by Ferenc Máté
With sunlight slanting into the galley through the hatch, Guillaume threw sizzling pork bits into the iron skillet, then sliced peppers and diced onions. He sang softly an old melody he had learned as a boy, about a shepherd whose true love had died, and who was begging a low cloud to carry him to heaven to find her. He emptied the skillet and poured in the whipped eggs.
Dugger pulled the blanket over his head and pressed against the hull so the sound of the rushing sea would drown out the Frenchman’s singing, but the rattling of the skillet and Nello’s thudding on the deck above broke into his dreams. Morning, he thought, why does it always have to be bloody morning?
THEY SAT IN THE COCKPIT eating Guillaume’s cooking.
“This is very good,” Kate said.
“Merci, Madame,” Guillaume said. “Thirty days at sea is a long time. It is best to divide it up with succulent meals. N’est-ce pas?”
Dugger lowered his fork and took his first good look at the man. His blond hair was slightly graying at the temples. His eyebrows, slightly raised, gave him an air of pleasant bewilderment. Creases flanked his mouth and one meandered above his chin, but his forehead was smooth, as was the skin beside his eyes, which were mostly twinkling as if he never ceased to find something amusing in life. He wore a canvas jacket that looked like it had taken long journeys before. He’s too tall and gangly, Dugger thought. His damned limbs will get tangled in the rigging.
WITHIN THREE DAYS they had settled into a routine. In daylight everyone but Dugger took four-hour turns at the helm, and Nello, Kate, and Guillaume took two-hour turns at night. Kate had sewn a sling for Dugger’s arm, so he felt comfortable enough to steer for short spells during the day when the others were around to trim sheets or shorten sail. The rest of the time he moved around listlessly trying to do chores with one hand that required two.
Nello took sextant readings morning, noon, and night, then, with the new coordinates, corrected their dead-reckoned progress on the chart. He stayed busy keeping the taffrail log free of sea grass, patched sails, and whipped the ends of lines with waxed string.
Kate seemed to be all over the ship wiping dried salt from varnished cap rails and hatches using the morning dew, then taking over the galley to bake saltwater bread in a pot. She mended Darina’s blouse and Dugger’s clothes, soaped his hair and poured seawater over him as he sat on the cockpit sole. Then she went to wash his clothes in a wooden bucket on the aft deck. Darina saw her begin to scrub the clothes laid on the wood. She stood and watched as if unable to look away. Then she came and knelt beside her. “Let me do that,” she offered, and took the pail. “I’m a good scrubber. I’m a Magdalene, remember? For seven years I worked in their laundry. They made us scrub clothes every day from dawn till dusk.”
Kate looked down at her hands. Underwater in the pail, her knuckles looked enormous, the joints of her fingers gnarled, the creases deep and wide—the hands of an old woman.
AFTER MEALS, DARINA KNELT on the aft deck, scrubbing the dirty dishes in a pot. She seemed most comfortable when working; at other times she was nearly invisible on the ketch. With her lace shawl over her head to fend off the sun, the speckled light shimmering across her face, she would unfold a small bundle of letters and read them over, but the boat’s movement soon made her queasy, so she spent long hours huddled on the aft deck watching the stern wave spread over the empty sea. She spoke only when spoken to and even then in a quiet and unassuming fashion, and always ending in such a way as to invite no reply.
When alone, she gazed often at her hands, surprised to find no wet clothing in them. She could still feel the burn of steaming water of the laundry, as she dragged the boiling clothes out of the cauldron and readied them for a beating on the stone. And she could smell the acrid stench of the bar of lye, feel her hands cramp from fatigue at day’s end, hear herself scream out when her fingers jammed in the rollers and the girl cranking the handle just kept cranking because she was too afraid to stop. And she remembered how she learned to stand the pain when coals from the iron spilled onto her feet and burned through the flimsy slippers to her flesh. She stood there in silence.
