by Justin Scott
“Both,” he said honestly. “I found that I liked the definite yes-no aspects of engineering more than the artistic maybe of medicine. Do you know what I mean?”
“I know that medicine means maybe.”
“It’s hit or miss,” said Hardin. “I missed once and it kind of got me.”
“Patients die,” she answered. “It’s their nature.”
“Mine didn’t die. But she went through hell because of me. For years. She was a friend. A nurse I had known for a while. I didn’t exactly treat her at first, it’s just that she started coming to me because she didn’t get any satisfaction elsewhere. She was a black woman.”
“Is that why you’re comfortable with me?”
“I think that I’m comfortable with your blackness because you are. I guess that’s because you’re African. You seem glad of what you are.”
He felt her shrug beside him. There was an edge in her voice when she spoke. “That doesn’t make me any more authentic, you know. I just happen not to be a welfare patient in a New York City emergency room. What happened with your friend?”
“She was nervous, overweight, unable to sleep, and suffering gastric disorders. She’d had the condition since she was eighteen, and every doctor she went to told her she suffered hypertension—which is common among American blacks—or she needed psychiatric help to get to the source of her anxiety.
“I ran every test in the book. Nothing. She finally decided to do something about it herself. She’d been studying Zen and yoga and chanting and she decided she could use her heightened awareness to, as she put it, ‘look into her body.’ She looked in and she saw thyroid. Finally I ran everything again and she was right. You know what?”
“Graves’ disease.”
“A young woman’s disease. You’re a young woman. You remembered that out of the thousands of diseases you read about in school, but I forgot. It was advanced and the thyroidectomy didn’t work, so she’s got to take pills for the rest of her life.”
“Doctors’ errors are more telling than other people’s.”
“I like things clear. That’s why I like sailing. What the ocean wants, the ocean gets. And if you feel the need to be absolutely right about something, you can polish your navigation. You can do everything right, strictly according to procedure, on the ocean, and it’ll still kill you; but if you’re a good navigator, at least you’ll know where you were when you died.”
“You’re absolutely crazy, Peter.”
“It’s true,” he laughed. Then, as if the word “died” had pricked his memory, he stopped laughing.
Ajaratu quickly changed the subject.
“But your navigation seems so haphazard. You’ll say our course should be one hundred and eighty-four degrees and then you sail one eight five.”
“It’s easier to sail a big point on the compass. You know, easier to read. You have to remember that a sailboat naturally wanders— the winds push it sideways and the waves shove it—so you have a built-in error anyhow. You can try to sail one eight four, but why not admit ahead of time that you’re going to sail, at best, within five degrees of the course you want? Your plotting is approximate. That’s what dead reckoning is all about. Approximate speed, approximate current, and approximate compass bearings give you an approximate course. When you have to know exactly where you are, you ask your chronometer, and the sun and the moon and stars. They don’t lie.”
Ajaratu stretched out on the cockpit seat and looked at the night sky. It was pitch-black now, studded with stars. “I can’t get over how they are different colors,” she said. “Is that red one Rigel?”
“Betelgeuse.”
Hardin sat on the floor of the cockpit and guided her finger across the diamond of Orion. “Reverse the initials. Betelgeuse, red, and Rigel, blue. What’s the orange star?”
“Aldebaran.”
“Good. And the brightest one?”
“Sirius.”
“There’s Vega. And that’s Capella, the goat. See her kids?”
“Yes.”
He got the sextant and took three sightings on each of the four stars, measuring their angles of altitude. Then he went below and looked up the average of each of the measured angles in the Nautical Almanac. He worked out his position on the chart, then turned out the red chart table light, and rejoined Ajaratu in the cockpit. He thought she was asleep, she was so quiet, but she spoke after a minute.
“Where are we?”
“Where we should be. . . . Are you cold? Want a blanket?”
It was very dark, but he saw her arm blacken a line of stars as she raised it from beneath her head and touched her body.
