by Daniel Mason
“I do. He is probably the oldest fellow on the ship.”
“His name is William Penfield. Former officer with the East India Company. ‘Bloody Bill,’ they called him. Perhaps the most decorated and violent soldier to serve in the colonies.”
“That old man?”
“The same. Next time you are near him, look at his left hand. He is missing two fingers from a skirmish during his first tour. His men used to joke that he took a thousand lives for each of his fingers.”
“Terrible.”
“That’s not the least of it, but I will spare you the details. Now look to his left. That young fellow, with dark hair, they call him ‘Teak Harry.’ I don’t know his real name. An Armenian from Baku. His father was a timberman, who licensed steamers to carry Siberian wood from the northern shore of the Caspian Sea to its southern coast. For a time, they say he controlled the entire market into Persia, until he was assassinated ten years ago. The whole family fled, some to Arabia, others to Europe. Teak Harry headed east, for the Indo-Chinese market. Reputation as a swashbuckler and adventurer. There are rumors that say he even funded Garnier’s journey up the Mekong to find its source, although there is no proof of this, and if it is true, Harry has been discreet, to preserve his British shipping contracts. Harry will probably be with you all the way to Rangoon, although he will take one of his company steamships to Mandalay. He has a mansion, no, a court, lavish enough to make the kings of Ava jealous. Which apparently it did. They say Thibaw twice tried to have Harry killed, but the Armenian escaped. You may pass his quarters in Mandalay. He lives and breathes teak. Difficult to talk to unless you are in the business.” The Captain scarcely stopped to breathe. “Behind him, the portly fellow, a Frenchman, Jean-Baptiste Valerie, professor of linguistics at the Sorbonne. They say he speaks twenty-seven languages, three of which aren’t spoken by any other white men, not even the missionaries.”
“And the man beside him, the man with the rings? A striking fellow.”
“Ah, the rug dealer Nader Modarress, a Persian who specializes in Bakhtiari rugs. He made this journey with two mistresses—unusual, because he has enough wives in Bombay to keep him too busy to sell rugs. He is staying in the royal cabin. He can always afford the fare. As you saw, he has gold rings on each finger—you must try to look at them, each ring is set with extraordinary jewels.”
“He boarded with another gentleman, a large blond fellow.”
“Bodyguard. A Norwegian, I think. Although I doubt he is much good. He spends half his time smoking opium with the stokers—nasty habit, but it keeps them from complaining much. Modarress has another character in his hire, a spectacled fellow, a poet from Kiev, whom Modarress hired to compose odes to his wives—the Persian fashions himself a romantic but has trouble with his adjectives. Ah—forgive me—I am gossiping like a schoolgirl. Come, let’s take some air before I have to return to work.”
They rose and walked outside to the deck. In the bow stood a lone figure, wrapped in a long white robe that fluttered about his body.
Edgar watched him. “I don’t think he has moved from that spot since we left Alexandria.”
“Perhaps our strangest passenger of all. We call him the Man with One Story. He has traveled this route for as long as I can remember. He is always alone. I do not know who pays his fare or what his business is. He travels in the lower berths, boards in Alexandria and disembarks in Aden. I have never seen him make the return journey.”
“And why do you call him the Man with One Story?”
The Captain chuckled. “An old name. On the rare voyages that he chooses to speak, he tells only one tale. I have heard it once, and I have never forgotten it. He doesn’t make conversation. He only begins the story and doesn’t stop until it is finished. It is eerie, as if one is listening to a phonograph. Mostly he’s silent, but for those who hear the story … they are rarely the same again.”
“He speaks English?”
“A deliberate English, almost as if he is reading.”
“And the subject of this … story?”
“Ah, Mr. Drake. That I will leave for you to discover, if you are meant to. Really, only he can tell it.”
And as if rehearsed, there was a call from the galley. Edgar had other questions, about Anthony Carroll, about the Man with One Story, but the Captain quickly bid him good night, and disappeared into the dining hall, leaving him alone, breathing the scent of the sea air, loaded with salt and premonition.
