Trawl
Page 13
I wake of a sudden, clear, my purpose in coming achieved. I do not know why. What did I consider last night? · · Joe Oliver · · · · · jazz · · · · · · · · Rochelle. · · · · · · · · Nothing there to precipitate it. · · But everything, building up on this voyage, all the thinking, collectively, accumulatively, must have led to this sudden freedom I feel now, relievedly, relieved of all the thinking. · · · · · · · · I climb through, up the companionway, strongly hauling myself by the arms, feeling the strength of my release in the power of my arms, for some reason, the decisiveness, the resolution, to haul myself through this hatch, by the vertical brass bar, and straight out across the galley alleyway, into the air · · and it is cold · · · · · clear, the storm has blown itself out, there is now just a heavy swell, through which we cut resolutely: the snow has ceased, no sign of it out here on the sidedeck, no sign of a squall, either, the weather clear, sharply cold, shall not stay here long, but the way we plough along, twelve knots, fast after the towing speed, is invigorating, yes, that’s the word, or re-invigorating, in the cold, here, over the rail, by the towing block, or rather where the towing block was, for I see now it has been dismantled, that it will disturb my sleep no longer, not that it did of late, for I had become used to it, one becomes used to anything, in time, except seasickness. · · · · · Wind on my face, through my hair, rustling beard, beard long enough to rustle through now, less prickly, softer. · · · · · And not so many gulls, seabirds · · · · · I even enjoy or at least accommodate the rolling, the pitching, the increased movement, now, at this speed, at this increased speed, more rolling, more pitching, at our homeward speed, roll, roll, and pitch, roll. · · · · · She rolls, bowls along by a cold coastline through these grey seas under a grey sky, already it must be the Norwegian rather than the Russian coast I see, that much nearer home, ah, honed to one level glacially, not that those were Norwegian or Russian glaciers then, the politics of geology, or something, it does not matter, no differentiation either in the atmosphere above those uniform heights: but the crests stained with snow, made white with the guano of the storm, and, yes, I can see foam beating at the bases of those cliffs, the white different from the snow against the black rock, we must be within the limits to see those breakers, as we may be, that we are no longer fishing, no, but in any case we steam west, from the east, towards the fjords, I hope he will go through the fjords, that the weather is rough enough to make it worth his while to go through the fjords, and oh, particularly to stop at Honigsvag! If that’s the right place, yes any land under my feet, still still, not moving, an end to this moving, a fortnight of movement! · · If he stops. · · · · · What’s the Queen’s favourite television? says Scouse, coming up and leaning on the taffrail next to me. When are we going to get in? I ask him in return. Phillips seventeen inch, says Scouse, and then, If I don’t go to sleep with a tit in each hand next Tuesday night, then someone on board’s going to have to bend over. · · Tuesday! Today’s · · Friday. · · · · · Four days! Not counting today, which is already counted. · · And I may be sleeping with her on Tuesday night! If I can ring her when we dock, if I can · · My mind bubbles! · · · · · I could be lying there, her sweet full breasts cupped in my hands, by Tuesday night! At last I can see the true end to this voyage, to this testing, to this thinking! · · And I have come through! Look, we have come through: Lawrence’s words come to me now, I feel that poem! · · · · · Scouse talks on, about what he is going to do this time ashore, I think, as I do not listen to him. All I can think of is Ginnie · · the warmth and the sweet softness of her: · · · · · Tuesday night.
