Tumbleweed

13

"Excuse me," a pleasant well-modulated voice said. "Do you mind if I sit down at your table for a moment?"

The commissaris looked up from his plate of fried noodles and shrimps. He had been eating and looking at the map, spread out on the table next to his plate, at the same time. He felt a little perturbed by the interruption; he had refused Silva's invitation to lunch in order to be by himself and he had, after having walked about for a few minutes, found a cheap clean-looking Chinese restaurant where he could enjoy his favorite food. And now there was someone else, standing patiently next to him and wanting something.

"Please," the commissaris said, "please sit down." He shook hands.

"Van der Linden," the neatly dressed man said. "I saw you at the airport yesterday, I saw you again in the lounge of the hotel last night and now I see you for the third time in two days. In it is quite unheard of to meet the same man three times in two days without knowing his name, so I have taken the liberty of making your acquaintance."

The commissaris smiled, looking at the face of the old gentleman. Mr. van der Linden would probably be close to seventy but a pair of very alive eyes twinkled in his face which seemed to be covered with old white-yellowish leather.

"I am a tourist," the commissaris said. "Surely you must see thousands of tourists wandering through your city."

Mr. van der Linden smiled and the waxed ends of his mustache vibrated. "No, sir. Excuse me for contradicting you. You are not a tourist."

"No?" the commissaris asked.

"No. A tourist has no purpose. He wanders about, looking at the shop windows. He wears an open shirt with a flower pattern, or striped, and he talks in a loud voice. He has to, for otherwise he loses his identity."

"Ah."

"A tourist doesn't wear a shantung suit with a waistcoat. Your waistcoat intrigues me. I haven't seen anyone wear a waistcoat for years."

The commissaris looked down at his waistcoat. "It went with the suit," he said guiltily, "and it isn't warm. It isn't lined, you see. And it has handy pockets. I always wear a waistcoat. My lighter goes into the left pocket and my watch into the right. It's a matter of habit."

Mr. van der Linden roared with laughter. "You don't have to explain yourself to me," he said. "It's I who should explain myself. I am a lawyer, you see, I have practiced here for many years, more than I can remember, and I didn't leave when I retired. I got used to the place. You are a police officer, aren't you?"

"Yes," the commissaris said.

"You are here to investigate the death of Maria van Buren."

"Yes."

"I was expecting a Dutch police officer to come out. Usually when one of us gets into trouble out there the causes can be found here."

"Do you have an idea that could help me?" the commissaris asked, opening his tin of cigars and holding it out.

"No, thank you. I am not allowed to smoke anymore. It's a great pity. We always have Cuban cigars here and to smoke one in the evening, sitting under the tamarind tree in the garden, is a true pleasure. Was a true pleasure. Yes, perhaps I have an idea. You found what Maria was doing out there, in Amsterdam I mean. It's 'out there' to me now, strange isn't it, and I am a true Dutchman."

"A macamba," the commissaris said.

"You have been learning already. Maria was a very courageous girl. She had ideals, strange ideals. Some girls have ideals, not too many of them, fortunately perhaps. They might stop having children one day and it would be the end of us."

"It might be the best ideal of all," the commissaris said, trying to blow a smoke ring:

"Yes. Quite. An interesting theory. Will you be staying long?"

The commissaris shook his head.

"Pity. I have a bottle of old brandy left and we could drink it under my tree and discuss a world without people. It's a beautiful thought. We wouldn't be there to regret the fact that we wouldn't be there."

"Maria was the mistress of at least three rich men," the commissaris said.

"Yes. My mind was wandering. It often does, nowadays. But Maria wasn't a prostitute. I knew her as a child and I think she had the mind of a discoverer, and explorer. She wanted to find out. She liked men, of course, any beautiful woman does. Men will confirm the fact that a woman is beautiful. I think she was experimenting with manipulating people."

"And someone objected and killed her."

"That's one possibility," Mr. van der Linden said. "Another thought which occurred to me was that somebody would object to her way of life in general."