The next morning, Edgar awoke early to the heat pounding at the porthole. He dressed and walked down the long corridor and up to the deck. It was bright, and he could feel the sun even as it barely hovered over the eastern hills. The sea was wide, and both shores could still faintly be seen. Further aft he saw the man in the white robes standing at the rail.
He had become accustomed to taking this stroll every morning, circling the ship’s deck until it became too warm. It was on one of these walks that he had first seen the man unroll his prayer rug to pray. He had seen him often since then, but he said nothing.
Yet on this warm morning, as he followed the same route of his usual stroll, aft along the railing, toward the man in the white robes, he felt his legs weakening. I am afraid, he thought, and he tried to tell himself that this morning’s walk was no different from the previous day’s, but he knew it wasn’t true. The Captain had spoken with a seriousness that seemed oddly out of character for the tall, lighthearted sailor. For a moment, Edgar thought that perhaps he had imagined the conversation, that the Captain had left him in the dining hall, that he had risen to the deck alone. Or, he thought several steps later, the Captain knew they would meet, a new traveler and a storyteller, Perhaps this is what is meant by the gravity of stories.
He found himself standing near the man. “Fine morning, sir,” he said.
The old man nodded. His face was dark, his beard the color of his robes. Edgar didn’t know what to say, but he forced himself to remain at the railing. The man was silent. Waves washed against the bow of the ship, their sound lost in the roar of the steam engines.
“This is your first time in the Red Sea,” said the man, his voice deep with an unfamiliar accent.
“Yes, it is, this is my first time away from England, actually—”
The old man interrupted him. “You must show me your lips when you speak,” he said. “I am deaf.”
Edgar turned. “I am sorry, I didn’t know …”
“Your name?” asked the old man.
“Drake … here …” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card which he had had printed especially for the journey.
EDGAR DRAKE
PIANO TUNER—ERARDS-A-SPECIALTY
14 FRANKLIN MEWS
LONDON
The sight of the tiny card with curlicue lettering in the wrinkled hands of the old man suddenly embarrassed him. But the old man puzzled over the card. “An English piano tuner. A man who knows sound. Would you like to hear a story, Mr. Edgar Drake? An old deaf man’s story?”
Thirty years ago, when I was much younger and not crippled by the pains of old age, I worked as a deckhand, traveling this very route from Suez to the Strait of Babelmandeb. Unlike today’s steamers that plow directly through the sea without stopping, we rode by sail and crisscrossed the sea, dropping anchor at dozens of tiny ports on both the African and Arabian shores, towns with names like Fareez and Gomaina, Tektozu and Weevineev, many of which have been lost to the sands, where we stopped to trade with nomads who sold rugs and pots scavenged from abandoned desert cities. I was traveling this same route when our boat was caught in a storm. She was old and should have been forbidden from sailing. We reefed the sails, but the hull sprung a leak, and the rush of the water split the boat. When the hull ruptured I fell and struck my head, and entered blackness.
When I awoke I was lying on a sandy shore, alone amidst some wreckage of the hull that I must have clung to by good fortune. At first I found myself immobile and feared I had been paralyzed, but found only t
hat I was wrapped tightly in my headdress, which must have unraveled and clung to my body like a child’s swaddling or the mummies they pull out of the Egyptian sands. It took me a long time to regain my wits. My body was badly bruised, and when I tried to breathe, pain shot through my ribs. The sun was already high in the sky, and my body was caked with the salt of the sea, my throat and tongue parched and swollen. Pale blue water lapped at my feet and at the piece of broken hull, which still bore the first three scrawled Arabic figures from what was once the ship’s name.
At long last I unraveled my headdress and retied it loosely. I rose to my feet. The land around me was flat, but in the distance I could see mountains, dry and barren. Like any man who has grown up in the desert, I could only think of one thing: water. I knew from our travels that the coastline is marked by many small estuaries, most brackish, but some of which, according to the nomads, merge with sweet water streams draining aquifers or the snows that have fallen on the peaks of distant mountains. So I decided to follow the coast, in the hope of finding such a river. At least the sea would keep me oriented, and perhaps, perhaps, I might sight a passing ship.
