Three Views of Crystal Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

So –’ His hands fell flat on the tabletop ‘– what’s the use of that? The Chinese grind them for medicine.’
    They drank their coffee then. Roberta leaned on her cash register and stared gloomily out of the window into the Vancouver rain. But she was only pretending to stare; Vera could tell she was actually listening.
    ‘Well, do you believe it?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ she said.
    ‘So, you don’t believe it?’ He peered at her.
    ‘Well,’ she began to doubt herself. ‘Maybe a little –’
    ‘When Columbus came to America, you know, he found that the natives on this continent believed it too. They had pearls galore, so many pearls, do you know? Pearls were not just in the Orient. No, not at all. When Fernando de Soto got to Floridahe found the dead embalmed in wooden coffins with baskets of pearls beside them. In Montezuma’s temple, the walls were all laden with pearls. The Temple of Tolomecco had walls and roof of mother-of-pearl and strings of pearls hung from the walls.’
    ‘Where did they come from?’
    ‘Quite literally, they grew on trees. You didn’t know that, did you, Vera?’
    ‘No,’ she said.
    ‘Yes. In the Gulf of Paria, Columbus found oysters clinging to the branches of trees, their shells gaping open. Do you believe that?’
    ‘No,’ she breathed. This time she had to have guessed right.
    ‘Wrong!’ he roared. Roberta looked back at them, her reverie interrupted, and grinned to see the old man teasing his granddaughter, and Vera’s pale face heating up again to the roots of her nearly white hair.
    ‘Oysters really did grow on trees.’ He went all scientific on her then. ‘The oyster in question is Dendrostrea, or Tree Oyster, a mollusc that is to be found upon roots or branches of mangrove trees overhanging the water.’
    She was reduced to silence.
    ‘There, I fooled you. But you got me going. What did you want to know? What were you asking about?’
    ‘Ceylon. You went to Ceylon.’
    ‘Oh, everyone went to Ceylon. My father too. Way back in the 1860s. That’s a long time ago, you can’t imagine how long, my dear.’
    ‘Of course I can. Seventy years ago.’ She was better at arithmetic now.
    ‘Give or take a decade, that’s how old your grandfather is. My father was away with the pearling ships when I was born.’
    ‘Just like my father was away when I was born,’ Vera offered this as a bond.
    ‘But I came to see you, didn’t I?’
    ‘Yes, you did.’
    Captain Lowinger banged his thick cup on the table. It bounced. The windowpanes seemed to rock in their frames. ‘Consider yourself lucky. My father never came to see me. I am sure I remember being born. I looked around and he wasn’t there. I had to wait years to see him, as far as I can remember. When he saw me, he was not really satisfied. Later, he took me along to make a man of me.’
    He rubbed the tips of his forefinger and thumb together. The good eye steadily gazed into Vera’s face. The other one saw her too, but she must have had a white cloud over her head. ‘It’s the way of men in our family. Seafaring men. Go off and leave the woman at home, minding things. It’s a good deal if you’re the man. Mind you, it never worked for me. I tried it with your grandmother, but she was not the type of woman who’d wait around. For that, I lost her and I lost your mother too.’
    He looked sad. Roberta brought fresh coffee and he took a long slurp. ‘But we were talking about fathers.’
    10 February 1860
    Night was falling as they landed at the British garrison in the Strait of Manaar. Before they left the deck of their little vessel, Papa Lowinger took the boy to one side, looking away from the streaky red of the setting sun. That was his first memory.
    ‘Do you see that land there?’ Papa said to James, pointing into the darkness. The white waving beach and dark hills above were two miles away. ‘That is the island of Ceylon. The people here believe that it was Paradise, the Garden of Eden. Up in