“Look at that sort of olive mist of mountains on the horizon.” Poly leaned out to sea and pointed. “That’s Haiti. Geraldo the Herald Angel says we’re still technically in the Windward Passage, but once we get to Haiti we’ll be in the Caribbean. I’m sort of sorry we aren’t stopping in Haiti.”
“How about being Norsemen today for a change, Simon,” Charles suggested. “There is a theory that they actually got to South America.”
“They got almost everywhere,” Simon said. “May I be Leif Ericson?”
They moved only halfheartedly into their game of Make Believe, and Charles broke out of it to say, “Simon, I went to Pharaoh last night.”
Simon raised his left eyebrow in a commendable imitation of Aunt Leonis.
“In a dream.”
Poly asked with interest, “Was it a regular dream, or a special dream?”
“A special dream.”
Simon asked, “What’s a special dream?”
Charles leaned on the rail and gazed down at the churning marble water. “It’s hard to describe. It’s much more vivid than a regular dream, because it’s much more vivid than real life—I mean, when I go to a place in a special dream I see it much more clearly, I’m much more aware than I am most of the time in everyday life.”
“Do you have special dreams?” Simon asked Poly.
“No. Charles is the only one. The rest of us just dream common garden-variety dreams.”
“Me, too. Except that last night I dreamed that Dr. Eisenstein and I were trying to save the portrait from a horrible dragon, and then Mr. Theo whistled and the dragon turned out to be friendly, like the one at Pharaoh, and Mr. Theo and I rode him up into the sky, and Mr. Theo called him Umar. Charles, please tell me your dream about Pharaoh.”
“It was just the way you described it. In the dream it was very early morning, barely dawn, and Aunt Leonis went into the kitchen to make tea in a dented copper kettle.”
“Did I tell you about the kettle?” Simon demanded.
“I’m not sure. Maybe. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“Anyhow, I’m sure you didn’t describe everything in the kitchen, and I could tell you where each cup and saucer is, each pot and pan. And the way Aunt Leonis was dressed, in an old-fashioned long cotton dress, white, with little blue flowers. Does she have a dress like that?”
“Yes.” Simon nodded uncomfortably.
“You see, Simon, when we were on the wharf in Savannah, waiting to board the Orion, Poly and I saw Aunt Leonis, remember?”
“Yes.”
“And what we see gets recorded in our memory, and most of the time we draw on our memory only in bits and pieces. But when I have a special dream it’s all more complete than I could possibly remember.”
“She didn’t have on the blue and white dress that day.”
Charles sighed. “I know. Well. I saw Aunt Leonis going out to the kitchen. You were still asleep. And she said good morning to the kettle, as though it were an old friend, and she talked to it while she filled it with water and put it on to heat; and she talked to the fire while she built it in the stove—paper and wood and then a couple of chunks of coal.”
“Yes,” Simon corroborated.
“Then, while the water was heating, she went outdoors and spoke to an old tin watering can in the same way, and filled it from an old hose, and then she watered her plants, her camellias and gardenias, only she didn’t call them gardenias—”
“Cape jessamine,” Simon supplied.
“That’s right. And then”—Charles continued to look down at the water, away from Simon and Poly—“then she talked to your mother.”
“You mean in the dream it was before my mother died?”
“No. Your mother was dead. But Aunt Leonis was talking to her.”
Simon did not speak for a long moment. Then he said, “Yes. I know. She does that. I wish I could. Aunt Leonis says she’s so old she’s already partly on the other side, and that’s why she can talk to things, like the kettle, and to people who aren’t here any more, people even longer dead than my mother. She sometimes talks to Niniane.”
“Not to Quentin?”
“I think only Niniane, because they’re somehow specially close. She doesn’t speak about it often, even to me, because she says she knows it makes me uncomfortable, and she’s afraid if anybody else hears about it they’ll think she’s gone dotty from old age. And, she says, maybe she has.”
“Do you think she has?” Poly asked.
“She’s the most sane person I’ve ever met.”
Charles turned from his contemplation of the sea. “Does it make you uncomfortable, my having dreamed about her that way?”
