They never got close to Bojador. A storm fulminated out of the south. Too late, the captain signaled his ships to turn for the safety of a harbor. The galleys were hurled toward shore, shattering against hidden reefs. He wrenched his own ship the other way, but a sail blew free and the lateen yawned taut with merciless air. The storm drove them out into the ocean.
Oars splintered, scything whole rows of men at the torso. Others washed overboard. In flashes of lightning, sailors on the rigging thought they saw monsters chomping in the foam. The captain lashed himself to the crumbling deck. All night, his ship dipped under waves, heaving into the air and through spray to the dizzying point that he felt his mind lift away from body and beam. A lightness filled the hollow timbers. It seemed that his ship was gliding onward in a flat line, as if the storming sea and sky were paper cutouts with all the reality of shadow puppetry.
He experienced the rest of his shipwreck like he was watching a puppet show. An island entered in the foreground and his ship, tiring of its role, soared head-on into collision. Flailing marionettes, his men sank below the rim of the stage. Fragments of the wreck pulled back out to sea and tossed around further islands. The captain saw himself holding on to debris, blowing and sucking like a fish, the gelatinous bulk of the ocean throbbing beneath.
The storm slackened. Alone, he edged toward a dark shore. These must be the Fortunate Isles, he recalled, once a continent in its own right according to the Greeks (but what do they know), now only a bunch of mountainous islands inhabited by idol-worshipping savages … They are the westernmost people in the world, famous for their ignorance, the muscular sex of their women, and the indigo dye you can harvest from a mollusk that washes up on their beaches. The captain’s recitation came partly in cold words, partly in syllables of seawater, but it calmed him. He felt like Sindbad, condemned to soliloquize on driftwood. What would the restless mariner have done in situations like this? Opportunist that he was, Sindbad would have prayed. So the captain began to mumble his prayers, which turned like so many into a lament: Oh God, I, your lickspittle servant, have done nothing to deserve this doom so please find it within your infinite grace to give me a break. The curtains closed, darkness fell upon the stage, and the captain swooned into unconsciousness.
He dreamt of falling through the water. Assemblies of fish drifted by, then a divan of squids, and great religious processions of whales carrying the bones and beards of their saints. Clouds of dust rose from the deep and soon he could see nothing at all, but kept on sinking, the dust filling his nose and mouth. With a bump, he landed on something hard. Something hit him in the chest. He struggled to see. The object hit him again and he held on to it, slick and dense. He was pulled forward and then backward. It was the shaft of an oar. He found himself seated on the bench of a galley, surrounded by his drowned sailors, all heaving in concert as they stirred the dust of the ocean floor.
The captain awoke on the beach practically naked, his clothes shredded by the storm. He tore off the rags to bind wounds on his arms and legs. Slowly, he lifted himself to his feet. The world wobbled before coming into focus. It was a narrow beach, giving way to a forest that lapped in laurel thickness up the side of a mountain. The sky was a quiet blue. Peeking above a high ridge, the sun rubbed his nudity with light. He saw no sign of other people.
God is hearing, God is seeing … whoever desires the reward of the world, then with God is its reward. The captain sank to his knees in prayer, giving thanks to the creator, angels, all the spirits that buoyed him from death, even the sharks for sparing his sad flesh. Renewed, he strode into the world. The talk of finches guided him to fresh water. Like a puff of steam, a firecrest appeared on his shoulder. You are a bird, he said. He cupped the creature in his hands, gently, as if it were the first of its kind. He named the insects, the moss, the dervish arms of trees. He climbed higher. Pastures rolled above the forest, speckled here and there with grazing animals. You are a goat, he said as he chased a goat, you were made in the image of man’s need. Wrestling the creature to the ground, he put his mouth to its udders and began to suck the milk.
The goatherds came then. What on earth are you doing? they said, but the captain didn’t understand, and in any case his mouth was overflowing with milk. The goatherds clouted him over the head. They bundled him up and took him to their village.
