Blue Voyage: A Novel (20 page)

“That’s right … I’ve missed plenty of trains, but never a——”

“
—perpendicular
——’

“—sick to death of them. Sixteen days on that damned tanker, and now
this
bloody thing——”

“—asleep. Are ye asleep, Paddy? Rocked in the bosom of the deep, deep, deep——”

“Ha ha ha.”

“Half seas over. He’ll
drink
his way to Ireland. It’ll be a dry country by the time he gets there.
Oh Paddy dear and did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round
—Who’s got anything better than a full house? Oh! S
HAN
dygaff
.”

“—told me about one trip he had, from Tampico to New Orleans, with some Mexican passengers. Indians, you know, those half-breeds. They had a
hell
of a time. Every time he turned his back, those damned Indians would light a fire on the decks! They’re always making little fires, you know,—just for company, and to warm up a few old coffee grounds in a can. Well, on a tanker full of oil! Gee whiz, man! she’d go up so quick you’d never know what happened. All night they had to watch them——”

“—is that so——”

“—is that so——”

“Aztecs, I suppose those were. Those Aztecs were a wonderful people. Wonderful builders—all just as straight as a die, and according to the points of the compass, and carvings all over everything. They had a high state of civilization.”

“That’s all right, but they were heathen just the same. They sacrificed human beings to the sun.”

“They thought Cortez was a reincarnated sun-god. That’s how he got control over them with so small an army. Damned dirty shame, too. Still, the world has to be civilized.”

“
Why
has it?… I don’t believe we’re a bit better than our so-called heathen ancestors.”

“Ah-h-h-h what you talkin’ about!”

“Well, look at Ireland, your own country, full of murders and burnings and treason and God knows what; and look at the Balkans; and look at the way we shoot down strikers, or burn niggers, or the whole bloody world going to war for nothing at all and all lying about it, every man jack of them, pretending there’s something holy about it! Look at the way in England, when they launch a battleship, they have a red-faced Bishop there, or an Archbishop, to
consecrate
the bloody ship in the name of God for murder!
Civilized!
You make me sick. The world hasn’t changed a hair for four thousand years.”

“That’s right, too!”

“Hear hear!”

“That’s all very easy to say, but just the same there is some progress. Look at the toothbrush——”

“Ha ha—make the world safe for toothbrushes!”

“Porter! Bring me the car toothbrush please!”

“Yes sir, and when she come back there was a foot sticking out of every berth——”

“Ante, mister.”

“—and when she whispered
‘Sweetheart!’
forty men answered with one voice.
‘Come
in, darling!
here’s
your icky fing!’”

“Ha ha—that’s a good old-timer.”

“
I—can sing—truly rural
——”

“Then I was sent out scouting with a Dodge two-seater and a pocket full of cigars—throwing the bull, you know, you have to do it. Finding out what the other companies were up to. A sort of commercial spy, that’s really what it is. I didn’t know a thing about it, but I knew enough to bluff, and before they found me out I knew the game. Gee whiz, I had a stroke of luck once! I was up looking over some old wells—gone dry. They didn’t say anything about it, but the first thing I noticed, right beside one of these wells, was a couple of dead birds—sparrows or something. Gas! That’s what it was. Well, I kept mum, and drove over to a rival company about two miles off, pretending just to drop in for a friendly chat. The first thing I knew, I heard a chap complaining about a gas well on their place—‘It’s a funny thing,’ he said, ‘the way the pressure’s dropped on that well.’ That gave me an idea! I looked up the geological layout—and sure enough, their gas was leaking through our old
oil
well. And before they knew it, we had it tapped. A stroke of luck, that was! It gave me a lot of pull with the company.”

“That was pretty good! There’s luck in everything——”

“It’s an awful thing to say; and I’m not insultin’ anyone that’s present here; but what I’m tellin’ you is facts and
figures …
There was three Italians come to New York; and they didn’t speak no English. They went to stay at a boardin’-house—I think it was kept by a Mrs. McCarty. The first night they was there, they woke up hearin’ a great noise in the room beneath, and they was scared … So one of them went to a little knothole there was in the floor, and listened. Now there was three Irishmen playin’ cards in the room beneath, but the Italian couldn’t see nothin’, and all he heard was a voice sayin’——”

“Major Kendall! Major Kendall! Is Major Kendall here?”