We come upon Honigsvag very suddenly, for me, anyway, just after we enter the fjords, have had for only a short while cliffs, black and snowy, on our starboard as well as to port, which is the mainland: or perhaps it is that I stare too long at, my eyes are fixed upon, the two great silver spheres, part of an early warning radar system like that at Fylingdales, spun on the peak of a mountain, their silver brighter than the snow, the snow streaked by the cable overhead lift running up the side of the mountain: as near Russia as they may be, these threatening spheres, or as they need to be. · · All that labour, all their materials, must have been transported with such difficulty to the top of that mountain: for war they will go to such lengths, will take such pains. · · So that, my eyes on these, I miss the slow appearance of the little town to our starboard, suddenly turn and there it is, the houses stepping half way up a hillside from a waterfront with a jetty, and sheds, oiltanks: the houses painted surprisingly fresh colours, unusual colours, sorrel, terracotta, denim blue, deep ochre: and I realise I have been deprived of certain colours, surfeited with greys and whites and silvers, cold colours, I long for warm colours. As I long again for fruit, too, perhaps I shall be able to buy fruit here: the Skipper says I will, they take English money: I have three pounds, I know, I had not thought I would need money, did not bring much, had not much to bring, fruit will be dear here, I must have fruit, what kinds will they have, though? · · It doesn’t matter, though I would prefer the more acid kind, feel as though I could almost eat a lemon, again, would welcome its acidity. Duff says they also have cheap lighters, the men buy cheap lighters and try to smuggle them, a small deception, and who is harmed, why do lighters cost so much in England anyway? Suddenly I see I want to buy something for her, a present, to take home to her, and I feel so pleased that this desire is not calculated, was natural, was spontaneous, the wanting to give, for I have too often calculated, too often been unnatural, unspontaneous: and this is the best thing she has done for me, Ginnie, that I am more natural now, whatever nature is, but I know what I mean, and for any of the earlier ones, others, I would not have felt this, she releases me, Ginnie. What can I buy then? · · · · · We swing round, edge slowly into the harbour, bounce gently against the old tyres on the jetty, and one man secures us to bollards as the Chief appears on deck, the first time I have seen him on deck, to supervise the passing on board of the freshwater supply pipe from the same one man: who then comes up to the bridge, greets and is greeted by the Skipper warmly, and I ask how long we have, seeing Scouse and a fireman and Mick and Festy and the deckie-learner already climbing the taffrail and stepping on to land. Twenty minutes, says the Skipper, No more, no more! · · · · · I briefly notice a pipe from the jetty the other side, dripping a trickle of effluent which causes and has caused and goes on causing a great semicircle of ripples right across the still surface of the water. Water still, water which is still, is what pleases me. · · Duff comes ashore with me. I stamp my seaboots on land, not dry land, for there are pools and slush everywhere, but it is solid, the jetty, and it does not move. Duff smiles at my simple reaction, and leads off across the jetty to a road wet and icy with packed translucent snow in ruts, past cars, yes, cars moving with chained tyres, familiar enough objects for all their chained tyres, three or four of them moving down the cold wide street of this little town, with its so firm earth, not that there is any earth to be seen. · · · · · Duff shows me the shop where the lighters are to be had, a gift shop full of eight or ten of our crew, looking very much out of place amongst the neat tables set out with all kinds of small fancy goods. The girl behind the counter looks apprehensive, the man, perhaps the owner, looks as if he is restraining anger. I look round quickly at what there is for sale, and fortunately see what I think would please her: a flat, short knife, a palette knife for serving butter or perhaps cheese, stainless steel and black nylon handle, a pleasing design, I think: so I pick it up, am first to the girl with anything, hand it to her with a pound note. She is the first woman I have seen for over a fortnight, but I feel nothing for her, no desire towards her. She wraps the spatula for me, hands me my c
hange in kroner, how many I do not count, it is not the point whether I have been given a fair exchange rate, for I have enjoyed buying, am pleased with what I have bought. · · Fruit. · · · · · Shop, oranges, yellow apples! Tins! Yes, in, buy, woman, woman sends for man on hearing me ask if anyone speaks English, he comes, asks politely but flatly if he can serve me, and I give him all my kroner and take oranges and apples and a tin of Israeli grapefruit juice, my mouth aches, the back of my tongue goes dry for the taste of grapefruit juice, most of all quenching, most of all able to satisfy my craving for fruit; clasp the oranges and waxy apples and the tin in my arms, smile thanks at the man, who formally nods and flatly says goodbye. Festy and Johnny are outside, laugh as they see what I have been buying, show me the lighters they have bought for a few shillings each. We walk slowly back to the ship, I eat an apple as we go, not my first choice, I would rather have had the grapefruit juice first, and next the orange, but both these involved trouble in opening, so as I walk I bite into the yellow thick-skinned apple, God knows where they came from, were grown, and they are only passable, as apples considered comparatively, but very welcome now, there are no others to compare with them, does not however satisfy the desire for acid, fruit acid, that I must wait for a tinopener for, back aboard the ship, five minutes early, could have stayed on land another five minutes, but must get this tin opened. . . .