“It’s so warm,” she said. “I forgot I’m still in this swimsuit. Feel my skin. See how warm?”
Hardin extended his hand, pale in the star light. She took it in hers and pressed his fingers to her belly. “See? Warm.”
“You’re shaking.”
“Oh?” She held his hand to her trembling form.
“Ajaratu?”
“Yes?”
“You are very, very lovely.”
“Do you think so?” she asked in a small voice.
“I do. And you’re very young and—”
“Are you preparing an excuse?”
“No. . . . I just . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“I do,” she said. “I think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.”
He felt a morbid loyalty to Carolyn, as if she were still alive and he would kill her if he broke the bond between them. He said, “I feel cast in the role of older, wiser seducer.”
“Older wiser seducer? Haven’t I the right to want you? Did it ever occur to you that I would seduce you, take you from your wife?”
“No. You’re a very young and sheltered religious woman.”
“Therefore?”
“Well, are you?”
“Yes. All of those things. What about them?”
“They make me responsible for you.”
“I was right the first time,” she said, sounding hurt. “You’ve prepared an excuse.”
“You flatter me,” he replied, wondering if she could soften him; the thought of losing his hate was frightening.
“Flatter you?” she said angrily. “You’re not talking to me, Peter. You’re having a conversation with yourself.” She stood up and started toward the companionway, then stopped and stood still for a long moment. After a while, she sat back down and cradled her head to her knees. She said, softly, “There is going to come a time between us when I demand things of you, Peter. You had best know that. I won’t always let you be.”
Two days, thought Hardin. He’d drop her in Monrovia in two days. He’d be all right when he was on his own again.
As if she could read his thoughts, she said, “I might pursue you.” She laughed. “That would be quite something. There you would be, making radars and thermometers, and who should appear on your doorstep in New York City but a tall, black doctor from Africa. Whatever would you do?”
“I would like to see you in New York.”
“Perhaps you will.”
Hardin chuckled.
“What?” she asked.
“You’ll hate me, but I was thinking about a cartoon. A couple embracing under the stars on a summer night in the country, and the woman is saying, ‘I know you’ll call me in New York, but could I hold your watch?’”
Ajaratu put her mouth to his ear. Her breath was warm. She said, “I shall faint outside your office. Passersby will bear my body to your workbench. You will put down your soldering gun and revive me, like a good doctor.”
The Swan heeled. She buried her bow and the wake grew suddenly louder. The wind was rising as the land, cooling in the night, exhaled over the sea. She heeled further, burying her lee rail in the black water.
Ajaratu disengaged the self-steering and took the helm while Hardin replaced the genoa with a smaller jib. He thought that the excitement which had risen between them had cooled in conversati
on, but he was wrong. As he stowed the genoa, his mouth grew dry thinking of her.
The land breeze brought cloud, which blotted out the stars. He felt Ajaratu’s hand on his cheek. “I can still see you,” she whispered, caressing him tentatively. “You glow.”
Hardin shuddered. Her hand passed over his jaw and her fingers trembled on his mouth. He parted his lips and touched his dry tongue to her palm. He moved toward her, feeling clumsy, blind in the darkness, his mind numb. Her shoulder touched his and she pressed against his chest and she was liquid in his arms and he felt like scaly, rusted iron.
Her lips found his. She kissed him, then buried her face in his neck. He reached for her, caressed her silken skin, felt excitement in spite of himself, and with it ease. He played his hands gently over her body, felt in the dark for her face and lifted it to his mouth and kissed her long and deeply.
Together they lay down on the cockpit seat, their lips locked, their legs entwining. She tasted of cinnamon, he thought, and when he unhooked her bikini top her breasts swelled against his fingers as firmly as her velvet tongue entered his mouth. Her hands grew less tentative and moved emphatically over his body.
He tensed as they glided down his belly. Then he stopped her.
“What’s wrong?” she breathed.
