“Why Meyer, of course. A selfish little bitch. Both of them. As if bodies were all that important.”
Then something appeared to give way for a moment in her. She spoke very tentatively.
“I don’t suppose we could take the Nathan James—make at least a brief search.”
“Leave it, Lieutenant. We can’t spare a drop of that fuel. Selfish indeed: how dare they take one of our boats. Takes us down to two.” The hardness in my tone real enough. Perhaps, also, in both of us, meant to hold back tears; useless tears.
6
Lieutenant Girard
We had gone there I believe innocently enough. Though committed to its happening, or at least—bearing in mind the great unknown of her own feelings, committed to testing the matter at some point, how I did not know . . . I had not crudely planned it for this specific day. Rather, it being our regular weekly session on supply and morale and now gunnery and missile matters and also a beautiful day, I suggested we conduct business while taking a walk; we had done this before. We proceeded away from the settlement, no particular destination in mind, through the rain-washed foliage, on a course—perhaps something subconscious in that—I had never before taken, toward the northern, least explored part of the island, now moving mostly along the corridor made by the stream bed, that area being clear of the thick growth, the morning sun filtered in soft dazzling shafts through the trees, then after a while up a high hill, hardly knowing the distance we were putting between ourselves and the settlement, realizing with a certain interest and excitement that we were into land-territory certainly neither of us had explored before nor, I believe, had any other of ship’s company. It was a considerable climb. On the ascent I marked on my part a notable agility in her lithe body moving upward ahead of me. At last topping the hill, we could see the island narrowing quickly now to a point not far ahead, and we went along the comfortable ridge until we came to its very tip, could go no farther. We stood and looked all around.
Glittering uncounted fathoms down went the sunlight through the waters, translucent far below us, straight down the heights. The view was a lookout’s dream. It was, we could now tell, the island’s highest point. There was hardly a place on the island that did not boast its discrete perspective, but this seemed from the island’s sharp narrowing here like a ship’s prow—one felt a strong wind would have blown you right off it—and from the elevation, the prince of all views. The sea near circumferential, seeming to come straight at us in a vast plain of turquoise, almost as if we were not on land at all but on a tall ship, sails unfurled and breasting the waters. Turning, a haunting prospect across all the bursting green of the island, and most especially straight down both its shores. The singularity being that the contrasts between the two sides were simultaneously visible from here as surely at no other vantage point, so marked as to make it difficult to believe one was on the same island; one side presenting that familiar fierceness of aspect, the other a sonnet of gentleness. To the west, the high cliffs plunging straight to the sea and stretching as far southerly as the island itself, seeming unapproachable; to the east, the land softly sloping to the white-sand beach reaching to the end of the island on that side, indeed to the Farm on the southernmost tip; the Farm, faraway, we could not see from here; no more could we see the least sign of the settlement on the western shore. It was a place of infinite solitude, at once glorious and the loneliest place that ever was, so untouched as to speak of the beginnings of time, no sense of life anywhere, only the eternal sea and a precious green island, flung up it seemed to adorn the immensity of the waters. Standing there, virtually encircled by the great waters, we seemed the only two creatures in the universe. We did not speak; it was as though the place forbade it. Stood I think a rather long time, in the stillness; a sense of time stopped, ourselves some sort of permanent statuary planted on this peak, the invasion of a sense of phantasm, as if attempting to divine what we never could; consisting, it seemed to me, in this incomprehensible strangeness of our standing there, not as of this particular day, but standing there at all, the mystery reaching back in time to our own origins far away, as human beings, to childhood, to youth, to lands called Oklahoma and North Carolina, to places called Annapolis and Wellesley, these very names now seeming ancient artifacts: What in the world had ever brought us here? Why? Felt this in myself, felt I was by no means alone in feeling it; that rare certainty of a given thought of oneself’s being known identically, simultaneously, to one’s companion. Startled to hear actual speech: “Why don’t we have a look down there?”
The westerly cliffs, perhaps influenced by the nearby eastern sandy shore, seemed less forbidding here, not nearly so steep as a bit further down . . . indeed, before I knew it she was starting down this declivity, myself following, until we stood on an apron of beach, as if the western shore wished to edify us with the fact that it too could have one of these, and of fine white sand as well, where we now stood; if not much of one in size. The sea slid in with a whisper. We turned and scanned the cliff just above us and she saw it.
“Look up there!” she said, a girlish excitement in her voice.
Her leading, we climbed up the rocks until we stood on the ledge, not high at all above the sea. It was as though it was a porch for the sea. And for the thing she had had a glimpse of below. The cave that opened immediately behind it.
