Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

“That sounds almost scary,” said Mrs. Zorn. “Like that movie, oh, what was it again?”

“ Night of the Living Dead?” said Anton.

“No.”

“ The Little Shop of Horrors?” said Albert.

“No,” said Mrs. Zorn. “Oh, why won’t it come to me?”

“Go on, Leo,” said Mr. Zorn. Mrs. Zorn’s end of the table quieted.

Professor Uzig was sitting back in his chair, arms crossed. “I think I’ve said enough.”

“Please go on, Leo,” said Mrs. Zorn.

“Yes,” said Grace. “You’re just getting to the good part. What’s Nietzsche saying inside my head?”

“You already know what he’s saying-if you choose to put it that way. None of us would be the way we are without Nietzsche.”

Nat saw Anton-flexing his forearm in the candlelight-pause.

“But give us some idea of his philosophy,” Izzie said.

“So, you want spoon-feeding,” said Professor Uzig. “Since it’s Christmas, then, and such a beautiful night, and since the concept of learning to think, by which I mean to think originally, is in the air, and since, as an original thinker, Nietzsche has no superior-” He paused, took a drink, looked at Mr. Zorn. “Here is some idea of his philosophy, then, as it applies to the act of thinking, thinking of the first water. Our supreme insights, he says, should sound like follies, even crimes.” He downed the rest of his drink, almost the whole glass, in one gulp. “Even crimes.”

“Like Galileo and the Inquisition,” Nat said; it just popped out, he had no business speaking at all.

Professor Uzig turned to him, eyebrows, gray and wild, rising. “Exactly.”

A bare foot pressed itself against his.

Mr. Zorn laughed. “I love your bullshit, Leo, I really do. World-class. But if you picked that quote-or invented it-to goad me into endowing that Leo Uzig chair of yours, the answer’s still no.”

“Does he have to be so rude?” Grace said.

“Grace,” said Mrs. Zorn.

Grace gave her a furious look. It made Mrs. Zorn’s hand shake. Nat saw the reflected candlelight from her rings making jagged patterns on the far wall.

“Nietzsche didn’t mind a little rudeness, did he, Leo?” said Mr. Zorn.

“He was rather correct in his personal dealings, in fact,” said Professor Uzig. “Excluding the period of his madness, of course.”

“Let’s exclude Lizzie Borden’s one bad day while we’re at it,” said Mr. Zorn.

Mr. Zorn was gone by the time Nat got up the next morning; the noise of the takeoff woke him. He went onto his balcony, found the skimpy European bathing suit gone, American-style trunks in its place. He put them on, went down the path to the beach. On the deck of one of the villas lay a pile of snorkeling equipment. He borrowed mask, fins, and snorkel, as well as a large fishnet, and jumped into the sea.

The sea calm, without a ripple, the sun rising directly in front of him, changing the color of everything moment by moment; and the water itself, as he sank into it, still that perfect temperature: it relaxed him to the core. Trailing the net as he’d seen Izzie trail her speargun, he set off toward the point.

Nat saw brightly colored fish, coral heads and fans, a ray, a barracuda, all things the Discovery Channel had prepared him for. It hadn’t prepared him for the feeling of this sea, the experience of being in it. He thought of all kinds of metaphors-amniotic, baptismal, blood-none of them quite right.

Nat was around the point, rising and falling with a swell so gradually begun that he was hardly aware of it, watching a tiny purple-and-gold fish nibble at a piece of coral that resembled antlers, and thinking antlers, St. Nick, and smiling into his mouthpiece, when he heard a low whine. It grew louder. He raised his head, saw that he’d gone much farther than he’d thought, all the way to the back side of the island, and, once again, a surprising distance from shore; was there some sort of current? As he oriented himself, he saw the cigarette boat, source of the whining sound, come shooting out of the natural harbor, throwing a frothing bow wave in front, a rooster tail behind. As it came closer, he could make out Grace at the wheel, Professor Uzig in the stern. Their course would take them hundreds of yards to the north, but Grace suddenly changed it and bore straight at him. Nat felt an adrenaline rush, was just about to do something, maybe dive straight down, when the cigarette veered sharply, reared up like a reined-in horse and settled rocking beside him. Grace and Professor Uzig, a book in his hand, gazed down.

“Scare you?” Grace said.

“No.”

She laughed. “I’m dropping Leo at the Sir Francis, then going over to Pusser’s for supplies. Want to come?”

“Think I’ll just stay here.”

“Not permanently, I hope,” said Professor Uzig.

“Suit yourself,” Grace said. “And if you spit in your mask, it won’t fog up like that.”

“You’re supposed to spit in it?”

“Unless you’re too dainty.”

She gave him a look. Professor Uzig, laughing, didn’t see it. The book in his hand had a German title. Grace hit the throttle, circled Nat once-she shouted something at him, might have been “Don’t get eaten”-and roared away. Nat caught the name on the stern: Manchineel. He spat in his mask, swished it with seawater, kept going, his vision much improved.

Some time later, how long he didn’t know, but the sun was high in the sky, warming his back even though he’d begun shivering, Nat swam toward shore. He came to a beach he hadn’t noticed before, a small beach beyond the harbor, almost hidden by rocky outcrops at each end. He took off his gear, saw a few strands of seaweed and some shells marking the high-tide line, carried everything above it. That was when he noticed Izzie, previously hidden from his sight on a patch of sand among the rocks. She lay facedown on a towel, reading a book, wearing nothing.

Nat stood there as though cast under a spell, aware of her, aware that his mouth was open. What was the right thing to do? If she’d been wearing something, anything, even just bikini bottoms, he could have spoken. But not like this. Therefore the right thing was to quietly, very quietly, without making the slightest Izzie stiffened, jerked her head around, had the towel over herself in a moment.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know-”

“That’s all right.” She sat up. “I thought it was that creep Anton.”

“He’s a creep?”

Izzie ignored the question, looked past him, saw the snorkel gear, the net. “Catch anything?”

“Didn’t try. I was hoping for one like Lorenzo.”

“Have to go to the Pacific for that. No clown triggerfish here.”

“That’s what he is, a clown triggerfish?”

“Yeah. And sit down. You’re making me squint in the sun. I’ll get wrinkles.”

He sat on the sand.

“What are you reading?”

She held it up: Young Goodman Brown.

He thought: We’ll be in class together. “Have you come to the part about him being the chief horror?” he said.

“That’s where I am right now. You think it’s important?”

“Probably. The ending doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

She looked at him. “Like it down here?”

“How can you even ask?”

“Is it your first time?”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone’s like that their first time. After a while you learn the truth about the Caribbean.”

“Which is?”

“It’s one big slum when the sun doesn’t shine.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Neither do I, actually.”

“Is it something Grace says?”

Pause. “Maybe,” she said. A shadow passed over them. Nat glanced up, saw a pelican; had to be a pelican, with that fish dangling from its long beak. “Let’s go for a swim,” Izzie said.