The Glass Ocean (6 page)

Dear Anna. She cuts me so, with those claws of hers.

No: he writes a great deal, but he would not write that. Some things he cannot confide.

Shortly Harry Owen comes down to make sure Clotilde’s talk hasn’t bothered Leo too much.
What? What did she say? I honestly didn’t hear her, Harry, so of course I don’t mind it, whatever it was
—blinking his luminous eyes, neck a pale stalk rising out of the stiff collar he insists on wearing even here as he sinks deeper into the berth, draws the thin, scratchy blanket up around him. Safe, in this shuddering, groaning cocoon.

Water rushing darkly just behind his head.

Mustn’t think about that, though.

Think instead of earthier dreads, the small scutterings beneath, rattling insinuation of vermin. Thorax, wing, carapace, tail. Seek comfort in the quivering whisker. This is where the gnawing begins in earnest.

It is not unusual for a single word from my mother to unman him completely.

Waves without, waves within.

In time he will cultivate other safe places. Up in the crow’s nest, or on the mainmast, on fair days. Down below, in the laboratories, where the specimens are stored. He will spend hours there, organizing the sarcophagus, sketching its contents. And time, too, beneath the tarp, or in the smallboat stored amidships—that is safe. Or crouching among the ill-fated charges of the cook, finding refuge among their warm, sweet, doomed breaths and the manure that repels Clotilde’s fastidious boot. As things progress he will grow fond of the railings aft, where, every night at midnight, once they have reached the warm latitudes, he will stand quietly watching Harry Owen smoke, both of them observing the miraculous phosphorescence of the million small floating animals plowed up astern by the rudder—the brilliant green sparks that come and go, rise up out of nowhere in a milky-green froth, then subside again, whirling away into watery oblivion.

•   •   •

Time is heavy on their hands. It’s an object that must be carried through one day, into the next, into the next. In all directions ocean, that terrible monotonous beauty. Even the birds disappear. Then they are really alone, at sea.

•   •   •

That will be me, too, soon enough.

•   •   •

They met at sea, they were at sea, they parted by sea.

•   •   •

No. I’m getting ahead of myself again. In retrospect there is such a sense of inevitability. But they don’t know that.

•   •   •

And so: even the birds disappear, and then they are really alone, at sea. Floating in all that vastness like a smut in a saucer. Someone wise has said, an ocean voyage consists of nothing more and nothing less than hours of tedium, punctuated by moments of terror, and this, it seems, is true. For every moment they spend with their hearts in their mouths—surrounded by crashing crockery, tumbling luggage, a chaos of spilled beakers and rolling funnels and shattering vials, science itself upended, papers loosed from beneath their weights, whirling like moths—and themselves as well, whirled around, whirled around, as the
Narcissus
hops and bucks and spins upon the waves—they will spend a hundred more languishing idly in their berths, perishing of boredom, pressed close by the rushing blackness of the sea.

It is very close, that sea. It is just there, on the other side of that wooden hull, which, after all, is a membrane merely, a flimsy man-made thing, a floating illusion, porous as a sieve. Why else are Blackstone’s men constantly below, manning the pumps? So as to stop them slipping through, into all that cold, black water.

Harry and Leo sleep poorly in the cabin they share, inches away from all that cold blackness and the million unseen, uncomprehended lives lived within it. They lie awake for hours sometimes, the two of them, not speaking, each assuming the other is asleep, listening to the chuckling rush of the water—then Harry Owen looks up, sees, in the shifting gloom, the tiny luminescence of Leo Dell’oro’s candle, suddenly lit in the opposite berth.
What’s that noise, Harry? Did you hear it? That noise—that’s it—that one, there!
But there are so many noises. The
Narcissus
is never quiet. There is a constant groaning, rending, wood upon wood, bone upon bone, strange thuds, thumps; it vibrates, deeply—shudders—from deep within the fragile shell separating them, just barely, from the sea.

’Twas just the timbers settling. That was the night watch, throwing down a rope. It’s just the rain on the quarterdeck—

They paddle desperately, together, trying to keep the flimsy illusion afloat.

