The Boatmaker

by John Benditt

  He thinks of the girl on Small Island. She was sometimes clinging, sometimes grave. Sometimes she seemed afraid of him, perhaps because he was so different from her father. His child will not be afraid of him. He knows it will be a boy. He will teach his son everything he has learned on Small Island, on Big Island and the Mainland. The child will know so much more than the boatmaker does.

  “Must I be gentle with you now?” he asks, reaching out to touch her belly.

  “Be gentle with me? Always,” she says, looking at him with a smile. She pulls his face to hers, covering his eyes so that he is blind, bound to her, and speaks directly into his ear. “Always. You must always be gentle with me.” She pauses a moment and then resumes, her lips on his flesh: “Always. Never. Always. Never. Always.”

  CHAPTER 26

  The boatmaker wakes early and disentangles himself from his bride. He pulls his clothes and boots on and steps out into a bright day. The foreman is standing on the platform, drinking coffee from a tin mug. He finishes the coffee and ducks into Jacob Lippsted’s tent, where he stays a few minutes, emerging without his mug. He touches his cap to the boatmaker and goes down a path into the woods.

  As the boatmaker stands on the platform in the sunshine, the things that happened in the capital are difficult to believe. He wonders what the Old Quarter looks like, how much of the city is controlled by men wearing the triangle armbands of the Sons of Vashad. He steps off the platform and takes the path to Meyer Goldman’s tent.

  He has no idea how the tailor managed to find the fabric, but his suit is nearly finished. He expects a harangue along with the suit, but the smaller Goldman has nothing to say beyond what is necessary for the practice of his craft: Enough room? Does this pinch? Raise your arms.

  The tailor’s eye is superb: The suit fits beautifully, needs only a last few adjustments. There is no mirror, but the boatmaker needs no mirror to see where he will go in this suit. His plans for Small Island are taking clearer shape every day. As he did in the compound, on Small Island he will do something that has never been done there.

  “Thank you,” the boatmaker says. The tailor says nothing.

  “I also need shoes to go with the suit, along with shirts and ties. All of it must be shipped to Small Island, to the general store in Harbortown on the steamer. It must arrive within the month.”

  Giving orders has already begun to feel less strange. But the tailor doesn’t make it easy for him; his face shows no expression. He can’t decide whether Meyer Goldman is happy to be of service, outraged or something else that can’t be read in his features. As he leaves the tent, the tailor is sitting cross-legged on the floor, bent over his work, humming tunelessly to himself.

  In their tent the bed is empty. The boatmaker sits in the chair listening to the birds crying the headlines from tree to tree: Very curious events! More tents than usual in the woods! A virtual city! Erected by humans who have guns but are not hunters! Fine weather continues through the week. Rachel enters bearing plates. They eat without talking, conscious that it is the first meal in their home.

  When they are finished, she takes him by the hand and leads him into the tent to the left, where the rabbi is sitting at a camp table. The table is identical to the one in Jacob Lippsted’s tent. But instead of neat stacks of documents requiring action there are mountains of books in Hebrew, German and the language of the Mainland. The tent cannot have been pitched more than a week, yet it has the feel of a scholar’s study, uncleaned for decades. On the camp table are layers of paper, a tin of watercolors and brushes in a glass. A broad white sheet sits in the middle, covering something brightly colored that peeps out from underneath. Behind the desk sits Rabbi Nachum Goldman in shirtsleeves and skullcap, perspiring.

  “So. The man from Small Island,” he says without getting up.

  “Yes.”

  “And under such different circumstances. About to become a member of the family. Although my theory is that you were one of us already—whether you knew it or not.” The rabbi smiles a childlike smile that says: You see, I can’t help myself. Don’t be angry!

  “Rabbi, you promised you wouldn’t bring that up again,” says Rachel, pressing herself into the boatmaker.

  Her warmth pleases his body. Nothing anyone could say at this moment would hurt very much. It feels as if there is a layer of something soft between any possible pain and his brain. He has felt this before only when he was drunk. Yet he has drunk nothing in many months, except a little at the townhouse, out of a desire to be polite. There will be a child, he thinks. He wonders if the rabbi knows, whether Jacob does. He assumes they do. Even that knowledge, which would ordinarily make him feel as if layers of his skin had been peeled off, leaving his entire body raw, red and exposed, causes no pain. The boatmaker is foolish in his happiness.

