The Eden Legacy

II

Rebecca trailed a hand in the water as they headed north, and watched the shore. A pirogue drew close, a spear fisherman standing astride its narrow prow, shouting directions to the youngster at the stern. They were important and admired men, these spearmen. The best could spike fifty kilos of fish on a good day. Some held rocks as weights so that they could lie on the sea-bed in ambush for big fish; others brashly chased after the shoals, though you needed to be super-fit to fight the currents. Their bodies, consequently, were exquisitely honed, burned of any trace of fat.

The man looked up as they passed, waved exuberantly. ‘Salaam, Becca!’ he cried. He motioned to the youngster and the pirogue tacked and came alongside, holding steady just a couple of metres away. A fat scar glistened on his left hip where a fishing line must once have sliced through his skin, and it was this that gave Rebecca the cue she needed, a sudden memory of the day he’d limped into their clinic with his leg a mess of blood, glimpses of the white bone beneath the flap of skin. ‘Salaam, Toussaint!’ she called out. ‘Inona no vaovao?’

‘Tsy misy.’ He was obviously chuffed that she’d remembered him, though he tried not to let it show. ‘So sorry about Adam and Emilia.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Your father is a very good man. Your sister a very good woman. Whatever we can do.’

‘You can search.’

‘We search already,’ he said. But his eyes dropped just a blink. ‘Is a big sea.’

‘Yes.’

‘You come see us sometime, yah?’

‘I’d like that.’

He pointed at Daniel. ‘Vezo blanc, yah?’

‘Vezo blanc,’ smiled Rebecca.

He made a small gesture to his companion in the stern and they tacked instantly away, waving their farewells.

‘Vezo blanc?’ asked Daniel dryly.

‘It’s a compliment,’ Rebecca assured him. ‘It just means a foreigner who knows the sea. It was years before anyone ever called my father a Vezo blanc. He didn’t stop gloating for days.’

‘He looked a bit sheepish,’ said Daniel. ‘Did you ask him if he’s been out searching?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s the problem with these guys?’

‘It’s not that simple. They don’t like visiting the Eden reefs, not if they can avoid it.’

‘Why not?’

She didn’t reply at once, for it wasn’t easy to explain properly. ‘Have you ever heard of the tragedy of the commons?’ she asked finally. ‘It’s a theory about why shared resources don’t work. Imagine you live next to a forest full of trees. Under local law, your family owns a section of that forest, as does every other family. You can do what you like with the trees in your section, but if you cut them all down to sell, then that’s it, you can’t take anyone else’s. So you’re going to look after your own holding, right? Plant new saplings, protect it from thieves, cut only what you need, because your family’s future livelihood depends upon it.’

‘Sure.’

‘Now imagine a different village next to a different forest, where all the trees are common property.’

‘It’ll be logged in a heartbeat,’ nodded Daniel.

‘A short-term feast followed by famine forever,’ nodded Rebecca. ‘That’s the tragedy of the commons. Fishing is a textbook example. No one owns the sea, but they do own whatever they catch, so they’ll fish and fish until there’s nothing left. It used to be fine here, plenty for everyone. But the villages are growing and the lagoon is silting up and the pressure on stocks has become hopelessly unsustainable. My father tried to get everyone to agree not to fish off Eden, leaving it as a breeding ground to keep the stocks up. It worked for a while, but then some people cheated, and the honest ones grew resentful, and it was a free-for-all again.’

‘So what did your father do?’

‘There’s something called fady in Madagascar. It’s like a taboo; very powerful. Fady aren’t just respected and obeyed: they’re feared. He realised that the best way to stop fishing near Eden was to make it fady. The question was how. The people here have always loved stories. Before TV came along, they’d all gather in the evenings, get smashed on rum and marijuana, trade tall tales. My father learned Malagasy so that he could join in. He took the Odyssey and some other Greek myths and transplanted them here. Boats destroyed by clashing rocks, fishermen snatched and eaten by one-eyed sea-creatures with arms thick as trees, families cursed for generations; giant squids lurking in lairs, their tentacles leaving hideous blisters, causing penises to shrivel up and fall off.’

‘Ouch.’

‘He even tricked up some photographs and showed them around, and it wasn’t long before all the fishermen were claiming to have seen them themselves, except bigger and scarier. No one believes a lie like people who’ve made themselves part of it. Within a year, they pretty much stopped coming even to our clinic, because they were too scared. My mother had to lay spells on lanes through the water to make it safe.’ She smiled. ‘A powerful witch, my mother.’

‘So what you’re saying is, they’ll happily look everywhere except off Eden, which is precisely where you need them to search?’

‘The fady’s grown less powerful over the years, but it’s still there. And if I break it altogether, it’ll be a disaster for the fish stocks. I couldn’t bear that.’ She gave a dry laugh. ‘Apart from anything else, my father would never forgive me.’

Daniel nodded. ‘Then I guess we’d better just search that bit ourselves.’