by David Masiel
His headache soared, whirled, spun his skull. He felt a fire in his brain that moved beyond pain as the kid rowed. As he refused to stop rowing. Snow stared from the bottom of the boat to the foreshortened legs and arms of the crew, Beth holding the cup to his lips and then hearing someone shout and turning toward the horizon and standing alongside the others. Her arm darted overhead in waves and her cries filled Snow’s ears, the hoarse and uniform cries of the crew calling toward a ship emerging from the steam, bow knifing the sea. Snow and Maciel were the only two who didn’t scream. They were too busy grunting. Snow thought maybe the ship was the authorities coming for him finally, and he tried to talk, but only a gurgle came out and the crew wasn’t listening to him in any case. Their attention was drawn to the wicked bowsprit of a merchant ship, cleaving tropical waters toward them. Even Snow cheered then, filling his head with a throbbing pulse of pain and relief, ringing in the one ear left undamaged by war. They saw the bow sitting tall, a cargo ship light on cargoes, heaving upward as it drew closer, a man standing on the bow, a black man waving his arms furiously calling out Ahoy or something like it, some greeting on an open sea. Then the voices in the lifeboat fell away, deflated. “Oh, Jesus,” said Maciel.
“Tell me that ain’t the truth, just tell me that!” said Momo.
The bow edged toward them, with the name there, painted so brightly, the good ship SABBATH. Then he looked again and saw that they’d got the spelling all wrong, that it wasn’t SABBATH at all but SABBATH. Maybe some variant, he thought, or some foreign ship. Snow could see it. Painted so recently, so fresh it barely set before the storm waters blew it all away.
He kept staring. Saw the faint lettering before those left intact, a faint shadow of the rest of the name, and it hit him then, after minutes of gazing, that the name there was ELISABBATH, a third of the name worn away by storm. A rust and steel ghost appearing out of the tropical mist of the horse latitudes, as if to inform them of their own death. He thought then perhaps they were all dead already. But beyond the ship’s outline lay the long plume of the Namib.
A depression fell over them all. Silent, downcast mouths. Maciel rowed along the hull of the ship’s forward half while they all still processed the reality of the ship’s being broken in two. The man on the bow waved again, yelled again, Ahoy, and soon from the fo’c’sle deck they saw the Liberian named Jimmy as he shinnied down on a mooring line tied off to a deck cleat.
“Where you go, brother? Where hell you go?” said Danny. “I think sure you dead.”
“Not gonna kill me,” said Jimmy as he came aboard, rocking their small boat and greeting his twin with a strong embrace. Waves of laughter rolled over Snow. Ocean swells tightened and crested toward shore. Off the broken middle of the ship’s forward half, more plastic balls floated, and from the broken ship he saw the exposed tanks along the midship bulkhead, sheared away cleanly in frayed ends of broken steel.
Snow heard the voice again. Calling, Hell, or Help, as if they meant the same thing. Floating in plastic. A person—Leeds now, coming to life and recognition. He floated on balls of plastic, an impromptu life raft, wearing an air pack. His pink deformed mitts stuck up over the gunwales and he hauled himself aboard with a thumping rock of the small craft. Leeds slumped to the base of the boat and tore the respirator mask free and breathed air.
The boat hunkered into the pale green water.
Snow thought out loud.
Delirium is a beautiful thing, he thought.
Who’s Van Sickle? How long has he been this way?
Joaquin Maciel never killed Dutch Van!
He has been this way since we hauled him from the ship.
I killed Dutch Van! I killed Van Sickle! I beat him with the blunt end of a marlin spike and ran him through to the heart! I did it, by God, I did!
What’s wrong with him?
He’s got the blackwater. He’s got the malaria deep in his brain.
What can we do for him?
You could pray for him.
Snow felt himself sink deeper into the bilges of the boat, the wetness at his ass. Pain from his loins rose upward until he thought he might piss fire. He had been at sea since he was five, following his father’s trips around the world. The ocean never stopped, that was sure. The ocean was like the moral underground. He wished he could talk out loud. He wished his confession could be heard. A man needed that, like he needed to lay it all out there at some point. He needed a map of the world, needed to know where the limits were.