“Yes. But I’m getting used to being uncomfortable.” He tried to laugh.
“Do you mind?”
“No. I don’t understand it, but I don’t mind. And I want you to come to Pharaoh in real life.”
“It couldn’t be any more real. But I want to come.”
“When we all get back from Venezuela, maybe your parents will bring yawl to visit us?”
“Of course they will,” Poly said. “Wild horses couldn’t keep us away. We belong together, Simon. You and I almost drowned together, and now Charles has been to Pharaoh, and that makes us family.”
“I’m glad,” Simon said. “It’s very nice to have a family.”
After lunch Jan ten Zwick, the chief steward, invited them into his cabin, which was at the starboard end of the foyer, between the salon and the starboard cabins. It was not much bigger than Poly’s cabin, but the bunk was higher, and the space underneath was filled with drawers with recessed brass pulls. There was a desk with a portable typewriter, and pictures of Jan’s parents and his younger brothers and sisters. The photograph of the father was much as Jan might look in another twenty years—square-featured, a little heavy, with straw-colored hair, and completely Dutch. The mother, on the other hand, was dark and exotic-looking, though overweight. The children were a mixture of dark and fair.
Poly examined the picture of the children assembled about their mother with interest. “Your mother doesn’t look Dutch.”
“She isn’t.”
“You look Dutch. You look like your father. But your mother looks—well, not Oriental, maybe Indian.”
“She is half Quiztano Indian. Her mother was a Quiztana, my grandmother.”
“From Dragonlake?”
“Yes. They are nowhere else, the Quiztanos.”
Charles said, “That ought to please Dr. Eisenstein. Isn’t she doing an in-depth study of the Quiztanos? You ought to be able to give her a lot of input and feedback and help her finalize her foci.”
Jan looked baffled and Poly giggled, explaining, “He’s just using educationese jargon. Don’t pay any attention. But Dr. Eisenstein probably will want to ask you all kinds of questions.”
“Oh, please, please—” Jan spread out his hands imploringly. “I did not think. I would much rather that Dr. Eisenstein does not ask .questions. It is a matter of time. I have much work to do. And I think she does not understand my people.”
Poly said wryly, “A particularly primitive and savage tribe, didn’t she say? Or was it Dr. Wordsworth?”
“It has to be Dr. Wordsworth,” Simon said. “I’m sure it wasn’t Dr. Eisenstein, not after the way she talked this morning.”
“We won’t say a word, Jan,” Poly promised. “We don’t want anybody bloodsucking you.”
“She does not understand. We are a very old civilization. We have forgotten more than the New World remembers.”
Simon said, “We won’t say anything, we promise. But don’t you want to set her right about things? Dr. Eisenstein is really interested, she really is.”
“There is no point. To people like Dr. Eisenstein and Dr. Wordsworth, different is the same thing as savage.”
“I really don’t think that’s true of Dr. Eisenstein,” Simon started, and gave up.
Jan smiled. “It is all right. I am p
roud of my Quiztano blood.”
Poly asked, “Have you been to Dragonlake?”
“Many times, now.”
“Jan, we’re going to Dragonlake, you know. Would it be possible for us to meet any of your relatives? Am I asking something awful?”
“No, Miss Poly. I know that you are not like the professors. Geraldo tells me how simpático he finds you. If we are at Port of Dragons long enough I will take you to see my many-times-grandfather, Umar Xanai.”
Poly dug her elbow into Simon’s ribs. “What did you say your grandfather’s name is, Jan?”
“Umar Xanai.”
“It’s an—an interesting name.”
“It is part of my name,” Jan said. “I am Jan Umar Xanai ten Zwick. My mother is Umara, after her mother and grandmother. There many Umars and Umaras among the Quiztanos, Polyheemnia.”
“Poly,” she corrected automatically.
“But it is a beautiful name, Poly-heem-nia.” He sounded the syllables lovingly.
“Maybe I’ll like it one day. I don’t like it now. Do you like your name?”
“It is important to me. Jan is the name also of my father and of my grandfather, both seafaring men. As you know, Umar is the name of my grandfather.”
“Jan, do you speak Quiztano?” she asked.
