And there was no reason for it: only that a twelve-year-old girl looked at him less kindly than if he had been a seaman. It is a terrible and empty thing to go to sea: all order is broken up and there are only periods of debauchery and boredom and work and grinding idleness, and the sickening old pond and its dirty borders. It was for such reasons that Moysha hesitated for three months.
Bonny came to see him for possibly the tenth time. She was now paying him interest of sixty cents a week on an old debt which, in the normal state of affairs, she would never be able to clear.
“Bonny, I wish there was something that I could say to you.”
“You can say anything you want to me.”
“O Bonny, you don’t know what I mean.”
“You want to bet I don’t?”
“Bonny, what will you be doing in four years?”
“I’ll be getting married to a seaman if I can find one to take me.”
“Why shouldn’t one take you?”
“For a seaman it is bad luck to marry a crippled woman.”
So on the first day of summer Moysha went off to sea as a lowly wiper. It broke his heart and shamed his family. He woke and slept in misery for the foulness of the life. He ate goy food and sinned in the ports in attempting to be a salty dog. And it was nine weeks before he was back to his home port; and he went to the Blue Fish with some other seamen.
It was afternoon, and Bonny went for a walk with him across the peninsula and down to the beach.
“Well, I’m thunderstruck is all I can say. Why in the world would a sensible man want to go to sea?”
“I thought you liked seamen, Bonny.”
“I do. But how is a man going to turn into a seaman if he isn’t one to start with? A dog could turn into a fish easier. That’s the dumbest thing anyone ever did. I had an idea when you came to the place today that you turned into a seaman just for me. Did you?”
“Yes.”
“I could be coy and say ‘Why Moysha, I’m only twelve years old,’ but I already knew how you felt. I will tell you something. I never did a mean thing, and I never saw anybody I wanted to be mean to till I met you. But I could be mean to you. It would be fun to ruin you. We aren’t good for each other. You oughtn’t to see me ever again.”
“I have to.”
“Then maybe I have to be mean to you. It’s for both of us that I ask you not to see me again. I don’t want to ruin you, and I don’t want to be a mean woman; but I will be if you keep coming around.”
“Well, I can’t stay away.”
“Very well, then I’ll be perverse. I’ll shock you every time I open my mouth. I’ll tell you that I do filthy things, and you won’t know whether I’m lying or not. You won’t know what I mean, and you’ll be afraid to find out. You’ll never be able to stay away from me if you don’t stay away now. I’ll have husbands and still keep you on a string. You’ll stand outside in the dark and look at the light in my window, and you’ll eat your own heart. Please go away. I don’t want to turn mean.”
“But Bonny, it doesn’t have to be that way.”
“I hope it doesn’t, but it scares me every time I see you. Now I’ll make a bargain with you. If you try to stay away I’ll try to stay good. But if you come back again I won’t be responsible. You ought to go back uptown and not try to be a seaman any more.”
After that the little girl went back to the Blue Fish.
Moysha did not go back uptown. He returned to the sea, and he did not visit that port again for a year. And there was a change in him. From closer acquaintance he no longer noticed that the sea was foul. Once at sunset, for a moment, he found something pleasant about it. He no longer sinned excessively in the ports. Ashore he traveled beyond the waterfront bars and visited the countries behind and met the wonderful people. He got the feel of the rough old globe in his head. In a pension in Holland he played chess with another girl, who was not precocious, and who did not dread turning into a mean woman. In a pub in Denmark he learned to take snuff like the saltiest seaman of them all. In an inn in Brittany he was told that the sea is the heritage of the poor who cannot afford the land. It was in Brittany that he first noticed that he now walked like an old salt.
After a year he went back to his home port and to the Blue Fish.
“In a way I’m glad to see you,” said Bonny. “I’ve been feeling contrary lately and you’ll give me an excuse. Every morning I wake up and say ‘This day I’m going to raise hell.’ Then I can’t find anyone to raise hell with. All those water rats I like so well that I can’t be mean to them. But I bet I know how to be mean to you. Well go get a room and tell me where it is, and I’ll come to you tonight.”
“But you’re only a little girl, and besides you don’t mean it.”
“Then you’re going to find out if I mean it. I intend to come. If you think you love me because I’m pretty and good, then I’ll make you love me for a devil. There’s things you don’t even know about, and you’ve been a seaman for a year. I’ll make you torture me, and it’ll be a lot worse torture to you. I’ll show you what unnatural really means. You’re going to be mighty sorry you came back.”
“Bonny, your humor is cruel.”
“When did I ever have any humor? And you don’t know if I’m kidding, and you never will know. Would you rather I did these things with someone else than with you?”
“No.”
“Well I will. If you don’t tell me where your room is, I’ll go to someone else’s room tonight. I’ll do things so filthy you wouldn’t believe it. And even if I don’t go to somebody, I’ll tell you tomorrow that I did.”
