by Lori Baker
• • •
Such a pandemonium.
It’s hard to imagine it almost, sailors running, and pigs, these squealing, and my mother, she squealing also as Felix Girard attempts to shield her with his shaggy bear’s body, McIntyre groping like a blind man with his monocle transformed into a waterfall, and what of my father, lying there like that, at the bottom of it all.
Someone ought to help him.
• • •
Why have I done it, put him in such a position, he’s out cold, helpless, but now Harry Owen has him by the armpits, and this other one, Linus Starling, takes him by the feet, this is unfortunate, that it had to be Linus Starling, why have I done this, my poor father, and together, with much effort, they carry him back into the saloon, lay him out on the table like the Christmas goose, he’s at the center of it all now, and they’re all there, crowded around, as many as can fit, seeking shelter from the deluge, soaked like rats the lot of them, trying to wring themselves out.
Look at him, says Linus Starling, he’s steaming.
It’s true. Steam is rising from my father’s sopping clothes.
He’s unconscious of this, mercifully.
It’s damned hot in here, says Harry Owen. Better unbutton him.
Unpack him’s more like it, Starling says.
It’s too bad Linus Starling has to be involved in this. My father never liked him. Yet all the same it’s true, as they unbutton the proud shirtfront they find that Leo has a second skin, he’s lined himself underneath with all sorts of stuff, letters, drawings, pages torn from magazines, bits of textile—
Hey, ho! says Linus Starling, what’s this?
He holds up what appears to be a crumpled swatch of material, a bit of stuff that might (were it larger) be used to make a curtain, or upholster a chair.
It looks like one of Petrook’s bits, says Harry Owen, remembering. No doubt something Dell’oro picked up off a pile in Bury Place. He’s a compulsive gatherer of the worst sort, you know.
I remember, too, my father in that hot dark room in Bury Place, shoving something into his pocket. It’s come back to haunt him now.
Hey, ho! says Starling, it looks just like Madamoiselle Girard!
Don’t be a fool, Starling—
Harry Owen takes the bit of textile away from him, carefully spreads it out on a corner of the table where my father is not, sighs over it a little, what, after all, can he say? It is a woven exotic miniature my father has stolen, the image of a fair servant girl kneeling before a beautifully brocaded elephant, presenting to it a jewel, an emerald, perhaps, the image very small, yet it cannot be denied that Linus Starling is right, it bears a startling resemblance to my mother, who, standing just to the left of the table wringing out her hair, sees it, and gives a tiny gasp, that is all, just a gasp, and then turns away, pretending not to have seen. They all pretend—some things, after all, are better unseen—yet this cannot be avoided.
Hey, ho ho! Here’s another—and another—
Continuing the unpacking, this Linus Starling has rolled my father over and found, pressed against his back, drawings of Clotilde. He’s so exacting, my father. Here she is: Clotilde at the taffrail, Clotilde in the saloon, Clotilde bending over to button her boot—
Poor unconscious father, peeled like an onion to the vulnerable, milky-white core, all the secrets of his heart and body ignominiously exposed. They’ll make a feast of him now for certain.
Poor silly fellow. He cannot help it. Who can defend against my beautiful Clotilde? Gentlemen, even I cannot. Certainly not a silly fellow like this. Owen, Starling, when the rain stops, take him below and put him to bed. And take all that stuff with you, eh? Put it away somewhere safe.
So my grandfather has rescued him, for now.
And my mother, what about her?
Now she’s seen it. Now she knows. She’s gazing at my father contemplatively. He’s a pale, unshelled creature, laid out there on the table for her delectation, every bit of him, every scrap, every fragment of his poor disarticulated soul exposed. But she says nothing. Nothing. Only turns away.
That’s not like her. Something has really happened, now.
• • •
When the rain has done its battering, they take him below. At seven he’ll wake, confused, asking Harry Owen if he’s dead. No, by no means. It was nothing; just a corposant, St. Elmo’s fire. A kind of electrical discharge brought about by the storm—quite harmless—
Harry Owen can hardly bear to look at him now. He does everything not to look, his gaze averted, over my father’s shoulder, or down, in the direction of his feet.