He said nothing as he stared into the black night, his eyes and mind filled with Carolyn, his body empty.
“Peter?”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
There was a long silence, broken only by the noise of the boat ghosting through the water. When Ajaratu spoke, her breathing had returned to normal and her voice was calm.
“I’m sorry, Peter.”
She touched his face. He jerked back, too late to stop her from feeling his tears.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh, you poor thing.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said bitterly.
“It’s my fault.”
He stared at the dark for several minutes. “What?”
“You don’t disappoint me. I wanted too much. I wanted to take, but I couldn’t give.”
Hardin waited, but she said nothing more. “What?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”
“It’s all right, Peter,” she said, her voice lightening artificially. “It doesn’t matter.”
Confused, but sensing that she was even more confused, Hardin said, “Would you please tell me what you’re talking about?”
“Some other woman will help you better than I can.”
It took a moment for her words to sink in. When they did, he sat upright. “Oh, for Christ’s sake! You think I can’t because you— Oh, for Christ’s sake!”
“I thought I could excite you.”
Hardin exhaled loudly and looked up at the black sky. The cloud was thinning in spots, and clumps of pale stars shone down. He could see her silhouette move as she replaced her bikini top. He felt reprieved. It was over and he and Carolyn were still intact.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Ajaratu asked. She brushed past him toward the companionway and paused at the hatch, waiting for an answer. He could barely see her outline in the dark, but something about the stiff and awkward angle at which she held herself told him that she had lost her knowledge of her own grace. He saw her maimed by his failure.
He rose to his feet. She waited. He approached her, then reached hesitantly to comfort her and embraced her like a child. She stood still and listened wordlessly while he patted and stroked her back and tried to explain that his inability to make love was no fault of hers. After he finished, she rested her head on his shoulder.
“I suppose I believe you,” she said, touching his arms, rubbing them with her fingers. “But I’m still very sorry that I can’t be the one to help.”
Hardin drew her closer. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry too.” They clung tightly and gradually his mind began to blank out all but the comforting touch of her hands on his arms and his own hands on her back. Her skin felt as soft and smooth as warm satin.
Like a far-off light that appears on the horizon without prelude, he felt a tiny core of desire where there had been nothing. It spread rapidly into his thighs. He moved against her and pleasure tumbled through his body.
“Ajaratu.”
He crushed her body to his, her mouth to his mouth, driven by a powerful desire too strong for art or skill or thought of anything but the taste of her mouth and the sleek firmness of her body. When at last he released her, he laughed aloud. “Disregard everything I said.”
She laughed with him, breathlessly, and pressed closer. “Perhaps I am the one,” she murmured.
Hardin bent his head and kissed her breasts, slowly and lovingly, searching for her excitement. Then he caressed the long beautiful insides of her thighs until she moaned with delight, and, drawing her with him with touches and kisses, he led her down the companionway to his berth.
He awakened in a panic.
A noise. The shipping lanes.
He was in his berth. Ajaratu stirred beside him, her hands reaching sleepily. He slipped off the berth onto the settee, then down to the sole and felt his way across the cabin and darted up the companionway.
There was still cloud. The night was black as coal. He saw no lights. The Swan was sailing comfortably, on course. He trimmed the luffing jib and the self-steering and went below as the noise repeated.
The radio. He’d forgotten to turn it off after eight o’clock.
A muted squawk from the earphones. Not loud, but different enough from the boat sounds to catch attention. He sat at the chart table and put on the headset. It was Miles, broadcasting on his own direct link radio. He had made initial contact several days before to report that LEVIATHAN was scheduled to off-load at Bantry Bay and Le Havre and might take two more days at a third port, depending upon the market.
Tonight, he said, “Kilo, Uniform, Xray.”
They were using international alphabet flag code for privacy. LEVIATHAN was Zulu, which really meant shore stations. Hardin was Hotel. Miles was Mike. Startled, Hardin focused the navigation light on the flag-and-pennant chart above the chart table. His memory was correct.
