The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  Slowness he felt then in the upward reaching of her mouth to find his lips. She was embracing him, a small column of urgent softness, and slipping down, kneeling, falling away—a slow and graceful falling until she lay on the pallet at his feet, no longer looking at him but knowing he would come to her.

  There were the fears, shy, ridiculous but now amusingly so, not even shameful when with another faint gust of laughter Clarissa helped him again. Time thereafter was measured in roaring heartbeats, in the grotesque innocent throes where Ben at last discovered a strength that was his own, a sureness and a rightness. Some part of him could still observe at the very crests of the waves. He could see, perhaps pity, her rich mouth squared down as in suffering, her brown dear face suddenly drenched in tears and twisting from side to side, and yet know that nothing of this could be held back, nor softened, nor in any way denied, and that pain was of no importance whatever until the cup should be drained.

  He was aware of most of the words she spoke—random and wild, fantastic or pitiable, they all owned a rightness in the moment and were a part of the climbing waves. “O God, hurt me! Set thy mark on me, Benjamin, Benjamin. I want thy seed. À moi! Now! Now! Benjamin—thy bright mouth—ainsi je vais, je vais avec toi jusqu’à la fin de la terre.”

  Out of limitless quiet, his face on her satin shoulder, Ben asked: “Have I hurt thee?”

  “No. Yes.…” And again with the faintest moth-wing touch of laughter: “No.…”

  He drew away from her; presently sat up and saw her lying still, with wet cheeks and closed eyes, near and defenseless, wholly quiet. She said: “I will not yet open my eyes.” And she did not, even when—timidly this time and bewildered at his own impulse—Ben curved his hand over the golden round of her breast where fading sunlight lay across it.

  “Clarissa, forgive me.”

  She looked at him then, pools of darkness opening, filling with amazement, then sorrow, then showing him such a remote and ruminative blankness that Ben was frightened as a child, for it seemed to him that what his own voice had said was monstrous, and nothing said now or later could redeem it. She stood, unconcerned at her nakedness, looking down at him he knew, the abyss between self and self widening. At length she asked with much coolness: “What does that mean?”

  “Clarissa, I did never intend”—Oh, close my mouth, anything I say makes it worse, and I go on spilling words—“We were swept away—I never intended—I’ve—sinned—betrayed—”

  He managed to stop the noise. She was silent; he could not even hear her breathing. Forced by the silence to look up at last, he found as he had known he would the high blaze of contempt. “Sin? Betrayal?…” Then—he had known this too and feared it more than anything else—contempt and anger were gone, closed away altogether by a mask impenetrable and cruelly polite. The mask said gently: “Shall I help you with your clothes, Mr. Cory?”

  He thought with a resentment that could accomplish nothing: Nay, I didn’t deserve that.

  The mask softened a little; a brittle thing quivering, but because it was so greatly needed it would not break. She caught her breath and said: “Oh, I am sorry! Forgive me too—if you can.” She caught up her clothes in a clumsy armful and ran barefoot out of the room.

  She had forgotten her slippers. Ben knew—this was the worst knowledge of all—that he could not search for her in the empty house. If he found her somewhere, a hurt and shrinking brown slave, he would not be finding her at all. The slippers were very small, soft, gray, a little run over at the edges. Ben dressed clumsily. He took up one of the slippers and tucked it under his shirt, but then it seemed to him that he could not even do that. He put back the mute and harmless thing beside its companion, and left the house. As he unhitched Molly and set his foot in the stirrup it occurred to him, in a misery now grown dull and almost impersonal, that perhaps it takes more than a successful act of intercourse at seventeen, to make a man.

  * * * *

  “I say overside is the only place. A devil’s name, what do you want of a pisstail boy on such an errand?”

  “Watch that tongue, Judah. Watch it, man, against the day the rations’ll run short and I’ll be a-mind to cut it off and ram it down your gullet for amusement and nourishment, now that’s no lie.”

