The Carp Castle

by MacDonald Harris

  Günther looks on, along with the passengers and the crewmen who haven’t joined in. The discipline of the crew is not his concern. That’s the responsibility of the Captain, who is lying helpless with a broken leg. By this time most of the survivors on the ice have gone to the crates and taken arctic clothing for themselves: gloves, boots, and stout Eskimo gear of sealskin. Günther himself is wearing a long parka that comes to his knees but still has on his Zeppelin officer’s cap. The Frieze and the Vestals look on for a while, then they bashfully go and help themselves to costumes from the crates. The crewmen pass them bottles and they accept them with the smiles of naughty children. Soon they are drinking too. A steward has produced a concertina, his own possession salvaged from the wreckage, and soon the air rings with Hungarian czardas and excerpts from Carmen. Some Greek shepherds and Folies-Bergères dancers grow tired and fall asleep on the crates. The evening is drawing on but it is still light; the arctic sun will be their companion all night.

  Suddenly the Vestals and the Frieze seem to remember Moira. In their bizarre costumes, tipsy with French cognac, they look to the west where she disappeared. There is no more trace of her than there is of any other apotheosized hero who has ascended into the heavens. They cannot believe that anything can happen to Moira that Moira has not planned.

  The Captain lies on the ice attached to his broken leg, which throbs rhythmically but is not entirely unpleasant. The laudanum given him by the little Engländerin has a remarkable effect; it soothes, brightens, and produces an effect of Elysian warmth. It surprises him to find that there are vices in the world that he hasn’t even tried yet, and at his age. It makes the future seem a little less bleak. Things have turned out not quite so badly as he expected. This is the advantage of being a pessimist; things never do. Rossi is dead; when the aluminum rudder-wheel shattered, a spoke penetrated his eye and drove through to the bottom of his brain. Oddly enough, he was able to scream for a few seconds under these conditions. As for the others, only those in the broken-off rear section were lost: Moira and her three companions and the two mechanics in the gondolas. Everybody else is unscathed except for a few bruises and scratches. In its saturnalian way, the salvage operation is proceeding according to the rules. Food, clothing, and fuel are piled on the ice, and the radioman dressed as a Roman senator and a rigger in a hula skirt are carrying the radio out of the wreckage and stringing up an antenna on two poles. The Captain can’t take any credit for this, still he carried out his command satisfactorily considering the circumstances and he is ready to face his judges in heaven or on earth. He attempts, with partial success, to forget about Moira entirely; that was a damn fool thing to allow in his mind anyhow.

  The little Engländerin has piled coats on him before she left, and he is quite warm. She even folded a sweater under his head for a makeshift pillow. His cap is God knows where; it flew off when the airship struck the ice. Lifting his head, he hopes to catch sight of Erwin. In the first shock of his injury he had imagined Erwin succoring and consoling him, kneeling by his side and holding his hand, touching a cup to his lips like Ganymede. No such luck. Erwin is in the mass of celebrants around the wine crates, wearing pink woman’s underwear over his clothing and embracing another sailor. Over the distance that separates them, their eyes meet for a fleeting second. Erwin’s face wears a Breughel peasant’s smile, magnified by irony. He holds up his hand as if to show he is still wearing the Captain’s aluminum ring.