"We have reason to believe that she dabbled in sorcery."

"Sorcery," Mr. van der Linden repeated, and laughed.

"You don't believe in sorcery?"

"Of course I believe in it. I have lived a long time, and most of my life I have spent on this island, and on similar islands. Black magic works, I am convinced of it. It's a lot of mumbo jumbo of course but so is advertising, and nobody will deny that advertising works. But black magic is silly, like advertising."

"Magic is silly?" the commissaris asked.

"Black magic is. Not the real thing. Black magic is a perversion of the real thing and all perversions are silly. The desire to hurt others is childish."

"You think Maria practiced black magic?"

Mr. van der Linden spread his hands on his knees and looked at them for a while. His body became still, his face relaxed. "Yes," he said in the end.

"Do you think it killed her?"

The commissaris had to wait for the answer again. "Yes," Mr. van der Linden said.

The car bounced a little on a bad patch of tar and the commissaris lost the thread of his thoughts. He had changed the pattern of his theory so that Mr. van der Linden's remarks would fit in, but now he remembered that Silva had told him not to miss the forest. The forest was supposed to be two hundred yards long and there would be a dip in the road. If he reached the dip he was supposed to stop the car and get out. Silva had told him to spend at least five minutes in the forest to try to recapture the old atmosphere of the island, the atmosphere that it had in the beginning of the fifteenth century, when Indian tribes still lived in , Indians who fished and hunted and who welcomed strangers and took care of them and who built large huts which fitted in with the landscape and whose religion centered around magic.

The car found the dip and the commissaris drove her off the road and switched the engine off and got out. He sat down on a rock and closed his eyes.

"The real thing," he said aloud, "not the perversion." To hurt is the perversion, he thought. So the real thing would be to cure, to restore.

He tried not to think but to feel the trees around him but his mind refused to become calm. He lit a cigar and got back into the car.

He was driving close to the coast and he could hear the sea raging against the cliffs. The forest had given way to the cunucu again, the dried-out veld with thornbushes. An occasional car passed or met him but nothing else moved, except the few cabryt goats tearing at dry plants, and once he had to slow down suddenly for a large lizard which scuffled across the road and gave him an angry look from its heavily lidded eyes.

He had to be close to Shon Wancho's place now and he stopped near a hut. The black woman who had come to the door gave him directions in slow pure Dutch. He thanked her and lifted his hat, and her answering smile was kind and puzzled.

The road didn't go to the house and he had to walk the last half mile until he came to the cliffs.

When he finally found the tall thin black man he felt very hot and his suit stuck to his skin.

"Good afternoon, Shon Wancho," the commissaris said, and took off his hat.

When, later, he tried to remember, to rebuild their meeting he found the task to be impossible. He tried often, he always failed.

There had been, and that seemed to be the main difficulty which made fun with his memory, no real conversation. Shon Wancho hadn't answered a single question, and after a while the commissaris had stopped asking questions. The experience was weird. As a police officer he had been trained to create situations. The other party, whether suspect or witness, had always been at some considerable disadvantage. He had always managed to trick his opponents, playing on their fear, on their sense of self-importance. And they had talked. Never once had the commissaris failed. He had cornered his opponents, threatened and flattered them. And they had talked. Never once had the commissaris failed. He had cornered his opponents quietly, by being polite to them, by making a little statement or asking a little question. They had been frightened of going to jail, of losing their reputation. They had been jealous and tried to incriminate others. They cared.