  “I said nothing, only spoke m’ futtering mind.”

  “Good. You may do it again. You may speak up plain and tell me who’s captain of this bloody sloop.”

  “You are, Mister Shawn. I’m only saying, a God-damn boy is no use here. Are you soft on the pup?”

  “You could say one thing too much one day.”

  “Dead in hell or alive in hell with one eye, what’s the difference? Comes to that, though, betwix’ you and me, maybe I won’t be the one that dies. Be you going below—sir?”

  “I am in a moment. You too.”

  “Leaving only Joey and Manuel on deck, and Joey scared of a tiller he don’t know yet, and the God-damn night blacker ’n a witch’s box?”

  “What’s to be scared of, you fool?”

  “I a’n’t scared of nothing, never was. Piss on ’em all. What’ve I got left any man could take from me? You want Joey to pile up the tub on Noddle’s Island it’s no beshitten difference to me and you know it.”

  “Noddle’s is it? You’re daft. We’re miles south of it, and clear of Dorchester Neck too, and nothing to watch but a sweet wide-open sea. Steady as she goes, Joey Mills! Why, Judah, man, I can feel and smell the sea and the land in the dark, the way they lie.”

  “I’ll ever recall how Quelch give you a rope’s end once for that same mad Irish brag. Nobody can feel land in the dark.”

  “Mother of God, what I put up with from you! Peace on it, Judah.… Keep your eye sharp for riding lights, Manuel—any lights. You won’t see ’em, and yet you might. Close ’em just once, any more ’n you need to blink, and you’ll hear old Shawn speak in a manner unkind. That’s my boy, Manuel—steady as she goes! O the fair night, and we better off without a moon!… Well, Judah, well—say I brought the boy on impulse, though it’s not that entirely. I never planned it, that I did not, but didn’t I find him, the poor puzzled thing, hiding in the doorway where I was a-mind to hide me own self for a last look at Artemis going down the bay? And didn’t I learn the way he’d set his own heart on going with her, and Kenny played him false too, with promises and then a chopping and a changing? God damn the old fart, I could puke to think of the way I all but licked the boots of him for a berth on her, and then to be shoved aside, shoved aside! We’ll learn how far they’ll be shoving old Shawn aside! Why, Ben’s heart was set on her, so it was, he was that full of it you wouldn’t know the thing he’d do, to be sailing on her—wisha, he shall!”

  “If he was that hot for it why’d you bother to drug him?”

  “This fishy tub will not have been his notion of going to sea.”

  “What are you laughing at now?”

  “You wouldn’t know. There’s a sailor in that boy, Judah. There’s an explorer in that boy.”

  “Ah! Still beating that dead horse.”

  “Steady as she goes, Judah! You know how much you can say to me—don’t exceed! Ah, at that I might’ve persuaded him, seeing how sweet he come aboard of us here for a gossip with old Shawn, and was telling some of his boy’s troubles but not all, not all, and believing everything old Shawn was a-mind to tell him over the little drinks, and the fish stink, why, he wasn’t minding it, and the lantern light winking on the pretty face of him—”

  “Shit, you’re drunk.”

  “Drunk on sea water, Judah, you with your leather heart, you wouldn’t know. He might’a’ come along of his own will, now that’s no lie. He was halfway so minded. He did believe I’d been given command, for a quick fishing trip to the Banks and so home—I think he did. But there’d have been much to explain later, and the devil with all ex
plaining, the drop of opium didn’t go amiss and will do him no hurt.… Judah, you fool, don’t you know he saw you there at the Lion—and you that clumsy, and giving him your dead-window look, the way you might as well have written a letter to their Select Watch, that you might.”

  “What if he did? The others is bought and paid for.”

  “You’ll run me no such errand again, Judah—nor wouldn’t’ve then, had not my voice told me there was need. Mother of God, to think I may have misheard, and a man died for nothing! But it can’t be so.”

  “Voice?”

