The Boatmaker

  The morning of the race is bright and clear, the sky a blue army on a long retreat from the earth. The boatmaker rises, relieves himself, washes at his basin, wonders how things are going in the barn. The Irishman knows it is the big day. Does Bold Prince? Does the pony? Perhaps they have already been brought to the stables at the Royal Racecourse. He’s stayed away from the barn for the last two weeks, to allow them to prepare. Nor has he seen Jacob Lippsted, who will watch the race with the king. He isn’t sure where Rachel and the rabbi will be sitting. Probably they will not be in the royal box, which will be filled with princes, dukes, soldiers and businessmen, some no doubt members of The Brotherhood.

  The nightly fall of handbills has become a blizzard blanketing every wall of the Old Quarter. Their message inflames the Christians and frightens the Jews, who have begun to stay indoors unless they have an errand to run, and then they do it without lingering. The boatmaker hears of meetings, some of them at the Grey Goose, where direct, violent action is discussed.

  He pulls on his overalls and canvas jacket, laces up his boots. Puts cigarettes in the pocket of his jacket, feels the handbill he removed from the wall when they were first appearing, like the first flakes of a blizzard. He drinks coffee with his landlady. He can tell she wants to talk, but he has no time to listen to her concerns about the changes taking place in the Old Quarter.

  Outside, the streets are empty, which is highly unusual for a Saturday. It is the Jewish Sabbath, so he is not surprised no Jews are abroad. But there are almost no Gentiles either. Usually the streets and Christian shops are bustling on Saturday, which is the time for a half-day of work and a long night for celebrating with music, drink and women of the town. Now the sidewalks are empty. Shopkeepers stand in front of their shops, looking left and right down empty pavements. The barber stands at his door in apron and striped sleeves. He nods to the boatmaker. The newspaper dangling from his right hand is The Brotherhood. Inside, the bench where the native sat snoring is empty.

  The race is at noon. The boatmaker wants to be there early, to find his way through the crowds, say hello to Donelan and pat the big horse before everything happens. First, though, he must pay a visit to the compound.

  As he enters the gate, he sees Sven Eriksson crossing to the townhouse. The door opens. The long canvas coat disappears. The door closes.

  In the workshops and storerooms only half the usual number of men are present. The workers in the compound never speak much to the boatmaker. Today it seems they are not speaking much to each other, either. The only sounds are boots on flooring, wood being set down, tools being taken out and used, brushes swishing as they spread oil and varnish on clean wood.

  In the storeroom the piece he has been working on sits under worn canvas loosely tied with old rope. He unties the rope, lets the canvas fall. What he has been working on stands complete: the boatmaker’s version of the secretary from Father Robert’s office. It is made of walnut, dark and austere, built as two separate pieces that can be taken apart for moving. The top half has bookshelves, gothic arches holding the glass. The lower half is a writing desk that folds down, revealing drawers and cubbyholes. Below the desk are three large drawers. All of it is made to last for generations.

  Now that it is finished, the boatmaker can see the whole piece clearly. But he does not know how well he has done. All he can do is leave it for Eriksson, who will tell him whether or not he has made a piece of Lippsted furniture. Regardless of the answer, he knows he will not be returning to the compound as an apprentice. He takes off his canvas jacket and hangs it on a nail next to the secretary, handbill still in the pocket. Canvas and rope lie in a heap, their work done. The boatmaker turns and heads out of the storeroom into June sunshine.

  As he approaches the racecourse, the crowds thicken and he moves with them as they home in on their destination. All around him are men in work clothes: denim, corduroy and canvas, with heavy boots, rough hands and flat caps. The gentry are in their carriages, being carried toward their own entrances. Among the workers, the feeling is not of holiday, as it was on the king’s birthday. Instead, it is sour, with muttering and angry talk, bottles and flasks passed from hand to hand, along with the handbills of The Brotherhood. Those who can read are reading the words of the bills to those who cannot.

