by Lori Baker
For a year he carries the secret inside him. It is a raw place, an irritation that can be neither nacred over, nor expelled and forgotten.
In the end it is his father’s cousin Giorgio who tells him, a visitor from the foreign homeland of which he knows nothing. For Emilio has told him nothing. Did he never tell you why he came here, why he left Italy to come to this place that is nothing but two rocks above the sea? In Ascoli Piceno he was a successful man, a very successful goldsmith. He was very talented. He loved to work with colored stones, the most beautiful he could find, but in the simplest of cradles, so that the stone was all. He worked very hard, was always there, at his wheel, at his bench, cutting, polishing. Emilio was as he is now, very steady, very methodical. But then he made a mistake—he got carried away. That is how we are, we Dell’oro! But your father, Emilio, thought that he was different.
But he was no different. For he began despite all a secret project. It seemed harmless at first; but then, so do they all. He had begun to work with corals, and these are most different from other gems, the hard, faceted gems with which he was accustomed to work. For corals, like jet, are porous, they breathe, like jet they are not alive but are the remains of living things. Maybe that is why, in his exile, he has chosen to work with jet, because it reminds him of the other, which he so loved.
He was fascinated by this new material, for by polishing it he could bring out all sorts of colors, all sorts of rich pinks and reds, which, it one day occurred to him, were like the pinks and reds of life itself, of the living flesh. Perhaps this is where the danger began, in this one simple realization. For soon he could not resist, he began carving figures, figures so tiny they could be set on a ring, or in a pendant, or on a brooch. To see these in the glass case in his shop was to wish to touch them—for they looked as if they might be warm to the touch, even though they were without life. Some might argue that they did live, in a way; a very particular kind of life—
He worked, at first, on traditional and religious subjects: the three Marys, the Christ Child, the thieves on their crosses—
Being beautiful, his things became very popular. Soon he began to receive special requests, some of which he would not like to share with your mother; for the special little corallines became very popular with a certain sort of gentleman, who liked to have them as secret watch fobs, carved in the likeness of the woman, pink, naked, and warm, whom he dreamed of loving …
And into it all the Dell’oro disease, all unseen, had already begun to creep.
Emilio found himself carving, for his own pleasure, again and again, the face and figure of the same woman, a woman of fantasy, a figment of his imagination, whom he regarded, because she was not real, as being of no real consequence. This despite the fact that he was spending a great deal of time with her, was even, indeed, a little bit in love with what he had created; but harmlessly so.
But then one day, as he was passing through the town square, he saw her: there she was, the woman whom he had carved, emerging from the lace shop, with a child, a little girl, by her side. Emilio could not help himself, but followed her, as far as he could, through the narrow, winding streets of our capital city, remaining always far enough behind so that she would not see him, until finally she made a turning, and he lost her.
It was a loss he could not accept.
Of course he was amazed, even horrified. How had this happened? He was haunted by what he had done, and made endless conjectures about it. Certainly there was a rational explanation. He had seen her before, in the street, perhaps, or glimpsed her profile in passing, in a window somewhere; noticed her, without noticing, at the park or the promenade; and her image stayed with him; or else it was just chance. But also it was strange, and with this Emilio was not comfortable; and I think he even believed, at the back of his mind, that he had created her, conjured her himself, coral made flesh, though this, of course, was impossible. And then it tormented him in another way, too, because he had already fallen more than a little in love with his coralline, his creation.
From this it was a very short step to thinking he must see her again, if only to prove to himself that he was mistaken. So he began to look for her, to search, in the squares, in the avenues, on the boulevards, in the gardens and the coffee shops … and when he found her again—as he was bound to do—again he followed her—each time he came upon her, in the shops, in the boulevards, he followed, for as long as he could keep her in sight. One day she noticed, and ran from him. She was his Daphne, and so he carved her, with coral branches for her hair, the arms and legs transformed, the beautiful Daphne turning, as she fled, into a tree all made from coral.
