The Young Man by Danny Antonelli

He rolled out from under the boat and lay on his back. The sun soaked into him. But the fly that had awoken him kept buzzing near his ear. It landed on his face and he brushed it away.

He heard the dry rustle of leaves behind him. He flopped over onto his stomach and saw the lizard among the dead leaves at the base of the hill. It was ugly, prehistoric looking. But he knew it wasn’t poisonous. That’s why he hadn’t hesitated to sleep under the boat again last night. The lizard vanished without a sound.

The young man did a few sit-ups and then reached under the boat and pulled out his battered white suitcase. The fly buzzed his ear again. He cursed it. What a pleasant dream he’d been having until that fly brought him to consciousness.

A ship’s horn sounded and he scanned the blue horizon. A white steamer was going out to sea. He looked after it longingly, wishing he could be aboard it, out in the ocean, sailing for anywhere, free.

The steamer plowed past the bluff and disappeared. The young man stood up, slipped out of his jeans and packed them into that part of his suitcase where he kept his dirty clothes. He always wore swimming trunks under his jeans so he only chose a clean red T-shirt out of the few clean clothes he had left.

He set the T-shirt on top of his suitcase and then ran down to the water. He continued running and it splashed delicious and warm over his legs and chest. He plunged down under it. When he finally raised his head to breathe, he shook his long curls and crystalline drops rained all around him. The water was warm all year because of the reef that belted the coast and kept out the cold currents—and the sharks.

At low tide once he’d walked out to the reef wearing tennis shoes so the coral wouldn’t slice up his feet. He’d explored the tidal pools where green seaweeds and black muscles were twined together in tight clumps. He’d pried open a few of the muscles to look inside them. But he didn’t like what he saw and threw them out into the choppy ocean on the other side of the reef. He decided that he preferred the shallows near shore where the water was warmest.

He washed by using handfuls of sand to scrub his skin. Afterwards, relaxing with only his head above the surface, he studied the green hill that rose like the hump of a sleeping dragon behind the overturned boat on the beach. At the top of the hill was a typical coast house, whitewashed walls and a thatched roof. It was large, probably three or four bedrooms. He’d watched it before for signs of life but it appeared to be dead. The holiday season had begun some time ago but perhaps the house was not to be used. He was concerned because whoever owned the house also owned the boat, and he was sure that the minute they found out he was sleeping under it they would become possessive and he’d be forced to find a new place to sleep. The boat was useless really because it had gaping holes in its hull, holes through which he watched the constellations drift across the sky before he went to sleep. But he knew what the owners would say. Well, if it happened it would be a bother, but he could always try a night or two in those caves under the bluff. Despite the bats that lived in them.

He emerged from the water and walked up the sand to the concrete slab the boat rested on. The sun had already dried him. It was another brilliantly hot day. Already the sand glowed like a white mirror and a heat shimmer distorted the wall of palms that lined the beach. He slipped into his T-shirt, put his suitcase under the prow of the boat, and then headed for the restaurant.

It wasn’t much of a restaurant, just a battered house with a canopied patio and a few metal tables and chairs. It was about a half mile up the beach and a hundred yards into the palms. At this early hour only the Arab cook and a few Africans would be around. No white people would be there. And certainly none of his friends. All the boys slept late. When they finally did arrive, it was with hangovers and dead eyes. For breakfast they always drank beer and smoked cigarettes. And when enough of them were gathered around they’d begin their entirely predictable stories about drink and seduction. The stories were obviously fabricated, but no one would challenge anyone else for fear that the illusions of manliness they were creating would be destroyed.

A blond boy with a rather scorched face held center stage most of the time. Especially when relating tales of conquest. But once, when he was describing a juicy scene in rather intimate detail, the girl he was talking about came up behind him. Of course nobody said anything and so she had a chance to listen to what he was saying about her. After he finished, the girl spoke up. Not only did she refute his story, but she filled in her version with some well-wrought aspersions on his virility. She then delivered a healthy smack to his cheek and walked away. The blond boy flushed crimson under his sunburn and the whole company of his faithless mates howled with derisive laughter. But the next day he was back, undauntedly recounting a fresh story, the boys gathered around him as tolerant as ever of his—their common—sin.

Red dust gathered on the young man’s ankles as he walked between the palms along the dirt path which led to the restaurant. The previous Spring he’d gone hunting in the northern frontier district and a dust storm had whipped up. He and his two friends had locked themselves up in the Land Rover, the windows barred tight, but the grains of red dust had sifted in anyhow. And by the time the storm ended, dust was in their ears, in their nostrils, in their mouths. Every exposed portion of skin had taken on a new blush. The whole country was red. Everything except of course the furry green vegetation and the white strips of sand on the beach.

He arrived at the restaurant and sat under the canopy, as far away as possible from the fly-infested entrance to the kitchen. A barefoot black man appeared out of nowhere. He wore khaki shorts and a ragged shirt, listened to the young man’s request and then plunged into the darkness of the kitchen.

