The Boatmaker
Page 21
The boatmaker goes to the storeroom, opens his parcel, takes the patent-leather pumps out, removes his boots and pulls the shoes on over the shockingly thin black socks the landlady gave him. Almost transparent, the socks are unlike anything he has ever imagined a man would wear. They remind him of the stockings worn by the woman of the town. The shoes fit in the length, pinch slightly in the width. He goes to the door of the townhouse and knocks.
The man who opens the door wears a suit much like the boatmaker’s. Without being told, he knows the man is a servant. The servant leads him up a flight of carpeted stairs into a drawing room with a big bay window that looks out over the compound where the boatmaker can be seen every day, wearing the short jacket of an apprentice.
Jacob Lippsted, dark and compact, wearing a suit of the same quality as the boatmaker’s, but transported three decades into the future, stands in the middle of the room. He dismisses the servant and shakes the boatmaker’s hand, drawing him into the light of a drawing room filled with priceless Lippsted pieces and paintings made up of splotches of color that seem to picture nothing but themselves.
The boatmaker finds himself moving toward the bay window. On a cushioned seat matching the curve of the bay sits Rachel Lippsted. Next to her is a man even smaller than she is, dressed in a rumpled dinner suit in a style somewhere between the boatmaker’s and his host’s.
“My sister, Rachel,” says Jacob Lippsted. “And our dear friend, Rabbi Nachum Goldman.”
The tiny man wears a skullcap, but he is clean shaven and without sidecurls. Around a large nose, his features are smudged with age. He looks weary, but his eyes are bright. The boatmaker shakes the rabbi’s small, dry hand and turns to the woman next to him, who is wearing a closely fitted dress the color of the sky on a perfect October night. The cameo at her throat is the one she wore at the Mint, its profile echoing her own. Her hair is up and she looks more elegant and composed than she did at the Mint.
She does not extend her hand; the boatmaker has no idea what is expected. He feels as if the other men are watching him to see whether he understands the ritual of being introduced to a beautiful woman in a drawing room filled with daringly modern paintings and priceless Lippsted furniture.
He nods in the direction of her cameo, approximating a bow. Those who know Rachel Lippsted know she is on the point of laughing out loud—feeling both pleasure and a teasing superiority. But her face shows only gracious welcome.
“May I bring you a drink?” Jacob Lippsted asks, breaking in on the boatmaker’s discomfort.
“Yes. Please.”
“Any particular drink?” Jacob Lippsted has a bit of his sister’s teasing humor, her combination of graciousness and superiority.
“Whiskey.”
“Whiskey, we have,” he says, moving to a sideboard where bottles the boatmaker has never seen before are arranged like soldiers next to their commanding officer: an elegant silver ice bucket.
The boatmaker is more interested in the sideboard than in the bottles. It is old, perhaps very old: Lippsted, in a style simpler and more austere than that of the present day. The front is light, inlaid with a geometric pattern of darker woods the boatmaker cannot identify, in spite of his months in the yard. Perhaps the wood is no longer used, possibly no longer available, even to the House of Lippsted.
As he accepts a tumbler filled with whiskey and ice, he worries about the drink. He has drunk nothing for many months, since waking up in the hospital, and does not know how he will react. In his life, he has rarely had just one drink. But he wants badly not to be drunk in front of these people, especially the woman on the window seat. He doesn’t care as much about the men. But the thought of what he might do in front of her if he can’t stop with one drink makes the sweat run under his old-fashioned dinner suit.
“Welcome to our home!” says Jacob Lippsted, raising a glass filled with the same whiskey he gave the boatmaker. They drink. It is smoother than any drink the boatmaker has ever tasted: perfumed fire.
“My foreman tells me you are a promising worker in wood. And Sven Eriksson, whatever his other virtues, is not a man to dispense compliments lightly. Though, come to think of it, that is one of his chief virtues to me, as a businessman.”
