We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [95]
Krebs stirred his coffee. I couldn't make him out. He was toying with me and I hated it.
My host tilted his head and examined me. Then, without warning, he started whistling a tune I didn't know.
"So distant," he said finally, sounding almost as though he was addressing himself. "So young, so angry, and so very unapproachable. How sad." He shook his head. "Tut, tut, tut." Then he continued. "By far the most bizarre thing about you is your interest in your namesake. You see, that interest—and you can trust me on this one—is shared by no one else here in Apia."
He got up abruptly. "Right, let's get going."
He nodded in the direction of the sea chest, which was still on the table. "You'd better take that. I presume you'll be staying with your"—he hesitated before tasting the word—"friend."
I nodded, but I was at a loss. I hadn't even thought that far ahead. But I supposed that Krebs was right. I would stay with my father. Fifteen years with his back to me, I tap him on the shoulder—and he turns around and invites me to stay? I could feel my earlier anxiety return. It was all so ill-considered. I really had no chart for this part of the voyage.
I stood and took the sea chest.
"Of course you're always welcome to return here, should the stay with your friend fail to work out. I would be only too happy to renew our acquaintance." Krebs bowed theatrically and gestured me toward the door with a sweeping movement. "Do you ride?" he asked, as we stepped down from the veranda. Two horses, already saddled, awaited us.
"Well, I can try," I replied, and stuck a foot in one stirrup with a movement that I hoped looked practiced. Then I swung myself up onto the horse. For a moment I thought I might slide down the other side, and I could feel how bruised and battered I was. I secured the sea chest to the saddle.
"You're doing pretty well," Krebs said, sizing me up.
With a light tap of his whip he got his horse moving at a walking pace, and I copied him as best I could. A white-clad servant trotted alongside me on foot: I presumed he was there to take charge if my horse decided to cause me any trouble. We followed the beach for a while. Here the pounding of the surf made conversation impossible, but when we turned toward the interior of the island and the ocean's din subsided, Krebs launched a torrent of speech, which didn't end until we reached our destination. I was too preoccupied by my own thoughts to pay much attention to his words, but I recalled them later—along with the warning that lay buried in them.
"Take a look around," he said. "We have big plans for this area. We don't own much land at the moment. But that's going to change." As he pointed his whip here and there, his posture straightened in a way I'd not seen before. "Come back in ten years and you'll see the difference for yourself. Then all this chaos and lack of discipline will be gone."
He snorted in contempt as he said this, and I recalled his house. Yes, it was light and airy—but it was also so neatly arranged that a sea chest on his dining table, and a man like me sitting next to it, looked like pieces of dirt. I followed the movements of his whip, and at first I thought that the chaos he was referring to was the mess left by the storm. Then I realized that it was nature itself that he saw as being out of control.
"Straight rows," he said. "In ten years there will be straight rows everywhere. Stone walls at right angles, and behind them, pineapple, coffee bushes, and cocoa trees—in formation! Copra plantations, yes, but with the palms properly aligned. Areas for grazing, leveled out. Cattle. Horses. Avenues of palm trees, like soldiers on parade! Fountains!" His voice grew staccato as the list of future delights grew longer. Then he paused and became pensive. "Of course, we'll have to import labor. The locals are utterly useless."
"Why?"