The Boatmaker

by John Benditt

  Crow was an impulsive, careless gambler. Tips on horse and dog races, from Crow’s friends in the shadow world, are decorated with doodles and exclamation points. Many are followed by angry, obscene entries, indicating that another sure thing had failed to materialize. Some are scored almost all the way through the tough paper. While he pages through the book, the boatmaker recalls Crow returning to the construction site from his mysterious comings and goings, occasionally ebullient, more frequently dark and withdrawn, lashing out at White and drinking by himself at the edge of the site, not inviting the boatmaker with them to the Grey Goose for dinner.

  The second stream is a smaller, steadier flow into Crow’s household economy. The amounts don’t vary much, never huge, never too small, mostly weekly, disappearing in the winter. They are scattered through the pages but, unlike some of the other entries, these are not difficult to decipher: They represent White’s pay, disappearing into Crow’s pocketbook and reappearing as Crow saw fit. White never expressed any resentment at this arrangement. White was grateful to Crow, as if the smaller man were guiding him through a distracting world in which White would otherwise have been lost. The amount White was paid is larger than the boatmaker would have expected. He wonders whether that was because of White’s unusual strength or Crow’s connections to the shadow world, or both.

  The third stream of amounts is impossible for the boatmaker to make sense of. Here there are no names—only dates, numbers and letters. P, Q and R appear repeatedly, appointments with each one scrawled in pencil, along with payments received from them. No payments seem to have been made to them, so they cannot have been bookmakers. In fact, in spite of his losses at the track, Crow does not seem to have had to resort to loans from bookmakers. The payments from P, Q and R are larger than any of the other sums, except a few of Crow’s worst losses. They are irregular, beginning before the boatmaker met the mismatched pair and continuing to the end.

  The boatmaker leafs through the notebook, trying to find patterns in the jumble. The only thing he can see is that payments from R increase in frequency and amount over time, while those from P and Q remain the same. The three largest payments from R, each larger than the last, are in the months before the boatmaker was beaten. He turns down the pages where payments from R are noted.

  At a knock on his door he stuffs Crow’s notebook under the rumpled sheets and rises, his body both light and heavy from lack of sleep. While he was absorbed in the book, morning has filled his room. He snuffs his candle.

  At his door, the landlady holds a bowl of steaming coffee, heavily diluted with milk, as he likes it. The black-and-white cats are twining between her legs. There is no sign of a mouse.

  CHAPTER 19

  A few snowy nights later the boatmaker stands at the door of the Grey Goose, stamping snow from his boots. When he enters, he sees that the interior looks just as it did when Crow and White sat in the back at one of the rough, poorly lit tables. Around them, the tavern would be filled with workingmen and people from the shadow world, eating goulash, sopping it up with bread and washing it down with dark, yeasty beer.

  But he’s come early, and the Grey Goose is quiet. One or two men who are always there, alcohol their only company, stare into space, not registering the entrance of the man from Small Island. As always, Gosdon stands behind the bar, apron lashed around his substantial middle, polishing a glass. He turns when he hears the boatmaker enter, puts the glass down and lays his palms on the bar, arms spread wide in the classic pose of the bartender, ready to hear your confidences—or reach under the bar for his truncheon.

  “Well, if it isn’t my friend from Small Island. Haven’t seen you for many a long day,” says the owner of the Grey Goose in a tone of commercial bonhomie. “Nor your friends Crow and White. Left quite a tab, those two. Meaning Crow, of course. White never handled money. But you knew that. What’s your pleasure, friend? Where have you been? In an accident, were you? Interesting scar that, on your nose. Been jumping through windows, have you?”

  The boatmaker starts. The bartender sees the effect of his words and says: “Just joking, friend. Just joking. But seriously, where have you been?”

  “Out of the city.”