Jacob Lippsted laughs, and it becomes clear that one of his ways of putting people at ease is laughing gently at all the participants in a situation, including himself. Like the whiskey, this kind of teasing humor is new to the boatmaker.
The host laughs and finishes off his drink in one swift motion. “Another?” he asks the boatmaker, rising. Neither Rachel nor the rabbi is drinking.
“No,” says the boatmaker, who has drunk only enough to feel the perfumed fire in nose and throat.
“Don’t tell me you are joining my sister and the rabbi in teetotalling?” Jacob Lippsted says, dramatically exaggerating his disappointment. “For them, one glass of wine is a celebration. Two is a debauch. Join me instead.”
“Maybe later,” says the boatmaker, relieved to find he can take a little of the surprising whiskey without being overwhelmed by his thirst. The sweat has stopped trickling down his back and sides under the antique jacket. He begins to feel as if an approximation of himself is present.
As he listens, he finds that Jacob Lippsted has a remarkable skill for drawing everyone into the conversation in rhythm. To be sure, the scion of the House of Lippsted has the assistance of beautiful surroundings, the warmth from aged whiskey and the frictionless, invisible attention of servants. But the boatmaker has the feeling that his host could do the same thing in a shed on Small Island, squatting on a dirt floor around a fireplace made of broken stones, surrounded by entirely different people drinking a much rougher whiskey.
CHAPTER 21
A servant whispers in Jacob Lippsted’s ear, and doors slide back. They are escorted into a smaller room with wood-panelled walls in which a narrow dining table has been laid for four. The boatmaker and the rabbi face each other across the width. Jacob is seated at the head, Rachel at the foot. Tapers are lighted. Candlelight glows on silver and linen. A servant fills the boatmaker’s glass with red wine.
The wine is as incomprehensible as the whiskey and the paintings. The same novel strangeness extends to the food. The roast and vegetables on his plate share names, shapes and colors with food he has eaten, but they don’t have the same taste. As he assesses these novelties, he continues to be surprised that he can drink a little and not be devastated.
As he eats, drinks and speaks a few words under the persuasion of Jacob Lippsted, the boatmaker keeps circling back to the question he has been asking himself since the foreman conveyed the invitation to dine: Why am I here?
The boatmaker is not a man of many words. But he has never been afraid to speak up when it is necessary, to say what needs saying, ask what needs asking. For the first time in his life he is afraid to speak: afraid that if he does, he will wake up in the cold storeroom under an oil lamp, wearing a short jacket, pieces of his project scattered across the floor.
Rachel Lippsted spends the meal studying the odd man in the old-fashioned dinner suit. Again, she has a memory of seeing him but cannot put her memory-picture in its frame. Where was it? And when? Wherever and whenever it was, she knows he was not dressed as he is now. Beyond that, her memory is failing her in a way it seldom does.
She watches the boatmaker as the conversation flows in the channels her brother creates for it. She can follow, participate and remain watchful, thinking her own thoughts. Long experience has made her comfortable in drawing rooms and dining rooms where conversation and mood move on many levels. She sees that the boatmaker is uncomfortable in his ancient suit. He may never have worn a suit before. She sees that in his discomfort he naturally assumes a formality, a consideredness, a slowness that fits the suit as well as the suit fits him.
She is surprised to feel herself drawn to the odd man from Small Island. To his bald spot, the crisscrossing scar on his nose, the rough, knowing hands. She pulls herself back m
entally, startled at how out of place her response is. Perhaps, she thinks, it is because the suit is the vintage of her father’s, hanging in his dressing room upstairs, in the place it was the day he died. The suit is touched by no one other than his daughter, who takes it out occasionally to brush it, shake it out and bury her face in it when no one is there to see her.
“And are you a Jew?” asks the rabbi from across the narrow table.
The boatmaker is as startled by this question as if the room had changed into a different room, with different people in it. But he gives no sign.
“No.”
