Letters To My Mother

by Rebecca Heath

  Dr. Rosenau was still standing beside me. “Do you know where you are?”

  “I think I must be in heaven, but I guess we’re really in Puget Sound.”

  He smiled. “That’s Vashon Island down there, with Tacoma just beyond it,” he said, pointing. “Seattle’s over there, of course; there’s Bainbridge Island and, to the north, though they’re not visible from here, the San Juan Islands.”

  “And the ocean?”

  “Yes, but it’s a long way off.”

  We stood side-by-side for several minutes more without talking. Now and then Dr. Rosenau glanced up at the sails.

  “I can’t thank you enough for inviting me,” I said at last, hardly daring to intrude on his silence. “I often imagine how something’s going to be, which is a bad habit because I’m frequently disappointed. But this is ever so much better than anything I could have dreamed.”

  Dr. Rosenau looked down at me with the warm smile that belied the aloofness of his face in repose. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the sailing; of course the weather’s not always like this. In fact we’re incredibly lucky today; everything has come together. Often when I go out it’s raining or there’s no wind or there’s too much wind, or it’s too cold or it’s too something. But I go anyway, regardless of the conditions. Harnessing the wind is a challenge.” He scanned the horizon and fell silent.

  “Do you usually sail alone or with a crew?”

  “Sometimes Frank comes with me. He’s turned into a good sailor, but usually I sail alone. Sturmvogel's rigged so I can handle her by myself. Inviting people to go sailing is difficult in this climate. If you ask them on a Wednesday, when the sun’s shining, then Saturday is sure to be rainy. Also, it’s hard to tell if someone’s going to enjoy bobbing around on a small boat for five or six hours with nothing to do; some people are simply bored stiff.”

  “Well, I’m not bored and I’m sure I wouldn’t mind the rain or a storm or anything. In fact, I think I would love being at sea in a storm. Can you go very far in a boat like this?”

  “Around the world, if that’s far enough.” Dr. Rosenau noticed my expression of surprise. “Sturmvogel was built in Norway and her first owner single handed her across the Atlantic to Newport. Last summer I sailed her to Alaska myself, for three months. Seaworthiness is more a function of strong construction than size. And the skill of the helmsman.”

  “You sailed to Alaska – alone?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes, I went alone.” He looked out at the water again and we stood silently for several more minutes.

  “Have you ever been in San Francisco?” he asked.

  “I spent about four months there with my mother during the war when Daddy was overseas, and then a few days in 1948 when we returned from Hawaii.”

  “San Francisco Bay is where I learned to sail. I was your age, an undergraduate at Berkeley. I joined the university sailing club out of curiosity, and I haven’t been off the water since. San Francisco Bay is a glorious place to sail; the wind blows hard from spring through autumn and the ocean’s right at your doorstep.”

  “I don’t have very happy memories of San Francisco. My mother and I lived in a hotel just off Union Square during the war while we waited for my father to finish his tour of duty in the Pacific. She was out every night and I was terribly lonely.” Dr. Rosenau looked at me with curiosity, but said nothing. “Several years later, when we came back from Hawaii, our plane landed at the Alameda Naval Air Station and I remember passing through a place called Treasure Island. I was disappointed because I imagined the island would be something straight out of Robert Louis Stevenson, and it turned out to be just another naval base. Have you seen it?”

  “Yes, several times, though T. I. didn’t exist when I was a student at Cal. It’s an artificial island, built for a World’s Fair.”

  A large cabin cruiser bore down on us at high speed, its deck crowded with waving passengers who pressed forward to stare at us as the boat changed course for a closer inspection.

  “Hold on!” Dr. Rosenau shouted, “We’re going to get a huge wake.” I watched eagerly as a breaking crest of frothing water surged toward us, followed by a series of troughs and waves. When the wake began to rock the boat, Dr. Rosenau put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me down beside him on the cabin top. Sturmvogel rolled heavily, flinging her boom from side to side, and as she rocked, Dr. Rosenau’s thigh touched mine. For the first time in my life I felt a tingle of desire; hoping my face didn’t mirror my emotions, I turned away from him and fixed my gaze on the bow. Then the wake passed beneath us and sped on, tumbling a fleet of smaller boats in its plunge toward shore.

