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The casks are sunk six feet underground and covered with the ashes of grape
vines. No one ever drank this wine, tasted it, or ever will."
"I'll drink it," Gray said one day, stamping his foot. "What a brave
young man!" Poldichoque said. "And will you drink it in Heaven?"
"Of course! Here's Heaven! It's here, see?" Gray laughed softly and
opened his small fist. His delicate but well-formed palm was lit up by the
sun, and then the boy curled his fingers into a fist again. "Here it is!
It's here, and now it's gone again!"
As he spoke he kept clenching and unclenching his fist. At last,
pleased with his joke, he ran out, ahead of Poldichoque, onto the dark
stairway leading to the ground floor corridor. Gray was absolutely forbidden
to enter the kitchen, but once, having discovered this wonderful world of
flaming hearths and soot, this hissing and bubbling of boiling liquids,
chopping of knives and mouth-watering smells, the boy became a diligent
visitor to the great chamber. The chefs moved in stony silence like some
high priests; their white hats etched against the soot-blackened walls lent
an air of solemn ritual to their movements; the fat, jovial dishwashers at
their barrels of water scrubbed the tableware, making the china and silver
ring; boys came in, bent under the weight of baskets of fish, oysters,
lobsters and fruit. Laid out on a long table were rainbow-hued pheasants,
grey ducks and brightly-feathered chickens; farther on was the carcass of a
suckling pig with a tiny tail and eyes shut like a babe's; then there were
turnips, cabbages, nuts, raisins and sun-burnished peaches.
Gray always quailed slightly in the kitchen: he felt that some strange
force was in charge here, and that its power was the mainspring of life in
the castle; the shouts sounded like orders and invocations; the movements of
the kitchen staff after years of practice had acquired that precise,
measured rhythm that seems like inspiration. Gray was not yet tall enough to
peep into the largest cauldron which bubbled like Mt. Vesuvius, but he felt
a special respect for it; he watched in awe as two serving women handled it;
at such times steaming froth would splash out onto the top of the stove, and
the steam that rose from the hissing stove lid would billow out into the
kitchen. On one occasion so much liquid splashed out it scalded one of the
kitchen maid's hands. The skin immediately turned red from the rush of
blood, and Betsy (for that was her name) wept as she rubbed oil into the
burned skin. Tears coursed down her round, frightened face uncontrollably.
Gray was petrified. As the other women fussed about Betsy, he was
suddenly gripped by the pain of another person's suffering which he could
not himself experience.
"Does it hurt very much?" he asked.
"Try it, and you'll see," Betsy replied, covering her hand with her
apron.
The boy frowned and climbed up onto a stool, dipped a long-handled
spoon into the hot liquid (in this case it was lamb soup) and splashed some
onto his wrist. The sensation was not faint, but the faintness resulting
from the sharp pain made him sway. He was as pale as flour when he went up
to Betsy, hiding his scalded hand in his pants pocket.
"I think it hurts you awfully," he murmured, saying nothing of his own
experiment. "Come to the doctor, Betsy. Come on!"
He tugged at her skirt insistently, though all the while the believers
in home remedies were giving the girl all sorts of
advice for treating the burn. However, she was in very great pain, and
so she followed Gray. The doctor relieved her pain by applying some
medication. Not before Betsy was gone did Gray show him his own hand.
This insignificant episode made twenty-year-old Betsy and ten-year-old
Gray bosom friends. She would fill his pockets with sweets and apples, and
he would tell her fairy-tales and other stories he had read in his books.
One day he discovered that Betsy could not marry Jim, the groom, because
they had no money to set themselves up in a home of their own. Gray used his
fireplace tongs to crack his china piggy-bank and shook out the contents,
which amounted to nearly a hundred pounds. He rose early, and when the
dowerless girl went off to the kitchen, sneaked into her room and placed his
gift in her chest, laying a note on top: "This is yours, Betsy. (Signed)
Robin Hood." The commotion this caused in the kitchen was so great that Gray
had to confess to the deed. He did not take the money back and did not want
to have another word said about it.
His mother was one of those people whom life pours into a ready mould.
She lived in the dream-world of prosperity that provided for every wish of
an ordinary soul; therefore, she had no other occupation save to order
around her dressmakers, doctor and butler. However, her passionate and
ail-but religious attachment for her strange child was, one might assume,
the only vent for those of her inclinations, chloroformed by her upbringing
and fate, which were no longer fully alive, but simmered faintly, leaving
the will idle. The high-born dame resembled a peacock hen that had hatched a
swan's egg. She was quiveringly aware of the magnificent uniqueness of her
son; sadness, love and constraint filled her being when she pressed the boy
to her breast, and her heart spoke unlike her tongue, which habitually
reflected the conventional types of relationships and ideas. Thus does a
cloud effect, concocted so weirdly by the sun's rays, penetrate the
symmetrical interior of a public building, divesting it of its banal merits;
the eye sees but does not recognize the chamber; the mysterious nuances of
light amongst paltriness create a dazzling harmony.
The high-born dame, whose face and figure, it seemed, could respond but
in icy silence to the fiery voices of life and whose delicate beauty
repelled rather than attracted, since one sensed her haughty effort of will,
devoid of feminine attraction -- this same Lillian Gray, when alone with the
boy, was transformed into an ordinary mother speaking in a loving, gentle
voice those endearments which refuse to be committed to paper; their power
lies in the emotions, not in their meaning. She was positively unable to
refuse her son anything. She forgave him everything: his visits to the
kitchen, his abhorrence of his lessons, his disobedience and his many
eccentricities.
If he did not want the trees to be trimmed they were left untouched; if
he asked that someone be pardoned or rewarded -- the person in question knew
that it would be so; he could ride any horse he wished, bring any dog he
wished into the castle, go through the books in the library, run around
barefoot and eat whatever he pleased.
His father tried to put a stop to this and finally yielded -- not to
the principle, but to his wife's wishes. He merely had all the servants'
children moved out of the castle, fearing that by associating with low
society the boy's whims would become inclinations that would be difficult to
eradicate. In general, he was completely taken up with endless family
lawsuits whose origins went back to the era of the founding of the first
paper mills and whose end perhaps lay in the death of the last caviller.
Besides, there were affairs of state, the running of his own estates,
dictating his memoirs, fox-hunts, newspapers to be read and an extended
correspondence to keep him at a certain distance inwardly from the rest of
the family; he saw his son so infrequently that he would sometimes forget
how old the boy was.
Thus, Gray lived in a world of his own. He played all by
himself--usually in the back yards of the castle which had once, in times of
yore, been of strategic use. These vast, empty lots with the remains of deep
moats and moss-covered stone cellars were overgrown with weeds, nettles,
briars, blackthorn and shy bright wildflowers. Gray would spend hours here,
exploring mole burrows, battling weeds, stalking butterflies and building
fortresses of broken bricks, which he then shelled with sticks and stones.
He was going on twelve when all the implications of his soul, all the
separate traits of his spirit and shades of secret impulses were brought
together in a single powerful surge and, having in this way acquired a
harmonious expression, became an indomitable desire. Until then he seemed to
have found but disparate parts of his garden--a sunny spot, shadow, a
flower, a great dark trunk--in the many other gardens and suddenly saw them
clearly, all -- in magnificent, astonishing accord.
This happened in the library. The tall door topped by a murky fanlight
was usually locked, but the latch fit the mortise loosely and when pressed
hard, the door would give, buckle and open. When the spirit of adventure
urged Gray to make his way into the library he was amazed at the dusty
light, whose effect and peculiarity were created by the coloured design of
the leaded fanlight. The stillness of desertion lay upon everything here as
on water in a pond. Here and there dark rows of bookcases adjoined the
windows, blocking them halfway; there were aisles between the bookcases
which were piled high with volumes. Here was an open album from which the
centre pages had slipped out; over there were some scrolls tied with gold
cord, stacks of sombre-looking books, thick layers of manuscripts, a mound
of miniature volumes which cracked like bark if they were opened; here were
charts and tables, rows of new editions, maps; a great variety of bindings,
coarse, fine, black, mottled, blue, grey, thick, thin, rough and smooth. The
bookcases were packed with books. They seemed like walls which had
encompassed life itself within their bulk. The glass of the bookcases
reflected other bookcases covered with colourless, shimmering spots. On a
round table was a huge globe encased by a brass spherical cross formed by
the equator and a meridian.
