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  In the normal course of life, there are ways to diffuse tension in relationships. You can go to the movies, talk to a friend, take a walk, go to the gym, see a therapist. In short, a structured life on land offers opportunity to take distance and reflect, or just escape. Living aboard a yacht doesn’t permit taking that personal space. You are in a small enclosed area, where you are always within sight of one another. There is nowhere to escape or take refuge or defuse. You have to deal with issues in the moment, and you have to deal with them in such a way that you can still keep your dignity, self-respect, and consideration of the other. Your survival depends on it. I had not yet learned how to do this. I was just starting to learn that I would have to.

  Fortunately, Bernard’s agitated and distant behaviour didn’t affect Jonah. This was due to the arrival of his older brother soon after we docked. In Taiwan we had received a letter from the friend in whose house Stefan was boarding that told us he was depressed, wasn’t going to his classes, and spent his time playing games in video parlours. We sent him a plane ticket so that he could join us in Hong Kong. Jonah was thrilled to have his older brother back, and accompanied me to the Kai Tak Airport to pick him up.

  I was as excited as Jonah to see Stefan.. I had wanted him to come with us. It was his decision to continue with junior college. I left him in good hands, but I still worried. He was 19 with no family nearby, and he looked even younger with his slim frame and sparse facial hair. We waited at the arrival area until everyone left the plane. There was no Stefan.

  “Do you think he missed the plane?” I was distraught and thinking about what to do next.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Jonah said. “Maybe he was hidden behind others getting off. Let’s look around.”

  The area had thinned out and a stocky guy with long hair and a beard was walking about aimlessly, carrying a guitar.

  “Do you think that’s him?” Jonah asked. “Stef plays a guitar.”

  “My God, yes.” I hadn’t recognized my own son. In the year and a half that we hadn’t seen him, he had filled out and grown a beard. I expected to find a kid. I found a man.

  The two boys had always been close, and it was a relief to know that Jonah had someone near to his age to pal around with. They explored Hong Kong together, became friends with a group of French students living on a Chinese junk called the Elf Chine that was anchored in the harbour, and settled into a life apart from us.

  There was another boat with young people aboard — a tall ship called the Osprey. The captain, an amiable young man named Doug, was an outgoing American who befriended us, and we occasionally visited the Osprey as a family.

  “I think the boys should sail on the Osprey,” Bernard said one morning over a cup of coffee. “They’ll get proper training sailing aboard a big ship.”

  I was livid at the suggestion. I didn’t trust his motive for sending them away. I felt he was trying to get rid of them. There was no way I would let them go.

  “That’s your job to train them,” I said. “I have no intention of unloading them onto the Osprey. They’re my kids. I want them here.”

  A year later, we heard the Osprey had sunk in a typhoon. There was one survivor, the cook. The captain and crew went down with the ship.

  Chapter 8

  HONG KONG: AN ISLAND LIKE NO OTHER

  Summer 1981: Hong Kong

  The mind is its own place, and in itself it can make a

  Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

  — JOHN MILTON

  In Taiwan, vitality is most evident in the inland city of Taipei, but in Hong Kong life begins in the harbour. Huge wooden junks crowd the waterways, and small sampans dart in and out hawking wares that range from fresh produce to clothing to household goods. Sampans motor deftly through anchored yachts leaving delectable scents that are impossible to resist. Almost daily we treated ourselves to roast pork, soy sauce chicken or pressed duck, placed over mounds of fragrant rice prepared aboard these small open boats. Off-shore seafood restaurants accessed by water taxis operated until midnight.

  We met fishermen who had lived their whole lives in the water village and never came ashore, eking out a meagre living plying fish to passing boats. Looking towards the island of Lantau, boatloads of Vietnamese refugees sat silently in the water hoping to be admitted.

