Greetings from the Vodka Sea Read online

  John shrugged. “The tides are still a matter of some debate.” The tour guide had a vaguely Oxfordian accent. Perhaps he’d studied there. Perhaps he was the son of a local potentate and had been afforded the advantage of a British education.

  Monica continued twisting one ankle and raised her knee and looked expectantly at Bruce. She could feel the fabric of her crepe dress drop below her (just as she knew it would, as if the fabric was now part of her), although the top of it still lay respectably on her knee. She felt the breeze move up her skirt and across her trimmed pubis, and with one more minor adjustment — there! — she awaited Bruce’s reaction.

  He caught her gaze and was smiling back at her now. She rather dramatically ran the back of her hand across her brow, then slowly lowered it to rest on her knee. She drew her sun-dress up another inch and watched her husband’s eyes widen. He seemed at first to panic, to signal her with urgent nods that something was amiss. But she only drew her hem up, discreetly, another notch, and slowly let her hand fall onto the pocket of fabric that tented her crotch. A finger lazy brushed the skin along the inner thigh, and Bruce’s signals became more frantic. The other passengers were engrossed in the tour and paid no attention as she casually let her hand drop to her thigh, and slipped two fingers along her smoothed skin until they lightly brushed the ruffled, raised flesh. Bruce crossed his legs and tried to look away. Was he angry? She couldn’t tell.

  “The Bolen’s whale, then, is it related to the humpback?”

  “Exactly right, sir. This whale is a close relative of the humpback. Scientists believe that the Vodka Sea was once part of a vast oceanic corridor that stretched from pole to pole. Way back, as the oceans receded, a pod of humpbacks may have become landlocked. They practiced the elementary rule of evolution: adapt or die.”

  “What about the marauders?” It was Bruce’s turn to ask the question. John hesitated. This was not the kind of question he normally faced. Bruce watched the guide scan his memory bank for a moment. John had one of those ageless foreign faces; he could have been anywhere from fourteen to forty. (Bruce thought of a story Anthony had told him about how his sister-in-law, ex-sister-in-law now, had once befriended an orphan during some South American getaway and decided to take him home and adopt him. They’d done all the paper-work, at least they thought they’d done the paperwork, but as they were entering the airport the chief of police stopped them. Turned out their orphan was a twenty-six-year-old midget with a wife and children of his own. The kicker to the story, as Anthony told it, was when his now-ex-sister-in-law lamented, “What’s the world coming to, when you can’t even trust a midget?”)

  John cleared his throat, suitably recovered.

  “Everyone has heard such stories,” he said, beading in on Bruce. “But it’s important to remember that our government has never supported the — what’s the word — notion? Yes, notion of a resort on the Vodka Sea. First of all, they mistrust foreigners in general, even Australians,” John turned to the McGuffans and smiled; Alice hee-hawed appreciatively, “and wish to do anything to avoid encouraging them to come here. And second, the government is given to a certain,” he paused again, grasping for the right word, “fundamentalism. The notion of a sea of alcohol, well, they don’t quite know what to make of that. First they tried to ban it, but as you can imagine, it’s hard to ban a sea.”

  The small crowd tittered.

  “Then they tried to regulate it: no swimming on Sundays or after eight o’clock, that sort of thing. Now, they simply tax us to death. There’s a twenty-six per cent room tax, a fourteen per cent food service tax . . .” He waved to indicate that he could go on forever. “It’s the perfect antidote for a pious, avaricious, ambivalent government. Condemn with one hand, profit with the other.”

  “But the marauders? What of them?”

  “The marauders?” John grunted. “That’s just an old wives’ tale, sir. Spread by the government to scare off tourists. The old women believe it, and the children. But I can assure you, you’re perfectly safe on the Vodka Sea.”

  On cue, a whale punched the surface and rolled its back through the air, and then another and another until the sea around the cruise boat boiled with these bobbing self-contained fists. John pulled a bucket from under his seat and spilled its shrimpy brine into the water; in their rush to get at the food, the little whales smashed into one another quite comically.

