Joshua found himself in Sydney with a pocketful of money and in no time he had made his first baby. He was standing in a pub on the waterfront when he noticed that a woman dressed like the Spanish Armada with flags had come in and seemed to want to attract his attention. She rounded up snug against him at the bar and said, “Aren’t you a sailor boy? Sure and you are. If you’re the lad I think you are, you’ll buy me a gin.”
Stella was a large woman with an imposing manner, black-haired with a Gypsy nose. Her costume was all scarves, ribbons, and ornaments. Inside the clothes was a figure like a statue of Victory. She was justly proud of her bust and carried it with her everywhere she went. In bed as they made the baby, she cried out, “Oh, you darling! You sailor boy.” Joshua didn’t have to give her any of his money, except for the dollar for the gin. He stayed with her for a week. She lived in a narrow house overlooking the harbor, and she cooked hearty meals for him, to fatten him up as she said, including bangers and mash, fried sweetbreads, and toad-in-the hole, her specialty. On the last day she took him to a meal at a fish-and-chips place called the Palace of Cod, and afterwards they went back to the house to make sure there was no doubt about the baby.
Joshua went blackbirding again, and made a voyage to New Zealand on a trading bark, and when he came back in a year Stella had a fine baby to show him, with pink cheeks and buttocks and Joshua’s own stiff black hair. He dandled it on his knee and felt all the joys of fatherhood, even though he was only seventeen. Stella was grateful and tried to press some money on him, but he refused.
In the years that followed, as he coursed about the world as an able-bodied seaman on sailing ships, Joshua made so many babies that he couldn’t count them. In the embrace of each of his wives, he imagined the beautiful baby the two of them might be making: chubby little hands with fingers like beans, a pair of button eyes, hair sticking up like grass, a round tummy with a pink marble for a belly-button. A widow in Hawaii. The wife of a stationmaster in Melbourne. A wayward Creole girl in New Orleans, who made a café-au-lait baby which he adored the next time his ship came in. In Hongkong, he made friends with a lady of mixed parentage who produced an infant that looked so much like a doll in a souvenir ship that he wanted to take it with him, but this was impossible in his life at sea. Whenever he was in Sydney he sought out Stella, who was not hard to find; she was always in one of the public houses along the waterfront.
In Capetown he met a woman named Melpomene who kept a boarding house and was a follower of Madame Blavatsky. They made friends and he was a guest in her house while his ship was discharging its cargo. She came down to the dock with him when he went to board the ship, but when the lines were cast off she held him in her arms so effectively that the ship was towed out to sea by the steam tug and Joshua stayed on the dock. He stayed with Mel for a year, helping out with the duties of the boarding house and looking on with pleasure and interest as her stomach grew larger. Mel held séances in her parlor in which there were table-rappings and ghosts appeared. When Josh had nothing else to do, he amused himself by reading her psychic books, although some of them were hard going. She bore him a pair of twins, which pleased him so greatly that before he left he started another one for her.
In his wandering life, he sent little bits and pieces of his pay to all of these women around the world as best he could. Once when he won a football pool in England he sent them all a bonanza, a hundred pounds apiece, enough to keep them going for some time. In any case, many of them had pensions to support them, or if not, other sailors from time to time. In forty years of going to sea he actually married two or three of them, but it didn’t make much difference in the way he loved them, or in the way he left them. Now and then he was accused of bigamy, threatened with guns, or arrested for unlawful cohabitation, but he faced up to these difficulties with good cheer.
Since he was a peaceable man he avoided the Great War as much as possibly, spending these years on coastal vessels in the waters of Australia. This meant that he could visit Stella frequently, and also the widow of a sea captain in Brisbane who, owing to a train accident, had only one leg but was otherwise in vigorous health. Naturally she was grateful to Joshua, but no more so than the others. After the War he sailed on the grain barks, the last of the ocean-going sailing ships, that brought the wheat from Australia to England. The barks all sailed from Sydney at the same time of the year, when the grain harvest was in, and their hard-headed Finnish skippers made the voyage into a race, piling on all sail and calling the crew to tumble out at midnight to reef, hand, or replace a blown-out foresail. It was a hard life but Joshua enjoyed it. Many an hour he lay on the yard-arm scrabbling with his bare hands to reef the canvas or set stunsails, while the bark roared along before the westerly gale leaving a wake like a battleship. These were the largest and finest sailing ships ever built. The grain racers with their wide-stretching wings lived in his dreams for the rest of his life, merging in them with the arms of the women who were his solace and delight ashore. The nourishing grain in the holds of the ships became, in his dream-wisdom, the babies that the women nourished in their wombs.