  Rachel moves to the camp table and lifts the large white sheet that sits in front of Rabbi Nachum Goldman. Lying under it on a sheet the same size is a large circle in black ink. Inside the circle are fields of bright color. Over the fields of color are lines of Hebrew, places for signatures at the bottom.

  “The ketubah,” she says, “our marriage contract. Here in the woods the rabbi has been practicing his magic.”

  “Not magic, child. Tradition. The customs of our people. Baruch Ha-Shem.”

  “Isn’t it the same thing, Rabbi?” To the boatmaker she says: “The rabbi didn’t think I would ever get married.” She reaches out and touches the old man’s cheek. The boatmaker is surprised by the familiarity. Like Jacob Lippsted, the rabbi has an aura of not being easily touched. But the older man smiles and holds her hand against his cheek.

  “I turned down so many more appropriate suitors. Isn’t that right, Rabbi? Men from great Jewish families, with fortunes as large as our own. And in the end I marry this man from Small Island. Nobody knows who his people are. I don’t care. All I know is: He’s the one I’ve been waiting for. And whatever they say or don’t say, I know they’re happy for me.”

  She buries herself in the arms of the boatmaker, who looks over her at the rabbi. The men exchange expressions of masculine understanding, intended to show how patient they are with women, with this woman in particular.

  “They had it wrong,” Rachel says, stepping back, “all of them. My brother is the one who will never marry. Which is why this child is so precious.”

  There is a moment of quiet in which each of the three people in the tent is harboring a deep, individual response. The rabbi breaks the silence to explain the meaning of each line in the colored marriage contract, then describes what will happen in the service that evening under the smaller green canopy.

  Toward evening the boatmaker kisses Rachel Lippsted and steps out of the tent carrying his antique suit, shoes, socks, undergarments, shirt and tie to a place where he can dress, allowing her the tent.

  He looks for a secluded spot, thinking about the wedding customs the rabbi has described. He is to crush a glass wrapped in a napkin—for reasons no one can fully explain. A small piece of bad luck to ward off larger danger? A recognition of the imperfection of all human life, no matter how blessed it may seem? A primitive sacrifice of something valuable? He wonders whether the glass will be one of the crystal goblets from the townhouse. How much planning was made for this wedding as Jacob and his sister fled between rows of burning houses? How sure was she that he would say yes? No one seemed very surprised by his appearance in the forest. Again he feels exposed—but without the usual pain.

  He finds a large tree suitable for his purpose and stands on a gnarled root. He takes off his longjohns and pulls on the dinner suit. He is glad to have brought it with him. Amid the Lippsted wealth it is something that belongs unquestionably to him. This is the last time it will be worn. Later, when things are calmer, he will have Meyer Goldman make one to his measurements in the current style.

  Balancing on the roots, he pulls on shoes and socks. He finishes, even tying the tie. It is crudely tied, but it will do. The landlady showed him how
to do it on his own. Rachel will straighten it.

  When he is fully dressed, he leans back against the tree, feeling its rough bark through the fabric of his jacket. He lights a cigarette and stands smoking in the everlasting June twilight.

  In the center of the tent Rachel is in white silk from head to toe. Her dress is in a style from two generations before—even older than his suit. She holds a necklace of pearls for him to fasten. He joins the clasp and leans in to inhale the scent of spring flowers. He lays his hands on her shoulders and leaves them there. He will say all the words that need to be said in the service under the canopy of maple branches. But his own promise to her is made in this lingering touch.

  He moves in front of her so she can straighten his tie. She brushes the shoulders of his suit, touches her lips to his. Then they walk out onto the platform and down the path to where the others are waiting.

  The rabbi and Jacob Lippsted stand under the canopy in the clearing, wearing dark suits. Sven Eriksson and a few of his trusted men are near the opening. The rest of the men are in the trees, taking part while they keep watch. Meyer Goldman is nowhere to be seen. The boatmaker wonders whether his suit will make it to Small Island in time.

