The Boatmaker

by John Benditt

  CHAPTER 7

  The boatmaker retraces the route he took to the Mandrake. On the crest of the bluff above the stone staircase he pauses, looking out over the sea, broad and green in the heat. He is in no hurry. No one is expecting him. On Small Island there are times when no one knows exactly where you are. But they know you are on the island or on the water nearby. Now he is in a place where no one knows him or his family, where no one will know if he walks out into the bay. He could find some heavy stones, put them in his pockets and keep walking, far enough so that the water comes up over his head. After a time the woman of Small Island would realize something had happened. She might think he had simply decided not to return. Or she might decide he had made it to Big Island, stayed there and drunk himself to death.

  On this island, he thinks, life is not as it is on Small Island. Things have odd names. The Warden. The Hostel. And some of those things seem to belong to no one—or to everyone. On Small Island each thing is owned by a particular person. Every house, boat, board, saw, adze, nail, bottle and glass, every table. Things are easily borrowed, often without much need for asking. But each thing belongs to someone. Nothing belongs to everyone. Except the sea.

  The boatmaker thinks of the woman of the town, her half-smile as she looked at him standing in the dusty road and asked if he had any money. A tremor runs through his body from top to bottom. It is the rage he felt in her room. But now it is without the tenderness that mixed with it and made it something else. He begins to shake with so much anger he can barely stand. He makes his way slowly and carefully down the stone stairs.

  His boat is as he left it, tied fore and aft. The tide is low and the double-ender seems to hang from its bow and stern lines. Two fishing boats, larger than his boat and painted dark blue, are tied farther out along the pier.

  He goes down the last wooden steps, crosses the sand and climbs the pier. Two of the boys who were there when he arrived are playing with a crab, standing on either side of the cornered creature with a stick, pushing it back and forth between them. As he crosses the sand, the boys lean together and whisper. He knows he doesn’t look right. And not just because of the purple eye and the crescent of blood on his cheek. Behind their hands, the boys are laughing at him in a way they would be afraid to laugh at their fathers, the fishermen whose boats are moored to this pier.

  In a few hours the tide will be higher. His boat will come up closer to the pier, and he will be able to step aboard easily. But the prickling sensation of rage under his skin won’t allow him to wait.

  Holding the stern line, he reaches until he feels the deck with his boots. He drops down, eases himself into the cockpit and releases the stern line. Everything is in place: tiller and rudder under the gunwales, centerboard stowed, sail lashed around the boom. Standing in his boat, he is aware of his body in a simple healthy way for the first time since he started drinking with the woman of the town.

  In the bottom of the boat is a little water: an inch or two of brackish green that moves as he steps aboard. Although the boat has been tied to the pier for only a week, it already needs to be bailed out and hauled up onto the beach. Each of its seams needs to be worked over and caulked. He thinks about taking off his jacket and starting to work; it’s a calming thought. He squats in the boat, feeling the healthy part of him return. He sees that while he has been on Big Island he has been changing into something else—something that was in him but unknown. The woman of the town did that. At the thought of her, anger surges through him again.

  He straightens up, moves toward the bow, the boat sliding under him. The compass is behind the mast, wrapped in canvas held down by a rope. He unties the rope and pulls the canvas off. Under its glass dome, the compass is almost as pristine as the day it was made in a factory on the Mainland, before it was mailed to the woman on Small Island, before his fever, before the dream of the blue wolf—before everything. He has polished it and kept a light film of oil on it. He feels the difference between the woman who gave it to him and the woman of the town; rage goes through him again. He reaches underneath the compass and pulls. Nothing. The compass is bolted with all his craft at the four corners of its base. He pulls again. Nothing moves. Red rage surges through him, blinding him. He pulls one last time. The compass comes up, tearing, splintering and leaving jagged holes in the deck. One of the mounting bolts is bent; the base and glass dome are unharmed.