  “You wouldn’t know. How many times did you strike?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do. Thirteen. And he didn’t die till morning. He lived to speak.”

  “He’s dead enough now, and never spoke of me. He never saw me nor Tom. Tom got the rag on his eyes and I came at him from behind. Thirteen, was it?”

  “It was. Judah, I think you’ve never been as close to your Maker as you be this moment. You bungled that thing. He suffered, and no need, and now it seems there was no profit in the thing at all.”

  “Easy, Shawn! We’ll take Artemis the easier and him not there.”

  “True enough. All the same I’m trying—while you’re here so near the rail and a weak puky thing too—I’m trying to recall if you had any part in persuading me to it.”

  “You’re mad, Shawn. You know I never.…”

  “I think you hadn’t. God help you if ever I’m receiving different instruction!… Come below, Judah. I’ll show you something. I’ll discover if there’s any juice in that leather heart at all. Mind the hatch, you clumsy son of a bitch! And go in front—I’m not so green you’ll ever find yourself behind me with a rag over me eyes.… Hath he been quiet, Dummy? Shake your head for ay or no. Dummy’s a good man, Dummy is. Mind if I’m touching your hump for luck, Dummy? And that headshake is ay?—good enough. Look here, Judas—”

  “Judah.”

  “Touchy, man? Look here, and look well. Nay, drink first, there’s something left here, and don’t cut your stupid eye at me! I’m drinking first from the same bottle, am I not? I say, drink it!… Now look here: this is the mortal image and presentment of a man, Judah. O the quiet sleep! Look on this chin, rounded like a woman’s and firm with all the fair power of a god! But you can’t see, you haven’t the eye to see or the mind to know. Look on this hand, how firm already, and will it not be all the nobler when its wondrous jointure is acquainted with the rope, and the leap of a tiller and the burning of salt and wind? This is a man. This is the man who’ll go with me, and be my friend, and stand by me in the new world when the rest of you are stinking carrion. And yet it hurts me a little, that I should be taking him away from his brother who loved him.… Go back on deck, Judah. Your one eye sees nothing. Go back on deck. Well, lively, man! I’m following.… Come for’d. We must have a feather under the bow.”

  “You’re drunk and raving. I’ve no mind to go for’d unless you make it an order, Shawn, and take care how you do it.”

  “Then bide here aft, seeing I care nothing what you think or do, and your one eye blinder than the one that’s gone.… Any lights, Manuel?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s well enough. She’ll be far ahead. Belike we sha’n’t see her till a certain day when we’re standing on and off outside Sherburne. We’ll see her then, Manuel, boy, but she won’t see us until the time I choose. And Tom Ball and French Jack aboard her, they’ll know the time I choose, they’ll see us come out of the north long before the others do, I don’t care who’s aloft. Good men, those, Manuel. Can you hear the water, Manuel? What does it say, Manuel?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Shawn.”

  “But I know. It saith, there be many islands.”

  PART THREE

  Chapter One

  The shadows of westward-rolling cloud obscured the calm of Polaris and the other stars, and the May moon. Reuben Cory had looked out not long ago from John Kenny’s window, noticing a ground-mist over the lawn, ghosts of it rising toward his eyes; a feeble thing like the random smoke of a fire dying out, but later it might increase, filling all the still air above the village, above the city in the north, above the harbor and that house in Dorchester where Charity at this moment might be watching the sea through her own window of loneliness. John Kenny’s voice had drawn Reuben back to the island of lamplight by the bed, and Reuben had resumed his watch there, trying to interpret the sound. It was vast labor for John Kenny to speak at all; the effort flushed his sunken cheeks, twisted his lips loosely downward to the side; after such toil it was necessary to wipe his mouth, and Mr. Welland had recommended cooling his face with a damp cloth. Reuben had done this, skilled with months of practise; now he sought to analyze in memory the blurred fragment of speech. It had carried the inflection of a question. The word, most probably, was “long.” Certainly within the stricken flesh a mind and a self were poignantly awake, needing an answer. The brown eyes retained much alertness. Sometimes, when the old man was asleep—as he was the greater part of the time—one could imagine that he would wake naturally, frown, say something half-kind and half-sharp, clearly, looking down the nose.