Turning to the exit, Gray saw a huge painting above the door whose
images immediately filled the rigid silence of the library. The painting was
of a clipper rising upon the crest of a tremendous wave. Foam coursed down
its side. It was depicted at the very last moment of its upward flight. The
ship was sailing straight at the viewer. The rearing bowsprit obscured the
base of the masts. The crest of the great wave, rent by the keel, resembled
the wings of a huge bird. Foam streaked off into the air. The sails, but
vaguely discernible behind the forecastle deck and above the bowsprit,
swollen by the raging force of the storm, were bearing back in their
enormity, in order to, having gained the crest, righten themselves and then,
tilting over the void, speed the vessel on towards new billows. Low, ragged
clouds swirled over the ocean. The dim light struggled vainly against the
approaching darkness of night. However, the most striking aspect of the
painting was the figure of a man standing on the forecastle deck with his
back to the viewer. It fully conveyed the situation and even the nature of
the moment. The man's pose (he had spread his legs far apart and flung out
his arms) did not actually indicate what he was doing, but led one to assume
attention strained to the extreme and directed towards something on deck
invisible to the viewer. The hem of his coat was whipped back by the wind;
his white pigtail and black sword were swept straight out into the air; the
richness of his dress indicated him to be the captain; his dancing stance --
the sweep of the wave; there was no hat; he was, apparently, completely
absorbed by the dangerous moment and was shouting--but what? Did he see a
man falling overboard, was he issuing an order to tack about or, shouting
above the wind, was he calling to the boatswain? The shadows of these
thoughts, not the thoughts themselves, took shape in Gray's heart as he
gazed at the painting. He suddenly felt that someone had approached him from
the left and now stood beside him, unknown and unseen; he had only to turn
his head to make the weird sensation disappear without a trace. Gray knew
this. However, he did not snuff out his imagination, but harkened to it. A
soundless voice shouted several curt phrases, as incomprehensible as if
spoken in Malay; there followed the crash of extended avalanches; echoes and
a grim wind filled the library. Gray heard all this within himself. He
looked around; the stillness that was instantly re-established dispelled the
ringing cobweb of his fantasy; his bond with the storm was broken.
Gray returned several times to look at the painting. It became to him
that necessary word in the conversation between the soul and life without
which it is difficult to understand one's self. The great sea was gradually
finding a place within the small boy. He became accustomed to it as he went
through the books in the library, seeking out and avidly reading those
behind whose golden door the blue glitter of the ocean could be seen. There,
sowing spray behind the stern, the ships plied on. Some lost their sails and
masts and, becoming engulfed by the waves, settled into the deep, where in
the darkness gleam the phosphorescent eyes of fishes. Others, seized by the
breakers, were battered against the reefs; the subsiding swell shook the
hull dangerously; the deserted ship with its torn rigging was in protracted
agony until a new storm shattered it to bits. Still others took on cargo
uneventfully in one port and unloaded it in another; the crew, gathered
around a tavern table, would sing the praises of a life at sea and down
their drinks lovingly. There were also pirate ships that flew the Jolly
Roger, manned by terrible, cutlass-swinging crews; there were phantom ships
radiant in a deathly glow of blue illumination; there were naval ships with
soldiers, cannons and brass bands; there were the ships of scientific
expeditions, studying volcanoes, flora and fauna; there were ships enveloped
in grim mystery and mutiny; there were ships of discovery and ships of
adventure.
In this world, most naturally, the figure of the captain towered above
all else. He was the fate, the soul and the brain of the ship. His character
determined the work and the leisure of the crew. He selected his crew
himself and it met his inclinations in many ways. He knew the habits and
family life of each man. He possessed, in the eyes of his subordinates,
magical knowledge, which enabled him to confidently plot a course from, say,
Lisbon to Shanghai across the vast expanses. He repelled a storm by the
counteraction of a system of complex efforts, squelching panic with curt
orders; he sailed and stopped where he would; he was in command of the
sailing and loading, repairs and leisure; it was difficult to imagine a
greater and more sensible authority in a vital enterprise full of constant
movement. This power, in its exclu-siveness, and absoluteness, was equal to
the power of Orpheus.
This notion of a captain, this image and this actual reality of his
position occupied, by right of events of the spirit, the place of honour in
Gray's splendid imagination. No other profession save this could so
successfully fuse into a single whole all the treasures of life, while
preserving inviolable the most delicate design of each separate joy. Danger,
risk, the forces of nature, the light of a distant land, the wondrous
unknown, effervescent love, blossoming in rendezvous and parting; the
fascinating turmoil of encounters, faces, events; the endless variety of
life, while up above in the sky was now the Southern Cross, now the Big
Dipper, and all the continents were in one's keen eyes, though your cabin
was replete with your ever-present homeland, with its books, pictures,
letters and dried flowers entwined by a silken strand of hair in a suede
locket on your manly chest.
In the autumn of his fifteenth year Arthur Gray ran away from home and
passed through the golden gates of the sea. Soon after the schooner Anselm
left Dubelt and set sail for Marseilles, with a ship's boy aboard who had
small hands and the face of a girl dressed in boy's clothing. The ship's boy
was Gray, the owner of an elegant travelling-bag, patent leather boots as
fine as kid gloves and batiste linen adorned with a crown crest.
In the course of a year, while the Anselm sailed from France to America
and Spain, Gray squandered a part of his possessions on pastry-cakes, thus
paying tribute to the past, and the rest, for the present and future, he
lost at cards. He wanted to be a red-blooded sailor. He choked as he downed
his liquor, and when bathing, his heart would falter as he dived from a
height of twelve feet. He gradually lost everything except that which was
most important--his strange, soaring spirit; he lost his frailty, becoming
broad of bone and strong of muscle, his paleness gave way to a deep tan, he
relinquished his refined carelessness of movement for the sure drive of a
working hand, and there was a sparkle in his intelligent eyes as in a
person's who gazes into
a fire. And his speech, having lost its uneven, haughtily shy fluidity,
became brief and precise, as the thrust of a seagull at the quivering silver
of a fish.
The captain of the Anselm was a kind man, but a stern seafarer who had
taken the boy on out of maliciousness. He saw in Gray's desperate desire but
an eccentric whim and gloated in advance, imagining that in two months' time
Gray would say, avoiding his eyes: "Captain Hop, I've skinned my elbows
climbing the rigging; my back and sides ache, my fingers don't bend, my head
is splitting and my legs are shaky- All these wet ropes weighing eighty
pounds to balance in my hands; all these manropes, guy ropes, windlasses,
cables, topmasts and cross-trees are killing my delicate body. I want to go
home to my mamma." After listening mentally to this speech, Captain Hop
would deliver, also mentally, the following speech: "You can go wherever you
want to, ducky. If any tar's got stuck on your fine feathers you can wash it
off at home -- with Rose-Mimosa Cologne." This cologne that Captain Hop had
invented pleased him most of all and, concluding his imaginary rebuke, he
repeated aloud: "Yes. Run along to Rose-Mimosa."
As time went by this impressive dialogue came to the captain's mind
less and less frequently, since Gray was advancing towards his goal with
clenched teeth and a pale face. He bore the strenuous toil with a determined
effort of will, feeling that it was becoming ever easier as the stern ship
broke into his body and ineptitude was replaced by habit. On occasion the
loop of the anchor chain would knock him off his feet, slamming him against
the deck, or a rope that was not wound around the bitts would be torn out of
his hands, taking the skin off his palms, or the wind would slap the wet
corner of a sail with an iron ring sewn into it against his face; in a word,
all his work was torture which demanded the utmost attention, yet, no matter
how hard he breathed as he slowly straightened his back, a scornful smile
never left his face. In silence did he endure all the scoffing, taunts and
inevitable cursing until he became "one of the boys" in his new
surroundings, but from then on he always countered an insult with his fists.
Once, when Captain Hop saw him skilfully tying a sail toll a yard, he
said to himself: "Victory is on your side, you scoundrel." When Gray climbed
down to the deck Hop summoned him to his cabin and, opening a dog-eared
book,
said:
"Listen closely. Stop smoking! We'll start fitting the pup
out to be a captain."
And he began to read or, rather, to enunciate and shout the ancient
words of the sea. This was Gray's first lesson. In the course of a year he
got to know about navigation, shipbuilding, maritime law, sailing directions
and bookkeeping. Captain Hop proffered him his hand and referred to the two
of them as "we".
His mother's letter, full of tears and dread, caught up with Gray in
Vancouver. He replied: "I know. But if you could only see as I do: look at
things through my eyes. If you could only hear as I do: put a seashell to
your ear--it carries the sound of an eternal wave; if you could only love as
I do--everything, I would have found in your letter, besides love and a
cheque, a smile." And he went on sailing until the Anselm arrived with a
cargo for Dubelt from whence, while the ship was docked, the twenty-year-old
Gray set off to visit
the castle.
Everything was as it had always been; as inviolable in detail and in
general impression as five years before, although the crowns of the young
elms were larger; the pattern they made on the facade of the building had
moved
and expanded.
The servants who came running were overjoyed, startled and froze as
respectfully as if they had but yesterday greeted this Gray. He was told
where his mother was; he entered the high chamber and, drawing the door shut
softly, stopped soundlessly, gazing at the woman, now turned grey, in the
black dress. She was standing before a crucifix; her fervent whisper was as
audible as the pounding of a heart. "And bless those at sea, the wayfarers,
the sick, the suffering and the imprisoned," Gray heard the words as he
breathed rapidly. There followed: "And my boy.... " Then he said: "Here...."
But he could say no more. His mother turned. She had become thinner; a new
expression lit up the
haughtiness of her chiselled face, like the return of youth. She
hurried towards her son; a burst of throaty laughter, a restrained
exclamation and tears of her eyes--this was all. But in that moment she
lived -- more fully and happier than in the whole of her previous life.
"I recognized you instantly, my darling, my baby!"
And Gray indeed ceased being grown-up. He listened to her tale of his
father's death and then told her about himself. She heeded him without
reproach or protestation, but to herself--in everything he contended was the
essence of his life,-- she saw but toys her boy was playing with. These
playthings were the continents, oceans and ships.
Gray spent seven days in the castle; on the eighth day, having taken
along a large sum of money, he returned to Dubelt and said to Captain Hop:
"I thank you. You've been a good friend. Farewell now, my mentor." He
sealed the word with a handshake as fierce as an iron vice. "From now on
I'll be sailing alone, on a ship of my own."
