by John Barth
Part of every day he spends out on that windy headland, before the abandoned buildings, reading and rereading Don Quixote. Formerly he marveled at how accurately, in Part One, “Hamete Benengeli” recorded his and Sancho’s early adventures. Upon first reading Part Two, he is enchanted by how skillfully, from the Montesinos incident on, this Miguel de Cervantes spins out a convincing alternative to the truth: as if he really had been hoisted out of that cave and gone on with that story. So seamless is the transition from history to fiction, so persuasive the narrative, that those later adventures of “Don Quixote,” ending in his death in La Man-cha, come to seem to him the real story, far more plausible than what has actually happened since Chapter XXII. Indeed, after several re readings, Part One also strikes him as a splendid and amusing fiction; he reads it neither more nor less spellbound than any other late-middle-aged reader—and identifies neither more nor less with its hero.
He does not want for money. Though the enchantment that once virtually exempted him from hunger and thirst seems to have worn off like his old romance with chivalric novels, his material needs are small, and the reales (which he has deposited in the Bank of Portugal) patiently accrue. He stares mesmerized out to sea and rereads Don Quixote. How much time passes? The ships rounding the Cape change design, as do the costumes and vehicles of sightseers out on the headland and, to a much lesser extent, those of the fishermen.
One afternoon a lean and beardless young fellow, whom he has lately often noticed alone out there like himself—reading, writing in a notebook, running the footpaths for exercise—salutes him in heavily accented Portuguese and remarks amiably that he looks rather like the hero of that novel he’s always reading, which the fellow declares to be his own favorite in the world. Don Quixote does not immediately reply that in a sense he is the story’s hero; like many another solitary, however, once the conversation has begun (and they have shifted to Spanish, with which both are easier than with Portuguese), he finds himself telling his whole story, just as Peter Sagamore will one day set it down.
So you’re Don Quixote, the chap marvels—merrily, but not sarcastically. ¡Well met, amigo! He too, he declares, has strayed improbably to Portugal out of a great novel, as it were: one with which his celebrated new acquaintance may be unfamiliar. Having put his native village behind him and rafted chapter after chapter down a certain North American waterway, at a certain pass he lit out for the Territory, so to speak, rather than return to his starting place at the voyage’s end. Thereafter he sharply missed those downstream days and nights, which came paradoxically to seem to him an island in the flow of time, rather than time’s flow itself. Inspired by the memory of them—and by the images of such other wayfarers as Odysseus and Don Quixote, he embarked upon a voyage far more erratic and uncertain than his first: a voyage which, for reasons he himself has yet to discover, has fetched him here to Saint Vincent’s Cape, where he means to stay until the next leg of his journey is clearer, and the nature of his vessel as well.
As to the former, says Don Quixote, my advice to you is not to wait overlong. At your age especially, if your craft is able, you need only the most general notion of your destination. Weigh anchor, fellow: Test the wind, lay an approximate course, and leave it to your destination to clarify itself as you go along.
The young man replies that that is more or less how he got to Portugal. All he knew when he left America was that he hoped one day to cook up a story as memorable as those of Odysseus, Scheherazade, Don Quixote, or Huckleberry Finn. That ambition led him somehow from the Capes of Virginia to Cape St. Vincent—but he cannot say that he feels any closer to his destination.
Don Quixote professes himself no great hand at allegory, but believes he understands: as if, enthralled by the novels of knight-errantry, he himself had set out, not to be a knight-errant, but to write a great novel of knight-errantry. He does not know this Scheherazade (though her name sounds Moorish, and he yields to none in his respect for Moorish storytellers) or that oddly named fourth personage, but he shares his new friend’s admiration for great Homer—in particular that part of the Odyssey between the hero’s loss of ship and shipmates and his final landing in Ithaca. In short, his singlehanded voyaging.
The American (he will identify himself no further) agrees that if any part of that splendid story can be called more admirable than the rest, it is that part: the interludes with Calypso and Nausicaa; the encounter with gray-eyed Athene herself on the beach at Ithaca. But what of such other great scenes as Odysseus’s reunion with Penelope?
