The Unpublished PROLOGUE
Five hellish hours later we had crossed the Nyali bridge and were onboard the boat in Kilindini Harbor. It was an eighty-foot bucket of bolts called “Lucinda.” It wasn’t much more than an underpowered metal barge with peeling paint. It smelled like old fish and sat on the water like a hunk of driftwood. We were sitting across from a very skinny, very black one-eyed man grinning at us with a golden tooth smile.
“I am Georges Sabatini,” he said. “At least that’s my name today. Last week I was Jost Van Dyke, which is also the name of my favorite island. But now I’m Sabatini because I was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad.”
Areas of no teeth surrounded the gold teeth. He was old but very fit and full of nervous energy. His left eye was clouded over with a blue/grey film. He was without a doubt completely insane.
“Big Man,” he said.
“Guilty,” said Clarence.
“I want to hear all the stories,” he said. “You and Bruce must’ve fucked everything that walks.”
“Not really,” said Clarence.
“You probably fucked my Mother,” he laughed.
“Not likely,” said Clarence.
“Why not? I did.”
He waited for us to look shocked then he laughed and pointed at me.
“Look at his face! He thinks I did it! I’m kidding of course,” he said suddenly serious. “I would kill any motherfucker who suggested that I would do such a thing.”
“Right,” I said.
We were sitting around a table that had been bolted to the deck. There were four chairs around the table. During our entire time on board nobody ever sat in the fourth chair. A blue plastic tarp had been stretched out over the table to provide shelter from the blistering sun.
“I had this shipmate named Henry Bollinger. A white man. Whiter than you,” he said to me. “We were in port at Honolulu and spent the night drinking in Chinatown and ended up staying in one of those hotels on the beach. Unbeknownst to me Henry went down to the pool in the morning and he died on one of those chaise lounges about eight a.m. but laid there all day until he was discovered that night with a sunburn so bad it would have killed him had he not been dead already.”
We smiled and he laughed like a lunatic.
It became clear that this had been a very bad idea.
So why didn’t we leave?
I’ve asked myself that question often. We had been traveling for weeks and we were exhausted. The idea of this trip had been so intoxicating that I think we were willing to overlook the lack of creature comforts. On top of that neither one of us wanted to be a wuss and bail out. Plus I wasn’t feeling well. I felt slightly feverish and really just wanted to rest for a few days. In any event we stayed on board and went out into the Indian Ocean headed south.
“I’ll sing you a song that was taught to me by Che Guevara in the Jungles of South America before the revolution,” Georges said.