A warm breeze stirred the scraps of refuse under the tables. Flies hummed around the sugar grains that hadn’t been cleaned off the tables since yesterday—since how many yesterdays? Two brawny blacks backed out from between the palms. They pulled a rope that had something attached to it. They were putting great effort into their work and urged each other on with pleasant singsong phrases. Eventually they got the momentum and pulled a large palm trunk out through the tall grass. They rolled it around until they got it parallel with the red path that swung behind the restaurant. Then they dropped the rope and slipped back into the shadows between the palms.

Breakfast, consisting of toast and tea, was delivered. Then the waiter ambled off into the palms also.

There’s only one similarity between us, the young man thought bitterly, and that’s a total lack of power to wring changes from the impersonal system of the world. The system is sealed vacuum tight and doesn’t recognize our existence independent of our utility. He understood that neither he nor those black men was indispensable. They were all nobodies in the middle of nowhere. It all seemed so utterly hopeless. If there were only some means of escape. If only he could beam himself around the universe like a lightwave! On this planet it made no difference which continent he was on. It was always the same. All was governed by an impersonal logic that drove people to exist like machines and die like machines, discarded, dismembered, thrown onto the scrap heap of history. The ignorant were kept ignorant so they could better serve the system. Discord between the nations and races was encouraged lest the simple people of the world attained to consciousness and realized their worth. Just let the masses get restless and the age-old cure was instantly delivered: WAR.

For the black men on this continent nothing had changed except the color of the Master. The orgies of independence and the diet of hope had actually made starving and slaving worse than before. It would be a long time before the situation got better, if it ever did. If it ever could.

Fury smoldered within him. He gulped his tea and scalded his tongue. Tears came to his eyes.

“Hello, hello, hello!”

He recognized the blond boy’s voice but couldn’t see him through the tears. He rubbed them out of his eyes.

“Memories of lost love no doubt,” the blond boy said with a chuckle.

A second voice chimed in: “What’s she look like? She got big boobs?”

He recognized the high-pitched cackle of the boy who had a bad complexion, the one who looked like a timber wolf.

Both of the newcomers sat down at the young man’s table. They lit cigarettes and when the waiter appeared, ordered beers. The routine began just as he’d anticipated it would. Silently, patiently, he listened to their voices rise and fall, but he allowed his thoughts to drift free. Later, after more of the group appeared, the young man was able to make an unnoticed departure and walk back to his beach.

As he approached the spot, his eyes routinely wandered to the house atop the hill. A dread engulfed him. He stopped. There was someone standing on the veranda. They seemed to be looking his way. Then the person turned and walked into the house. Whether it was a man or woman he couldn’t tell. Dressed all in summer whites like that it could have been either. But unmistakably it had been a white person. That meant the owners of the house were there.

He continued toward the boat and kept an eye on the house but nobody else appeared. He went for his swim, relaxed in the sun until evening, returned to the restaurant for dinner, and when he came back in the darkness lit by billions of sparkling stars, his suspicions were confirmed. There were lights on in the house. But at least for tonight he’d be safe.

*

The next morning, for some reason, he slept later than usual. Finally the sun blasted through the damaged hull and he was forced to blink open his eyes. He lay there quite still and listened. Someone was splashing around in the water. He rolled out from under the boat and glanced quickly into the leaves at the base of the hill but the lizard wasn’t there. Then he looked into the water. A head with dark hair was the only thing visible above the glassy surface. He stripped down to his trunks and strolled down to the edge of the water. Before he could put his toe in, she turned. She was obviously surprised because in the middle of starting to stand up she hesitated and then sat down, breaking the water around her into wide ripples.

His eyes retained an after-image of the two dark stripes of her bikini.

“You from the house?”

She seemed reluctant to reply and moved cautiously away as he entered the water.

“Where did you come from?” Her voice was heavily accented. Northern England.

“From under the boat.”

She glanced over his shoulder and he slid down to his knees so that the water crept up over his chest. She looked back at him. Her eyes were just like the ocean on the other side of the reef, blue-green and disturbingly deep.

“You have a great tan,” she said. “Been here long?”

“A few days.”

He launched himself and swam with sure swift strokes, but only for a few yards. He stopped, turned to face her, and shook the water from his hair.

“Staying much longer?” And with a gentle breaststroke she circled around behind him.

He turned to face her once more. “A few more days.”

The long low bleat of a ship’s horn cut in. They both turned their attention out to the ocean. A black tanker, low in the water, steamed out to sea. A black plume of smoke trailed out behind it.

“What an ugly old thing,” she said.

He stood up suddenly and the water fell off him in sheets. She studied his body.

“I know where the sea has cut some caves into the rocks. Down there.” He pointed toward the bluff that guarded the entrance to the port. “Would you like to see?”

She hesitated.

“There’s bats,” he said.

She opened her eyes wide. “Yes. Alright.”

She stood up. He was pleased at the sight of her young body. Her hair hung wet and black across her white shoulders. She smiled. And together they left the water and walked down the beach toward the bluff.

Danny Antonelli

Image: Pero Kvrzica, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons – Scruffy beach cafe with canopied veranda. Cropped to fit.