He is thinking about that night on the Embankment, the frightening absence. And this, the subsequent voiding. It is difficult to be a gentleman about this.
My father, though, sees nothing amiss, sleeps again, for him there’s nothing but oblivion, despite the storm. Brief violent downpours, thunder and lightning that shake the ship, this continues until dawn. Probably nobody sleeps, except my father, who sleeps so poorly, in the best of times.
• • •
In the morning the sky is clear, it’s as if nothing has happened, nor have they moved. Punta Yalkubul is once again a purple ribbon dropped by a careless girl, tapering away narrowly, like a ribbon, to nothing at the ends.
Lightning seldom strikes a ship at sea. But the saint’s body is a different matter. That means bad luck. My father is a marked man now. But, still sleeping, he doesn’t know it; and by the time he wakes, rather late, it won’t matter anymore.
• • •
Hugh Blackstone, on the bridge, observes, with his glass, the horizon’s edge. Land is there, lives being lived, though giving no sign: no lights at night, no sails by day, it is odd is it not, a mode of life difficult to imagine. As he stands one of his men approaches, speaking quickly, with a faint air of emergency. One of the smallboats is missing. Gone, sir, and the oars, too, sir, gone without a trace.
Gone? What do you mean?
The withering glance of Blackstone.
I don’t know where it’s gone, sir, but it’s gone, and cook says a sack of his best salt fish is gone, too, an’ one of potatoes, and a cask of water.
That’s impossible. I suppose the fairies done it? The faint derisive smile, this is something to be avoided. Even if Doyle does think the fairies done it, he will not say so now; and as far as Hugh Blackstone is concerned, that is a good thing.
I don’t know, sir.
Very well, Doyle. I’ll deal with it.
Wisp of Doyle, running away.
Blackstone at the rail now, smiling still. Smiling. Well, I’ll be damned. Training his glass at the edge of the earth.
• • •
By lunchtime it is confirmed that Felix Girard has gone. His bed has not been slept in; John McIntyre has found a note, pinned inside his Compendium of American Psittaciformes, which reads, I will show you, McIntyre, you bastard! You puny man, now you will see!
Clotilde is in tears. She can’t find her dear Papa anywhere. And neither can anybody else. A search of the ship is fruitless, the import of the note clear: he has taken one of the smallboats and some supplies, and set out to row himself to Punta Yalkubul.
God help him, says Hugh Blackstone, laughing, he’s just mad enough to succeed!
Everyone’s looking at the horizon now. If the Narcissus is a smut in a saucer, then what is Felix Girard in a smallboat?
All that immensity.
And my father, sleeping. He doesn’t even know. He’s dreaming, maybe; of what, who can tell. Far distances, perhaps, or the opposite of that, the delicate pink whorl of one particular ear.
I’ve taken him this far. The rest is inevitable.
He won’t be back, my grandfather. The search party, sent out despite Hugh Blackstone’s reluctance, will run aground on what they think is Punta Yalkubul, finding there, instead, a small island, ten miles in circumference, consisting of an east-facing coral-sand beach and a west-facing red mangrove swamp crouched over a
shallow lagoon formed by a coral reef. Sand flats extend prettily, at low tide, perhaps three quarters of a mile to the south. All that will be left here, of my grandfather, is the mark of his keel in the sand, and a plug of tobacco, left behind when he pulled his smallboat through the shrubbery, and rowed off the other side.
All the days they spent, staring out at this crust in the sea. We all have our illusions.
Though Felix Girard could not be produced, the search party brought back samples of what life there was. There were beauties there, in the place where my grandfather disappeared, the place where I, too, now, am bound: honeycombed corals, some growing in thin, perpendicular points, others forming thick, fawn-colored antlers, still others round, green knobs, some convoluted like brains; brittle, whip-legged starfish, delicate shrimps, minute, sparkling amphipods, alive, still, in the jars, before Harry Owen kills them; sea whips and sea fans; the sea cucumber, Holothuriae, in bright yellow and brown; sponges in every color, every shape; beautiful shells; and a diminutive sole, two inches long, marbled gold and black above, creamy white below—named, for the first time, by he who catalogued it, Owen’s Darling Solenette, Monochirus amatus Owenii.
