East of Suez by Howard Engel Read Free Book Online Page B

understanding. I got the idea that the harbor was some distance below this part of town. In the end, he wrote something on the back of a book of matches, which he passed to me.
    Poseidon Outfitters
    Quay de la Reine Blanche, 24
    The name tallied with the one my client back home had given me. It seemed like a good omen. I keep probing reality with my thumb, hoping for what? That it would save my hide one day, I suppose. Maybe I’d been hoping that the name and address wouldn’t match. Then I could go home.
    The room clerk phoned for a taxi and I sat down to wait, passing the time with a selection of postcards of the neighborhood. To my surprise, I was able to write to several members of my family without thinking of my difficulty in reading what I had written. Reading and writing are related skills, but not the same, as I had been learning these past months. I had just licked the last stamp when a scooter-like thing screeched to a stop in front of the hotel’s large front door. When the room clerk called my name, I got up to see how lethal this contraption was. I showed the driver the name of the outfitter and he showed me how to get inside the plastic-wrapped parcel on wheels. The buckle of the seat belt was in good working order, but the strap was attached on one side only, six safety pins having given their all in the service of health and welfare. I had two wheels, the driver only one, but our fates were the same. Quickly I began to overlook the safety factor once the noise factor intervened. The din was like a boilerworks in the middle of a war zone. The driver wore a World War I leather helmet with dangling side straps. When he had given a brave grin, we were off.
    The driver took the flattened intersections with a bounce whenever the steeply descending road crossed a side street. Occasionally, he readjusted the dark goggles that gave him the look of a robot. He treated all of the mechanical stop signs as though they were only suggestions, but obeyed the whiteuniformed traffic wardens with an impatient courtesy. As soon as we were out of their sight, we were off again on this reckless ride through streets sometimes crowded and sometimes deserted. I noticed the smell of garbage only when we stopped for another vehicle. We must have been traveling faster than the speed of smell. I tried to recall the name I’d heard for the three-wheel taxis: Yuk-yuks? Ton-tons? Luk-luks? What did it matter? I was a newcomer; relax and enjoy it.
    I could feel our descent down to water level long before I glimpsed the docks.
    Then suddenly there it was: the sea. A cool scimitar slice of blue against the mountains and the sky. Now I began to comprehend this place. Now I could understand people like my clerical friend from the taxi. It put Grantham, Ontario, Canada, into a context I never could have imagined without this glimpse of sun reflected in the marvelous horseshoe harbor.
    It was a straight, unbroken, downhill run now, and the vista opened up as we descended to it. Then, almost in the middle of the road, half blocking our way, was a derelict ship, an old freighter by the look of it. It was just lying there in the street. Black and white, with rust-red stains above the keel. It was an easy two hundred meters from the jetties and about thirty or more meters above tidewater. I thought of the beached ship in the poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” That one was called the Alice May ; this one was the something-or-other Maru . As we rounded it, I tapped the driver on his shoulder and pointed to the wreck. He looked at me for a moment, then at the wreck, now in his rearview mirror, and said one word: “Tsunami.” As we drove on, I looked around to see the rest of the ship. It was like a beached whale, being chipped at by acetylene torches on the ocean side. Somebody was trying to break up this monster. Blue light from cutting torches drove slanted shadows up the sides of the hulk, even under this burning sun. It was like watching men