  The ceremony is exactly as the rabbi described. The boatmaker makes his way slowly, but without stumbling, responding in Hebrew as he is asked to.

  At the right moment, Jacob Lippsted produces a plain gold band. The boatmaker slides it on, feeling himself aroused. When they are finished, he steps out of the canopy and crushes the glass, which gives with a satisfying crack. After that, there is a silence broken by cheers from the men in the clearing and an echoing cheer from the woods beyond.

  The guard the boatmaker saw leaning against a tree when he arrived at the camp goes into the shadows behind the canopy and emerges with a fiddle. He begins to play folk songs of the Mainland.

  The boatmaker steps up to the foreman and whispers a request. The foreman nods and speaks to the fiddler, who retunes. Then he plays the song of the duck: so clumsy on land, awkward in the water, but with such grace in the sky, because it was born for the sky.

  The boatmaker’s voice is uneven. He is unused to singing, even when he is alone, much less for anyone other than Crow and White at the Grey Goose when they were all far gone in drink. But he knows this song in his bones, intestines and muscles, not just in his mind. He feels the song, allows everyone to see him feeling it. Rachel wipes tears away with an embroidered handkerchief, then doesn’t bother to hide them.

  Everyone in the clearing knows this song comes from a region not far from where they are standing, where there had once been a thriving Jewish community. After pogroms in the last century, boiling up from the south and east, the Jews in that region were killed, forced to convert or driven away. Each listener has a distinct and different reaction to the boatmaker’s song.

  By morning he is gone.

  The country the boatmaker passes through on his return seems very different from the one he saw on his journey in from the coast. He takes a different route, starting far to the southeast and winding his way back toward the place where he arrived. When he first landed, hungry and tired, but full of curiosity, the Mainland seemed unimaginably large and strange: a place of myths and legends, warrior kings who went to sea in ships with round shields on their gunwales, sacrificing to pagan gods. On his way back, the country is no more than rivers, trees, hills and fields filled with pigs, cows and bullocks driven by peasants with dung matted in their hair. He bypasses the towns to avoid the Sons of Vashad.

  His route to the coast takes him through rolling hills that turn dry as he nears the sea. Trees give way to sandy hills covered with tough grass. The last few hills are bare dunes dropping down to the ocean, which is blue, green and placid in the July heat. On a bluff overlooking the beach he comes to a snug cabin made of wood, set into the hill for protection against the sea winds. Now there is just a touch of sea breeze. Smoke from the cabin’s chimney rises and hangs for a moment before the wind spins it out to sea. Even before he reaches the house, the boatmaker smells what he knew he would smell there: meat roasting in its own rich juices.

  The door is open. At a wooden table sits a man in undershirt and workpants, suspenders down, face flushed. His round face and white beard make him look like the images of Saint Nicholas on the Advent cards children carry. But his mustache and beard are stained yellow from smoking, he steams with sweat, and there is something in his eyes that is not like Saint Nick.

  The man roasting meat seems unsurprised by the appearance of the boatmaker. In fact, he looks as if he has been expecting his visitor any day. This cannot be true. The boatmaker has not set foot in this house for three years, and when he left, he gave no sign he would ever return.

  “Come fer yer boat, have ye? I thought ye might. Mainland too much fer ye? Can’t say ye look too bad. Not starving, any rate.”

  “I came for my boat.”

  “Aye, it’s still here.”

  “In the cave.”

  “The boys are there. They’ll be happy to sell it ye—at a fair price.”

  The red-faced man with the yellowing beard smiles. The boatmaker suppresses a return smile. He knows what a fair price means: an outrageous price. Two or three times what they paid him. Maybe more. And they won’t have taken good care of it, either. The boat will need work before it can be put in the water. But as long as all the pieces are there, he will be able to make it seaworthy.

  On one side of the house, a window overlooks wooden steps leading down to two smaller houses and then to the beach. On the landing at the top of the stairs stands a powerful brass telescope. With the telescope the man at the table can see many leagues out to sea when the weather is fair and the running lights of ships even when it’s foul.

