The Laughter of Carthage: Pyat Quartet

by Michael Moorcock

  The boat’s vibrations were now less violent and water was a reassuring rush in the paddle blades. The shore fell away from us on all sides as we headed for Gallipoli and the narrow straits for which so many men of the British Empire had died in vain. Beyond Gallipoli lay the Aegean, that most hallowed of seas, where civilisation had been born, where the philosophy of Christ was created. From the Aegean grew the Mediterranean and Italy, from which Law and Justice were carved out of the Chaos of pagan barbarism. I was sorry Esmé was not awake to share my joy. The boat grumbled and clanked. She wheezed and squealed, but I did not care. I knew that Odysseus was going home!

  Esmé stirred once or twice, then fell into a deep, natural slumber. Only later, when we were actually in the Hellespont and the water was growing choppier, did she wake up. I was dozing myself by then. I heard her gagging and spluttering and hardly realised what was happening before I recognised the smell and felt dampness on my chest. She had vomited all over me. This was one of the few things she had in common with Mrs Cornelius. I accepted the discomfort as fitting revenge for the blow, cleaned myself as best I could, then, putting her head back on my shoulder, stroked her to sleep. It seemed my destiny to fall in love with women who had weak stomachs. The sounds and scents of the sea altered subtly as we slipped into the Aegean, passing close to Lemnos and its big Russian refugee camp. With a certain amount of malice I thought that sooner or later the Baroness and Kitty must arrive here. It would be a shame if the child suffered, but Leda deserved a short spell in such conditions. Only then, I thought, would she come to realise from what I had saved her, how much she had lost because of her hysterical folly and her unreasonable jealousy. I had been more than careful to consider her feelings. Now she, in my absence, could consider mine!

  By midmorning of the following day it became apparent that Captain Kazakian was not the mariner he had claimed to be. By the afternoon it was also obvious neither he nor his boat was fitted for the voyage. The paddlesteamer was mechanically sound, in the sense that most of her parts functioned properly but she was hardly a seagoing boat at all, being more suitable for ferrying work on inland waters. I caught the captain twice puzzling over maps and staring through an old telescope at the coast. We had never gone out of sight of shore. The launch now stank of burning oil and several times I had awakened from my doze in alarm, thinking we were on fire.

  I did everything I could to keep my knowledge and my fears from the almost comatose Esmé. Mostly she lay full length on the bench, very occasionally taking faltering steps to make dry, retching noises over the rail. She had eaten nothing since Constantinople. For that I was selfishly grateful, though increasingly I was concerned about her. I could not believe anyone would react so badly to mere anxiety. Sometimes she looked up at me to ask in a tiny voice if we had arrived yet. I was forced to shake my head. All I could reply was ‘Soon.’ Then I would go to the wheelhouse and discover the bulky Armenian struggling with charts, frowning at instruments and scratching his head with the peak of his filthy cap. His reply to my question was usually a grunt and always the unreassuring information that we were ‘not far from Greece’. I admit my own geography had also been at fault, for I had believed Captain Kazakian when he said Venice was little more than a day’s voyage. At length, when I forced a more specific answer from him, he admitted our position was ‘somewhere near Smyrna’, which was almost the last place I wished to be. He tried to ease my mind by pointing at his obviously malfunctioning compass. ‘But we are on our way to Mykonos.’ He explained Mykonos was Greek; an island ‘not far from Athens’. By that evening, as the sun went down below a mysterious range of bleak cliffs and while Kazakian muttered in tempo with his engine, still puzzling over his sea-maps, Esmé was asleep and I was starving. It had not occurred to me to bring food.