  “Ah,” says the bartender, picking up his glass and polishing. “A nice long vacation in the country. Like a man of means. A nobleman at his country estate. Seems to have done you good. All except your nose. Get that fighting, did you? I’m no fool. Even in the country they have fights.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how does the other one look? Tell me he looks worse than you. I always thought you were a man who could take care of himself. Even though you are not the largest fish in the sea.” Gosdon laughs at his own wit and holds the glass up to the light to examine it for streaks.

  “Even against that mountain of a man, your friend White, I think you might do alright. You didn’t get that nose fighting with White by any chance?”

  “No.”

  “Glad to hear it. Now, tell me, what became of that oddly mated couple? They haven’t been here nearly as long as you—more than a year, I think. Until then, they were in here almost every day, running up their tab. Oh, I know Crow was drinking his own whiskey out of that silver flask even while he was in here: buying one from me and drinking one of his own and thinking I didn’t see. Too smart by half, that one. Well, I keep my eyes shut and my mouth closed. That’s my motto. Everyone knows that about Rickert Gosdon. As long as a man behaves himself in my tavern, I don’t care what he does on the outside. And aside from running up a tab that maybe he intended to pay and maybe didn’t ever intend to pay and sneaking some of his own whiskey out of his fancy flask, Crow never caused me any trouble. Too smart by half, though.

  “By the way,” Gosdon says, putting down glass and rag, leaning forward across the bar as far as his stomach will allow and lowering his voice: “I hear those two came to no good in the end. Which doesn’t entirely surprise me. But since they were friends of yours, I thought you might know something about it.”

  “No.” The boatmaker’s stare is steady.

  “Alright. If that’s how you want it.” The proprietor, who had been hoping for gossip, is put off. He turns away and makes himself busy behind the bar before coming back and stopping in front of the boatmaker.

  “Well then, what’ll it be? I seem to recall that yours is whiskey. And if memory serves, not too particular about whether it’s a fancy whiskey. I like that. A man who’s not a snob about his drink.” What the tavernkeeper means is: a man who drinks what Gosdon serves and doesn’t complain.

  “Nothing, thanks. But I’ve a got a question. Do you know anything about a man named R?”

  “R? That’s not a name. It’s a letter.” The bartender draws back. The question has an air he doesn’t like in these troubled times. Perhaps the boatmaker, who always seemed to be a bit of a half-wit, a rustic foil for Crow and White, might actually be a dangerous half-wit.

  “Maybe his name just starts with R. Could it be someone Crow knew? Someone he had business with?”

  Under its fat the tavernkeeper’s face goes pale. “I don’t know anything about R, my friend. Or any other letter of the alphabet.” He pauses, breathing a little harder. “And you would be well advised to forget the entire alphabet—up to and including R. Especially R. Our friend Crow may have been mixed up in things that are a little too deep for the likes of honest men like you and me. Ordinary peaceful men.” Gosdon reaches under the bar and wraps thick fingers around his truncheon.

  The boatmaker can see that the owner of the Grey Goose knows more than he is letting on—and is frightened by his knowledge.

  “One more thing. Do you know anything about something called The Brotherhood? An organization that publishes a newspaper, maybe does some other things.”

  “I do not. And now I know you’re getting into things that the likes of us plain honest men should stay away from.” The tavernkeeper is sweating.

  “This kingdom’s mad at the moment. I’ve hea
rd about it being like this before—in the time of my grandfather. He started this bar, my grandfather. Built it himself. And based on what he told me when I was no more than a pup, when things get like this it means we’re going straight into the mouth of Hell. Stay out of it, friend. Get yourself back to Small Island, and stay there. Forget your bloody questions. And for God’s sake stop asking about The Brotherhood.”

  The tavernkeeper lets go of the truncheon and brings up an unlabeled jar of clear liquid like the ones the monks of the New Land use for preserving fruits and vegetables. He fills a shotglass and downs it without offering any to the boatmaker.

  “Just one more question. How big was Crow’s tab?”

  “Big enough for a little chiseler,” says Rickert Gosdon, pouring and draining another shot of clear stuff. He names a substantial sum.

