Reamde

jams with gravid cargo pockets that made his legs look even skinnier than they were to begin with. Until a couple of weeks ago, Csongor would have found it all quite alarming. As it was, with a sour and contemptuous look on his face, he grabbed the hem of his ragged and salt-stained shirt and pulled it up just high enough to expose the butt of the Makarov protruding above the waistband of his shorts. This had less impact, at first, than he’d hoped for, since for several moments the man simply could not get over the spectacle of Csongor’s huge, hairy torso. This was not as convex, nor as pasty-white, as it had been two weeks ago, but even in its slimmed and tanned condition, it was a sort of Wonder of the World or sideshow spectacle to this young Filipino, who in any case did not know what to make of the odd gesture: Was Csongor offering his belly to be stabbed? In time, though, the scavenger’s eyes wandered down and focused in on the butt of the gun. It was, Csongor knew, a somewhat hollow threat. If the scavenger were serious about using the knife, he could do serious damage to Csongor, maybe even inflict a fatal wound, before Csongor could pull out the pistol and get it ready to fire. But his sense was that the scavenger was not making a serious promise to use the knife, just trying to bluff his way out of a bad situation, and that all Csongor need do was raise the stakes with a bigger bluff.

Anyway, no attack came. Csongor continued to stare into the man’s eyes until finally he put the knife away. Then Csongor pointed at the bag and crooked his finger. The man rolled his eyes, sighed, and slung it off his shoulder, then kicked it across the deck plates. Csongor scooped it up, then moved sideways and let the scavenger go out.

Thirty seconds later, they were aboard one of the boats, having accepted the offer of a ride ashore. Thirty seconds after that they were standing on dry land, haggling with the skipper, who professed to be shocked that they had not expected to pay for his services. Communication was difficult until Yuxia—who, since they’d made landfall, had alternated between jumping up and down on the sandy beach, as if testing its structural integrity, and dropping to her knees to kiss it—realized that the man was speaking a recognizable dialect of Fujianese. She rolled up and pitter-patted over and began to try out words on him, framing syllables with sandy lips. Csongor could see that communication between the two was far from perfect but that they were getting a few concepts across. Marlon—who until a few moments earlier had been lying spread-eagled on the sand, screaming exultantly—sat up, cocked an ear, listened for a bit, but didn’t seem to understand what they were saying any better than Csongor did.

Csongor moved several paces away so that the boatman would not be able to look directly into the bag, then set it down on the sand, dropped to his knees, and unzipped it.

A shadow fell. He looked up to see a girl of perhaps eight years, holding a baby on her hip, staring down curiously. Csongor hooked his arm through the bag’s shoulder strap and stood back up, elevating it up above the level where she could see it, and then pulled it open. She edged around, standing up on tippytoe, trying to look in, and the baby reached out with one saliva-drenched hand and got a grip on the bag’s edge and pulled it down, as if trying to help his big sister satisfy her curiosity. The situation was impossible; Csongor couldn’t very well lay his hand on someone else’s baby. But he really did not want any of these people finding out how much Chinese money they were carrying around.

The sun shone down into the bag’s central cavity, revealing nothing except a few loose magenta bills. All the cash had disappeared.

Csongor remembered now the young man in the cabin. How his cargo pockets had bulged. He turned to look back out toward the beached hulk of Szelanya. A hundred people were on it now, and more were on the way. Others had already finished taking whatever they wanted and were dispersing on their little boats. The situation was impossible. Even if Csongor bought passage back to the wreck, or swam to it, and somehow managed to impose his will on a large number of people, most of whom were probably armed with (at least) knives, the odds were very small that the young man who had taken the bricks of money was still anywhere near the thing.

Csongor checked his wallet and found a lot of Hungarian currency and a few stray euro notes.

He glanced up at the boat pilot, who, by the standards of Filipinos, looked almost totally Asian in his racial makeup. What sorts of connections did people here have back to China? Just a vague awareness that their ancestors had come from there, centuries ago? Or did they go back and forth all the time?