  The crowd ahead of the boatmaker parts. The racecourse comes into view: a long oval of brown earth, firm and dry, enclosed by a tall wrought-iron fence like the one around the Winter Palace. At the far end stands the main building, built of brick, with a slate roof overhanging boxes for the gentlefolk. The royal box is at the very front, down at the level of the track. Uncovered grandstands for ordinary citizens extend from the main building like long arms embracing the track. These stands are filling with workingmen, a hum of talk and drink running through them. Above the roof of the main building two flags are flying. One is the flag of the kingdom, with its blue and yellow quarters. The other is the king’s battle streamer, a long, narrow white pennant with a red cross. Under the slate roof, the royal box and the boxes nearby are empty.

  The boatmaker makes his way through the crowd, an unremarkable worker wearing overalls and boots, with a drooping mustache and a scar on his nose. He doesn’t enjoy crowds, doesn’t like being pushed, shoved, even brushed by people passing by. He picks his way among brown cloth, blue cloth and canvas, finding openings, turning sideways to let beefier men pass without touching.

  In back of the main building he finds a door that seems to lead to the stables. He passes through and finds himself in a small area between buildings, enclosed by an iron fence. At the far end, in front of the door leading to the stables, stands a beefy policeman rocking gently back and forth, holding his truncheon against two rows of silver buttons that rise over his blue belly like a road climbing through a mountain pass.

  “No entrance. Horses, horsemen and owners only past this point.”

  “Donelan asked me to come back and say hello. The trainer for the House of Lippsted.”

  “Yes, I know Donelan. He asked you to come back, did he? You don’t look like much of a horseman to me.”

  “No. But Donelan asked to see me.” It isn’t true. But the boatmaker doesn’t think the Irishman will mind. And he wants very much to see the three of them before the starting pistol is fired.

  “Alright. Go ahead. You look harmless. But if I find that Donelan hasn’t asked for you . . . If I find out, for example, that you’re one of those newspaper johnnies in some sort of disguise, I’ll find you. Even in this unholy mess of a crowd, I’ll find you—and make you regret your bitch of a mother ever whelped you. Do I make myself clear?” he asks, tapping the truncheon into a meaty palm.

  The boatmaker nods. The policeman moves aside to let him into the barns. He turns right between rows of empty stalls. Then he turns left and sees Bold Prince through an arched doorway that leads to a stall larger than the rest, straw piled on the floor. The big brown horse is bucking and rearing, his eyes wide and white.

  The boatmaker runs toward the arch. As he reaches it, a man comes rushing out past him. He is sure it is the man he saw at the Mint. Rademacher. A very dangerous man, Rachel had said.

  Inside the stall, the tall brown horse and the pony are backing into a corner, the pony in front, protective. The Irishman is lying crumpled in the straw. The boatmaker kneels beside him. A bruise is spreading across Donelan’s cheek. His flat cap is lying in the straw. A large syringe, half-full of milky liquid, stands up out of his chest. There isn’t much blood.

  He takes Donelan in his arms, smells tobacco, horse, cologne and a sweetish smell he can’t identify. The color has drained from the trainer’s features. He does not seem to be in pain, but he is weakening moment by moment.

  “The horse?” he asks in a wisp of a voice.

  “Fine.”

  “Get him to the track. He must race.”

  The boatmaker doesn’t know whether to remove the syringe, which is deep in Donelan’s chest. Then the Irishman’s body goes limp
, and the boatmaker knows he’s gone.

  Staedter, the jockey, appears in the arched doorway holding the racing saddle with the bridle draped over it.

  “Donelan’s dead.”

  “Christ! Who did it?”

  “Rademacher.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I think they were trying to get to the horse and fix him so he couldn’t run.”

  “Jesus Christ!” The jockey looks at the animals in the corner, cowering and showing their teeth. He kneels on one knee to look at Donelan, careful not to get spots on his gleaming white jodhpurs or the silk blouse in Lippsted red-and-white.

  “You’ve got to get him out of here. The horse will never calm down with the body in the stall.” He rises, takes two small steps toward Bold Prince, stopping out of range of hooves and teeth, turns and barks at the boatmaker: “Get him out of here, I said!”