  He sets the compass down, takes off his jacket, reaches into the sealskin bag strapped to his chest. Inside is the handkerchief from his mother with the image of Harbortown and the three seals in green. He wraps the compass in the handkerchief and puts on his jacket.

  With the compass cradled in his arms, it’s not easy to climb up onto the pier. But he manages and goes along the pier and down to the beach. The boys are gone, leaving behind their prey, a translucent crab stepping into and out of a thin line of foam. The crab moves with a delicate, high-stepping motion, as if it wanted to avoid contact with the water.

  At the top of the bluff the boatmaker hesitates. He knows he is going to a place he saw while walking the roads of the island. He doesn’t remember exactly where it is, but there’s a homing instinct in him, like a salmon’s knowledge of the place where it was born. The salmon-instinct takes over, and he sets out on the dusty road to the main harbor and the town on the bluff. He has a feeling that the place he’s looking for is on the outskirts of the town.

  On Big Island people often stop to say hello to a stranger and offer him a ride to town in a farm wagon. But they don’t stop to ask the small man carrying a bundle wrapped in an embroidered handkerchief. In fact, as they pass some people make a mental note to ask the Warden who the stranger is and whether he is dangerous. Paying no attention to their looks, the boatmaker keeps walking until the dusty trees at the side of the road are replaced by buildings, first old one-story houses, then larger houses with stores nestled in between. Ahead is a wider road, the dusty wagons and buggies on it headed for the center of town.

  He comes out of his salmon-trance in front of the place he’s looking for. He must have passed it while he was deep in drink, at some point after he left the Mandrake and before he woke up at the Hostel.

  His destination is a simple storefront with a big window in front that reaches almost to the ground. Behind the window is a space that looks as though it should hold a display of goods. But there’s nothing on display—just a field of green, flat across the bottom and covering a wall in back that comes up to the height of the boatmaker’s shoulders. On the window three disks are painted in gold, one above and two below. Under the three golden balls is the name Cohen.

  The boatmaker knows almost nothing about Jews. On Small Island there are no Jews in the flesh. They are present only in the pastor’s Good Friday sermons drawn from the Gospel of John. But there have always been whispers on the island about people from certain parts of the Mainland who came and settled, blending in and concealing their origins. Along with everyone else, the boatmaker heard the whispers, but they never concerned him one way or the other. If he knows anything about Jews it’s only because he read about them. Reading is an odd faculty for a house carpenter from Small Island. But his mother always had books in her house: the Bible and a few others, including a picture book with plates showing Vashad surrounded by his cloud of blackbirds.

  He pushes the door open and enters a large room with counters on two sides. Behind one counter is an arched opening filled by a beaded curtain. The room is bare, with nothing on the countertops, nothing on the shelves behind.

  The boatmaker knows he’s in the right place. He feels he should be ashamed to be here, but he isn’t. He is focused only on what he came to do—and what will happen afterward. He pulls the door closed behind him, walks to the counter and sets down his compass.

  A man comes through the arched opening, pushing aside the beads. He is tall and thin, dressed in black and wearing a skullcap. Light brown curls dangle in front of his ears like corkscrew shavings left behind by a
plane. The boatmaker is startled: He has never seen such curls on a man. What surprises him even more is how closely the man resembles the face on the banknotes. The king doesn’t have curls dangling in front of his ears, but apart from that the men could be brothers, with their long faces and dark eyes behind oval lenses.

  The man in the skullcap moves to the counter, appraising the boatmaker and his shrouded parcel with the eyes of someone who has seen everything that is for sale in the world and knows how to evaluate each item to the penny. He reaches out with long white fingers to remove the handkerchief. The boatmaker’s hand shoots out, takes the man’s wrist and stops him before he can touch the linen. The shopkeeper pulls his hand back, curling his lips at the unclean touch. The boatmaker unwraps the handkerchief and stows it in his jacket.

  “You don’t have to do business here,” the shopkeeper says. When the boatmaker stares at him without saying anything, he adds: “We don’t need your compass.”

