by Robert Stone
Inside, the first room was in deep gloom, its unglazed windows nailed and boarded. Fungi grew along the walls and years of spiderwebs in every corner. The naked doorway he had entered through admitted the only light. Two of the strange little birds clattered out of the shadows, startling him. He thought the place should smell of ashes but it had the same odor as the foul wind outside. Thick gravel dust sanded his steps.
His eyes had been dazzled with an Antarctic glare and it took him a little while to adjust to the half-light. When he had, he saw a second room beyond the first. The connecting door was ajar. Behind it was a hallway from which a flight of stairs ascended to the upper floor. What light there was seemed now to be above him, but at the top of the stairs he found himself in darkness. Immediately before him was yet another door. Light was visible beneath it. He was surprised by the notion that he had been in a similar place somewhere before.
He opened the door to see an empty window open to the sea. Framed in it was the half-disc of the same setting sun that he was certain he had watched on the horizon hours before. It was impossible, he thought, as though the sun hung out of time. Browne grew frightened. He drew his breath carefully. How can it lurk there like that, he wondered, like a jack or a joker? He was reminded that he had taken liberties with time and located himself falsely. These are the interstices, he thought.
Slowly he became aware that part of the room was in shadow, unilluminated by the vagrant sun. It was a vast high-ceilinged room. In one shadowy corner was what appeared to be a high-backed old-fashioned Cape Cod rocking chair. It was piled with what he thought were quilts. Among the stack of quilts he thought he saw braided human hair. His anxiety was replaced by sexual excitement.
A febrile rush made him shiver. The pulse under his collarbone beat hard. He felt a dizzying pressure behind his eyes. At the same time, he was stirred to sudden emotion, a dear, bittersweet longing and a sense of expectation. He suspected he was not alone.
“Who is it?”
The close air was suddenly fragrant. There was a wind chime. Browne had the sense that an old game was in progress. The players were familiar and affectionate but there was an edge of conflict or pursuit. He heard mocking, sprightly music. Panic, Mozartean strains.
“Who is it?” he asked again, smiling.
The sound of his importuning voice hung in the air. The first land crab of twilight scuttled across the floor. He felt called upon for gallantry or wit. Believing that there was a woman in the room with him, he began to proclaim his undying love.
At some point, he thought she tried to warn him she was more coarse and lascivious than he understood. He paid no attention. He cried; his hands described figures in the air. The shadows, the faint music, all suggested she was less nurturing than he required, more carnal. Shameless. Free.
He decided it was only an illusion of the light, of sensual shapes and things that lingered in any old room. Drafts composed themselves into female whispers. The wind was always full of voices.
“Midshipman Browne.”
“It isn’t anyone,” he said.
Browne was certain that no one was there. He looked cautiously at the sun that hung so strangely in the window, at the edge of the sky. Its suspended motion furthered illusion. He spoke to the persuasive image that he had mistaken for a wife, who seemed to want him to stay.
The deasil was sacred. It was an old principle of the sea. He moved his extended palm from horizon to horizon in a clockwise motion. Perfect order. It was always necessary in determining the relative motion of bodies to hold their courses in mind. Clockwise was sound.
He thought of himself heading around the world, congruent with the sun and stars. All that whirl, so much true and apparent motion.
“Look what connects me to them,” he told the illusionary woman. He referred to his wife and daughter.
There were bone hooks fastened to his flesh, inserted under the muscle so that he could swing free. Hide lines bound him to a pole, the central pole, the axis of the world. He swung around, in the ancient deasil motion, at varying angles to the blue horizon, supported by the trusty hooks beneath his ligaments. The line groaned as it turned on the bit. He himself sang in the grip of the hooks, glad to be there, exhilarated by the dips and turns. The rational, algorithmic Sun Dance. Such was love.
I’ll make my fortune on the Japan Ground, Browne thought, bring my pretty ones silk and amber. Many before him had thought the same.