He would have loved this stuff, my grandfather, if he’d seen it.
There’s solace here for some, for Harry Owen, for my father. He is interested in the smallest finds, in the sand that turns out, beneath the microscope, to contain shells, miniature in size but magnificent in architecture, glorious spires and intricately incised whorls, cathedrals, each one smaller than a grain of rice. I can imagine him, after the wind turned (because it did turn, finally), drawing these, spending many hours on that long journey home hunched by a candle, separating out, with a pin, these tiny beauties from among the dross, then sketching, sketching. I have seen what he found there: entire cities, miniature worlds, ancient and beautiful catacombs, mysterious curving passages leading to who-knows-what-or-where, glimmering opalescent walls signposted with the runes and hieroglyphs of the sea. I imagine he sees, within their pale pink or golden or creamy white curves, curves softer yet: of a certain cheek, the nape of a neck, of the closed and slightly trembling lid of a downcast eye—
For her there is no solace. There will be no miracle, no chance sighting, no encounter with another vessel that has picked up a ginger-bearded Frenchman, floating. No matter how many days she spends at the rail, gazing at that empty blue mirror of a sea, she will never find him. She finds nothing but herself reflected there. Felix Girard is lost, as quick and as sure as her blue shawl would be lost, if she flung it upon the water. He will not be retrieved.
• • •
You see we have so much in common, she and I.
• • •
I turn my face away from what comes next, her loneliness, his obsession, attraction overcoming repulsion, the edging toward and away and toward again, the first touch, then the second, the loss in her, desire in him, that’s it: that they will be together is inevitable now. What else is there for her, after all? Rooms in Bury Place, dead things, and, down below, that vulture Petrook waiting, preening himself, sharpening his claws.
I wouldn’t do that to her. I’ve done enough already.
• • •
In the brightness of the day I can see there’s a hieroglyph outside my window, though I cannot read it: two halves of something brilliant that has been broken, and a gesture that says, Carlotta, it’s time to go.
II.
THE BIRDCAGE
It is hard to get in; harder yet to get out.
These are first two things my mother, orphaned now, cast ashore, learns about her new home in Whitby, on Bridge Street, above the River Esk. The house is called the Birdcage. Here it perches, above the river, here with my mother in it, the Birdcage, the narrow, whitewashed, pentagonal house where my parents begin their life together; the house with its two cramped, winding staircases, one designated for up, the other for down, since only with difficulty may two persons pass through either at once; with its thick stone walls and stubborn, low-jambed doors, none of which opens the first time—none willing—all must be pushed, pushed hard, with the shoulder, or, in my mother’s case, because she is slight, pushed with the whole of the body. They must be pushed twice, at least, those doors, if they are to yield; and when they yield at last they do it grudgingly, the wood grating against the uneven flagstone floor up to the final sticking point beyond which it will not move at all, the point at which even my mother, small as she is, must turn sideways in order to slip through, whether into the next room or out into the raw cobblestoned outdoors.
Hard to get in, harder yet to get out.
Like everything else in the house, the doors are swollen with the damp. Rusty of hinge. Disinclined. The house shudders above the river as if it would prefer to rise up and run; but, held fast, it receives, reluctantly, through its foundation, through its floors, its walls, its windows, the rush and suck of the tumbling Esk as it carries toward the sea a malodorous cargo of grease and gut, fin and bone, pulp and tar, bitumen and slag, night soil and glue: the runoff of the blubber works, the fishing fleet, the boatyard, the knacker’s yard, the jet works, the privies, the mines. My mother, in the house above the river, is puzzled, perhaps, after so many months at sea, to find that, though cast ashore, she still hears water rushing beneath her all the time; still smells it; still feels the damp of it everywhere, permeating everything, the furniture and food and clothes and bedding, the sheet music that she so seldom touches now, even herself, her skin, her hair, all rich and damp with the unwelcome oily scent of the river, the scent both of life and of death, which no amount of washing will ever remove. Through leaded windows that cry out upon rusty hinges of their own she observes when she so chooses, and also sometimes when she does not, the edge of the harbor, one arm of the breakwater, the cold North Sea beyond. These are dangerous objects—shards of glass upon which she may cut herself if she is not careful.