  “Drinking his own whiskey in here and making notes in that little black notebook. Did more of all that than paying up. Mind you, I wrote it off long ago. Learned that from my father. No use dwelling on the past.” Talking about Crow’s tab has brought them back onto safe ground; the fat man’s breathing is more regular. The sweat on his face is drying. He sighs a long sigh.

  The boatmaker turns away, reaches into the sealskin pouch and takes out a sheaf of bills. With his back to the bar, he counts. Then he turns and lays bills on the polished surface. “That should cover it.”

  The tavernkeeper looks from the money to the boatmaker and makes a calculation in which greed and fear are as delicately balanced as the mechanism of a fine old grandfather clock. Then he reaches for the sheaf of bills and shepherds it under his apron and deep into his trouser pocket.

  Looking Gosdon straight in the face, the boatmaker reaches into his corduroy jacket, pulls out Crow’s flask and lays it on the bar. The flask lies face up, the letters A and K glinting in their dull stripes. “Take this too. Let’s call it the interest on Crow’s tab. No doubt it’s valuable. Might be solid silver.”

  Gosdon looks at the flask. His eyes widen. “Absolutely not! You’re a good man, settling your friends’ tab like that, but take that thing out of here. Take it off my bar. I don’t mean to be rude. But pick that thing up off the bar, get out of here and don’t come back!”

  The tavernkeeper has raised his voice. He’s sweating again, more heavily this time. He stares at the flask as if it were a poisonous snake coiled on the bar his beloved grandfather built with his own two hands. The boatmaker turns and walks out, leaving the flask glinting in the light above the bar.

  The next morning he is back at work in the compound. Sven Eriksson is pleased with his progress; the boatmaker has taken a step up from shaping the pegs and carrying them through the snow in an old basket. Now he is allowed to watch as the boards are marked, then sawn, with the understanding that one day, perhaps in the spring, he will be allowed to mark the wood for cutting and sometime after that make a cut himself. He is still a long way from the rooms where the finely shaped pieces are fitted together and finished with many coats of oil, stain or lacquer without the benefit of any plans other than those stored in the heads of the master craftsmen.

  Little by little, the journeymen, apprentices and masters have come to tolerate the boatmaker, even though he isn’t really one of them. He comes from far away and has no father, uncle or cousin who worked at the House of Lippsted before him. He envies the workers in the compound, who fit in easily and seem to know their jobs without being told how to do them. In spite of his gift for wood, there are still many things he does not understand about how Lippsted furniture is made, how the pieces are so finely attuned that they fit together without fastenings.

  Moving from workshop to workshop, the boatmaker feels both pride and shame as he compares himself to the others. Though he would never share his feelings, in secret he believes he has a talent greater than that of even the master craftsmen. And yet in the light of day he is a novice who is not even allowed to carry a pencil. He both envies and looks down on the others in the compound. In this awkward, divided fashion he goes where he is told to go, carrying sawn boards to where they are needed.

  One day, as he carries boards across the yard through falling snow, he sees Rachel Lippsted step out of the townhouse and cross the courtyard to the waiting carriage. He stops, not wanting to stare but unable to prevent himself. The last time he saw her he was sure she had not seen him. This time, without her brother, undistracted, she can hardly miss him, standing in the yard in his short canvas jacket, shivering over sawn boards, his mustache rimed with snow, head bare, the scar on his nose faint in the cold.

  She pauses, surprised to see a workman in the compound staring at her without reservation or concealment. She is wearing a long skirt of green silk. Her hands are hidden in a fur muff that matches the trim of a long wrap made from the same silk. Snow dots her dark curls.

  She intends to turn and step into the carriage immediately to interrupt the unusual exposure, but she is caught, stopped, by a feeling of recognition. She cannot recall where she has seen this compact figure, the face with its drooping mustache. But there is something familiar about the small workman. The feeling stops her only for a moment. She resumes her movement, climbs into the carriage; the liveryman closes the door. Rachel Lippsted gives no sign, but she is musing as she is carried off within the comfort of black leather cushions.