All at once Browne was certain that he was alone after all and that he had better get out of the familiar house. It was difficult to isolate and address hallucinations, which were part and parcel of sailing alone. It was hard sometimes to distinguish them from the genuine insights which only the sea provided. Sometimes you had to take the bitter with the sweet.
In the next cove, he found more bones and another familiar sight. An ancient steam windlass coiled with rusted wire lay on the rocks together with a welter of ventilator tubes, riveted funnels and iron boilers.
He started back then. Coming in sight of the ash house, he stopped for a moment and looked anxiously at the single window on the second story. He wanted to see someone there. Yet he was afraid of seeing her. That was typical of him, he thought, to be afraid of what he wanted.
That made him consider all that he had learned about himself. From a certain point of view, Browne thought, there were things about himself he hardly dared reflect on. Can it be, he thought, that everyone has this much to conceal?
It was difficult, and every day had its secrets. Every hour had some unsuitable reflection. The longer everything stretched on, the greater the weight of subterfuge. It was necessary to live and then to justify, to balance the calculated and the true. It was necessary to experience life correctly but at the same time compose it into something acceptable.
He stopped and turned back toward the house. He felt truly exhausted, ready to fall asleep on his feet. How restful it would be, he thought, if he could put himself to one side and put things on the other. When he looked at the horizon again, to his great relief the sun was down.
57
ONE DAY Thorne’s office called to say that Harry had consented to go on camera for Strickland’s film.
“Seriously?” Strickland asked Joyce Manning. “What made up his mind?”
“Frankly, Ron,” Joyce said, “I think he’s always been curious about your operation. He told Duffy he’d personally pay you off.”
“Sounds ominous,” Strickland said.
Harry came alone to the Hell’s Kitchen studio. “I wanted to have a look,” he explained. He did not seem favorably impressed. They talked movies.
“I have friends in the picture business,” Thorne told Strickland. “They take a lot of shit from highbrows. But they’re very good at what they do.”
Strickland was taking his own sound. When he had tested the level, he aimed a camera at his guest.
“Really? What is it they do?”
Thorne laughed humorlessly. “You might say they anticipate popular taste. Across the country and across the world. I think that’s pretty good.”
“Your friends in pictures used to manufacture popular taste,” Strickland said, “when they owned all the tools. Now they’re just gamblers.”
“You seem to know all about it.”
“Everybody does. People in that business don’t know from one season to the next what will sell for them. It’s a pseudo-rational process. They’re medicine men. If it rains, they say they did it. If not, they blame someone else.”
“But it appears,” Thorne said, “that you couldn’t cut it out there.”
“I took my business elsewhere. I found other things to do.”
“Really?” Thorne asked. He took his glasses off and squinted at Strickland with a hard smile as though it were easier to see him that way. Strickland kept filming. “Less trivial things, maybe?”
“Maybe.”
“I suppose you think Hollywood films are trivial. A lot of them are. Documentaries are
more serious.”
“We try.”
Thorne watched him with what seemed to be myopic pleasure at the filming process.
“The guys in L.A. make a lot of trivial pictures about trivial things. Maybe that’s bad. Other people make trivial pictures about serious things. Like the Vietnam War. They trivialize what’s important.”
“Who,” Strickland asked, “me?”
“Who knows,” Thorne said, “maybe even you. A man risks his life and you look for small significances.”
“Small significances,” Strickland said, “are neat.”
Thorne put his glasses back on and settled into a chair.
“Some people go out and do things,” Thorne said. “They put life and reputation on the line. Others seem to see their role as following after. Checking up. With a flashlight. Looking for cracks.”
“Or a shovel,” Strickland said, “looking for bullshit.” He did not stop filming. Thorne laughed amiably.
“What I’m saying,” Thorne said, “is there’s a difference between people who actually do things and people who find fault and poke holes and make judgments.”
“It isn’t true,” Strickland said, “that I don’t do anything. A film is something.”
“Not one of your films, Strickland. A film of yours is just an attitude about something.”