The blood rushed to Hop's head, he spat, yanked his hand away and
stalked off, but Gray overtook him and put his arm around his shoulders. And
so they went to a tavern all together, twenty-four of them, counting the
crew, and drank, and shouted, and sang, and ate, and downed everything there
was in the bar and in the kitchen.
But a short while later the evening star flashed above the black line
of a new mast in the Port of Dubelt. It was the Secret, a
two-hundred-and-sixty-ton, three-masted galliot Gray had purchased. Arthur
Gray sailed it for four more years as the owner and captain until chance
brought him to Liss. However, he had remembered for always that short burst
of throaty laughter that had greeted him at home, and so twice a year he
visited the castle, leaving the silver-haired woman with an uncertain
conviction that such a big boy might perhaps be able to handle his toys
after all.
The stream of foam cast off by the stern of Gray's Secret crossed the
ocean as a white streak and faded in the glow of the evening lights of Liss.
The ship dropped anchor near the lighthouse.
For the next ten days the Secret unloaded tussore silk, coffee and tea;
the crew spent the eleventh day ashore, relaxing in alcoholic fumes; on the
twelfth day, for no good reason, Gray was blackly despondent and could not
understand this despondency.
He had barely come awake in the morning when he felt that this day had
begun in a black shroud. He dressed glumly, ate breakfast half-heartedly,
forgot to read the newspaper and smoked for a long while, plunged into an
inexpressible mood of futile tension; among the vaguely emerging words
unacknowledged desires roamed, destroying each other through equal effort.
Then he got down to work.
Accompanied by the boatswain, Gray inspected the ship and ordered the
guy ropes tightened, the tiller rope loosened, the hawse cleaned, the tack
changed, the deck tarred, the compass wiped and the hold opened, aired and
swept. However, this did not dispel his dark mood. Filled with an uneasy
awareness of the gloom of the day, he spent it irritably and sadly: it was
as if someone had called to him, but he had forgotten who it was and whence.
Towards evening he settled back in his cabin, picked up a book and
argued with the author at length, making marginal notes of a paradoxical
nature. For a while he was amused by this game, this conversation with a
dead man holding sway from the grave. Then, lighting his pipe, he became
immersed in the blue smoke, living among the spectral arabesques that
appeared in its shifting planes.
Tobacco is very potent; as oil poured onto the surging rent between the
waves allays their frenzy, so does tobacco soothe irritation and dull the
emotions by several degrees; they become calmer and more musical. Therefore,
after
three pipes, Gray's depression finally lost its aggressive nature and
was transformed into thoughtful distraction. This state lasted for about
another hour; when the fog lifted from his soul, Gray came to with a start,
hungered for exercise and went up on deck. It was night; alongside, in the
slumbering black water, there dozed the stars and the lights of the mast
lanterns. The air, as warm as a cheek, brought in the smell of the sea. Gray
raised his head and squinted at the gold coal of a star; instantly, through
the dizzying distance, the fiery needle of a remote planet penetrated his
pupils. The muted noise of the town at evening reached his ears from the
depths of the bay; sometimes a phrase from the shore was wafted in across
the sensitive surface of the water; it would sound clearly, as if spoken on
deck and then be snuffed out by the creaking of the rigging; a match flared
on the forecastle deck, lighting up a hand, a pair of round eyes and a
moustache. Gray whistled; the lighted pipe moved and floated towards him;
soon, in the dark, the captain made out the hands and face of the man on
watch. "Tell Letika he's coming with me," Gray said. "Tell him to take along
the fishing tackle."
He went down into the rowboat where he waited for Letika for about ten
minutes; a nimble, shifty-eyed youth banged the oars against the side as he
handed them down to Gray; then he climbed down himself, fitted them into the
oarlocks and stuck a bag of provisions into the stern of the rowboat. Gray
sat at the tiller.
"Where to, Captain?" Letika asked, rowing in a circle with the right
oar alone.
The captain was silent. The sailor knew that one could not intrude upon
this silence and, therefore, falling silent as well, he began rowing
swiftly.
Gray set their course out to sea and then steered them along the left
bank. He did not care where they were going. The tiller gurgled; the oars
creaked and splashed; all else was sea and silence.
In the course of a day a person heeds to so many thoughts, impressions,
speeches and words that together they would fill many a heavy tome. The face
of a day takes on a definite expression, but today Gray searched this face
in vain. Its obscure features glowed with one of those emotions of which
there are many, but which have not been given a name. No matter what they
are called, they will forever remain beyond the scope of words and even
concepts, so like the effect of an aroma. Gray was now at the mercy of just
such an emotion; true, he might have said: "I am waiting. I see. I shall
soon know,"--but even these words were equal to no more than are the
separate drawings in relation to an architectural conception. Yet, there was
the power of radiant excitement in these ideas.
The bank appeared to the left like a wavy thickening of darkness.
Sparks from the chimneys danced above the red glass of the windows; this was
Kaperna. Gray could hear shouting, wrangling and barking. The lights of the
village resembled a firebox door that has burned through in tiny spots to
let you see the flaming coal inside. To the right was the ocean, as real as
the presence of a sleeping person. Having passed Kaperna, Gray steered
towards the shore. The water lapped against it softly here; lighting his
lantern, he saw the pits in the bluff and its upper, overhanging ledges; he
liked the spot.
"We'll fish here," Gray said, tapping the oarsman on the shoulder.
The sailor harrumphed vaguely.
"This is the first time I've ever sailed with such a captain," he
muttered. "He's a sensible captain, but no ordinary kind. A difficult
captain. But I like him all the same."
He stuck the oar into the silt and tied the boat to it and they both
scrambled up the stones that rolled out from under their knees and elbows.
There was a thicket at the top of the bluff. The sound of an axe splitting a
dry trunk followed; having felled the tree, Letika made a campfire on the
bluff. Shadows moved, and the flames that were reflected in the water; in
the receding gloom the grass and branches stood out; the air, mingled with
smoke, shimmered and glowed above the fire.
Gray sat by the campfire.
"Here," he said, proffering a bottle, "drink to all teetotallers, my
friend Letika. And, by the way, the vodka you brought along is flavoured
with ginger, not quinine."
"I'm sorry, Captain," the sailor replied, catching his breath. "If you
don't mind, I'll eat it down with this...." At which he bit off half a roast
chicken and, extracting a wing from his mouth, continued: "I know you like
quinine. But it was dark, and I was in a hurry. Ginger, you see, embitters a
man. I always drink ginger vodka when I have to
g-As the captain ate and drank, the sailor kept stealing
glances at him and, finally, unable to contain himself any longer, he
said,
"Is it true, Captain, what they say? That you come from a
noble family?"
"That's of no importance, Letika. Take your tackle and fish a while if
you want to." "What about you?"
"Me? I don't know. Maybe. But ... later." Letika unwound his line,
chanting in rhyme, something he was a past master at, to the delight of the
crew.
"From a string and piece of wood I made a very fine, long whip. Then I
found a hook to fit it, and I whistled sharp and quick." He poked about in a
tin of worms. "This old worm lived in a burrow and was happy as could be,
but I've got him hooked real good now, and the perch will all thank me."
Finally, he walked off, singing: "Moonlight shines, the vodka's perfect,
fishes, harken, I draw near. Herrings, faint, and sturgeon skitter, Letika
is fishing here!"
Gray lay down by the fire, gazing at the water and the reflection of
the flames. He was thinking, but effortlessly; in this condition one's mind,
while observing one's surroundings absently, comprehends them but dimly; it
rushes on like a stallion in a jostling herd, crushing and shoving aside,
and halting; emptiness, confusion and delay attend it in turn. It wanders
within the souls of things; from bright agitation it hurries to secret
intimations; passing from earth to sky, conversing on the subject of life
with imaginary personages, snuffing out and embellishing one's memories. In
this cloudy movement all is live and palpable, and all is as loosely hung
together as a hallucination. And one's relaxing consciousness often smiles,
seeing, for instance, one's thoughts on life suddenly accosted by a most
inopportune visitor: perhaps a twig broken two years before. Thus was Gray
thinking by the fire, but he was "somewhere else"--not there.
The elbow he was leaning on, while supporting his head on his hand,
became damp and numb. The stars shone faintly; the gloom was intensified by
a tenseness preceding dawn. The captain was dozing off, but did not realize
it. He felt like having a drink, and he put his hand out towards the sack,
untying it in his sleep. Then he stopped dreaming; the next two hours were
to him no longer than the seconds during which he had laid his head upon his
arms. Meanwhile, Letika had appeared by the campfire twice, he had smoked
and, out of curiosity, had looked into the mouths of the fish he had caught,
wondering what might be there. But, quite naturally, nothing was.
Upon awakening, Gray forgot for a moment how he happened to be where he
was. He gazed in astonishment at the cheerful shine of the morning, the
bluff adorned by bright branches and the blazing blue distance. The leaves
of a hazel bush hung over the horizon and also over his feet. At the bottom
of the bluff--Gray felt it was right at his back--the tide lapped softly.
Falling from a leaf, a dewdrop spread over his sleepy face in a cold
splatter. He rose. Light had triumphed everywhere. The cooling brands of the
campfire clutched at life with a tendril of smoke. Its aroma imparted a wild
headiness to the pleasure of breathing the air of the green woods.
