‘THE CORAL IS dying,’ said Daniel to a small and disinterested family of floppy-hatted, baked-skinned tourists. The matriarch wore a translucent beach robe that shimmied around her wide hips. She took snaps of a coral tank on her iPhone then looked away, instantly gratified. The air-conditioner laboured in the background and the water in the steel tanks of coral glimmered beneath strip lights.
‘Coral is incredibly important to the diversity of the planet. It acts as a habitat for one third of the world’s biological diversity. I was blown away when I found that out,’ confided Daniel with enthusiasm.
The family didn’t look blown away. They looked tight jawed and sceptical and shuffled their feet with the onset of impatience.
Daniel brandished a twiggy white splinter of coral—the one he always used.
‘Look at this. It’s an example of bleached coral. Believe it or not the natural colour of coral is white.’
‘Not always,’ argued the father, ‘I’ve been diving and I’ve seen it in all colours. Green, purple—‘ he floundered, as though his colour palette had dried up. ‘—and some other colours.’
‘Can we go to the beach now?’ pleaded the son, wrestling his mother’s thigh.
‘Soon dear. David is telling us about coral,’ said the woman.
‘It’s Daniel,’ corrected Daniel with a diffident smile.
‘I like your hair,’ she said, in perverse reference to Daniel’s shoulder length, blonde curls. She reached out as though to touch it but thought better of it.
‘Thanks,’ he said, turning to the father. ‘In answer to your question it’s the algae. The algae give corals their colour. They’re symbiotic: that means they can’t live without each other.’
‘A bit like us then, babes,’ said the husband with a laugh that lacked sincerity. He nudged his wife and she swatted him away.
‘Stop it,’ she said with a sour look.
‘So, here’s the thing. The warmer waters are killing off the algae,’ continued Daniel, ‘and that’s what nourishes the coral. That’s why the coral turns white. If the oceans don’t cool off quickly, then the coral dies too. It’s already happening all over the world. The oceans are heating up and the coral is dying – after 500 million years of existence. Can you feel how hot it is?’
The impact was lost on the woman, who pushed her son away. ‘Stop it, Calvin. We’re going soon.’
‘500 million years,’ repeated Daniel for emphasis, losing his audience with the magnitude or the apathy.
The woman looked around at the bath-sized water tanks containing small lozenges of rescued coral, then seeing nothing to capture her interest craned her neck to see through an internal window that looked onto the scientific laboratory with its array of microscopes and shiny surfaces. ‘Calvin’s got a microscope just like those,’ she said. ‘Never uses it of course. Too busy on his PlayStation. You know kids…’ Outside the day was sharply focussed and vibrant. Beachgoers strolled past the windows without a glance. The air conditioner hummed, and the woman’s interest flagged. ‘So where are you from?’ she said. ‘We’re from New Jersey.’
Daniel sighed. ‘California.’
‘Whereabouts?’ said the husband, newly interested.
Daniel shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t know it.’
‘I know California,’ insisted the man.
‘Sausalito. It’s a small town near—‘
‘I don’t know it,’ said the man with a deflated shake of his head, his attention fading. He was angular and tattooed with an aggressive, wide footed stance, and a forward lean that suggested he was working hard just to keep upright.
‘Now look at this coral here,’ said Daniel, leaning over a tank and pointing to a bulbous coral that undulated beneath the water. ‘The scientific name for this coral is Dendrogyra cylindrus—you probably know it as ‘Pillar coral,’ he said without much confidence.
‘Pillow coral,’ said the woman, enunciating carefully and nodding her head.
‘Pillar,’ repeated Daniel.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I knew that.’ She laughed, a cackle that she tried to correct halfway through into something more melodic. Daniel thought it was a smoker’s laugh.
‘See the waving polyps? He’s hungry,’ said Daniel, pointing.
The woman looked bored now. ‘So do you feed it?’ she asked, without much interest.
‘I call him Fluffy,’ said Daniel. He produced a plastic container and dipped a syringe into it, sucking up cloudy liquid, ‘and I’m going to feed him right now. This is a plankton solution,’ he said, administering a stream of liquid to the flailing tentacles which billowed and bloomed as tiny mouths opened and closed.
‘There—you see?’ said Daniel with pride and patronage.
‘So, what’s Sausalito like?’ said the man, ignoring the coral. ‘How’d you end up here?’
‘Sausalito is fine. I’m a marine biologist. The SeaVista resort sponsors this programme, and I came here to help save the coral reef surrounding the Dominican Republic. You know, if it wasn’t for the reef this resort wouldn’t exist at all?’
Calvin was now playing a game on an iPhone, which played a mindless melody punctuated with periodic buzzes and bleeps. He stabbed with his fingers at the display. His mother said: ‘You say this coral is alive? Like an animal?’
‘That’s exactly right. It is an animal—part of the animal kingdom. The oldest living animals on earth – some can live for 5,000 years.’
‘So do they think, then? Do they have actual thoughts?’
‘That’s deep, babes,’ said her husband exchanging a mischievous look, as though sharing a joke.
‘It’s a good point,’ said Daniel, squirting another dose of plankton at Fluffy. ‘The science says that although corals are animals, they’re not sentient. But they somehow know when it’s mealtime—when I come to feed them, for instance. It’s a difficult thing to contemplate, but my theory is they have a kind of collective intelligence, a bit like ants.’
The woman’s eyes had glazed over. ‘But they don’t actually think?’
‘Not in the sense you mean, no.’
‘Shame,’ she said with a dismissive look at Fluffy. ‘All right Calvin, let’s go to the beach. ‘Thank you, David,’ and she extended a regal hand to Daniel, which from the gesture he didn’t know whether he was expected to shake or to kiss.
‘No problem,’ he said, accepting the hand fleetingly, ‘…and it’s Daniel.’
