The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  Yeah, Andy knows all that: He’s felt stuff like that, and he guesses Joyce portrays it pretty well. Katherine smiles at that “portrays.” Andrew thinks he caught most of the symbolism, too (Kate’s still smiling—but it turns out that in fact he did. Under her and Peter’s tutelage, Chip Sherritt is a closer reader than any English teacher he’ll likely have till his second year of college). What strikes him as dorky about Joyce’s protagonist is that when he discussed the story with his father just now on the way to Dun Cove—

  You talked about James Joyce’s “Araby” with Dad? Sure I did. Dad and I discuss stuff. Dad’s no dork, Kate. Well of course he’s no dork; but early-modernist lit is hardly Daddy’s long suit. Says bridge-learning Andrew A good player knows how to play his short suits as well as his long ones. Katherine squeezes her brother’s hand—they’re holding hands across the cockpit—and says How old did you say you are? But back to Daddy and dorks.

  Math-minded Henry Sherritt, she learns now, had been less interested in the “Araby” boy’s preadolescent agonies than in the story’s financial transactions, and had set his son the following arithmetical problem: The orphan lad’s uncle in Joyce’s story gives the boy a florin to go to the Dublin bazaar called Araby in pursuit of a love token for the girl with whose image the boy is infatuated. He takes a train across town, reaches the bazaar just before closing time, pays his admission, comes to realize the futility of his errand, and, as “the two pennies fall against the sixpence in his pocket,” experiences an epiphany of humiliation. Now, had asked Henry Sherritt: Given the pre-decimal currency of the time, in which a florin (two shillings) equalled twenty-four pence, and assuming that the boy had no money of his own, and further that his return train-fare would be the same unspecified amount as his fare to Araby: (1) How much was round-trip fare from Dublin’s North Richmond Street to the bazaar and back in 1894, the year of the action? And (2) how much would the boy have had to spend on a gift for “Mangan’s sister” if he hadn’t been unmanned by his excursion into the adult world?

  Holy mother of God, breathes Kate, wishing Peter were here to hear. But Peter has of course windsurfed down to Katydid IV and Off Call to be nice, inasmuch as he is nice, and enjoys his parents-in-law and the Basses. I could never even figure a London restaurant tip till the Brits went decimal. Fifteen percent of four pounds three shillings tuppence! So?

  Says Chip The kid has to pay a shilling to get in, because the sixpenny entrance is closed. That’s a symbol right there, right? The sixpenny entrance must have been the kids’ entrance, and he has to pay the grownups’ price of admission. Anyhow, there goes twelvepence: half his florin. Since he has two pennies and a sixpence left in his pocket, the train fare out must have been fourpence, and if the train fare home is another four, he’s only got fourpence to buy his gift for Mangan’s sister.

  Corrects wowed Kath Not only got fourpence, Chipper: got only fourpence.

  That’s what struck bright-green-eyed Andrew Sherritt as dorky: Even allowing for inflation, what did the kid think he was going to find for fourpence, or even for ten if he hadn’t had to pay the extra admission? Dad said maybe the kid thought his uncle was going to give him more than one florin; but we agreed that a florin’s about right for the time and the occasion and the social class. Anyhow the kid didn’t seem disappointed to get it, and once he had it he should’ve done his arithmetic down the road. Plus we wondered how come the dork didn’t have a penny to his name for such a big-deal errand. We’d just been going over my finances.

  Says smiling K So you and Daddy didn’t think much of the story. I’m not crazy about it myself, but it’s one of Peter’s favorites.

  Says Andrew I’ll appreciate it better when I’m older. Like that first-person narrator remembering an experience that still burns his buns maybe twenty years later, when he’s a grown man. I agree with Pete that the narrative viewpoint is the bottom line of that story.

  You do.

  They speak of other things and not at all, soaking the evening in. P presently glides back in the dark and splashes down with a laugh, less gracefully than his brother-in-law. Your options, he calls to Andy from the water, are to sleep here tonight or sail this thing back now so your folks can quit worrying that you’ll drown in the dark. Sighs Kate You can stay; but Chip digs night windsurfing. He dons his wet T-shirt, joins Peter overside, belts up, scrambles onto the board, hauls mast and sail out of the water, calls good night, grabs the wishbone, and sets off upwind. Katherine keeps his sail in sight with our largest flashlight as he tacks easily back and forth toward Off Call and Katydid IV, lit up for him to steer to. Such a fine moon rises as he draws near that an hour later no lights would have been needed: Even without the binoculars, we can see the two rafted boats in silhouette a quarter-mile off.