“Outside! Outside!”

“Two Scotch? Yes, sir.”

“And a splash.”

“Well, they was so scared they took their bundles and run out of the house; and after a while they come to the Harlem bridge; and when they was halfway across the bridge they come to a dead man lyin’ on his back in the middle of the sidewalk with his throat cut and a knife in his hand——”

“I’ll bet you’ve got an ace. Want to bet?”

“—kiddin’——”

“—and while they was standin’ there lookin’ at the corpse a policeman came up to them—
say! listen
to this! Are you listenin’?”

“Sure we’re listening.”

“—and says to them, ‘Who done this?’ ‘I
drew!’
says the first one, ‘I
cut!’
says the second one, ‘I
had a hand,’
says the third: so he pinched all the three of them.”

“Ha ha! Some story! Good boy, Paddy!”

“—at the Orpheum, in Boston, two weeks ago, dressed as a woman, with a great big brass padlock hanging down behind, and biting a little Japanese fan—saying he’d been followed right to the stage door by two sailors and a fireman——”

“Have you a little fairy in your home? Well, we had, but he joined the navy!”

“—and this guy went into a saloon in Chicago, leading a tiger on a leash! A big rattlesnake put his head out of his breast pocket, and he slapped it in again. When the tiger wouldn’t lie down, he kicked it on the snout. ‘Say!’ says the bartender. ‘The town you come from must be pretty tough!’ …
‘Tough
! You said a mouthful, bo. That town’s so tough it kicked us fairies out.’”

“Ha ha ha … You know that one about the lonely fairy in Burlington, Vermont, and the alarm clock?… smothered it with kisses! I like that story.”

(“
My throte is cut unto the nekke bone,
”

Seyde this child; “and, as by way of kinde,

I sholde have deyed, ye, longe tyme agoon
…” …

Of course it was deliberate. That cold blue light in her eye. She bore down on me like a frigate. Frigga, the goddess of fertility. Perhaps she and Cynthia had disagreed about it—and this was her way of forcing a crisis? She guesses that now I won’t be inclined to approach Cynthia? Damned clever!
Damned
clever. I take off my hat to her. It was done so beautifully, too—like an aseptic operation—no feelings, no display, no waste of effort; a miracle of economy. The first time, I thought—actually!—that it might have been a mistake! I had made ready to bow to her—and I was so pleased, too, to be discovered walking there, in broad daylight, like one who “belongs,” on the first cabin deck with Purington—so anxious, also, that I might be seen by Cynthia! I was positively wagging my tail, as I drew nearer—discreetly, of course, and to myself; the bow I had prepared was to be a very refined and quiet one. Alas! it will never be seen, that clearly preconceived bow on the deck of the
Nordic,
on the port side, at eleven o’clock in the morning, at latitude such-and-such and longitude so-and-so, with the sun
x
degrees above the horizon in a fleece of cirro-cumulus, and one sea gull perched on the foremast like a gilded finial! And now the question is—will Cynthia be told of that encounter? That depends on whether she is already a party to the plan. About even chances … No—more than that … After all, there was the copy of
Galatea
I sent her, and the two silly letters, which she never acknowledged or answered. She must, therefore, have been annoyed. In the circumstances, after so brief and casual and superficial and
unguaranteed
an acquaintance, I had no right to send them. Of course, I knew that. Just the same, if she had been as mature, as broad-minded, as
fine
as I thought——)

“No, you see, I miss boat in New York—got to take dis one, sure. I lose one week. Torino. I go Torino. How I go? Liverpool to Lond’ is four hour,’ tha’s fi’ dollar? Lond’ to Dover is t’ree hour?… Naw, I don’ care, I got plenty time, sure … Torino, I go Torino firs’. My fader liver in Ancona, ol’ man, live alone. My moder, she die six, seven year ago. Look—she give me——”

“—pretty risky, yes. I saw a man killed on a derrick once. He was climbing up near the top, when he slipped. His shoes were worn down, and the broken sole of one of them—anyway, that’s what we thought—caught on a girder … Another time I saw an oil derrick start to fall—eighty feet high—with two men on it, right at the top. They felt it beginning to go—and by gosh they
jumped
—first one and then the other,—eighty feet down to the slush vat—only a little thing ten feet square, you know—and both of them hit it, neither of them hurt! Gosh! The rest of us felt pretty sick. About five minutes after it, I began to shake so bad I had to sit down on a barrel. A thing like that makes you think …”

Lights of Library and Port Deck. Lights of Bar and Starboard Deck. Single Stroke. Trembling
.