Letika was nowhere in sight; he was oblivious to all; he sweated as he
fished with the zeal of a true gambler. Gray left the woods for the
bush-dotted slope. The grass smoked and flamed; the moist flowers resembled
children who had been forcibly scrubbed with cold water. The green world
breathed with myriad tiny mouths, blocking Gray's way through its exultant
cluster. The captain finally got to a clearing overgrown with grass and
flowers, and here he saw a sleeping girl.
He cautiously moved aside a branch and stopped, feeling that he had
made a dangerous discovery. But five steps away lay a tired Assol, curled up
with one leg tucked under her and the other stretched out, and her head
resting on her
comfortably crossed arms. Her hair was mussed; a button had come undone
at her collar, revealing a white hollow; her tumbled skirt had bared her
knees; her lashes slept upon her cheek in the shadow of her delicately
curved temple, half-covered by a dark lock; the pinky of her right hand,
which was under her head, curled over the back of her head. Gray squatted
and looked into the girl's face from below, never suspecting that he
resembled the Faun in Arnold Bocklin's painting.
Perhaps, under other circumstances, he would have noticed the girl with
his eyes alone, but now he saw her differently. Everything stirred,
everything smiled within him. Naturally, he did not know her or her name,
or, moreover, why she had fallen asleep on the shore; but he was very
pleased by this. He liked pictures that were accompanied neither by an
explanatory text nor by a caption. The impression such a picture makes is
far more powerful; its content, unencumbered by words, becomes boundless,
affirming all conjectures and thoughts.
The shadow cast by the leaves was approaching the trunks, but Gray
still squatted there in that uncomfortable position. Everything about the
girl was asleep: her dark hair slept, her dress slept, as did the pleats of
her skirt; even the grass near her body, it seemed, was dozing out of
sympathy. When the impression became complete, Gray entered its warm,
engulfing waves and sailed off on it. Letika had been shouting for some
time: "Captain! Where are you?", but the captain heard him not.
When he finally rose, a predilection for the unusual caught him
unawares with the determination and inspiration of an angered woman. Giving
way to it pensively, he removed the treasured old ring from his finger,
thinking, and not without reason, that perhaps, in this way, he was
suggesting something essential to life, similar to orthography. He slipped
the ring gently onto the pinky that showed white under the back of her head.
The pinky twitched in annoyance and curled up. Glancing once again at this
resting face, Gray turned to see the sailor's sharply-raised brows. Letika
was gaping as he watched the captain's movements with the kind of
astonishment Jonah must have felt as he gazed down the maw of his furnished
whale.
"Ah, it's you, Letika! Look at her. Isn't she beautiful?" "A wondrous
painting!" the sailor shouted in a whisper, for he liked bookish
expressions. "There's something prepossessing in the presentation of the
circumstances. I caught four morays and another one, as round as a bladder."
"Shh, Letika. Let's get out of here." They retreated into the bushes.
They should have turned back to the rowboat now, but Gray procrastinated,
looking off into the distance at the low bank, where the morning smoke from
the chimneys of Kaperna streamed over the greenery and the sand. In the
smoke he once again saw the girl-Then he turned determinedly and went down
the slope; the sailor did not question him about what had happened, but
walked on behind; he sensed that once again a compulsory silence ensued.
When they reached the first houses Gray suddenly said,
"Can your practised eye tell us where the tavern is, Letika?"
"It must be that black roof," Letika mused, "but then, again, maybe it
isn't."
"What's so special about that roof?"
"I really don't know, Captain. Nothing more than the voice of my
heart."
They approached the house; it was indeed Menners' tavern. Through the
open window they could see a bottle on the table; beside it someone's dirty
hand was milking a steel-grey moustache.
Although it was still early in the day there were three men in the
common room. The coalman, the owner of the drunken grey moustache already
noted, was sitting by the window; two fishermen were lodged around some
scrambled eggs and beer at a table set between the bar and an inner door.
Menners, a tall young man with a dull, freckled face and that peculiar
expression of bold cunning in his near-sighted eyes that is a distinctive
feature of tradesmen in general, was wiping plates behind the counter. The
window frame was imprinted in the sunshine on the dirty floor.
No sooner had Gray stepped into the strip of smoky light than Menners,
bowing respectfully, came out from behind his enclosure. He had immediately
sensed a real captain in Gray--a type of client rarely to be seen there.
Gray ordered rum. Covering the table with a cloth become yellowed in the
bustle of daily life, Menners brought over a bottle, but first licked the
corner of the label that had come unstuck. Then he went back behind the
counter to look intently now at Gray, now at the plate from which he was
picking off a dry particle of food.
While Letika, having raised his glass between his hands, was whispering
to it softly and glancing out the window, Gray summoned Hin Menners. Hin
perched on the edge of a chair with a self-satisfied air, flattered at
having been addressed, and especially flattered because this had been done
by a simple crook of Gray's finger.
"I assume you know all the local inhabitants," Gray said in an even
voice. "I would like to know the name of a girl in a kerchief, in a dress
with pink flowers, auburn-haired, of medium height, between seventeen and
twenty years of age. I came upon her not far from here. What is her name?"
He spoke with a firm simplicity of strength that made it impossible to
evade his tone. Hin Menners squirmed inwardly and even smirked slightly, but
outwardly he obeyed the nature of the address. However, he hesitated before
replying--but only from a futile desire to guess what was up
"Hm!" he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "It must be
Sailing-ship Assol. She's a halfwit."
"Indeed?" Gray said indifferently, taking a big sip. "Why is she like
that?"
"If you really want to know, I'll tell you."
And Hin told Gray of the time, seven years before, when, on the
seashore, the girl had spoken to a man who collected folk songs. Naturally,
this story, in the years since the beggar had first affirmed its existence
in the tavern, had taken the shape of a crude and ugly rumour, but the
essence remained unchanged.
"And that's what she's been called ever since," Menners said. "She's
called Sailing-ship Assol."
Gray glanced automatically at Letika, who was still behaving quietly
and modestly, then his eyes turned to the dusty road outside the tavern, and
he felt as if he had been struck--a double blow to his heart and head.
Coming down the road towards him was the very same Sailing-ship Assol whom
Menners had just described from a clinical point of view. Her striking
features, which resembled the mystery of unforgettable, stirring, yet simple
words, appeared to him now in the light of her gaze. The sailor and Menners
both had their backs to the window and, in order that they not turn
accidentally, Gray found the courage to shift his gaze to Hin's ginger eyes.
After he had seen Assol's eyes, all the prejudice of Menners' story was
dispelled. Meanwhile, Hin continued unsuspectingly:
"I can also add that her father is a real bastard. He drowned my pater
like he was a cat or something, God forgive me. He...."
He was interrupted by an unexpected, wild howl coming from behind. The
coalman, rolling his eyes fiercely and having cast off his drunken stupor,
suddenly began bawling a song, but with such force that it made everyone
jump:
Basket-maker, basket-maker, Skin us for your baskets!
"You're roaring drunk again, you damn whaleboat!" Menners shouted. "Get
out!"
But take care that you don't fall Right into our caskets!
the coalman bawled and then, as if nothing were amiss, he | dunked his
moustache into a slopping glass.
Hin Menners shrugged indignantly.
"He's the scum of the earth," he said with the sinister | dignity of
the miser. "It happens every time!"
"Is there anything else you can tell me?" Gray asked.
"Me? I just told you her father's a bastard. On account of
him, sir, I was orphaned, and while still a boy was forced to earn my
bread by the sweat-of my brow."
"You're lying!" the coalman said unexpectedly. "You're lying so foully
and unnaturally that it's sobered me
up."
Before Hin had a chance to open his mouth, the coalman addressed Gray:
"He's lying. His father was a liar, too; as was his mother. It runs in
the family. Rest assured, she's as sane as you and me. I've spoken to her.
She rode in my cart eighty-four times or a bit less. If a girl's walking
home from town and I've sold all my coal, I'll always give her a lift. She
might as well ride. I'm saying that she has a sane head on her shoulders.
You can see that now. Naturally, she'd never talk to you, Hin Menners. But
me, sir, in my free coal trade, I despise gossip and rumours. She talks like
a grown-up, but her way of talking is strange. If you listen closely--it
seems like just the same as you and me would say, and it is, but yet, it
isn't. For instance, we got to talking about her trade. 'I'll tell you
something,' she said, and her holding onto my shoulder like a fly to a
bell-tower, 'my work isn't dull, but I keep wanting to think up something
special. I want to find a way to make a boat that'll sail by itself, with
oarsmen that'll really row; then, they'll dock at the shore, tie up and sit
down on the beach to have a bite, just exactly as if they were alive.' I
started laughing, see, 'cause I found it funny. So I said, 'Well, Assol,
it's all because of the kind of work you do, that's why you think like this,
but look around; the way other people work, you'd think they were fighting.'
'No,' she says, 'I know what I know. When a fisherman's fishing he keeps
thinking he'll catch a big fish, bigger than anyone ever caught.' 'What
about me?' 'You?' She laughed. Til bet that when you fill your basket with
coal you think it'll burst into bloom.' That's the words she used! That very
moment, I confess, I don't know what made me do it, I looked into the empty
basket, and I really thought I was seeing buds coming out of the basket
twigs; the buds burst and leaves splashed all over the basket and were gone.
I even sobered UP a bit! But Hin Menners will lie in his teeth and never bat
an eye--I know him!"