  By then—so delicious is the air, the night—K has joined her friend for yet another swim: Only afloat is she free of the weight of her great belly. Hank says that if you’re going to show it to everybody, you should rent the space for advertising, Peter reports, like the Goodyear blimp. The south wind soughs at eight and ten knots through the woods onshore; the water is perfectly comfortable, silky on our skin. There are noctilucae: microscopic algae that phosphoresce with our every motion, sparkling our bodies and the water round about us. There are luminescing jellyfish—untentacled, harmless, magical—glowing like incandescent lemons in our wake as we tickle by. No human life has many such evenings; most, we suppose, have none. Peter marvels duly at the “Araby” dork story. But that moon!

  Proposes Kath We could just sneak out. We’re back aboard now, splitting unequally a split of champagne by way of nightcap (that sip of alcohol won’t hurt you, kids) and listening to one barn owl and two whippoorwills. Sail all night. Give ‘em the slip. Replies her husband Irresponsible. It’s going to be brunch, then, you know, Kate reminds him. Or they’ll board us with chafing dishes. Crepes, melon balls. I can’t stand it.

  Grins he It is a hardship.

  Well, it is, in its tiny way. Why can’t we just sail for a while like that couple in our story, whither the wind listeth, till further notice from downstairs? Our last duetude until apostrophe Ninety-eight?

  Muses Peter Hm. But sighs: Irresponsible.

  We could radio home twice a day, to keep them from worrying. Three times a day. At the teeniest sign of anything, we get on the horn and head for the nearest marina. Rough weather, we scoot for shelter or don’t start out.

  She’s serious. It’s not as if we’re in mid-Atlantic, she points out. Chesapeake Bay, for Christ’s sake: a Mickey Mouse crack in the coastline.

  Hm.

  DAY 1:

  DUN COVE TO DUN COVE

  PYTHON AND CHICKENS.

  In the reptile house of the Berliner Zoologischer Garten, in a glass cage the size of a small room, lived a large python. As Peter Sagamore and Katherine Sherritt watched, a carrot-haired, milky-skinned zoo attendant put into that cage three white leghorn chickens, who flapped and fluttered and fussed for a minute and then clucked and pecked contentedly about the cage floor, separately and together. Flaked down and torpid in a corner, the python paid his guests no apparent heed for a very considerable while. The life of the reptile house went on round about the cage, the life of the zoo and its attendants round about the reptile house, the life of Berlin round about the zoo.

  We watched.

  In time the python leisurely uncoiled and glided forth. The chickens clucked, moved slightly away, and went on with their business, until with surprising swiftness and economy of motion the python seized one of their number. White feathers flew; the cage rang with hen screams: those of the victim, held fast and dying now in the python’s jaws, and those also of its companions, thrashing terrified about the cage. Then only the companions squawked, for the python, with a movement almost too quick to follow, shifted its bite, unhinged its lower jaw, and began the unhurried process of swallowing its prey alive, headfirst. For a full half-minute the other chickens flailed from
corner to corner, beating their wings against the glass walls, alarming themselves further with their own attempts to flee. But before their hapless fellow, feet still twitching, had entirely disappeared from view, they were back to their scratch and peck, their strut and cluck. One of them perched sometimes upon the very back of the python, torpid again now with the great labor of digestion.

  At 0630, Monday, 16 June 1980, a brief thundershower wakes Peter Sagamore: Yesterday’s weather front is still slowly passing through Maryland. Story rocks and rustles but slightly in the associated wind; we’re in the lee of trees on the fork’s west bank. The rain is cozy upon our deck and cabin-top; we closed the forward hatch and companionway slide at bedtime against this forecast possibility, and not enough rain blows back through the companionway proper to require further buttoning up. Snug in the quarterberth, P enjoys light drizzle in his face while the thunder moves off, and reflects upon his vivid, unsettling dream.

