by Lori Baker
Its breath the ancient stinking breath of the sea.
My father loved to inhale it, standing in his boots on the humped rock in spite or perhaps even because of his mother’s aversion and her fear.
That would be Gentilessa, my grandmother. The fearful one. I picture her in the small house on Henrietta Street, shivering in a woolen wrap. She is always cold; cannot adjust to this cold place. Her hands are red and sore, cracked. This is from the cold to which she cannot become accustomed and from constant scrubbing. The house on Henrietta Street is always clean, spotlessly clean. Gentilessa scrubs, scours, sweeps, fumigates. Drags the mattresses out into the sun when there is sun to drag them into. Scalds the wash, then wrings it, then smokes it to rid it of bedbugs. This, at least, she can do.
How she hates it there!
They came from Italy, from a place on the Adriatic, a place of green and blue and gold, to this place of black stone. To this place of surreptitious Catholicism, where even in a creeping minority redoubt they are a minority. Crazy filthy furriners. Crawthumpers. Pikeys. To break a living out of the rock, form it into obsequious memorials, brooches, earrings, lockets, mourning-wear. Emilio Dell’oro is very good at that. He is an artist, a craftsman, a slyly obsequious salesman who succeeds, despite all, and prospers, in this place of bitter rains and hard rock and cold, unyielding unacceptance.
My other grandfather, that would be. The one with the little, round spectacles, the rather severe manner. I’ll never meet him either.
My father, though, is having none of this. He has chosen the sea instead. He has his reasons.
And does everything he can to avoid her.
It’s a wonder I’ll ever be born, at this rate. Such ineptitude on his part. Also on hers.
Yet, of course, it’s inevitable, it’s going to happen. For am I not here, at the edge of the world, getting ready to jump off it, the whole ginger length and breadth of me? My father feels this inevitability, he senses it, feels me, perhaps, readying my leap, and hunches all the more tightly over his pad of paper, clutches tight to his pencil, as if this will make him safe, and me, too.
Mr. Dell’oro, what is that you are drawing? Is it a portrait of me? Or is it a porcupine fish? I’m sure you are a very talented artist, Mr. Dell’oro! Won’t you let me see?
He won’t.
Her laughter is like an object in itself.
He clutches tight, very tight, until she has passed by. Repulsion and attraction, attraction and repulsion. It’s as if he can see the future, and he doesn’t like it. That stink of inevitability.
For, in fact, she’s right: he is drawing portraits of her. It’s all her. How does she know? She can smell it, that’s how: his adoration, his fear, it’s in the air, and something else, too. She senses it, fears it herself, without knowing what she fears. Of course she’s used to the rest, the admiration, the desire, the hand that longs to touch, repressed: stilled. That’s nothing new, to her. But for him. It makes him feel naked. Exposed. Flayed. Vulnerable. A poor soft creature, unshelled. And then the drawings: Clotilde at the taffrail. Clotilde at the spinet. Clotilde bending over to button her boot. She mustn’t see those. But there’s no denying it’s all her to him, as far as he is concerned, the blue of the sea her eyes, the gold sun her hair, the thrilling, vertiginous swell of the waves her breasts and belly, even the sea in its darker moments, its rages, yes, all her, already he is lost, lost, already sinking, he with his pale stalk of a neck, his awkward, ill-fitting suit, with all around him filth, discomfort, danger, bad food, foul companions, the whole wobbling scientific contraption, the career he might or might not make of it, the home he left, none of that matters, it’s all Clotilde, all around, to him.
He doesn’t want her to know.
Everything swollen, stinging with brine.
• • •
As for her, she is interested in her Papa only. He is in his workroom, studying the Proceedings. Or hunched over a map book, latitude and longitude laid out before him in wedges, exotic fruit that he longs to devour. Is devouring, with every mile of progress. Papa will not leave me. Papa will never leave his Clotilde again.