I followed her into it, not much surprised at finding it there. Islands and caves: They went together in my mind; the dozens of islands of the Mediterranean I had visited during my Naples tour of shore duty. I could remember none absent of caves; some always underwater; more, such as this one presently turned out to be, belonging half to the land, half to the sea. It was low to the water. Evidence, in fact, that at high enough tides the sea actually entered the cave, and if high enough, put it entirely underwater. Fresh encrustations, barnacles, on its walls. We explored eagerly around. High enough to stand up in, most of it, and quite roomy. Tides, too, further manifested by the smoothness of the floor of gray rock. We moved into it, the cave going deeply enough that we soon found ourselves in darkness, or near-darkness, and I wished for a flashlight. We came back out into the sunlight and sat down at its entrance, on the porchlike ledge, and looked at the sea, hearing its low throb on the cliff stretching to the southwest. The cave seemed to delight, to excite her, its discovery, to bring a flush to her cheeks. She was wearing Navy work clothes, dungarees, shirt, and had picked up one of the baseball-type caps that were used by the trackers at their computer screens to protect them from flashing images on missile-launch; fair hair emerging from underneath. We sat talking comfortably.
“That cave, for some strange reason. I get the feeling there have been people here,” she said. “Sometimes when I’m walking through the forest, too. Almost as if there still are. People watching me from within all that darkness.”
“Yes, I’ve had that too. Perfectly natural, I’d think. If kind of spooky. But I believe we’re the first. We’ve seen no evidence.”
A long and comfortable silence; no compulsion to fill the stillness with words; watching the sea, turning all argentine now under a climbing sun. By habit, when with her, no one aboard more identified in my mind with the well-being of ship’s company than herself, keen to its changes, its nuances, alert as a ship’s lookout for signs of danger, after a time my soft, almost routine probing.
“Well, Lieutenant. Do you think the men are becoming resigned to . . . that this is it, this island . . . that we’re here to stay?”
She waited, careful and precise as always in these matters. “More so all the time, I’d say. Partly the island and its goodness. Partly, what other choice is there? Except of course for that small party of men we’ve talked about that hangs on to there being life, habitability, back there. I sometimes think even some of them are changing.”
Then I was surprised. She asked me something of a kind she never had, our talk always excluding questions the least personal in nature; some of that breached of late. Quietly, the to
nes of reflection seeming to take us, now somehow natural, perhaps having something to do with where we were.
“Yourself? Are you content to live out your life here?”
“I’m getting there. Anytime I get a little restless, I remind myself of all that dark and cold we went through. That awful contamination. Just thinking of it, I sometimes breathe it. Then I feel very good to have the island.”
And yet again, coming on in those same quiescent tones, the susurrant sea on the rocks its backdrop. I sometimes thought her voice was the best thing about her; I had never heard it shrill, heard it raised. I had heard it tough, coming down hard. Now a touch of conversational curiosity.
“What do you miss?”
“There isn’t all that much to miss, for me.”
She hesitated, as if uncertain as to my meaning. Then:
“You didn’t have anyone?”
“Not really.”
She seemed to pause a moment. “Didn’t you ever miss that?”
This was different. She was coming very close to my own self.
“I used to—now and then. Now I’m damned glad. When I look at some of the others—wives, children. I think how much easier it is for me. They’re the ones who have it rough. I’ve very grateful not to have anyone. All alone. And you?”
“There was someone. I’m sure there isn’t anymore.”
High up and far away, gossamer cirrus had begun to streak the skies. Now I did move away from it. “Mostly what I miss is the ship. Being at sea. All I ever had. All I ever wanted.” I laughed shortly. “I wish we could take the James for some runs. Some very short runs I’d settle for, even just around the island. I miss her, miss that.” I sighed. “We can’t.”
“The fuel, you mean.”
“We daren’t expend a drop. If we should ever be forced out of here . . . Very remote. Even Selmon says that. Whatever was going to happen has happened. So he judges. Still with qualifications. You know Selmon. So we still have to have that reserve.” I looked out to the horizon. Earlier merging synchronously with the sea, it now had begun to establish its own distinct line. “Of course, what I would really like is to have a five-year-fueled ship under me and take her around the world—to see with my own eyes what happened.”
“You have doubts as to that?”
“Not really. I come down on the idea that—at the most—there are a few scattered clusters of human beings—somewhere. I’d kind of like to see where—and if. Talk with them. To find out. When I knock off the mooning, mostly I know this: These few miles of island—we’ll always be here.”
“Yes,” she said, like an echo of finality. “We’ll always be here. I’d like to see us fifty years from now.”
“A number of children running around. Grandchildren . . . Reminds me: That project, all hands, putting down everything they know or remember. How does it go?”
A quick interest felt from her like a spark. “We’ll be starting it next week in the Main Hall. I’ve talked with a number of the men—the women. You can’t believe how eager they are for it, excited. They got right with it. Its importance. The women will be doing most of the work. Classifying the material—subject matter—history, skills, the rest. We’re getting all organized for it. It’s going to be good. What a nice big project! They want very much to do it. Excited by what exactly they’ll be putting down. They understand it. We’re about to turn into a community of writers.”
“It’s for the children, of course.”
“Yes, for the children.”
We were using the word as if it were a sure thing when we knew there were problems; maybe, both of us, feeling that saying it would make it happen.
I hesitated. “The men, you said, feeling better about the island. It’s the women have made all the difference.” Hurried on from that lest she think I was fishing for details, was prying into an area we had agreed should be reserved for themselves, and for her. “But I felt it before that. The beginnings at least of an acceptance—to live out their lives on this island. The women, too?”
