The Narrator (25 page)

Silichieh is there at one of the tables, his head on his fist, emptily stirring tea in a tin cup, and Tabliq Quibli is on the floor up against the wall with his head on the insides of his elbows and his forearms on his bent knees. A bandage under his turban. I get some hot water and sit. I’m so dried out I’d upend myself into a rain barrel if there was one handy. Silichieh keeps rubbing his red eyes and I know he feels it too—he’s not smoking. Looking out at an all but undetectably rising and falling shoreline in the dark, the steely phosphorescent blue night, the layered slopes left to right like slabs of silver fat, the dry air stealing in to scrub the corners. The mess is a bladder of orange light in a world of blue and the only place on the ship we didn’t all look like ghosts or statues of blue lead.

I’m trying to collect my thoughts, but I can’t compose my mind at all, my face is smarting and my eyes rasp in their sockets as though they’d rusted there. I turn away from the door for relief, splash water in my hand and squeeze it into my eyes. I feel that unaccountable feverishness again.

Outside, Thrushchurl is pacing the deck. Maybe Jil Punkinflake is with him, I don’t know. Silichieh staggers off to his bunk, looking beaten. Now I follow, not tired, not alert. Lying in my bunk, I can hear flakes of air rattle against each other.

Someone whispers something in my ear and I bolt upright out of sleep. Silichieh is gone. I’m alone. It’s night. The island is still floating outside the door.

I lie back. I sleep.

Someone whispers something in my ear and I start out of sleep. There’s nothing but the wind in the cabin and the island at the door. I lie back and listen. Gradually, I begin to make it out. There is a sound like speech in the wind blowing from the island, a whisper, without words, but with an addressing sound of speech. I imagine the island is haloed with that sound.

I lie back in my bunk again. The sea laps at the hull, the wind grates gently on everything, the island gazes in through the door at me. I dream of the dark water beneath us; I’m a spirit moving effortlessly through the coolness down there, the water moving through me, my calm mind settling as though I were only sinking into a bottomless bed. There is a white mass of paper in a rude body, pulling itself along the bottom with its reedy arms, sliding itself in among the rocks. A sudden impulse makes me want to drag myself down, to stare into its face, because the sight will terrify me and realizing this is like acquiescing to the impulse—I divert myself toward the bottom and watch from behind as the two pale arms float out and it lays its hands on a polished brown brass-framed counter top like a barman. I snort with laughter and wake myself up.

*

We’ll depend on Nardac’s keen eyes to guide us in. She is set out with a couple of sailors in a patched lifeboat, haunched there in the bow, over the water and swinging the boom of her bony arm, in line with her beak, this way and that. There was no keeping her to her bunk, although her wound is still not healing. She seems almost not to notice it, and to be insensible to the pain.

With the coming of the wan morning light, a survey from the mast has disclosed an end to the field of blocks where the land opens up, and that there is a passage through. All hands are on deck watching anxiously; at the rail someone I don’t recognize is impatiently taking it all in. Saskia arrives on the bridge. She puts her hand on Jil Punkinflake’s shoulder as she passes him, no differently than she would have gripped a post standing in the same spot, and he’s just beside himself, his face mingling pink and yellow with pleasure.

We begin to glide tentatively forward; Saskia is unbelievably deft at the helm, but one strong swell could ruin us within sight of the shore. Not all the lifeboats have been patched—some still show daylight through the holes Makemin made. A little after noon, the sun is a snowy coin above us, and with a gasp of relief we drift forward into clear fathoms between the two arms of land. Nardac is reverently lifted from the life boat back to the deck, and, resting her meagre weight in my arms, permits herself to be carried back to her bunk, clucking once or twice to herself in satisfaction. This is as close as I’ve ever been to her, her eyes do sparkle like diamonds, as though a cold fire were caught in them.

Our eyes peeled for more rocks, we are making our way cautiously up a wide estuary. The wind dies away nearly to nothing as the land closes around us, and, in the raw new stillness, the noises of the ship seem excessively conspicuous. Above us, on the port side, are high grey cliffs with black bangs and gaunt, shaggy pines that stand out, dark and insubstantial, against the clouds. The opposite shore is lumpy and sere with blistered yellow-grey stubble, lunging up toward the mountain line. Ahead, the land bells out like a vast low amphitheatre, the river curves away behind slopes and, still far off, in the crook of the river’s sweeping curve, I see an enclosed sprawl of buildings collected there like mine talings. With care, Saskia brings our prow to bear on it.