Finding the conversation to have taken an obviously insulting turn,
Menners looked at the coalman scathingly and disappeared behind the counter,
vines. No one ever drank this wine, tasted it, or ever will."
"I'll drink it," Gray said one day, stamping his foot. "What a brave
young man!" Poldichoque said. "And will you drink it in Heaven?"
"Of course! Here's Heaven! It's here, see?" Gray laughed softly and
opened his small fist. His delicate but well-formed palm was lit up by the
sun, and then the boy curled his fingers into a fist again. "Here it is!
It's here, and now it's gone again!"
As he spoke he kept clenching and unclenching his fist. At last,
pleased with his joke, he ran out, ahead of Poldichoque, onto the dark
stairway leading to the ground floor corridor. Gray was absolutely forbidden
to enter the kitchen, but once, having discovered this wonderful world of
flaming hearths and soot, this hissing and bubbling of boiling liquids,
chopping of knives and mouth-watering smells, the boy became a diligent
visitor to the great chamber. The chefs moved in stony silence like some
high priests; their white hats etched against the soot-blackened walls lent
an air of solemn ritual to their movements; the fat, jovial dishwashers at
their barrels of water scrubbed the tableware, making the china and silver
ring; boys came in, bent under the weight of baskets of fish, oysters,
lobsters and fruit. Laid out on a long table were rainbow-hued pheasants,
grey ducks and brightly-feathered chickens; farther on was the carcass of a
suckling pig with a tiny tail and eyes shut like a babe's; then there were
turnips, cabbages, nuts, raisins and sun-burnished peaches.
Gray always quailed slightly in the kitchen: he felt that some strange
force was in charge here, and that its power was the mainspring of life in
the castle; the shouts sounded like orders and invocations; the movements of
the kitchen staff after years of practice had acquired that precise,
measured rhythm that seems like inspiration. Gray was not yet tall enough to
peep into the largest cauldron which bubbled like Mt. Vesuvius, but he felt
a special respect for it; he watched in awe as two serving women handled it;
at such times steaming froth would splash out onto the top of the stove, and
the steam that rose from the hissing stove lid would billow out into the
kitchen. On one occasion so much liquid splashed out it scalded one of the
kitchen maid's hands. The skin immediately turned red from the rush of
blood, and Betsy (for that was her name) wept as she rubbed oil into the
burned skin. Tears coursed down her round, frightened face uncontrollably.
Gray was petrified. As the other women fussed about Betsy, he was
suddenly gripped by the pain of another person's suffering which he could
not himself experience.
"Does it hurt very much?" he asked.
"Try it, and you'll see," Betsy replied, covering her hand with her
apron.
The boy frowned and climbed up onto a stool, dipped a long-handled
spoon into the hot liquid (in this case it was lamb soup) and splashed some
onto his wrist. The sensation was not faint, but the faintness resulting
from the sharp pain made him sway. He was as pale as flour when he went up
to Betsy, hiding his scalded hand in his pants pocket.
"I think it hurts you awfully," he murmured, saying nothing of his own
experiment. "Come to the doctor, Betsy. Come on!"
He tugged at her skirt insistently, though all the while the believers
in home remedies were giving the girl all sorts of
advice for treating the burn. However, she was in very great pain, and
so she followed Gray. The doctor relieved her pain by applying some
medication. Not before Betsy was gone did Gray show him his own hand.
This insignificant episode made twenty-year-old Betsy and ten-year-old
Gray bosom friends. She would fill his pockets with sweets and apples, and
he would tell her fairy-tales and other stories he had read in his books.
One day he discovered that Betsy could not marry Jim, the groom, because
they had no money to set themselves up in a home of their own. Gray used his
fireplace tongs to crack his china piggy-bank and shook out the contents,
which amounted to nearly a hundred pounds. He rose early, and when the
dowerless girl went off to the kitchen, sneaked into her room and placed his
gift in her chest, laying a note on top: "This is yours, Betsy. (Signed)
Robin Hood." The commotion this caused in the kitchen was so great that Gray
had to confess to the deed. He did not take the money back and did not want
to have another word said about it.
His mother was one of those people whom life pours into a ready mould.
She lived in the dream-world of prosperity that provided for every wish of
an ordinary soul; therefore, she had no other occupation save to order
around her dressmakers, doctor and butler. However, her passionate and
ail-but religious attachment for her strange child was, one might assume,
the only vent for those of her inclinations, chloroformed by her upbringing
and fate, which were no longer fully alive, but simmered faintly, leaving
the will idle. The high-born dame resembled a peacock hen that had hatched a
swan's egg. She was quiveringly aware of the magnificent uniqueness of her
son; sadness, love and constraint filled her being when she pressed the boy
to her breast, and her heart spoke unlike her tongue, which habitually
reflected the conventional types of relationships and ideas. Thus does a
cloud effect, concocted so weirdly by the sun's rays, penetrate the
symmetrical interior of a public building, divesting it of its banal merits;
the eye sees but does not recognize the chamber; the mysterious nuances of
light amongst paltriness create a dazzling harmony.
The high-born dame, whose face and figure, it seemed, could respond but
in icy silence to the fiery voices of life and whose delicate beauty
repelled rather than attracted, since one sensed her haughty effort of will,
devoid of feminine attraction -- this same Lillian Gray, when alone with the
boy, was transformed into an ordinary mother speaking in a loving, gentle
voice those endearments which refuse to be committed to paper; their power
lies in the emotions, not in their meaning. She was positively unable to
refuse her son anything. She forgave him everything: his visits to the
kitchen, his abhorrence of his lessons, his disobedience and his many
eccentricities.
If he did not want the trees to be trimmed they were left untouched; if
he asked that someone be pardoned or rewarded -- the person in question knew
that it would be so; he could ride any horse he wished, bring any dog he
wished into the castle, go through the books in the library, run around
barefoot and eat whatever he pleased.
His father tried to put a stop to this and finally yielded -- not to
the principle, but to his wife's wishes. He merely had all the servants'
children moved out of the castle, fearing that by associating with low
society the boy's whims would become inclinations that would be difficult to
eradicate. In general, he was completely taken up with endless family
lawsuits whose origins went back to the era of the founding of the first
paper mills and whose end perhaps lay in the death of the last caviller.
Besides, there were affairs of state, the running of his own estates,
dictating his memoirs, fox-hunts, newspapers to be read and an extended
correspondence to keep him at a certain distance inwardly from the rest of
the family; he saw his son so infrequently that he would sometimes forget
how old the boy was.
Thus, Gray lived in a world of his own. He played all by
himself--usually in the back yards of the castle which had once, in times of
yore, been of strategic use. These vast, empty lots with the remains of deep
moats and moss-covered stone cellars were overgrown with weeds, nettles,
briars, blackthorn and shy bright wildflowers. Gray would spend hours here,
exploring mole burrows, battling weeds, stalking butterflies and building
fortresses of broken bricks, which he then shelled with sticks and stones.
He was going on twelve when all the implications of his soul, all the
separate traits of his spirit and shades of secret impulses were brought
together in a single powerful surge and, having in this way acquired a
harmonious expression, became an indomitable desire. Until then he seemed to
have found but disparate parts of his garden--a sunny spot, shadow, a
flower, a great dark trunk--in the many other gardens and suddenly saw them
clearly, all -- in magnificent, astonishing accord.
This happened in the library. The tall door topped by a murky fanlight
was usually locked, but the latch fit the mortise loosely and when pressed
hard, the door would give, buckle and open. When the spirit of adventure
urged Gray to make his way into the library he was amazed at the dusty
light, whose effect and peculiarity were created by the coloured design of
the leaded fanlight. The stillness of desertion lay upon everything here as
on water in a pond. Here and there dark rows of bookcases adjoined the
windows, blocking them halfway; there were aisles between the bookcases
which were piled high with volumes. Here was an open album from which the
centre pages had slipped out; over there were some scrolls tied with gold
cord, stacks of sombre-looking books, thick layers of manuscripts, a mound
of miniature volumes which cracked like bark if they were opened; here were
charts and tables, rows of new editions, maps; a great variety of bindings,
coarse, fine, black, mottled, blue, grey, thick, thin, rough and smooth. The
bookcases were packed with books. They seemed like walls which had
encompassed life itself within their bulk. The glass of the bookcases
reflected other bookcases covered with colourless, shimmering spots. On a
round table was a huge globe encased by a brass spherical cross formed by
the equator and a meridian.
Turning to the exit, Gray saw a huge painting above the door whose
images immediately filled the rigid silence of the library. The painting was
of a clipper rising upon the crest of a tremendous wave. Foam coursed down
its side. It was depicted at the very last moment of its upward flight. The
ship was sailing straight at the viewer. The rearing bowsprit obscured the
base of the masts. The crest of the great wave, rent by the keel, resembled
the wings of a huge bird. Foam streaked off into the air. The sails, but
vaguely discernible behind the forecastle deck and above the bowsprit,
swollen by the raging force of the storm, were bearing back in their
enormity, in order to, having gained the crest, righten themselves and then,
tilting over the void, speed the vessel on towards new billows. Low, ragged
clouds swirled over the ocean. The dim light struggled vainly against the
approaching darkness of night. However, the most striking aspect of the
painting was the figure of a man standing on the forecastle deck with his
back to the viewer. It fully conveyed the situation and even the nature of
the moment. The man's pose (he had spread his legs far apart and flung out
his arms) did not actually indicate what he was doing, but led one to assume
attention strained to the extreme and directed towards something on deck
invisible to the viewer. The hem of his coat was whipped back by the wind;
his white pigtail and black sword were swept straight out into the air; the
richness of his dress indicated him to be the captain; his dancing stance --
the sweep of the wave; there was no hat; he was, apparently, completely
absorbed by the dangerous moment and was shouting--but what? Did he see a
man falling overboard, was he issuing an order to tack about or, shouting
above the wind, was he calling to the boatswain? The shadows of these
thoughts, not the thoughts themselves, took shape in Gray's heart as he
gazed at the painting. He suddenly felt that someone had approached him from
the left and now stood beside him, unknown and unseen; he had only to turn
his head to make the weird sensation disappear without a trace. Gray knew
this. However, he did not snuff out his imagination, but harkened to it. A
soundless voice shouted several curt phrases, as incomprehensible as if
spoken in Malay; there followed the crash of extended avalanches; echoes and
a grim wind filled the library. Gray heard all this within himself. He
looked around; the stillness that was instantly re-established dispelled the
ringing cobweb of his fantasy; his bond with the storm was broken.