  Later, one of the passengers offered me a piece of thin sausage and some pitta which I gratefully accepted. He was more outgoing, more confident than most of the others (who now seemed like fellow refugees rather than tourists); a big man in a black overcoat and black astrakhan hat. He introduced himself as Mr Kiatos and was reassuringly content with the progress of the voyage. He had travelled on the launch several times, he said. She always managed to survive the trip in one piece. He was a businessman, dealing mainly in dried fruits, and he had cousins in Constantinople. He lived at Rythemo, he said. A regular steamer never took this route. If he travelled by more conventional means he would have to transfer boats once or twice and thus lose a great deal of time. I asked him where Rythemo was. It was on Crete. Captain Kazakian, I said, had given me the impression we were going straight to Venice. At this Mr Kiatos smiled without rancour in the folds of his smooth, well tempered face. ‘I think the Captain goes wherever we pay him to go, sir. And he tells each passenger he is sailing direct to that place!’ He chewed with pleasure on his sausage, returning his attention to the placid surface of the sea, while I stretched out on one of the empty benches and managed to sleep.

  I was awakened by the night’s chill. We were moving slowly beneath a magnificent yellow moon. To our port the craggy cliffs ran with foam. The sea was still relatively calm but I could hear breakers rushing on a beach. The lights of our launch swung back and forth and human silhouettes stood leaning against the rails. Esmé was sitting upright, clinging with outstretched arms to the back of the bench, like a crucified doll. I asked if she were better. She wanted some water. I went below to where their tongueless Bulgarian cook sat playing cards with one of the other unwholesome-looking crewmen. I signed to him. I needed water from the barrel. He made an expansive, hospitable gesture. Cleaning out a mug, I carried it back for Esmé, who swallowed, spluttered, then asked if we were sinking. I pretended to laugh. ‘They’re putting a passenger ashore, that’s all. A minor delay. It won’t be much longer before we’re in Venice.’

  She rolled her eyes upwards like some Godforsaken martyr, then again subsided into sleep. She seemed feverish so I dabbed the rest of the water on her forehead. I noticed my own hand was shaking. I forced myself to be calmer.

  With a good deal of yelling and cursing from Captain Kazakian, his men brought the launch closer to shore. They started to unship one of the boats. A large Gladstone bag at his feet, Mr Kiatos stood over me, wanting to shake hands. I had become so abstracted, I had not at first noticed him. ‘This is where I leave you, sir.’ He smiled with sympathetic humour. ‘I hope it isn’t too long before you arrive in Venice.’ He bent down and placed the rest of his food and a little packet of dried figs on the bench beside me.

  I watched him clamber gracefully over the side, then came to my senses enough to move to the rail. A seaman rowed him through choppy water towards the beach. I waved at him, but he did not see me. For a moment I wondered why they had not docked at the town’s wharf. Then it occurred to me we were probably closer to Mr Kiatos’s home and Kazakian was avoiding port fees. It might also be that Mr Kiatos was a smuggler.

  By morning the boat was shaking and squealing across a calm sea beneath pure blue skies and I was trying to get Esmé to take some crumbled biscuits and milk, which an Italian woman had given me. The land was almost out of sight and Captain Kazakian therefore was making frantic efforts to get closer in to what he guessed might be Hydra. He was inclined to panic if, even for a few minutes, the horizon consisted only of ocean. For my part I had sunk into that peculiar stupor which over the years has helped me stand many kinds of boredom and several sorts of terror. I sat with Esmé’s poor little burning head in my lap, staring forward, watching for clouds and praying a storm did not come. By now I was perfectly convinced the launch could not possibly ride anything more than a squall. Captain Kazakian’s need for reassurance no longer seemed unreasonable. Further passengers were put off, usually in obscure coves of nameless islands. Sometimes a person would object, claiming he did not recognise the coastline or that it was not the exact place to which he had paid passage. At this, Captain Kazakian would shrug. He would argue. He would stab his filthy stubs of fingers at the char
ts. He would offer to take them on to his next port of call or carry them back to Constantinople. Then eventually, resentful and suspicious, they would disembark. It had, of course, become absolutely clear we should not be sailing into Venice via the Grand Canal. We should be lucky if he landed us on a stretch of pebbles less than ten miles from the city. Not that this likelihood disturbed me very much, since it was important to avoid the authorities if at all possible. I was actually comforted by the knowledge that almost every other person on board was also anxious to remain inconspicuous. Now no embarrassment existed between us; nonetheless very few fellow passengers attempted to communicate. It seemed we shared a similar reaction to our plight. Nothing we could say would improve our situation; so we said nothing.