  This is where the boatmaker landed after sailing from Big Island. He found the old man and his sons friendly. They explained that their meager livelihood lay in scavenging things washed up from wrecks on the shore below. The water shoals there, they explained, in such a way that the shoaling can’t be seen until a ship is already over it. Only those who know the coast can land safely. The boatmaker was lucky to land without snagging, or smashing his boat.

  After he landed he stayed on the coast for a few weeks, sleeping on the floor of this house, sharing the meat the father roasts continually for his two silent sons. One night in a storm they called him to the beach to help salvage a brig that was foundering offshore. He went into the water again and again, bringing back goods and animals and hoping he could rescue the crew. Strangely, he didn’t find any of the crew on board; only goods were saved.

  He helped the brothers store their salvage in a large cave with many chambers in the bluff at the landward edge of the beach. The brothers allowed him to see only the largest of the cave’s chambers, moving goods into the smaller side chambers themselves. Afterward, they all got drunk on whiskey from the brig. The father and brothers praised the boatmaker’s skill in the water, his fearlessness. They offered to take him into the family business. He wondered what kind of living they could make by salvaging cargo from the occasional wreck on this lonely stretch of coast. The shoal must be marked on the charts, he thought. And there was a lighthouse no more than half a mile down the coast.

  It was only a week later, when he saw the brothers stacking wood on the beach in a huge firepit that had clearly been used many times before, that he understood the family business. The bonfire fooled a ship’s crew into thinking the lighthouse was there, drawing them onto the shoal. By the time the brothers called him for the first wreck, they had already doused the bonfire, killed the brig’s crew and thrown the bodies overboard. When he understood the scheme, the boatmaker offered apologies and sold them his boat, accepting little for it. Then he set out for the capital.

  Now he is back at this table eating roast meat. The man across from him seems jolly and welcoming. The boatmaker has never said a word to anyone about the business father and sons do here. He hopes they will sell him
back his boat and let him go without harming him. If they want to hurt him, there will be no one to come to his aid: This stretch of coast is all but deserted. He eats the meat the old man offers, steaming and bloody. The window of the snug house looks out over the bluff and the wooden stairs to the ocean, shoaling blue, then green, finally a deeper blue, all the way to Small Island.

  CHAPTER 27

  Inside the cave it is cool and dry. The sons look like twins, wearing the same dark sailor clothes, knitted watchcaps, sporting the same luxuriant dark mustaches. One is slightly taller and heavier than the other. Both are cold to the boatmaker. Before he came, they had never asked anyone to join their business. They were insulted when he turned them down. Because he came from Small Island, which they think of as a wild place, without benefit of law, they assumed he would jump at the opportunity. When he refused, they were angry, wanted to kill him. The father stopped them. They watched with contempt as he left their coast, as if the boatmaker were the runt of the litter. They are surprised to find he is alive and not much worse for wear, aside from being thinner and having an odd scar on the bridge of his nose.

  “What do you want with us?” they ask in unison.

  “My boat.”

  “What did the old man say?”

  “That you would sell it back to me.”

  “For how much?”

  “A fair price.”

  Standing on the sandy floor of the cave, the brothers look at each other, suppressing grins. Those words from their father are a signal for them to extort an absurd price from the boatmaker. And they do: three times as much as they paid him for it.

  “We’ve taken good care of it,” they say together, one voice a little higher, one a little lower. “We’ve improved it. That’s why the price is higher now.”

  The boatmaker knows that if he is silent and walks away, the price will come down quickly. He is certain no one has shown the slightest interest in his boat in the three years since he has been here. But he didn’t come back to haggle with these twin devils. Money has come to mean something different to the boatmaker than it did when he landed on this coast. When he left Big Island, he thought money had a power of its own, a kind of magic. After all his experiences on the Mainland, he no longer believes money is magical. It is a tool like any other. A tool that is very sharp, capable of cutting if not used correctly, but also capable of producing beautiful things. The magic—if there is any—lies in what is done with money, not in the money itself. When he returns to Small Island, he will be a different kind of workman, and money will be one of his tools.