was taken out of the water near Hasa.’
And he sank down into a gloom from which he did not rise during the entire return trip.
They came back to the port of Kuwait in time for the end of season, or
quffal,
as it was called. It was celebrated with a gun salute fired from shore. At the salute, the ships all ran up their flags and sails, the divers dived into the water, and the crew began to dance on deck, stepping like large mating birds around each other in circles, clapping their hands and watching their feet while the chanter crooned.
James could see mothers and wives scurrying back and forth from the souk in preparation for the return of their beloved men. As their boat came in on a swell, the crowds rushed into the shallow water of the sea to meet them. James stepped onto dry land into a throng of townsfolk. Beduin women plucked at his arms offering dates and rice. Traders in pearls had pitched their tents along the sand.
He decided to stay on. He did not really know why. The accommodations were horrid. The sun was monstrous. He slept on the roof of the house. His body poached in his own sweat, and he woke feeling exhausted at three in the morning. He bathed in sea water, as did everyone else. Fresh water could be bought for a price. But the price was steep. The reason for this, he was told, was that the freshwater was found under the sea, and had to be fished for by divers with skins made from the bellies of goats. He found this bizarre, yet reassuring: presumably he had not been dreaming. Almost everyone else was abroad in the souk at five in the morning. He went out again in the evening, from five to eight o’clock.
One evening, Hizam the Bedu appeared on the beach. The Englishman approached him. He mentioned that he was in the market for pearls, freshwater pearls from under the sea. But Hizam seemed not to understand. They spoke a few words: he had bought a camel and was going back to the desert. He smiled.
James decided to visit his friend once again. It was not difficult to find him: he merely went to his corner of the souk in the pre-dawn darkness, and stood, speaking his name to passersby. Soon a courtier appeared and led him through the maze.
Al-Farhan was seated on his carpet, his robes spread out around him. He rose to embrace James, full of warmth, and then, holding his shoulders in his enormous hands, held his friend at arms’ length, looked into his face. ‘You do not look well. It could have been you, not me, who lost a pearl of great value,’ said al-Farhan.
‘I am always losing,’ said James.
‘What is keeping you in my country?’
James confessed that he did not know. A strange lassitude had overtaken him.
‘A curious coincidence,’ said Ahmad, ‘perhaps you are aware. There is a European woman who stays here. She has a servant with her as well. Three months they are living on a little fishing barque where men with guns protect them. She too is in search of pearls, but I believe no one will sell to her.’
James called on her in the evening. She came to the rail of her vessel with hair attractively dishevelled, cheeks flushed, and eyes enormous. Positive as he was of her spotless character, he could have sworn she was smoking the hubble-bubble herself.
‘Miss McBean,’ he said, from the shore.
‘Mr Lowinger,’ she replied, mockingly. At first she refused to let him on board but eyed him askance, as if he were the buffalo she’d seen years ago and she had latterly realised what was coming at her. It was desperately alluring, and had he known how rare a reckless mood was in this woman, he would have tried harder to get on board. As it was they spoke with several
yards of filthy water between them. She called the barque her house and professed to adore it. She was to leave in several days. She implied that she had found many wonderful pearls. He implied the same. She asked him to call her Sophia.
At length, she invited him in. Her maid beat a speedy retreat to her couch on the roof of the boat, and they to the pillows within. It was so hot they were slick with sweat. And there passion unlike anything James had known before, or was to know since, overtook them.
She was an Englishwoman and so the outpouring shocked and reduced him. But she was not an ordinary Englishwoman; she had lived her life, in exotic circumstances, all over the world. She must have been, then, in her middle thirties. Was she drugged? Was he? Questions that tormented James for years later became, in the end, academic. What did it matter? They flew at each other like warriors. But at the first taste, and smell, he fell her victim. She ravished him, to be truthful. He lost all the words to speak, and even those to tell the tale. She bewitched him. He made only fits and starts of sentences; he had been reduced to basic components, of which grammar was not one.
‘Who would have dreamed one so upright could be so supple?’ had lasted as a complete thought.
But the rest were fragments.
‘So many ways,’ was a kind of sigh. Later, phrases returned to him: downy skin, soft breasts, thighs with a hollow between them, dainty deep cleft, soft fur, a well of sweet water.
It was over too soon, but not over. The maid appeared with cool liquor.
They lay naked together and it felt as if this was the reason they had met, over and over, in strange locations. Fate was willing them to come down to this, bare skin, yeasty odours, delicate fingertips on satin skin, whispered praises.
‘May I tell you one secret,’ she said, after the second, or perhaps the third time.
‘Of course, my dear.’
‘And will it be secret for ever?’
‘It will indeed.’
‘I have bought the most exquisite pair of pink rosées. Quite unexpectedly, from a Bedu man. They are fine, large, and perfectly round. I am told they came from the freshwater spring in the depths of the ocean.’
He begrudged her none of it. If only she would share with him that space between her breasts where he could lay his head, and let him hold her delicious hips one in each hand, and plunge into her, dividing her like a ripe fruit, she could have every pearl in the world. She was every pearl in the world.
As three a.m. came, and four, and the world was making its presence known on the harbour, Sophia said that he should go. They went through it all again – the tears, the clinging, the insane joy of discovering such beauty in each other, the equally insane grief of parting, even for a day. Sophia said that he should come back after dark and they would plan a future. Clutching that promise to his heart, he stumbled away and went to lie, dazed and beyond delight, on his roof until dawn arrived with its hideous red sun. Then, he went inside and slept like the dead.
The next evening when he returned to her houseboat, it was gone.