  “I came here to sell it.”

  The Jew looks at the boatmaker as if he were a wild animal in a zoo: dangerous but safely behind iron bars. He picks up the compass, examines it and sets it down on the counter. He pulls a loupe out of his pocket, pushes his glasses onto his forehead and uses the loupe to peer into the glass dome. His eyes come alive and the look of having seen everything the world offers for sale disappears.

  He puts the loupe away, lifts the compass above his head to examine the underside, the hanging bolts. “One of these is bent. Did you rip it off your boat?”

  The man pulls his glasses back down onto his long nose. Behind the oval lenses, he looks at the boatmaker as if he can see every drink that has poured into him since he put in at Big Island, every beating he has taken, the talk with the Warden, even the way he had to reach for his mug with both hands.

  “This is yours, isn’t it? It didn’t by chance come from someone else’s boat? We don’t accept stolen goods here. We follow the law to the letter.”

  The boatmaker says nothing. His mother’s handkerchief is a lump inside his jacket. He stares. The man in the skullcap stares back.

  “Not talkative, I see. Not from Big Island either. Well, that’s as it may be. And this compass may be yours, and it may not. I would guess it is. A Stenysson. Lovely piece of work. A miniature version of the ones they make for the big ships. Don’t see many of these hereabouts. Not much call for them.”

  The shopkeeper goes quiet, calculating what he knows about the compass and the boatmaker, fitting each figure into the right account. Then he names an amount.

  The boatmaker says nothing, but his small erect figure gives assent. The shopkeeper turns and pushes through the beaded curtain. The boatmaker flicks at an itch near the crust of blood on his cheek. He doesn’t want to scratch it and make blood flow. But he can’t help touching his face. Crumbs of dried blood fall to the floor.

  The storekeeper comes back and places some bills on the smooth wood of the counter, along with a few coins. The boatmaker picks up the bills without counting them, turns and walks out of the shop, leaving the coins.

  The shopkeeper looks at the retreating back, the round bald spot, the worn corduroy jacket. What a savage, he thinks, almost without human language, not so different from an animal, a beast of the field, lowing to its fellows, with no soul and no knowledge of Ha-Shem. Then again, he thinks, I live in a land of savages.

  In the mind of the shopkeeper, the people of Big Island are no better and no worse than Gentiles anywhere, among whom the Jews have always been condemned to live. From Abraham in Mesopotamia to Joseph in Egypt, from the destruction of the Second Temple to the harlots of Paris or Berlin. They are all savages. This one is a little stranger than most, that’s all. He did have a fine compass, though, a beautiful instrument. Which is odd. Assuming it isn’t stolen. If it is stolen, that will be found out soon enough. And the way he wouldn’t let me touch the handkerchief, which was embroidered after some strange Gentile fashion. Perhaps the handkerchief is a fetish of some kind, a thing sacred to the savage.

  Without thinking, the shopkeeper lifts the strings that extend from under his dark jacket and brushes them to his lips. He picks up the compass and carries it through the curtained archway into the room behind. After sliding a ladder along the cases, he puts the compass on a high shelf, among other valuable items that have parted company with their owners.

  As he puts the compass on the shelf, the shopkeeper stops thinking about the boatmaker. Long experience and deep study have taught him not to waste time trying to understand the ways of those who live beyond the Word and apart from Ha-Shem. They may seem close to beasts, like this strange little man with his round bald spot, or dignified and cultured like the men he does business with on the Mainland: experienced and tolerant, some of them as world-weary as Jews themselves. But deep down, he knows that, whether they are wearing overalls smelling of cow dung or bespoke suits scented with expensive cologne, they are nothing but animals: hot breath without mind, unsanctified clay. He comes down the ladder feeling the need to wash his hands, read a midrash and pray to Ha-Shem from the depths of exile.

  CHAPTER 8

  After pawning his compass, the boatmaker wanders until he finds a place to sleep in the brush by the side of a dusty road. He has enough money to stay anywhere on Big Island, eat wherever they serve food. But he isn’t willing to spend any of it on anything but what he pawned the compass for.