He felt the brush of sand beneath the lifeboat and then the tipping to one side, and he rolled out and onto the sand, looked up the long flat dunes north of Walvis Bay. How on earth could they have made Walvis Bay? The Namib, where Snow didn’t know a soul. He had no relatives here, had never set foot here. They ran hard aground to wedge themselves on the beach north of the harbor’s entrance. The sounds of German floated on the breeze: der Ozean hat sich sie an Land erbrechen. Maciel stood tall and wet, watching the endless sand shore. Snow wanted to reach for the kid’s sleeve and pull him down, to ask him what he knew about any of this anyhow, what he knew about this German, what he knew about last rites. He felt his mouth move—or maybe not. I killed him, not your gramps; it was me.
The kid looked down at him with a confused look. Maybe sound did come out. Maybe he could hear it all. I killed Dutch Van Sickle, and your grandfather helped me dump the body. I heaved him over the side up near Decker Island. I did it. I did it. I admit I did it. The cadence of confession sounded like Morse code flickering in his brain. The kid held Snow’s face in his hands, rough hands, swollen hands, hands with blood on them. Why didn’t you tell me? But he expected no answer. He shook his head in pathetic commentary, eyes on eyes. Thanks for doing it now. You have that. You have that, Harold.
Then he moved away.
Beth’s face appeared upside down over his head, replacing his image of the kid, and she peered down with moist eyes turned red by her fear of death and by chemistry, and his lungs felt the ragged bleeding from within. Now he couldn’t tell her voice from his own. She pulsed inside him. Her whisper was his whisper. She pulled him, dragged him up the beach into warm dry sand, sifting through his fingers. She got him to sit up. He felt his arms hanging loose between his outstretched legs. Up the beach as far as he could see lay sand. “We made it, Harold. Goddamnit, we made it!”
Farther down he saw the bullet raft pulled up the beach, and a truck there, an official vehicle with a light bank across the top, and a black man standing by it in uniform, gazing toward him, pointing at him.
“You’re going to be okay now, Harold,” Beth said.
Der häßlichste Geschöpfaufstieg vom Meer.
Maciel clapped his back. Snow heard that funny little Snowman song, his long-dead mother sitting at the piano and explaining that love didn’t mean giving yourself over to another, it meant finding yourself inside them. He had smirked at that; he snarled: maternal horse manure. Snow wished he had understood it. He felt the kid’s hand on his face. He mumbled in a language Snow didn’t recognize. He wondered if the kid was talking in tongues now. There was a time when he would have been unnerved by this, but now he felt only affection for the boy. Then he felt only humming. Snow wondered if this was God. He felt the kid’s calloused hand to his forehead. His eyes stared down, black and clear. His voice came clear then too, rang low in Latin like an old chorus. Then the girl: her lips to his ear, her voice soft as a kiss. He could smell her body even as other hands hovered over him, and faces, the waving black seaweed hair of all those Hindus floating in the brown water of the Bengal with cremated mouths. They were here for him. He knew they were. Wave them away, she said. Wave them away. He wondered what that meant. Like he was supposed to understand. To wave away voices, and wet arms reaching for him, dripping silted water through their closed fists.
Snow blinked. He saw the girl’s face over him. So brightly dark and round, her brow glistening with worry. He blinked rapidly in succession through caked blood and salte
d lids, and then the arms were gone. The black cavernous mouths were gone. Voices evaporated into stony silence, along with those unknown siblings, that lost family out there walking the waterfront for the first sight of the father home from sea. The lifeboat rocked next to him in a swirl of surf. Looking out he could see the crippled form of the stern end of Elisabeth, and Kairos sat there on the edge of the lifeboat dangling his legs saying gotta redeem that steel, Snow, then laughing in his Baptist way.