#
Moments later Celina breezed in, a flurry of apologies and flapping hands. She was all bright white teeth and brown limbs and ribbons of honey coloured hair that eddied around her shoulders.
‘So, so, sorry, Daniel. I’m so late.’
‘You’re not late at all.’
‘But you must want your lunch. It’s almost three.’
In truth he hadn’t thought about food. It was the heat: he rarely had an appetite during the hottest part of the day, and today it was hotter than ever.
‘I wasn’t that hungry.’ He nodded out of the window at the lingering family who seemed to be engaged in an argument. ‘We had some guests while you were at lunch.’
Celina looked out at the departing family, the boy swinging on his mother’s arm. ‘Were they really TOO terrible?’ she said with empathy.
‘Well, yes they were.’
She patted his cheek and his stomach contracted at the lightness of her touch, breathing the scent of her sweat and her sun block. ‘Poor Daniel. Well, I’m back now,’ she said, and she tugged open the glass door, swinging her handbag and breezed into the laboratory where she slipped the obligatory white lab coat over her T shirt and jeans.
‘I’ll go then,’ he said, and he was at the door, hoping to be called back, when he thought he heard his name called.
‘Daniel.’ A voice in his head. He propped open the glass door and called inside. ‘Did you say something Celina?’
‘Not me,’ said Celina, ‘maybe it was your precious corals talking to you.’
‘Funny,’ said Daniel.
‘Enjoy your lunch.’
He closed the door and crossed the footpath to the beach, lifting off his sandals. The sand scalded the soles of his feet. Only a few sun-browned holidaymakers basked on sun loungers. Motley encampments cowered under sunshades sipping cocktails and murmuring to each other. Daniel nodded at a waiter he knew, fresh and laundered despite the heat.
‘Good morning, Mr Daniel.’ The waiter’s thick soled shoes buried themselves in the sand. He flapped a tray at his side.
‘Hey, Carlos,’ he returned, pausing to survey the beach, hands on hips. ‘Not busy today.’
‘Not today, Mr Daniel. It’s the seaweed,’ he said, making a gesture towards the lapping ocean. ‘They prefer the pool.’
A shallow bank of brown seaweed stretched along the beach. Daniel shielded his eyes from the sun, looking along the coastline. ‘It’s bad today,’ he said.
‘Most days now, Mr Daniel,’ said Carlos in a despairing voice. ‘The tractors, they will come later to clear it away.’
‘Hmm,’ said Daniel, limping down towards the water and hopping over the seaweed. ‘See you later, Carlos.’
‘If you need anything…’ Carlos said, with a wave and a grin.
The water was glutinous and brown and didn’t live up to the Caribbean idyll. Daniel stooped and scooped out a handful of seaweed. It was sargassum, a variety that now plagued the island beaches and the Mexican coast. He burst some of the berries that allowed it to float on the water. The warming of the oceans and intensive soya farming dumping nitrogen and phosphorous in the ocean providing nourishment had created an ideal growing environment, and sargassum had flourished. Millions of tons of the stuff floated out there, blocking the light that coral needed to grow.
He tossed the seaweed into the water.
‘Daniel.’
He looked around. There was nobody within hailing distance, but he was certain he’d heard somebody call his name. A low, insistent voice, he thought. Perhaps just carried on the breeze—except there was no breeze. A mystery.
#
Professor Abraham Jewson perched on the patient bed, eschewing the chair at the side of the desk. The consulting room was compressed and silent, a vacuum. He was short of breath and sucked at the air. He had known Curtis Watkins for half a century and had never seen him this serious, swivelled towards him from the desk with his hands folded in his lap. He looked old and piercing with tight curled, steely hair and a fraught lined face.
‘So what are you telling me, Curtis?’ he said.
‘I can’t sugar coat it, Abe.’
‘Then don’t.’
Curtis looked out of the window. A Ford saloon was manoeuvring into a parking spot and making a meal of it. They both saw it and allowed themselves to be distracted by the car’s shifts and turns, backwards and forwards into a space that was too small for it. An interval before the big reveal.
‘We’ve know each other a long time. A lot of water passed under the bridge…’
‘So, cut to the chase.’
Curtis looked away. ‘You’re dying, Abe,’ he said, at last.
‘We’re all dying,’ said Abe, not making it easy.
‘You don’t have long.’
Abe gulped for air, and put a hand to his chest. The chest that contained the tumour, burrowing somewhere deep inside. ‘Mind if we open a window?’
‘They don’t open. Sorry.’ Curtis opened his palms in a helpless gesture.
‘They never do these days, do they?’
Curtis shook his head, slowly. ‘These days…’ he repeated, threading his fingers again. They were taut and white, like he was holding tight.
‘Maybe it’s why you don’t see so many flies indoors any more?’
‘Maybe.’ Curtis waited for the inevitable question, drawing it out.
‘How long do I have?’
‘Functionally, I’d say six months.’ And there it was at last, laid out before them like a patient exposed for the surgeon’s knife. The final cut.
‘I’m seventy-eight.’
‘I know, Abe.’
The Ford had driven off with an impatient puff of black exhaust in search of an easier place to park. The sun glanced off a windscreen and vapour rose in the air from the hot tarmac. A small electric Toyota swept into the vacant space and a man in a white coat got out, hauling a briefcase from the rear seat and then slamming the door.
‘Same age as the President,’ said Abe with a slow smile.
‘You would make a better one, and that’s a fact.’
‘I’ll never get that chance, will I?’
‘The faculty…’ Curtis began.
‘Screw the faculty. They can do what they do without me.’
A silence descended for a few moments. ‘What will you do?’ said Curtis at last.
‘One thing I learned when I was a kid growing up in Mississippi is there’s no sense running from mosquitos or hurricanes.’
