PADRE ROCHA pieced it together fairly quickly. Not from Fonso’s confession. Nor from Maria’s or any of the others in the kampong. It was a small community and everyone knew what had happened by the next evening. Mrs Foo talked and listened as she served the Mesticos in the kampong in her shop and gave Padre Rocha the final little bits for him to put together. And the all-seeing, all hearing Vellupillai had made his little contribution, of course.
It seemed it started with Fonso bringing home a catch of fish.
“Aiyah! What have you been doing, Fonso?” Maria asked him.
“Fishing, lah. And look, six beauties.”
“You mean you didn’t catch any udang gerigau, little shrimps, today?”
“Sim,” the Portuguese yes. “I decided to go out to sea and fish with a hook and a line. Borrowed Antonio’s koleh, his tiny boat.”
“Who will buy that?” Maria asked, raising her hand with the fingers spread above her head, with a frown.
“I’m not selling them,” Fonso replied.
“Good. I’ll make a fish curry,” Maria said, at once smiling.
Fonso took a deep breath. The woman will not understand, he thought to himself.
“But, aiyah, so much. Six fish. You know fish curry can’t keep. Tell you what, why don’t you …” Maria spoke before Fonso could reply. He took another deep breath. She paused at his reaction, but added quickly before he could speak, “We’ll ask Manoel and Flora. And the Letaos. And Julio. He’ll bring his guitar and we can …”
“Hold it. Hold it, Maria.” Fonso raised his hand.
“These are not for fish curry. These are special fish …”
“They are only kurau.”
“Listen to me! I went out fishing to get them to try out something.”
“Hah?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna make a special saltfish.”
“Whaffor? You can get saltfish …”
“These will be different.”
“Huh?”
“The other day, I was sitting on the beach in the evening …”
“Hoping the itchy Philippa would pass …”
“Oh. Shut your mouth and listen. I thought of that saltfish from Burma that Gregorio had bought. Remember how delicious it was?”
“Yah. It was so …”
“I said to myself, I said, I can make saltfish as good as that. I had an idea. So I’m going to try to …”
“What? How?”
“I will only use a very little salt.”
“But saltfish …”
“I’ll use Chinese soy sauce and vino.”
“Cannot. Cannot. Cannot. Won’t dry, lah.”
“I’m going to put a little every day and dry it. Then put some more the next day, and dry it.”
Maria just looked at him. Fonso sighed. She was always like that. When he expected her to say something, she kept her mouth shut. When he talked, she kept interrupting.
Maria knew better than to argue any further with Fonso. He got those crazy ideas now and then. And he would be off. No one could stop him when a devil was in him. Yet she had never forgotten how good his crabs in vino and vinegar had been.
Salting the fish became a ritual for the next ten days. It was salt on the first day. On the second he made a big jugful of a wine and soy sauce mixture and started putting the mixture on the six fish every evening after dinner. The family was warned not to touch the holy brew.
Every fish was examined closely in the morning, poked very gently with a fingernail, smelt with great concentration and laid out where it would get the most sun while Fonso was away fishing for shrimps. Maria was given strict instructions to bring them in if the tiniest drop of rain fell. The instructions were repeated for the first seven days. After that he thought “You won’t forget the fish, will you?” would be sufficient.
Ignacio was only five then but he seemed to understand the gravity of the fish salting business and stood in front of the fish when he was bored, staring at them.
“Aiyah! They’re only fish, ’Nacio,” Maria would say when she saw him scrutinising the objects of his father’s new love intently.
Philippa walked past one morning when Fonso was poking the fish. From the kitchen, Maria heard her asking Fonso about them and came out. As usual, Philippa smiled sweetly at her and made some excuse to say adeus at once.
One day, after Fonso had chatted for a few minutes with Maria when he returned from the sea, listened to Adam and Fernao’s stories, and swung little Ignacio around, he went to the fish.
Suddenly the attap-thatched roof of their rough house was nearly blown off by a thunderous leonine roar.
“MARIA!”
Maria almost dropped the plate she was carrying as she heard his voice crash through the house.
It was immediately followed by another: “IGNACIO!”
Then a whole unbroken series of roars, each louder than the other, “ADAM! CLARA! CATARINA! RICARDO! FERNAO! JOAO!”
Maria rushed out to the fish-drying side of the house, muttering, “God! Even the Pereras must be able to hear him.”
She was met by another roar, “WHERE’S JOAO?”
The children and Maria looked at each other. Ignacio ran to his Ma.
“Dunno,” Adam said.
Ricardo was going to say that Joao had told him that he … when the next roar exploded.
“WHO TOOK MY FISH?”
Maria looked at the window sill where his precious fish were being dried. They were still there. But she saw in a flash that there were only five.
A terrible scene followed as everyone was accused and interrogated in turn and then questions were thrown out in raging fury about who they had seen prowling around the house.
Ricardo ventured a timid word about a cat … but he was cut off. For some reason the cats that prowled around the kampong were above suspicion.
Fonso scowled all through dinner and the children kept silent. Joao had returned soon after the assembled family left the scene of the crime and Adam had to tell him not to ask any questions by gripping the back of his neck and curling his lips to look as fierce as he could. Joao understood.
Fonso went to the beach after he put the fish away for the night. Maria knew his anger would seep away into the sands as it always had when he sat in silence listening to the sea.
