The Bookman's Tale (5 page)

And not the first time he had asked the question. Showing a young real estate agent about the house when he was considering whether or not to list it, move to smaller quarters. A slim bareheaded girl dressed in a two-piece something that he thought showed a nice awareness of what was fitting for both office desk and living room, pad and pencil in and out of a shoulder bag for notes on this and that, opening closets, looking in and about, in no hurry—starting the dish washer, listening to the air conditioner, lighting the oven, lighting all burners on top of the stove. “Two bathrooms?” flushing both toilets. “Built-in shower? Yes,” opening the glass door that had often closed on Mary and him in the laughing days; wanting to see the attic and climbing the steep stairs indifferent to much tan stockings and garter clips showing, but no more than he was. And indifferent beside her as she felt the mattress of the double bed, not wondering how she would be with her hair spread out on the pillow and her shoes kicked off but how soon he could wind up her visit and get rid of her; not wondering if he would ask her out to dinner to finish up their questions and answers, just wondering how soon she would go.—What was the matter with him?

It was as if the accident had been a lightning flash that left him in a dark house pushing dead switches, stumbling about for candles; and settling after a time for quiet old lamps with wicks and kerosene and before long telling himself the softer light and shadows were rather pleasing; or as if he had moved into a cabin in the woods with everything at hand but electricity, quiet forest voices he had forgotten, deep many-leveled silences. Call in an electrician? Why? He could see things that were obscured before.

And yet: “Testosterone,” white jacket, eyes drawing a bead on him over half-glasses, as sure-footed as a service man reaching up to close the master panel of circuit breakers. “Very simple. Ten minutes. Stop in once a week, any of the nurses can handle it if I am tied up. A simple shot in the hip.” “Every week!” “Or you might consider the longer-lasting procedure. An analeptic injection of slow-release tablets into the lower abdomen. No pain, no discomfort. I have patients who come in twice a year.…” (like lighting your house from a tank of propane gas in the yard that you refilled from time to time).

No thank you. Eyes getting used to the dark; that was really more of a light-change than a dimness, revealing as much as it obscured, revealing meadow land and easy-winding roads in place of switchbacks skirting mountain canyons, deadly drop-offs. Revealed his need for today's Claudia—or the Claudia she might be if she was as glad to leave the area of zig-zag emotions as he was—

Revealing the young woman's gawky flat-foot woman-trot as she hurried across the parking area, reminding him of the agent as she finally trotted off to her car, the same age and shape (“One in girth, in coif, in cadence, Lithe and blithe of limb and look,” sisters in his newfound liberation); and this one thankfully soon to drop him off at the steps of his hotel with, no doubt, a gay flutter of young wrist like a rising pigeon.

“Sorry you had to wait,—Mr. Edward Ray of the
Sunwise Press
,” folding herself under the wheel as neatly as running a comb through her hair, using his name as if she enjoyed shining a light on him from her obscurity, he mumbling something about not being in a hurry, plenty of things to worry about if you were in his business, and she starting the motor with the offhandedness of a mother scooping up a child. “Poor Peter. They keep him on the run. Continental Drug. Medical supplies among the islands.” Waiting at a light she said, “Can I take you somewhere? Are you familiar with our Island?”

He said he was familiar with the bus service, which made her laugh as she had laughed at “
Helen
,” a short surprised laugh that flicked a color on and off her jawbone. She said, “Yes,” and after a pause, “You shouldn't have taken the bus.”

“I see that now.”

“They're touchy. We're all touchy. Touchy as half-brothers and-sisters, Jerry says. Stepparents all divorced or dead or both. He says something's burning but we don't know where.…” breaking off as the light went green. He almost said, “‘Jerry?'” not because he cared but as you let the young talk about what interests them or there won't be any talk, and no matter anyhow; two or three more lights and she would have “vroomed” away.

The thought bringing back a childish instant in a swimming pool foreseeing the withdrawal of a hand from under his chin; could he stay afloat through a solitary afternoon and evening in a strange island he had no interest in until a distant “lunchtime tomorrow”? But if, instead of merely thanking her at the hotel steps, he asked her in for a drink he could certainly expect a transparent excuse coated with a film of youth-to-age; and if she came in, sat a while on the broad porch, the result would be worse, so far apart in years their voices would hardly carry, assuredly wouldn't carry the overtones they started with, references, opinions, standards, beliefs all lost in the valleys. Contemporary with the two young women on the ship but different in a way as hard to define as the differences, for Western eyes, in the faces of Orientals; all three with layers of individuality like undercurrents in a stream but a suggestion in this one of levels, or just a level, under the others, the stream not quite so clear, maybe no deeper but the depth obscured, indeterminate. For him. Hazy as a page of manuscript without his glasses—that really did't appeal to him enough to make him put them on.