But Shon Wancho didn't care. When the commissaris found him the old man had been working in his garden tending a creeping plant with delicate yellow flowers. The garden was next to a small house, a neat building consisting of two rooms and a covered porch, supported by strong beams which looked as if they had been found on the beach, bleached by a hundred years of sun. Shon Wancho had met his guest, treating the commissaris as if he were a small tired hot child. He had been shown where he could wash his face and hands, had been given some cool fruit juice to drink and directed to a rocking chair in the shadow of the porch from which he could see the flowers of the garden. There had been no need to explain the purpose of his visit. The commissaris had tried but his sentences broke halfway. The quiet half-closed eyes of the thin elegant black man expressed a peaceful lack of interest in the prattling of a distracted mind. He neither answered nor acknowledged the questions of the commissaris but stood silently, leaning against a bleached beam. The commissaris became irritated and began to repeat himself, his words stumbled over each other, he felt as if he were trying to press against something which wasn't there, but at the same time he felt some response in his own mind, as if the tall Negro were right. Nothing had happened so what was the police officer fretting about? He began to pay attention to the silence of his host. He saw Shon Wancho's face now, the small pointed beard, the high cheekbones, the thick arching lips framing the wide mouth, and the aquiline nose, the face of a chief, of a nobleman.

"This man needs nothing," the commissaris' mind was saying to itself and a small surge of approval moved through his thoughts.

"No, not a chief," he was thinking now. "A chief needs a tribe. And a nobleman needs his rank."

His attempts at trying to place the man failed. And suddenly he felt that he no longer cared either. The quietness of Shon Wancho was too strong and he surrendered to it. Shon Wancho had stopped looking at the commissaris. He sat down on a low stool, close to the rocking chair. His back was erect and his gaze steady; he was looking ahead now, at the garden and the distant sea.

Together they underwent the sudden explosive sunset of the tropics; the bursting colors, the wide space of the endless view, and the cool powerful sound of the sea combined to knock away the last support of the busy-ness of the commissaris' mind so that he reached a state of awareness where he was neither awake nor asleep.

After a while he found his hat and put it on and left, and before he left Shon Wancho had lightly touched his forearm and smiled.

"So what did you find out?" the commissaris kept on asking himself as he drove back to Willemstad. "What did you find out?'

There was a final visit to make. He stopped near a public callbox and dialed Mr. de Sousa's number.

Mr. de Sousa answered the phone himself.

"Yes, commissaris," Mr. de Sousa said. "Chief-Inspector da Silva told me you would be calling."

"I would like to come and see you," the commissaris said.

"Tomorrow?"

"No. Tomorrow I should be on my way back to Holland. Unfortunately I am rather pressed for time. If it isn't inconvenient for you I would like to come and see you right now. According to my map I am very close to your house. I should be able to see you within a few minutes."

"You will be welcome," Mr. de Sousa said and rang off.

The commissaris found the house, a palatial home built on a small hill with a driveway lined with palm trees. Mr. de Sousa opened the car door and led the way.

The house breathed wealth. The corridor was wide and high and there were potted plants and pieces of sculpture and oil portraits of men who looked like plantation owners, dressed in riding breeches and holding whips, and of ladies with elaborate hairstyles and stiff lace dresses.

As they walked to Mr. de Sousa's study a servant scuffled behind them carrying a silver tray with bottles and glasses. Polite phrases filled ten minutes before the commissaris could mention the name of Maria.

"Yes," Mr. de Sousa said, and the folds of his face trembled. "My daughter. She is dead."

The commissaris found that it had become impossible to ask questions. He waited.

"I refused her presence," Mr. de Sousa said, and began to wipe his wet face, "my own daughter, the cleverest, the most beautiful of them all. I wouldn't have her in my own house. I disapproved. I had to disapprove. Do you understand, commissaris of police, do you understand?"

The commissaris drank his whisky, the silence of Shon Wancho was still around him and some of it reached the fat rich man and calmed him a little.

"Perhaps you understand. Perhaps you have children of your own. But Europe is different. I have been to Europe, many times. I am a wealthy man, I do big business. I know the beautiful women of Europe, I have paid them money and they have given me experiences which I will never forget. I am grateful to those women. But my own daughter became one of them and that I couldn't accept."

Mr. de Sousa filled the commissaris' glass and fussed with the ice cubes and the water and the silver stirring spoon.

