Samantha and my Cynara, pexels-rachel-claire.
Over the next few weeks, I suppose some unspoken truce was in place because the sailing life went on smoothly and everyone was happy. We still sunbathed every afternoon on the front deck, holding hands, close together and making light chit-chat. I would often doze off, and I noticed that Jaime did too, but I never saw the women do the same. They might close their eyes for several minutes, but their minds were full of activity which I could sense, indistinctly. The only thing I could catch was a torrent of woman talk, small compliments on tans, tips, foods lately enjoyed, and speculations of what the island would be like and life there, and motherhood.
But underneath this stream, I could sometimes catch glimpses of another flow of information going on, more technical and scientific, especially just as I was coming out of a nap. I would see it for an instant, streams of computer code, hundreds of them, like a rain shower. Then it would vanish.
During the third week of this peace, as we were nearing our destination according to Mr. Higgins, another disturbing event occurred. I awoke one night to find that Claire was not by my side. I checked our lavatory then opened our door ever so slightly to peak into the galley. But she wasn’t there. An eerie silence pervaded the boat and also my head. I stayed in this ridiculous posture for ten minutes until I noticed the door to Mary and Jane’s cabin quietly begin to open. I jumped back into the bunk and feigned drowsily waking up as our door opened and she returned to bed. I asked no questions, and a few kisses put me to sleep again.
Two nights later it happened again. With the same crack in the door and this time a half hour of peeking out, she returned only this time it was Samantha and Jaime’s cabin that she came out. This time I was sitting up in bed as she tiptoed in.
“What, are you sleeping with everybody now?” I began.
“No you silly dear. I’m not sleeping at all, just conversing. This pregnancy keeps me awake at night and I don’t want to bother you. You sleep so soundly. So I talk with the other girls.”
‘What, are they all pregnant too?” was my next question.
"Deary” she began, putting her arms around me, “you do imagine the strangest things. Jane and Mary frequently stay up late. They get so much sleep in the afternoons sunning themselves. In Samantha’s case, you might be right. She’s not sure yet but tells me she’s feeling a bit strange. But let’s keep this our little secret honey. Please don’t tell Jaime anything until we know for sure.”
She gave me one of her long, swooning kisses and I let her. Once it started, I could never resist. It was an invitation to a dream state seductive and mesmerizing in its complete beauty, a feeling of perfect happiness. I was lights out.
It was Scout who first spotted the most easterly of the Tahitian islands. Mr. Higgins had been giving the children brief daily lessons in the use of the sextant and compass and how to plot the boat’s course on the charts. He’d told them the day before that we were getting close, so Scout spent the early morning lying belly down on the front deck, her feet and lower legs waving in the air with the rolling of the boat, her binoculars to her eyes and after an hour or so she spotted land. She announced it while we were finishing breakfast. We rushed out to see for ourselves and flares were sent up to notify the glad tidings to the other yachts. All of them had made it without a single incident. We’d even sailed in close formations many nights as the weather had been fair the whole trip. Even the few brief downpours were pleasant, like warm, unexpected showers.
We sailed past Mr. Tanaki’s island, not able to come within a mile of it because of reefs. We were guiding our little flotilla into the port of Papeete, where we arrived early afternoon, docked and felt the strange sensation of land beneath our feet. We spent that evening and night as his guests at the Mandarin hotel, enjoyed fine dining and drinks once again for the first time in two weeks. Jane’s wine collection had run dry mid-journey due to our frequent libations on deck throughout the afternoons. Ken’s liquor cabinet went next, within a week, and after that it was fruit juice or water. But tonight we were on our host’s tab, and while he met with some assistants to catch up on affairs, we drank and talked with the other boat crews until we stumbled into our respective suites.
The town, as far as I could see the next morning, seemed perfectly normal, unaffected by world events. It wasn’t tourist season so there weren’t a lot of people in the streets. But businesses and stores were open, their shelves full of stock and our money still good, so we strolled about the lanes and bought knick-knacks like tourists while Higgins looked after the more necessary supplies we’d need for the island.
By noon we were on our way with Higgins and Mr. Tanaki on a thirty-foot launch. In four hours we were there, approaching a small pier in a cove, white beaches, coconut trees and lush green forest behind, a tropical paradise of Paul Gauguin perfection. Scout dived into the water and swam to the dock as we approached. Akika was standing there, wildly waving to us. After greetings and introductions we were shown to a row of bungalows right off the beach, one for each pair of us and then led slightly further up the hill to a large mansion, Mr. Tanaki’s home, where we had a feast served to us on silver platters by his staff of domestics.
The next morning we toured the large estate, led by Akika. There were greenhouses with more staff in them, watering all sorts of plants. I thought of Naomi through most of this tour and what she was missing. There were solar arrays and other buildings, some empty, some storage rooms full of all sorts of supplies. I guessed that the staff to this whole operation must have numbered fifteen at least, half islanders and half Japanese, a little world in miniature supplying almost everything one might need, to Mr. Tanaki sitting in his office behind a large desk and all his guests.
