Castle of Water

by Dane Huckelbridge

  Without a doubt, however, the greatest advancement made in their general well-being came courtesy of the Askoy III, the outrigger canoe that Sophie had designed and that they had built together. It proved, in the end, to be an absolute lifesaver.

  Were one to ask, Barry would have readily admitted that he had never been especially successful as a bond salesman at Lehman Brothers. Or even very competent, for that matter. Embarrassingly old to have not made director, he had simply never possessed the gilded élan so common to his cohort when it came to schmoozing with clients or sealing big deals. In matters of negotiation, he had been timid and guileless. And as far as making huge sums of money, he was more or less indifferent to that as well. After all, the oil paints and secondhand art books that filled his apartment were relatively cheap, and admission to the Met was donation only. Looking back on it, he was amazed that he’d lasted as long as he had. He and his boss had briefly been on the football team together at Princeton, not to mention in the same eating club, and Barry suspected that was the only reason he’d kept him around. Perhaps if the fateful Gauguin exhibition that shunted his course had come a decade sooner, things would have been different. But alas, that was not the case, and he had spent twelve lackluster years pitching financial products at a New York investment bank.

  As a fisherman, however, Barry excelled. Tiller in hand, net at the ready, he felt inexplicably at home. The crisp snap of the sails catching the wind was an exalted sound; the weighty thump of a full net on the hull was practically music to his ears. The Askoy III felt from the get-go like an extension of himself, and he plied the waters around their island with the same joy and grace he had known previously only when seated before his easel. Naturally, the net technique took a little practice, but not much. And within only a few days of trial and error, he was able to re-create a scene as old as time: a lean, wolfish man, sun cured and squinting, standing astride the prow of his boat and casting his net to harvest the sea.

  By his doing so, what had been an elusive delicacy became instead a nourishing staple. And hunger, the agony that had consumed their existence, quickly became a thing of the past. Suddenly, there was charbroiled parrot fish with banana kebabs. Raw paddletail with bananas in coconut milk. Mahi-mahi baked in banana leaves. Tern-egg omelets stuffed with black jack and bananas. Goatfish sashimi sprinkled with banana paste and sea salt. Barry caught them, Sophie cleaned them, and they cooked them together. Bananas may have still composed the bulk of their diet, but rare was the day when there wasn’t a healthy portion of poisson du jour to go along with them. Sophie even used a few slender slats of ‘ohe bamboo to carve them some chopsticks, and were an outsider to ever actually set foot on their island at just the right moment, they would have found the two of them chatting and digging into a bowl of fresh-caught sushi as casually as if in a sake bar on St. Marks Place.

  The effects of all that nutrition became immediately apparent. The exhaustion they had known since their arrival was replaced by a renewed sense of vigor. Their emaciated bodies regained proportions and muscle tone that bordered on normality. Their swollen gums and sour stomachs ceased to be the bane of their days. Barry’s sunken cheeks lost their hollows, Sophie’s whittled hips regained their womanly shape—they started to feel human again, less like the walking dead and more like the sentient, wholehearted beings they once had been.

  And it didn’t stop there. Far from it, their restored health ushered in a whole series of improvements. With the search for food no longer a constant distraction, both Barry and Sophie began to employ the miniature set of stainless-steel scissors from the first-aid kit for grooming. His beard was trimmed to a length of passable civility, and her hair ceased to drop past her behind (although despite Barry’s good-natured chiding about Frenchwomen, Sophie steadfastly refused to do anything about her armpits). With less hair and more exposed body area, bathing became a regular occurrence, with the two of them soaping up in coconut lather each time it rained. And with skin that was suddenly borderline clean, their filthy loincloths—pieced together from the very last vestiges of boxers and cutoffs—were no longer acceptable and soon replaced by two crisp, laundered codpieces fashioned by Sophie from rope and a single Charles Tyrwhitt dress shirtsleeve. Over the course of just a few months, two exceptionally decrepit individuals who very readily could have been mistaken for Lower East Side junkies on the verge of death were replaced by a couple who very easily could have passed for tanned Parisian bobos on some peculiar form of nudist holiday.

  Not that it was all rose-colored glasses, however. Life on the island may have lost its darkest tints, but it had hardly become la vie en rose. Still, no distant ships steamed across the horizon; no contrails made chalk lines across the blue slate of the sky. And as mentioned, when it came to those nearby maritime transmissions, there was nothing but an endless stream of radio silence. Barry and Sophie did their best to hide it, but they shared a common fear that the rescue they had been waiting for might never come. The facts were bare and unavoidable—no trace of humankind had done so much as skirt their purview on the island, let alone drop by to whisk them away. And even if that coveted ocean freighter or 747 was to glint from afar in all that turquoise and sunlight, what would it take to get their attention? After all, Barry had fired every last one of their flares into the air when he saw the ships, and look how much good that had done. Their only realistic hope of salvation, it seemed, was that someone—some moneyed adventurer, some eccentric ornithologist, some curious cartographer—might land on their beach and discover them there. That, or the shipping lane, or whatever it was, might suddenly fill with boats again and jump back to life. The months, however, had taken on the sickening proportions of years, and the deliverance their souls screamed for simply did not appear.

