The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel
Page 35
“They’ll do better without me.” She grinned as the door slid open. “The skeleton at the feast.”
He made as if to come with her, but she halted him with a raised hand. “I’m kidding. Okay? I’ll be back. I promise. Just need some air.”
He looked doubtful, but stopped as the doors closed behind her.
* * *
Outside she stood for a long time bathed in the LA summer heat and car exhaust and the exhalation of air conditioners. Sweat prickled her skin. She plucked her shirt away, panting in sudden terror.
Around her human beings seethed like krill sensing a warming sea. They thronged the sidewalks and surged across the street. So many. So different. Their expressions worried, intent. Yet here and there … that lone man across the street … that woman at the wheel of the small car. Here and there, in passing visages, she saw the outcast, the beast. The rogue.
She no longer knew what that word meant. Only, perhaps, one who went solitary, perhaps even hated, but whose course was set by the compass of his own will. Those individuals wrote history.
But there was a larger stage, even, than human history.
Alone among the species of earth, one had gone rogue. Its hand, like Ishmael’s, was raised against all others.
Lifting her head to soaring towers rearing into a darkening sky, she shuddered as if harrowed by an icy wind. Solitary, self-willed, self-obsessed, contemptuous of the past and careless of the future, Man himself was the rogue. But only for a time.
Only for a time.
Acknowledgments
Ex nihilo nihil fit. First of all thanks to the master, Herman Melville, in whose deep-graven wake—along with that of Joseph Conrad—all writers of the sea must sail. For this book I’m also indebted to J. C. Alonso, Robert P. Arthur, David Baxter, Ina Birch, Julia Blythe, Barbara Brown, Bonnie Culver, Lourdes Figueroa, Herb Gilliland, Adam Goldberger, Terra Layton, Terta Gillian Lewis, Kate Longley, Eric LoPresti, Pamela McGrady, Kate Ottaviano, Charle Ricci, Kathryn Parise, Naia Poyer, Matt Shear, Kenneth J. Silver, Bob White, Tom and Jean Wescott, Frances Anagnost Williams, and Georgina Winton, along with the following institutions: the Nantucket Atheneum, the Maria Mitchell Natural Science Museum, the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, the Nantucket Whaling Museum, the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Research Library, the Wilkes University Creative Writing Program, the Eastern Shore Public Library, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Mt. San Angelo.
Few novels stem from pure imagination. My discussions of humpback songs were informed by Mercado, Herman, and Pack in Aquatic Mammals, 2003. The description of sperm codas is from the papers of Ricardo Antunes, Luke Rendell, Hal Whitehead, Shane Gero, and Tyler Schulz. Descriptions of chimp behavior and primate research were largely from Muller and Mitani, 2005, and John Cohen’s “Thinking Like a Chimpanzee” in the September 2010 issue of Smithsonian. The discussion of Von Economo neurons was written after perusing Ingrei Chen’s “The Social Brain” in the June 2009 issue of the same magazine. Philip Hoare’s magical The Whale has great descriptions of sperm whales in close-up, as does, of course, Melville. The tactics employed by the fictional CPL and their Japanese adversaries were informed by Peter Heller’s Whale Warriors and the Whale Wars television series, plus U.S. Navy and IMO antiboarding protocols and my own experiences in the Arctic and elsewhere both in large craft and under sail. John Nelson’s A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine was useful for Hy Kimura’s background. Other helpful works were Shapiro and Bjelke’s Time on Ice, the Lonely Planet Guide to Antarctica, and Dan Beachy-Quick’s poetic and haunting A Whaler’s Dictionary, which I had the great pleasure of hearing him read from at the 2011 AWP conference in New York.
Let’s emphasize that these were consulted for the purposes of fiction. I am not saying that anything in these references leads to the conclusions my characters reach or voice.
The translation of Soseki’s haiku is widely quoted, but I have been unable to find any attribution for insertion of the original translator’s name.
My most grateful thanks to George Witte, long-time editor and friend, with whom I’ve been discussing a reprise of the Mocha Dick legend for some years; to J. Michael Lennon, Wilkes University colleague, who also shared his thoughts on how to tell an old tale anew; and to Lenore Hart, anchor on lee shores, and my guiding star when skies are clear.
As always, all errors and deficiencies are my own.
Previous Books by David Poyer
TALES OF THE MODERN NAVY
The Towers
The Crisis
The Weapon
Korea Strait
The Threat
The Command
Black Storm
China Sea
Tomahawk
The Passage
The Circle
The Gulf
The Med
TILLER GALLOWAY
Down to a Sunless Sea
Louisiana Blue
Bahamas Blue
Hatteras Blue
THE CIVIL WAR AT SEA
That Anvil of Our Souls
A Country of Our Own
Fire on the Waters
HEMLOCK COUNTY
Thunder on the Mountain
As the Wolf Loves Winter
Winter in the Heart
The Dead of Winter
OTHER BOOKS
Happier Than This Day and Time
Ghosting
The Only Thing to Fear
Stepfather Bank
The Return of Philo T. McGiffin
Star Seed
The Shiloh Project
White Continent
About the Author
DAVID POYER’s naval career included service in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, and Pacific. His thirty-plus books, including twenty sea novels, have been translated into Italian, Dutch, Japanese, and other languages. He’s also written sailing, diving, and nautical history articles for Chesapeake Bay, Southern Boating, Shipmate, Tidewater Virginian, and other periodicals. His work has been required reading in the Literature of the Sea course at the U.S. Naval Academy, along with that of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville. He lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia with his wife and daughter, with whom he explores the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic coast in their sloop, Water Spirit.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE. Copyright © 2013 by David Poyer. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by James Iacobelli
Cover photographs: ocean © Aaron Foster; sailboat © Eunice Bergin/Getty Images; iceberg © Shutterstock.com
ISBN 978-1-250-02056-7 (hardcover)
e-ISBN 9781250020574
First Edition: April 2013