It was then that Emilio decided to leave Ascoli Piceno. He knew enough for this, that he could not stay. He was like a man who stands on shore and sees the wave coming, large and black, filled with terrible things, which will dash before it all that he holds dear. Gentilessa was still ignorant, busy with the baby, Anna, but for how long? And so he packed up before anybody could say anything, and took your Mama and the baby here, to this ugly place of two rocks by the sea … He gave up his goldsmithing; and in his perpetual mourning for she whom he has lost, now carves in honor of her memory these gruesome memento mori; and other things, too, perhaps, that you do not know of—
• • •
The cousin has more, family stories, the Dell’oro ancestor who carved jewels engraved with enigmatic runes and symbols, the remains of ancient languages only the jeweler understood, which were believed to foretell the fortune of the wearer; another who made a woman entirely of gold, so lifelike that she was believed to speak, saying Help me—in a voice peculiarly low, throaty, more like the painful gyration of an unoiled hinge on a rusty gate; another who created automata, beasts of the field, so realistic they could not be told from the real thing, until the slaughterer’s knife revealed what was inside, the perfect coiled springs, the gears, the ingenious, jeweled mechanism; this was not life but something else, as Giorgio might have put it, a very particular kind of life.
There was obsession in it. A tendency to obsession. La tendenza. These things are rumors. Distortions. Monstrosities. It is these that my father thinks about there in his berth, down in the sloshing belly. And of course: of Clotilde at the taffrail. Clotilde at the spinet. Clotilde bending over to button her boot. But I’m not like them. Amended. Him. I’m not like him. I hate him—and I’ll never go back—
And then they pass, manwomanboyandspinet, into the heat of the subtropics. It is as if my father’s anger at his father, once allowed expression, has dispersed, forming now a climate through which they will all be obliged to sail.
Now begins their true journey, to which all else has been the prelude.
Many things, previously hidden, will now be revealed: my mother’s heat-bared shoulder; the wan, unshaven cheek and wild, staring eye of mal de mer–tormented Linus Starling, as he emerges from below deck for the first time in weeks, pale as a moth, as a mushroom, as the belly of a toad. Then, too, there is the monocle of John McIntyre, glinting ferociously in the light of that unrelenting sun, shooting sparks, divots of light.
• • •
For there are no ambiguities in the tropics. The sun shines mercilessly upon all; reveals all, mercilessly. It is a time of sharp contrasts, and sharp conflicts: of air and cloud and water against hull and sail, each battling the other, begrudging any progress; of pale skins turned painfully red, then gratefully brown; of stark, relentless blues and dense, dark, weighted shadows—for the shadows here, at the latitude 25 degrees north, possess the solidity, the authority, of objects. In a strange equatorial inversion, the occupants of the Narcissus find themselves rendered blind by an opulence of light, they fracture their vision on shadows each day as they pass from the burning brightness of outdoors into the ship’s unbearable, stifling, stinking darkness. Imagine them (as do I), traveling, dazzled and blinking, from shipside to workroom, workroom to shipside, laden with buckets full of that imperturbably smiling ocean, brimming with
all she has yielded and will not miss, firm in pursuit of their science yet made fools of by sun and shade, stumbling against each other blindly, spilling water, tripping over coils of rope, staggering among the piglets that run wild upon the deck with the cook in hot pursuit, his cleaver’s flash as brilliant and as merciless as the sun.
Merciless. Yes, that is the word. It is all brightly, gaily, grandly merciless.
And my mother: the brightest, gayest, most merciless of all.
• • •
It’s her turn now.
• • •
Now, during the hot, brilliant days and warm, languid nights, my mother begins the series of concerts in her stateroom. Like a little snail I shrink/Into my painted shell, that is what she sings, beneath a midnight sky alight with stars, the entire Milky Way, or so it seems, whirling away above them into a space infinite, black, and dizzying, while the Narcissus plows its own Milky Way, equally luminous, in the dark, fetid ocean, a galaxy of living creatures that twirl and spark for an instant, then spiral away again into depthless obscurity.