Reflecting on the notion, Strickland put his camera aside and turned to the window to check the declining light. On the street below he saw the Brownes’ sedan draw up against the curb opposite. Anne got out, looked at her watch and locked the car.
“That has its uses, I guess,” Harry Thorne was saying. “Opinion making is important. That’s why I was advised to hire you. I think now I was ill-advised. I think it was a waste of time.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Strickland said, watching the street. Anne came straight for the street door of his building. She seemed not to notice Thorne’s Lincoln, parked near the corner of Eleventh with its driver at the wheel. “You would have been better advised to get a different man.”
“It was Matty,” Thorne said, and shrugged. “Originally. Then Anne. She wanted the film. Anyhow, I think we’ve reached the parting of the ways.”
The downstairs bell rang. It would be necessary to go down and let her in. There was opportunity enough to turn her away.
“Excuse me,” Strickland said. “I’m expecting company.”
“I’m leaving,” Harry assured him. “My people will be in touch. Do you have anything for me to sign? A release?”
“You don’t mind signing a release?”
Thorne seemed pleased with himself. “Glad to have my thoughts on record.”
He put his coat on and they went out and got into the scrofulous, graffiti-ridden elevator. Strickland started it down.
“Too bad it didn’t work out,” Strickland said.
“Yeah, too bad,” Harry said.
She was standing square in front of the elevator, framed very nicely when Strickland opened the door. She smiled guiltily, all confusion, and blushed becomingly. It was genuinely embarrassing. Glancing at Harry, Strickland saw his quick gasp and equally quick recovery. He seemed to understand the situation readily enough.
“Harry,” she said, “good Lord, what are you doing here?”
“Anne,” Harry said smoothly. “Nice to see you.” He hurried by her to the curb outside. His car came abreast upon the moment.
“God,” Anne said, riding up with Strickland. “I never expected to see Harry.”
“Yeah,” Strickland said, “he happened by.”
“God,” she said. “I think he knew, don’t you? I think he knew about us.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Strickland said. “You were discreet.”
“I was?”
“Sure. Quite matter-of-fact.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said. She got out of the elevator with her arms folded, looking at the floor.
The shamefaced posture touched him but he was pleased at her humiliation. He meant no vital harm; his lust was to capture, not to kill. Sometimes he had the fantasy there was some wound he might inflict that could make her into a creature more like himself. For company’s sake. So as not to be lonely.
58
AT NINETEEN HUNDRED Zulu time, Browne sat hunched by his radio, waiting. In the same moment, at the Southchester Yacht Club, they were attending the monitor, waiting for his signal, in vain. By nineteen-thirty Zulu, the reaching out would begin. Borne by Whiskey Oscar Oscar, by Kilo Oscar India on the cypress cliffs of Marin, by Whiskey Oscar India on the Florida Gold Coast, on the hour and the half hour, all the concerned souls in the other world would start singing him home. He waited, smiling, with his lie coiled, ready to spring it into space.
At nineteen-seventeen, on 21.390 megahertz, he heard Mad Max’s frenetic fist.
“CQ DE ZRA1J563, CQ DE ZRA1J563.” Over and over again.
Max was CQ-ing the entire planet to advertise his antic presence, inviting discourse. Browne decided to give him a thrill. He tapped out his call sign and the bitch’s name, Nona, on Max’s frequency. Max was delighted.
“JLY GD RARE DX EXCLT SPR,” he exclaimed. Which Browne understood was Anglo—South African ham for jolly good unusual and interesting long distance transmission excellent super.
Max inquired the weather, as custom decreed. Browne glanced at his most recent weather fax to see if it would indicate conditions at the false coordinates he was about to claim. He had decided to claim approximately fifty-three south, forty-eight east.