That was the worst: their enforced silence. Some sixty girls and women of all ages, facing each other in two rows, scrubbing, in endless silence. The slosh of water, slapping of hands, and silence. Day after day; dawn till dusk. The same face across from you. And you weren’t allowed to even ask her name. You spoke only three times a day, to utter prayers—whose power faded the longer you scrubbed in the steam.
You scrubbed for the nuns, for the priests, for the wealthy of the town, and all you got was a bowl of porridge twice a day, and Sister Phyllis yelling, “You’ll wash the filth out of your own lives when you wash the honest dirt from people’s clothes.”
“Morally unfit for Irish society” was their crime. Women of the night, unwed mothers, or victims of fathers’ or brothers’ or uncles’ passions, or girls from orphanages deemed too pretty to be let out. They had been committed by priests, or doctors, or relatives, sentenced to the Magdalene laundry behind twenty-foot-high walls with broken glass cemented at their top, without mention of how long they would be kept there. It often turned out to be all their lives. And when they died, the word PENITENT was chiseled in their tombstones, to remind them for eternity that they’d fallen.
The Magdalenes and their demons.
But she wouldn’t mention all of that to Kate. Why sadden her? Let her live in her innocence. In the immaculate bliss of long-lost memories.
UNDER NELLO’S DIRECTION, Kate and Guillaume had been sewing an awning from an old sail to be rigged between the mizzenmast and main shrouds to shade the cockpit. Kate finished stitching an eye for a hook when she looked up at Guillaume pushing through the big three-sided needle with a sailmaker’s palm. “You sew well,” she said. “And you’re an excellent cook.”
Guillaume smiled broadly but didn’t reply.
“You’ll make someone a good wife,” she said with a laugh.
Guillaume pulled the waxed line through tight and snug. His smile waned and he said without a hint of irony, “I hope so.”
AT THE RARE TIMES HE WASN’T COOKING, Guillaume fished. He fabricated fanciful lures out of tin cans, strings, and wire, and had caught a small bonito the first day, which he served up in thick steaks with fried onions, beans, and rice. The head and spine of the fish he tied off the stern and trailed behind the ketch as bait.
One day, with the sun high and the view into the sea still deep, he saw a fish he didn’t recognize follow behind, and swim around the bait. Hello, fish, he thought. Do you like the shiny lure? Come close. Closer. Then, repenting, he added, Sorry, fish. Being hooked is no joke. Believe me, I know what it’s like being hooked. And be dragged along. To want to swim free but be forever dragged along. If we weren’t hungry, I promise you . . . So I’ll hook you, but in my heart of hearts, I hope you shake yourself free.
He watched the lure flash back and forth underwater and thought, All my life I’ve been dragged along. By traditions; expectations. Everyone wanted me to be something I wasn’t. My father said, “What the hell is it you want?” I didn’t know. But I knew what I didn’t want: his life. I just wanted to be happy. To look for someone to be happy with. To dream with. To look for someone who’s been looking for me.
Chapter 11
Twilight shrouded the ketch in somber hues and the air was heavy before nightfall. Darina came up the companionway ladder and quietly slid the hatch closed behind her. “Good evening,” she said to the lone figure at the helm.
“Evening, Sister,” Nello said. The ketch rolled softly over low, long swells, and the ropes creaked a gentle chorus in their blocks.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Darina said.
“No,” he said. Then he added more reassuringly, “No.”
A strip of blazing light clung to the horizon. It lit the sprinkling of rain that fell over the ketch, so fine the drops dried as soon as they fell. A benediction, Darina thought. “It’s
so beautiful out here,” she said. The drops made her skin tingle and she ran her hand up, then down her arm. The movement caught Nello’s eye.
He turned his head slightly as if to say something, but upon seeing her stayed silent. Even with the constant motion of the ketch, she bore herself stiffly and upright as if held up by gimbals. She sat now with her palms flat on the raw wood beside her thighs, drawing in the warmth remaining from the day. Behind her the evening star burned a small hole in the sky.
“Do you believe that our fate is in the stars?” Nello mused.
“In the stars?” Darina absently repeated. “I would say it’s in our hands.” She laughed softly. “Unless we let others grab it.”