“A little. A few phrases. It is a deep language.”
“How many languages do you speak?”
Charles grinned at Simon. “Here we go again. She’s off.”
Jan answered Poly. “I speak Dutch, Spanish, which of course is necessary in my work, and a reasonable amount of French, German, and English. It is a constant astonishment to me that well-educated Americans, such as travel with us, should be so unproficient in languages, and show no interest in learning them. I understand from Geraldo that you speak excellent Spanish.”
“Well, we lived in Portugal. Simon speaks quite well, too.”
“I speak French better, though,” Simon said.
Jan pointed to his typewriter, on which he was typing out the menu for the following day.
“Why do you do the menus in French?” Poly asked.
“Because the French have the great cuisines. And for my own amusement.” He pointed to the word rognons on the menu for lunch, and gave them a very young grin. “I heard Dr. Eisenstein say that she cannot abide kidneys. Our chef cooks rognons superbly. I wonder if she will know she has eaten kidneys?”
Poly giggled. “Jan, you’re a snob.”
Charles said, “So are you.”
“Okay, probably I am.”—It had to be Jan who was in the cabin with the portrait the day before, she thought. Again she nudged Simon.
Uncomfortably he turned to Jan. “Did you help Cousin Forsyth with the portrait? Getting it into the cabin next to ours and all?”
“Yes. He seems very concerned for it.”
“It’s valuable, I guess.”
“That I quite understand. But it is completely safe on the Orion. No one would trouble it.”
“Well—of course,” Simon said. “I know that. Thank you for letting us come see your room, Jan.”
“Es su casa,” Jan said.
Poly led the way swiftly to the promenade deck. The Smiths and Mr. Theo were stretched out on deck chairs, wrapped in blankets. “I would have thought it would be too windy for them,” Poly muttered, and climbed the steep stairs to the small upper deck with the lifeboats. The captain had showed them how the lifeboats worked, and warned them never to stand in the space between the deck rail and the lifeboats. ‘You could slip and fall into the ocean,’ he cautioned. ‘Always stand by the rail.’
Now Drs. Wordsworth and Eisenstein were briskly walking the small span of deck. Dr. Eisenstein smiled at the children. “This appears to be our only way to exercise, and we have to be careful not to walk into the captain’s laundry.” She indicated a small line on which flapped several snowy handkerchiefs, undershirts, and underpants.
Dr. Wordsworth added, “Fifteen paces each length, and forty paces the full walk from starboard to aft to port. We are trying to walk at least three miles a day.”
“We like to exercise, too,” Poly said politely.
Simon and Charles followed her back down the stairs, through passage and foyer, downstairs again, past the galley, where they waved at the chef, and out onto the deck.
Charles asked, “Why didn’t you come here in the first place?”
“I called my shots all wrong. I thought everybody’d be in the salon or in their cabins. Now we know who was in the cabin with Cousin Forsyth yesterday. It was Jan. And no wonder he was interested when he saw his name on the back of the portrait.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Simon cried. “Why would one of Jan’s names be on the back of the Bolivar portrait?”
“We have to find out.”
“Should I ask Cousin Forsyth?”
“No.” Charles spoke quickly. “If Cousin Forsyth knows, he certainly wasn’t telling Jan yesterday. And he didn’t want Jan poking around the portrait, that’s certain. I wouldn’t ask him if I were you. It’s more than just yesterday, and what we heard. I just—well, don’t say anything to Cousin Forsyth, Simon. I’m not sure exactly why, but I just know you shouldn’t.”
Poly said, “Simon, when Charles knows something—I mean, knows it with his pheromones, sort of, not with his thinking mind, then you have to take whatever it is that Charles knows seriously.”
“I think I would always take Charles seriously anyhow.”
“Simon, you’re so nice.” Poly took his hand in a swift gesture of affection. “You’re too nice for the end of the twentieth century. I worry about you.”
“I’m all right, and I’m not very nice.”
“Umar,” Poly repeated. “Just keep your eyes and ears open. And if there’s anything to report …”
“Oh, I’ll tell you,” Simon said. “The portrait has always been a treasure, a happy treasure, and now I feel kind of funny about it and I don’t like feeling that way. Why on earth should it have one of Jan’s names on it? That makes me feel very peculiar. I wish I could ask Aunt Leonis.”