• • •
My father, though, is not neglected. In the half life they occupy beneath the billowing canvas, he, too, is pursued, though not by her. What need has she to chase that which comes to her naturally, inevitably, like an act of homage? Rather, Harry Owen is on his trail. The scientific gentleman, momentarily lacking in objects of study, studies my father instead. In the Mayfair of my existence I’ve never met anyone like him. So he writes in the journal he keeps of this voyage. That familiar, precise handwriting. Soothing it is. Soothing. They each have their methods. Here it is on my desk. In the Mayfair of my existence. And: He is a study indeed. And: Today, walking into our cabin, I found Dell’oro, motioning over his shoulder and muttering some weird incantation, thus: Black black bear-away, don’t come down by here-away. Twice he said it. Then seeing me behind him, commenced to look thoroughly ashamed.
Harry Owen makes of my father a scientific undertaking. A meal of sorts, and a disappointing one, evidently:
He speaks little, despite my best efforts to draw him out.
• • •
In the end, though, the sea itself will assist.
They are in the workroom. How many weeks in? Three weeks. Harry Owen has pressed Leo Dell’oro into assisting him. In the liquid half-light of down below they are seated together on stools, uncomfortably (but then, when, since the pressing off, have they been comfortable?—never), shelves around them bristling with beakers and vials, microscopes, wads of cotton, jars of ether, scalpels, the tools of the trade, all the necessities of capture, subdue, disembowel, preserve, these are not symbol but fact. The ship beneath and around them shuddering. Outside the porthole: wet, grey. Horizon indistinct, uncertain. They do not look out. Afraid, perhaps, to see an eye looking back? No. They are too busy; they are hard at work making a surface net. Harry Owen has designed it himself, and will use it, when they reach calmer, tropical waters, to catch tiny pelagic creatures, helpless floating things aflame with the green fire of the sea, wandering spirals and crystallines, minute plants like snowflakes, tiny dragons fierce and bristling, these really the larvae of starfish and whelks and lobsters; phosphorescent fishes, medusae with blue translucent disks, minute pulsing tentacles; spawn, goo; dream objects. The net to be lowered over the side of the quarterdeck when the sea is calm, blue, in a yielding mood. Disinclined to notice. Open to plunder.
There is so much in her, she won’t miss what we take.
All in the interest of science, of course. Hoping to discover one that will be named after him.
In this he will be successful. See: Porpita minusculus owenii.
So it is not all in vain after all.
• • •
My father perched on his stool, sewing transverse hoops into Harry Owen’s net, doing his best to assist in the plunder. He works with severe concentration, despite the juddering of the ship, the juddering of his heart. He has seen my mother up above; therefore is hiding. Unwitting of his impending capture.
Waves within, waves without.
Then the sudden heave. Leo Dell’oro, upended, unceremoniously flung, sent sprawling beneath the worktable, arms and legs akimbo, this is so undignified, tangled in the toils of the net he has lately been sewing, hopelessly raveled; and at the same time—accompanying clatter—a small object, liberated from somewhere about his person by the vehemence of the wave, careens onto the floor, bounces, slithers, is lost.
He rights himself and within moments is crawling around on his knees, feeling around in all the convolutions of the net, searching for whatever it is he has dropped. Aha! Here it is, in the corner, underneath the worktable. A lunge and it is in his hand. Safe there. But he does not immediately emerge. Kneels instead, oh eccentric father, makes a short, sharp, thrusting backward motion with his arm and hand, as if intending to throw something over his shoulder that he does not in fact throw, chanting
, Black black bear-away, don’t come down by here-away!
It’s the same mysterious doggerel Harry Owen heard before, in the cabin. Only this time he won’t let it pass. He’s got a strong spirit of scientific endeavor, actually takes my father by the wrist this time. Refrains though, from the cotton wool and the ether.
What have you?