• • •
And my Papa?
• • •
Very often my mother turns her back upon the sea. She dislikes it in all its moods, its grey wintry indifference, its boiling infuriated white and green, its bright icy dissimulating blue. She cannot help but sense, no matter what is on the surface, the dark that lies beneath.
My Papa …
She cannot think about him. She cannot think about anything else. She cannot think.
His things, of course, are all around her—those, at least, that Petrook, ever calculating his profit and his loss, knew he could not sell. They are her inheritance and her dowry, shipped north from London in a series of packing crates and bundles, crowding now each of the five corners of each of the three rooms of the Birdcage, and rendering more precarious by their presence the screw-tight turning of the two staircases, both down and up. These are her old friends, her playmates, the splayed and grinning confidantes of her girlhood—the elephant’s skull, the stuffed orang-utan, the snakeskins and skeletons, the gaily patterned venomous cone shells, the butterflies and moths askew on their pins, her father’s prized Morpho telemachus, his Attacus atlas, his box of rotting silkworm pupae, the jar containing a mysterious object labeled “Mermaid’s hand,” the heads and arms, the broken-off chins and noses and fingers of stone idols neglected and fallen—even a single large crate containing nothing but the skins of birds Girard had been interrupted in the process of preserving, shedding now their feathers of crimson and violet and indigo, their delicate beaks shattered, packed in obvious haste, without care. Her father’s hummingbirds arrived in a cage, all dead but one. The single survivor, emerald green above, ruby red beneath, batters itself all along the crooked ceilings, buzzes like a trapped fly in the casements, never resting. Hovering in place it drinks sugar water from a glass that my mother has set out for it, then darts away up the stairs, or tangles itself among the last, dying filaments, cold nipped, of Felix Girard’s remaining orchids, or dodges between the rotting, rolled-up Turkish carpets leaning in the corners; or zooming downstairs makes Mar
y, the girl-of-all-work, scream aloud when its wing (moving so fast that it does not seem to move at all), grazes her cheek or her hair. For days at a time the hummingbird disappears completely, until some slight motion—a vibration among the white lace of a curtain, perhaps—reveals it; and then it is gone again, until next time.
Señor El Galliñazo is intact, though balder than before, it is true, and rests now upstairs in the bedroom, on top of the chest of drawers, along with a snaggletoothed cayman that used to perch on the shelf above my mother’s bed in Bury Place. Her family gone, these corpses make Clotilde feel at home; she will not throw anything away. What does not fit inside the house is piled, still boxed, in the shed out back where Leopold struggles against the cold to make his studio in an ever-dwindling space, surrounded by curiosities.
Up to his neck in them.
But then the whole house is a collector’s cabinet without the collector, except as he is reflected in his accumulation. My mother, stroking El Galliñazo’s molting back, or thumbing through the Conchylien-Cabinet (from which Arthur Petrook has removed the best of the colored plates with the sharpest and subtlest of knives), or touching the leathery palm of the gorilla’s hand that she keeps hidden in a drawer among her stockings, or arranging the heads of six terra-cotta goddesses along the fireplace mantel in the room that serves the Birdcage as sitting and dining room both, feels the collector’s presence so vividly that she would not be surprised to hear him say: Ah, Tildy! Why must you tease and torment your poor Papa so?—
But she doesn’t.
She doesn’t hear him; yet his waistcoat, against which she sometimes rests her cheek, still smells like him, and his old watch in its silver case still bears the smooth spot where his thumb rubbed nervously against it, again and again, during the months he spent in her grandfather’s attic, writing Felix Girard’s Ghosts of Bain Dzak. If she holds the watch long enough in her palm, it grows warm, almost as if it has just emerged from his waistcoat pocket, warmed by his body, not hers.
Petite! Cannot you allow your poor Papa to write his book? Do not pull so on his whiskers! Let Papa work, my dear!