The villagers turned out to inspect him. It seemed to the captain, as he shook himself upright, that the natives were a people of the goat. They wore goat-skin robes and jackets. They smelled of mutton. Some of them had slicked their brown hair with animal fat. Their faces were narrow and pinched, but their lips and noses had a bluntness that gave them an obstinate, slightly glum look. He was taller than the tallest of them, so he stood, indifferent to his nakedness, and spoke. I am a captain of Tunis, a man of means and good repute, and I’d be grateful if you kind people would do me the honor of your hospitality … some food, some drink, some clothing, and if you don’t mind, a bed for me to rest.
They stared at him, uncomprehending. The crowd shifted to allow the approach of a gray-haired woman. She handed a cloth to the captain to cover himself and motioned for him to sit down. Her robe was so long that it covered her feet. She lowered herself next to him and took his hand in hers. He was startled by her touch. Do any of you understand Arabic? he asked. She looked at him mutely. How about Greek? My Greek is not bad, you see … Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday … leeward, windward, riptide, current … Scorpio, Libra, Pisces. The woman turned his hand over and inspected his fingers. From the back of the crowd, somebody whistled. From the captain’s left came another whistle. The whole village shook with laughter, including the woman, revealing her little pointed teeth.
My god, the captain thought, this is a nightmare from the tales of Sindbad … I’ve come to an island of tongueless cannibals.
He tried again, ransacking his sailor’s locker for all the words he’d collected on the sea. You might understand some Castilian, he said, and spouted a few phrases. Majorcan maybe? Genoese? Please, you people must understand something, it’s not as if you live that far away … Don’t tell me you’re Jews. Berber? Sardinian? Portuguese? How about French?
Yes, the gray-haired woman said, I understand French-speak. Oh, French. French, yes. She smiled at him. Good, good, the captain said in French and then looked in defeat at his lap. It occurred to him that his own French was rather meager and picked up in brothels. Who are you? she asked. I am a captain of Tunis. What is Tunis? Tunis big town far away, many ships. Why are you here and not in Tunis? My ship break. Where is your ship? Tell me, where am I, what island this, this France? Where is your ship? My ship break, no more erect. The captain mimed its disintegration with his hands, one hand arching like a wave, the other cupped like the foundering boat. Where are your men? The woman squeezed his knee. The captain shrugged. No more men. His hands motioned the sinking of bodies beneath the sea. Surprising himself, he began to weep.
She put an arm around his shoulders. What is inside this? The gray-haired woman pointed to the pouch that he wore around his neck. Show it to me, she said.
In normal circumstances, the captain would never let others touch his most valuable possessions. He felt he had no choice but to undo the thong and hand over the pouch. She slid the contents onto the ground: his father’s coral ring, a small book of prayer, a charm against the evil eye, and most conspicuous of all, his astrolabe.
The villagers pressed in close to inspect the astrolabe, its moving brass plates and intricate lines. You eat your food from this, the gray-haired woman said. No, no. The captain didn’t know the word in French, so he translated from Arabic: This takes the stars. The gray-haired woman translated what he had said into her own language and the villagers murmured and smiled, looking at him with a kind of pity. They thought him touched. You pray to this then? It is your god? There is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, the captain said in Arabic. Then he spat in French, pointing up to the sky. My god is not a thing, he is one go
d. The gray-haired woman nodded knowingly. Of course, we have that kind of god, too.
She ran her fingers over the various markings of the astrolabe. Your god’s plate is very beautiful, she said, what does it tell you?
The captain inhaled. Long ago, he had a better grasp of the logic behind the astrolabe, but that knowledge had silted into his mind and lost its definition. He knew simply to trust the astrolabe’s measurements. The prospect of having to relate its functions in his whorehouse French exhausted him. How could he explain such grand concepts with so few words? How could he make them understand that the astrolabe represented the flattened sphere of the universe, that mathematical principles undergirded the wonder and ephemera of the world, that land, water, and sky were divisible in degrees, that the earth was rung with lines of latitude just as the heavens fell into their own grid, that a ship on the sea plots its terrestrial address in a landscape of stars? Please, he said, some drink and food. A plate was brought to him of polenta and unsalted cheese. The gray-haired woman poured liquid from a goat-skin into his mouth. It tasted enough like wine.