Joshua was no longer a thin sailor boy. He became a sturdy mariner with red hands and a bit of a pot-belly. His hair, though grizzled, was still as stiff as a scrubbing brush. He turned sixty, but could still reef, hand, and steer. He never held a rating higher than Able-Bodied Seaman and considered this to be an honor to be proud of. When he turned his palms up, at the base of his eight fingers were tattooed the letters H.O.L.D. F.A.S.T. Others fell from the yard-arm into the sea, died in fights, or developed consumption from the fetid air of the foc’s’le, but Joshua persisted, as tough as an old oak with green leaves.
One winter, when the grain barks lay idle in Finland, he signed on a collier bound from Newcastle to Baltimore. He hated steamers, and this one was gritty with coal dust and left an intestine of black smoke on the sea as it went. He steered and chipped rust, and when he got to Baltimore he had had enough of it. He was ready for a spell on the beach. In a sailors’ bar on Shakespeare Street he drank more than was his custom, and looked around for some female companionship, but there was none in sight.
Out he went into the night, and on Broadway he saw a hall with an open door and lights inside. With his blurry eyes, he mistook it for a mission where he could pad down for the night and get a cup of coffee in the morning. He went in and sat down and became aware that a remarkable woman had appeared in his frame of vision. He couldn’t bring the five green letters over her head into focus, but presently someone near her murmured the word. He could hear what she was saying though. She was speaking about Love and how Love peoples the earth. It was divine and not a sin. There was no sin or evil, only the absence of good. Love was good. This fitted exactly with Joshua’s own ideas.
After the performance he went up and spoke to the woman in the gown covered with M’s. He remembered the séances in the boarding house in Capetown, and recalled enough of their lingo to convince her that he had an Astral Body. But he never knew why in the Seven Devils of Patagonia she took him in. For his part he could see that the members of the Guild were two-thirds female, and he thought he would like to marry one. Moira, to start with. This was before he saw the difficulties in such an enterprise. But he clung on out of hope. He fixed his attention sometimes on one of the Vestals, sometimes on Aunt Madge Foxthorn, who seemed to him not entirely out of the question. It was a torment to him to have to give up drink, but there were other forces in him even more preponderant. Besides he could sneak a sip from time to time, and even had an idea that Moira didn’t mind this. It was the women that kept him on. For a time he had his eye on the skimpy English lass with freckles, but she took up with a pockmarked Spanish philosopher.
Cereste Legrand and Moira are having a conference in the sitting room of her suite, which has a window overlooking the Green Park. Through the summer air he can hear the twitter of birds and the voices of children calling. In Piccadilly, at a little greater distance, a taxi hoots and th
ere is a murmur of traffic. He has set his beaver hat on the table and has a pen and a note-pad in front of him. Moira is sitting on the Empire canapé in her long dress; she has nothing in her hands. Cereste Legrand has already taken several pages of notes about the provisioning of the League of Nations, from tool kits to glassware, musical instruments, patent water-closets, and rolls of wallpaper. To his surprise she orders quantities of the finest wines and beers. “We will find some use for them, perhaps. Our life in Gioconda will be quite different from what it is here in the world.”
“Then Gioconda is not in the world?”
“In the world but not of it.”
“Where is it exactly? Are you ever going to tell us?”
“Don’t pester with questions, Cereste Legrand. Just do as I say. Take another sheet. Now about the clothes we will wear in Gioconda.”
“Will we wear different clothes in Gioconda?”
“Of course.”