Don Quixote, however, prefers to talk of seafaring, especially solo seafaring. Over the next days and weeks he searches out the young man’s company nearly every afternoon or evening, and hears from him astonishing stories, which the American swears to be true, of people who have done the very thing that Quixote aspires to do: people who have sailed alone not only across the ocean, but around the globe. He hears of Joshua Slocum in the little boat Spray and Francis Chichester in Gipsy Moth IV, both men in late middle age. On a map such as Quixote has never seen, his friend traces the thirty-seventh parallel of north latitude directly from Cape St. Vincent west to Capes Henry and Charles, the entrance portals to his home waters. That coincidence, the American says, perhaps accounts for his presence in Sagres, though his route to Portugal was by no means so direct; and perhaps it is to those birthwaters he’ll eventually return, when his craft is ready—but not by sailing the thirty-seventh parallel. Admirable as are those literal solo voyagers, he still regards Miguel de Cervantes as the noblest singlehander of them all: he who in the sea battle at Lepanto lost the use of his left arm to the greater glory of his right.
After providing Don Quixote with many more particulars both about the author of Don Quixote (who, like “Alonso Quijano” and the present Don Quixote, came to his best identity late in his career) and about the kinds of sailing vessels best suited for singlehanded passagemaking—as well as about the republic on the far side of the ocean before them, more rich and dangerous these days than Spain in the Siglo de Oro—the American presently bids his elder friend good-bye. It is spring; he has spent a long winter immersed in his four favorite stories, in his own practice, and lately in conversation with his estimable fellow voyager. Now he means to follow Quixote’s advice and move on, he scarcely cares where, with no other Rocinante than his thumb, taking note of everything, before making his solo return to where he came from.
I know now why I came to Sagres, he declares: It was to meet you, on neutral ground.
Saludy suerte, says Don Quixote: success and godspeed, quixotic as your project is. Who knows? Perhaps our paths will recross, maybe even in those waters at the western end of our parallel. It is not often, he declares, that a young man inspires an old. But he is resolved now to equip himself to do what until meeting the American he would scarcely have dreamed possible: aboard some fourth Rocinante, in quest of nothing but the having done it, to sail alone from the old world to the new.
Their handshake turns into a proper abrazo, and then—first apparently from the American’s far-off birthwaters, then as it seems from right inside his narrative head—comes an insistent beeping that the young man realizes he’s been hearing for some time: Beep-beep-beep, beeeep beeeep beeeep, beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep, beeeep beeeep beeeep, beep-beep-beep.
IT’S YOUR FUTURE CALLING.
Peter Sagamore has not written the foregoing sentences. But shamelessly, possessedly, he has logged long notes upon this unfinished possible Don Quixote story all through the sticky morning into the forepart of the afternoon, with scarcely a frontal thought for his other responsibilities until they rouse him from the Don’s abrazo with a Very Very High Frequency Mayday.
Stop here, Dad, his potential daughter calls. Sorry to interrupt.
That’s okay, Stop. It’s okay. What’s up?
I’ve tried to keep my eyes open every blessed minute, she declares, in a tone indistinguishable from Peter’s conscience’s. But I dozed off bac
k there for just a second, and your potential son got his finger on the Abort button.
Dear God, Stop!
Not for both of us; just for himself. He did it while Mom was sort of sobbing down here by the pool and you were up there working on your story. Now he’s cried himself to sleep, but I can feel the machinery starting up.
Ai yi!
Right. Request permission to push the Launch button right this minute, Dad, to try to salvage us both before Go aborts. Over?
PUSH! PUSH! PUSH!
pleads her father: Go, Stop! Oh, Go! And he springs in one bound from Portugal to Key Farm, Wye I. He races from dock to porch; Judge George Talbott is napping in a wicker chair there, white-shirted, necktied, looking dead but comfortable, and doesn’t stir when P crashes past and explodes through living room into kitchen. Nobody home. He tears upstairs, hollering Frank? Lee?
Leah Talbott gets up from typing a formal letter of acceptance, as it happens, to the Commonwealth of Virginia, confirming her earlier telephoned yes to the job down there. (Her Selectric sticks in Wye Island humidity; once she’s on salary, she decides, she’ll buy both a word processor and a food processor.) She steps wondering into the hallway, T-shirted, short-shorted, from her makeshift office. Kath’s delivering and aborting at the same time, Peter explains; I’m pretty sure. Where’s your car keys?