This takes the stars, the captain began, also other things. You use it to tell time … you can use it to see how high things are … you use it to see the planets dance. What do you mean, tell time? I mean the time of day … so I know when to pray. Can’t you look at the sun? It’s not so easy. Don’t you know how high things are? Do you … Tell me, how tall is that mountain? That mountain is as tall as that mountain. That isn’t a size. Show us something then, make your god work.
The captain rose with the astrolabe. I need a hand. This one helps, the gray-haired woman said, and pushed a young girl toward the captain. Tell her to look through here … keep still … when she sees top, tell me. The girl did as she was instructed, angling the astrolabe to the point that it aligned with the mountain peak. She grunted. The captain took the reading in degrees. There, you see, mountain is this high … now you can see if mountain is taller or shorter than other mountains.
The gray-haired woman shrugged. We only have one mountain … anyway, I’ll tell you how high it is … it takes a healthy young woman two days of climbing to reach the very top … I did that once … now, why don’t you show me how the planets dance?
It was possible to make celestial readings with his astrolabe, but that required adjusting for the object’s home latitude, which in the case of this device was forty degrees for Tunis, the city where his astrolabe was made. He would first have to determine his current latitude and then adjust the celestial readings on the tympanum for his present location. The process was beyond him. I’m too soft, the captain said, I can’t do it. That is a shame, can we help you? The captain shook his head.
The gray-haired woman might have described to the captain their own system of astrology, the way her people aligned the openings of their tombs with the rays of the spring sun, how they read shapes not only in the spider webs of the stars but in the purple darkness in between, a cartography of black rivers in the sky, how some of their neighbors tracked the movement of the female planets, others the male, how on clear summer nights they all went to the high spots to enumerate the stars and the shadows of stars. But she, too, was growing tired of speaking this language that was neither hers nor his.
You want to know how I can talk French-speak? Okay, how do you know French-speak? the captain asked. They made me learn it. Who? The French. In France? No, they came here many years ago. This is not France? No … they tried to rule us for a while and give us their god … when I was young I was taken as a servant … they were very hard on me. I’m sorry. No matter, we killed them all in the end. Oh.
The rheum stirred in her eyes and the captain sensed her voice taking on a cold steel. Your men, she said, all gone? I think so. Only you left? Yes, only me. Nobody else? Nobody, only me. She sighed and rose stiffly to her feet. In her own language, she summoned the young girl, who gathered up the captain’s things. Before the captain could protest, the girl fled back into the crowd. Bodies closed in around him. They hoisted him over their heads and carried him higher, out of the village and up onto a climbing path. Rough hands reached through the thicket of flesh to daub his body in fat. The captain thrashed and yelled, but the hands that held him were implacable.
He grew still. By the time they hurled him from the cliff, he had surrendered. No people can hasten their fate, nor postpone it. The captain fell without a cry. Air screamed between his eyelashes and it seemed as if the clouds had taken the shapes of whales. There is nothing but our life of this world, and we shall not be raised. The villagers watched the waves take his broken body from the rocks into the sea.
The gray-haired woman returned to her dark home. She emptied the captain’s pouch onto her bed. The astrolabe gleamed with russet magic in the firelight. She let her fingers trace its many grooves, its curving designs, the spiraling letters. The French, too, had their ways of writing. It seemed all the outsiders did. The young girl was in the corner watching. She’d been waiting for her. I know you’re feeling bad, the girl said. I don’t like having to make these decisions … it is hard. Don’t feel bad, grandmother, it’s better this way. We could have kept him with us, made him one of us. No, that is impossible. How do you know? She turned to the youngster. How do you know, little one? She admired the girl’s stillness, her unmoving gaze. When he fell, the girl said, he did not fall like a man or a chicken or a dog, he fell like a stone.