In Cereste Legrand’s opinion, he is not likely to wear clothes in Gioconda any different from those he wears here in the world. He has always dressed the same from the time he was a young lion tamer in Belgium before the War: gray trousers, a cutaway coat, a stand-up collar, and a paisley cravat. When he goes out, he puts on a flat gray beaver with a narrow brim. He wears a short mustache and an imperial, and his complexion is florid. There are many broken blood vessels on his face, particularly on his nose, which is covered with a filigree of red lacework. His teeth are bad. He is usually cheerful, but mercurial and easily enraged. He is the only member of the Guild, if indeed he is a member of the Guild, who does not share Moira’s beliefs in Astral Bodies, True Visions, and Clairvoyance. He is a thoroughly pragmatic person, except that he has certain hypnotic powers which he discovered more or less by accident. He has managed to conceal these from Moira, if it is possible to conceal anything from Moira. She hired him as manager solely because of his managerial abilities. As for Astral Bodies, he will believe them when he sees one.
She is still going on about clothing.
“For a time we will head to the north, so we will need stout Eskimo gear. Parkas, anoraks, fur-lined boots, and gloves.”
He writes down parkas, anoraks, fur-lined boots, and gloves. “Winter clothing. Is that all?”
“Of course not. We will need many other things. Do you have your pen ready?”
He waits patiently.
“Gowns and raiments of all the hues of sunlight and nature. We must have Phrygian caps; slippers of Mercury; girdles of lapis lazuli, vair, and lambskin; harem trousers; headbands set with pearls; pellucid peignoirs; black oriental pajamas; G-strings of gossamer; broad horse-tamers’ belts; gilded cod-pieces; tunics of satin that leave one breast bare, both left and right; and cowboys’ chaps embroidered with hearts and flowers. Do you have all that?”
He goes on writing for a while, then looks up expectantly.
“Wooden Chinese clogs; sorcerers’ robes and viziers’ caps; also caps for Greek fishermen, English navvies, gauchos, French sailors, and Basques. Tarbooshes and fezzes. Red Indian’s headdresses. Body-gloves of black rubber. Torero costumes with tight breeches. Hangmens’ masks. Sainte-Affriques—do you know what Sainte-Affriques are, Cereste Legrand?”
“No.”
“Gowns that cover the entire body and allow only the parts concealed by the Folies-Bergeres dancers to appear. They also have them for men.”
“In the north?”
“It will be warm in Gioconda. Grass skirts, sarongs, silk saris, fishnet stockings, brass cups for the breasts, acrobats’ tights and singlets, Japanese paper gowns painted with nympheas, short pants of goatskin with the fleece on the outside, Rumour Gowns painted with tongues, dungarees worn to the thread, fandango hats and pumps with clacking heels, Roman tunics and togas, dhotis of the finest virgin cotton, lungis and moochas, caftans and cassocks, tangerine tea-gowns, Saint Lucy crowns with candles, chemisettes of peacock feathers, tuxedos and swallowtail coats, boiled shirts with white bow ties, silken undershirts, African cache-sexes made of bark, Hindu loin-scarves, dancers’ leotards, boxers’ trunks, white satin tutus, and Shakespearian stockings that come up to the crotch.”
“Are we going to wear all these things?”
“Some of us one and some another. In Gioconda a good deal of our time will be spent in trying different costumes. You can assume many different spirits and persons by putting on different clothes. Do you know that the word person means a mask? If you try on many different costumes, you will end by finding one that suits you. Consider the word suit also, Cereste Legrand. If something suits you, it means that it fits you like a garment. Or maybe you will find a costume that changes you in the way you want to be changed. Have you ever considered why we wear clothes at all, Cereste Legrand? Not because of the cold. We could easily get used to that.”
Cereste Legrand has a private theory that it’s because the world is run by men, and men don’t want to have their erotic states so visibly signaled to the other half of the human race. Nothing is more ludicrous than a dog with a hard-on who is having no luck with his lady friend. He says nothing about this.
“Here in the world,” she goes on in. a chatty and personal way, not usual for her, “I myself wear what you see.” Cereste Legrand’s glance falls on her plain linen dress that comes almost to her ankles. “But this is because I will not wear what the world would dictate to me, the clothes that are sold in shops. Such clothes could not really express my spirit, because I have a spirit that is so special that no ordinary clothes could be made for it. And so,” she concludes, with a slight gap in the logic it seems to him, “in a few days we will embark for Gioconda.”