Gray returned several times to look at the painting. It became to him
that necessary word in the conversation between the soul and life without
which it is difficult to understand one's self. The great sea was gradually
finding a place within the small boy. He became accustomed to it as he went
through the books in the library, seeking out and avidly reading those
behind whose golden door the blue glitter of the ocean could be seen. There,
sowing spray behind the stern, the ships plied on. Some lost their sails and
masts and, becoming engulfed by the waves, settled into the deep, where in
the darkness gleam the phosphorescent eyes of fishes. Others, seized by the
breakers, were battered against the reefs; the subsiding swell shook the
hull dangerously; the deserted ship with its torn rigging was in protracted
agony until a new storm shattered it to bits. Still others took on cargo
uneventfully in one port and unloaded it in another; the crew, gathered
around a tavern table, would sing the praises of a life at sea and down
their drinks lovingly. There were also pirate ships that flew the Jolly
Roger, manned by terrible, cutlass-swinging crews; there were phantom ships
radiant in a deathly glow of blue illumination; there were naval ships with
soldiers, cannons and brass bands; there were the ships of scientific
expeditions, studying volcanoes, flora and fauna; there were ships enveloped
in grim mystery and mutiny; there were ships of discovery and ships of
adventure.
In this world, most naturally, the figure of the captain towered above
all else. He was the fate, the soul and the brain of the ship. His character
determined the work and the leisure of the crew. He selected his crew
himself and it met his inclinations in many ways. He knew the habits and
family life of each man. He possessed, in the eyes of his subordinates,
magical knowledge, which enabled him to confidently plot a course from, say,
Lisbon to Shanghai across the vast expanses. He repelled a storm by the
counteraction of a system of complex efforts, squelching panic with curt
orders; he sailed and stopped where he would; he was in command of the
sailing and loading, repairs and leisure; it was difficult to imagine a
greater and more sensible authority in a vital enterprise full of constant
movement. This power, in its exclu-siveness, and absoluteness, was equal to
the power of Orpheus.
This notion of a captain, this image and this actual reality of his
position occupied, by right of events of the spirit, the place of honour in
Gray's splendid imagination. No other profession save this could so
successfully fuse into a single whole all the treasures of life, while
preserving inviolable the most delicate design of each separate joy. Danger,
risk, the forces of nature, the light of a distant land, the wondrous
unknown, effervescent love, blossoming in rendezvous and parting; the
fascinating turmoil of encounters, faces, events; the endless variety of
life, while up above in the sky was now the Southern Cross, now the Big
Dipper, and all the continents were in one's keen eyes, though your cabin
was replete with your ever-present homeland, with its books, pictures,
letters and dried flowers entwined by a silken strand of hair in a suede
locket on your manly chest.
In the autumn of his fifteenth year Arthur Gray ran away from home and
passed through the golden gates of the sea. Soon after the schooner Anselm
left Dubelt and set sail for Marseilles, with a ship's boy aboard who had
small hands and the face of a girl dressed in boy's clothing. The ship's boy
was Gray, the owner of an elegant travelling-bag, patent leather boots as
fine as kid gloves and batiste linen adorned with a crown crest.
In the course of a year, while the Anselm sailed from France to America
and Spain, Gray squandered a part of his possessions on pastry-cakes, thus
paying tribute to the past, and the rest, for the present and future, he
lost at cards. He wanted to be a red-blooded sailor. He choked as he downed
his liquor, and when bathing, his heart would falter as he dived from a
height of twelve feet. He gradually lost everything except that which was
most important--his strange, soaring spirit; he lost his frailty, becoming
broad of bone and strong of muscle, his paleness gave way to a deep tan, he
relinquished his refined carelessness of movement for the sure drive of a
working hand, and there was a sparkle in his intelligent eyes as in a
person's who gazes into
a fire. And his speech, having lost its uneven, haughtily shy fluidity,
became brief and precise, as the thrust of a seagull at the quivering silver
of a fish.
The captain of the Anselm was a kind man, but a stern seafarer who had
taken the boy on out of maliciousness. He saw in Gray's desperate desire but
an eccentric whim and gloated in advance, imagining that in two months' time
Gray would say, avoiding his eyes: "Captain Hop, I've skinned my elbows
climbing the rigging; my back and sides ache, my fingers don't bend, my head
is splitting and my legs are shaky- All these wet ropes weighing eighty
pounds to balance in my hands; all these manropes, guy ropes, windlasses,
cables, topmasts and cross-trees are killing my delicate body. I want to go
home to my mamma." After listening mentally to this speech, Captain Hop
would deliver, also mentally, the following speech: "You can go wherever you
want to, ducky. If any tar's got stuck on your fine feathers you can wash it
off at home -- with Rose-Mimosa Cologne." This cologne that Captain Hop had
invented pleased him most of all and, concluding his imaginary rebuke, he
repeated aloud: "Yes. Run along to Rose-Mimosa."
As time went by this impressive dialogue came to the captain's mind
less and less frequently, since Gray was advancing towards his goal with
clenched teeth and a pale face. He bore the strenuous toil with a determined
effort of will, feeling that it was becoming ever easier as the stern ship
broke into his body and ineptitude was replaced by habit. On occasion the
loop of the anchor chain would knock him off his feet, slamming him against
the deck, or a rope that was not wound around the bitts would be torn out of
his hands, taking the skin off his palms, or the wind would slap the wet
corner of a sail with an iron ring sewn into it against his face; in a word,
all his work was torture which demanded the utmost attention, yet, no matter
how hard he breathed as he slowly straightened his back, a scornful smile
never left his face. In silence did he endure all the scoffing, taunts and
inevitable cursing until he became "one of the boys" in his new
surroundings, but from then on he always countered an insult with his fists.
Once, when Captain Hop saw him skilfully tying a sail toll a yard, he
said to himself: "Victory is on your side, you scoundrel." When Gray climbed
down to the deck Hop summoned him to his cabin and, opening a dog-eared
book,
said:
"Listen closely. Stop smoking! We'll start fitting the pup
out to be a captain."
And he began to read or, rather, to enunciate and shout the ancient
words of the sea. This was Gray's first lesson. In the course of a year he
got to know about navigation, shipbuilding, maritime law, sailing directions
and bookkeeping. Captain Hop proffered him his hand and referred to the two
of them as "we".
His mother's letter, full of tears and dread, caught up with Gray in
Vancouver. He replied: "I know. But if you could only see as I do: look at
things through my eyes. If you could only hear as I do: put a seashell to
your ear--it carries the sound of an eternal wave; if you could only love as
I do--everything, I would have found in your letter, besides love and a
cheque, a smile." And he went on sailing until the Anselm arrived with a
cargo for Dubelt from whence, while the ship was docked, the twenty-year-old
Gray set off to visit
the castle.
Everything was as it had always been; as inviolable in detail and in
general impression as five years before, although the crowns of the young
elms were larger; the pattern they made on the facade of the building had
moved
and expanded.
The servants who came running were overjoyed, startled and froze as
respectfully as if they had but yesterday greeted this Gray. He was told
where his mother was; he entered the high chamber and, drawing the door shut
softly, stopped soundlessly, gazing at the woman, now turned grey, in the
black dress. She was standing before a crucifix; her fervent whisper was as
audible as the pounding of a heart. "And bless those at sea, the wayfarers,
the sick, the suffering and the imprisoned," Gray heard the words as he
breathed rapidly. There followed: "And my boy.... " Then he said: "Here...."
But he could say no more. His mother turned. She had become thinner; a new
expression lit up the
haughtiness of her chiselled face, like the return of youth. She
hurried towards her son; a burst of throaty laughter, a restrained
exclamation and tears of her eyes--this was all. But in that moment she
lived -- more fully and happier than in the whole of her previous life.
"I recognized you instantly, my darling, my baby!"
And Gray indeed ceased being grown-up. He listened to her tale of his
father's death and then told her about himself. She heeded him without
reproach or protestation, but to herself--in everything he contended was the
essence of his life,-- she saw but toys her boy was playing with. These
playthings were the continents, oceans and ships.
Gray spent seven days in the castle; on the eighth day, having taken
along a large sum of money, he returned to Dubelt and said to Captain Hop:
"I thank you. You've been a good friend. Farewell now, my mentor." He
sealed the word with a handshake as fierce as an iron vice. "From now on
I'll be sailing alone, on a ship of my own."
