The Boatmaker

by John Benditt

  The priest’s voice becomes a subdued version of the voice that gave the sermon on despair: quieter but very passionate.

  “The sacrifice must be renewed to lift the darkness of a new age. And you, my son, are an essential part of the renewed sacrifice Our Father has offered us: the New Christ on the New Land.”

  The boatmaker is stunned into silence, deeply confused. These are mighty answers indeed—but they are not answers to the questions he carried with him into this office. And what the priest is saying is so momentous he cannot begin to comprehend it.

  Suddenly he is ashamed of the questions he entered this room with. He must let go of them. He must put aside his doubts, his despair, and do whatever the priest asks of him. If he does, in the end he will find answers to everything he has asked—and much more.

  At this realization, the boatmaker feels as if he will break down and weep for the second time in his adult life. But he is sure such a display would be letting Father Robert down. He composes himself and listens, obedient.

  The priest feels the change, and his paternal heart softens. He wants to stand and embrace the rough little man, but he cannot possibly allow himself to do that. Instead, he proceeds to explain, as gently as he can, what lies ahead. He smooths his blond hair, takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose to hide his emotion. His heart is overflowing, swimming in proud, hot gratitude. He puts the handkerchief back and continues calmly.

  “We have been waiting, and now the time of renewal is at hand. Your dream is one of the final missing pieces of the puzzle. Now that you have had this dream, your life will change. You will be preparing for the moment of rebirth, the sacrifice of the New Christ.”

  “Why has this happened?”

  “I will tell you as much as you need to know—and no more,” says the priest, the question returning him to his authoritative daily self.

  “In every era there is a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. It happened in the beginning, between Satan and Adam. It happened again when the Jews freed Barabbas and chose the crucifixion of Our Lord. Now the forces of darkness are again rising and undermining our nation. And the Jews are again at the center of it. The House of Lippsted, who make this beautiful furniture”—the priest gestures with his thumb over his shoulder at the secretary—“have crept into the heart of the kingdom. Through his insatiable need for the money to support his schemes for progress, our weak and foolish king has delivered himself into their hands. Behind closed doors, the debt of the Crown to the House of Lippsted grows and grows. They take pains to conceal it, the king and his Jews. They have broken the debt up into many small pieces—each owed to a different subsidiary of the House of Lippsted. And they believe that that way the size of the debt will remain hidden.

  “But nothing remains hidden from the eyes of God!” says Father Robert, bringing his palm down on the surface of the desk.

  As he feels the heat in his palm, the priest fears for a moment that he has gone too far, even for a private conversation. The division of the Crown’s debt into splinters to conceal its size has never been made public. That information comes from a network of spies loyal to The Brotherhood that reaches all the way to the palace. It would be disastrous for the network to be exposed.

  Father Robert pauses, breathes in, rubs his palms together. He feels himself calming. He is almost certain that the man from Small Island is not shrewd or worldly enough to understand the implications of what the priest has said.

  The boatmaker is barely listening to what Father Robert is saying about the details of the king’s debt to the House of Lippsted. The man from Small Island has crossed a threshold: He will join the priest’s plan for the New Christ.

  “How do I fit in?”

  “You have come to us when the moment is ripe,” the priest says, now feeling quite secure. “There have been signs—many signs—already. Our Father is merciful. When the forces of darkness are strongest, a new Redeemer comes. Now that you have been shown to us, we will show you the rest.”

  The priest watches to see the effect of his words. The boatmaker is silent. He has decided to give himself to this new purpose. All he wants now is to be taught how to serve.

  “Now I will show you how powerful the love of your brothers is for you,” the priest says, rising and moving to the window behind the side table. “Come and see.”

  The boatmaker gets up, sets down his glass and goes to stand next to the priest. Father Robert puts a wrestler’s arm around the boatmaker’s shoulder and points with his other hand down across the square. Suspended on the poles the brothers raised in front of the chapel are Crow and White. Their arms are wrapped behind the poles, and thick ropes are tied around their chests and legs. Their eyes are open as if they are surprised. There are no marks on them. Their faces are pale. It is not easy to tell how long they have been dead.

  CHAPTER 15

  The day after seeing Crow and White the boatmaker is moved out of the hall where the brothers sleep. Neck leads him to a small building tucked behind the chapel. He has never paid much attention to this building, which faces the woods stretching away to the border of the New Land. Neck shows him to a small single room.

  “You have been chosen to give everything. What an honor. Beyond an honor.” The neckless man would like to be in the boatmaker’s place, would like to give even more than he already does to Father Robert and the New Land. But he knows envy is a sin; he pushes the thought away.

  The walls of the boatmaker’s new room are whitewashed, the pine floorboards unfinished. On the wall above the narrow iron bedstead is a crucifix. He is given a new robe, finely woven, whiter than his old one and never worn before. There will be no more work in the fields for him. Taking off his old robe, stained and gray, putting on the new one, he feels himself enter a new life. It seems as if everything he has experienced—Small Island, the woman of the town, the Mainland, money, the Jews, the New Land, the lettuces, the hare, the dream of the salmon—was intended to bring him to this moment.

