Is it the deadness of this unconvected watermass, an oxygen-starved twitch of apprehensive herring-brains? Are they deceived as their dorsal lines shudder at the pressure pulse that presses from the chasm’s ill-defined sides? The watermass seems suddenly to shunt itself upward. Surely they have already passed that particular band of sediment? A weirdly deferred rumble succeeds the water-shudder, growing, building, shaking the eyeballs in their sockets. Stunned cannibals gather their wits and reorientate; the creature is still sinking, its tendrils speeding past them. Oddly, they can see it more clearly now, etched against a thinning of the sea-floor’s darkness, a glow punctuated by flashes of light, as of objects puncturing the surface and sunlight catching the splashes. Small chunks of cliffside are coming loose and impacting on something down there—they are traveling with a few lumps themselves—but what exactly? The water is growing absolute, airless, utterly liquid, and they should turn back, ascend, get out. They continue, blood thickening, organs pumping, the light seeming to pulse as the pressure inside them swells. The creature is plunging on and the flashes now appear to them as eyes, hundreds upon hundreds, all opening and closing. The water has a fist around them, and up is no longer possible. There is a burst of brightness as the creature crashes through, and they are following hopelessly, knowing now that this was an error as they dive on after. Absolute water is a mouth closing over their gills in the lightless fathoms; absolute air signals choking in the sky’s high brightness above—or below; the two are confused. They have arrived at both and found them hinged together like jaws. The creature sits motionless, still mysterious, booming dully as they flop and drown about it and the city creeps over the curve of their lidless eyes. The Water-man gathers himself above, hangs there. The rope that spears him through the midriff jerks and straightens, seeming to slice him in two. He dangles and shivers as the creature tips, then begins to rise.
The rope quickened its slither over the side, then stopped as suddenly. Bernardo hitched the remainder securely about the oarlock and settled back to wait for the next signal. Salvestro had reached the bottom.
More times than he cared to remember he had fallen asleep to the sound of his companion’s voice telling him of this city beneath the sea. It had soothed the blacknesses of mood that would overtake him and goad him and that he could not marshal. Even unseen this sea had dissolved his frustrations a hundred times before now. Sitting about the low campfires with the black rocks tumbling in his brain, he listened, and Salvestro’s voice would reorder his thoughts and lead them toward dulling sleep. The urge was a hunger he could soothe but never satisfy. Never remember satisfying, at any rate. Even after Prato. “This will be good,” his companion had told him as they stood on the boggy foreshore and looked across the Achter-Wasser to Usedom. He had nodded, for as someone had once told him, a starving man will eat coal.
Lazy troughs spread themselves in shallow basins about the gently rocking boat. Waves curled and relapsed. He was alone. Bernardo busied himself with recoiling the little that remained of the rope. Only minutes before, Salvestro had plunged overboard and sunk beneath the waters’ crawling surface. It seemed like hours. Years. Another age, already the day he would remember as the “the day when …” Too distant. He began uncoiling the rope, then sat in the center of the boat, the boat itself surrounded by sea: a pointless speck in the expanse of gray. The signal line tautened and slackened with the boat’s motions. Pull, he silently urged his sunken partner. He felt very faintly sick, from the boat or hunger he could not tell. Possibly Salvestro had drifted directly to the richest of the promised temples. He would be counting the treasure they would raise. Estimating weights and loads, like their rehearsals in the pond. Organizing matters properly. That was still possible. But it was growing less and less possible with the passing minutes. Salvestro had discussed the matter of air with him; he had forgotten the exact nature of the problem. Not enough, perhaps. And balance, another problem. He had liked the rowing and that was good, and the launch, too, apart from the bump; but the line remained still and he wished Salvestro were here to make this particular decision that the minutes were pressing upon him, for he did not like it and gave the water about the boat a great roar of frustration.