  The worst problem I could imagine for Esmé and myself, as we got a little closer to Italy, was the transporting of our trunks to the city. There would not be porters at one of Captain Kazakian’s landing stages. I refused to voice my fears to my little girl, whose (ever subsided after I had managed to get her to take some cocaine. The drug’s restorative properties rarely failed and in this case helped to bring her to her senses. I could now force her to nibble on Mr Kiatos’s figs and sausage. We were sustaining ourselves entirely on borrowed food. Without the silent kindness of those other people we might have starved to death. Kazakian and his crew had certain supplies, but had no intention of sharing them with what they plainly regarded as a troublesome cargo. They would have treated cattle better.

  By the next afternoon Esmé had recovered still further. She looked fragile; her eyes had a bleak, wounded quality, but she was better able to move and to talk.

  ‘Where are we now, Maxim?’

  ‘Nearing Venice,’ I said.

  The sky had a few strands of cloud but was otherwise perfect; the sea might have been an ornamental lake. The engine steadily turned the paddlewheels which, with light glinting on their green metal covers, sent refreshing spray into our faces. The gods, it seemed, were favouring this Odyssey, at least for the moment. I sat with my darling beneath the stained canopy and held her hand, murmuring of half-remembered Greek legends, the glamours and treasures of the Venetians, the engineering marvels we should find in Europe. Meanwhile Captain Kazakian came up onto this deck and, with a nod to us, stretched himself full length on the planking beyond the awning. Stripped to the waist and smoking a cheroot, he was enjoying the sun. Occasionally he would turn his massive head towards us and call out encouragement. ‘Everything’s under control. Just a few more hours.’ They were meaningless words. He was relaxing because he had actually recognised the coast of Cephalonia and had recently passed a number of large ships. Every time Captain Kazakian had seen one of these he had given a cheerful greeting on his whistle. The nearer we were to land, the more vessels there were in the immediate vicinity, the happier he was. We had flown the Turkish flag when we left Constantinople but were now carrying Greek colours. That evening, just after dark, we let off three passengers and took several more on board.

  The newcomers were all middle-aged men walking with that swaggering gait I identified with well-to-do bandits or comfortably corrupt police officers. Until dawn, they remained standing around the wheelhouse, chatting to the Captain and later to the bosun who relieved him. They offered no recognition of the other passengers and never looked at anyone else directly; they were of the type for whom eye-contact is a weapon, a means of threat or persuasion. They did not waste it on casual socialising. Eventually a small sailing vessel drew alongside and took them in the direction of Corfu (according to Kazakian, who seemed greatly relieved when they had left). He reassured me we would be in Venice ‘tomorrow’. He nodded at me, as if I were a mute baby. ‘Yes,’ he said smiling. ‘Yes.’

  By noon the next day the engine suddenly stopped. I at first assumed we were making another rendezvous. The boat drifted under a copper sky, away from the hazy outline of land to starboard. Esmé lay in my lap breathing deeply and the world was filled with an enormous silence. I was enjoying the sensation until, from the wheelhouse, Captain Kazakian began to yell fiercely in all the languages of the Levant and Mediterranean.

  I saw the engineer come running along the deck. He was waving his arms and screaming. I sat upright. Thick black smoke gouted from the little engine-room and drifted towards us. It was menacing. Like a sentient, supernatural creature which might devour us if we moved.

  A few moments later Kazakian left his post and with one eye on the cloud, as if he shared my impression of it, walked slowly up to where we stood. He was grinning and shaking his head, his hands going through their entire vocabulary of gestures, a sure sign of his utter terror. ‘I thank God you are with us, Mr Papadakis, for you are the only one who can help us with our problem. You are a genius of a mechanic. Everyone in Galata says so. I know it.’ This litany of praise was merely a preliminary and I suffered through it, waiting for him to reach his point.