  “Look at the sailors, see the funny sailors in their little wooden boat, see the sailors get mad and curse in Spanish.” Dr. Rosenau made a wry face as he watched the powerboat receding in the distance.

  “Are wakes like that dangerous?” I asked, wiping the salt spray from my lips.

  “We can’t capsize, if that’s what you mean. Sturmvogel has five thousand pounds of lead ballast to keep her upright. A small boat could be swamped and overturned, though, especially if it took the wave on the beam – the side - rather than at an angle to the bow. I hope they got their money’s worth.” Dr. Rosenau removed his arm from my shoulder.

  Once out of the turbulent water, Sturmvogel's sails filled again and she heeled gently. I stood up and braced myself against the rigging, delighting in the sting of the wind on my cheeks and the tug of my hair as it whirled around my head.

  “Your hair’s so lovely when you leave it loose. Why don’t you wear it that way all the time?”

  “Because it makes me look like a little girl. I can’t bear to cut it, but I haven’t worn my hair down since I was in high school.”

  “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Only nineteen? Because you’re a junior, I thought you were older. Did you skip a year in school?”

  “When I entered kindergarten I already knew how to read, so the principal put me in first grade. Then when I was eight they put me in the fifth. Skipping me was a terrible mistake; I was small for my age and morbidly shy. Despite my test scores, I was an abysmal student. Two years don’t make any difference to an adult, but when you’re a child, they matter a lot. I hated school.”

  “No, two years don’t make much difference.” I thought he stressed the word two, but perhaps I was mistaken.

  Dr. Rosenau took a strand of my hair in his hand. “I should have told you to wear a scarf. You’ll never get a comb through your hair again if you let it toss around like this. Did you bring anything with you to cover your head?”

  “I forgot; anyway, I like the way my hair feels when the wind blows through it.”

  “You’re not going to like the way it looks, though. Here, let me braid it for you.”

  We returned to the cockpit, where I crouched down in the well, out of the wind, while Dr. Rosenau tried to part my tangled hair. “It’s already too late; we’ll just have to shave your head,” he joked, tugging on the mass of snarls. After several minutes of patient effort and more than one “ouch” from me, Dr. Rosenau finally succeeded in separating three skeins, which he plaited into one thick braid; he pulled a piece of quarter-inch rope from his pocket and tied a bow at the end.

  “There,” he said, surveying the braid. “You’ll still have your work cut out for you tonight, but at least the job won’t be completely hopeless.”

  I thanked him and resumed my seat on the low side of the cockpit.

  “Since you won’t be around next summer to give me a hand with the varnishing, how about doing some work now; would you like to steer?”

  I looked at him apprehensively. “I’ve never steered a boat before. I don’t even know how to drive a car. What happens if I do something wrong?”

  “Absolutely nothing. We’re heading into the wind, so if you make a mistake the worst that can happen is the sails will start flapping and the boat will come to a
halt.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. Going downwind is another matter. You need to pay more attention to avoid an accidental jibe, but I’ll show you how to jibe some other time.”

  “I’m not very mechanical,” I warned him. “My father tried to teach me to drive when I was sixteen and I was so worried I’d engage the clutch wrong and wreck the engine that I never mastered it. Daddy doesn’t have much patience with slow learners.”

  “Sailing is easier than driving a car, or at least the rudiments of sailing are simple. And I promise to keep my temper,” he added with a smile. “Come here, and I’ll show you.”

  Frank and I exchanged places and he gave me the tiller; I took the helm gingerly, as if he’d passed me a live grenade, and Dr. Rosenau reached across my legs, putting his hand on mine.

  “A boat will always go in the direction opposite to the way the tiller is turned, so if you move it to the left,” he said, giving my hand a slight shove, “the bow of the boat will swing to the right, and vice-versa.” We practiced this maneuver several times.