“Not in God’s hands?” Nello asked, genuinely surprised.
“I think he has his hands full; must be a lot of work moving those stars around every night.”
Nello felt his throat tighten with attraction. He turned away.
When he didn’t answer, she crossed her arms against the chill. The twilight thickened. All around her, colors deepened: the varnished wood, the greened bronze port lights, his white shirt luminous below the canvas sails, and a thread of brilliant red—the telltale on the portside shroud—a length of yarn to indicate the wind, bloodred against the now-indigo sky.
“The stillness is lovely,” she said, barely louder than a whisper.
Nello pocketed his pipe, then checked the compass. He waited for a while before asking, “Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m from Inishturk.” She laughed. “That’s cold.”
As suddenly as they had come, the blazing colors faded. When the darkness was complete, Nello stuffed his pipe and struck a match. Seeing in the light of the flame that she was still awake, he killed the flame. “And what is it like, this Inishturk?”
She hesitated. “It’s small. Maybe a mile long. The cliffs are . . . enormous. The waves so cruel they carve holes through the rock.” Then she smiled. “Sorry. It’s an island. North of Aran.”
It came suddenly over her with the clarity of a dream and an intensity she hadn’t known in years: the bursts of sunlight through clouds onto green moors, the scattered houses by the harbor, the lone creek where sheep drink; and the great waves crashing against the cliff, making a sound deeper than thunder. Green water climbed halfway up the bluff, and the spray flew skyward like upward-driven rain. And she remembered how, at the first light of dawn after summer storms, she and her twin brother Michael would run across the island down to the raging ocean, to where it had carved a big hole, leaving a graceful bridge. And they would stand hand in hand in mortal terror close to the coming waves, and watch the next giant breaker bulge under the bridge and come roaring through the hole and up the chute. Then they would turn and run, escaping, howling in delight—her brother laughing so loud it rang over the roar—with the spray engulfing them and the wave towering behind.
And how in later years Maeve Flynn, two years older and the wild beauty of the island, would insist on coming along. In her red dress, her favorite, tight at the bosom and flowing from the waist, she stood beside them, but, when they ran, always ended up a bit behind even though with her long legs she could outrun them in a heartbeat. But she lagged behind and cried out for Michael to help her, and when he stopped and turned, she’d run into his arms.
Until one day she cried out but they just kept on running. And when they finally turned, Maeve Flynn wasn’t there. And forever thereafter, Maeve Flynn wasn’t anywhere. Only her red dress rode the current around the island and came into the harbor one evening on the tide.
Darina stood up suddenly, as if she meant to run. She seemed startled to see Nello there in the binnacle’s faint light. He leaned heavily on the wheel, the bulk of his stout shoulders and arms pressing his shirt and vest. His crumpled black hat was pulled low on his eyes, and the short curved pipe hung like an upturned question mark at his chin.
She sat back down and turned toward the darkness.
Her brother went silent after that for weeks. He would climb to the highest, windiest point of the cliff to sit and watch the sea. And he wouldn’t let her go with him to watch storm waves anymore. He stopped her at Connally’s cottage, whose windows, even though well back from the cliff, were caked with salt that glittered in the sun. From there he would go alone down to the murderous hole.
Once she snuck after him and watched from behind a shepherd’s windbreak on the hill. He stayed back from the bridge, sat against a windbreak but on the windward side. Embracing his knees, he watched the waves roar in, watched as if expecting one to bring Maeve Flynn back from the sea.
Nello saw her fingers reach out in the dark, as if to beckon someone or push something away. He sucked on his pipe and the embers lit his eyes. “They say no man’s an island,” he said gently. “Or woman.”
She tried to say something, to break the vise of memory of her brother at Connally’s window drawing in the caked salt with a sharpened twig. Always the same thing, storm after storm: Maeve Flynn in her dress.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I get caught in memories.”
But she didn’t mention how Mr. Connally, who had no children, came back one day from Galway on the boat, bringing a flat tin box of colored pencils and a pad of paper that was nice to touch. Her brother drew on the pad after that. He kept it under his pillow because it was full of Maeve Flynn, but now without a stitch of her red dress on her.