But Moysha would not tell her where his room was. So late that night when he left the Blue Fish she followed him. It was fantastic for a grown man to walk faster and faster to escape a thirteen-year-old crippled girl, and finally to run in panic through the dark streets. But when finally she lost him she cried out with surprising kindness: “Goodnight Moysha, I’m sorry I was mean.”
But she wasn’t very sorry, for the next night she was still mean.
“You see that old man with the hair in his ears? He’s filthy and we don’t even understand each other’s language. But he understood what I wanted well enough. He’s the one I spent last night with.”
“Bonny, that’s a lie, and it isn’t funny.”
“I know it isn’t funny. But can you be sure that it’s a lie? I only lie part of the time, and you never know when. Now tonight, if you don’t tell me where your room is, I’m going to take either that old red-faced slobberer or that black man. And you can follow me, since you run away when I follow you, and see that I go with one of them. And you can stand out in the street and look up at our light. I always leave the light on.”
“Bonny, why are you mean?”
“I wish I knew, Moysha, I wish I knew.”
* * * *
After a week of this he went to sea again, and did not come back to his home port for two years. He learned of the sea-leaning giants.
“I do not know the name of this tree,” said Sour John, “though once I knew it. This is the time of a story where one usually says it’s time for a drink. However, for a long time I have been worried about my parasites who are to me almost like my own children, and this constant diet of rum and redeye cannot be good for them. I believe if the young lady would fry me a platter of eggs it would please my small associates, and do me more good than harm.”
He learned, Moysha did, of the sea-leaning giants. They are massive trees of the islands and the more fragmentary mainlands, and they grow almost horizontal out toward the sea. They are not influenced by the wind; from the time they are little whips the wind is always blowing in from the sea, and they grow against it and against all reason. They have, some of them, trunks nine feet thick, but they always lean out over the sea. Moysha beg
an to understand why they did, though most people would never understand it.
He acquired a talking bird of great versatility. He acquired also a ring-tailed monkey and a snake that he carried around inside his shirt, for Moysha was now a very salty seaman.
He was prosperous, for he had never forsaken the trade of the moneylender, and he was always a shrewd buyer of novelties and merchandise. He turned them over as he went from port to port, and always at a profit.
He became a cool student of the ceaseless carnage of the ocean, and loved to muse on the ascending and descending corpses and their fragments in the old watery grave.
He spent seven months on a certain Chinese puzzle, and he worked it, the only Occidental who ever had patience enough to do so.
* * * *
When she was fifteen Bonny married a seaman, and he was not Moysha. This happened just one week before Moysha came back to port and to the Blue Fish. The man she married was named Oglesby Ogburn; and if you think that’s a funny name, you should have heard the handles of some of them that she turned down.
The very day that Moysha came to the Blue Fish was the day that Oglesby left; for the honeymoon was over, and he had to go back to the sea. Bonny was now all kindness to everyone. But she still put the old needle into Moysha.
“I’ve had a husband for a week now, so I won’t be able to get along without a man. You stay with me while you’re in town; and after that I’ll get another, and then another and another. And by that time Oglesby will be back for a week.”
“Don’t talk like that, Bonny, even if I know you’re joking.”
“But you don’t know that I’m joking. You never know for sure.”
“How can anyone who looks so like an angel talk like that?”
“It does provide a contrast. Don’t you think it makes me more interesting? I didn’t know you were the kind who chased married women.”
“I’m not. But O Bonny! What am I to do?”
“Well I’ve certainly offered you everything. I don’t know how I can offer you any more.”
And a few days later when Moysha was leaving port they talked again.
“You haven’t even given me a wedding present or wished me luck. And we do need it. It’s always bad luck for a seaman to marry a crippled woman. What are you going to give me for a wedding present?”
“The only thing I will give you is the serpent from my bosom.”
“O don’t talk so flowery.”
Then he took the snake out of his shirt.
“O, I didn’t know you had a real snake. Is he for me? That’s the nicest present anyone ever gave me. What do you call him?”
“Why, just a snake. Ular, that is, he’s a foreign snake.”
So he went back to sea and left the little girl there with the snake in her hands.
Bonny was a widow when she was sixteen, as everyone had known she would be. It’s no joke about it being bad luck for a seaman to marry a cripple. They seldom lose much time in perishing after they do it. Oglesby died at sea, as all the Ogburns did; and it was from a trifling illness from which he was hardly sick at all. It was many weeks later that Moysha heard the news, and then he hurried back to his home port.
He was too late. Bonny had married again.
“I thought you’d probably come, and I kind of wanted it to be you. But you waited so long, and the summer was half over, that I decided to marry Polycarp Melish. I’m halfway sorry I did. He wouldn’t let Ular sleep with us, and he killed him just because he bit him on the thumb.
“But I tell you what you do. What with the bad luck and all, Polycarp won’t last many months. Come around earlier next year. I like to get married in the springtime. I’ll be a double widow then.”
“Bonny, that’s a terrible way to talk even when kidding.”
