Russell Hoban - Come Dance With Me

After going through customs I came out into the main lobby with the other arrivals. My footsteps joined the other footsteps and I listened as they took me back to 1993.

Although I knew that the Mini Hotel Sleep/Shower had been shut down I went to have a look anyhow. There it was, chained and padlocked, still with signs by the entrance showing the room rates. A hand-lettered sign on the door: AS OF TODAY (10/15/01) WE ARE NOT LONGER OPEN FOR BUSINESS. MAHALOÜ! Looking through the glass I could see various rubbish and debris, fallen ceiling tiles, some partitions, a stool, an old map on the floor. It had been such a quiet place, and now it seemed noisy with emptiness. I imagined my ghost beating its fists against the glass while I stood there listening to footsteps and echoes and smelling fries from where the Fresh Express cafeteria used to be. Now there’s a food court with Burger King, Pizza Hut Express, Chinese fast food and a bakery with coffee and ice cream. If aliens from outer space ever want to visit us they could home in on the smells from Burger King and Pizza Hut. Maybe they already have, and now they staff those establishments and say ‘Have a good day’ like regular people.

In London it would be almost nine o’clock in the morning; here it was getting on for ten in the evening of the night before London’s morning. So I was really in yesterday but that’s nothing new. I had coffee and pineapple ice cream while the people around me from yesterday or tomorrow had whatever it was time for by their reckoning.

Through the glass I could see the spotlit gardens and the little Chinese pagoda. I visited the ladies’ and remembered the air freshener of 1993 with its Juicy Fruit fragrance. Now there was just a blank smell. Then I went out to the Japanese garden and sat under the gazebo there. It was raining a little by then, and the drops pattered on the roof and on the leaves and splashed in the ponds. It was a good sound and the rain was like a time freshener with a smell of tomorrows.

I must have been sitting there for quite a while when I heard another sound. Then I saw something on the ground that flapped a little and stopped. I went to it and saw that it was a bat, strange and furry, the fur not like a mouse but like a proper little flying animal. It seemed dead but I was afraid to touch it.

I was standing there looking at it when a very large security man with a gun appeared. ‘Everything all right?’ he said.

I pointed to the bat. ‘It just dropped out of the air,’ I said. ‘Is it dead?’

He knelt to examine it. ‘Ope’ape’a,’ he said. ‘It’s dead all right. They’re not as rare as they were a while back but they’re still an endangered species.’

‘What did you call it?’

‘ Ope’ape’a is the Hawaiian name. Hoary bat is what it’s called in English. Lasiurus cinereus semotus is the scientific name. It’s Hawaii’s only bat.’

‘How do you know so much about it?’

‘I’m a member of the Sierra Club and we have a project to save this bat. Look how beautiful it is.’ He held it up by its outspread wings. Its fur was grey, with a cream-coloured ruff around the head. Long ears and sharp teeth.

‘What killed it?’ I said. ‘Why did it fall out of the air right here in front of me? Do you think it was sick?’

‘No idea. I’ll take it to the university, there’s a man there who can do an autopsy.’ He took off his cap and put the bat in it. ‘Bat in a hat,’ he said.

‘Is it a male?’

‘Yes. How come you asked?’

‘No reason. Do you think it’s unlucky if a bat drops dead in front of you?’

‘Look at it this way: this bat got to the end of his run and he picked you for his crash landing. Most people never get to see an Ope’ape’a, so this makes you special.’

‘Like a beacon for dying bats?’

‘Try to think positive — maybe he was picking up good vibrations from you. Maybe he knew you’d keep him in your thoughts and remember him. Have you got a camera with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you should take some pictures.’

‘To capture this dead-bat moment?’

‘It’s a moment you’ll want to look at again.’

‘OK.’ I took one of him holding the bat and another closer one of the bat in his hands.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘I’ll take one of you with the bat.’ I gave him the camera and held up the bat and he did it. And came in for a second one, a close-up of my face. He was a nice-looking Hawaiian with a lot of charm.

‘I don’t need to remember what I look like,’ I said.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘My name is Henry Panawae.’

‘Henry, are you hitting on me? I’m old enough to be your mother.’

‘A woman like you is special,’ he said. ‘Age don’t matter. ‘Your name?’

‘Christabel Alderton.’ He was around thirty-five or so. The kind of man a woman says yes to. ‘You’re probably married with a couple of kids,’ I said.

‘For sure,’ he said, ‘but if I wasn’t.’

‘You’ve made me feel twenty years younger. Thank you.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said.

‘If you give me your address I’ll send you prints.’

He wrote down his name and his address on a notebook page that he tore off and gave me and I wrote down mine for him. It was raining harder so we got under the gazebo. ‘I make a circle around this day on my calendar,’ he said.

‘Me too.’ And I did. The circle is there now. And he and the bat are in my photo album. A moment I look at sometimes.

‘You going to be here a while?’ he said.

‘Yes. I’ll get a morning flight to Maui but I’ll be around all night. Later I’ll go to the lounge.’

‘OK, I’ll see you later then. I’ll be going on my rounds now.’ He turned to go, then stopped. ‘We never said hello properly,’ he said.

‘OK. Hello, Henry.’

‘Better we do it the old way, which is called honi: we touch foreheads, we look into each other’s eyes which is where the soul looks out, then with nose to nose we mingle our breath.’

I knew about honi because I’d done it in 1993 with Rudy Ka’uhane and his wife but I felt like teasing Henry. ‘That’s going pretty far with a stranger,’ I said.

‘Nobody’s a stranger, that’s what it’s all about, OK?’

So we touched foreheads and his thoughts were next to mine; we looked into each other’s eyes and I could see he was a man you could depend on; we mingled our breath and he wasn’t a stranger.

He left and I sat there for another hour or so, smelling the rain and listening to it on the roof and the leaves and the water of the ponds. I wondered what Elias was doing and whether he was thinking of me. I’d never looked straight into his eyes as closely as I did with Henry’s.

28 January 2003. That woman, Christabel Alderton, she was sad. Lot of trouble in her eyes. But she was special, maybe she’ll be all right. I hope so. Ope’ape’a picked her.

28 January 2003. When I left Peter and went down to the netherworld of the Piccadilly Line with the ghost of Bo padding after me I found myself remembering Mary Snyder, a girl I had a crush on when I was fourteen. I’m not sure how Bo led me to her but there she was. She was very pretty, with blue eyes, fair hair and a face that I’ve seen on porcelain figures. I got her to go fishing with me one summer day. I cycled over to her place in Kulpsville or maybe it was Souderton and we rode to a nice little tree-shaded part of the Perkiomen Creek. I caught one small sunfish which I grilled over a little fire. Fortunately we’d brought sandwiches and a thermos of iced tea with us. Mary was so graceful, so nicely finished, a real pleasure to look at. I was thrilled to be with her, my first magic shiksa. She didn’t like Tchaikovsky and she wasn’t much interested when I wanted to read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to her but she seemed to like me and I thought she might be my girlfriend. That summer day was all there was. A few days later when I asked her to go to the movies with me she turned me down. She said her parents didn’t want her to go out with me. I asked her if it was because I was Jewish and she said yes. At school after that I’d see her in the halls with Karl Gunther and we’d both look away.