It’s n-nothing—
The nervous stammer coming out now. I wonder does Harry Owen remember Leo Dell’oro passed out in the bushes off the Embankment, that hollow vacancy, the tremor, the horrible, empty staring. The carapace.
Or is he too much of a gentleman to remember?
Purposeful pretense, that.
Show me. Severely, as if speaking to a child.
Sulky-eyed, like a child, Leo Dell’oro opens his fist, reveals, at the center of his small, pale palm, the tiny black figure of a horse, which Harry Owen quickly acquires, hefts, feeling the strange, porous lightness of this object, which is both and neither: wood and stone, wood nor stone. Feels the warmth of it, which is like the warmth of a living thing, though it is a borrowed warmth. Stolen.
This was made by a master carver, says Owen admiringly, all his tweeds and whiskers bristling with desire for the object, the smooth glistening blackness of it, the flared nostril, the shapely hoof, the veins beneath the polished skin, which have not been neglected by the evidently obsessive maker, these seeming to throb almost with life, though, of course, this is impossible, it is so tiny, simulacra merely, tempting simulacra, it longs to leap into his gaping pocket, to nestle there, that is what Harry Owen thinks, or rather feels.
Says Leo Dell’oro grudgingly, My father made it—
But this is excruciating, this blushing, the rubbing of the heel of the right hand against the left wrist, he can admit nothing, concede nothing, and always in the background the shadow of the small, severe man with round glasses, his posture stiff, upright, trudging up Church Street, in Whitby, in the rain. Carrying, in his pocket, a small box, tied up with a black ribbon. Requiescat in Pace.
Intaglio in jet of a child’s face, oh, those pin curls, and the initials in seed pearl around the border.
How ashamed he was, my father, accompanying his father up Church Street, in the rain.
It is always raining there, in Whitby. Summer and winter both.
• • •
Your father is a great artisan.
Yes. Bitterly. He’s a very great carver. He’s a better carver than he is a man!
• • •
It is a question, whether Harry Owen will return the coveted object, or add it to his collection. I can feel him hesitating, running his greedy thumb over the lustrous skin that is not skin, that is neither wood nor stone, neither animal nor vegetable nor mineral but some other substance in between; and as for Leo Dell’oro’s evident discomfort, well, never mind that. There is a shelf in a room in Half Moon Street that has an empty space. Or a cabinet, with a glass front, and a cunning inscrutable latch.
Once locked it will not open easily.
• • •
He made it for me when I was sick once. When I was a boy. This horse, Lath, stood by my bedside, and kept watch til I was well again. I almost died—
Afterward if ever I dropped it, I said the rhyme, to ward off bad luck.
There is petulance in this. Now Harry Owen must concede. There takes place a regretful separation, at the conclusion of which the small horse made of jet slides back into my father’s pocket. Safe now.
Come! Now you must tell me! What has this father of yours done to deserve such harsh words? Have you always felt so? Did he punish you, perhaps, too harshly? Too often got drunk? Partook overselfishly of the roast? I am interested in this issue of fathers and sons, what keeps them together, what drives them apart—
Is that what separates you from your father? That he “partook too selfishly of the roast”?
Here it is again, that bitterness of Dell’oro by which Harry Owen remains unperturbed, into which he thrusts a doleful and lengthy scientific silence, sharply punctuated by a disappointed stiffening of the whiskers, until at last Dell’oro, compelled, must speak again.
As a child I admired and loved him. I wanted to be a master carver, like him. It wasn’t until later—and anyway, it’s not what he did to me, but something I learned about him. He’s a rascal—a rascal and a sneak—and he doesn’t even know that I know it.
Is that why you’re here, then? To get away from the rascal?
I’m here because Professor Girard invited me.
And because it suits you.
Yes, it suits me. What of it? You’re no different. Pugnacious outjutting of chin.
The tweed withdraws slightly, pleased or not with the perspicacity of its research subject, but must concede.
