Rabbit Island Recharge

by Maxwell Addington (Canada)

A leap into the unknown Cambodia

After five weeks of following Kazumi’s exhausting itinerary, which comprised long days of walking in full sun to places Kazumi could collect photos for his Instagram, we bussed to the Cambodian coast and took a boat to Rabbit Island. The island was off the grid; a tiny community of wooden bungalows tucked into lush vegetation behind a beach lined with towering palms. I chose the island out of a desire to recharge in tranquility. Travel websites said the electricity that fed power outlets and the restaurant came from generators which were switched off at night, so you could sleep to the sound of softly collapsing waves. As we closed in on the island and wind whipped through my hair, I could feel concerns leaving my head like dandelion seeds shed into the breeze. I grinned at Kazumi, who tucked his chin into his red lifejacket, gripped the gunwale, and stared at his phone. He was not looking forward to the island’s lack of air conditioning and WiFi, but I had long suspected Kazumi of having an Internet addiction, and I believed he should learn to disconnect. Regardless, this was the section of our graduation trip that I got to plan. I wasn’t going to let him spoil it. Admittedly, I hadn’t known about the scorpions. The first appeared in our bed. The moonlight streaming in the mesh window gleamed on the scorpion’s hard body and illuminated the sweat glistening on Kazumi’s forehead. I was considering how to capture the scorpion and gently put it outside when Kazumi asked me to raise the mosquito net. I wasn’t sure of his plan, but I raised the net and he swiped the scorpion off the sheets with the back of his hand. This sent the scorpion sailing into a dark corner, where it hit the wall with a light clack. “Well now you’ve made it angry,” I said. “No,” he said, “I made it dead.” In the morning Kazumi was squatting over the trough-like toilet when another scorpion, perhaps the same one, stood watching with its stinger raised. Kazumi was in a more vulnerable position this time, so he stared the scorpion down, finished, and calmly backed out of the bathroom. Scorpions became Kazumi’s main bargaining chip in subsequent discussions about leaving the island. The two proliferated in his mind, and he spoke of the island as though scorpions rained from the sky. But there must have been thirty other people on the island: they also slept in bungalows with gaps in the joints and floorboards. They were just as susceptible to night attacks, yet they managed to spend their days floating in the clear water without apparent concern. I spent my days in a shady hammock, tearing through short novels, while Kazumi had made the mistake of bringing a seven hundred–page history of capitalism. He would read a couple pages, put the tome down, then stand at the shoreline with his phone. The reception was supposedly better near the water, but I suspected he wanted to get in my line of sight so I could better view his suffering. Particularly when he extended the phone into the air and waved it. He claimed the waving gave him an extra bar of service, though to me it looked like he was trying to send out an SOS. On the fourth morning, Kazumi’s mobile data reserve vanished. From my hammock, I watched him perform his signal SOS at the shore. He trudged back up the sand and told me that the last gigabyte had disappeared. Gripping his phone, he outlined his argument: he didn’t want his girlfriend to worry, there were scorpions everywhere, he was constantly perspiring, and regardless, he didn’t see the point of flying halfway around the world just to lie in a hammock and read. I’d believed I could force him to disconnect, but it was clear: what was paradise for me, for him was hell. Some tension left Kazumi’s body as he went off to arrange a boat. I opened my book, but the exhaustion I thought I’d left on the mainland filled my head, leaving no space for the sentences to go in.