As I walked, the sun rose over the hills, which I knew meant that I was in Africa. This realization was simple but frightening. We have all been lost, but it is rare that we do not know on which continent’s sandy shore we wander. I did not speak the language nor did I know the land as I did Arabia. Yet something emboldened me, perhaps youth, perhaps the delirium of the sun.
I had not walked one hour when I reached a turn in the coastline where a sliver of the sea sliced into the shore. I tasted the water. It was still salty, yet beside me lay a single thin branch, which had been washed downstream, and on it, a single leaf, dry and shaking in the wind. My travels and trading had taught me a little about plants, for when we anchored in Fareez and Gomaina, we traded for herbs with the nomads there. And this little leaf I recognized as the plant we call belaidour, and Berbers call adil-ououchchn, whose tea brings the drinker dreams of the future, and whose berries make women’s eyes wide and dark. Yet at that moment I thought little of the preparation of tea and much of botany. For belaidour is expensive because it does not grow along the Red Sea, but in wooded mountains many miles west. This gave me the faint hope that man had once been here, and if man then perhaps water.
So with this hope alone, I turned inland, following the sliver of sea south, with the prayer that I would find the source of the belaidour, and with it the water that nourished those who traded it.
I walked for the remainder of the day, and into the night. I still remember the arc of the moon as it passed through the sky. It wasn’t half full, but the cloudless sky gave no shelter from the light that cast itself over the water and sand. What I don’t remember is that sometime during the night I lay down to rest, and I fell asleep.
I awoke to the gentle prodding of a goatherd’s staff and opened my eyes to see two young boys, wearing only loincloths and necklaces. One of them crouched in front of me, staring with a quizzical gaze. The other, who looked younger, stood behind him, watching over his shoulder. We stayed like this for the duration of many breaths, neither of us moving, watching only, he squatting, holding his knees, looking curiously, defiantly into my eyes. Slowly I rose to a sitting position, never dropping my gaze. I raised my hand and greeted him in my own tongue.
The boy didn’t move. Briefly his eyes left my face and jumped to my hand, stared at it, and looked back at my face. The boy behind him said something in a language that I didn’t understand, and the older one nodded, still not dropping his gaze. He raised his free hand behind him, and the younger boy unstrapped a leather canteen from his shoulders and placed it in the raised hand. The older boy untied a thin lace from the mouth of the bag and handed it to me. I raised the bag to my lips, closed my eyes, and began to drink.
I was so thirsty I could have emptied the bag ten times over. But the heat bid temperance; I did not know where the water had come from, nor how much remained. Finished drinking, I lowered the bag and handed it back to the older boy, who tied it without looking, his fingers winding the leather lace. He stood up and spoke to me in a loud voice, and although the language was foreign, the commanding tone of a child faced with responsibility is universal. I waited. He spoke again, louder this time. I pointed to my mouth and shook my head, as today I point to my ears. For then I was not yet deaf. That story is yet to come.
Beside me, the boy spoke again, loud and sharply, as if frustrated. He stamped his staff on the ground. I waited a moment and then rose slowly, to show I did so out of my own will and not for all his shouting. I would not let myself be commanded by a boy.
Once I had risen, I had my first chance to examine the landscape around us. I had fallen asleep by water, and no further than thirty paces ahead I could see where a little brook bubbled into the estuary, casting reflected currents across the pebbles. At its mouth, a scattering of pale plants clung to the rocks. I stopped at the brook to drink. The boys waited and said nothing, and soon we continued, up a bluff where a pair of goats gnawed at the grasses. The boys prodded them along, and we followed a dry streambed that must have fed the river in the rains.
It was morning, but already hot, and canyon walls rose on either side of the sandy path, intensifying both the heat and the sound of our steps. The boys’ voices echoed as they chattered to the goats, strange sounds that I recall vividly. Now that I am old, I wonder if this was due to any physical property of the canyon, or because in less than two days I would no longer hear.