  He sees that in each of his experiences he has been different: sometimes meek, sometimes hard, usually silent, occasionally talking too much, often gullible, sometimes suspicious, sometimes drunk for long periods, at other times achingly sober. All these versions of himself have played their part in bringing him here; he is grateful to each of them.

  He no longer eats with the other brothers. Twice a day a silent monk comes to his door carrying a wooden tray that holds a glass and a bowl or two. While the brothers in the refectory continue to have vegetables every day and often eggs, along with their grains, in his narrow room facing the woods the boatmaker’s diet diminishes day by day. At first there are summer vegetables: eggplant, tomatoes, squash and greens, served with barley. Then the vegetables thin out and disappear, first the tomatoes, then the eggplant and squash. Finally his beautiful lettuces stop appearing, and nothing remains but stewed barley, washed down with cold springwater.

  The boatmaker knows he is being prepared for something, but he does not know what the task will be. His understanding of what the young priest told him just before he saw Crow and White staring from their telegraph poles is unsteady, transient. Sometimes he thinks he knows the sacrifice that will be required, at other times he is lost in confusion. He works to humble himself.

  His only work is reading the Gospels and praying to the crucifix on the wall over the bed. When he can pray no more, he waits for the silent brother with his wooden tray to arrive. From time to time, between his two meals, Neck comes in. For the boatmaker, these are the best times, because Neck is willing to explain a little.

  Neck tells the boatmaker he is one of four brothers, each of whom has a mystic and sacred seal set upon him. Now that the seals have appeared, a revelation is at hand that will change the Mainland, then spread out to transform the world, as the death of Jesus did, radiating from Jerusalem. Father Robert has not yet been given the full meaning of the seals: There is more to come before the revelation is complete. But
the priest is busy, going frequently to the capital for meetings. Neck is vague about the people the priest meets with in the city and what they discuss. But it is clear that, young as he is, Father Robert has spent years laying the groundwork for this change—and the New Land is only part of the picture.

  The boatmaker wants to know more about all of it: the bigger picture the New Land is part of, the men the priest meets with in the city, the other three brothers, the seal each one bears, the nature of their task. But he knows he must be satisfied with what he is given. If he asks directly, Neck goes silent.

  Over time, his eagerness for answers fades. The diet of barley gruel, water and prayer has left him at a distance from the things of this world. He stays in his cell, reading the Gospels and waiting for his task to begin, praying for the strength to do whatever is asked of him. Despite all the steps he has taken on this road, he is not certain that he has completely vanquished his own stubbornness, the spiritual pride concealed within despair. And so he prays harder, eats less.

  On a hot day toward the end of summer, Neck comes to his cell with a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. While the boatmaker has changed during his time on the New Land, the neckless man has remained exactly the same since the boatmaker first saw him, entering the hospital room behind the priest. Neck has never offered more than he is able to give, never appeared when he was not welcome, never tried to explain more than he understands.

  The boatmaker looks at the package under Neck’s arm, but he asks nothing. In the last few days, the world has moved even farther away. The barley gruel shrank to a spoonful in the bottom of a bowl. Then the bowl itself disappeared, and all that was left was a glass of water from the spring. At first, the boatmaker gulped it greedily. Then he measured it out, drinking a little at a time. Now he barely notices the glass when it arrives. Sometimes when the brother comes to him with the second tray, the first glass is still full.

  With the package under his arm, Neck leads the boatmaker to a covered walkway outside his cell. It is the first time he has been out of his room in many days. He steps out, head feeling light. Even in the shade of the overhanging roof, the sun is blinding. He closes his eyes.

  Neck takes him by the arm and guides him around a corner. He feels Neck let go. He stands there, eyes closed, hearing Neck’s steps retreat, a door opening and closing, steps returning. Neck undoes the boatmaker’s belt, lifts his robe, guides him forward until he feels something cool against his thighs.

  “Lift up and climb in.”

  The boatmaker lifts his left leg and puts his foot down into water that is between warm and hot. He lifts his right leg. Neck hands him in and down.

  “Let me know if it’s too hot.”

  The boatmaker opens his eyes to see Neck standing over the metal tub with a bucket. He gives a sign that the water is fine.

  Within the metal tub, his body seems long and white. His hands and arms are dark from working in the fields. There are few marks left from the beating by Crow and White. He closes his eyes, welcomes the hot water. It is the first hot bath he has had since coming to the New Land.

  As tenderly as a woman, Neck bathes every inch of him. When they are done, the boatmaker steps out. Neck towels him off and walks to pick up the package wrapped in twine, which is sitting on the seat of an old green kitchen chair pushed up against the wall of the building. He cuts the twine and breaks the brown paper, bringing forth a new robe, even finer than the one the boatmaker has been wearing.

  He unfolds the robe, shaking it out and pulling it over the boatmaker’s head. His dark hair is wet from the bath, his bald spot larger than when he left Small Island. The new robe is snowy, immaculate. Over the left breast a heart engulfed in flames has been stitched in red thread. Inside the heart the Roman numeral IV has been worked in the same bright red.