Sound Signals for Fog and So Forth
.

In fog, mist, falling snow, or heavy rainstorms, whether by day or night, signals shall be given as follows
:

A steam vessel under way, except when towing other vessels or being towed, shall sound at intervals of not more than one minute, on the whistle or siren, a prolonged blast
.

“Well, Mr. Demarest, why so sad?”

“Sad, do I look sad?”

“You look as if you’d lost your last friend!”

“So I have—I’ve been crossed in love.”

“No. You don’t say so. You’re old enough to know better. Were you on your way to the Library? Do you mind if I join you till dinnertime?”

“I should be delighted. I’ve been trying to read psychology in the smoking room. But the combination of disappointment in love with the noise there—was too much for me.”

“Noise! My dear Mr. Demarest, you ought to be grateful. Up where I come from, if anyone is so careless as to drop a teaspoon, everybody else is upset for the rest of the day. I feel like screaming … What’s the psychology?”

“Well, I’m a little hazy about it. Did you ever hear of the Bororos?”

“Bororos? Any relation to the Toreadors?”

“No—I believe they’re a totemistic tribe in South America or Australia or is it Madagascar. Anyway, I know this much about them: their totem is a red caterpillar called the Arara. And they believe themselves to
be
red Araras. Van den Stein—of course you’ve heard of him—asked them if they meant that after death they would
become
Araras? But they were shocked and offended and replied, ‘Oh no, we
are
Araras!’”

“Is this nonsense you’re talking to me? It sounds like
Alice in Wonderland
.”

“Said the Arara to the Bororo——”

“You aren’t a psychologist yourself, by any chance, are you?”

“Nothing like that. I sometimes wish I were. Every man his own psychoanalyst?”

“What
do
you do, if you don’t mind my asking so personal a question?”

“What
do
I do! That’s what a good behaviorist would ask, and what I often ask myself … Accurately and dispassionately put, I’m an unsuccessful author.”

“An author!… Well. You could knock me down with a toothpick. You don’t
look
like an author.”

“No?”

“No. Where’s your long hair? your flowing tie? your—pardon me—maternity trousers?”

“Yes, I do lack the secondary sexual characteristics. That’s probably why I’m unsuccessful. Or at any rate, the two things go together. If a man takes himself seriously enough to dress the part, and to look like a damned fool, he may perhaps be crazy enough to be some good!”

“Well now,
that’s
an interesting point!… Wait for me five minutes, will you? I’ve left my old reekie behind.”

“Sure.”

“—well, that’s all
right
. You have
your
opinion; and other people have theirs. Which kills the most—this last war—or tubercleosis?… So!… You would pronounce judgment on it without knowing the facts. That’s what women
do …
Not all the people that’s in the street is
bad
. And not all the people that’s in the street is
good
. There’s no grand rules by which you can lay down the law—if you’re a good Christian. There’s only special cases, that’s all; and what you’ve got to do is to look into each case by itself, and judge it on its own merits … Everybody is aimin’ for the same place, ain’t they? That’s the fact to be remembered, and not the fact that they go different ways to get there from what
you
choose. That’s the way it is with religion. We all take different routes. But we’re all aimin’ to get to the same place. So what’s the good of quarrelin’ about the routes we take, or scorning one man because he goes this way, and another because he goes that … as long as they’re honestly striving to get to the good place … But if there’s a place on this earth that’s a second Sodom, it’s New York.”

“How are you, Mrs. Simpson? Have you got hearts?”

“For fair!”

“Hearts are trumps.”

“—the
dollar,
that’s their god, the almighty dollar. You see what they mean by that, don’t you?”

“Yes?”

“You remember the Jews in their journey through the desert. You remember how some of them, losing faith, backsliding, went whoring after false gods, and worshiped the golden calf. That is a
symbol
—the golden calf. And the golden calf is today the god of America. It’s the Almighty Dollar; instead of Almighty God. Mark my words.”