  “Look, the whales have come to say hello.” John uncovered another bucket, and with a professional conjurer’s flourish, poured it over the side. “A most intelligent animal indeed, ladies and gentlemen. Stories are told of I don’t know how many drunken fishermen, who, after falling overboard in a stupor, have been safely buffeted to shore by the vigilant whale.”

  Bruce looked into the water. The sun was already beginning to set, and the broken water sparkled sharply in the whales’ small wakes. Two or three of the creatures begun ramming the side of the tour boat, hungry for more, It was all quite comical, like a small child play-fighting a giant dog. Ping. Ping. Their little heads echoed off the aluminum hull. Bruce looked in the water and watched the curious whales, immersed in his own tiny sea as surely as Monica (leg slightly raised, fingers discreetly but vigorously working) was immersed in hers.

  . . .

  There were ups and downs. At times they seemed to be moving in different directions. If Monica wanted to go to the bazaar, Bruce wanted to go to the ruins; if Bruce fancied the ancient burial grounds, Monica insisted on the sixteenth century frescos. She called her mother.

  “It’s a give and take, sweetheart. Your father and I never really agree on anything. That’s why we have two tellies.”

  “Three tellies, Mum.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Three tellies. You and Dad have three tellies.”

  “Yes, three tellies. One for the children, of course.” Monica envied the way her mother could reduce any problem to fit into her dollhouse world of social teas, the ladies’ squash ladder and Third World charity boards.

  “It’s just that I sometimes wonder if — not that I think I’ve made a mistake, mind you, but — I wonder if maybe we didn’t rush into this a little too fast.”

  “Surely you’re not having second thoughts? The man’s a doctor.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, Mummy. I just don’t know him. I should have eased into him a little more, I think.”

  “Monkey, sweetie, you’re on holiday. You’re a thousand miles away from nowhere. You shouldn’t have a care in the world. I know what it’s like. I get to Provence or Gibraltar, I’m weeks before I can settle in. It takes time to shake the city out of your head, to let yourself go and just relax. Go have a nice mineral mud bath — have you tried the mineral mud bath? Treat yourself to something nice and stop worrying so much. You’re just like your father.”

  And Monica took her mother’s advice. She treated herself to a mineral mud bath (it was as good as she’d heard; she emerged, hours later, thoroughly rested, her skin tingling), then wandered down to the sea. She took a sip of the salty water, and then another and another. She spent the rest of the afternoon on the shore, drinking from the Vodka Sea and watching the tiny waves rise and fall.

  The week was almost over, and they’d planned a coach trip to the coast. At the last minute Bruce got an urgent call. They needed his advice on a complicated case (Bruce had pioneered the use of non-invasive procedures, almost single-handedly pulling London out of the Dark Ages of reproductive surgery); they wouldn’t have called but it was, quite literally, a matter of life or death. Bruce kissed Monica’s forehead.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to it, Peachtree. A doctor’s life is never his own.” He urged her to take the motor trip without him. The McGuffans would be there, and that new couple from Bingly (married, it turned out, the same day as Bruce and Monica), and besides, he would likely be in and out of consultation all afternoon. She reluctantly agreed.

  The coach was cramped and hot (air conditioning was yet
to be discovered by the locals, it seemed). Monica had a seat mostly to herself, although John sat with her whenever he was taking a break from his guide duties. They drove due west, past the government checkpoint a few kilometres from the resort compound, up into the rolling hills (several rows of barbed wire separated the road from the untended orange groves), and through the gentle grasslands. They drove right past the Hanging Gardens, heralded in several languages as the Tenth Wonder of the World. It looked broken down and unattended, and judging by John’s smirk, it must of been something of a local embarrassment. The coast was . . . well, a coast: rocky shoreline and sandy beaches, although the water looked cold and muddy and violent; it had nothing of the Vodka Sea’s soothing charm. And so they trudged through the half dozen grim tourist shops, each selling the same cheap t-shirts and shell animals, and the dirty bistro (where a mercifully Spartan lunch of fish soup and herbed bread was provided) and out along the same breakwater where pirates and crusaders, centuries before, had stopped to ask directions. Their last stop was an icebox-sized bar, named simply 1234. A glass of local wine was included with the tour (somewhere between a Merlot and a Cabernet, with a peaty, almost mouldy, aftertaste). Monica had one drink, and then John, who’d latched onto her, the Single Englishwoman, bought her another and another.