  Sunday mornings, we abandoned the Santa Rita for Dim Sum establishments, where endless varieties of sweet and savoury dishes rolled past us on little carts. I looked forward to the flat rice noodles washed over with soy sauce and sesame oil. Bernard favoured the steamed baskets of pork and shrimp dumplings. Stefan and Jonah, being more adventurous than either of us, tested their palettes on duck feet and gloppy-looking tripe. If we had room left in our stomachs, we ordered the little packets of glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaves and steamed to chewy perfection. Each meal ended with an order of delicious egg tarts washed down with our last cups of tea, an overindulgence that always put a stitch in my side, but I couldn’t resist.

  The dim sum houses were more than eateries for us. They were also cheap entertainment. Within cavernous walls devoid of decor, hordes of people descended, several generations together, to share in the ritual of communal eating. Babies cried. Toddlers practised with chopsticks pinned together like long clothespins. Mothers placed small delicacies into the bowls of their children. Everyone shouted across large tables, their voices rising above the sounds of clattering platters.

  I enjoyed being enmeshed in this theatre of life, but was overwhelmed by the masses of people pressed together. I couldn’t understand why they never got irritated with one another. The crowded waterways, densely populated streets, and shared restaurant tables seemed to bother no one but me. I remember waiting in line for a movie, keeping a proper distance from the person in front, when a woman wedged into the space. For her it was a gap in the line, a space to be filled. I wondered whether their tolerance for constant contact was conditioned behaviour from childhood or resignation because they had no choice. For me, living in tight quarters was difficult.

  On the Santa Rita, Bernard and I weren’t doing well in our cramped quarters. I knew adjustments and repairs had to be done on our newlyacquired yacht, but I wasn’t responsible for the flaws, and bridled at his taking his frustration out on me. The final rupture came on a seemingly neutral day when a sampan motored up to the Santa Rita with an offering of barbecued pork.

  Bernard, focused on a part of the shaft that had become loose during the crossing, didn’t look up when I asked if he was interested. “Get what you want,” he snapped. “I don’t care.”

  “But will you eat it?”

  “I told you I don’t care.”

  “Why are you so edgy?”

  “I’m not edgy.”

  “You raised your voice.”

  “I didn’t raise my voice.”

  That evening we ate in silence. After the meal, I escaped to the fresh air on deck to get away from the gloomy atmosphere below.

  I saw little of my boys during this period. They were old enough to be on their own, and did a lot of exploring without us. During the day they checked out the markets and antique shops where Stefan picked up an early American coin, an old Chinese lock, and a brass scale.

  “What do you think, mom?”

  He was thrilled with the scale. “It’s really old, but I can still use it.” He lined up the gradated weights for me to inspect.

  “Great find,” I said. I got a vicarious pleasure out of their explorations and discoveries, and felt hurt that Bernard had no interest in exploring the city with me.

  Evenings, Stefan and Jonah visited the Elf Chine with its crew of French students. From time to time, they hung out with the crew from the Osprey. If they were aware of the atmosphere on the Santa Rita, they didn’t let on. I was relieved they had one another and a circle of friends.

  I felt invisible when I was with Bernard. I wanted to talk to him about it, but couldn’t bridge his silence. To get away, I escaped to different parts of the
city. A few times, I visited the aquarium and communed with the coral and sea life. I spent time wandering among sharks in an underwater glass tunnel because it put me into a timeless space with no thought.

  One evening I took the tram to The Peak to see Hong Kong from 1300 feet up. I looked down on Victoria Harbour and up to the mountains behind the skyscrapers. I’d had no idea how varied the terrain of Hong Kong was. From The Peak, I saw the outlying islands and across to Kowloon and the new territories. The view was so sweeping and breathtaking it made me feel powerful and in control of my life. I imagined myself a god looking down from Mt. Olympus.

  As the sky darkened, the city lit up and the buildings glowed like luminous stalactites. I felt euphoric, and I wished I could have shared the moment with Bernard. I knew he would have loved the view. On one of my escape days, I visited Madame Tussauds to check out the Beatles in wax. I felt guilty because I knew Stefan and Jonah would have enjoyed that visit, but I didn’t ask them. I had wanted to see Hong Kong with Bernard.