Bernardo reached across and gave the line several fretful tugs. It came free with the last. Or snapped, perhaps. Most probably it snapped. He was too big and too stupid. His caresses too often became assaults. Necks could snap like candles. He began to sniff and sob a little. Salvestro was a certain bastard, but without him he was hesitant and unsure what to do. There should have been a signal. He had been promised signals. Perhaps it was not too late. He moved to brace himself crosswise between the oarlocks. He untied the rope, took hold of the free end, and heaved. Somewhere below, down the black fathoms and through the waters’ dragging bulk, he felt the weight of the barrel and its occupant rise off the bottom as they began their passage to the surface. The fog was almost lifted now. Hand over hand, Bernardo hauled in the stiff wet rope and sweated in the wintry sunlight.
His labor found a rhythm, a capable one two, one two, counted out in a mutter as the barrel’s weight grew more definite somewhere in the water below him. He heard first of all some irregular shouts, some splashes, on the shoreward side, but intent on his task, he accepted these sounds with the quiet sloppings and wave-slaps and went on with his efforts. The sounds grew sharper, impinging more urgently. One two, one two, thought Bernardo. Then a barked command, louder, breaking the set of his concentration. “Wait!”
He brought up his head, his hands frozen about the rope, and he saw them streaming down to the waterline in a long scurrying line. Gray-robed figures were scrambling down by the side of the cliff. Monks. They were shouting to one another, and several had already reached something he had earlier registered as driftwood; it looked like a bird nest built from logs. They were climbing aboard, one, the one who had shouted for them to wait, now struggling past his fellows to order some of them off and marshal the remainder with, what, they looked like paddles. Yes, paddles, most definitely, as a curtain of spray was raised and the raft lurched out from the shore. The monks aboard—ten, perhaps twelve—were vigorous but inexpert. Their raft wallowed and veered about wildly. The shouting monk yelled and waved his arms. His paddlers moderated their strokes. Bernardo watched openmouthed as the strange craft lunged one way, then the other, up the coast, down the coast, back toward the cliff, but more and more toward himself. The rope began to slip through his fingers; the barrel was sinking back. Bernardo looked down into the water, then up at the monks, and recalled himself to his task. One two, one two… The shouting distracted him, his long arms jerked at the rope, and the barrel seemed to shift position as the boat swung about. He grew frustrated and apprehensive. The monks were gaining some semblance of control over their vessel, and its course seemed set on collision. Bernardo yanked and heaved, the weight growing more definite by the second. More focused. His companion would be directly below him now. He breathed deeply, trying to shut out the commotion heading toward him. One two, one two … Thunk!
Bernardo leapt to his feet and the boat tilted violently. The top of the barrel had surfaced under the boat’s curving side, knocking against the strakes. He fell back, then cinched the rope and advanced more gingerly, peering over the side and seeing their craft turning freely in the water. He manhandled the barrel about until the spy-hole was uppermost. Water topped with a yellow froth slopped against the glass, then a white shape rose out of the barrel’s interior darkness: eyes, an open mouth. Bernardo pressed his nose to the glass and watched as the face sank back beneath the liquid. He shouted again, then hammered with his fists.
“Ho there!” reached him across the water. He shut it out. Think, he told himself, then lunged for the barrel, and the boat tipped, hovered for a second between capsizement and relapse, fell back. Balance, he told himself, and braced himself once again to heave on the rope. But the barrel was wedged firmly under the angle of the side.
“Ho! Ahoy the
re!” Again. He ignored it, straining at his impossible task, thinking of the bloodless and slack-jawed face, the watery confines, Salvestro drowned or drowning. But the barrel would not rise, he knew it already, and the boat would not hold him as he plucked it from the sea, and so he bellowed at the water, at the sky, at the monks, and kicked at the bottom. At the filthy island. The raft was almost on him. Rage and frustration hurled stones in his head. He stood upright as the monks paddled up. Ten. He flexed his fingers. His own familiar anger, closer now, closer, all ten of them as their captain started waving and pointing at the barrel, just a few more feet before he might jump the gap between them; he tensed, steadied himself.