What a liar she is, my mother.
Because she does not shrink, she blossoms. In the hothouse tropic atmosphere she darkens with the influence of the sun, and also lightens, golden hair falling softly over tanned brow, teeth like pearls against berry-dark lips, her blue eyes more luminous than ever. In the somnolence of those short nights, when all on board are drunk with the heat, when the ocean, slackened, and relaxed, as if the moon, turning away its face, has released all from its influence, my mother exudes an unmistakable life force all her own, a pull as powerful as the moon’s, and a perfume as intoxicating as any put forth by the orchids in Felix Girard’s collection.
Wär’ ich so klein wie Schnecken, indeed.
They’re all there, at her concerts: the insufferable McIntyre, his mouth shut for once, Linus Starling, so pale and sinister, Hugh Blackstone, grudging but present, Harry Owen, calf eyed, my father, still in his suit that he will by no means shed, all there. The moon may have abandoned them, and the tides, but my mother holds them fast in her orbit on those still evenings, when their sighs, it seems, are the only breath upon the sails. A prefiguration in this of what is to come, but all in ignorance still, in their bliss, they are one and all in love with her: not just my father, but all. Though he most of all, sick with it, and sick with the hiding of it. He has been successful in this, the hiding, with everyone but her.
He shrinks from what he loves. Attraction and repulsion. Fortunately he has hidden the things he really cares about, the things my too-perceptive mother must by no means see.
• • •
And his other work, his official work, as ship’s artist, his work sketching those ephemeral creatures brought up in the brimming buckets or captured in Harry Owen’s surface net, goes brilliantly well. Night after night they two haul the net, invert it into their jars and vials of water, releasing a cloud of thrashing, scuttering things, soft, struggling ambiguities that wink, pulse, glow, retort, subside. At the height of it, my father is up all night, drawing by candlelight, his dark head bent over the paper, the pencils, despite Harry Owen’s assertion that he must stop for the night and Go to bed, Leo. No: he will not. This is his obsession.
His other obsession.
What does he see, when he looks at them?
Soft, translucent bodies, electrical sparks, fiery snowflakes, palpitating stars. Ephemera. They will be gone by morning: gone, as if they never existed at all.
Thus his rush, to draw them as they fall. The brief bright shower, fiery descent.
For Harry Owen’s creatures, his captives, do not thrive. Some disappear almost immediately, sinking down and away into those vials filled with seawater; others last a few days, throbbing, flailing, floating, dying. Some last a week. A week at most.
None are brought back alive. Though some will return in formaldehyde. Others, those solid enough, packed in cotton wool. But what will return are mere shadows of the living creatures, simulacra, gestures toward. In a drawer in the museum now, gathering dust. Unrecognizable things, giving rise to distortions, misunderstandings, mistakes in the science, fantasies.
The ocean has so many. It will not miss a few.
In my father’s drawings, that is where they really live now.
He is almost happy, absorbed in the work that progresses, if not to his satisfaction—for this is impossible, he is never satisfied, though he is prevented, by the brief alighting of his subjects, from his usual picking and scratching, doing and redoing—then, at least, well enough.
Their brevity aids his contentment.
• • •
It is my father’s favorite time, late at night, in the silence and the starlight. The small, guttering flame of Harry Owen’s cigar. Night watch on the booms. Hugh Blackstone at the helm. Sails bellying soundlessly in a night breeze, soft slip-slop beneath the bows the only sound. The dark water a solid thing, viscous membrane. There is a sense of breath held, of anticipation, an immanence, as of something unknown that is about to happen: a planet, rising on the dark horizon, out of the sea, it seems, Venus it is, bright as a flame.
That’s it, that’s what it was—
Except it isn’t.
At Harry Owen’s elbow there comes, not a touch, but the warm, familiar insinuation of a touch.
Dr. Owen, my mother says, I have come to see what it is you are always tangling up in this mysterious net of yours.
Her golden hair seen in darkness shines like a bright, submerged thing, half seen, rising in a rush to surface in dark waters.