  “You can’t sail a boat any closer than about 45 degrees on either side of the wind, and if you do, the sails will flap, or luff in sailing parlance, and the boat will stop. If you want to bring the boat closer to the wind, you push the tiller toward the sails and to move away from the wind you pull the tiller away from the sails. Watch the tell-tales – those pieces of yarn tied on the shrouds – those wires supporting the mast. They show which way the wind’s blowing; try to steer as close to the wind as possible without luffing.” He removed his hand from mine.

  At first I overcompensated for every puff of wind and Sturmvogel gyrated erratically from one side to the other, but gradually I got the feel of the helm, and a glance back at our wake showed me we were sailing in a straight line – more or less.

  “Now it’s my turn.” We traded places. I looked at the speed indicator and noted with chagrin that the boat picked up a knot when Dr. Rosenau took the tiller. He had an instinctive feel for Sturmvogel, an ear tuned to the swish of the water passing along the hull, to the rustle of the sails, to the sound of the wind. A slight hardening of the mainsheet here, a loosening of the jib there, and Sturmvogel responded like a racehorse in the hands of a skillful jockey.

  Dr. Rosenau glanced up at the sun. “Is anyone besides me hungry? I think it’s time for lunch. Kate, can I ask you to get the sandwiches and make coffee? You’ll find the sandwiches in the ice chest under the ladder and there are two thermos bottles of hot water in the locker beneath the sink. Take whatever else you need from the cupboard. I have instant coffee, tea, bouillon, and cocoa, plus a bag of cookies and the cups.”

  As I was opening the ice chest, he called down, “Don’t fill the cups too high or they’ll spill. And bring up the loaf of stale bread, will you; it’s for the seagulls.”

  “How do you manage to cook when you’re sailing by yourself?” I asked, passing the food up to Frank.

  “Cooking’s a real problem. The stove’s so temperamental that I don’t dare take my eyes off the burners for long. My diet last summer was oatmeal for breakfast and whatever I could catch for dinner and canned stew when nothing better turned up.”

  A wildly improbable idea occurred to me and I wondered if Norma would be too disappointed if I didn’t go to Mexico with her. “Are you planning to go sailing next summer?”

  Dr. Rosenau shook his head. “Unfortunately I’m scheduled to teach. I may go to Hawaii in the summer of ’58 though.”

  I prepared more coffee and the three of us relaxed in the cockpit, munching cookies and warming our hands on the sides of the steaming mugs. I broke the bread into small pieces and tossed them to a couple of passing seagulls. Within minutes a hundred or more birds surrounded us, all wheeling and crying above our heads, contending noisily for the scraps I threw them. When the bread was gone, the crowd dispersed gradually until only one seagull remained soaring behind us, riding the eddies from the mainsail, his bright eyes following my every movement.

  The conversation turned to Spain, to my schooling in the convent, to Spanish literature and culture. “I’ve never been in Spain,” Dr. Rosenau remarked, but one of the things I like most about the Spaniards I’ve met is their love of music. Many years ago, when I graduated from high school, I spent the summer before university backpacking around South America with a friend. We were on a train one morning in Peru, going from Cuzco to Machu Picchu, and in the same car with us was a group of Spanish tourists from Burgos. One of them started singing folk songs and a couple of others began to dance flamenco in the aisle; before you could say olé, the whole car was singing, and we kept right on all the way to the ruins. That train ride is one of my happiest memories of the trip.”

  “Did you learn Spanish folksongs in school?”

  “A few, but my mother taught me most of the songs I know.”

  “Do you know 'Con las abejas' or 'De los cuatro muleros'?”

  “Of course! Do you?” In a moment the two of us were singing Spanish folksongs at the tops of our lungs. For once I didn’t think how my parents claimed I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and I didn’t worry what Dr. Rosenau thought, either. I sang because the sun was shining, because Sturmvogel was dancing over the water, and because I was ecstatically happy; I wore my joy on my sleeve.