  He wakes up under the bushes to the sound of wagon wheels. The sun is up and it’s hot, hotter than it ever gets on Small Island. He rises, stretches, feels the sealskin bag strapped to his chest, money and handkerchief inside. The purple moon around his eye has faded. The scab on his cheek has shrunk to a scratch.

  He undoes his overalls. Yawning and stretching, he lets a hot stream run against the folded bark of a tree and then shakes out the last drops. Even though he’s had nothing to eat since the day before, he’s not hungry or thirsty. He stretches again and walks out onto the road that leads to the Mandrake.

  When the boatmaker reaches the inn, the pine table sitting out in front is empty. He realizes it must be very early. He walks up to the inn and opens the door. Inside it’s dark, cool and quiet.

  Leaving the front door open, he walks toward the stairs, their scalloped edges showing walnut grain. He goes up slowly, a step at a time, trying to make his feet quiet. But a door under the stairs opens, and the innkeeper comes out of the office where he sleeps in the same nightshirt he wears during the day. The only difference is that at night he adds a nightcap, equally unclean, with a long tail. The innkeeper doesn’t care about his appearance. But he does care deeply about the cashbox under his bed. On the floor next to the metal box is a large, well-oiled shotgun. Box and gun are rarely parted.

  The innkeeper steps out and comes close enough to the foot of the stairs to recognize the boatmaker in his corduroy jacket and overalls. He goes back into the office, pulls the door closed behind him and touches box and gun with a big toe before climbing back in bed for a few more hours of half-sleep in the endless daylight.

  On the top floor there are only a couple of doors and no noise coming from behind any of them. The boatmaker walks up to hers and pulls it open. She’s asleep, wearing a cream-colored shift under sheets that look the same as when he left.

  He enters and walks across the room to the desk built into the far wall. Like the stairs, the desk is made of walnut. A lot of walnut was used in building the Mandrake, which means it was originally a respectable establishment: a summer hotel with striped awnings, men in linen suits drinking and playing croquet in the garden behind the main building, watched by women under parasols. The boatmaker leans back on the desk, waiting for his presence in the room to penetrate her sleep.

  She turns over once or twice, mumbling things he can’t catch, then opens her eyes and looks straight at him. At first, she’s frightened. There’s something strange and different about the boatmaker, the way he’s looking at her, his unannounced presence in her room while she sle
pt. Then she relaxes, pleased that her power has brought him back. He must have found money somewhere, she thinks. He wouldn’t have the nerve to return without it. Unlike her husband, the woman of the town has little regard for money in itself. But she does like the elegant things it buys. And most of all she enjoys receiving it as a tribute to her power over men. They draw near her offering it, eager to be enslaved. Their submission pleases her. The money itself is nothing.

  She reaches back, plumps the pillow, arranges it under her. Locks her fingers behind her head and looks at him as if she had no doubt that when she woke on this day, just past Midsummer’s Eve, she would find him in her room, leaning on the edge of her desk.

  At the sight of her, luxuriating and complacent, the boatmaker’s anger rises up. She is playing with him, he thinks, happy to see her prey. She seems to be licking her lips. He feels the redness swell until it reaches his eyes, and he can barely see. His body feels clumsy, immensely strong. He feels as if he’s not wearing his clothes but is caged within them. He tears at his brown corduroy jacket and opens the sealskin bag.

  Reaching into his bag, he pushes the handkerchief aside and takes out his money: all the bills from the pawnbroker, along with the coins that were left when he stumbled away from the Mandrake. He raises the money over his head, turns, and brings his hand down on the desk. The coins leap and fly into the room. The bills flutter like summer rain, falling on the floor and on the worn sheets molded to the body of the woman of the town. She is no longer smiling; she is frightened. He pulls the rest of his clothes off and stands naked, the core of his body white, his arms and face sunburned.