Canal Dreams

'And now we must go.

'Can I come back with you?

That tiny frown, drawing in his black eyebrows. 'I think it isn't so good idea. We are closer to the combat and also… a tanker. He squeezed her hand. 'I have to worry for the ship. To worry for you too…

'That's all right. She stood on tip-toes and kissed him. 'Take care.

They went down to the water, down the long ladder at the side of the ship. The sky was milky in places, coming and going like some soft aurora. The boat hadn't arrived, but they could hear it coming through the fogbank.

She knelt down at the edge of the pontoon and looked at the water. The people behind her were still. She couldn't see their faces.

Whatever was wrong with the water? It was slopping and splashing very oddly and slowly; it looked wrong.

She drew back the arm of the kimono, reached down.

The water was warm and thick. The trees on the nearby islands looked very green. They floated above the creamy fog. The black prow of the first boat was appearing through the swirling mist.

The water felt slippy and too hot. She could smell it now; something of iron… for a moment she thought she couldn't withdraw her hand, but it did come out, though it seemed to resist, sucking at her hand, wrist, forearm. Her fingers were stuck together.

The sun came out, flooding everything in light. She looked at the blood dripping from her hand, wondering how she'd cut herself.

The blood dribbled down her arm to her elbow, and dripped from there and from her blood-glued fingers, falling in slow, ruby droplets down to the lake. But it was blood too. The whole lake. She lifted her gaze, from the red lapping tide at her feet, out across the calm, smooth surface, to the islands and the black boats. In the distance, a woman came up through the red surface, making a strange, plaintive hooting noise, and holding something tiny but bright between thumb and forefinger of one hand. Hisako felt her vision zooming in: the pearl was the colour of the fog and cloud.

The stench of blood overpowered her, and she fell.

Into her pillow. She dragged her face out, breathing heavily, looked round the cabin.

A chink of brightness where the curtain over one porthole let in light. The soft red glow of her old alarm clock on the cabinet, numerals refracted and reflected in the tumbler of water alongside.

She got up on one elbow, feeling her heart thud, and sipped at the water. It had become warm and tasted thick and stale. She fumbled her way out of the bed, to go to the bathroom and get some more.

On the way back she pulled aside the curtain over a porthole. The lit stretch of deck she could see looked the same as it ever did. She was looking in the direction of whatever had happened in the hills to the west, but if there was still any glow left in the sky, it was quite drowned by the Nakodo's own lights.

4: Water Business

She hadn't thought it would be so beautiful. The rugged, lumpy little hills around the canal were covered in trees displaying a hundred different shades of green, broken here and there by clumps of bushes and stretches of grass smothered with bright blossoms. She had imagined low wastes of monotonous jungle, but here was a landscape of such variety of texture and shade, and such delicacy of proportion, she could almost imagine it was Japanese. The canal itself was impressive enough, but — save when the ship had entered the gloomy depths at the bottom of one of the massive locks — its scale was not as oppressive as she'd expected. As the ship slowly rose past the enclosing walls, floating on a raft of swirling water, the manicured grasslands and neat buildings surrounding each great double set of locks came gradually into view.

At the same time, she thought, something of the smoothness and massiveness of the operation, the sensation of inevitability and contained power involved in the raising of the ship in such a stately, nearly majestic fashion, somehow transferred itself to her and to the others on the ship; she thought they all became calmer and less fraught as each set of locks was negotiated, and not just because with each step along and up that ribbon of concrete and water they were closer to their goal, of release from Panama and a clear run through the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

The repairs to the prop had been completed. In that week of waiting the situation had become worse, with the venceristas mounting attacks on the towns of David and Penonome and a brief raid on Escobal, which lay on the western shore of Gatún Lake itself. Worst of all, rockets had been fired at two tankers between Gamboa and Barro Colorado, inside the canal. The rocket fired at the first ship had missed; another launched at the second tanker had glanced off the vessel's deck. The canal authorities had told a tanker making its way through from the Caribbean coast to moor in Gatún while the situation was assessed.

Canal traffic had dropped off sharply: Dozens of ships were tied up against the docks of Panama City and Balboa, moored in the bay, or swinging at anchor further out in the Gulf of Panama, awaiting instructions or advice from owners, charterers, insurance companies, embassies and consulates. The Nakodo was already late; the permission to proceed came through from Tokyo as soon as she was ready to sail.

And it all seemed so calm, so orderly and assured. The precise lines of the great locks; the tidiness of the expanses of grass, bordered by the concrete at the side of the locks like inlay edging a lacquer cabinet; the quaint-looking but powerful electric locomotives that pulled the ship through the locks; the deeply eaved, oddly temple-like buildings set at the side of the artificial canyons of the locks, or perched on the thin concrete island dividing one set from the other; the feeling of procession as the ship made its way up towards the level of the lake, as though it was a novice being gently guided, prepared and anointed and clothed for some fabulous and arcane rite in the heart of a great basilica… everything made the war seem distant and irrelevant, and the fuss about threats against the canal and the ships that plied it somehow undignified and paltry.

Miraflores locks, where the gush of fresh water descending from the lock above washed the Pacific's salt from the Nakodo's keel; Pedro Miguel, where the buildings around the locks sat in disciplined rows like solemn spectators, and where a bulk carrier passed them, sinking in her lock as the Nakodo rose in hers (the crews waved to each other).

Her ascent completed, the Nakodo cruised quietly on, through the echoing depths of Gaillard Cut and on into the ruffled emerald landscape beyond, where the canal swung gradually towards the lake, and a train moved, outdistancing them, to their right.

They'd seen a few Guardia Nacional, wandering about the edges of the locks or draped over jeeps and trucks parked on the various roads, or sitting smoking in the shade of the canal buildings… but they'd looked nonchalant, unconcerned, and waved back as the ship passed.

Hisako had been allowed on to the bridge after making great entreaties; Captain Yashiro was worried that if the ship was attacked, any sensible guerrilla would aim at the bridge. However he had finally compromised by agreeing she could stay on the bridge until they approached Gamboa. But it was all so tranquil, so patently normal, that she was pleased but not at all surprised when Gamboa slipped by to starboard, and she was not asked to leave the bridge and go below.

The Panama Canal Commission pilot was chatting in English to Officer Endo. Gamboa, and the mouth of the upper reaches of the Chagres River, moved slowly astern; the train which had overtaken them earlier left the town and passed them again, carriages rocking and wheels singing, only a few hundred metres away; The morning sun slanted over them, between small clouds which speckled shadows over the forested slopes. Only in a few places could she see the naked hillsides where the trees had been cut down and gullies and ravines had formed, scarring the smooth green land. The Commission pilot had said something about problems in the hills; trees cut down, topsoil washed away; dams silting up and so decreasing the available water the canal required to keep functioning. She hadn't thought of that; of course, the canal could not operate without water at its head; water was its currency.