  Suddenly the archway is filled by Eriksson in his long canvas coat, followed by two journeymen the boatmaker recognizes from the compound.

  “We need to move him,” he says, looking up at the foreman, who kneels down and presses two fingers against Donelan’s neck, then nods to the men behind him. The two of them pick Donelan up under his arms and legs and carry him out.

  “What happened?” the foreman asks.

  “Rademacher,” the boatmaker says. The foreman looks startled, then thoughtful.

  “We must tell Herr Lippsted.”

  “No,” says the boatmaker. He has never given Eriksson an order, never even thought of doing such a thing. He isn’t sure how he has the courage to do it now, but he is certain Jacob Lippsted must not know about Donelan until after the race. The horse is not harmed. The race must go on. With his last breath, Donelan had said so. The two men stand up out of the straw, one more than a head taller than the other. They look at each other, dark eyes into light, for what seems like minutes.

  “Alright,” says the foreman. “I’ll have Donelan taken away. Some of the men will stay here to guard the stall. They’re not armed, and we don’t have time to go back and get weapons. But I think we’ll be safe. I doubt that he’ll come back now. He was after the horse?”

  “Yes.” The boatmaker bends down, picks up Donelan’s cap and hands it to the foreman.

  “And the little Irishman fought like a demon to keep them from hurting him.”

  “Yes.”

  “A bloody mess.” The boatmaker knows Eriksson means not just what has happened in this stall but everything outside as well: the boiling city, the crowd drinking itself into a rage as it fills the stadium, the hateful newspaper, the poisonous handbills.

  Turning to the jockey, the foreman asks, “Staedter, can you manage here by yourself? We have men outside.”

  “I can if you will by God get out of here. The horse won’t calm down until you leave. And the race goes off in fifteen bloody minutes.”

  The boatmaker and the foreman exchange glances. Neither likes Staedter, but the jockey has a job to do that no one else can do—and he knows his work.

  The boatmaker leaves the stables to find a place where he can watch the race. He wants a place outside the iron fence, with open streets at his back. It is a day to have room to run.

  At the end of the track farthest from the royal box, he finds a good spot. He will have to watch the race standing, but there is plenty of room to turn and run, and he has a clear view down the track to the main building. He cannot make out every detail under the slate roof flying its two flags. But he can see the scarlet tunics of the King’s Own Guard on the track in front of the stands, white gloves on their rifles. He knows the king will enter last, to the sound of a brass band, joining Jacob Lippsted and a few others in the royal box.

  All around the royal box, the boxes for the nobility are filling with refined chitchat. Along the straightaways, the stands for commoners are full of excited babble. Outside the fence, near the boatmaker, stand the workers who could not afford a ticket or chose not to buy one. They seem even poorer, drunker and angrier than the men in the stands. All around him, the boatmaker hears words that have leaped off the handbills into the mouths of the people. Disease. Parasites. Purify.

  Down at the other end of the track there is a commotion as the king enters and takes his seat. When everyone is settled, the royal chamberlain, in dark coat and long tails, walks out from under the stands. Standing in front of the royal box, on the white line marking start and finish, he takes papers from an inside pocket and reads. His remarks are carefully written and appropriate for the day, praising the king for his liberality, his modernity, his farsightedness, his boldness in welcoming the future to the Mainland.

  The chamberlain is too far away for the crowd around the boatmaker to make out his words clearly. The speech goes on and on, tension rising in the crowd. When the chamberlain finishes, there is no cheering, only polite applause from the high-born.

  The chamberlain bows and recedes. A brass band in dress blue marches out onto the track, instruments gleaming, and begins to play. The sound is thin and distant, but the boatmaker can hear the national anthem, its tune going all the way back to the time of the sea-warriors. After the anthem, the band plays the hymn that has for centuries accompanied the Mainland’s army and navy into battle. The music that accompanies the words a mighty fortress comes down the track, the words humming involuntarily in every brain from hundreds of repetitions over a lifetime.