The water here is as calm as a lake, with an indifferent current. Deep chasms are tearing open and grinding shut again in the clouds above us. We pass a ruin set in among the cliffs, its foundations half submerged; I can’t make out the contour of the building. It seems likely to have been a square tower, with its feet in the water and its head up in the pines. Its exposed grey bricks are insanely uniform in shape and size; a tangle of pipes sprouts from the wall like a trunk of thickened vines, and their ends shiver in the air.

A dream pulling up alongside another dream, each measures the other. The war is up there on the island, where we’re going to meet it, but there’s no war there, nor could there be. War is dreamlike, but war
is
a dream ... Where is the war? In the guns and helmets and uniforms? Is it in the rock from which the ore to make the gun was mined, the grass that fed the sheep whose wool went into the uniform, or the sun that lights the battlefield? Not impossible to escape but it tethers as unsubstantially, as lightly, as a dream, the bonds binding me inside. I go on with it; I’m not bound like a prisoner, but like a sleeper. Two men meet, and one will give his life for the other, or they will each try to kill the other, while the day is still blandly unfolding around them. The violence I’ve already seen has been as random and abrupt as a dream, always ending in death that seems only to become more and more impossible. I always know that I’m no more than one sharp breath from waking. It’s a breath I can never manage.

We’re drawing nearer to the city now. Makemin is peering at it with his goggles and looking glasses, Nikhinoch stands by him with his hands behind his back. Makemin points suddenly at something in the air before us. I can’t see anything but some streaks. As I watch, an uncouthly flapping near-invisibility vaults over and around the ship with a sound like a leather umbrella being shaken out.

“A Predicate,” Silichieh says.

“It’s an ungainly flier,” I say, as it wobbles away from us and back toward the city. So we come to know the city—Vscriathjadze, they’re telling me it’s called—has not fallen into enemy hands, and we may approach without fear of attack.

The steep brae shawls itself around us; the grade is only just recumbent enough to prevent our calling it a cliff, and covered in a blazing new green, right down to the water. There are no waves, and the surface barely heaves against the shore. Mountains with green sides, and Vscriathjadze sits in a narrow groove between them. I’m glad to see mountains again, surprisingly glad.

The harbor is like a huge loophole in the rock; we must pass through a narrow gap like an inverted triangle to enter it. Drawing near, I see the stone is unnaturally smooth, with many small marks of human work there, peering out from fronded mats of fern and quivering vines. On top of the outer enclosure to the harbor perch two towers of heavy gneiss with elongated eaves, and a man emerges from one of these waving small flags. Saskia’s voice resonates from the bridge. Our ships’ huge grasshopper legs slow, nearly stopping, and the stacks begin to vent steam. The man high above us goes away, and presently a small launch chugs out of the gap and pulls up alongside with the pilot. He’s a boxy yellow man in a quilted jacket, who tugs his cap’s visor at us, eyes flitting from face to face in search of the one to whom his deference is chiefly due, and bows a little at the waist. Nikhinoch accompanies him to the bridge, and in time we begin to advance smoothly through the gap. Why didn’t he come out to meet us earlier, when we were threading that maze at the estuary’s mouth?

The harbor is as steep as a chimney, and completely paved. We’re in a vast mortar cone, hundreds of yards across, with straight and switchback stairs cut into the sides. The circle of sky over us is confused by a jumble of crane arms, dangling chains and ropes. The docks radiate from a curved platform against the wall opposite the opening. As we pass through the gap, I look up at a narrow strip of satin blue, and little curds of dense cloud racing across it.

There are many small boats moored to the piers, but only a couple or three of any size, and nothing approaching our ship’s dimensions. The pilot guides us toward an empty dock just off the center. Already a number of people stand there, waiting for us in silence. They do not move, they make no gesture, nor do they speak to or in any way I can see acknowledge us or, for that matter, each other. They are like statues.

