diplomatic.day

PARAGRAPH I · FOREWORD

Of the day in question

It begins, as these dispatches always do, with weather observed and not interpreted.

To the honoured reader of this dispatch — greetings from the warm latitudes. The morning of the thirty-first arrived without ceremony, only the slow uncovering of the sea by an indifferent sun. I write these notes from a writing-desk fixed to the deck of the cutter Envoy, which has been at anchor for two days now off the lee shore, awaiting the courtesy reply from the consul.

The matter at hand is a small one in the language of capitals, but here, in this water the colour of polished tea, it is the entire subject of conversation between the harbour-master, the cook, and a small congregation of yellow tang who attend the bilge-pump each morning. I shall describe what I have seen, plainly. Where I am uncertain, I shall say so. I trust you to read between my lines as you have always done.

PARAGRAPH II · OF TROPICAL WATERS

A reading of the bay

The water here keeps three temperatures and four colours, all of them at once.

By half past nine the harbour had assumed its working temperament. Three lateen-rigged skiffs went out toward the reef line, their sails the colour of dried tobacco. The reef, which the chart names Banco de los Mil Reyes, lies four cables to the south-east and announces itself by a thin white line of broken water that rearranges itself with each swell.

Below that line, in water no deeper than a tall man, the day’s real diplomacy is conducted. A consortium of butterflyfish, calicoed in yellow and ink, perform their slow rounds along the staghorn corals. Among them moves a single emperor angelfish — Pomacanthus imperator — whose authority is undisputed and whose flanks bear a livery of stripes so geometric they appear to have been drawn with a ruler. I record his presence here for the avoidance of doubt: nothing of consequence happens in this bay without his observation.

The cook says the snapper are running slow today, which he attributes to the change of moon. The cook is rarely wrong about fish.

PARAGRAPH III · REEFS & CURRENTS

Concerning the noon observation

A current does not negotiate; it simply is. A diplomat learns to read both kinds.

At noon precisely, in accordance with practice, I lowered myself into the bay with the brass observation-mask the consul lent me. The water was warmer than the air, which is the inverted natural order of things and always disarms the lungs at first.

The current here runs east to west in the upper stratum and west to east in the deeper, a fact known to the parrotfish whose grazing rounds use both layers efficiently. Scarus guacamaia — the rainbow parrotfish — moved past me at arm’s length and produced, audibly, the small grinding sound for which his species is famous: the sound of teeth on coral, the slow geological labour of turning reef into sand.

I watched a school of trigger-fish convene in the lee of an outcrop and disperse, three times, in what seemed to be a debate. Trigger-fish are the lawyers of the reef — argumentative, well-armoured, and capable of remarkable spite. Their meeting concluded with no visible resolution, only the tacit agreement that they would resume tomorrow.

Returning to the deck, I noted in my log the temperature of the water at three depths, the prevailing direction of the current, and the small red sea-fan that has begun to grow on the chain of our anchor.

PARAGRAPH IV · SHORE MARKETS

A note on the small commerce

All diplomacy, in the end, is conducted on the price of fish.

By four o’clock the boats had returned and the small market that operates on the stone quay opened for its customary hour. The smell of citrus and ice and weed-salt rose into the warm afternoon. The merchants spread their catch on palm-fronds and arranged the larger snappers in deferential rows, the way a man arranges silver before a guest.

I purchased, for the cook, two pounds of red snapper and a single small lobster whose dark blue claws had been bound with a length of pandanus twine. The harbour-master’s wife — a woman of slow movements and complete authority — weighed each item on a brass balance whose pans she had wiped clean with the corner of her apron, and quoted the price in three currencies as a courtesy.

It is here, on this quay, that I am most aware of the smallness of capitals. The treaties signed in cold rooms hundreds of leagues to the north arrive at this quay only as a slight adjustment to the price of mackerel; the wars debated in those same rooms arrive as the absence of a particular merchant, who has gone elsewhere. I record this without judgement.