“… grasp the end! Do it, you lumpish dolt!” The command stalled him. The raft collided with a clatter of waving paddles, and the shouting monk was shouting at him and pointing to the barrel that knocked and rolled between their vessels. He bent down, still uncomprehending, quite overtaken by the turn of events. Other monks were reaching down, and then he understood. Hands, thin and white from the raft, huge and red from the boat, grasped either side of the barrel, heaved it up, Bernardo thrust forward and the monks fell back, the tun rolling over the deck of the raft, where other hands fell to cutting away the leather and smashing in the lid. Greenish, evil-smelling water topped with a yellow scum spilled over the deck. An arm fell out, the back of a head.
“Salvestro!” Bernardo jumped the gap between the vessels. The whole raft tipped beneath his weight, he almost fell.
“Silence!” the monk’s leader barked, then turned to his companions. “Walter! Willy! Hold the drowned rat by his ankles. Higher, good. Now, Brother Gundolf, punch him in the stomach.”
A monk stepped forward and began to pummel the lifeless body. The others clustered around. Ignored, Bernardo felt his rage replaced by apprehension. This had happened before; now it had happened again. He was alone amongst strangers with no one and nothing for company but the aftermath of a disaster. It was not his fault. Salvestro had gone and left him here and died. The bastard. What was he supposed to do now? They were going to be rich and live like princes. Like kings. He was exceedingly hungry, tired in his head, and he would like to simply curl up and sleep and awake to find himself far away from here. Home, wherever that was. He had been promised. Bernardo felt the raft yaw under his feet, watched the gray habits move about its deck, heard the monk’s fists thud against unfeeling flesh, and sniveled into his sleeve.
The corpse shuddered. Bernardo’s head came up. The corpse vented seawater, bile, fragments of half-digested herring, coughed, then puked, spattering the monks, who lowered him quickly to the deck. Bernardo shoved aside the nearest and knelt on the deck by his heaving, choking companion.
“Alive!” Bernardo shouted at the expressionless faces looking down on them both. “Did you find it?” he hissed. “Tell me, whisper it in my ear. …” The shouting monk was standing over them.
“Are you Niklot, son of the witch who once practiced abominations on this island and gutted fish for Brüggeman, was tried by water, and perished?” he demanded of the figure groaning on the deck.
“He is called Salvestro,” Bernardo said, but the monk ignored him.
“Are you?” he asked more sharply.
“I am,” managed the body on the deck. “Or was.” He looked up at his interrogator and saw a thin, ageless face topped with a mat of blond hair. The man might be thirty or fifty.
Bernardo looked blankly from one to the other. The monk turned away to shout orders at his brothers, and Bernardo bent his head closer.
“Whisper it now,” he whispered, and pressed his ear to his companion’s lips. “Tell me what you found.” His companion gasped for breath and let loose an acrid belch, then a great convulsion seized him. He puked, heavily, finally, the last of his stomach emptying itself down the side of Bernardo’s face.
“Nothing,” he spluttered.”! found nothing.”
They expected more. He saw it in their faces, in the ebbing flush of excitement, the strain of mere exertion, as Gundolf, Reinhard, Harald, and the others dug their paddles into slack water and propelled the raft to shore. He ordered the giant and heathen into their own vessel and towed it off the stern, where it dragged and rolled. The heathen seemed to have recovered well enough, lying back with one elbow propped insolently on the wales. The giant appeared inconsolable, staring down at his feet and muttering to himself. A boat, two vagabonds, and a barrel of seawater: not much of a catch to the innocent eye. He felt his own heart jerk and shudder at their prize.
Paddles plashed to either side of him, and the rotting ropes below the deck’s planking chafed against the logs. Jörg’s eye wandered over the ruin of the church, down the cliff to its foot. There was Gerhardt, flanked by the remainder of the brothers. They were drawn up along the waterline, still sentinels in gray, the island’s defenders. Only a little farther now. He glanced back at the boat lolling in their wake and the men within it. The giant seemed quieted.