"But I am her father and perhaps I should have accepted. As a child she always came to me and talked to me and we were together. She was a wise child and I learned from her as we walked through the island. I took her to the other islands, the Dutch islands and the English islands and some of the French. I even took her to Haiti, she wanted to go to Haiti. She was partly black and she was very interested in her blackness and Haiti is a black country. I always thought that a father teaches his child but Maria taught me. Her voice was very quiet and when she spoke I listened.

"And now she is dead," Mr. de Sousa said after a while. "You will want to know who threw the knife into her but I do not know."

The commissaris returned to his hotel and had a bath. He drank his coffee and his orange juice and he smoked a cigar and the hot water soaked the dirt and the sweat off him. He put on a clean suit and left the hotel and wandered past the ships moored at the quay. The schooner of the Indian who gave him the cigarettes had left. He stopped to admire the old tramp steamer.

"What are you looking at?" a voice bellowed from the bridge.

"Hello," the commissaris shouted.

"You," the captain with the yellow beard shouted back. "You? Come up here!"

The commissaris crossed the gangway, anxious not to soil his suit. The captain met him on the lower deck.

"Have some rum with me, policeman," the captain said, and put out his hand. The commissaris touched the hand gently but it was clean, clean like its owner, who was now grinning through his beard, showing broken teeth separated by large gaps.

"I saw you at Silva's window this morning," the captain said, and cackled. "He pretends not to care about the soot I blow at him but I got him the other day. He came out and shook his fist at me. That police station will be very dirty when I finish with it but there is nothing they can do about it except cough. I am not breaking any law. I have to keep the old engine going, don't I?"

They were in the captain's cabin, and a hunchback in a torn jacket had brought a flat green bottle of rum and glasses and a dented silver bucket filled with ice.

"Nice bucket," the captain said, picking it up. "Filched it from a nightclub in Barranquilla. But they made me pay for it on the next trip. They always win in the end."

He poured a glass half full of rum and filled it with ice.

"Thank you," the commissaris said.

"Carta Blanca," the captain said, "the best rum of the island. You know why?"

"No."

"Because of the label."

The captain turned the bottle and the commissaris saw a handsome black woman showing a full well-formed bosom as she bent down to took at a letter which she had obviously just received and which was causing a strong emotion.

"Every man who drinks this rum thinks he has written the letter," the captain said, "and they forget the taste of the rum. But the rum isn't bad all the same."

The commissaris leaned back in his chair and sipped a little of the raw-tasting liquor. He told himself to be careful, his body wouldn't take much of the strong spirit.

"You made some money today," the captain said, emptying his glass, filling it again and leering at the commissaris. "I spoke to the woman who sold you a number. You should go to Otrabanda tomorrow and collect, she likes you. You had a busy day, didn't you? One of my men saw you talking to Mr. van der Linden. Did you like the old buzzard?"

"Yes," the commissaris said, "a nice man."

"He is all right. Won a case for me once, and he lost one too, but that was my fault. He warned me but I was young then. I believed in right and wrong."

"You don't anymore?"

"Hee hee." The captain sat down gingerly in a rickety-looking cane chair. "Must be careful now. Chair is getting old, like the ship. One day the bottom will fall out of her but it doesn't matter anymore. We are all getting old, me, the crew, the engine. Right and wrong. I don't know now. The older I get the less I know."

The commissaris forgot his good intentions and swallowed his rum. He put the glass on the table with a bang and the captain filled it up for him. His hand was unsteady and he had trouble with the ice cubes. The commissaris helped him.

"You saw our medicine man today as well, didn't you? Did you like him?"

"Shon Wancho," the commissaris said.

"Shon Wancho," the captain repeated, nodding his head vigorously.

"Do you know him?"

"Sure," the captain said. "I brought him here, a long time ago, thirty years maybe, maybe longer. He comes from me bush, a bush doctor. His father was a bush doctor before him. He knows."

"He knows what?"