“What kind of money is this guy willing to accept?” Csongor asked Yuxia.

“He is willing to take our renminbi,” Yuxia reassured him.

“Any other kind?” Csongor asked.

She asked the question and Csongor heard him say, “Dollars.”

The girl, seeing that there was nothing marvelous to look at in Csongor’s bag, had lost interest, pried the baby’s fingers loose from it, and backed away to make further observations. Ambling back toward Yuxia and the boatman, Csongor groped his way into one of the bag’s internal side pockets and pulled out the Ziploc bag containing Peter’s effects. He extracted and opened Peter’s wallet, which was made of ballistic nylon. Flipping it open, he observed what he took to be Peter’s state of Washington driver’s license, trapped beneath a window, and a number of cards and slips of paper stored in a fan of transparent plastic envelopes: some kind of insurance card, a voter’s registration card, a rectangle of white paper with several long strings of random letters, digits, and punctuation marks printed on it: passwords, probably. No photograph of Zula, which only confirmed certain uncharitable opinions that Csongor had been harboring about Peter since the moment they had met. Pockets with credit cards and debit cards. A billfold containing two American dollar bills and a great deal of some other, more colorful currency that Csongor did not immediately recognize: Canadian, he now saw. Very odd to be handling this carefully preserved relic of a dead man’s life in a completely different world, here on a beach in Luzon.

The conversation between Yuxia and the boatman had lapsed as the latter gazed into the billfold.

As long as he had the fellow’s attention, Csongor said to Yuxia, “We need to get to some kind of city where it would be possible to get a hotel room, get on the Internet, buy a bus ticket to Manila or something. How far away is the nearest city like that? Is it easier to go by boat or on land?” For they could hear occasional trucks storming down a road, a kilometer or two inland, raising clouds of brown dust that rose up from the jungle like heavy smoke.

“He’s not stupid,” Yuxia pointed out. “You know what he’s going to say.”

“Use any words you like,” Csongor returned, “as long as it gets us out of here.”

This at least gave Yuxia and the boatman something to talk about while Csongor opened the Ziploc bag that contained Zula’s stuff. Opening her wallet laid him open to a kind of shotgun blast of diverse emotions. Shame at his ungentlemanly behavior. Horror at the thought he might be rifling the possessions of a dead person. Intense curiosity about all aspects of Zula’s life. A piercing sense of loss followed by a resolve to get on with this and try to find her, supposing she was still alive. Trepidation that he wouldn’t find any money, then a ridiculous sense of gratitude when he discovered, commingled with Canadian bills in various denominations, several crisp new American twenties.

“There is a city south of here along the coast with a hotel where tourists go,” Yuxia announced.

“Internal Filipino tourists or—”

“He says they are all white men.”

“How long to get there?”

“On his boat, three hours in this weather. Or we can walk to the road and try to hitchhike.”

Marlon had rolled up to his feet and drawn closer to the conversation. He was covered with sand and grinning. Csongor exchanged looks with him and with Yuxia. There seemed to be a consensus that they should go by boat. So Csongor snapped a twenty out of Zula’s wallet, held it up in the air, and handed it to the boatman.

The boatman looked quite pleased, but: “He wants more,” Yuxia said, in a frozen voice that told Csongor he had already been outmaneuvered and outhaggled.

Csongor turned and looked back toward the wreck surrounded by boats, many of which were at least as seaworthy as this fellow’s. “Tell him he can have another when he gets us there,” he said. “And if he doesn’t like that, ask him what is going to happen if I wade out there waving twenties over my head.”

“Why are you paying with American money?” Marlon asked.

While Yuxia was translating, Csongor showed Marlon the empty bag. In response to Marlon’s shocked look, he nodded in the direction of Szelanya. “One of those people was a little too clever for me,” he admitted.

The boatman put up enough of an argument to save some face, then moved toward his vessel, making gestures to indicate that they were welcome to step aboard.