Ashore, Jörg directed Florian and Matthias to clean and clothe their guests. Gerhardt was speaking with his back to him. A group of brothers was listening. The raft and boat were made fast, and then he moved quickly to scale the slope. Gerhardt blocked his path.
“I would have words with you, Father. …”
But Gerhardt’s words were chains, weights, sapping loads. He was too close for distractions, for Gerhardt’s sour face and his pique at losing the captaincy of the raft, and he muttered, “Not now, not now,” pushing past the man and hearing an answering mutter start up behind him as he strode up the side of the point. The prize needed to be better, and would be if he could only impel them to grasp it, to leap over their fears and reach it. They were close, but still too far. Brother HansJürgen was waiting for him in the cloister.
“Take our guests to the beet loft,” he told the monk. “Give them straw and a slop bucket. They may take their meals there. Bring the one calling himself Salvestro to me before Vespers.”
More monks appeared, then the paddlers, breathing heavily from their exertions and the steepness of the ascent, and last of all Brothers Florian and Matthias with the giant and his companion. HansJürgen followed as they were led to the well and watched as they stripped to have buckets of water poured over their heads. Naked, the giant looked if anything even bigger than before. His companion was rather puny. HansJürgen found it difficult to connect him with the islanders’ ill-defined fears. What had these vagabonds hoped for? What had they sought out there, beneath the sea’s opaque surface? He waited as they dried themselves and dressed, then led them through the cloister, past the dorter to a stone lean-to tacked onto the back of the kitchens..
The beet loft was wider than it was deep and higher than it was wide, perhaps twice the height of a man. Lines of lathes on which the beets had once rested were set into the back wall, pointing out horizontally and rising in cobwebby shelves up the back wall. Three kinds of confusion—momentary, resigned, fundamental—peered through the door, for between it and the lathe-ends there was barely room to stand.
“You will stay here,” HansJürgen told the two men. “You will be brought straw and food later. You may remove these sticks as you see fit.”
Sounds of hesitant, then determined destruction followed him as he walked back through the cloister.
Once Bernardo had removed the last of the lathes the two men entered and sat down. The beet loft smelled of dry rot and long-abandoned chicken coops. Gloom descended.
“Nothing!” Bernardo burst out after a minute’s silence. “How could there be nothing?”
Salvestro looked up absently. “Not nothing,” he murmured to himself.
“What, then?” demanded the other.
Salvestro did not reply. They could sell the rope, he calculated. The market at Stettin was held on a Saturday, or had been when last he heard. Today was Sunday. Ewald’s boat would have to be returned and Bernardo’s other boot fetched from the drying-shed. Barns, woodsheds, caves, stables, scrapes, and bivouacs; in t
he forest beneath the boughs of the trees, the open sky. Now a beet loft. All the miles since Prato had fetched them up on a packed-earth floor with a view through the open door of a pile of sticks and a flat muddy field. Little enough. But down there, in the blackness and the disorder of his wits … Something. He had pulled back. He fingered the bump on the back of his head, which began once more to throb. Seated opposite him, Bernardo shifted on one buttock to release a long-withheld fart. Salvestro looked over at his companion, who prodded the ground aimlessly with his finger and would not look back.
“There is a market quite near here. We’ll be able to sell the rope, and there’s a good few suppers right there, that’s just for starters.”
Silence.
“Listen, Bernardo. These monks didn’t fish us out just to throw us back in. They probably need a couple of fellows like us about the place. We can winter here as well as anywhere, and in the spring—”
“I don’t like it here,” Bernardo said abruptly. “I didn’t like it when we arrived and I don’t like it now.” He paused and thought. “It’s a shit hole.”
“It may be a shit hole, Bernardo, but it’s a shit hole with a roof, with walls. …”
“That fish shed was a shit hole, too. I don’t care if you were born there or not. This island’s a shit hole, and that dump we stopped in on the mainland before we got here, now that was a real shit hole. …”
The Pop’s Rhinoceros Page 10