Snow wished he had people here in Namibia. What a lonely spot to die. Then again he reached for the girl and the boy, both next to him now, and Beth waved Kairos away or else brushed at a fly, he wasn’t sure which. She placed an oily finger on Snow’s head to test his fever, only to leave a smudge of black grease. He felt it there, dirty oil clinging to his sweated skin and then melting, starting to drip. Maciel knelt over him, leaned out over him to show his face against the sky. The kid smiled warmly, sadly even. Snow thought he heard him say something. He felt his breath, smelled chemicals. He felt the kid, holding his head in one hand, dabbing at his forehead with the other. He felt something relax inside. It came easy then, just heat surrounding him, his body encased by warm sand. Snow thought maybe it was his birthday.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Profound thanks to the faculty and staff of the California Maritime Academy, in particular Bill Schmid and Dan Weinstock, master mariners, for their good company, patience at my endless questions, and technical expertise. Thanks to Dr. Mark Stinson and Dr. Jack Ellis for their thoughtful reading of the manuscript, as well as personal anecdotal information on tropical diseases in general and cerebral malaria specifically. My late mother-in-law, Morwenna Yackzan, my sister-in-law Linda Yackzan, and my wife, Dawn, all read and reread the manuscript, offering insightful commentaries. At U.C. Davis: Linda Morris and Laura Antonelli for providing space to work; Pam Houston, David Simpson, David Robertson, for the chance to teach; and Jack Hicks for his advice and encouragement. Deb and Buzz for their four years in Lagos and stories of West Africa. Mom, Dad, Auntie Bo—to all of my family for being the stable core. Humble thanks to Scott Phillips, Sean McNerney, Swan, Ron Bell, Bob Young, and Doug Masiel, in some cases for reading the manuscript in its formative stages and in all cases for their friendship and talk. Many thanks to my editor, David Ebershoff, for his scalpel-sharp blue pencil. And deepest thanks, as always, to my agent, Nicole Aragi—words fail.
DAVID MASIEL is the author of 2182 Kilohertz, a New York Times Notable Book. Between 1980 and 1989 he worked offshore in the arctic oilfields, sailing oceangoing tugboats and icebreakers. His work has appeared in Outside magazine and The New York Times Magazine. He currently lives in California with his wife and children.
Visit the author’s website at www.davidmasiel.com.
Also by David Masiel
2182 KILOHERTZ
Praise for The Western Limit of the World
“With his second novel, The Western Limit of the World, [David] Masiel makes good on the promise and achievement of his debut [2182 Kilohertz].”
—The Seattle Times
“An assured, propulsive novel that nicely balances adventure sequences with more intimate moments.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“As 2182 Kilohertz explored the outer boundaries of the Arctic soul, so does The Western Limit of the World for the torrid zones, and against all expectations it’s an even weirder and scarier trip. David Masiel has the rare gift of forcing us to stare down the deepest, most appalling flaws in his characters and making us love them anyway; the richness of these portraits makes them real, and that reality makes The Western Limit of the World impossible to ignore or abandon.”
—SCOTT PHILLIPS, author of The Ice Harvest
“This book throbs with menace and tension and excitement. I’ve never read anything quite like it: It’s both an adventure novel and a work of philosophical inquiry. In the character of Harold Snow, we see a man at odds with his past and with the world he has made for himself—a dark and dangerous world set aboard a decaying chemical tanker. It’s an original and thrilling novel by a gifted and unique novelist.”
—VICTOR PELEVIN, author of Buddha’s Little Finger and The Life of Insects
“The Western Limit of the World is a terrific, exciting novel, and though it will be said to be in the tradition of Conrad, it’s very much in Masiel’s own voice, extending the moral range of this exotic tale beyond mere adventure. There’s no better writing about the sea now.”
—DIANE JOHNSON, author of Le Divorce and Le Mariage
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2007 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2005 by David R. Masiel
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2005.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Masiel, David.
The western limit of the world: a novel / David Masiel.
p. cm.
1. Chemical carriers (tankers)—Fiction. 2. Middle-aged men—Fiction. 3. Seafaring life—Fiction. 4. Sailors—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.A8W47 2005 813'.6—dc22 2005042893
www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-594-1
v3.0