The next day was as golden as the first and the haul of awabi went up to sixty-eight, largely thanks to Bond’s improved diving.
awabiThe evening before, Kissy had come back from selling her shells at the market and had found Bond writhing on the floor of his room with cramps in his stomach muscles and her mother clucking helplessly over him. She had shooed her mother away, spread the soft futon on the floor beside him and had pulled off his bathing pants and rolled him on to the futon face downwards. Then she had stood upright on his back and had walked softly up and down his spine from his buttocks to his neck, and the ache had slowly gone. She told him to lie still and brought him warm milk. Then she led him into the tiny bathhouse and poured hot and then tepid water over him from an aw
