Russell Hoban - Come Dance With Me

The other vessels in the harbour were expensive sailing boats, cabin cruisers and sport-fishermen and the water sparkled with dollar signs. There were T-shirts with whales on them in the shops and the Lahaina News advertised a Slack Key Guitar Festival. Still, it was charming and lively, full of places where you could spend time and money. I mustn’t let the jaded me of 2003 get in the way. I bought Django a T-shirt with a humpback whale on it and a baseball cap that said MAUL

Later we went to the I’‘O nearby in Front Street for a candlelit dinner outside under the trees. For starters we had steamed wontons filled with ‘roasted peppers, mushrooms, spinach, macadamia nuts and silken tofu over a fragrant tomato coulis with a creamy basil yogurt purée’. The list of ingredients with its adjectives was so colourful that I took a menu away with me for a souvenir. We shared a Maui steak after that and finished up with pineapple ice cream. Front Street was full of tourists enjoying their evening as we went back to the Pioneer Inn. Some of them were singing.

When Django was asleep I went out on to the veranda. The sky had cleared and there was a little sliver of crescent moon. I stood there looking at the stars until I found the Plough. That’s all right then, I thought. This is home too. But I didn’t quite believe it.

30 January 2003. It was as if the ocean were sending up to me songs of my childhood. One of the songs we sang in Morning Exercises was ‘My Faith Looks Up to Thee’:

My faith looks up to thee,

Thou lamb of Calvary,

Saviour divine!

Now hear me while I pray,

take all my guilt away,

O let me from this day

be wholly thine!

I didn’t have any Christian guilt but the hymn had a good sound to it and I joined in with a will. The verse I liked best was the last one. It accorded well with the darkness that was in me even then:

When ends life’s transient dream,

when death’s cold sullen stream

shall o’er me roll;

blest Saviour, then in love,

fear and distrust remove;

O bear me safe above,

a ransomed soul!

I had no idea of a Saviour and ransomed souls but death’s cold sullen stream rang true for me. Now I was reflecting that we are all of us little chips of life borne on death’s cold sullen stream to the ocean of nothingness. No more anything. I shook myself to shake off those thoughts; I didn’t want them to connect with my thoughts of Christabel.

‘Somebody walk over your grave?’ said the woman next to me. American. Fat, middle-aged.

‘They do it all the time,’ I said.

‘You get used to it,’ she said. ‘Try Jack Daniel’s.’

‘Have they got it on the drinks trolley?’ I said.

‘Johnny Walker will do the job too,’ she said. ‘I just happen to like sour mash when they start walking.’

‘Who?’

‘Over my grave. Ex-husbands. Worthless bastards.’

‘How many?’

‘A fifth will usually last me two days, sometimes not.’

‘I meant husbands, not drinks.’

‘Four.’

‘Why so many?’

‘Kept trying to get it right, never did.’

‘You must have loved them, at least in the beginning?’

She suddenly took on a sharper focus and her face zoomed to a close-up. She fixed me with a penetrating glance and said, ‘What’s love? Can you tell me?’

‘I don’t think it’s something that can be defined.’

‘I didn’t think you could. I’m going to watch a movie now.’

Left to myself I didn’t try to define love. I had heard myself say that I was in love with Christabel and I believed it without understanding it. Sometimes late at night I watch major league baseball on TV. Abstractly, without caring who’s playing. I enjoy the dramatic moments, as in bottom of the ninth and the team I’m rooting for trying to hold on to a one-run lead with the other team at bat and two outs. The pitcher (whoever he is) looks to the catcher, waves off the sign, goes into his wind-up. Here’s the pitch, a low fast ball but not fast enough. The batter (leading the league in RBIs this season) connects and, Wow! There it goes, going, going … The centre fielder races back, back, back and up the wall, up, up, yes! He’s got it! What a catch. OK, so love hadn’t escaped me. But that was just my end of it. Did Christabel love me? She liked my company and was willing to go to bed with me but lots of people do that without being in love. Her history wasn’t the usual thing. Woody Guthrie came to mind with his songs about hard travelling down various roads. I’d sung those songs to myself at one time and another; maybe Christabel had too — life is full of rough roads. By now probably anything with a man looked like hard travelling to her. Sometimes she felt like a bad-luck carrier, she’d said. For me the worst luck would be to lose her, and while the plane seemed perfectly still high above the ocean I leant forward in the roaring recycled silence, straining towards her, afraid that she couldn’t love me, that I couldn’t hold her, that she’d slip through my fingers and be lost. I went back to the galley and one of the flight attendants said, ‘Hi. What can we do for you?’ A pretty young woman with a knowing air and a figure that gladdened the eye.

‘I know this isn’t drinks time,’ I said, ‘but do you think I could have two of those little bottles of Johnny Walker?’

‘Did you bring a note from your mother?’ she said.

‘Actually you might say it’s for medicinal purposes. I’m a doctor.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I trust you. I’ll even pour it into a glass for you. Straight up?’

‘Neat,’ I said. ‘No ice, no water.’

‘You got it, Doc. Go back to your seat and I’ll bring it to you.’

‘Thank you, I feel better already. You’re very kind.’

‘What are flight attendants for?’ she said with a compassionate smile.

An answer almost leapt to my lips but I limited myself to another smile. When she brought me the whisky she said, ‘There you go, Doc. If symptoms persist buzz me.’

‘You got it,’ I said. It was a pleasure to watch her walk away. With scotch in hand I went back to my anxiety in an easier state of mind.

I was halfway through my drink when suddenly all ease left me and I saw Christabel Alderton climbing the stairs of the old mission in Vertigo. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Please no.’

The woman beside me had on her headphones and I don’t think she heard me. I finished the whisky and resumed my forward lean. Although my seat was on the aisle I kept my eye on the window. There was no sign of Bat Air.

30 January 2003. If I had an electric eye and a buzzer in the back of my skirt there’d be a lot of noise following me around. Of course there isn’t room for an electric eye and a buzzer. I think it’s nice when older men take an interest and this one certainly did. When they have good manners like that doctor I think it might make a nice change sometime from the usual guys I go with. Not that pilots are all that young. I like a little refinement in a man. And that’s what I mostly get: very damn little. Oh well, some day my prince will come. But not prematurely, I hope.

The doctor really did seem troubled when he asked for the scotch. I wonder what he was troubled about. I’m twenty-eight and I’d guess he was in his late fifties. When I’m twice as old as I am now, what’s it going to be like? Rafe Simmonds, the pilot on our last flight to HNL, said to me during our layover, ‘Now it takes me all night to do what I used to do all night.’

‘I like a man who takes his time,’ I said. Well, what else could I say?