  Naturally, the fresh presence of the Askoy III did encourage talk around the campfire about the possibility of escape. Not simply waiting around for ships, as Sophie had suggested in the cave, but actually going out there and finding an inhabited island. It was a boat, after all, and although small, it could hold two people and harness the wind. But any hope or promise its mobility offered was quickly tempered with a hard dose of reality. Sailors and a few astronauts aside, the true proportions of the ocean are incomprehensible to most people; its breadth and depth are abstract at best. As denizens of the island, however, both Barry and Sophie had received a harsh lesson in its proper dimensions; they understood its elemental vastness. And in different ways and at different times, they had both opted against the idea of suicide. Without any knowledge of where they were or where they might be going, venturing blindly into its blue yonder in search of new lands seemed precisely that: suicidal. At least on their island there was food to eat, water to drink, earth beneath their feet, and a place to bear witness to their fate. In short, there was something. Out there in the ocean there was … nothing. And “nothing,” in their condition, had become synonymous with death—the same black cloud that had swallowed their Cessna, the same shapeless horror that had consumed Étienne. They may have argued at length about every single other thing over the course of their relationship, but on this point they were in reluctant agreement. For better or worse, that island was their home. If salvation was to come, it would be most likely to find them there.

  And so … patience. Barry fished and painted, Sophie carved and designed, and together, when there was nothing but time to kill, they built overly elaborate sand castles, went for long afternoon swims, played a crude form of Stone Age pétanque, and even tried baseball—Barry taught her the basics with a driftwood bat and tight ball of rags, and Sophie, oddly enough, enjoyed it, laughing before each pitch when Barry told her to “put a little mustard on it.” The fact that they loved each other ceased to be an improbable oddity and instead became as natural and reliable as the rains. And just like the rains—the heaven-sent water that filled their two rock cisterns—it was very much what kept them alive. Although it was never spoken, there was a mutual understanding that without the other, n
either would have survived alone on the island. Their relationship was the bulb that burned on in the darkness; their love was the rigging that kept the sails intact. And they didn’t need a preacher or a priest or an until death do us part to place benediction upon that which was abundantly clear.

  34

  They had just made love the first time it happened. It started like this: Sophie was resting her head on Barry’s panting chest, stroking his arm, when she mentioned, all rather casually, that she wished they could have met each other like normal people. Somewhere else, someplace far away.

  “Like where, for example?” Barry asked with a tired chuckle. “Lisbon? Eating octopus salad?”

  “No, not Lisbon, although we would definitely go there someday.”

  “We would?”

  “Yes. I would take you to the Alfama and we would drink ginjinha together and listen to fado music.”

  “What’s ginjinha again?”

  “It’s the sweet liqueur made from sour cherries.”

  “And what’s fado music?”

  “It’s the songs that the women sing when their men are out at sea. They’re full of sadness and longing.”

  “I think the last thing I’d want to hear is a song about sadness and longing, or being lost out at sea.”

  “No, they’re beautiful. You would love it.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. But where would we meet, if Lisbon’s out of the question?”

  “Paris. We would meet there.”

  “Why Paris?”

  “Why not? You Americans always think it’s a romantic city. Why not Paris?”

  “You don’t think it’s romantic?”

  “I don’t know. It is a city, like any city. It has good and bad. But that’s where we would meet.”

  “All right, Paris it is. And how do we meet?”

  “Well, you would be visiting of course. You’d come for just a few months to work on your paintings. You’d rent a little studio in the tenth that doubled as your apartment.”

  “Where exactly in the tenth? I’ll need to arrange this with my travel agent.”

  “Rue du Château d’Eau. I used to walk down it on my way to work. I think that street would be good for a painter. Most people think it’s ugly, but there was something I always liked about it. It had character and charm. Something unique.”

  “You mean a certain je ne sais quoi?”

  “We never say that, you know. And while we’re on the topic, we never say c’est la vie, either, so you might want to stop. You don’t sound French, you just sound ridiculous.”

  “Okay, sorry. Continue.”

  “So yes, you’d live on Château d’Eau.”

  “Castle of Water?”

  “No. Well, literally, it means ‘Castle of Water,’ but it also can mean a water tower.”

  “I think I like ‘Castle of Water’ better. It has a little more romance to it than ‘Water Tower.’”

  “Well, you can call it that if you like.”

  “I will. And what would I do on this Castle of Water Street?”

  “You would stay in your little apartment and have breakfast at the café on the corner in the morning and work on your canvases in the afternoon. You would have a few affairs with other artist girls you meet there, but nothing would come of it. Just casual, you know?”

  “Sounds very bohemian.”

  “Oh, yes. Very bohemian. That’s why you’d live on Château d’Eau. You’re like me, you would know it’s mal entretenue, but you would find great beauty in it.”

  “I can see that. But when would you come into the picture?”

  “Be patient, I’m getting there.”

  “All right, then, go on.”

  “Alors. One night you would be waiting to meet one of your little cocottes, at a café down the street called Chez Suzette. Only she wouldn’t show up, because she’d become very ill.”