The pilot is taking a long time angling the ship in toward the dock. Still, no one moves. The upturned faces blink, but they do not vary their position, they are not passing their eyes over the unfamiliarities of our ship. Only when ropes flop down toward them do a few of them move, without any particular speed, to retrieve and tie them.

Makemin strides up and down the pier giving orders; the locals totter out of his way like mill horses, and meanwhile many of the loonies are capering off the gangplank and scooting up the stairways toward the town permission or no. I’m asking Makemin about Nardac, specifically what I, as
her physician
, should do with her.

“We might leave her in the boat. Do you think she can be moved?”

“She’s not in any danger, but she’d be better looked after on land.”

“Well, fine, fine,” he is looking away, watching as our ship’s laden cranes swing out over the pier. “We’ll make arrangements.”

He wants her out of the way; he seems to want to avoid her now.

“Tell them who we are,” he says.

I climb up the gangplank and address the crowd in Lashlache.

“Aw hawdemin-herleken! Hawr s’dan s’dess! Aw d’hadr s’dess! Aw w’hodet s’hodet hodet woi m’set! M’swedet sherd’dhemeto, m’dqess ...” and so on.

This kind of formal speech in the vocative mode is nothing like the written or formal Lashlache upon which my studies concentrated, but as often happens with this sort of thing, I find my memory serves me better than I would have expected. I enjoy unshackling my voice like this. The people on the pier plainly understand me, although they do not attend to me.

The steps leading up to the city are steep and narrow, slotted into concrete like hardened custard. Ascending one by one, we gather in the open area above the harbor, where there is a profusion of water tanks, coal hoppers, rails set into gravelled scars, scaffolds thickly painted with creosote, barrels, carts, and warehouses with arched mouths standing open. The air here is still. The city doesn’t embrace the upper ring of the harbor, but only touches it, gingerly, at one point, where we are gathered now. The buildings here are tall, lean, and close together. They fill a narrow alley between two steep slopes of coffee-colored rock. The port is at one end of this alley; the city is at the other, where the slopes fall open. Apart from a few paths, there are no buildings or terraces to be seen on the sides of the mountains.

A messenger in Alak uniform has appeared, and Makemin is interrogating him sharply. The messenger dashes off again; Makemin says something to Nikhinoch and begins pacing with signs of disgust and impatience. Nikhinoch presently comes over to me and instructs me to bring up Nardac.

“Well, but how? I can’t carry her up all those stairs.”

He tosses a glance of withering indifference over his shoulder at me, and returns to Makemin.

Jil Punkinflake and I contrive to bind Nardac to a stretcher. We find her in the bow, lying on her back, her head craned round and her glinting eyes peering steadily up toward the island. She lifts herself onto the canvas, and mildly submits to our snugging her in. I’m the stronger, so I take her feet. With some puffing and straining we convey her up the steps, hurrying, lest we be left behind.

We needn’t have bothered. Nothing has changed. Makemin is apparently still waiting for the arrival of the envoy of the local officials, or what have you. I look around in vain for a cart in which to transport my patient until it occurs to me to find Tabliq Quibli. He unerringly locates or emanates carts. I find him already seated on one already, directing the installation of our cargo, and we add Nardac to it. She is still staring at the land.

Fed up with waiting, Makemin orders the columns to take form, and, with some commotion, we enter the streets. The city is grey, damp, and built of strange materials; there are pipes running everywhere, along the streets or up the sides of houses, like clumps of noodles. The main boulevard is a wide slab of silky clay with meagre, chute-like lanes sprouting from its sides, most of them narrow, covered, and as sharply inclined as staircases. Where the slopes draw back, and the city, no longer corseted by mountains, expands to fill the basin beyond, we begin to see side streets that are more proper-looking, but they are still disproportionately small in comparison with the artery we follow now, like a snake with centipede legs. Shallow puddles everywhere reflect the sky, like cold dollops of mirror. A thickened fear, kind of a miasma, is thrown over everything like an oppressively heavy blanket. I feel exposed, although I can’t say to what. I notice the inhabitants now, at their windows, in the doorways and alley thresholds, always half in hiding and I suppose ready to flee, even if it seems as though such exertions would be beyond them. On all faces I see weariness, and velleity; a quiescent mistrust.