The captain gesticulated. "Everything. He knows the lot."

"Do you see him regularly?"

"Not regularly," the captain said, "sometimes. I saw him the other day."

"Why?"

"About the crabs. The crabs were after me, you know. The rum brought them out. Thousands of crabs. I was seeing them all the time, rum or no rum."

"Did he tell you to stop drinking?"

The captain looked surprised. "No," he said, "but he chased the crabs away."

"They haven't come back?"

"If they do I will go and see him again."

The captain was slurring his words and the commissaris expected him to fall asleep or pass out any minute now but he had underestimated the old man's capacity.

"You like ?" he asked.

The commissaris had suddenly remembered the pain in his legs. The twinge had come back again during the morning but it had left him when he was sitting on the rocking chair in Shon Wancho's house and it wasn't with him now. "This is a good island," he was telling the captain. "I have been thinking that I might like to live here one day."

The captain nodded solemnly. "Yes, you do that. And when you get bored seeing the same people and the same goats you can come on a little trip with me. I have a cabin for passengers and the cook is Chinese."

"That would be nice."

"No charge," the captain said, "provided I am still alive. Don't wait too long."

The captain stamped his foot on the floor twice and an elderly Chinese appeared in the doorway.

"You are Dutch," the captain said, "and the Dutch always eat something when they drink. I have come to so often that I have picked up their habits. In Venezuela we drink when we drink. What have you got, cook?"

"Noodle soup, boss."

"No eggrolls?"

"Eggrolls, too."

"Yes, please," the commissaris said.

The food arrived within minutes and the hunchback set the table, taking the rum bottle with him in spite of the captain's protests.

The commissaris stayed another hour, listening to the captain's tales. He heard about the ports of Venezuela and Colombia and there was a long story about Guajira, the peninsula between the two countries where smugglers rule and where Indians still live the Indian life. He was told about the many islands, about revolutions, about sudden gales.

"I nearly lost my first mate then," the captain said, "Maria's brother. How is he, by the way?"

"Her brother?" the commissaris asked, "but she only has

The captain was trying to light a soggy cigar and, after several attempts, threw it out of the porthole and selected a fresh one from the tin which the commissaris had put on the table.

"Different mother," he said, "but the same father. Maria's father has a lot of children but he was very fond of this son. His mother had come out from Holland to teach here. De Sousa looked after her when she became pregnant and built her a little house in the South. Maria knew her brother, they would come and play on this ship sometimes. The boy went to high school in Amsterdam and later graduated from the merchant navy college. Then he came back."

"You knew him well?" the commissaris asked.

"Of course. He sailed under me for several years. Poor fellow."

"Poor fellow?"

"Yes." The captain stamped on the floor three times.

"Captain?" the hunchback's voice came from the lower deck.

"Can I have that bottle back now?"

"No," the hunchback shouted, "but you can have a beer."

"Beer!" the captain shouted.

Two tins arrived and the captain shoved one to the commissaris. They pulled them open.

"Health."

"The poor fellow," the commissaris reminded him.

"Yes. Natural child, you know. He had his mother's name. His mother married and she didn't have much time for her first child. He hated his father. And he is a small chap, small chaps have a difficult time. He looks small too, some small chaps don't look small but he does. Became very Christian, Bible and all. And then he wouldn't stay with me anymore, he couldn't put up with the drinking and goings on, used to lock himself in his cabin at times. I couldn't help him. But he was a good seaman, I liked him."

"So where is he now?"

"He went back to Holland. Surely you know. Didn't you run into him when Maria got killed?"

"No."

"He is on Schiermonnikoog, 'The Eye of die Gray Monk. Funny name, that's why I remembered it. He gave up die sea but he had to stay close to it so he picked an island to live on. He became a ranger on a nature reserve. Always liked birds and plants."

"What's his name?" the commissaris asked.

"He has his father's first name and his mother's surname. Ramon Scheffer."

"Thank you," the commissaris said.