Let me drive you, she says; then Oh my: Frank took the Toyota down to Easton for more electronic stuff, and Cecilia Skinner’s gone marketing in the Dodge ‘cause their Chevy died. Who knows when they’ll be back. . . .
Ai yi yi. Chip’s ten-speed? Nope; Chip’s already back home. Cab from Easton? Too slow getting here, but let’s call one. Shit shit shit.
Not to question your masculine intuitions, Lee Talbott says, but shouldn’t we phone Nopoint Point first, just to make sure?
He does, twice, from the kitchen: Busy. Oy, Lee, I’ve been being such an asshole!
Well. Call your cab, and then try Nopoint Point some more while you’re waiting.
He does, then dials the Easton Hospital: No Sagamores or Sherritts registered. Nopoint Point again: Busy. It’s happening, and he’s not going to be there, and it took a Mayday to wake him up. So why didn’t Hank call? But who knows whether Hank’s home just now, and why should Hank have to call? The beeper goes off again, but this time it’s upstairs—in the bedroom Frank’s using for his office, in fact. Lee explains that it’s the signal Chip and her husband rigged to let them know when there’s company out back at NRR. She’s supposed to stroll over, if it’s not inconvenient, and note what’s coming and going from that driveway.
Peter commands or begs her to ring Nopoint Point until she gets through and to tell Katherine he’s been being a deep-dyed shit but he’s finally on his way. He dashes to the porch (old George is stirring); considers jogging Eastonward (there’s only one road off Wye Island; if he meets Frank Talbott or Cecilia Skinner or the Easton taxi, he’ll turn them around); sprints, finally, as if set off by the insistent beeper, around behind the house, across the long front yard, which as on most waterfront properties is really the backyard, over to the line of woods and the chain-link fence, through which he now sees, hot dog, an idling black Cadillac limousine with, yup, New Jersey plates. He is prepared to scale that fence, pound on the rolled-up windows, and pay (with what?), even threaten (with what?) the driver, if necessary, to fetch him to Nopoint Point. But the bugged gate is wide open. He charges through, realizing among other things, as he sees the driver reach inside his jacket, that he himself is walletless, weaponless, topless, and barefoot, wearing only cutoff jeans and a pukka-shell necklace.
Slow down, Peter Sagamore. Put your hands up; open them, anyhow, and smile as you approach, to show the two men in the backseat plus the driver in front that you’re harmless: a maker of sentences, brief ones at that; a sometime inventor of imaginary personages; an abandoner of your nonfictional dearest friend. As he trots around to the driver’s side—tough-looking hombre, that one, and Peter knows but can’t name the face regarding him through the window behind—the rear door on the far side opens, and big florid-faced sport-shirted cigared Willy Sherritt heaves out of it, grumbling Peter Fucking Sagamore. What can we do for you.
His manner is . . . guarded but not incordial. Peter says Kath’s in labor, Willy. Can you drop what you’re doing and get me to Nopoint Point?
Mm? In Willy’s face, as he mouths his cigar, P sees painfully his brother-in-law’s awareness of our opinion of him. All the same (as a ragged monarch butterfly, en route to Mexico, flitters across the Cadillac’s black roof for no other purpose, just now, than to emphasize this pregnant pause), one large hand on the open door-top, one on the raingutter, Will ducks his head to confer for two sentences with his backseat companion, then says to Peter Cmon around here and opens the front passenger door for him. Our man starts to say, for example, I really appreciate this, Willy: We’re tied up at a friend’s dock here, and Kath went on to your parents’ while I worked on some stuff, and wouldn’t you know it, there was no car available when the time came. But Willy says This is Paul, and to the driver: Paul, this is my brother-in-law, and, irrelevant to this introduction, Peter now realizes who the fellow in the backseat is.
Great-brown-eyed, sallow-faced, blue-jawed, sleek-haired Paul removes his right hand from his presumable pistol but does not shake Peter’s hand, only twitches his eyebrows hello and starts the engine. Take her out, Willy tells him; I’ll get the gate. The amiable other backseater offers his hand over the seatback and says as the car rolls out I guess you and I have never quite met. Porter Baldwin.