The one thing it didn’t supply for us was ‘occupation’. Everything was brought to us at the snap of a finger. Now we had even less to do than on the yacht, which was about ninety percent leisure. There we could at least make our beds, tidy up or do some dishes. But not here. It was on Mr. Tanaki’s strict orders that all of our slightest needs were looked after. We had maids to clean our rooms each day, a chef to cook for us and servants to bring the meals to our rooms. There was a small bar on the beach serving drinks day and night, as long as we chose to lay there and sunbathe or take dips in the ocean. Once again I felt I was trapped.
For my part, I still gave the children a few hours of lessons each morning. But my library was swiftly running out, and Mr. Tanaki’s mansion held only a few shelves of books, mostly in Japanese. It was here that Akika stepped in, fulfilling her long ago promise to Scout to teach her and her two new friends Japanese, which she did over several weeks putting me out of a job. I played with the children on the beach and would take long walks, sometimes bringing them along, watching them run and dash in front of me looking for seashells, playing tag and exploring all the strange new flora and fauna of the island.
Most often I would walk alone for long hours, meditating my situation and not happy. The truce I’d made with the women seemed to be still holding and my hours of solitary wanderings gave me an illusion of independence until dusk fell and I had to rejoin their company. Each night I was once again cradled in her arms, powerless as a baby under tiki torches on a beach in the middle of nowhere, lost to the world. But what disturbed me most was that with each passing day she seemed to grow stronger in influence over me and I weaker. Anywhere in her proximity, I could feel her affecting my mind, coaxing it, manipulating my thoughts, perhaps even creating them, and her range seemed to grow all the time.
Scarier still was their behavior. Every afternoon after lunch they would lie in the sand holding hands like a row of conjoined snow angels, now six of them, as Akika had fallen under their spell. They would commune in this strange array for several hours like a sun worshipping cult. This was usually the time I began my long walks so as not to witness it. I tried at first to convince Jaime to join me but with no success. Samantha would simply take his hand and lead him to a lawn chair nearby, and in a minute he’d be sound asleep, while she resumed her position with the girls.
It was at the end of the second week of this sad odyssey that another disturbing scene befell me. One day there were two more females in the array, one, a young Japanese woman who was a special assistant to Mr. Tanaki, always in his mansion and often in his office, and another, a beautiful native girl who worked in a greenhouse. It didn’t take much conjecture on my part to see what was happening. I confronted Jaime later that afternoon waking him up and pulling him off his lawn chair right after the eight women had left the beach.
“Jaime, those four wafers you have, where are they?” I asked.
“I gave them to Samantha. I thought it would be best.”
“No” I replied angrily, “she thought it would be best. Why did you give them to her, think?’
“I remember now” he began, “it was because I sometimes have these strange lapses. I’m so in love with her I can’t seem to focus at times, and we both agreed they’d be safer in her hands than in mine. So I gave them to her.”
“Jaime your mind has been a thousand times sharpened by the very same wafers so how can you possibly be having ‘lapses’?”
“I don’t know; she says it’s because I’m so much in love with her. I’ve never been in love like this before.”
“Jaime you’re not in love, you just think you are. You’re a totally mind controlled zombie. She could tell you to walk off that pier and you’d do it. Now the girls have taken the chips and increased their ranks by at least two more women. I wonder what they did with the last two chips?”
I left him there on the beach, befuddled. He was still my friend, but I had little hope of saving him unless I came up with some shield against their powers. My whole world was descending into a nightmare. I had to get off the island.
Just by chance, it happened that Mr. Higgins showed up the next day on the launch with a fresh load of supplies. He did this regularly, like clockwork twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays just before lunch, joining us in the mansion for a quick bite while the staff unloaded, then motoring off again early afternoon. I told Mr. Tanaki at the table that I was getting a bit of what they call ‘island fever’. I asked if I might join Mr. Higgins on his trip back and spend a few days in Papeete. Before we’d left my house I’d packed in our luggage over twelve thousand dollars in cash along with the pistol, now laying in the top drawer of our dresser in the bungalow. I told Mr. Tanaki that I had plenty of money and would like to roam the streets of such a quaint town and be back with Higgins in a few days.
He graciously agreed right away but unfortunately added: “A most excellent idea and if any other of my guests wish to join Rolland, feel free.”
Claire spoke up: “Roland that’s a brilliant idea. Why don’t we make it a foursome, Jaime and Samantha and I? We’ll be like honeymooners and stay in that wonderful hotel.”
Samantha was holding Jaime’s hand, while he was nodding up and down furiously like one of those plastic, dashboard, bobble-headed dolls you see in a redneck’s truck. It gave me a sickening feeling in my gut, but I rolled with it.
“See you in four days” the whole crowd of children and friends roared at us as our launch left the dock. As we motored away from the pier, Higgins slowly revving up the engines at the helm, I stared at the figure of a sailor and envied him immensely. He’d never eaten a chip. He was free, and the ocean was his domain, but not like Odysseus. There was no Calypso lying in wait for him ready with a potion to turn him into a swine for nine years. Our strange fate couldn’t touch him. The wind and waves and stars at night were his whole world, and in this quality, I looked up to him as a blessed god.