  Were you ever in the Berlin Zoo? he asks quietly through the cabin, not to wake Katherine if she happens to be still asleep. Peter himself has never visited that city; is only assuming that it has, in fact, a zoo. His friend replies from the forward V-berth Sure. She’s been awake for a while, listening to the little storm, thinking sober thoughts and wishing Up and At ‘Em wouldn’t start their morning soccer practice before sunup. It’s right by the Tiergarten, off one end of the Kurfürstendamm. Once when the folks and I were touring West Berlin it was just this time of year, but the weather was so cold we had to take shelter in the crocodile house. The only heated room we could find.

  We have lived together too long for her to ask Why do you ask? Over breakfast we share dreams; this morning K can’t quite remember hers, though she remembers having had some. P’s, we agree, was inspired by that item in that ad-lib catalogue of what Whatsername gave birth to in our prologue—where, however, those hens were Plymouth Rocks instead of white leghorns, weren’t they. Anyhow, says K, you dreamed a real dream. That’s a good sign, no?

  We are pleased to take it so to be. Perhaps because he is or has been a professional waking dreamer, so to speak, Peter Sagamore’s night dreams are normally dull stuff indeed. Much of the time they’re scarcely even visual, much less exciting: spelled-out words and punctuation, scanning by as on a trans-lux, or a neutral voice speaking like a proofreader in his skull: Anyhow comma says K comma et cetera. But at anchor aboard Story, particularly on the early nights of a cruise, we both tend to dream more lively and narratively coherent dreams, and to recollect them better, as it is said one does if one decides to record and report them. More anon.

  Gray day, the forecast unpromising: intermittent rain, a raw stiffening northwesterly, chance of further thundershowers. We nibble strawberries, chew croissants, swallow coffee, speak little. Yesterday’s lark seems now to each of us just that; yet the stakes remain as high as they are vague and still incompletely exposed. We don’t know.

  Through white mist rising from Dun Cove, we see Off Call unraft and motor out, doubtless homeward bound. Katydid IV stays put. We do not talk about it, but after breakfast, while Peter on the can reads faute de mieux the U.S. Coast Pilot 3: Atlantic Coast: Sandy Hook to Cape Henry, he hears Katherine say affably to her parents by VHF that she doesn’t care, we’re heading out anyhow for a few days, no destination, whither the wind listeth et cetera over. Says Henry Sherritt Whither the wind listeth today is right back home, Katie. Anyhow upriver, not out to open water.

  Replies Kath Yes, well. But I guess we’ll give it a try, Dad. No trip should begin by going backward.

  Hank requests a word with Peter. K half teases, half bristles: The old man-to-man thing? Her father says Yup. And then to Peter, who has emerged from the head, What exactly are you-all up to? Instead of quite answering, Peter says I guess we’ll try the Narrows, Hank, while the wind’s light and the tide’s with us. If we can’t get through or the weather blows up, we’ll run back and regroup. Otherwise we’ll tuck in behind Poplar Island and call you from there about mid-morning.

  We are a touch surprised at our firmness of purpose, considering. Irma, we suppose, is unhappy, but Henry Sherritt is impressed enough to say merely that he trusts we won’t object to K IV’s standing by at this end till we’ve either shat or got off the pot, excuse him. Says Katherine I object. Says Peter Overruled. Overruled, Hank and Irma agree. Andrew Sherritt comes to Katydid’s microphone and says Hi, Kath; hi, Pete; overruled. Democracy, sighs Katherine; I swear.

  The clear purpose of Knapps Narrows in the universe is to put the screws to our principles and projects; to test whether we’re still serious. How many times already in our narrative have we tried to get through that mile-long cut, here to there or there to here, and failed, or nearly, for want of engine? Okay, Knapps Narrows, here we come again, despite last evening’s prudent weather-amendment: About nine, we suit up in foul-weather gear, secure everything below and on deck, weigh anchor, raise sail under the sodden overcast, and ride out of Dun Cove on a light northwesterly that seems less light already once we’re into the broader waters of Harris Creek. Katydid IV powers out in our wake, Irma and Katherine chatting by radio as busily downstream as they had chatted up. Henry means literally to stand by at the green day-beacons off the east end of the narrows. You’d think we’re setting out for Portugal, Kate complains. Eleven months pregnant, Irma retorts, you shouldn’t set out farther than our swimming pool.