  And there is Günther, wearing a long sealskin coat and his Zeppelin cap, not participating in the foolishness but gazing on it with contempt as a demonstration of the general corruption of the times. He is a witness of the decadence of Europe, its sad decline into mongrelism and democracy, and the harbinger of its revival under the strong hand of Teutonic leadership. The Captain thinks how little future there is for Erwin, or for himself, in the times that lie ahead. Erwin is sure to become an air officer and be killed in the immense Wagnerian cataclysm that Günther is so eager to stir up, along with other Germans like him and their counterparts in every country of Europe. Even in Liechtenstein and in Andorra there are little Günthers, frustrated artists all of them, who bear in their breasts the clarion-call of purity, virtue, and nationalism. Güntherism will spread like a disease, like a tropical malady, like the Black Death that swept over Europe in the Middle Ages, until it penetrates every soul, except those of the wretched outcasts who are driven from their countries or are forced into inner exile in their own lands. Those who look different. Those whose noses are not quite the right shape, whose skin isn’t pink enough, whose names have too many consonants, or who talk in a funny way. Mobs in the streets will stone and beat the outcasts. There will be yells and the rattle of weapons, new blazons and badges. The shadow of the primitive will descend again over Europe. It is not Nietzsche but Spengler who is right. There is no evolution, no ascent to the Superman; it all moves in a great circle like the sun arching its way around the earth. After day comes night. The civilized man born of Athenian democracy, refined and uplifted by the Renaissance, sinks from enlightenment and reverts again to the primitive, swelling with pride over the hut of sticks made by his own tribe, over the sounds that they and only they make by knocking together gourds, over the slaughter they inflict on the tribe over the next hill; they erect three bean poles into an arch and march proudly through it.

  Yet, he reflects, looking upward into his own eyelids rather than at the mob of yelling and clacking revelers, Günther is not excluded from humanity. He is only too intimately a part of it. Born of a mother who held him tenderly to her breast, afraid in the War but not showing it, longing for companionship and the touch of a loving hand, a man who has bad dreams and a fear of death, he is no different from the Captain himself. He imagines himself as others see him: a stiff Prussian with a penchant for boys. And his companions in this insane arctic farce. The skinny would-be Goddess with green eyes, lifting her arms to prophesy gardens in the ice. The old lady who tried to scare people with the bump on her head. The broken-down circus master in his morning coat. The bat-faced brown girl with her golden trinkets. The grim nurse with freckles, the moon-pitted metaphysician. He remembers Thistlethwaite, a Mr. Pickwick out of Dickens descending from his balloon in East Prussia, and the sinister Albertino, a figure from a film noir, who in a Berlin dive suggested that he suck off an old man. It all comes to this: the ludicrous, simple, and doll-like way that people seem from the outside, and the seriousness and pathos with which they see themselves from the inside; the piercing phenomenon of consciousness; the illumination of the ego, the sense of the cosmic importance of self. Each man is a god imprisoned in a clown. Now and then one of greater courage than the others struggles to transcend the flesh, to emerge full blown in divine nakedness, to speak the truth of the inner soul. So was Moira, who sought to free others too from their shabby earthly raiment. So might anybody be, so might he be, Georg von Plautus, if he succeeded in the excruciating effort of freeing himself from his dying corpse.

  *

  Stealing away from the midnight sun, Romer and Eliza creep into the control car lying crushed under the wreckage. He is in Eskimo garb with a sealskin hood, and she is wearing a fur coat and a Russian fur hat. In the crates of supplies intended for Gioconda they have found what they need and nobody else does in this land where the sun never sets: a flashlight. (Or, as Eliza calls it, an electric torch, a term that seems romantic to Romer). They clamber in through a broken window. It’s not easy forcing their way into this tangle of white metal. Shattered glass and electrical cables bar their way. He goes ahead with the flashlight, pulling her after him. The control car has been crushed to half its former height so that they have to bend over to make their way through it. The flashlight beam wanders over the radio hutch, the chart table, and the crumpled ceiling with engine telegraphs dangling from it. A little farther on the corpse of the rudderman Rossi lies under a canvas. The pool of blood seeping from his head has crinkled and turned black. The beam of light stops for a moment
on his shoes protruding from the other end of the canvas.

  Turning away from this emblem of mortality, they search until they find the ruins of the ladder leading upward to the inside of the dirigible. It hangs swinging by one limb and the climb is precarious. But there is no thought of turning back now that they have come so far. Above in the crew’s quarters they find nothing but a jungle of white metal. There are no more floors and no handholds. It is totally dark. Following the flashlight beam, they pick their way through the wreckage.