  After that, weeks go by without the boatmaker seeing her in her two-wheeled carriage with the matched blacks. From time to time he does see Jacob Lippsted enter or leave, accompanied by important-looking men. Some are obviously elders of the Mainland’s Jewish community. Others are Gentiles: clean shaven businessmen or government officials who move through the yard paying no attention to the workmen crossing between outbuildings.

  Jacob Lippsted seems at ease with all of them, Gentiles and Jews, giving each man his due. Because he is a Jew, Lippsted can have no official position, cannot meet openly with the king. Still, he knows how to move the government, even move the king, if he must.

  The boatmaker notices more than he lets on of these comings and goings, more, perhaps, than an apprentice should. None of the other workmen seem to take any interest in what the owners of the House do. The only one who speaks to Jacob Lippsted directly is the foreman, Sven Eriksson, who is always respectful and focused on the matter at hand.

  Snow drifts into the courtyard and piles up against the walls. Across the river from the Old Quarter, in the ceremonial district, the ground is still frozen in the parks and gardens around the Winter Palace. But daylight has already begun to extend itself, a little at a time. In the early afternoon, when the boatmaker goes into the yard with a load of boards, he doesn’t need to feel in the dark with the toe of his boot for each cobble, fearful of going down.

  As spring approaches the boatmaker moves up once more in his craft. Now, not only is he allowed to mark boards for cutting under the supervision of a journeyman, he is allowed to make the cut and show his boards afterward for inspection, standing in a line with younger apprentices, some of whose fathers have worked in the House of Lippsted for most of their lives. Standing next to his peers in their short coats, the boatmaker feels his awkward, secret mixture of superiority and envy.

  As he continues to work, these feelings grow stronger. His pride surprises him. There is something in the boatmaker that will not be satisfied even with being a master in this house, having at his command every tool and technique that goes into furniture famous throughout Europe. Even being the foreman, which would put him on a different level entirely, might not satisfy him. He realizes these feelings are mad, and he confides nothing to anyone as he stands in line to have his boards inspected. The masters linger over his work, perhaps unable to believe the man from Small Island can do what the other apprentices do. His feelings trouble him. But his boards pass.

  Toward the end of winter the boatmaker makes a decision: He will begin a project on his own. He knows that what he intends to do goes against the grain of the House of Lippsted. In the compound, each man
moves at the pace determined for him by his elders, and every step is examined and approved by men who have already climbed the ladder of their craft. No one undertakes anything on his own initiative. Indeed, the guiding and containing of individual initiative is one of the deepest secrets of the furniture. Each piece is formed by the accumulated wisdom of generations, not by the impulse of any one man.

  The boatmaker knows all this, but there is something in him that will not be stopped. Having mulled his decision for days, he stops the foreman in the yard and explains, in his halting and awkward fashion, what he intends to do, using material left over from other projects. The foreman takes out his pipe, knocks it against his hip, fills the pipe and lights it to give himself time to think before he speaks.

  Sven Eriksson’s first impulse is to shout: “Of course not, that’s not how we do things here! I didn’t give you the honor of inviting you to this place so that you could do things your way. I invited you here to learn how to do it our way!”

  But something about the small man’s determination makes the foreman hesitate. Though Sven Eriksson is a man of tradition, he is not lacking in imagination. He can see how things might be done differently. After all, he has chosen the boatmaker to be an apprentice in this place, which to the foreman is as sacred as the massive cathedral consecrated to Vashad.

  As he smokes, inhaling and letting the smoke flow out in a long stream like a flight of wild ducks, he finds himself, to his own surprise, acceding to the boatmaker’s plan. He feels lightheaded, as if a heavy grip on his mind has been loosened.

  That unfamiliar sensation lasts only a moment. The strictness of tradition returns immediately as he lays out the conditions of his permission, which can be revoked at any time. The work must be done on the boatmaker’s own time, using nothing intended for any piece of Lippsted furniture. It is not to be a secret, but he should keep it covered when he is not working and avoid making a public display of his heresy. If even one of these conditions is violated, the project ceases on the spot.