And what about you, Mr. Dell’oro? What have you caught tonight?
N-nothing. We haven’t h-hauled the net yet.
There is fearfulness in him, at her approach. She feels it, draws closer.
Excellent! That means I can watch. I have always watched my Papa at his work, you know. I have helped him with it, too. He tells me I am his only real collaborator—his scientific amanuensis.
Turning from them she leans against the rail, then leans over it toward the water; gazes at the place where the towline disappears. It is a thin, shining gossamer, a spider’s web.
Well—ain’t you going to take up your net?
Commanded, they cannot disobey. Together Leo and Harry take hold of the line, pull. Then pull again.
The net, though, will not come.
I can imagine my mother’s laugh, high and clear and faintly derisive, in the watery darkness.
A further effort on their part, dark pantings at the line. And then it comes, all at once, furiously, dripping black with weed, green with foam, and falls, writhing madly, onto the deck. From among the coils there resonates a fierce, hollow, chopping sound, like the fall of a mallet on a block.
Small things scatter everywhere, shrimps, fishes, snails, angry squids, crabs clinging desperately to knots of bladder as the net twists and thrashes, contorts into a hundred wild figures, writing an alphabet from a dream.
Oh, how my mother enjoys it! She shrieks with laughter, she is filled with delight. And she is the brave one, she the delicate, the golden haired, she with the shawl cascading like foam from around her shoulders bends forward, while Harry Owen and Leo Dell’oro draw back. Bends forward, and reaches down her hand.
Don’t.
This is Hugh Blackstone. His cool, severe observing eye has taken them in and judged them incompetent to cope.
Fetch the oar.
They, though, are paralyzed as at their feet the net turns upon itself in a last violent peristalsis, then disgorges: a great green eel, four or five feet long, jaws snapping, this is the sound they heard, the hollow chop of a mallet on a block.
Fetch the oar.
Still nobody can move but then at last my father does. He runs off up the deck, a glimmering, small figure, they see him struggle with the tarp on the smallboat, trying to lift it up to get at the oars. The eel, though, is quicker; it turns over once, a single sinuous contortion, slides over the side, falls back, there is hardly a
splash, it is gone.
In the silence that follows, Harry Owen begins to pick sadly at the remains of his net.
My dear Dr. Owen, was it not magnificent?
My mother is still laughing, flashing her brilliant feathers in the starlight.
Blackstone turns the yellow glare of his bird-eye upon her.
That, madam, could easily have removed your hand.
Then there is that cold, unpleasant smile. It is admirable, is it not, the cold severity of this Hugh Blackstone? I wonder is he imagining my mother’s hand in the eel’s jaws, and smiling at that? Those pale white fingers, the delicate, pink pearlescent nails. Otherwise, at what does he smile? It doesn’t matter, I suppose. My mother has her hand; and in a moment Hugh Blackstone will be back on the bridge, consulting his sextant as if nothing has happened.
Now at last my father returns exultant with the oar. But my mother, spanked, seeks immediately to spank in turn.
Mr. Dell’oro, she cries, it appears you are an oar short!
The air comes out of him at that, humiliated he slackens visibly, the oar held triumphantly upright makes a quick descent toward the deck and in that same moment something else happens, there is a kind of shift, a beat skipped, it is as if the air has gone out of everything, yes, that is it exactly, the air goes out of everything, not just him but everything, in the sails, too, the breeze has died completely, all the bellying white folds fall slack, something somewhere breathing has died, and its breath will not resume.
Hugh Blackstone, on the bridge, utters a soft oath.
My mother, as if conscious of what she has done, runs away then, my father and Harry Owen stand helpless watching the curl of her shawl glimmering in the dark, lessening and lessening like the crest of a wave that breaks and slips back into the sea. In a few minutes they will hear a few notes of the spinet, rising from down below.
• • •
But they’re done now. They’re finished. They’ve entered the Trough of Leo’s Despair. A trough that will be deepened, almost before they really realize they’re in it, by a shout from the mainmast the next morning: