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  Chapter 5 - World Harmony Cafe

  The evening is warm and balmy, like most evenings on St. Lucy. A salty ocean breeze plays gently across the large veranda of the restaurant. The veranda is studded with glass topped white wrought iron tables and cushioned wrought iron chairs. A few couples sit in the open air perusing menus or looking into each other's eyes. Slow Jazz instrumental music drifts faintly out onto the patio from inside the main restaurant. The smell of potatoes cooked with Indian spices occasionally wafts out with the music when the direction of the breeze changes. A big sign on the brick wall of the building announces the name in big letters:

  World Harmony Cafe

  Shortly beneath that, in smaller script, the names of drinks appear:

  Juice and Fruit Smoothies on tap. Beer and Wine also served.

  The next lines list some popular menu items:

  Jambalaya, Falafel, Enchiladas, Tacos, Kung Pao Tofu, Pasta Pomodoro

  Potato Pancakes, Lefse, Corn Cakes, Naan

  Samosas, Plantain Chips, Pappadum, Antipasto, Hummus

  Collard Greens, Chow Chow

  Asparagus soup, Pot Liquor, Soup D'Jour

  Sweet Potato Pie, Pineapple Cake, Banana Bread, Sorbet

  Don't see what you want? Just Ask, all Vegan.

  Skipping a space, the next lines read:

  No animal products used.

  No tobacco allowed!

  Bringing people together by bringing food together.

  Vegan for life.

  After another blank space, the two bottom lines announce, in somewhat larger letters:

  Music nightly from 8 p.m.

  Jazz Friday and Saturday

  Late dinners and a nightlife are part of the package in hot climates. This particular Vegan restaurant is locally famous for the best Indian food around, occasional tofu ingredient notwithstanding. The New Orleans music is a big draw too.

  Pretty young Annetka Svoboda sits on the terrace with her beau, Dr. Albert Bedwin Baldwin. His nickname is Buddy to his friends, occasionally Baldy, and sometimes Bedwin to Annetka, who has somehow found out his oddly royal, and mildly suggestive, middle name. She's especially delighted that he blushes slightly and gets momentarily flustered if she gives him a suggestive glance when she pronounces it with the emphasis on the first syllable. "Bedwin," she is saying, "Tell us about your research."

  "I'm dreaming," Zeph says while Baldwin pauses. Baldwin and Annetka have been joined at dinner by another couple. Zephram Yates, a castoff CDC scientist friend of Buddy's from the states, now also working on the island, sits across from his new girlfriend. His eyes are locked on Zoe Jalissa Zamora, his exotically beautiful mixed-race multilingual island dream girl. "Tell me, Buddy, when you were back at the NIH, did a single pretty girl EVER ask about your research?" Zeph poses his perpetual question. He still has trouble believing his luck in finding Zoe. He keeps expecting her to vanish if he rubs his eyes.

  "But we're interested, DOCtor Yates," Jalissa responds scoldingly, emphasizing the first syllable of Doctor, like a mother cross with a child. She looks at him with enormous round brown eyes that seem to reflect the night sky. Her long dark hair hangs over her shoulders in layered medium-loose curls. She has a small nose, but not too small, and full lips, but not too full. Taller than Annetka but not as tall as Zeph, she has long legs and the lithe body of a dancer, with the addition of abundantly developed feminine characteristics. She smells like the spices and flowers that grow on the islands. With only a little formal education, but a lot of native intelligence and intellectual curiosity, apparently she actually is interested. Meeting her, for Zeph, was like a polarized magnet encountering its opposite.

  "Amazing," Zeph says, and shakes his head, with his gaze fixed unbreakably on his girl. Stunningly beautiful and interested in science. Can life offer anything better, he wonders, and thinks not.

  "Oh, come on," the dark island girl insists, turning her attention to Baldwin. "Annetka said it has something to do with the crazy people. She says it's like the antler ants on the Shaman's Island."

  Zeph isn't terribly interested in the research just now. He's wondering how Jalissa can possibly smell like the spices and flowers that grow on the islands. He lacks the nerve to ask. Anyway he enjoys imagining the possibilities. He says nothing and lets Baldwin talk while he contemplates and stares at young Ms. Zamora.

  "The recent outbreak of sudden onset insanity," Baldwin delivers his composed answer, "has led to death in all the cases we know about for certain. But I suspect there may be a lot more people who are carriers, people who haven't been driven to the insanity and death stage, at least not yet. It may be that it takes a long time to develop. Not as long as AIDS, but probably several months. Much longer than the flu. So a person carrying it might show no symptoms for a long time, but they can probably still spread the parasite during that phase."

  Zeph - Dr. Yates - looks at the speaker, taking an interest.

  "That's my suspicion, anyway," Buddy adds.

  "After all, they send me tissue samples because somebody has died, right?" he asks Zeph rhetorically. "People want an explanation. Somebody insane but alive doesn't attract as much sympathy and interest, and I certainly don’t get samples. People assume the victim is drunk or on drugs. And the parasite might not develop fully in a person with a strong immune system. If it has a long incubation period that would explain how it could spread so widely before presenting itself in a fairly far-flung geographic area."

  "Florida and the Gulf Coast states, and maybe the whole Caribbean," Zeph says and nods.

  Buddy nods back. For illustration, and for the beautiful non-biochemists at the table, he describes the offending parasite a bit loosely. "This parasite -- it's sort of a fungus. You can think of it like a wart with long stringy tendrils like vines growing inside the brain of the victim." After a pause he adds, "That takes time."

  Jalissa is again struck, from that description, with the similarity to the Antler-Ant phenomenon sometimes found in the nearby tropical jungles.

  "Does it ever explode out of their heads, like what happens to the ants?" she wants to know, but doesn't pause for him to answer. "In the highlands on Shaman Island," she tells him, "they have a healer, a tribal medicine man, who brews up a herbal tea. Sometimes animals, and even people, are infected with the Antler Ant spores there. He gives them the tea. It's supposed to be a cure, people say."

  Baldwin is astonished. So is his fellow scientist Zeph.

  "Cordyceps had made the trans-species jump to humans? Ophiocordyceps unilateralis?" Baldwin enquires of the girl, so surprised he forgets to dumb down the language. "To mammals and humans? Here, in these islands? You've seen this yourself?"

  "Well, no. I haven't seen it myself," she answers, taken aback by his sudden intensity. "I've heard about it," she adds for clarification. Seeing the disbelief in the men's eyes she also adds, "from reliable sources."

  Nobody says anything. Uncomfortable with the silence, she continues. "What, you think I'd make up something like this? For what? No, really. This is true. There is one particular species of giant carpenter ants that only live on the one island, in the high jungle in the interior," she explains. "These things are half as long as your foot. Well, half as long as Jack's foot."

  "Jack is her brother," Zeph offers. "A big guy about 6 foot 6. Don't know his shoe size."

  "You've seen these ants yourself?" Buddy asks.

  Again, she hasn't, but she has seen evidence. "Not the ants. I saw an ant bite on a friend of Snake's. It was big. Jack and Snake have seen the ants. They were there on the island. Not long ago. They were a little shaken up by it. Snake was afraid his friend might get infected."

  "Snake is a friend of her brother Jack," Zeph clarifies. "Big tough guy. Normally nothing shakes him up."

  The two men suspect she's exaggerating, or repeating an exaggeration she heard from the actual witnesses. But curiosity
is a potent force in the scientific soul. They want to see for themselves.

  "That island," Annetka offers, "is famous around here for the fantastic beaches on the north coast."

  "I don't own a swimsuit," Baldwin says weakly. He isn't trying to resist going to the island, which he very much wants to do. What he doesn't want is to go swimming. It dawns on him that he isn't going to be able to refuse to swim forever and still make a life in the Caribbean.

  Annetka, undeterred, reports that "There's a very nice nude beach there too, so no problem. A clothing optional beach, I mean."

  The combined appeal to his prurient interest and his scientific curiosity is too much to endure. "Okay," Baldwin answers, "Let's go have a look. One day soon. Swimming and, uh, sightseeing."

  "Tomorrow," the two women say in unison.

  "It'll be Saturday tomorrow," Annetka says with a trace of excitement, flashing her big deep blue eyes right at Baldwin, smiling her charming half smile.

  The waitress picks this moment to come to their table.

  "How's the falafel?" Zeph asks. "Do you have samosas? Bring me a large strawberry banana smoothie."

  Jalissa answers one of his questions: "That spiced potato smell you keep noticing? That's the smell of samosas."

  "The falafel is good. All our food is good," the waitress answers his other question. "One large strawberry banana smoothie. You need more time to decide? Anybody want to order a drink?"

  Yerba Mate for Zoe Jalissa. Annetka wants chocolate almond milk made with Mexican chocolate -- the kind flavored with Christmas spices. A large glass of apple-pineapple juice for Baldwin.

  Annetka and Zoe look at the menus, which they already know by heart. Nothing on them has changed since the last time they were here. "Jumbalaya?" Zoe asks her friend Annetka.

  "I like their Indian food," Annetka answers. "Chana Dahl or Lentil Curry. Or maybe that cauliflower potato thing. Definitely Samosas. Pappadum."

  "Bring us the drinks and some samosas and pappadum for appetizers," Baldwin tells the waitress, "and plantain chips."

  The woman departs without writing anything down, walking away slowly with her hips swinging gently side to side.

  Annetka continues the conversation where she left off. "We can go tomorrow early. We'll have lots of time. We could even spend the night if it comes to that. Maybe we can find the shaman, the ants, everything. It's lucky Jalissa speaks all the local languages. She can translate no matter what language they're speaking."

  When she sees agreement in Baldwin's eyes she adds, "after swimming."

  The plan is silently agreed, by being unopposed. Jazz sounds float out from the main restaurant, overlaid with the chatter of scattered conversations at the tables. The breeze brings in the fresh salt ocean smell.

  "So, what did you do today?" Buddy asks the others at large.

  "We were all swimming," the girls answer, and giggle. Nobody explains to him why that's funny.

  "We had a great time," Zeph sums it up.

  . . .

  After dinner the two couples part, agreeing to leave for the island early in the morning.

  Zeph and Zoe Jalissa take off in his little blue car. The discordant sound of the engine seems to assault the quiet peace of the evening, which is otherwise punctuated only by drifting strains of jazz and fragments of tinkling conversations.

  Baldwin is left alone with Annetka under the dim streetlight. They set out to walk with the few blocks to her family's home. He likes walking, and she seems to like it too. The island is nice that way. He estimates the entire island is only about ten or fifteen miles across at its widest point. Soufriere itself is small, with maybe ten thousand inhabitants at the most. No place in Soufriere is ever too far away to walk.

  The starlight is bright and the moon is almost full. Baldwin takes Annetka's hand and holds it in his as they walk, swinging their joined hands between them with each step.

  He remembers high school, walking a girl home from a dance. He had almost forgotten that period of his life, but walking here with her suddenly it doesn't seem so long ago. As in high school, they arrive at her home too soon.

  At her front door they stop and she turns toward him, face upturned. The porch light illuminates her sparkling eyes, her perfect features.

  He wonders whether to kiss her goodnight.

  As he looks into her eyes, her father opens the door and the moment disappears.

  "Good night, Annie," he says, dropping her hand from his.

  She smiles and goes in through the door that her father holds open.

  "Good evening, Sir," he says to the father by way of greeting. The father nods at him, retreating back into the house as he closes the door.

  Baldwin turns and walks away, walking toward home without thinking where he is going, thinking about nothing.

  Before his head hits the pillow he is already dreaming about swimming with Annetka at the clothing optional beach.