“Repeat,” he said, pressing the transmit button.
Miles’s signal was the same. “Kilo. Uniform. Xray.” Kilo, stop instantly. Uniform, standing into danger. And Xray, stop your intention. A redundant, unmistakable “Cancel, cancel, cancel.”
Hardin dropped code. “Why?” he asked, stabbing the voice button.
“Xray, Xray, Xray!”
“Why, dammit?”
He heard Ajaratu stir on the other side of the thin bulkhead. She called his name in her sleep. He glanced around the edge of the nav station and saw her turn over in the berth and face the other way.
“Why?” he whispered into the microphone.
A staccato drilling sound interrupted Miles’s reply. The Russian radar interference. It rattled like the coins in a blind beggar’s cup. He waited, fuming, while it chattered in his ears. What the devil was Miles talking about?
The night Miles had boarded him in the channel, Hardin had refused to accept his coy reference to a democratic state in need of a new weapon.
“You mean Israel?” he had shot back.
Miles had smiled. “Is there anything else you would like to know?” He listened, his smile undisturbed, while Hardin aired his suspicions. Then he had answered him with a single phrase. He wanted Israel to regard oil tankers as “targets of opportunity.”
What if, he had asked, Israel demonstrated to the oil-producing nations and their economic allies, the consuming nations, that the crude-carrying tankers vital to their mutual existence were vulnerable to acts of terrorism on the high seas?
“They’d blow you off the face of the map.”
Not Israel per se, Miles had retorted with heavy irony, but uncontrollable Jewish terrorist groups. “The whole world is willing to believe that the Black September doesn’t really represent Palestine, just because they are Palestinian and draw
support from Palestinians, and seek refuge in Palestinian camps.” He had nodded at the cabin sole which concealed the weapon. “You pose a serious threat, Mr. Hardin.”
“I’m not Jewish.”
“Your wife was Jewish,” said Miles. “Do you remember the Hebrew name you were given when you married Carolyn in Rabbi Berkowitz’s study on East Sixty-eighth Street?” He nodded impatiently. “Yes, we learned something about your life. Do you remember your Hebrew name?”
“Chaver Israel.”
“Friend of Israel,” Miles translated. “It’s fitting that a friend of Israel would inspire other Jews to seek out targets of opportunity. Don’t you think?”
“Two thousand oil tankers a month round the Cape of Good Hope,” Hardin had protested. “You can’t stop the flow of oil.”
“We can certainly disrupt it,” Miles had replied. “And what more dramatic demonstration of that ability than sinking the biggest ship in the world. LEVIATHAN—”
“No!” Hardin had shouted. “It’s not yours. It’s mine. It’s my loss, my fight, and my revenge. Leave it alone.”
“It will be yours, Dr. Hardin. All I offer is the one thing you can’t do yourself. Surveillance. I’ll tell you a half day in advance exactly where the ship is. She’s yours to sink. Your victory.”
“I’m not looking for a victory.”
Miles had chuckled. “That’s fortunate. Because we’ll claim it privately, regardless of whether you accept our help. In fact, Dr. Hardin, perhaps we could arrange it so you wouldn’t be implicated. Perhaps you won’t be a fugitive.”
Hardin had replied, “All I want to do is sink it.”
“Then let us help.”
The Russian woodpecker stopped abruptly. Hardin turned up the volume and strained to hear through the hiss of the headphones. He glanced at Ajaratu, barely visible in the red glow of the chart light. She was fast asleep, her body instinctively braced against the Swan’s gentle heel.
Miles’s voice came in loud and clear. “Xray.”
“Why?” snapped Hardin. “Did Zulu sail?”
“Yes. They found you out.”
Hardin’s mind raced. They would try to dodge him. “So?”
“They’ve taken a helicopter.”
Hardin pressed his fingers to his temples and tried to think. Could he attack at night? No. Distances were too deceptive in the dark. A dull ache grew in his stomach.