  After they have climbed for a while they believe they have arrived in the passenger’s quarters. There is a warped and tilted cavern that was once the lounge, with the chairs all piled at one end. Beyond is a twisted corridor that disappears into the darkness. Romer balances the flashlight with one hand and feels his way with the other. In the dark his hand passes over doors. After a few yards he stops.

  “This is it.”

  “Your cabin?”

  “No, yours.”

  The floor of the corridor is tilted and the door of the cabin is jammed shut. They push at it but they can’t budge it.

  “Let’s find yours.”

  “I’ve forgotten where it is. This way, maybe.”

  Following the beam of light they turn a corner, then another, and find themselves in a parallel corridor on the other side of the airship. Romer goes straight to his door and pulls her in after him. The cabin is relatively undamaged, except that the wall has split from the impact of the ice, leaving a long fissure through which a mother-of-pearl light penetrates. He switches off the flashlight, which is no longer necessary, and sets it on the dressing table. It promptly rolls off onto the floor.

  They embrace. Through their northern garb they can scarcely feel each other; Eliza has the sensation that she is hugging a bear which has eaten Romer and has him inside. They begin taking off their clothes. It is cruelly cold.

  “Just a minute.”

  She puts her fur coat back on, and he goes out to the other cabins and comes back laden with blankets. They are white wool blankets with a blue stripe and the emblem of the Zeppelin company at the end. They pile them on the lower berth, his. The upper belongs to John Basil Prell, who has left a hernia truss and a vial of liver pills behind him. The blankets make a large mound, as smooth and rounded as snow.

  “Our igloo.”

  Their breaths hang from their mouths like steamy beards. They take off their clothes and hurry in under the blankets, first she, then he. Eliza catches a glimpse of the arching organ between his lean and gaunt hips. Remembering Moira’s explanation of the difference between the sexes, she visualizes in her mind’s eye the hollow inside her exactly the same shape. The two quickly slip into their fit, a marvel of design which could only have come from the hand of a benevolent, ingenious, and sly Creator. The hair on Romer’s chest prickles at her nipples, making them press back.

  “Oh, Romer.”

  “Please don’t talk.”

  “But Romer.”

  He silences her by pressing his lips on hers. For a long time they are locked together like those two halves of Plato’s perfect creature; was it Moira who told her about that or Romer? Their limbs slither warmly and a hum like distant angels begins; it turns to a rhythmic buzz which grows louder and louder until finally a flood of warm honey and perfume gushes inside her, sending trills to her fingertips. This is only the third time this has happened to Eliza, but it is by far the best, in spite of the cold and the narrow berth.

  He removes his lips from hers.

  “Now you can talk.”

  “Oh, Romer.”

  “After waiting for so long, you might think of something more intelligent to say.”

  “Romer.”

  “It is a beautiful name. I’ve always liked it.”

  Romer’s half of the phallic fit-together puzzle is gradually growing smaller, but it still feels good. It creeps through her as though it is trying to winkle its way out. Finally it succeeds. She sighs.

  “Romer. If we should have children—”

  “What?”

  “What would we name them?”

  “That’s a pointless question. A hypothetical question. We don’t have children, and there are no children in the Guild.”

  “But there will be in Gioconda.”

  “We’re not going to Gioconda.”

  She has almost forgotten that. “Then it doesn’t exist?”

  He rolls away from her and props himself on his elbow under the blankets. She knows he is about to commence a lecture; he always draws away from her first in order to convert her into an audience.

  “Gioconda exists. Moira knew. She told us of this in the séance. She had been to Gioconda. But they were afraid she would find it and show they were wrong. The professors and scientists. They want us to believe the old maps found in books. They want us to believe in old imperfect man, wallowing in his ignorance and suffering, unable to recognize the divine in himself, blind to his destiny as a creature who is to surpass himself, a creature born to peace and love, not to violence and death.”