The blood rushed to Hop's head, he spat, yanked his hand away and
stalked off, but Gray overtook him and put his arm around his shoulders. And
so they went to a tavern all together, twenty-four of them, counting the
crew, and drank, and shouted, and sang, and ate, and downed everything there
was in the bar and in the kitchen.
But a short while later the evening star flashed above the black line
of a new mast in the Port of Dubelt. It was the Secret, a
two-hundred-and-sixty-ton, three-masted galliot Gray had purchased. Arthur
Gray sailed it for four more years as the owner and captain until chance
brought him to Liss. However, he had remembered for always that short burst
of throaty laughter that had greeted him at home, and so twice a year he
visited the castle, leaving the silver-haired woman with an uncertain
conviction that such a big boy might perhaps be able to handle his toys
after all.
The stream of foam cast off by the stern of Gray's Secret crossed the
ocean as a white streak and faded in the glow of the evening lights of Liss.
The ship dropped anchor near the lighthouse.
For the next ten days the Secret unloaded tussore silk, coffee and tea;
the crew spent the eleventh day ashore, relaxing in alcoholic fumes; on the
twelfth day, for no good reason, Gray was blackly despondent and could not
understand this despondency.
He had barely come awake in the morning when he felt that this day had
begun in a black shroud. He dressed glumly, ate breakfast half-heartedly,
forgot to read the newspaper and smoked for a long while, plunged into an
inexpressible mood of futile tension; among the vaguely emerging words
unacknowledged desires roamed, destroying each other through equal effort.
Then he got down to work.
Accompanied by the boatswain, Gray inspected the ship and ordered the
guy ropes tightened, the tiller rope loosened, the hawse cleaned, the tack
changed, the deck tarred, the compass wiped and the hold opened, aired and
swept. However, this did not dispel his dark mood. Filled with an uneasy
awareness of the gloom of the day, he spent it irritably and sadly: it was
as if someone had called to him, but he had forgotten who it was and whence.
Towards evening he settled back in his cabin, picked up a book and
argued with the author at length, making marginal notes of a paradoxical
nature. For a while he was amused by this game, this conversation with a
dead man holding sway from the grave. Then, lighting his pipe, he became
immersed in the blue smoke, living among the spectral arabesques that
appeared in its shifting planes.
Tobacco is very potent; as oil poured onto the surging rent between the
waves allays their frenzy, so does tobacco soothe irritation and dull the
emotions by several degrees; they become calmer and more musical. Therefore,
after
three pipes, Gray's depression finally lost its aggressive nature and
was transformed into thoughtful distraction. This state lasted for about
another hour; when the fog lifted from his soul, Gray came to with a start,
hungered for exercise and went up on deck. It was night; alongside, in the
slumbering black water, there dozed the stars and the lights of the mast
lanterns. The air, as warm as a cheek, brought in the smell of the sea. Gray
raised his head and squinted at the gold coal of a star; instantly, through
the dizzying distance, the fiery needle of a remote planet penetrated his
pupils. The muted noise of the town at evening reached his ears from the
depths of the bay; sometimes a phrase from the shore was wafted in across
the sensitive surface of the water; it would sound clearly, as if spoken on
deck and then be snuffed out by the creaking of the rigging; a match flared
on the forecastle deck, lighting up a hand, a pair of round eyes and a
moustache. Gray whistled; the lighted pipe moved and floated towards him;
soon, in the dark, the captain made out the hands and face of the man on
watch. "Tell Letika he's coming with me," Gray said. "Tell him to take along
the fishing tackle."
He went down into the rowboat where he waited for Letika for about ten
minutes; a nimble, shifty-eyed youth banged the oars against the side as he
handed them down to Gray; then he climbed down himself, fitted them into the
oarlocks and stuck a bag of provisions into the stern of the rowboat. Gray
sat at the tiller.
"Where to, Captain?" Letika asked, rowing in a circle with the right
oar alone.
The captain was silent. The sailor knew that one could not intrude upon
this silence and, therefore, falling silent as well, he began rowing
swiftly.
Gray set their course out to sea and then steered them along the left
bank. He did not care where they were going. The tiller gurgled; the oars
creaked and splashed; all else was sea and silence.
In the course of a day a person heeds to so many thoughts, impressions,
speeches and words that together they would fill many a heavy tome. The face
of a day takes on a definite expression, but today Gray searched this face
in vain. Its obscure features glowed with one of those emotions of which
there are many, but which have not been given a name. No matter what they
are called, they will forever remain beyond the scope of words and even
concepts, so like the effect of an aroma. Gray was now at the mercy of just
such an emotion; true, he might have said: "I am waiting. I see. I shall
soon know,"--but even these words were equal to no more than are the
separate drawings in relation to an architectural conception. Yet, there was
the power of radiant excitement in these ideas.
The bank appeared to the left like a wavy thickening of darkness.
Sparks from the chimneys danced above the red glass of the windows; this was
Kaperna. Gray could hear shouting, wrangling and barking. The lights of the
village resembled a firebox door that has burned through in tiny spots to
let you see the flaming coal inside. To the right was the ocean, as real as
the presence of a sleeping person. Having passed Kaperna, Gray steered
towards the shore. The water lapped against it softly here; lighting his
lantern, he saw the pits in the bluff and its upper, overhanging ledges; he
liked the spot.
"We'll fish here," Gray said, tapping the oarsman on the shoulder.
The sailor harrumphed vaguely.
"This is the first time I've ever sailed with such a captain," he
muttered. "He's a sensible captain, but no ordinary kind. A difficult
captain. But I like him all the same."
He stuck the oar into the silt and tied the boat to it and they both
scrambled up the stones that rolled out from under their knees and elbows.
There was a thicket at the top of the bluff. The sound of an axe splitting a
dry trunk followed; having felled the tree, Letika made a campfire on the
bluff. Shadows moved, and the flames that were reflected in the water; in
the receding gloom the grass and branches stood out; the air, mingled with
smoke, shimmered and glowed above the fire.
Gray sat by the campfire.
"Here," he said, proffering a bottle, "drink to all teetotallers, my
friend Letika. And, by the way, the vodka you brought along is flavoured
with ginger, not quinine."
"I'm sorry, Captain," the sailor replied, catching his breath. "If you
don't mind, I'll eat it down with this...." At which he bit off half a roast
chicken and, extracting a wing from his mouth, continued: "I know you like
quinine. But it was dark, and I was in a hurry. Ginger, you see, embitters a
man. I always drink ginger vodka when I have to
g-As the captain ate and drank, the sailor kept stealing
glances at him and, finally, unable to contain himself any longer, he
said,
"Is it true, Captain, what they say? That you come from a
noble family?"
"That's of no importance, Letika. Take your tackle and fish a while if
you want to." "What about you?"
"Me? I don't know. Maybe. But ... later." Letika unwound his line,
chanting in rhyme, something he was a past master at, to the delight of the
crew.
"From a string and piece of wood I made a very fine, long whip. Then I
found a hook to fit it, and I whistled sharp and quick." He poked about in a
tin of worms. "This old worm lived in a burrow and was happy as could be,
but I've got him hooked real good now, and the perch will all thank me."
Finally, he walked off, singing: "Moonlight shines, the vodka's perfect,
fishes, harken, I draw near. Herrings, faint, and sturgeon skitter, Letika
is fishing here!"
Gray lay down by the fire, gazing at the water and the reflection of
the flames. He was thinking, but effortlessly; in this condition one's mind,
while observing one's surroundings absently, comprehends them but dimly; it
rushes on like a stallion in a jostling herd, crushing and shoving aside,
and halting; emptiness, confusion and delay attend it in turn. It wanders
within the souls of things; from bright agitation it hurries to secret
intimations; passing from earth to sky, conversing on the subject of life
with imaginary personages, snuffing out and embellishing one's memories. In
this cloudy movement all is live and palpable, and all is as loosely hung
together as a hallucination. And one's relaxing consciousness often smiles,
seeing, for instance, one's thoughts on life suddenly accosted by a most
inopportune visitor: perhaps a twig broken two years before. Thus was Gray
thinking by the fire, but he was "somewhere else"--not there.
The elbow he was leaning on, while supporting his head on his hand,
became damp and numb. The stars shone faintly; the gloom was intensified by
a tenseness preceding dawn. The captain was dozing off, but did not realize
it. He felt like having a drink, and he put his hand out towards the sack,
untying it in his sleep. Then he stopped dreaming; the next two hours were
to him no longer than the seconds during which he had laid his head upon his
arms. Meanwhile, Letika had appeared by the campfire twice, he had smoked
and, out of curiosity, had looked into the mouths of the fish he had caught,
wondering what might be there. But, quite naturally, nothing was.
Upon awakening, Gray forgot for a moment how he happened to be where he
was. He gazed in astonishment at the cheerful shine of the morning, the
bluff adorned by bright branches and the blazing blue distance. The leaves
of a hazel bush hung over the horizon and also over his feet. At the bottom
of the bluff--Gray felt it was right at his back--the tide lapped softly.
Falling from a leaf, a dewdrop spread over his sleepy face in a cold
splatter. He rose. Light had triumphed everywhere. The cooling brands of the
campfire clutched at life with a tendril of smoke. Its aroma imparted a wild
headiness to the pleasure of breathing the air of the green woods.