  “What kind of illness?”

  “Oh, some form of hemorrhagic fever, something nasty.”

  “And I’m there all alone?”

  “Oui, you’d be drinking a glass of beer all alone. But you’d notice a girl across the room, sharing a bottle of wine with her friends.”

  “Would she be pretty?”

  “Mais oui, une beauté incroyable. She would be wearing a blue dress from a little thrift shop and red Yves Saint Laurent lipstick, and you would love her smile. You’d want to go talk to her.”

  “What would I say?”

  “Nothing, because you’d be trop timide. You’d just watch her, trying to work up the nerve, but you wouldn’t be able to. You’d hope she’d look your way and invite you with her eyes, but she would not, because she’d be in love with the bartender Antoine, and she would be staring at him.”

  “Well, that would stink.”

  “Yes, it would. You’d watch when she gets up to speak with him, and you’d see her kiss him on the cheek, and you’d decide not to talk to her, because she’s obviously in love with him.”

  “This doesn’t sound like much of a meeting.”

  “Oh, it wouldn’t be. You wouldn’t meet her this night. You’d only see her for the first time. You’d finish your beer and walk out the door, and you’d go home, a little upset.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Yes. But you would be so filled with passion, you’d decide to make a painting of her from your memory. And you would stay up all night, painting with your shirt off, with the moon coming in through your window, and you wouldn’t stop until dawn and then you’d look at it and decide it looked just like her.”

  “With my shirt off, huh? How would my muscles be?”

  “They’d be okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “Come on, it’s not what matters. It’s your art.”

  “So I’d be a talented artist?”

  “Yes, of course, although you wouldn’t know it yet. You still wouldn’t be sure what you are.”

  “Fine. So I’d have this painting.”

  “Yes. But after you finish it, you’d be disgusted with yourself, and upset that you wasted so much time on it, because you wouldn’t think you would ever see her again. So you’d hide it in the bathroom behind the toilet, and you’d go to bed. And you would try to forget about this girl you had seen, and you wouldn’t think about her anymore. And you’d go back to your routine, you know, you’d eat your lunches at a little Turkish soup restaurant on Saint-Denis to save money, you’d smoke cigarettes out your window and knock the ashes into a flower-pot, you’d walk around the city to decide what to paint. But two weeks later, you would see her again at the same café. Only this time she would not smile at the bartender Antoine and give him kisses on the cheek, because he broke her heart.”

  “How would he have done that?”

  “He slept with her, of course. But afterwards, he would have ignored her. Like a typical French guy. She would be very upset, but Chez Suzette is her friends’ favorite café, and the best in the quartier, so she would have to go back. And that is when you would talk to her.”

  “I’d walk up to her this time?”

  “No, of course not. You are an American, Americans wouldn’t do such things. What would happen is that you would go to the toilet, but you wouldn’t be able to find out how to use the sink. It would be different than American sinks, and would use a foot pedal to start the water. But you wouldn’t understand it, and you’d have soap all over your hands and you wouldn’t be able to wash it off. So you’d walk out of the bathroom and ask the first person you see how the sink works.”

  “And that person would be her?”

  “No, that person would be her friend. We can call her Berenice. But you’d start to talk to Berenice, and she’d think you are rather nice, even for an American, and she would know that her friend is unhappy about what happened with Antoine, so she would invite you to come join them. And you would.”

  “And this girl would finally fall for me?”

  “No, pas de tout. Not at first, anyway. Bu
t your little accent when you speak your terrible French would be rather cute, and you’d be different than the Parisian men she is used to with their ridiculous scarves and leather jackets and their macho bullshit, and she would decide to talk to you. You’d still be too shy to ask her to do something with you alone, so you’d invite her and her two friends to come over the next night for une petite fête. But you wouldn’t realize that fête means ‘party’ because your French wouldn’t be that good. You’d think it is more like a small gathering of friends. So when the girls come, they’d be disappointed. They would have been expecting a cool party full of handsome men and loud music, and instead it would be just you with a cheap bottle of wine.”

  “Sounds pretty bad.”

  “That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that you’d serve them salade niçoise from a can. This girl is from the south, where they take cuisine very seriously, and one simply does not do such things. After that she would decide she cannot stay any longer and that it was a mistake to come. But because of all the cheap wine you gave her, she would have to pee very badly. So she’d ask if she can use your bathroom before she leaves, and when she’d go in, she would see the painting behind the toilet. She would know instantly that it was her, and she would start to cry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because no one had ever done such a thing for her. Not once in her life. And because she would feel badly for the way she had been treating you. And that is when she would decide that she is going to kiss you.”

  “So she’d go straight out and kiss me?”

  “No, she would wait until her friends leave, then she would go with you to the market downstairs, and she would get the ingredients to make you a proper salade niçoise, not this American can nonsense. And then, after dinner when you are walking her home, she would pull you under the Saint-Denis arch and then she would kiss you at last.”

  “And I’d be a good kisser?”

  “Yes, she’d be surprised. You’re actually pretty good.”

  “Well, merci.”