At first light and without further ceremony, Sarani had rolled up the pandanus mat that had marked the seat of Mbo’. The taboo ended, it became an ordinary part of the boat’s fittings once more. Sarani leant against it as he prepared the day’s first wad of sirih pinang.
As soon as the boards were up, Arjan jumped down onto the nets in the hold. His feet disappeared into the monofilament and caught in the mesh as he tried to pull them out. He fell over onto the mattress of nets, and his arms became entangled. He wriggled about, squealing with laughter, kicking his legs against the net. His arms freed, he stood up again so he could throw himself forward once more. It looked like too much fun for Sumping Lasa not to join in.
Sarani and I wrestled the nets up onto the bow deck, where Pilar waited to transfer them to his boat. The last net was one I had not seen used before. It had a larger mesh and it looked new. ‘Si Sehlim gave the money last time we were in Sandakan. Thousands, and now look what the rat has done. Here.’ Sarani had found a section that had been shredded, very neatly, into strands of spaghetti that scattered into the bilge as we lifted it out. The hold was empty now, but there had been no sign of the rat. I stepped down into the hold to join Sarani. Arjan and Sumping Lasa peered over the edge of the planks. Minehanga was positioned as backstop by the engine well. The hunt was on.
Sarani moved forward to the bow locker, separated from the main hold by a half bulkhead, and pulled out the coils of rope, the floats, a new anchor, a punctured football, and an old coconut that were stored there. I was expecting the rat to come bursting out at any moment, to bear down on where I stood in the hold, gripping a length of wood. But nothing emerged from the locker. The rodent had to be aft.
The waves lapped against the hull. The water in the bilge was hardly moving. We scanned the shadows under the cabin boards, below the engine and beyond to the stern. Nothing. Sarani started slowly towards the stern, poking his stick into the crannies between the ribs and the gunwale, squatting down as he checked under the cabin deck, rattling the stick under the block of wood on which the engine sat. Nothing. A movement at the edge of my field of vision startled me into raising my stick. It was only a cockroach, but now my heart was pounding.
Sarani moved out of sight under the deck beyond the engine. Any moment now. Where else could it be? I was now the lonely backstop. I crouched over the bilge, commanding the approaches to the bow locker. Any moment now. But Sarani had found nothing in the stern hold either. He called to me that I should check the bow locker again. I wondered if it might have hitched a ride onto Pilar’s boat with the nets. I peered into the locker, prepared to meet the stare of beady eyes, but there was nothing. I was running my stick around inside the rim of the car tyre when Minehanga cried out. It was on deck.
I got there as Sarani was coming up through the boards of the stern. Minehanga had seen the beast, its head poking out from behind a plank leaning against the gunwale. She had thrown Sumping Lasa’s flip-flops at it. The gap between the board and the gunwale had created a covered run above decks that the rat was using to double back towards the bow. Sarani took the stern end of the plank. I took the other, my cudgel raised, ready to Bat-A-Rat. Slowly we pulled the top edge of the plank away from the gunwale. The rat was halfway between us, crouched in defence, halted in its retreat towards the stern. When the light touched it, it turned again and bolted in my direction. It had too far to go. What had been a refuge was now a trap. Sarani opened up the old ammunition crate that held what tools he had and pulled out a sledge hammer with a rusty head. The body of the rat settled onto the sea bed near a spinney of black urchins. It was no longer there the next morning.
In the days that followed, waiting for Sabung Lani’s return from Bongao, my role aboard the boat filled out. I had been a deck-hand from the start, but the purchase of disposable razors made me ship’s barber too. Sarani was my first customer and he sat patiently presenting a toothless jaw while I tried to work up a lather on his salty oil-skin face. The performance drew a crowd. Arjan watched fascinated, raising his grubby hand to his forehead from time to time as though something were bothering him. Sarani told me he had fallen into the engine well while I had been in Semporna and had cut his scalp. Barber and leech, I washed away the dried blood matting his hair to reveal a wound that should have been stitched. It was showing signs of infection already. ‘You have medicine?’ asked Sarani. I had a small supply of antiseptics, and set about shaving the area surrounding the cut. ‘That one looks like water,’ except it was H2O2 instead of H2O: hydrogen peroxide, the diver’s remedy. When applied to a cut it turns white and fizzes like a dose of salts. Arjan’s cut was volcanic, a bubbling vent in the middle of the bald patch. There were murmurs of surprise. ‘It’s like Coca-Cola,’ said Sarani. I swabbed the cut with betadine and pulled the edges as close together as I could with the plaster, wondering just how long it would stay on a head like Arjan’s. Thereafter I was asked to look at wounds old and new, from the nick on Sumping Lasa’s finger to the long invaginated gash in one young man’s leg. I did what I could.
The passing of time was marked by gratifying moments that showed I was progressing from being tolerated on the boat to being accepted. Arjan could sit on my lap without fidgeting or pulling my chest hair. At meal-times Minehanga no longer gave me my own bowl. As the men of the household Sarani and I ate from the same dish. We were served our food before women and children, but often Mangsi Raya could not wait and would crawl to my side, staring into my eyes with unnerving trust as I fed her flakes of fish. Sumping Lasa’s tantrums were becoming less frequent and I realised with a pang that the traits in her character I found so unlovely had in fact been symptoms of the disquiet my presence had caused her. One night when the wind was cold, I was woken by a movement against my back; it was Sumping Lasa snuggling in behind me for warmth. I let her stay, despite Sarani’s warning not to sleep too close to the children. ‘You will be wet,’ he said. ‘They will pee on you.’ I got wet anyway; the wind brought rain soon after.
Analisa, one of Sarani’s granddaughters, a pretty girl of ten, shyly proffered the bamboo louse-pick to me one day. I had watched the operation often enough and knew the right noise to make on discovering a louse, ‘tsss’ on the inhale, and on killing it, an exhaled ‘hmm’. It worked like a progress report. I took the pick and she lay down on the deck in front of me waiting to be groomed. I parted her wind-blown hair with the bamboo slat and scanned her scalp for louse spoor. I was an inept tracker – I failed to find a nit even – but Analisa had thought it natural to entrust me with this service. Bunga Lasa, Sarani’s youngest child by his first wife, relieved me of the pick when she had seen enough of my incompetence and was soon going ‘tsss-hmm’ as she cut a swath through the parasites. Then she turned on me. It did not occur to me that she might find anything that would summon the sound effects, but she did. ‘Tsss-hmm’, once, twice, announced acceptance into a club I would rather not have been joining.
My familiarity with life afloat was growing on a subconscious, physiological level as well. I knew without looking the state of the tide. My balance was improving as my body came into synchronism with the periods of the sea, its broad movements, its grace-notes. I could walk the length of Pilar’s roof while the boat was under way. I could even walk the length of the dug-out without bending to hold onto the sides. My eyesight became sharper, revealing shapes on a farther horizon. One morning when the deep-water net had shifted in the night, I was the first to spot the polystyrene float. I began to be able to read the sea, the shallows and currents, from the colour of the water and the pattern of waves. Sarani had me steer when both he and Minehanga were busy.
On our fishing trips in the dug-out I had worked my way up from baler to net-boy already. Sarani began to pass the pole to me more often while he prepared a quid, or caulked the