“You are from Small Island?”
“Yes.”
“And where on the Mainland are your people from?” The rabbi is fluent in the language of the Mainland, but he speaks with a slight accent, as if he came from the lands down to the south and east, in Europe.
The boatmaker names a region a long way from the capital, near the narrow neck of land that connects the Mainland to Europe. This narrow land bridge has been fought over repeatedly, belonging to three different nations over the course of its history. Now it is firmly in the possession of the Mainland, the border overseen by a toll collector in a booth guarded by one sleepy young conscript.
“What you say may be true,” says the rabbi, removing the linen napkin he tucked into his collar when the soup was served. In spite of this precaution, there are dots of beige and brown on his lapel and shirtfront, corresponding to the soup and each of the three subsequent courses. “But there is the matter of the name.”
The boatmaker feels himself tense. He has remained silent about the question of his name whenever it has come up on the Mainland. He has no wish to discuss it here. But he feels an obligation to be a respectful guest. While he is wrestling with his feelings, the rabbi stuns him again.
“Then again, you may be one of the Secret Jews,” Goldman says, wiping his mouth with the big napkin, dark eyes sharp and bright. “Stranger things have happened. Baruch Ha-Shem.”
“Secret Jews?” The boatmaker cannot believe what he is hearing. He wants to clean his ears out with his fingers. But he sits unmoving.
“Yes, the Secret Jews. There are twelve of them, hidden from the prying eyes of the world. Ha-Shem in his wisdom understood that mankind is weak, unable to keep the Covenant on its own, despite all its piety and good intentions. So he built a foundation.”
“What?”
“A foundation. You are a carpenter, yes?”
The boatmaker’s silence passes for assent.
“So you understand the importance of a good foundation. It is invisible—and yet essential. To last, a house must be built on a solid foundation. Even if the house burns down, it can be rebuilt on the same foundation. A single foundation can serve many houses, over generations. Not so?”
The boatmaker’s relief that the conversation has veered away from his name has turned to disbelief. Many strange things have happened to him on the Mainland. What happened on the New Land was, in the end, shocking. But at the very least all of it happened within a Christian framework, the framework that holds the entire kingdom together, from the capital to the outer islands. The idea that someone thinks he is a Jew, secret or not, is incomprehensible.
The rabbi rumbles on, giving no sign that he is aware of the boatmaker’s distress.
“In his foresight, Ha-Shem provided a foundation for mankind, who are as frail as the frailest wooden dwelling on our Mainland. This foundation consists of twelve men in each generation. These men are to all outward appearance ordinary men, simple, humble people. And yet they support the world. Who knows? Perhaps you are one of them. Baruch Ha-Shem.”
The rabbi wipes his mouth, eyes twinkling.
The boatmaker has no idea whether the rabbi’s speech is deadly serious or merely a fantastic joke played in this room every night on another unsuspecting guest. Perhaps he has been invited only to be the butt of this joke. The foreman told him Jacob Lippsted had an unusual sense of humor, that he was capable of anything. A Secret Jew. Nonsense! He is no Secret Jew. Any more than he was Father Robert’s Number IV. He wants to get up and leave, but the eyes of Rachel Lippsted are on him, and he cannot rise.
The rabbi continues as if everything is fine.
“The final irony is that none of these twelve know who they are. And they cannot know. The virtue they need most to fulfill their task is humility. And what man, knowing he is one of the righteous twelve—pillars of Ha-Shem’s creation—could possibly remain humble? No one! That is not human nature! They would tear off their rags and clothe themselves in jewels and furs. And the people, in their benighted state, would bow down and worship them.”
The rabbi wets his throat with a little of the deep red wine in his glass, which is still more than half full. A servant enters, offering a carafe of the same wine. All except Jacob Lippsted reach out and cover their glasses.