He said, “How do you like living on an island?” (just to bring up something to interest her—a little sorry that it came out suggesting a ball tossed underhand for a child to catch).

She skipped answering in a way she seemed to have of going on as if she
had
answered. “Jerry once sent us out to cover one of their get-togethers in the back country. ‘Cain and Abel,' it seemed to me. No words I understood, but I could follow. No pictures though. They took the camera. Gave it back.”

He said, “Cain and Abel?” watching for the white front of the
Princess Ann
.

“Gran Met, they say, is the Creator of heaven and earth but the Almighty Master created the Universe. He's too busy to bother with daily problems down here, has delegated spirits to help him—Loa. They say a man searching for a lost horse saw a flash of light in a palm grove and looking up saw a Loa nestled in the palms pointing into the woods. He crossed himself and called to her to thank her and she flew away in the shape of a pigeon—Here we are.”

“Will you come in?” still expecting an excuse—and rather hoping—the invitation escaping like the Loa, she accepting without a word in a movement of locking the ignition and opening her door.

She might have been the one to invite him, more at home in the hotel than he was, speaking to ‘Thomas” who took their order and brought it out to porch chairs with wide flat arms like schoolroom chairs but cushioned and with slanted backs suggestive of heat and loose clothes and easy-does-it. She waved at a crooked little sign across the street (that he was glad to realize he could read at this distance): “‘
22 Taxis Facing West
.' Usually two, sometimes one,” pausing for a moment then going on with what he came to think was really on her mind. “Peter wanted to drop you off on the way in and save you a wait at the airport. I said, No. But you'd never guess why.”

He said he hadn't minded waiting.

“You wouldn't guess I was a writer, would you?”

He was mean enough to say it was never safe to assume a lady wasn't, laughing a little not to hurt her feelings but seeing ahead of him the probability of having to read something and contrive a kindly negative; he had faced other over-the-transoms but none that landed more unexpectedly than the one he could foresee.

She had written some poetry that “Jerry” had printed in the
Islander
when she was on the paper. “Second grade, I'm sure. Or third. Anyway, no pay. Somebody said only a blockhead would write without pay, but I think only a blockhead would say such a thing.” He mumbled something about “Dr. Johnson,” but it didn't divert her. She said she had a half-done novel that was better than the poetry. “Maybe no good, but—yes, good,” he trying to arrange an escape by saying his company didn't publish fiction, and much relieved at the reappearance of their waiter and her making an expert leap to, “Thomas, is Mr. Hugh Jim here today?”

Thomas, wary as his Georgia cousins, said he couldn't say about that, and she, understanding the idiom as well as Ray did, said to tell him she would like to speak to him, turning then to Ray and saying perhaps he would like to see something of the back country. “Maybe worth the trip, maybe not. Rites? Rituals? Maybe nothing. You never know. Or is your evening spoken for?” Confronting him with an immediate decision: off with this subtly foreign, pushy young woman to tourist “sights” he was too old to have room for, or off to bed with a paperback under a slow-turning ceiling fan possibly not turning at all after a ten-o'clock curfew.

“‘Adam and Eve,' once, somebody told us. Not Christians, where did they get it? And maybe it wasn't ‘Adam and Eve' at all.… Hugh Jim,” to a tall black man in a chef's pleated toque that made him seem all but majestic, “Mr. Ray is a distinguished visitor to San Juan de Pinos. He would like to see something of the real island, the mountains, the Cockpit country, the people—the sort of thing you once arranged for Mr. Jerry on the paper; remember?” Hugh Jim gazing down slantways as if at something between him and the broad cypress planks of the floor. When he said nothing she said, “Remember?” again and he waited a minute as if for a sauce to settle then shook his head. “Not the right season, madam.”

Surprised, she asked, Why not? and he said, “Christmas-time, madam. Old year dying, new year borning—”

“Yes, but—”

“New day borning—”

“Well, all right, but—”

“Not a time for visitors,” moving from one glistening shoe to the other, obviously anxious to be gone.