He did not get up the next morning at his usual time. Maria knew that Fonso would never carry his rage through the night and would have forgotten all about it the next morning.
“Hey! It’s late, you know,” she said.
He was lying on the mat on the floor where they slept, staring at the underside of the attap thatch.
“Coffee’s ready.”
“Not going today,” Fonso replied.
“Wassamatter? You all right?”
“Yah.”
“Then why aren’t you going out to fish today?”
“Have something to do.”
“We’re short, you know. I need oil. It’s nearly finished.”
“Put the fish on the coals.”
Maria knew he didn’t mean the fish.
“But the vegetables. They have to be …”
“Boil them,” softly and firmly. “I’m not going to sea today.”
He left after he had his coffee. He did not take his nets with him. Maria shook her head in the kitchen. There were times when Fonso was like that. Not often, Deo gratias.
After washing up, she picked up the basket she knew as her market basket, shouted out to her boys and went to the market. It was no use worrying about Fonso. It would work out. It always did.
Fonso sat rigid in the bushes behind the shack with his eyes glued to the five fish on the window sill. Waiting.
The house was empty. Joao and Ignacio had gone to the market with Maria. He saw the women of the village walk past on their way to the market. Mrs Lopez, Mrs Rodrigues, Mrs Coelho, Lucia de Quental, Rosa with that stupid dog of hers. Then Padre Rocha walking the other way.
It seemed ages to him. The sun climbed up in the sky. It got hotter. But he sat there, concealed in the bushes with the sweat dripping off him, waiting and watching.
A grey cat padded past the house. It stopped for a minute and raised its head to smell the air. Then it moved on.
Nothing happened. A kingfisher flew past.
A beetle crawled up his leg. He ignored it.
A twig snapped. He took his gaze off the window sill and looked to his right. He saw a small brown, almost black body crouching about fifteen feet from him, a pair of big glistening eyes staring with concentration at the window sill of his house.
He froze and moved his head slowly to look round a leaf that was blocking his view. As he moved, the black body shot out of the bush with the swiftness of a frightened deer towards the window sill.
Fonso’s thigh muscles tensed, ready to spring. It was a thin Indian boy, about eight years old.
Rama the waif, he thought.
The skinny form had by now rushed to the window sill and grabbed a fish.
A terrible roar erupted from his throat and the depths of his chest and belly as he sprung to his feet and charged towards the boy.
He grabbed his arm. “THIEF! BASTARD! BLOODY KLING IDIOT!” he roared again and again, his temples throbbing with the exertion.
He dragged the wide-eyed, open-mouthed trembling child into the house. Rama the waif had dropped the fish on the sand.
Fonso threw him down onto the plank floor and glared at him. “Don’t move!” he roared again.
Fonso went to the wall where the cane hung, the cane with which he thrashed sense and Catholic morality into his children.
Rama the waif crouched on the floor, petrified. His thin black body was shaking with fear. His big eyes were wide with terror as he saw Fonso return with the cane in his thick muscular hand.
“Oh maaaaa …” he cried out.
His rib cage stuck out through his stretched black-brown skin. The waif wore dirt-encrusted grey cotton shorts.
Fonso pulled them down and forced the quivering body over the dining table. His brown buttocks were tight and stretched. The skin gleamed.
He raised his hand, gripping the cane. His eyes felt hot and his temples throbbed.
He heard a sob, again, “Oh maa …”
Something snapped deep inside him. It was as though someone had kicked him in the scrotum. A sharp sudden pain ripped through him and turned his mind blank for a split second.
He threw the cane down on the plank floor with a ferocious anger he didn’t understand. He grabbed Rama the waif’s arm and drew the shaking little body to him. The child was like a limp lump of meat. Fonso crushed him to his chest and an uncontrollable sobbing seized him. His thick muscle-heavy arms crushed the frail body against him, his shock of blond hair cascaded over the waif’s dirty, matted head and black face and the tears poured out of his soul.
The roar of Fonso’s rage hit Maria like a thunderbolt as she returned to the house. Joao and Ignacio rushed to her, clawing at her sarong. She stood petrified as she watched Fonso grab Rama’s bony arm and drag him into their shack.
“Oh God! Mother of God. Oh Blessed Virgin! Oh Mother of Christ! Oh St Stephen! St Christopher! St John! Oh God he’s going to kill him! Oh God! Oh God! Oh Jesus!”
She covered her face in her hands. Joao and Ignacio clung to her, pulling at her sarong, sensing her agitation. She shut her eyes. The roar of his voice continued to reverberate in her ears. Oh God! That orphan child! He’ll drop dead with the first stroke of Fonso’s cane. Oh Fonso! Please … She shut her eyes. She shut her ears.
Joao and Ignacio’s muffled calls of Ma, Ma, Ma brought her back to where she was. She shook her head like an animal to clear her mind. Then she heard soft sounds from her man. He was crying.
It took Maria a few seconds to react to the abrupt unexpected sobs from Fonso’s throat.
She stood listening to be quite sure. Then she shook off her clinging sons and walked briskly to the house.
She saw the big sun-browned frame of her Fonso kneeling on the planks of the floor, clasping the orphan Rama to him and his mass of golden hair flowing over the orphan’s greasy head.
“Oh Mother of God! Oh Blessed Virgin!”
A wave of relief flowed through her. Her knees went soft.