  Trusting to insight—since thought must move in the atmosphere of doubt, and is often free to claim that this guess is truly a little better than that one—Reuben spoke slowly and plainly: “It is a year, Uncle John, since Ben went away.” A thought of the ground-mist touched Reuben again as he settled in his chair and reached for the book on the bedside table. Doubtless it would increase; men would grope in it cursing; the tower of South Church would dissolve away, shadowing forth some remote day of demolition, and in the harbor no ships would move.

  Uncle John could still make some motions of his head within a narrow range, enough to indicate yes or no, agreement or denial, satisfaction or protest. Reuben saw it stir, the waxen chin lowering a fraction of an inch, the gray owl tufts rising the same tiny distance from the dent in the pillow—a nod. The guess must have been fair. Reuben saw the flush fading, the deep wrinkles around the eyes relaxing after travail. Uncle John could also move his right leg and arm, and until about a month ago had used the right hand to feed himself. Kate fed him now, or Reuben: the paralysis of his stroke had not advanced, but that right arm seemed too weary, too skeletal, and the old man had finally appeared willing to be delivered from that exertion.

  “Uncle John, I’ve thought all winter long that Ben might come back this spring. It is May. The wild flags are out in the marshes. I know we cannot put any trust in a mere hope, but I keep the thought in my mind. I feel certain he is alive, and will come home when he can.”

  The eyes watched, with intelligence; as Reuben was aware, nothing in response to what he had said was worth the effort of speech; acceptance of the message was enough. Reuben held a volume of Montaigne near Uncle John’s right hand, so that if it wished the hand could rise and turn the pages, indicating a part to be read. When sleep would not arrive, Uncle John seemed to enjoy such reading, and Montaigne was his usual choice. At times Erasmus, Locke, Sir Thomas Browne, Virgil—more often Montaigne. The blurred eyes lowered, the hand groped among the pages for a while, and tapped the beginning of the essay “Use Makes Perfect,” as Reuben had almost known it would, and fell away.

  Familiar with the text, Reuben could read without much thought for anything but slowness and clarity in his voice, remembering to keep his face turned toward the old man. Reuben and Mr. Welland were convinced that since the stroke of last July, Mr. Kenny’s deafness had thickened; he could hear plain speech and hear it well, but it was apparent how closely his eyes followed the motion of a speaker’s lips.

  “‘… A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, necessity and such like accidents, but, as to death, we can experiment it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it.’” Natural enough, Reuben thought, and perha
ps good, that Uncle John should so often wish to hear this essay, in which Montaigne would have it that one must train for death as for a voluntary act. Not unnatural anyway, for one whose task of dying had begun months ago and might continue yet a long time. “‘…with how great facility do we pass from waking to sleeping, and with how little concern do we lose the knowledge of light and of ourselves.…’”

  Kate would have been distressed by it. She clung, at least outwardly, to the thought that John Kenny would recover. Reuben supposed that when she was alone with herself, not sustained by those who loved her enough to reinforce the fantasy, she knew better.

  “‘Of this I have daily experience: if I am under the shelter of a warm room, in a stormy and tempestuous night, I wonder how people can live abroad, and am afflicted for those who are out in the fields: if I am there myself, I do not wish to be anywhere else.…’”

  The eyes watched. It was possible, Reuben felt, that the hidden self was listening to his voice as much as to the voice of Montaigne: this would remain in the region of doubt, a thing not to be known. He read on without weariness to the end: “‘Whosoever shall so know himself, let him boldly speak it out.’” But Reuben thought: Who under the North Star hath ever known himself to the depth? May one not most nearly approach it by gaining a glimpse of the self in the thought of one other?—but this will happen only in the rarest moments of the journey.