  Neck takes him by the arm and leads him, dripping, back to his cell, where he kneels in the corner. The waiting is over. Knees on the pine floorboards, he looks up at the crucifix and prays.

  Two days later, Neck returns. Leaning on him, the boatmaker walks in his flaming-heart robe, feet bare, eyes closed, under the roof of the covered walkway. They pass the spot where Neck bathed him in the metal tub and arrayed him in his new finery. They turn another corner, cross grass and climb steps. At the top of the steps the boatmaker feels the presence of an open door and other people.

  He lets go of Neck and opens his eyes to find that he is looking through the door of a one-room building set right at the edge of the woods. The room is simple and whitewashed, the floor covered in deep, fluffy cotton wool. On the cotton wool, sitting cross-legged, are three brothers of the New Land in the same kind of robe the boatmaker is wearing. In a low chair, holding a worn Bible, is Father Robert.

  The boatmaker takes a tentative step into the room, feeling the softness of cotton wool on his feet. On the far wall is a large round window like the one in the chapel, with concentric lead strips intersected by lines radiating from the center that form a polar map overlooking the woods.

  Father Robert motions for him to sit. He sees that the other three also have Roman numerals stitched within their flaming hearts. The boatmaker sits down facing I, with II on his left and III on his right. He doesn’t recognize the others from his days on the New Land. Number I is tall and sinewy, with a dark beard and piercing eyes, his hair close-cropped. II and III are doughier, II dark, III a redhead with flaming hair and freckles, a type seen from time to time in the capital, displaying the blood of a tribe conquered long ago by the sea-warriors in their longships.

  Each day for the next week, after praying all morning, I, II, III and IV in their flaming-heart robes are brought to sit on the cotton wool and listen to Father Robert read from the Gospels. He reads from all four accounts in turn, not starting at the beginning, but going immediately to the description each of the Gospels offers of the dark hours before the Crucifixion, when Jesus, betrayed and abandoned, wrestled with His fear, revealing that He was both human and divine.

  The priest says each word loud and clear, stopping occasionally to see whether his meaning has penetrated the four men before him in their pristine robes. Between passages the priest neither explicates nor preaches. He lapses into silence and waits.

  After days of living on springwater, the boatmaker’s mind is aflame, his senses acute as a hare’s. Beyond the wind in the trees he hears the bees in their hives. He concentrates on that low hum as he struggles to make out what the priest is trying to convey through his readings. When his brain can no longer make this effort, he looks sidelong at the brothers beside him in their flaming-heart finery. Number I is clearly the leader: vigorous and powerful, in command of himself. II and III are just as clearly followers: nervous and sweating, willing to do anything to avoid disappointing their leaders.

  After a week, the boatmaker is led to the open door by Neck, feeling light not only in head but also in body. Father Robert is not present. The sun is behind the building, away from the great radial window; the room with its cotton-wool floor is in shadow. The boatmaker enters and takes his place across from I.

  “Welcome, brothers,” says Number I, the boatmaker hearing the leader’s voice for the first time. It is a reassuring voice but not one that invites discussion.

  “We are all equal here,” Number I says. “Each of us is essential. The number you wear indicates no precedence. We are four-in-one, one-in-four. We shall live and die together for the New Land. Let us pray.”

  Number I bows his head and leads them through the Lord’s Prayer. The boatmaker no longer hears the bees even though the wind is now very soft.

  When they finish their prayer, Number I raises his hand and looks at each of the others in turn. “By now, I think we all understand what is required of us. It will be a slow and painful end—like that of our brother Jesus, the First Christ—but when it is finished we will be on the right hand. And by the time we reach our appointed places, having sacrificed body and blood, the great transformation, with
its unstoppable force, will have begun here below. Is anyone not ready? Speak now or forever be silent, brothers.” The boatmaker feels Number I looking straight at him, trying to read his Small Island heart.

  “Then we are ready.” Number I reaches a strong arm behind him into the cotton wool, holding the other three in his gaze. He finds what he is looking for on the floor. His hand comes around in front of his chest holding a knife with a worn wooden handle and a long, highly polished blade. The boatmaker can see there is an inscription along the blade in the ancient spiky script of the Mainland.

  “Our task will be long and slow, brothers, counted in days, not hours or minutes. Blood shall flow, and be taken up. In between, we will be in our cells, praying. Then we shall return here for the next round. Toward the end, we will be carried, but we shall return as long as we draw breath.”

  Outside the wind dies; the oak leaves hang in ripe green clusters.

  “Finally, we shall leave our husks of bodies and be swept up in a great ascent, turning and turning until we join as one and are seated at the right hand of the Father.”

  Number I takes the knife, holds it up before him in strong tanned hands. “I will go first.”

  Their leader closes his eyes, lips moving. He opens his eyes and raises the knife. Holding his nose with his left hand, he uses his strong right arm to slice off the tip. The stub of pink flesh comes away in his left hand. He holds it up, showing it to the others, as blood washes down his face.