  As Peter has reckoned, we’ll have to short-tack back and forth up the first half-mile of the narrows, to the bridge. Once we’re through it, a single starboard tack should fetch us the remaining half-mile out into the Chesapeake. On any weekend in the boating season, traffic in the channel would make tacking through it unfeasible; on a drizzly Monday there’ll be few or no pleasure craft abroad, and the working watermen will have cleared the narrows hours since. We bet we can do it, bridge-tender willing; then, we promise ourselves, we’ll reconsider what we’re up to.

  But that wind is piping up. At the last minute before committing us to the passage, Peter tucks a reef in the mainsail; Kate calls the bridge-tender as we approach. It is the one we have come to know, the patient one, Howard: He recognizes Story and reminds us, as has become his habit, that he knew Peter’s dad, yes indeedy, Capn Fritz, God bless him, over. We promise to make only one pass this time. No sweat, says Howard as he raises the draw, and nothing coming our way from bayside. He’ll keep the lift open till he’s sure we’ve got a purchase on the wind—Happy phrase, thinks P—and won’t be blown back through. But he warns us that it is right rough out there this morning.

  With the tide’s help, we coast easily through the draw. Peter tucks a second reef in the main, and we strap life jackets clumsily over our slickers. Rain resumes, light but pelting in the wind that whistles now through shrouds and stays as we clear the west end of Knapps Narrows.

  Howard was right: The lee of the land has been uncommonly deceptive. To leave secluded for open water when that water has a bit of a chop on it is always gut-tightening; pleasurably so, as a rule. But today those brown-and-pewter seas—steep, short, breaking—roll under the dirty sky straight at us, rank on rank as far as we can see, which is not far. Loudly into the wind, Kate says Gulp. Pete agrees.

  Our problem is that we must negotiate that narrow channel through shoals on both sides for another half-mile of exposed water before we can turn either up-or downwind: no joke at all in those two-and three-foot seas, with no engine to help us and not another boat in sight.

  We have been foolish.

  This comes clear in five rough minutes of slamming into those waves, each one stalling our forward motion, knocking us to leeward, drenching us with cold salt spray. Katherine says nothing, but is truly frightened, not least by the tight concern in Peter’s face. The kids huddle and cling like a passel of possums or steerage immigrants in a storm. In the first of those minutes, Peter understands that we must retreat; it takes him the other four, of supremely watchful seamanship, to gauge the right moment for co
ming about in a situation that will permit us no second try. Coming about, he calls hopefully when that moment arrives: A puff gives us just enough drive at the crest of one sea to bring Story’s bow through the eye of the wind, so that the next sea slams us the rest of the way around. Steering with his knees, P quickly eases the sheets for our run back into Knapps Narrows. A deft, even masterly bit of skippership, this whole maneuver, in which, however, our skipper takes small satisfaction, so wretched does he feel for having thus exposed us at all. Would he ever have, he wonders, if life in the First Guest Cottage had not so relieved us lately of responsibility for ourselves? He asks Kate to take the tiller now as we swoosh back into the sheltered narrows, our dinghy surfing left and right behind us down the following seas; he radios first Howard and then Hank Sherritt that we’ve packed it in, are heading them-ward. Not to worry, Irm. Do have that draw up, Howard, so’s not to oblige us to kill our headway as we once more balance wind against tide.

  A DELICATE MOMENT IN ANY VENTURE

  Irma won’t, for the present. Howard does. There is the now-familiar moment in the lee of the drawbridge when the tide offers to carry us astern before Story regains a purchase on the wind. Who cares? The spirit’s gone out of our adventure like the fizz from stale champagne. Here wind and water are easy again; the rain stops to congratulate us for coming to our senses, however belatedly. Peter peels out of his life vest and foul-weather top and takes the helm so that Kate can do likewise. Out yonder where Knapps Narrows and Harris Creek conflue into the huge Choptank, Katydid IV rides serenely at anchor. We feel chastened, childish, low.

  Here is a delicate moment in any venture. Mighty tempting now to pack it in altogether, as surely Hank and Irma expect we shall, and go tails between legs back to the First Guest Cottage: to comfort, safety, and unresponsibility except to the imminent offspring. Back to work.