“I’m not kidding at all. I even have an idea how we can beat the jinx. I’ll tell you about it after we get married next year. Maybe a crippled girl gets to keep her third husband.”
“Do you want Polycarp to die?”
“Of course I don’t. I love him. I love all my husbands, just like I’ll love you after I marry you. I can’t help it if I’m bad luck. I told him, and he said he already knew it; but he wanted to do it anyhow. Will you bring me another snake the next time you’re in port?”
“Yes. And you can keep the monkey in place of it till I come back. But you can’t have the bird yet. I have to keep someone to talk to.”
“All right. Please come in the spring. Don’t wait till summer again or it’ll be too late and I’ll already be married to someone else. But whether we get married or not, I’m never going to be mean again. I’m getting too old for that.”
So he went to sea again happier than he ever had before.
When she was seventeen Bonny was a widow again as everyone had known she would be. Polycarp had been mangled and chopped to pieces in an unusual accident in the engine room of his ship.
Moysha heard of it very soon, before it could have been heard of at home. And he took council with his talking bird, and with one other, technically more human.
“This other,” said Sour John, “was myself. It was very early spring, and Moysha was wondering if it were really best to hurry home and marry Bonny.
“‘I am not at all superstitious,’ he said. ‘I do not believe that a crippled woman is necessarily bad luck to seamen. But I believe that Bonny may be bad luck to everyone, including herself.’
“We were on a chocolate island of a French flavor and a French name. On it were girls as pretty as Bonny, and without her reputation for bad luck: girls who would never be either wives or widows. And there is a way to go clear around the world from one such place to another.
“‘The Blue Fish is not necessarily the center of the earth,’ I told him. ‘I have always necessarily believed them to be a little left of center. And Bonny may not be the queen. But if you think that she is, then for you she is so. Nine months, or even a year is not very long to live, and you will be at sea most of the time. But if you think a few weeks with the little girl is enough, then it is enough for you. A lot of others who will not have even that will be dead by next Easter.’ I said this to cheer him up. I was always the cheerful type.
“‘And what do you think?’ Moysha asked the talking bird.
“‘Sampah,’ said the bird in his own tongue. This means rubbish. But whether he meant that the superstition was rubbish, or the idea of marrying with a consequent early death was rubbish, is something that is still locked up in his little green head.”
Moysha hurried home to marry Bonny. He brought a brother of Ular for a present, and he went at once to the Blue Fish.
“Well you’re just in time. I was going to have the banns read for me and somebody tomorrow, and if you’d been an hour later it wouldn’t have been you.
“I was halfway afraid to come.”
“You needn’t have been afraid. I told you I knew a way to beat the jinx. I’m selling the Blue Fish. I wrote you that Papa was dead. And we’re going to take a house uptown and forget the sea.”
“Forget the sea? How could anyone forget the sea?”
“Why, you’re only a toy seaman. You weren’t raised to it. When you go away from it you won’t be a seaman at all. And crippled women are only bad luck to seamen, not to other men.”
“But what would I do? The sea is all I know.”
“Don’t be a child, Moysha. You hate the sea, remember? You always told me that you did. You only went to sea because you thought I liked seamen. You know a hundred ways to make a dollar, and you don’t have to go near the sea for any of them.”
So they were married. And they were happy. Moysha discovered that Bonny was really an angel. Her devil talk had been a stunt.
It was worth all five dark years at sea to have her.
She was now even more lovely than the first night he had seen her. They lived in a house uptown in the heart of the city, and were an urbane and civilized couple. And three years went by.
Then one day Bonny said that they ought to get rid of the snake, and maybe even the monkey. She was afraid they would bite one of the children, or one of the children would bite them.
The talking bird said that if his friends left he would leave, too.
“But Bonny,” said Moysha, “these three are all that I have to remind me of the years when I was a seaman.
“You have me, also. But why do you want to be reminded of those awful days?”
“I know what we could do, Bonny. We could buy the Blue Fish again. It isn’t doing well. We could live there and run it. And we could have a place there for the snake and the monkey and the bird.”
“Yes, we could have a place for them all, but not for the children. That is no place to raise children. I know, and I was raised there. Now my love, don’t be difficult. Take the three creatures and dispose of them. And remember that for us the sea isn’t even there any more.”
But it was still there when he went down to the Blue Fish to try to sell the three creatures to the seaman. An old friend of his was present and was looking for an engineer first class to ship out that very night. And there was a great difficulty in selling the creatures.
He could not sell them unless he put a price on them, and he was damned if he’d do that. That was worse than putting a price on his own children. He had had them longer than his children, and they were more peculiarly his own. He could not sell them. And he could not go home and tell his wife that he could not sell them.
* * * *
“He went out and sat on the horns of the dilemma and looked at the sea. And then his old friend (who coincidentally was myself),” said Sour John, “came out and said that he sure did need an engineer first class to leave that very night.
The R a Lafferty Fantastic Megapack Page 21