ICEBREAKERS
It takes only moments for an icebreaker in the Antarctic to come to the profound realization that it can no longer break ice. The Russian ship carries sailors, engineers, a cook, a doctor, a communications officer, a team of researchers, a handful of journalists, a photographer, and an asthmatic captain. When the boat shudders and stops, they zip up their red bubble coats and crowd the railings. We’re stuck, we’re stuck, we’re stuck. Word spreads around the ship. The captain wheezes the command to reverse, but to no avail. The icebreaker is hemmed in. We’re stuck, we’re stuck, we’re stuck, cry the throng of sailors at the rear. The engineers report back, shaking their heads. The captain fumbles for his inhaler. If an icebreaker can’t break ice, what can?
A bigger icebreaker, of course. They radio for rescue, the communications officer paddling the distress signal. In the modern world, there is always somebody within reach. A Chinese boat responds quickly: Stay put, comrades, we’re coming for you.
To kill time, the crew scatters about the ice. The cook sets up a cauldron of hot chocolate. Staring across the rough white vastness, the journalists struggle with their metaphors. The photographer wishes for just a few penguins.
The researchers take samples and measurements. We know that the glaciers of the continent are shrinking, they tell the captain, but nobody understands the growth of the sea ice around Antarctica. Every year, the crust on the cold ocean swells. The dizzying labor of NASA satellites has not helped explain why. It could be caused by precipitation, changing atmospheric conditions, a general cooling in the regional water, expansionist molecules, who knows. Sea ice is as mysterious as it is dangerous. Gusts of westerly air blow its piratical floes into sudden hedges, into walls so thick a free-moving twelve-thousand-ton icebreaker finds its passage blocked on all sides. Strictly speaking, they say, our ship’s predicament is not the fault of the ice but the conspiracy of the wind.
At night, the crew return to the ice-locked ship, where they drink vodka and argue over which movie to screen in the little auditorium. There’s no consensus. They veto an Eisenstein epic as too nationalist and too smothered in ice. (This isn’t the time to watch people drown in freezing water, even Germans.) They reject a Hollywood disaster movie as uncomfortably near their own situation. In the end, the engineers and sailors have their way. The crew spend the rest of the evening watching a Bollywood film, one typically long enough to put everybody to sleep. Most of them have already dribbled off to their bunks by the time the film reaches its happy climax. The hero and heroine, bundled in earmuffs and scarves, dance aro
und an alpine mountain and make angels in the snow.
The photographer dutifully captures the scene: the nearly empty auditorium, one sailor slumped asleep in his chair, the Indian heartthrobs flickering on-screen. She imagines a magazine feature, or an Internet click-through, or even a narrated slideshow, her own gravelly voice captioning the curious ordeal. She works around the ship, snapping away. In the galley, the cook already sweats over the morning porridge—breakfast times come quickly in the polar summer. He grins at her and poses with his ladle, outstretched and dripping. Engineers on the late shift peer at gauges in the boiler room. They thumbs-up and say in faltering English, Ship machines are A-OK. Some of the researchers and journalists are awake playing cards in the rec room. Why is it, one of them asks as she takes their profiles, that Russians love Indian films so much? I’m Indian and I can’t bloody watch them for a second.
She crests the rattling interior passageways and box-like compartments, emerging out into the cold. The boat has been anchored in place so the floes won’t shepherd it to an even worse fate. Frost chaps the railings and slicks the deck. The blue murmur of morning spreads on the horizon. Up above, she sees a glimmer in the bridge and the hunched form of the captain. She takes a few shots from a distance, then climbs up to him, knocks on the open door. You wouldn’t mind if I took your close-up? she asks. The captain rises, sweater billowing about his narrow frame, and closes the door. He feels the ice closing in around his ship and struggles for breath.
Two days later, the Chinese ship appears on the horizon. Please free us soon, the communications officer tells them, I’m sick of watching Indian movies.
Okay, the Chinese captain says, make your infirm and nonessential crew line up single file by the side of the ship … we’ll land our helicopter on the ice and begin evacuating the lot of them.
Swimmer Among the Stars Page 17