You’re right. I don’t like my father either, and I wouldn’t follow him into the clove trade, though he’s gotten rich by it. He’s a true vulgarian—nothing but buying and selling, selling and buying—and eating, a great deal of eating. Gluttony alone, a continual gorging, on people, things, food, money—whatever he could get hold of—without even pretending to anything more. And why should he pretend? Certainly not to please me.
Certainly not.
And certainly I’ve lived well off it. Off him.
Certainly.
They hover together, cross-purposed in the watery light, the liquid creeping of the porthole reflected across ceiling, floor, the bristling scientific apparatus, their two faces, the whiskers of Owen, bright, dark eyes of Dell’oro, aqueously lit, burbling, sea-shuddering, unbalanced.
• • •
With stink in the background. Of fish, of tar, of wet woolens, of too many men in too small a space. And of that, too, of course: of fear.
The sea-shudders are deeply felt, and not just in the wooden membrane that separates them from it. Deeper yet. Each wave is a vibration in the body itself. Entering through the legs, exiting the stomach, the mouth, the eyes. Top of the head.
• • •
Whether he will tell it or not, that is the question. Small-footed creature that he is. Whether he will dig, unearth, expose. Lay bare.
The moment tautens, then at last he decides.
I learned that he was disloyal to my mother. He did not love us; he preferred someone else. My mother doesn’t know it. All those years he deceived her—deceived us all. I couldn’t be around him anymore, and k-keep his secret—so I left.
Thinks, I didn’t say goodbye.
That ocean spread out before him. Forgetfulness there, in the blue infinity. Or so he hoped.
Behind the drawn shade the sister still sleeping. Dark head recumbent on white pillow. Now as far as he is concerned her innocence will last forever, she is suspended in that final moment of undisturbed dreaming. This is a gift he tried to give her.
• • •
His anger and his bitterness are like a window, closing. Harry Owen desists, returns to untangling what he hopes will be a more successful net. I did not feel comfortable saying further about it.
• • •
Such turning away, in my father. He is like his own father, in that. Emilio Dell’oro’s is a nature that repels questions; by his very austerity, which allows no grasp, no lever, no fingerhold to be placed upon him, he forestalls from even being asked those questions that he will by no means answer. He is like a fish that slips away, elusive, glimmering, between waving fronds of eelgrass, completely self-contained in his silence.
My father will tell Harry Owen nothing but he will think about it again, later, when he is below, in the safety of his berth. There in the dark. Remembering. Himself at sixteen, pale, indwelling worm of a boy. What he saw when he unlocked it—his father’s rolltop desk. This an act of petty larceny. What does he keep here? The desk is always locked, has been locked forever. Forever as defined by sixteen. Tedious account books, old envelopes, receipts, crumbling packing slips, crusted-over jars of ink, mucilage, frayed twine, pedestrian bits of brown wrapping paper, all the
accrued business detritus of the Dell’oro Jet Works, this seems a shame, hardly a just reward for the light-fingered pilfering of the small brass key, so many drawers, mysterious cubbyholes, nooks and crannies, latch and hinge, imagine the possibilities, spring mounts, false-bottomed drawers, so much potential wasted on ink and rubber bands and mucilage.
And then he finds them, wrapped up in a handkerchief. Tiny carvings in coral, some in jet, of a woman’s face, her body. The same face, the same body, over and over. The warm, milky pinks of the coral very like flesh. So like that he must repress a fascination of his own in order to wrap these up, put them away in the cubbyhole where they have been hidden. He will revisit these, they burn in him, but, of course, he can say nothing. What can he say? He is a voyeur. He has seen what he should not see. The reward being silence, suspicion that can be neither placed nor dismissed nor spoken aloud as he watches now his cool, austere father filing jet in his workshop, or in the dining room, ladling out the stew. The father a stranger now, the beautiful small works, beautiful corallines, unexplained. Objects of desire. Warming to the touch with borrowed warmth. Emilio’s creations.