Sheepish Peter—Why sheepish, will ask indignant Katherine? Well, the guy was being so amused and civilized; it was like meeting Mephistopheles at last after all the bad notices and finding him a charming fellow. Plus he was so spiffy in his beige linen jacket and his blue forty-dollar shirt and his twenty-dollar club tie and his black mustache and his silver-gray hair, and me begging a favor in my beach-bum drag. It made me feel creepy. Creepish, then, K will insist; not sheepish. Creepish Peter shakes his wife’s first husband’s hand. Willy locks the gate and heaves into the car and tells Paul Go out the way we came in and take Fifty south and I’ll tell you from there. We’ll be back inside of an hour.
Quips Porter “Poonie” Baldwin, Jr., No robbing Paul to pay Peter. He quipped no such thing, Kath will protest, but Peter will swear that that was the fellow’s very quip. And he’s a nice-looking guy; much more attractive in person than in the media.
He never cornholed you with a forest-green Crayola.
Well, that’s true. Anyhow there I was, expecting. Uca Pugnax and U. Pugilator, and okay, they’re villains, but they were anything but villainous, is my point. Cool and relaxed and good-humored and decent about the situation. I felt creepish. So the big moment is at hand, says the first man ever to insert penis into beautiful young Katherine Shorter Sherritt of Talbot County, Maryland, and Vinalhaven, Maine, before he went on to other sexual interests. Congratulations to both of you.
Katherine here spits upon her ex-husband’s congratulations. The Devil is always a charmer, at first.
You get a call? Willy wants to know. P says he got a message. Awfully good of you-all to interrupt your business and taxi me in.
She at the hospital or home? Peter doesn’t really know; acknowledges that his message might be garbled. Smooth Poonie says Why don’t we find out? And to Willy You’d better do the calling. Already they’re off Wye Island, speeding through the green corn and soybeans toward the main highway south. You’re docked at Judge Talbott’s? Poonie mildly asks Peter while Willy punches buttons on a phone he’s fished from somewhere back there. Before our chap can reply, the black Cadillac swooshes and is swooshed by an ice-blue Mercedes going the other way in a powerful hurry with, what was it, two ladies in front? Says Willy What the fuck; that was mine. He punches up a different bunch of buttons and asks Vi, is Molly there? In accents that even from up front Peter hears to be unreconstructed
Eastern Shore black female, it is declared that Miz Sherritt is over to Nopoint Point with Miz Sagamore. Ex-Congressman Baldwin smiles brightly at Peter and at the ceiling of the automobile, now turning onto Route 50 south. His expression does not change when Willy says he’ll be buggered if that wasn’t Molly and Kate in his car, headed where present company’s coming from. He rings Nopoint Point; Olive Treadway confirms that Miss Molly is driving Miss Katherine out to Wye Island to meet Mist Peter. At 60 mph, impassive Paul gives Peter a 150-yard level look. Says blushing Pete My message must have been garbled.
Turn us around, Paul, Willy recommends. Ex-and aspiring Congressman Porter Baldwin, Jr., holds the smooth tan point of his chin between his thumb and two fingertips. Dizzy broads, Will mutters, but it’s pretty clear that in his judgment, dizziness crosses gender lines. Peter admits that his summons to Nopoint Point was more urgent than clear. Poonie observes helpfully that the girls were in an obvious hurry, all right. Maybe they meant to pick Dad up en route to the hospital?
Our party passes the Wye Oak, a national park consisting of a single white oak tree bigger than can readily be believed (Except, adds Kath—if we’re going to sully our Tidewater Tales with tourist-guide stuff—by them as have sat in that town park in Lahaina, Maui, consisting of a single banyan tree even bigger, no?), and zips back through the beans, over the Wye Narrows bridge, and through more commercial agriculture to just within sight of the unlabeled gate of Natural Recycling Research, Inc., where they see the ice-blue Mercedes retracing its way, too. In one fierce motion, impassive Paul hits the brakes and whips the black limo sixty degrees to port, blocking both lanes and putting Peter at the mercy of Molly Barnes Sherritt’s reflexes.