“You say that in Gioconda a good deal of our time will be spent in trying on costumes. How will the rest of it be spent?”
“Perhaps in doing what the costumes make us feel like doing. You’re a fool, Cereste Legrand. You have no imagination. Perhaps it’s just as well to have one among us who is a fool and has no imagination. Otherwise who knows what follies we might fall into.”
Cereste Legrand is not sure whether this is a compliment or not. It all depends on the question of whether Moira has a sense of humour, a matter he is uncertain on.
“So on your way, Cereste Legrand. Your work’s cut out for you. Time is short. Take your cheque-book. Have everything delivered to the aerodrome at Croydon. And don’t forget the Sainte-Affriques. You’ll find them in the costume shop in Floral street.”
Cereste Legrand gathers up his papers and leaves, nodding, to Moira and just clicking his heels in his best Continental manner. In the lift he adjusts his cravat. The doorman opens the door for him with respect. On the pavement outside he encounters a cat, and send it scuttling into an alley with a single glance of his eyes.
*
Cereste (as we may call him, now that he is out of Moira’s presence) was an animal trainer in Belgium before the War. He fell into his gift at an early age. It came from his discovery, which most of us make, that if you stare into the eyes of a dog it will turn away embarrassed. He soon found that he had a special power with animals. When he looked at them in a certain way, instead of turning away in embarrassment they were unable to take their eyes from his; and as he turned his glance from one side to the other, or up and down, the animal was obliged by some inner compulsion to move so that it remained in the narrow beam of his vision. As a child he practiced his trick on cats, dogs, and an occasional cab horse left unattended by its owner, until he had polished it to perfection.
At the age of twenty he joined the circus in which he performed for several years, dressed like an impresario in his cutaway coat, gray trousers, and flat beaver hat. Unlike most animal trainers, he carried nothing in his hands. Solely by concentrating the beam of his vision, he could make animals leap through hoops, jump onto barrels and tables, dangle from trapezes, and stand on each other’s backs, even though they were unhappy doing so and did it unwillingly, an effect that pleased his audiences even more than if they had seemed to be his jo
lly friends and eager to please. Sometimes a big cat would snarl at him, or a lioness bare her teeth, but they could only charge him if he turned his back, which he was careful not to do.
In addition to the usual lions and tigers he trained polar bears, jackals, and other animals not usually found in the circus ring. In his most famous trick, a goat stood on the back of an American bison, a monkey straddled the goat, and a cockatoo sat on the monkey’s head. All these animals leaped to their places without the touch of a human hand, compelled by the rays of Cereste’s eyes. And then sometimes, if he was lucky, the cockatoo cried “Voila!”
This all came to an end with the War. The circus was dispersed, the animals were given to zoos, and Cereste was conscripted into the Belgian army. Almost at the beginning of the War, as the Germans in their spiked helmets crossed the Belgian border, he was captured and spent four years in a prison camp in Wuppertal. As the War was about to end, in the fall of 1918, he escaped with some others and managed to make his way back through the Ardennes forest into Belgium. He came to Brussels just as the Allied troops were taking over the city. There was much confusion. Shops were broken into by mobs. A German soldier was discovered hidden in the cellar of a baker and was killed with butcher knives by angry people. Cereste wandered through the streets. No one paid any attention to him. Strange things were happening in the city; the shops were closed and doors were locked. In a suburban street near the zoo, he came upon a young elephant, then two camels, then a rare white rhinoceros. As it happened, on the pavement was lying a long pole of the kind used by shopkeepers to raise and lower their iron curtains. With this, he shepherded the animals down the street, with furtive glances behind to see if anybody was watching. Lurking in the lanes and under the hedges he found other animals, one by one: a lioness, a water buffalo, a Thompson’s, gazelle, a llama, and a pair of long-haired Tibetan goats. When the lioness attempted to escape, he fixed her in his glance; she stopped as though hypnotized and he invited her to join the others. He was pleased to find that his gift still worked after four years of disuse. He herded the animals along the street through the suburbs and out into the country, where he persuaded a farmer to board them temporarily in his pasture. He had no money and was still dressed in his prisoner-of-war clothes, a striped jacket and pants and a pillbox hat.
The Carp Castle Page 22