  “It’s a long ride back.” He smiled. He skin smelled of coconut and motor oil.

  And a long ride back it was. Dusk had come, and the coach fairly crawled along the unlit gravel highway. John gave up his patter ten minutes into the trip, and settled into the spot beside Monica.

  “It seems so curious to me,” she said, after enduring a few moments of silence.

  “What’s that, miss?”

  “You seem to be somewhat above this.” The wine had made her unusually brave. “I mean, you’re obviously educated. A man of some character and breeding. Surely you aspire to being more than a tour guide.”

  John shrugged.

  “We do what we can, miss. And when we can’t do what we can, we do what we must.”

  “Come now, John, there’s no need to play the inscrutable foreigner on me. You and I both know that you are cut out for bigger things than pampering fat Americans and buying squeaky English women drinks. I could see you doing quite well back in London.”

  John smiled. “Two things, miss. First, never look at a postcard and think you’re getting all the picture. And second, this isn’t London.”

  A few minutes later, he seemed to drift off to sleep, his head tilting onto her shoulder. It was not uncomfortable, it just wasn’t comfortable. Some minutes later, John let his hand slip casually against Monica’s knee. Slowly, glacially, it marked its way up until it rested on her thigh. A slight grunt as the pretending-to-sleep tour guide pretended to turn in a dreamy fit, and the hand was on her lap. He pressed lightly, his hand vibrating and jumping as the coach slithered along the ancient road. She let it stay there, pretending now to be asleep too. Casually, she let her legs unfold a few inches, so that the tour guide’s hand pressed firmly against her. And there it stayed for the duration of the trip.

  . . .

  At supper that night, Monica ordered the whale, grilled on an open flame and served with a peppercorn-garlic mash. There were potatoes too, the brownish red kind, apparently a staple around these parts, roasted with a variety of sweet local squash. Bruce watched his wife as she ate. He expected her to approach the whale with caution; she attacked.

  “Mmmm.” Her eyes were shut, the sound stretched into a barely muffled moan. Bruce felt embarrassed. Surely nothing could taste that good.

  “You must try the whale, Bruce. It’s . . .”

  “I’d rather not, thank you.”

  “But it’s . . .”

  “No thank you, Monica.” Bruce pulled on the wing of his game hen, which tasted rather more game than hen, and looked around the dining room. McGuffan was there, chawing on his whale steak and kidney pie as his wife neatly filleted her whole poached whale in a vodka Béarnaise (spécial du jour in the Imperial Room). The Americans were there too, he sucking the marrow out of a whale’s spine, she helping the young children slice their battered whale and chips into manageable pieces. There were others, couples mostly (new couples, honeymooners, seemed to arrive every day) who collectively, and silently save for the gnawing and sucking and appreciative smacks, were devouring an entire generation of Bolen’s dwarf whale. Monica took another slug of her Blue Whale (fresh-drawn vodka, blue curaçao and grenadine), downed the last drop, and signed to Ricki, pulling double duty behind the bar, for yet another glass.

  “Haven’t you had enough to drink, Peachtree?”

  “We’re on bloody holiday.”

  “But angel, that’s six . . .”

  “Give it a rest, granny.” She offered Bruce one more bite, just, she didn’t doubt it now, to rub it in. His priggishness was suited to back home; the hospital and great city demanded no less, but that was a thousand miles away. The more kempt and parcelled he became, the more Monica unstitched herself. It was stupid, really; Monica knew it. She’d set Bruce up as some sort of authority figure (not unlike, as distressing as this was to admit, her father), and now she tilted and tumbled at him like a temperamental teenager. He’d challenged her when she headed off to supper in shorts and her bikini top (although that’s how the other women were dressed, for godsake, what with the nights so stifling and the atmosphere of the restaurant so informal), and sternly swatted her hidden hand away during appetizers as she quietly tried to breech the fortress of his trousers. The reactions were expected. Anticipated.