Darina looked up. Nello, lit by the compass, was staring at her hard.
She shuddered. “Sorry,” she said again. “Something I thought I had forgotten long ago.”
He watched her shudder become a shiver. That must have been some memory, he thought.
“Take the wheel,” he ordered gently.
She didn’t rise.
“Come on,” he said. “Take the wheel.”
He changed course five degrees to allow her latitude for mistakes without disturbing the setting of the sails, and waited until she had her hands on the spokes. “Steer two hundred degrees.”
He left her at the wheel and went below.
She did her best, but felt a strange crosscurrent tugging at the rudder and the bow would swing and she would overcorrect in the other direction. He came up carrying a blanket, but instead of handing it to her, he unfolded it and wrapped it around her as she peered down at the compass. He got the ketch tracking back on course, then pulled a silver flask from his pocket.
“Here,” he said. “Have a drink. It’s not the blood of Christ, but it does the trick.”
She held the flask to her lips and took a drink of the rum and coughed. “It’s very strong,” she said, and felt a rush of heat surge through her deep inside.
“Take another,” he offered.
She did, then held out the flask.
He took back the flask but held her hand with it. “Come here,” he said gently.
She hesitated, then took a small step closer and he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her near. He rubbed his hand on her back until the blanket was warm. She was rigid, holding her breath.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Sailors do this after cold gales to put the heat back in.”
Her shivering slowly eased.
“Fishermen too,” she said. “When they’re pulled from the cold sea.”
THE KETCH FLEW SOUTH by southwest in the sun. The trade winds blew without gusts or lulls and the needle of the log pointed fixed at eight knots. The air seemed to grow hotter by the hour and Nello calculated six more days to the equator. That night, when the first flying fish sparkled in the moonlight, Guillaume sprang to action. With Dugger’s permission, he stitched two small fishnets into one and draped it from the main boom to catch the fish that flew across the deck.
“Are you a fisherman, then, Monsieur?” Kate inquired. “Or a treasure hunter? Or a seacook?”
Guillaume laughed as he attached the net. “None of those, madame. I’m happy to be whatever the moment calls for.”
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Guillau
me asked if he could bring the chart of French Polynesia out to the brightness of the cockpit because his eyes had become somewhat weak with age.
He studied the chart, made measurements with dividers, pulled out a small black notebook held closed by knotted string, read, scribbled some notes, then, without looking up, said, “Some of the gold is still in Inca jewelry, some was melted into Spanish coins. All of it is sunk off a small coral island in the Tuamotus.”
Nello, sitting near him whittling a bung for a seacock, looked down at the chart and smiled. “Can’t be more than a few hundred of those, spread over, what? A few hundred square miles?”
“No, Monsieur,” Guillaume corrected politely. “Spread over a few thousand. Fortunately, I have the map that reduces the search to just three islands, and just one tiny atoll,” and here he read from the notebook, “with a steep, coral pinnacle on its eastern shore. Behind it lies a deep, pear-shaped pool.”
Nello stopped whittling. They all looked up at each other, then at the chart—all but Darina, who sat nearby, oblivious to the world.
“At the bottom of the pool,” Guillaume continued, “in a grotto, the gold.” He closed his notebook but kept a finger in it as a marker. “The runaway monk told his lover, Alvarez, about the gold guarded by the priests in the catacombs. Alvarez, the monk and three shipmates sailed back to Pisco. But they killed the monk at sea before they reached port. Alvarez and the ship’s captain, Killorain, were good Catholics, so they impressed the priests of Pisco with their love of God. Then they warned the priests that the runaway monk was coming with a shipful of cutthroats the next day for the gold. The priests, of course, were frightened. It was too late to send for soldiers from Lima, but Alvarez had a plan: they could load the treasure on his ship and sail it to Lima—guarded by the priests, of course. At dusk, when the fog rolled in, they began to load. It took all night, using five donkeys; over twenty trips each down the steep steps to the harbor. That was how I calculated about fourteen tons.