The snow does not lie on certain slopes, obeying laws I do not wish to understand: remark only on the patterns created apparently at random, what I would call random, that is, but which is a pattern in fact obeying these strict laws of orientation and wind, rain and incline, immutable laws except when they are changed, the huge rational mess which is nature, ah, what am I about? Through here she does not buck. · · · · · The mountains! · · They change only slowly, but anything is worth watching, is new to me, at this point, who have had little more than the sea to watch, for too long. I stare at these rocks, these glacier-ground heights changing slowly as we move down the fjords, not into the land, between the islands and the mainland, really, protected from the rough seas outside, in the clear water, it is called.
A black stain ahead of us drifts across the bloom-grey sky and powder-white gullies, from the black smokestack of a ship ahead of us. Duff tells me she is a Greek timber boat, burning coal, filthily, bound for the Mediterranean after taking on Russian softwoods. I wonder that he can know so much, she is far away, to me, but do not doubt he is right. · · I notice for the first time that Duff has missing the top joint of his righthand little finger, ask him how he lost it, expecting to hear some grisly detail involving perhaps an unbridled warp: but no, he was in a fight in a pub, was knocked out, woke up to find it missing, and eyewitnesses told him it had been bitten off by his Chinese opponent, or one of them. Scouse says he has always told the same story to account for the missing joint: there is no reason to think he is lying: I make an effort to believe him: I believe him.
Sometimes we are close to the shore, to a sandy inlet ringed with sheer rock, with one house on a new moon of grass, there seeming no access but from the sea: or we are twenty yards from a cliff whose fall gives a sense of continuing below the sea’s level indefinitely, of being the edge of an enormous drop: at other times the land is a long way off, crags and rock islands, outcrops, standing stark in the sea, with farther off the snow on higher crags, protrusions.
We gain on the black Greek ship. She does half a knot less than us, so slowly we gain on her. The amount is only noticeable after a long while, every hour or so. Always, the forward view is perhaps corrupted by the screen from her smokestack, the smear of her wake.
Now I know these rocks only as shapes, that they are rock is of no point, they drop, but how do I know they even do that, they may climb, everything is relevant only to me, relative only to me, to be seen only from my eyes, solipsism is the only truth: can be the only truth: a thing is so only because I think it to be so: if I do not think it to be so, then it is not so: this must be the only truth: belief does not arise.
I stand near the after gallows, looking forward along the deck (now lined with bobbins like a great string of babies’ beads) to our wash bowing out towards this unfriendy coast, the Greek coalburner nearer now, we shall overtake her on her port, if we do not have to negotiate narrow passages, soon.
No one about, the deck strangely inactive, which was the scene of such movement earlier. The deckies sleeping, this first day they have not been on watch eighteen hours a day, for ten days, the deck deserted, few gulls even, as we stalk through these narrow fjords. · · · · · · · · Her name in Greek and Latin characters, on her stern, the funnel rolling black smoke to landward, a breeze off the sea, across us as we near.
The sun sets, is towards setting, is now on our starboard, smudged across with black, now the fingers of the fjords point it directly at us, still stained, making a dry composition, then again the sun cedes to the intercession of the black outcropped mountains, fills the air with vicarious redness, bursts, bursts, as we move into clearer water, the red-gold wine of the Greek-black sunset, sun sets, sunset, sun sets.