  “It’s a fascinating island,” I said over a morning cup of coffee. “Come with me. There’s a lot to see.”

  “Can’t you do anything on your own?”

  He picked up his mug and went on deck without waiting for me to answer. I sat alone at the table, frustrated and seething at the unfairness of his comment.

  I was in a foreign country with a husband who’d turned from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. It never occurred to me that Bernard may have been afraid of taking on the responsibility of three unseasoned sailors, or that he was having second thoughts about sailing into treacherous waters. I just knew I was without a home to escape to and without any money to restart my life. Not that I wanted to restart my life. I loved Bernard, and I desperately wanted things to go back to the way they were before the Santa Rita came between us.

  “Screw you!” I mumbled to myself. “I AM going to do things on my own.”

  I stopped caring about having Bernard join me and took pleasure in my daily outings. I wandered in and out of small shops, and took delight in discovering narrow alleyways where I walked in step to the click, click, clicking of mah jong tiles emanating from surrounding apartments. Gambling outside of designated parlours was against the law in Hong Kong, and mah jong was considered a gambling game. People were betting away their homes and children, and the government wanted to put a stop to it. But it was obvious that the law wasn’t working. People were blatantly ignoring the government decree.

  At first, the brusqueness of the people unnerved me, but I gradually acclimated. I learned that “thank you” was not part of the Cantonese culture, and stopped being offended. The language lent itself to blunt directness, so when I wanted something, I got right to the point and never said thank you. I discovered that a smile worked well in all cultures and over-rode any linguistic differences. A smile from Bernard would have gone a long way in bridging the distance between us. I could have forgiven his preoccupation with the Santa Rita.

  During one of my downtown explorations, I stumbled across a second-hand bookstore that sold books and magazines in English at discount prices. I unearthed four dog-eared copies of the Smithsonian Institute Magazine and a scruffy hardcover book by a man named Joseph Murphy, who promised to show me how to bring joy into my life. I bought the magazines to lose myself and the Murphy book in an attempt to find myself.

  I hoped the book would excise the litany of betrayal scenes from my childhood that buzzed inside my head like a swarm of trapped bees. Bernard’s distance opened a Pandora’s Box of wounds that had been long buried. Miss Powell, my grade one teacher, made me a cabbage in the Peter Rabbit play. Miss Cincinelli, my grade three teacher, didn’t recognize my talent and claimed someone else did my drawing. Miss Dolan in grade six gave the poem I wrote to another child to read at graduation. Miss Rowland, the school principal, kept the red bag filled with money that I had found on the way to school. God didn’t give me my sister’s beauty. My mother never cuddled me. My dad told me my sister was a far better person than I was, after I had spent every college weekend home trying to “straighten her out” because he had asked me to.

  I changed my name to Susan, my only association with the name being the bright yellow sunflowers that grew wild in the fields near my childhood home. I don’t know what made me do it. I know I was angry with myself for having put so much trust in Bernard. Maybe with a different name I could reinvent myself. It also occurred to me that it may have been a way of taking distance from the yacht that had taken my name and my husband away.

  “You were born with a horseshoe up your ... you know what,” a friend had once said. I now remembered her words and hoped that Mr. Murphy’s book would prove her right. His table of contents promised “nirvana,” and I figured if I got only halfway there, I was ahead of the game. He offered visualization and relaxation techniques that bordered on meditation, and I felt a connection to something familiar.

  Ten years earlier in Mexico I had meditated with Ejo Takada, a monk from Japan who had been sponsored by a group of Mexican psychiatrists to teach the technique to their patients. I met him at a house gathering in Mexico City, liked him immensely, and joined his weekly classes. The sessions with Ejo were enthralling but not practicing daily on my own. I gradually stopped doing the daily practice and then going to the weekly sessions. I now regretted I couldn’t maintain the discipline. Maybe Bernard was right when he said I was not taking enough initiative to do things on my own. I was committed to changing that in myself.