  Dessert was served, mango ice in hollowed coconut shells (definitely imported, he was certain of this) as Bruce diligently avoided eye contact with McGuffan. It had become ritual for the Australians to come to their table for coffee and dessert, and Bruce couldn’t bear the thought of entertaining them again. He strategically selected a minuscule table at the far end of the dining room, beyond the pampas divider and prostate-shaped dance floor. They ate their ice in a pleasant silence. The sound of a folk guitar washed over from the Queen of Hearts (and here and there, an odd cracking sound from across the water, fireworks, no doubt, for some local saint’s eve), riding the rhythms of the distant waves. The fingers of their free hands interlocked, and they looked deep into each other’s eyes the way lovers should.

  He was talking to his wife about London, about how the city had changed.

  “I don’t see the difference,” she was saying. “It’s the same old city it’s always been, only there’s more of it, I suppose.”

  “Nonsense!” Bruce was surprised how aggressive his tone had become. Already a Senior Fellow and department head, he’d learned not to have a lot of patience. “I mean, it’s not really English any more, is it? You won’t find any real English people in London. You’ve got to go far out of the city to find real English people.”

  “We’re real English people, aren’t we?”

  “You’re twisting my meaning . . .”

  “And my family. And your friends. Even your mother — Christ, her father was assistant to the Home Secretary.”

  “Let’s leave Mother out of this.”

  “Her uncle was a Churchill by marriage. How could anyone possibly be more English than your mother?”

  “I mean the city as a whole. It’s become . . . cosmopolitan.” Bruce emphasized each syllable, as if each one represented a particular shade of decadence. “Just try getting a decent meal. It’s all McDonald’s and halal meats. Just try getting some decent fish and chips . . .”

  “You hate fish and chips.”

  “Or a decent glass of beer. You know what the pub across from the hospital sells? Molson’s Canadian. And Coors Lite. Coors Lite? What the hell is that?”

  “I hardly think fried potatoes and beer are reasonable grounds for dismissing an entire city.”

  “That’s not the point.” Bruce was shouting at Monica now. “It’s the people. The people have changed. When I was a boy, the people were still Englis
h. Now, everyone in London is an immigrant or a tourist or a businessman. Christ, even the prostitutes are Russian. And when I go to work, I need an interpreter — and that’s just for my staff. In the wards, it’s like a UN refugee camp, its all coloureds and Asians and Indians . . .”

  Bruce’s voice trailed off. Monica sat in silence. This was a side of her husband she had never seen or even suspected. Underneath the starched shirt and school tie was a starched shirt and school tie, an Englishman dying to get out. Bruce tried to smile.

  “I’m only saying the truth. You know it as well as I.” He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. She was thinking of the years ahead, the chubby, pasty children, the women’s club, a mistress perhaps, a lover for her, a friend of his no doubt, a protégé.

  “Honey, please don’t be that way.” He reached for her hands again. She let him hold them but turned her head toward the sea.

  “Fancy a bit of company?” McGuffan had rooted them out.

  “Actually, we’re just going to our room.” Bruce pushed his chair back.

  “Splendid! But we’ve only just ordered fancy coffees. Imperial Room specialty. You must try one.”

  “Caffeine doesn’t agree with me.”

  “Caffeine doesn’t agree with you. Did you hear, that Alice? We’ll make it decaf, then. You really must try this drink. It has — what’s the stuff, Alice?”

  “Anisette, dear.”

  “Anisette, yes . . .”

  “And a splash . . .”

  “. . . of vodka?”

  “That’s right, love. Vodka.”

  Bruce looked at Monica pleadingly. She tilted her head and ran her bare foot up his leg.

  Bruce collapsed just a little. “One drink, then. Only one.”

  “Splendid.” McGuffan rubbed his hands together, excited at the opportunity to play the congenial host. “Ricki! Café spécial, for four.”

  “Make mine a —”

  “And make one a decaf, for the good doctor here.”

  “One drink, and that’s it.”