“You see why this lack of self-knowledge is so important. Others may try to guess who they are. A foolish impostor may claim to be one of them. But in almost all cases they live out their lives unknown and unrecognized, to be discovered only later, after they have fulfilled their purpose and been replaced. Because there must be twelve in the world at all times. If one dies, a new one is born that very day, somewhere in the world. Only Ha-Shem knows where. It may be in the farthest, humblest corner of the world—even on your Small Island.”
“There are no Jews on Small Island.”
“Yes,” the rabbi says, laughing and dabbing at his mouth with a corner of his napkin. “That is just what one of the twelve would say. And who is to know? None of us! All we know is that the humor of Ha-Shem is at work at all times and in all places. And He rarely makes our road straight.”
The strange dinner concludes without further discussion of the Secret Jews, but the boatmaker is left wondering, new questions added to the ones he has been accumulating since he landed on the Mainland. No closer to answers, he resumes his routine, going back to long hours in the storeroom before and after his other tasks.
In the back of the storeroom, the thing he is making is filling out. He has recognized it. When he started, he didn’t want to see an image of the finished piece; he wanted it to come into being on its own. Now he can see what it will be. He puts the image out of his mind, concentrates on details. He knows that finishing this piece will interrupt his progress from apprentice to master in the House of Lippsted. But he does not know where his path will take him after that.
After the dinner, Sven Eriksson comes to the storeroom more frequently. The foreman says little, but he seems troubled. Even though he himself gave permission for it, he has always been disturbed by what the boatmaker is doing in the storeroom. Now that the man from Small Island has been up the stairs to dinner, what is going on in the storeroom seems like an even more troubling disruption of the accepted way of doing things. There is an explosive energy around the boatmaker and what he is building. Perhaps it is because no such work has ever been undertaken inside these walls, with or without permission.
His mind troubled, the foreman mutters that his time has passed. He’s lived too long, he tells himself. He’s an old man in his dotage, the way his father was for three or four years before he died. Eriksson knows none of this is true. It would be easier if it were. He walks the wall four times, five times.
All around him the smells of the city rise in full power—from layers of manure, fruit in vendors’ carts, raw meat behind windows inscribed with letters of gold. The foreman flaps and puffs like a waterbird, trying to put out of his mind the volatile energy he feels around the wordless Small Islander. He badly wants to know what things were like upstairs in the apartment of Herr Jacob Lippsted and his sister Rachel, but he will never ask.
A few days after the dinner the boatmaker tries to return the dinner suit, but the landlady won’t accept it. “You might be asked to dinner again,” she says. “Then you’d just have to come down and get it. Keep it in your room. I’ll come up and brush it.”
While for some reason the landlady is sure the boatmaker will be invited back, he is equally sure he will not. The invitation was a mistake, he thinks, or an elaborate prank. And if he is, by some remote chance, invited back, he will decline immediately. He has no need to be harangued about being a Secret Jew. He is no Jew, has never been one.
But he humors his landlady, appreciating her kindness. He hangs the suit in the wardrobe and returns to his round of working, walking, smoking and attempting to puzzle out Crow’s notebook. One night while he is looking through Crow’s black scratches for the twentieth time without approaching any closer to the mystery of R and the third stream of Crow’s income, there is a knock on his door, something that is unusual at any hour, unheard of this late.
He gets up and opens the door to find the landlady, Kierkegaard and cigarette in hand, sans cats. “You have a visitor,” she says. Her voice is even, not too different from usual, but the boatmaker can feel her excitement. He thinks Father Robert has finally found him. In a corner of his mind he has been expecting the priest, Neck and a few other brothers to enter, wrestle him to the floor and take him to the New Land, bound and gagged. He should have run long before. He was an idiot to return to this house.
“A visitor?”
“I think you should go down.” She turns and disappears down the stairs. The boatmaker pulls the straps of his overalls over his longjohns, picks up his candle and follows her down between the ancestors until he reaches the bottom and the family’s founding knight, dating from only a few centuries after the time of Vashad.