She persisted with, “You could arrange it, Hugh Jim,” giving Ray the idea she wanted to go for reasons of her own, probably for filling out something in her book (already a member of the ruthless-author clan).

“On duty tonight, madam,” finality in the shake of the white cap, she dismissing him with a petulant wave then calling him back and handing him ten dollars with, “Christmas gift, Hugh Jim.”

Taking him back for an instant—street lights coming on—to the Christmas lanterns strung about the deck of the anchored ship and Sarah-Wesley talking to the mate, talking down a little, eyes on the others dancing to the phonograph. “Take a drink, Mr. First Mate. You're not having any fun,” the mate smiling at his cup of punch, taking an obedient sip and as the music ended going to the turntable and changing the record, she beside him, shoulders rocking on the memory of the old tune and, as the new one started, opening her arms to be danced with—

Janet saying, “Never mind, there are other ways,” in much the manner of Sarah-Wesley concerned that the mate was “not having any fun,” standing up with, “I'll ask Jerry,” and leaving Ray to phone him from the lobby—leaving him dancing with Cousin Becky but thinking of the other two, Sarah-Wesley feather-light on her debutante feet, the mate's big shoes threatening a collision at each step and she by some laser-beam signal to her toes moving them in the nick of time, the mate not able to see it but conscious of it and smiling at her spread of white teeth. Bits of their talk drifting to him laced into the music: “You really think I'm lightheaded, don't you?” “Lightheaded? What is lightheaded? I think you are beautiful-headed.” A turn of the record, two or three turns, then, “Well, you know you're rather handsome yourself, Mr. Mate.”

And little laughs back and forth, the music ending and the mate changing the record and filling two cups from the bowl, she dancing by herself while she waited, lifting a cup from him as she passed then holding out her arms, teasing him with, “They must teach dancing at your Navigation School.”

“No time for dancing.”

“But you are a beautiful dancer,” pushing back at his shoulder when he held her closer, lowering her eyes, offended but forgiving, falling back on some country-club chatter (“How often do you make this trip, Mr. Wagman?”— “Mr. Wagman” itself a slight push at his shoulder—and, “I suppose you are never seasick, Mr. Mate?”), which he ignored: “Would you like to see my School? I have pictures.” “Oh, yes I would.” “Come, I'll show you.” “My cousin would like to see them too. Becky!” But Becky was listening to the Doctor. “Wait a minute for Becky.” “You change your mind, you do not want to see them.” “Oh, but I do—”

“He's not in the office. But he's expected. I'll go talk to him, it isn't far. Thomas, bring Mr. Ray something to wait with. Ten minutes, Edward, no more. Maybe twelve.” And off down the steps at a sure-footed run that brought back the sure-footed real estate woman, the two of them merging for an instant, both young, both persistent with purposes involving him—list a house, read a manuscript (not quite proposed yet but casting its shadow)—and he with an instinctive negative for each; that in the case of this one grew weaker as he waited: suppose her book was built somehow on “Gran Met” and “Almighty Master” and “Loas”, as her interest in all that suggested, wasn't that reaching into the same metaphysical area as the Press's best seller of a few years ago? If she had told it simply, with enough first-hand freshness, mightn't it be edited into another
Beyond the Grave?
(Fiction, she called it, but there was usually less fiction in fiction than the author believed.)

“Beyond the Grave” taking him back to the ship and the funeral service for the Captain's aunt, the Captain reading through his wire-rimmed spectacles at the leeward end of the bridge, his passengers at the rail below, the thin pages of the Prayer Book fluttering in the light wind like captured birds: “
Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our sister departed
,” through his bull-horn, the ship hardly making steerageway, the sky hardly light enough to let him read but getting brighter every second as the sun pushed up, all of them at a seemly remove from the mate with the urn containing the ashes—inviting them all at dinner to the sunrise service, explaining that the old lady had asked to be buried at sea with her forebears but the authorities would not release the body except in the form of ashes after cremation. “
And we commit her body to the deep
,” signaling and pausing while the mate dipped into the urn with a wooden spoon from the galley and cast a spoonful of ashes south and west. “
In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection
” (signaling again) “
unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ
,” signaling again, and the mate casting another spoonful.