  ‘Will you please look at our engine?’ he said.

  Esmé had become frightened again. In spite of the sun’s warmth, she pulled her coat about her and withdrew to the bench.

  Reluctantly I followed Kazakian into the tiny engine-room, having taken the precaution of placing a handkerchief over my mouth and nostrils. I staggered before what was almost a tangible wall of heat. I gave instructions to shut everything down and tried to look for the trouble. The engine was typical of its kind, of no specific manufacture and operated by people who treated it with more superstition than mechanical skill, repaired so many times that scarcely an original part remained. I had become used to understanding the individual logic which went into these pieces of machinery; one had to guess the quirks of another’s mind. There was no manual which would have been of the slightest possible use to me. After a while it emerged there was a blockage in one of the pistons. I set about dismantling the whole primitive system, having them clean each part as we went. The launch was burning any fuel she could find and the engine was patched with rags, bits of metal, even the remains of a corned beef can, while the boiler was a nightmare of welded scrap iron. Carefully I reassembled everything and gave orders to make steam again. To my enormous relief she ran more smoothly than before. I had not looked forward to being some minor Daedalus to that seedy Minos.

  Delighted, Captain Kazakian insisted we go to his cabin. It was little more than a cubbyhole behind the wheelhouse and smelled worse than any other part of the boat. He wanted to drink some arak. But by now I was firm. First, I told him, I must see if my sister was all right. It was growing dark. I found her shivering on the bench where I had left her. I was worn out and inclined to greater anxiety. I was determined to get us to Venice before anything else went wrong with the boat. I returned to Kazakian’s cabin. I thought Esmé had typhus, I said. This impressed him. He looked grotesquely startled, as if he suspected himself of giving her the disease. Then he insisted vigorously that she was merely seasick. I had lost patience with him.

  ‘You had better understand, I think, that it is not only possible to lift a curse placed on an engine. I can also make a curse. Without moving from here, I could immobilise you completely.’

  He sneered at me but I had obviously impressed him. My guess was that he was too superstitious to risk very much. Also I had proved so useful to him he was willing to placate me. He called his bosun in and gave orders that Esmé be taken below to one of the recently-vacated cabins. ‘At no extra charge,’ he told me with the air of a man who knew he was being stupidly generous. The stuffy cabin had a bed with a single dirty sheet on it, but it was better than the bench. Lifting her fragile little body onto the bunk, I made the others leave; then I undressed her and washed her. She awoke for this and did not resist me, showing no interest when I told her the engine was working well and we were on the last lap of our journey. ‘We should be sighting the Italian coast tomorrow. I have taken charge here.’

  As soon as we landed, I said, I would find her a doctor. She became calmer as the night progressed. Her fever had dropped radically
by morning. I left her alone long enough to demand a cup of coffee from the boat’s galley and remind Captain Kazakian of my threat. He flapped his hands and shrugged, ‘It is where we are going!’ he said, as if I were an unreasonable and demanding child. ‘Where we are going. Of course!’

  I stayed with Esmé until evening, keeping myself awake with cocaine. At about nine o’clock there was a knock on the door and Captain Kazakian entered. He was smiling broadly. His attitude was completely changed. This suggested he was now more certain of his position. ‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘Yes. Actually tonight. In Venice. Will your sister be well enough to go ashore?’

  ‘Where will you land us?’

  ‘Not far from Venice. A village. You can get a train. A matter of half an hour.’

  ‘I am almost out of money, Captain Kazakian. I can’t afford any further travelling expenses. You promised to take me all the way to Venice, remember?’

  He scratched the back of his neck and became embarrassed, placing the tips of his Angers into the pocket of his greasy, embroidered waistcoast. After some hesitation he produced three sovereigns. ‘I will give you these back. Your fee for helping us with the engine. They will pay your fare to Venice.’

  It was a mixture of peace offering and sacrifice to the gods; a reluctant libation to the little spirit who watched over steam launches. I accepted his gold. It was my right.