Crazy night out
The harbour master had been in a jolly mood all along, telling the Captain that I was his new wife and trying to pair me off with two young crew members on the pilot boat with whom he made me pose for photos. When he said he would like to take me to a nice hotel, I felt a little uneasy.
However, I was all for his suggestion to go for a drink so I could get a propper chance to talk to him. So I relented and, once we had dropped the bike back at Trinco Rest (much to the surprise of the guards and the receptionist) he told the driver to take us to Club Oceanic. I was worried about the cost as I at least wanted to be in a position to offer to pay. I had been in a similar situation before. In Taiwan, in an expensive beachfront bar, I had made the same offer to a group of businessmen with whom I had spent the evening drinking and expected them to refuse. They accepted and I ended up blowing half of my travel budget on that one night. So I was relieved to find the harbour master easy-going when I suggested we go to the French Garden instead. I was doubly relieved, because there were other women staying there, prettier and younger than myself, which I hoped would divert his attention. He was not so easily deterred, however. Before we had even reached the bar, he had booked a room for me. This was going to be one crazy night.
For the lone female traveller, accepting hospitality from men is a juggling act of apprehension and politeness. It required quick assessment on my part. Sure, the harbour master was married with kids, but his family was not around, they were in Colombo. To highlight how hairy this kind of situation can be, let me tell you what happened to me in Bangassou, a godforsaken border town in the Central African Republic. A Greek arms dealer I had started a conservation with invited me to his house for dinner. Strange company, true, but in these kind of places you can’t be choosy and I was looking forward to an evening in the bossom of his large family. However, it turned out that did not have a wife and six children as he had claimed. What he did have was splintered glass on the high walls surrounding his house and a heavy iron gate with spikes on top which he locked behind me. I kept off his advances while he got progressively more drunk and eventually managed to slip into my room. There I donned a traditional Sudanese dagger, worn on the arm, where it was concealed by the sleeve of my T-shirt. When the man followed me into the room and proceeded to stalk me around the bed, I mentally prepared myself to plunge the thing into him. I realized that I only had one chance which lay in the concealment of the weapon, and that I would have to kill the guy. Suddenly, the thought of stabbing someone and then wondering what to do with the body seemed irresistibly funny, – well hysterical. I started laughing and found that I couldn’t stop. The man froze in his tracks, aghast, as I pointed a finger at him and doubled over with mirth. Then he slowly retreated mumbling “Elle est fou, fou!” (“She is mad!). I piled all the room’s loose fittings against the door and went to bed. The next morning, just after dawn, I composed myself to look cool and aloof and entered the lounge where his teaboy had laid the breakfast table. He informed me that his master was still asleep. I told him that he had had a very hard night (wink, wink) and must on no account be disturbed, ate a hearty breakfast and caught a ferry across the Oubangi river into what was then Zaïre. I marvel that I was able to get by without Valium in my youth.
This kind of trouble just seems to follow me around and does not seem to have abated much with age. All this played on my mind this evening, but I decided to along with it when the harbour master told me that he had booked a separate room for himself and that I should just relax. Politeness dictated not to make a scene. He sent me back with his driver to collect my luggage and (more importantly!) the bottle of Ouzu. The driver was not overly pleased to make the six mile round-trip, so I told him it had not been my idea to stay at the French Garden.
“Please understand!” I said: “Your boss is a wonderful man. A generous man. But I won’t sleep with him. You understand? I am not going to sleep with him!” I sounded like Helen Hunter in As Good as it Gets.
The driver nodded. “Don’t worry” he said.
“Can you explain this to your boss?”
“Don’t worry”, he re-iterated.
And I shouldn’t have worried. On my return, the harbour master was engrossed in animated conservation with a group of backpackers. He bought us all seafood and beers and, after we had polished off the bottle of Ouzu, bade us cheerfully goodnight. I retreated to a beautiful beach-front room with a fan, a net, a blanket and a spotless bathroom all by myself.
Over breakfast the next morning the harbour master explained he had fancied a night out rather than return to his deserted house in the Navy base. He had to sent his driver home, so he had taken a room. I confessed my worries and he laughed. “It would never occur to me to be indecent”, he said: “Besides, it would trigger an international incident. You have been introduced to me by Paths!”
This morning, we went to see off an Indian cargo ship but this time I could not come on board. I did not mind staying on one of the pilot boats as we cruised past mangove fringed islands, scattered like emeralds across the deep blue bay. The sheer scale of the harbour was breathtaking. Many of the larger islands served as naval bases, but there were many smaller ones which seemed entirely untouched. Where the deep-water channel runs into the bay, jetties and loading docks were strewn seemingly at random. I began to understand the economic and strategic potential of this harbour. No wonder the Americans had expressed an interest in setting up a base here.
As soon as we landed at a jetty where we would await the harbour master’s return, the men tossed lines among shoals of darting fish which had gathered around the boat, using only pieces of colourful plastic straws as bait. Within half an hour or so, they had caught enough for their lunch.
When he re-joined us, the harbour master appeared flustered. Clearly he was going to be busy today, so back at the Port Authority, I said my goodbyes, promising to keep in touch. However, before I could take my leave, one of his friends invited me to lunch. He was a commander at the military base at Fort Frederick, so I passed through the historic gate for a second time, this time in an official jeep. The Commander offered me a shower which I gratefully accepted, the heat was unrelenting, then we talked about whales over rice and curries, made with the same kind of fish the crew had pulled out of the sea only a short time before. I told him about the research program NARA had initiated in the 1980s, spearheaded by Dr. J who was a champion for marine mammals in Sri Lanka and whom I very much hoped to meet.
“I know Dr. J!” the commander said. He offered to try and arrange an appointment for me and I left him my phone number at Trinco Rest which now seemed to have become my official base in Trincomalee.
Buoyed up by these news, I set off. As soon as I left the commander’s compound, I became aware of a sense of unease and tension in the air. Several troop-carriers had been mobilised, there was activity at the barriers and a stronger than usual presence of armed soldiers patrolled the streets. I had decided to spend one more night at the French Garden but stopped over at Trinco Rest to leave my details, in case there were any messages. Four guards were now posted outside the door, in animated discussion with each other.
I approached a tuk-tuk driver and showed him the Tamil address which the barman at the French Garden had written down for me. He looked at it blankly. “I can’t read that”, he said “I’m Sinhalese!” “What?!” I exclaimed, indicating the armed soldiers in the street: “are you not nervous about living here?” He did not seem to understand what I was making such a fuss about.
Tags: The Whales of Trincomalee, Tag Index
Denni