The black ship drops astern, the last sun now glinting squarely on one port bridge window. · · · · · The light now, just there, placing the darker outcrops from the dark sea, the seadark sky, a white line, a lighter line, for some reason drawn across the sea level at the base of the land on the horizon, and across the gaps, too, strange, a line.
Car lights progress along the haunch of the fjord-side. Towards home, someone is going home, perhaps, as we are, as I am. I who have not seen car lights for weeks, see these and am pleased, almost heartened, by these, wherever they may be going, since I do not know where they are going. · · · · · · · · The pilot sits quietly, he does not talk as the other pilot did, the one who brought us up through the fjords. He sits, a naval figure, in cap and braided coat, quietly.
Flute and harpsichord gently from the speaker next to the Sal log, delicate, blended sounds, so strange to hear them here, that Molloy should put them out, in this context, at this time, as the radar glows amber, the music a pleasure, my own, a secret pleasure, I do not reveal I am listening, really, just as I could do when I went to concerts with Martin, who taught me about music, what little I know, tried to · · —No, I need no more of these flashbacks, these autopsies performed on the past, I have all that, no, not all, only a part, there is so much, but what I wanted has been achieved, I have been purged of my past, of those things which have hurt me, or enough of them, to make me feel it has worked, this coming to sea, that I have no need now to shoot again, I am going home now, this music I can enjoy for its own sake, not for its associations, a blessed relief, that I become more natural, that I relax, somewhat, that I— · · · · · · · · The piece ends, coda, resolution. I need to take a deep breath. I straighten from the brass rail, feeling its curved impression still deep in my forearm, lean over against the door of the wireless room and ask Molloy: he says it is Tromso radio from some hundred miles south: and this reminds him of the new bridge at Tromso, and that I ought to see it, so he talks to Scouse, and Scouse agrees that this bridge is a wonder, yes, he uses the word wonder, that I ought to see, it is important to see everything that I might never have a chance of seeing again, he believes, then says It’ll be worth getting up for, and calculates we’ll be under it at about two in the morning, and I am not so keen about being awoken at two in the morning, to see a bridge, in the dark, but what can I say, they are insistent on doing me this favour, on giving to me?
In the crew mess four sit playing dominoes, more watching, money between them, playing intensely, concentrating. Cheese, bread, margarine on another table, and a piedish swilling gently with once-dried apricots, looking like nothing so much as redskins’ earholes. Notices on the walls telling me how to extract the oil from livers properly, how to use the self-inflating life raft and mind my mates as I jump.
A bow of steel or concrete, I cannot tell which, thin, slender, picked out in red lights, not a particularly graceful shape: perhaps its wonder lies in its thinness, I cannot tell, of course, what they see as a wonder. I look round at the city, the hillsides spattered with random patterns, again, of streetlights, back at the curve of the bridge, concealing my disappointment from Scouse.
Almost I could imagine myself on a cruise now, standing here in the bright northern morning sun, having risen at the sophisticated hour of eleven, seeing scenery free which tourists must pay to see in summer, though now the sight is as good, surely, as impressive, at least. The passage of the night has brought us south, into more temperate places, the mountains less uncompromising, gentler slopes, and grass down long sunken valleys: thread-thin larches here and there, and fleeces of firs, ah, it is a long time since I saw a tree, of any kind, how different, warm, human, they make the landscape. · · · · · · · · The humps of land, islands, outcrops, stumps, fells, the shapes dictated by the way the glaciers went, the way the icecap melted, to the south, these shapes tell me, this way the great ice ground us. · · · · · · · · And now there begin to be more than occasional farms, there are clusters of wooden houses, again painted brightly, upland farms, long and single-storied. And here fresh water runs! The falls we pass now and again run, this far into November they are still not frozen, another thing I have not seen which delights me in its newness, freshness, running water, the falls, the falls! · · · · · · · · Now I stare at the log, see we have come just two thousand miles, seamiles that is, and calculate we have about another thousand back home. The Skipper sees me looking, working it out, grins, now in his more formal passage clothes, says It’s a hell of a way to come for a bit of fish!