  “Frank, you’re the real singer here. Give us something from opera – a German opera, none of that sentimental Italian stuff.”

  Frank thought for a moment. “Okay. Here’s the tenor’s act one aria from Der Rosenkavalier.” Dr. Rosenau started to laugh, but I didn’t get the joke. As if waiting for his cue, Frank began to sing – in Italian. His lovely voice carried over the water to the other boats, and they sailed closer to enjoy the unexpected concert.

  When the song was finished, Dr. Rosenau remarked, almost to himself and with a hint of sarcasm, “Well, that was appropriate.” I didn’t understand what he meant.

  “Frank, you have such a beautiful voice!” I exclaimed. “You’re just like the boatman in the 'Romance del Conde Arnaldos.'” He looked at me with raised eyebrows. “It’s a fifteenth century Spanish ballad; Count Arnaldos meets a sailor singing a song which is so magical that the fish rise to the surface of the sea to listen, the birds perch in the rigging and even the wind and water are stilled."

  “No wonder the wind’s died,” Dr. Rosenau joked, looking up at the sails. “Enough out of you, Frank, or we’ll have to swim home.”

  “Is there more to the poem?”

  “The count begs the sailor to teach him the song, but the man refuses.”

  Dr. Rosenau interrupted, “Yo no digo esta canción sino a quien conmigo va.”

  “That’s it! Do you know it too?”

  Dr. Rosenau nodded. “I know the ballad by heart; we seem to have a similar taste in literature.”

  “I think I can figure that out from Italian,” Frank interjected. “Something about only telling the song to a person who goes with him?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Do you know Italian?”

  “I should. Italian’s the only language I could speak until I was fifteen. I was born in Calabria, the toe of Italy, the dirt-poor part of Italy. I’ve got an uncle who came to the States first, in the 30’s. He tried to get my dad to emigrate, but by the time he made up his mind, the war started and we had to wait another seven years. We finally got here in ‘46.”

  Despite Dr. Rosenau’s warning about the wind, Frank sang a few more songs in Italian and the three of us belted out “Funiculì, Funiculà,” together, in English, Spanish and Italian, fairly shouting the chorus until we were hoarse from laughter and singing.

  We headed back to Seattle late in the afternoon, just as the first lights were starting to blink from the shore. I fixed hot chocolate for everyone and put on a couple more sweaters, for the temperature was falling along with the wind. As we neared the city, a swiftly moving bank of clouds overtook the sun and blotted it out, signaling the end of the afternoon as sure
ly as the ringing down of a curtain marks the end of a play. No one wanted to linger; the magic was gone.

  Back at the marina, I helped Dr. Rosenau furl the mainsail and remove the jib from the forestay. After the three of us had folded the jib on the dock and put it in a sailbag, Dr. Rosenau lifted the bag over his shoulder and turned to me. “Kate, I’d take you home myself, but I have an engagement at six, so I’ve asked Frank to give you a ride. I hope that’s all right with you.”

  Down below he lit a couple of kerosene lamps whose light cast a flickering orange glow over the cushions and woodwork. I gathered my things from the forward cabin, wondering if I would ever sail on Sturmvogel again, and went back on deck where Dr. Rosenau was coiling lines in the cockpit.

  “I want to thank you for a perfectly wonderful day.” I held out my hand. “I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the sail.”

  “Thank you for coming. It was a perfect day, wasn’t it?” Dr. Rosenau’s eyes engaged mine and I managed to return his smile. He kept my hand in his as though unaware he should be shaking it and saying goodbye.

  Frank held open the door to his small Fiat and I climbed in. I didn’t feel like talking; I wanted to be alone, to hug the delicious memory of the day’s sail to myself, to relive every conversation, every smile. I cast around for something to talk about, a subject to sustain us until we reached Blaine Hall.

  “Do you have a Fiat because it’s an Italian car?”

  “To tell the truth, I think German cars are better. I used to room with the guy who owned this one, and when he moved to Texas he sold it to me cheap. Do you know what ‘Fiat’ stands for? ”