“Daddy says if there’s an emergency we could use the radio room,” Charles said.
Poly scowled in thought. “This isn’t an emergency. Yet.”
“Anyhow,” Simon said, “we don’t have a telephone. That’s why Cousin Forsyth just arrived instead of calling. The nearest phone is at the filling station a mile down the road. Is it all right if we don’t think about it for a while? Can we be Quentin Phair and Bolivar and his sister again?”
4
A STRANGE GAME OF BRIDGE
By the third day at sea the blankets were put away and the Caribbean sun was warm on winter-white skin. The captain and the officers had changed from winter serge to summer whites, and Jan told the children that in the afternoon the sailors would fill the pool. The ‘pool’ was a large wooden box at the end of the promenade deck; it had a lining of heavy plastic, and would be filled with ocean water by a large hose which lay coiled like a boa constrictor aft of the deck. The pool was hardly big enough for swimming, but Jan said the crew enjoyed splashing about in it when the weather was hot, and the passengers were welcome to use it, too.
The breeze was warm and moist. Dr. Eisenstein and Mrs. Smith still carried sweaters, but Simon, Poly, and Charles went to the Dragon’s Lair dressed for summer. It seemed as though they had been at sea for weeks. They found it no trouble to keep to themselves, mostly in the Dragon’s Lair, leaving the promenade deck for the adults.
“Which I think they actually appreciate,” Poly decided.
“It’s not that I don’t like old people,” Simon replied, “but these aren’t like Aunt Leonis. But then I don’t suppose anybody is like Aunt Leonis.”
Poly leaned against a box of oil-well equipment. “It’s a wonder we aren’t sick and tired of Aunt Leonis. But we aren’t—we love her,” she added swiftly.
Reassured, Simon nodded. The sun was warming and comforting hi
m. He pulled Geraldo’s fisherman’s cap forward to keep the sun off his nose. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” he asked the two O’Keefes.
Charles countered, “What do you want to be?”
“A doctor. I haven’t decided yet whether or not to be a people doctor, or to go into research, to stop heart attacks or cancer from ever happening.”
“Then there’d be something else,” Poly said. “People do die. We have a life span, just like every other organism.”
“It’s supposed to be threescore years and ten,” Simon said.
“Yes. Okay. I understand. You’ll be a good doctor, Simon. I’ll come to you.”
Charles said, “I want to be a kind of people doctor myself.”
“What kind?”
“Well, I don’t want to do research, or to be a psychiatrist, and I don’t think I want to be a philosopher or a priest—”
“Although my godfather is a priest, remember,” Poly said.
Charles continued thoughtfully, as though she hadn’t interrupted. “I want to take care of all of a person—body, mind, and spirit. It will probably mean getting several kinds of degrees, a medical one, and maybe a theological one.”
“I don’t think much of church.” Simon looked dour.
Poly said, “That’s a lovely dream, Charles, but may I remind you how many years of school are involved?”
Charles smiled his slow, bright smile. “Sometimes I’m glad I haven’t inherited Mother’s talent for math. If I counted I might never begin. But it’s what I want to do and I plan to do it.” He spoke with quiet conviction.
Simon nodded, then looked at Poly. “What about you, Pol?”
“I don’t know yet. Not that I haven’t thought about it. Our grandmother—Mother’s mother—is a bacteriologist and a biologist with two earned doctorates; she won the Nobel Prize when she isolated farandolae within a mitochondrion.”
“You expect me to understand what you’re talking about?” Simon asked.
“Not before you study cellular biology. I don’t understand it very well myself. Anyhow, I don’t think I want to be a cellular biologist or a chemist or anything. Mother’s a whiz at math; Daddy says she could get a doctorate with both hands tied behind her back, but she just laughs and says she can’t be bothered, it’s only a piece of paper. I’m not sure what I want to be. You and Charles are lucky. I think you’ll be a marvelous doctor, Simon.”
Dragons in the Waters Page 8