  “Romer. I’m trying to tell you something.”

  “I’m trying to tell you something. About Gioconda. Don’t you see, if the dirigible had been allowed to go on for just another few hours, then the world would have known once and for all whether her Vision was true. If she were wrong, then the scoffers would have their way. But they were afraid! They were afraid because they knew she was right! Gioconda exists! It is there! But now nobody will ever find it, because her Vision is destroyed.” He seems heated and emphatic; his eyes burn in the gloom.

  “Romer. Do you remember in Mainz, when we were walking in the rain, I told you I had a headache and something was coming on?”

  He hardly pays attention. “Vaguely.”

  “Well, it didn’t happen.”

  “I’m glad. Maybe you don’t have headaches now because you’re in love. L’amour médecin.”

  “Romer, how can you be so dense?”

  “Dense?”

  “I thought something was going to happen in Mainz. And I thought again it was going to happen in London. But it never did.”

  He stares at her. Because he is propped on his elbow, the icy air is coming in under the blankets, and they are going to have to put their clothes on again quickly. She waits to see what he will say.

  “How could you let that happen, you silly fool?”

  “Don’t you see, it was Moira.”

  “Don’t blame it on her!

  Eliza feels as though she’s being accused of a crime. “We joined the Guild by accident. But it was Moira who made us come together. She wanted us to fall in love, but not to have a child before we arrived in Gioconda. That’s why she put all those obstacles in our path. Putting us in hotel rooms with impossible roommates. Separating us while you went to Nuremberg and I went to Geneva. Aunt Madge Foxthorn always pointing her egg at us. But after Mainz, she knew that Gioconda was near and—she let us do it.”

  He thinks. He seems to draw distant from her; his narrow face becomes wary. “Perhaps she wanted us to have a baby. But that doesn’t excuse you. You could have-”

  “What?”

  “How do I know?” he bursts out in exasperation. “Women take care of those things. It’s up to them not to make mistakes.”

  “Men have things they can put on.”

  “It doesn’t appeal to me. It’s like taking a bath with your socks on.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk about these things so crudely.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t be so prissy.”

  “First you get a girl in trouble, then you insult her.”

  “So it’s all my fault!”

  “According to you, it’s all my fault!”

  “Well, you’re the one that’s making the baby. I may be the proximate cause, in the distinction made by Aristotle and refined by Spinoza, but you’re the efficient cause.”

  “Oh, that’s all only in books!”

  “If you want to find out
about the theory of causation, you have to go to the experts.”

  “That’s you, I suppose.”

  “No, it’s Aristotle, Descartes, and Spinoza.”

  “Oh, I get so tired of your always being right. Just because you wrote a book about angels.”

  “It was considered a brilliant thesis.”

  “You’re a consummate egoist!”

  “And you’re an impossible person!”

  So they both have said it. She hates him. His fox-like face bears an expression of righteous justice. They are silent while the cold air coils about their shoulders and creeps down under the blankets. She feels tears welling into her eyes. If only she could stop them from coming! The last thing she wants is to show him that she feels something.

  He looks at her tears in the typical inept way of men, as though it were a problem in plumbing that he is baffled how to fix. His own face is working as though he is feeling something or other, but he is not going to reveal what it is. Then his hand comes out as though he is going to hit her, and instead slowly touches her shoulder.

  “Oh, Romer!”

  They fall into each other’s arms and clutch desperately, pressing the flesh to squeeze out its mortal poisons. Her tears spread to his face and wet it too. A great wave of tenderness washes away their suffering and suspicion, their meanness and petty spite, and unites them in a bond of bliss so glowing that they are no longer conscious of their egos and their selfish identities, only of an imperishable We. The red sun, creeping around the horizon, peers through a crack in the dirigible, and a pink warmth floods the cabin. This is Gioconda. Fountains plash, birds warble, flowers prickle from their buds. The woman in the picture smiles. In the land of the soul, the world is a heart.