Letika was nowhere in sight; he was oblivious to all; he sweated as he
fished with the zeal of a true gambler. Gray left the woods for the
bush-dotted slope. The grass smoked and flamed; the moist flowers resembled
children who had been forcibly scrubbed with cold water. The green world
breathed with myriad tiny mouths, blocking Gray's way through its exultant
cluster. The captain finally got to a clearing overgrown with grass and
flowers, and here he saw a sleeping girl.
He cautiously moved aside a branch and stopped, feeling that he had
made a dangerous discovery. But five steps away lay a tired Assol, curled up
with one leg tucked under her and the other stretched out, and her head
resting on her
comfortably crossed arms. Her hair was mussed; a button had come undone
at her collar, revealing a white hollow; her tumbled skirt had bared her
knees; her lashes slept upon her cheek in the shadow of her delicately
curved temple, half-covered by a dark lock; the pinky of her right hand,
which was under her head, curled over the back of her head. Gray squatted
and looked into the girl's face from below, never suspecting that he
resembled the Faun in Arnold Bocklin's painting.
Perhaps, under other circumstances, he would have noticed the girl with
his eyes alone, but now he saw her differently. Everything stirred,
everything smiled within him. Naturally, he did not know her or her name,
or, moreover, why she had fallen asleep on the shore; but he was very
pleased by this. He liked pictures that were accompanied neither by an
explanatory text nor by a caption. The impression such a picture makes is
far more powerful; its content, unencumbered by words, becomes boundless,
affirming all conjectures and thoughts.
The shadow cast by the leaves was approaching the trunks, but Gray
still squatted there in that uncomfortable position. Everything about the
girl was asleep: her dark hair slept, her dress slept, as did the pleats of
her skirt; even the grass near her body, it seemed, was dozing out of
sympathy. When the impression became complete, Gray entered its warm,
engulfing waves and sailed off on it. Letika had been shouting for some
time: "Captain! Where are you?", but the captain heard him not.
When he finally rose, a predilection for the unusual caught him
unawares with the determination and inspiration of an angered woman. Giving
way to it pensively, he removed the treasured old ring from his finger,
thinking, and not without reason, that perhaps, in this way, he was
suggesting something essential to life, similar to orthography. He slipped
the ring gently onto the pinky that showed white under the back of her head.
The pinky twitched in annoyance and curled up. Glancing once again at this
resting face, Gray turned to see the sailor's sharply-raised brows. Letika
was gaping as he watched the captain's movements with the kind of
astonishment Jonah must have felt as he gazed down the maw of his furnished
whale.
"Ah, it's you, Letika! Look at her. Isn't she beautiful?" "A wondrous
painting!" the sailor shouted in a whisper, for he liked bookish
expressions. "There's something prepossessing in the presentation of the
circumstances. I caught four morays and another one, as round as a bladder."
"Shh, Letika. Let's get out of here." They retreated into the bushes.
They should have turned back to the rowboat now, but Gray procrastinated,
looking off into the distance at the low bank, where the morning smoke from
the chimneys of Kaperna streamed over the greenery and the sand. In the
smoke he once again saw the girl-Then he turned determinedly and went down
the slope; the sailor did not question him about what had happened, but
walked on behind; he sensed that once again a compulsory silence ensued.
When they reached the first houses Gray suddenly said,
"Can your practised eye tell us where the tavern is, Letika?"
"It must be that black roof," Letika mused, "but then, again, maybe it
isn't."
"What's so special about that roof?"
"I really don't know, Captain. Nothing more than the voice of my
heart."
They approached the house; it was indeed Menners' tavern. Through the
open window they could see a bottle on the table; beside it someone's dirty
hand was milking a steel-grey moustache.
Although it was still early in the day there were three men in the
common room. The coalman, the owner of the drunken grey moustache already
noted, was sitting by the window; two fishermen were lodged around some
scrambled eggs and beer at a table set between the bar and an inner door.
Menners, a tall young man with a dull, freckled face and that peculiar
expression of bold cunning in his near-sighted eyes that is a distinctive
feature of tradesmen in general, was wiping plates behind the counter. The
window frame was imprinted in the sunshine on the dirty floor.
No sooner had Gray stepped into the strip of smoky light than Menners,
bowing respectfully, came out from behind his enclosure. He had immediately
sensed a real captain in Gray--a type of client rarely to be seen there.
Gray ordered rum. Covering the table with a cloth become yellowed in the
bustle of daily life, Menners brought over a bottle, but first licked the
corner of the label that had come unstuck. Then he went back behind the
counter to look intently now at Gray, now at the plate from which he was
picking off a dry particle of food.
While Letika, having raised his glass between his hands, was whispering
to it softly and glancing out the window, Gray summoned Hin Menners. Hin
perched on the edge of a chair with a self-satisfied air, flattered at
having been addressed, and especially flattered because this had been done
by a simple crook of Gray's finger.
"I assume you know all the local inhabitants," Gray said in an even
voice. "I would like to know the name of a girl in a kerchief, in a dress
with pink flowers, auburn-haired, of medium height, between seventeen and
twenty years of age. I came upon her not far from here. What is her name?"
He spoke with a firm simplicity of strength that made it impossible to
evade his tone. Hin Menners squirmed inwardly and even smirked slightly, but
outwardly he obeyed the nature of the address. However, he hesitated before
replying--but only from a futile desire to guess what was up
"Hm!" he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "It must be
Sailing-ship Assol. She's a halfwit."
"Indeed?" Gray said indifferently, taking a big sip. "Why is she like
that?"
"If you really want to know, I'll tell you."
And Hin told Gray of the time, seven years before, when, on the
seashore, the girl had spoken to a man who collected folk songs. Naturally,
this story, in the years since the beggar had first affirmed its existence
in the tavern, had taken the shape of a crude and ugly rumour, but the
essence remained unchanged.
"And that's what she's been called ever since," Menners said. "She's
called Sailing-ship Assol."
Gray glanced automatically at Letika, who was still behaving quietly
and modestly, then his eyes turned to the dusty road outside the tavern, and
he felt as if he had been struck--a double blow to his heart and head.
Coming down the road towards him was the very same Sailing-ship Assol whom
Menners had just described from a clinical point of view. Her striking
features, which resembled the mystery of unforgettable, stirring, yet simple
words, appeared to him now in the light of her gaze. The sailor and Menners
both had their backs to the window and, in order that they not turn
accidentally, Gray found the courage to shift his gaze to Hin's ginger eyes.
After he had seen Assol's eyes, all the prejudice of Menners' story was
dispelled. Meanwhile, Hin continued unsuspectingly:
"I can also add that her father is a real bastard. He drowned my pater
like he was a cat or something, God forgive me. He...."
He was interrupted by an unexpected, wild howl coming from behind. The
coalman, rolling his eyes fiercely and having cast off his drunken stupor,
suddenly began bawling a song, but with such force that it made everyone
jump:
Basket-maker, basket-maker, Skin us for your baskets!
"You're roaring drunk again, you damn whaleboat!" Menners shouted. "Get
out!"
But take care that you don't fall Right into our caskets!
the coalman bawled and then, as if nothing were amiss, he | dunked his
moustache into a slopping glass.
Hin Menners shrugged indignantly.
"He's the scum of the earth," he said with the sinister | dignity of
the miser. "It happens every time!"
"Is there anything else you can tell me?" Gray asked.
"Me? I just told you her father's a bastard. On account of
him, sir, I was orphaned, and while still a boy was forced to earn my
bread by the sweat-of my brow."
"You're lying!" the coalman said unexpectedly. "You're lying so foully
and unnaturally that it's sobered me
up."
Before Hin had a chance to open his mouth, the coalman addressed Gray:
"He's lying. His father was a liar, too; as was his mother. It runs in
the family. Rest assured, she's as sane as you and me. I've spoken to her.
She rode in my cart eighty-four times or a bit less. If a girl's walking
home from town and I've sold all my coal, I'll always give her a lift. She
might as well ride. I'm saying that she has a sane head on her shoulders.
You can see that now. Naturally, she'd never talk to you, Hin Menners. But
me, sir, in my free coal trade, I despise gossip and rumours. She talks like
a grown-up, but her way of talking is strange. If you listen closely--it
seems like just the same as you and me would say, and it is, but yet, it
isn't. For instance, we got to talking about her trade. 'I'll tell you
something,' she said, and her holding onto my shoulder like a fly to a
bell-tower, 'my work isn't dull, but I keep wanting to think up something
special. I want to find a way to make a boat that'll sail by itself, with
oarsmen that'll really row; then, they'll dock at the shore, tie up and sit
down on the beach to have a bite, just exactly as if they were alive.' I
started laughing, see, 'cause I found it funny. So I said, 'Well, Assol,
it's all because of the kind of work you do, that's why you think like this,
but look around; the way other people work, you'd think they were fighting.'
'No,' she says, 'I know what I know. When a fisherman's fishing he keeps
thinking he'll catch a big fish, bigger than anyone ever caught.' 'What
about me?' 'You?' She laughed. Til bet that when you fill your basket with
coal you think it'll burst into bloom.' That's the words she used! That very
moment, I confess, I don't know what made me do it, I looked into the empty
basket, and I really thought I was seeing buds coming out of the basket
twigs; the buds burst and leaves splashed all over the basket and were gone.
I even sobered UP a bit! But Hin Menners will lie in his teeth and never bat
an eye--I know him!"
Finding the conversation to have taken an obviously insulting turn,
Menners looked at the coalman scathingly and disappeared behind the counter,