It was quite otherwise. She seemed almost to welcome the subject of the women.
“I would say the women most of all. Any talk of going back—it’s almost disappeared with them. Of course, not a one of them had ties of marriage, or children. They’re like you in that. And me,” she added. “I’ve come to consider it fortunate they don’t.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, indeed. Extremely fortunate.”
“And, of course, they’re a coping lot. They wouldn’t have got to sea in the first place if they weren’t. I used to resent it like hell the way the Navy made it so damn deliberately tough, for me, for every one of them. I look back and say, Thank God. It took a lot of—something—in a woman to tough her way out through that. They handle things. Like right now. The way they’re handling what we always thought would be such a problem.”
I was surprised, even astonished—not at this recitation of the women’s qualities, save only that she knew long since how entirely I agreed with such a characterization—but at what seemed a readiness, even an eagerness, to speak with such a direct reference to a subject on which we had so carefully refrained from being remotely explicit. Perhaps again it was simply being away from the formalities of our usual morale-and-supply session in my cabin.
“No one thought so more than myself,” I said. “I was never more glad to be wrong.”
I would not probe further. It seemed to me we had gone quite far enough, certainly further than we had ever before ventured. She would continue or she would not. I felt almost that she was debating with herself whether or not to do so. A sense also of an almost irresistible desire on her part to talk about it. I kept silent, making sure to do nothing to encourage her. It would have to be her choice. She took off her baseball cap and shook her hair back, the slanting sunshine seeming quick and eager to catch its own clean lights.
“You’d have to say they’re pretty resourceful,” she said. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Lieutenant, I’d have to say they were just about anything you want to call them.”
She spoke now in tones of philosophy, as if come upon a subject which it might be exceptionally interesting to explore, and by no means yet exhausted; dispassionately discoursing on some striking experiment in human relations.
“I sometimes wonder if having all those qualities that brought them to sea . . . I wonder if there could be any connection between those and possessing what I would call . . . well, let us say, a generally high sexual quotient.”
“Sexual quotient? An interesting phrase. If I understand it, I am glad to hear they possess it. It must help. But I would be out of my depth to express an opinion, Lieutenant.”
“You don’t mind if I express one?” she said, the first faint touch of tartness, so I felt, in her voice, almost of impatience with such a dull conversationalist. “Everybody, of course, has a sexual quotient, quite like everyone has an intelligence quotient.”
“You educate me, Lieutenant.”
She wriggled around on the rock, changing position, coming to rest cross-legged.
“I think my theory has a certain validity. These women particularly seem to me distinctly to enjoy it.”
This statement constituted such a quantum step beyond anything we had ever got near as to snap my wits all alert, looking within myself and closely pondering. Her tone itself seemed to change at least to a nuance, now in it something like a wry, faintly mocking gaiety, if I were any judge of speech tones. But I remained baffled, in my uncertainty continuing to take refuge in commonplaces.
“Again we are fortunate,” I said. “Beyond words.”
“Do you like Conrad?”
“Love him.”
“Conrad is what made me go to sea as much as almost anything. It was his doing. I probably wouldn’t be sitting here otherwise. He has a line somewhere, one I always considered very funny and I’m sure he didn’t. ‘Women have always been a sailor’s chief distraction.’ I remember bursting into laughter
when I first read that. So nice, clean, unequivocal. A model of a simple declarative sentence. I wondered then why he used the word ‘sailor.’ I was still a landsman. I understand now.” She spoke with a certain sportiveness, and as if intent on pursuing this rather recondite subject whether I so wished or not, indeed almost as though spurred on by my reluctance. “I wonder if it could be turned around now. ‘Sailors have always been a woman’s chief distraction.’ These women seem not to have any problem dealing with what normally would be judged an oversupply. Wouldn’t you think so, Captain?”
“About the women not having a problem?”
“No, dummy. About there being what would normally be considered an oversupply.”
The appellation slipped right by me. “The fact would be unarguable, Lieutenant.”
She had never remotely talked so much, or so specifically, about the women, come anywhere so near to their emotions and their feelings as to the task that had been set before them. And she had not finished.
“Women are a lot more explicit than men in these matters,” she said. She tossed her hair again, a rather pert, self-delighting gesture; it put me in mind of the best colt I had ever had, as a boy, who loved doing that with its mane; he very much knew his own mind; maybe the gesture went with the quality. “I think most men would be shocked to hear women talk among themselves. Learn a thing or two.”
I was suddenly aware of a new, tangible aura to her; some instinctive, sassy, lofty, unabashed yet curiously soft air of femininity and confidence; an air of total assurance, as if she knew who she was and what she had.
“Again you educate me, Lieutenant.”
I watched the sea. It seemed to be making up a bit, my nose detecting the approach of wind. I was wondering how far the water entered the cave on the high tide. I had the impression that my silence, or the brevity of my replies, my lack of questions, my absence of at least expressed curiosity, irritated, almost exasperated, her and that she had made up her mind, by God, to do something about it.
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