  The wind dies. The flags crumple and spill down their poles. The music stops. The band carries their golden instruments back under the stands. The wind picks up again. The flags belly out: the blue-and-yellow rectangle and the white streamer sliced by the cross.

  Down on the right, from the opening the band marched out of, comes The Royal Champion, ridden by a tiny jockey wearing blue-and-yellow silks. At the sight of the never-defeated black thoroughbred, the crowd opens its throat and sends out a roar of love and willingness to die—and kill—for the homeland. A groom leads the Champion, who is dancing, lighter than air.

  The black horse passes the royal box before being turned and brought back to the starting line. The horses will start in front of the stands, make the first turn immediately, go into a long straightaway, sweep around the turn in front of where the boatmaker is standing and head down the other straightaway into the final turn. They will finish where they started: in front of the royal box, before the eyes of the king and Jacob Lippsted.

  A moment later, Bold Prince is led out to a low grumble from the crowd. He is taller than the royal horse and thinner, obviously powerful but not nearly as elegant as the black horse. He is not floating. A groom in red-and-white leads the horse and Staedter. The boatmaker sees the jockey talking to the big brown horse, stroking his neck. Bold Prince walks slowly, head down, as if he is in pain. The boatmaker wonders whether some of what was in the syringe did reach its mark before ending up in the chest of the Irishman.

  The groom gets Bold Prince turned in front of the royal box and brings him up level with The Royal Champion. The noise in the stands quiets. A man in a dark suit steps onto the track, a silver pistol at his side. The grooms release their horses. The starter raises his silver pistol. When the report reaches the boatmaker at the far end of the track, the horses are already running.

  The black jumps off the line into the first turn, taking the inside. The Royal Champion runs with speed and grace, his jockey holding him back, horse and rider appearing to be as untroubled as if they were out for a training gallop. The brown is running, but the boatmaker can see that he is not himself.

  On the far straightaway, both horses take the inside, Bold Prince breathing the Champion’s dust. The boatmaker sees Staedter urging the brown horse on. He is not using his whip. As they reach the end of the first straightaway the gap widens to three lengths, then to four.

  If the race continues like this, the king’s horse will win by many lengths. From the crowd in the stands and along the fence comes a deep rumble of satisfaction. All is right with the worl
d. The cosmic order has held. Tonight, glasses will be raised to the king who put the Jews back in their place. The Jews of the Old Quarter will be relieved that things have begun to return to normal. The handbills from The Brotherhood will be replaced by the usual advertisements for circuses and miracles.

  Unlike the men around him, the boatmaker is not yelling; he is simply watching. He can feel his own disappointment. But perhaps it is for the best, he thinks. However it has come about—whether Rademacher actually reached Bold Prince with his syringe or not—it may be the better outcome. The crowd will be calmed. There may be sporadic violence but no mob out of control in its rage and bloodlust.

  The horses come into the turn in front of the boatmaker and swing around, both on the inside. He sees desperation on Staedter’s face. As they come out of the turn into the second straightaway, the jockey begins using his whip. Staedter strikes Bold Prince’s neck and shoulders. As he brings the whip down, the jockey loses control. He is no longer a calm strategist, a skilled technician, winner of many races. He is a man in a rage.

  Whether it is because of the pain, or the outrage at being treated with such disrespect, Bold Prince wakes up and starts to run as the boatmaker has seen him run many times. On the second straightaway it looks as though The Royal Champion has slowed to a walk, though the boatmaker knows he is moving just as fast as he was before. The tiny royal jockey, shocked at the pounding coming up behind, begins whipping his horse. The black responds, but the gap continues to close: three lengths, two, then one.

  Looking down the straightway, seeing the horses from behind, the boatmaker cannot tell who is in front. As they thunder into the far turn, Staedter swings Bold Prince to the outside, around the black. They pound past the finish line, necks stretched, nostrils wide. As they reach the royal box, the boatmaker can make out the brown head on the outside, just in front of the black.