Mad Max was impressed. “SPR DX.” He thought it formidable transmission. “QRX?” He was inquiring into the intelligibility of his signal. Browne sent him a numeral five for excellent and asked in turn for Max’s location. Max was in Pietermaritzburg, Natal. He asked Browne to mail him a DSL card, the postcard memento that hams exchanged to commemorate their rare DX. Browne readily agreed. Then he gave Max the telephone number of Duffy’s office and asked Max to patch him through. Equipped with the number, Max radioed one of his rare DX pals in New Jersey. The ham in Jersey patched the signal to Duffy’s phone. In an instant the worried publicist was on the line. Back in the world, Browne thought, but not of it.
“RNDZVS ON 29.871 MZS,” Max broadcast. At the rendezvous, on 29.871 megahertz, Browne found an exasperated Duffy.
“Jesus Christ, chum,” Duffy was saying, “where the hell you been?”
“My tanks were contaminated, Duffy. I couldn’t charge my batteries. I just got it squared away.”
In the simplex transmission they could talk to each other easily.
“We thought you sank, babe. Your dingus isn’t sending signals.”
“I can’t be the only one.”
“You’re not,” Duffy said. “Cefalu and Dennis are down too. We haven’t heard from Dennis. Where are you?”
Browne gave him the false position.
“You’re leading, then. Is everything O.K.?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Can you dream up something for the press?”
“I would hesitate to dream,” Browne said.
“Well, we don’t want to seem strange or unusual, chum. And how about calling your wife?”
“Should I?”
“Definitely,” Duffy said.
“I will, then.”
“Maybe we should start preparing the world for a winner. When do you figure on clearing Cape Horn?”
“I’ll let you know. It’s bad luck to guess.”
“All right, buddy,” Duffy said. “Keep up the good work.”
“I will,” Browne said.
Later Max started sending BTs—dah-dit-dit-dit dah, dah-dit-dit-dit dah, dah-dit-dit-dit dah. It was the Morse equivalent of a stammer. He was thinking of what to say next.
“STNDBY FOR FILS,” he tapped suddenly. Browne tried to remember what HLs were.
“INTERROGATIVE HLS?”
“HA HA HA HA,” Max wired. HLs were laughs.
Brow
ne sighed and sent him a roger.
“HEAR ABOUT MINIATURIZED TRNSMTTR?”
Browne waited.
“FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE SMALL TALK.”
“HL,” he told Max.
“YOUR CALL STATESIDE LIKE TWO SNAKES FIGHTING.”
Browne was taken with the image. He waited.
“CALL WAS POISON TO POISON.”
“HL,” he sent back.
“ONE HORSE TO OTHERHORSE AT RACECOURSE.”
Browne waited the beat.
“CANT REMEMBER YR MANE BUT YR PACE IS FAMILIAR.”
“HL,” Browne replied. The puns continued for some time. Browne interrupted the next wave of BTs with a sign-off and closed down. He fell to the work of imaginary positions, devising himself eastward, figuring the angles until he grew tired. The fatigue that settled down on him was considerable. He stood up, put on his fur-lined jacket and went on deck for air.
One minute the lagoon was very still, the next a sudden wind from the peaks would race across its surface, addling the reflected sky. Leaning on the rail, Browne had a sudden recollection of himself speaking to the press in the offices of the Joint Public Affairs Office. His manner had commanded an unaccustomed silence. His words, deliberate, grammatical and clearly spoken, had deepened the attention of the room. He had felt transfigured by his own forthrightness and the reporters had sensed his honesty. He could no longer remember the nature of the information he had been providing the press or whether it had been misleading or not. He remembered only the appearance of rectitude that had surrounded him.
I am neither that person, Browne thought, nor the person remembering that person. There had been something like a death. He went back down to the navigation table and looked with loathing at the almanacs. Browne thought he could take no more of it. It was too hard for him. He went back on deck.
The trick was to take pleasure in knowing what was true and to deprive the rest of the world of that knowledge. That was the power suggested in the Bible stories. The power of command over reality consisted in being party to its nature and possessing the knowledge exclusively. All at once Browne understood that such power would always be denied him.