  I burrowed into the tiny settee Bernard had built for me in the aft cabin and memorized whole chunks of Murphy’s book. I made a daily practice of using meditation and Murphy’s subconscious training techniques to pull myself out of the dark hole I’d fallen into. It didn’t do much to improve Bernard’s disposition, but it did a lot for how I responded to him. I became less reactive when he’d suddenly snap or withdraw into himself. I smiled more and listened attentively to his complaining about the sloppy work the yard had done on the yacht.

  “They’re good craftsmen,” he said, “but lousy mechanics. I have to test this yacht before we go further.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Take as long as you need here.” I was sympathetic but not overly concerned. I believed Bernard could fix anything.

  “The time spent here will be good for you and the boys,” he said. “You’ll get in a bit of sailing experience before we head for the Philippines.”

  In that moment I sensed the weight of the responsibility he was carrying — three people with no sailing experience aboard an unseasoned yacht heading into the China Sea. I felt an affection that I hadn’t for a long time. I wasn’t forcing anything. I just felt happier and less nervous — more positive in how I viewed our relationship. The atmosphere on the Santa Rita slowly changed from gloom to civility to an eventual re-kindling of friendship — and lovemaking.

  Bernard and I had survived the harrowing crossing of the Formosa Strait by finding ways within ourselves to work through the fear, Bernard by focusing on the yacht’s weaknesses and me by quieting my mind. Fortunately, we had the resiliency and determination to hold on to our dream. We saw yachties sail into the Aberdeen Harbour who didn’t. They arrived tired and dejected, and lost the will to go on.

  An American couple we’d met in Taiwan arrived after us in their bulky fifty-five-foot ketch that looked more like a small pirate ship missing some masts than a sailboat. “This is our dream,” the man told Bernard when we were still in Taiwan, “our retirement home that we’ve been looking forward to for years.” He invited Bernard aboard to show off the amenities he had installed for himself and his wife, Faith, whose name like mine graced their yacht.

  “It’s more like a houseboat than a yacht,” Bernard later told me. “It has every piece of equipment possible — a satellite system, a ham radio, a full stove with oven and even a washer and dryer. It’s so heavy from the washer and dryer that more ballast had to be added to keep it from listing to one side.”

  I watch
ed them come into the Aberdeen Yacht Club, and saw Faith leap off the yacht the moment they were tied to the mooring. Faith’s husband chased after her. Neither of them returned. Faith was put on the market. Their dream of an idyllic retirement in a cozy harbour was over.

  A French aristocrat whom we had met earlier sailed his yacht into Aberdeen and abandoned it in the middle of the harbour. He flagged down a sampan to take him to shore, hired someone to dock his yacht, and moved into an apartment for several months. He eventually returned to his yacht and sailed to Manila, where the boat mysteriously sank in the bay.

  The Australian couple that had built their yacht at the Shin Hsing Boatyard just before us was still in the Aberdeen Harbour when we arrived. This was the man with the hairdresser wife, who had taught me everything there was to know about provisioning; the woman who knew every nautical term and expression, and talked as though she had been at sea most of her life.

  I remembered Bernard asking me why I couldn’t be more like her. Between Taiwan and Hong Kong, Bronica had a nervous breakdown. I saw her sitting on the bow of their yacht in Aberdeen Harbour, mute, with a fishing line dangling in the water, but she caught no fish. Her husband went looking for crew to help him sail back to Australia. It was clear that the fully equipped beauty salon would never be used.

  Chapter 9

  SETTLING IN

  There is no boredom with anything that varies in such a way as always to tip one’s thoughts just over the horizon: and the absence of boredom must be one of the main attributes of happiness.

  — FREYA STARK