We followed the canyon for several miles, until at a bend identical to hundreds we had passed in our route the goats scampered instinctively up a steep trail. The boys followed nimbly, their sandals finding impossible toeholds in the sandy wall. I tried my best to keep up, but slipped, skinning my knee before finding a solid grip and pulling myself up the trail they had so delicately trod. At the top I remember stopping to inspect my leg. It was a small, superficial wound and would dry immediately in the heat. And yet I remember this action, not for itself but for what followed. For when I looked up, the boys were running down a broad slope, chasing the goats. Below them stretched one of the most stunning visions I have ever seen. Indeed, had I been struck with blindness, rather than deafness, I think I would have been content. For nothing, not even the pounding surf of Babelmandeb, could match the scene that stretched out before me, the slope descending, flattening into a vast desert plain that stretched into a horizon blurred with sandstorms. And out of the thick dust, whose silence belied the rage known to anyone who has ever been caught in the terror of one of the storms, marched legions of caravans, from every point on the compass, long, dark trails of horses and camels, all emerging from the blur that swept across the valley, and all converging on a tent encampment that lay at the base of the hill.
There must have been hundreds of tents already, perhaps thousands if approaching caravans could be counted. From my perch on top of the mountain, I gazed out over the tents. A number of the styles I recognized. The peaked white tents of the Borobodo people, who often came to the ports at which we called to trade camel skins. The broad flat tents of the Yus, a warrior tribe who haunted the southern reaches of the Sinai, famous among the Egyptians for raids on traders, so fierce that ships would often not drop anchor if the tents were sighted onshore. The Rebez, an Arabian race, who dug holes in the sand before laying skins as a roof and setting a long pole at the thresholds of their homes, which serves as a beacon should shifting sands bury a home and its inhabitants. Beyond these, however, most of the structures were foreign to me, suggesting perhaps that their people came from deeper in the African interior.
I heard a piercing whistle from down the hill. Halfway between me and the tent city, the older boy was shouting and waving his staff. I ran and soon I reached the boys, and we descended the remainder of the hill together. We passed another group of boys playing with rocks and sticks, and my friends called out to them in greeting. I noticed they held their heads high, and pointed
frequently to me. I was, I imagine, an impressive find.
We passed the first tents, where camels were tethered outside. I could see firelight through their entrances, but no one came out to greet us. Then more tents, and as I followed my guides to a mysterious end, the paths between tents began to bustle with more activity. I passed hooded nomads whose faces I couldn’t discern, dark Africans bedecked with fine furs, veiled women who stared at me and dropped their eyes quickly when our gazes met. In such a gathering, I caused little sensation. Twice I passed men I heard speaking Arabic, but both my shame at my dishevelment and the haste of the boys kept me from stopping. We passed several campfires, where silhouetted musicians played songs I did not recognize. The boys stopped briefly at one, and I could hear the older one whisper the words as they watched the singers. Then we turned and plunged back into alleyways of tent and sand. At last we reached a large circular tent with a flat, slightly pointed roof and an open hole in the center from which wisps of smoke followed the glow of the fire into the darkening sky. The boys tied the goats to a post outside the tent, next to a pair of camels . They lifted the tent flap and motioned me inside.
Before I saw the people sitting beside the fire, I was struck by the rich smell coming from the central spit. It was testament to my hunger that I should notice the roasting flank of meat before I noticed my new hosts. It was a single leg of goat, and drops of blood swelled on the simmering meat until they dropped to the fire. At my side the boys spoke rapidly, gesturing at me. They were addressing a withered old woman, who reclined on a thin camel-skin rug on a raised bed near the edge of the tent. Her hair was wrapped tightly in a thin, translucent shawl, lending her head the illusion of a desert tortoise. She held a long pipe to her mouth and puffed it in contemplation. The boys finished talking, and for some time the woman said nothing. Finally she nodded to them, and they bowed and scampered to the other edge of the tent, where they threw themselves onto a rug, pulled their knees to their chests, and stared at me. There were others in the tent as well, perhaps ten silent faces.