•   •   •

It’s easier, for some. John McIntyre and Felix Girard, for example, are seasoned travelers, drawn violently together by the magnetism of a strong mutual dislike. It is not unusual to find them, in the saloon, at any time of day or night, regardless the weather, angrily disputing the nomenclature of the
Satyridae
, while all around them plates and saucers are borne floorward by the violence of the waves. My mother, in the same weather, may be found on deck, hugging her shawl around her, trying to tease the sailors into teaching her how to tie a granny knot, or a carrick bend, or a Matthew Walker.
Under—around—and up—!

For she is fearless, mother mine.

But others are suffering. Linus Starling, Felix Girard’s new assistant, becomes, from the moment of departure, a strange, enigmatic beast, remaining below deck, working at who knows what in Girard’s laboratory, perhaps at nothing at all. Here he is: see the glint of his glasses in the swaying lamplight as he staggers along the dim, rocking passage between the cabins and the scientific workrooms. There is a sudden buckling heave; all at once he is thrown violently against Harry Owen, who is creeping along uncertainly in the opposite direction in that narrow, pungent space; lapels gripped for support, obsequious smile a pale, smudged, rat’s grimace in the briny darkness, his
Begging your pardon, professor
, a pathetic squeak, neatly swallowed up by the ferocity of the gale. Then quickly they separate, the dance has ended, Starling moves past with a strange, unnerving, crabbed motion, clinging once again to the walls: he is maddened by mal de mer, and will not be seen above deck until the
Narcissus
reaches the calmer waters of the tropics.

There is something unsavory about this fellow. My father dislikes and distrusts him, though without knowing why. In this, the restless ocean, the cat’s paw, not now at play but in earnest, is his ally. Containing that which is best contained. Though this cannot last forever. Eventually, hidden things emerge.

•   •   •

My father has proven a tolerable sailor. Somehow his small, compact form is an advantage at sea: lower center of gravity. There is, though, so little for him to do, during the long hours of rotten weather. He is unoccupied; but then, they all are. And so he sketches, furtively. What is he drawing? This I cannot say. I can see him, though, hunched over the pad of paper that is his constant companion, the gentle, self-referential movement of the pencil, this is how he comforts himself: a bulwark against all that blue and green and grey. He combats infinity with a pencil point. Or tries to. At a table in the workroom, or maybe in the saloon. Approach and he pulls the sketch pad close, into his body, or leans over, shields it in the crook of his arm. Such a furtive creature. What has he got to hide? He is nineteen at most, perhaps twenty. Too young yet to have a history. When the others talk he is quiet. He comes from Whitby, he has told them that much. The city that stinks of rendered blubber. Carved out of it. Ships in the harbor heavy with paper and ambergris, cramped little whitewashed houses creeping tenaciously up their crack in the cliff, up toward the wrecked medieval abbey that reigns over all. The breakwater with its two lights. And the Scaur, which passes there for a shore, a bed rather of stone and wrack, the grim spine of the earth exposed—laid bare, like bone at the stroke of a cleaver, by the sudden ebbing of the tide. My father broke his boots on it as a boy, on that humped black spine of rock in which fossils are embedded, ammonites in pyrite, garnet, amethyst. Snake-stones, they call them: St. Hilda’s work. Old things, interesting things, things that have been lost; buried things, pushing up like unstoppable rebellion from beneath cracked and compromised ribs of bedrock. A repository of the living and the dead.

Its breath the ancient stinking breath of the sea.

My father loved to inhale it, standing in his boots on the humped rock in spite or perhaps even because of his mother’s aversion and her fear.

That would be Gentilessa, my grandmother. The fearful one. I picture her in the small house on Henrietta Street, shivering in a woolen wrap. She is always cold; cannot adjust to this cold place. Her hands are red and sore, cracked. This is from the cold to which she cannot become accustomed and from constant scrubbing. The house on Henrietta Street is always clean, spotlessly clean. Gentilessa scrubs, scours, sweeps, fumigates. Drags the mattresses out into the sun when there is sun to drag them into. Scalds the wash, then wrings it, then smokes it to rid it of bedbugs. This, at least, she can do.

How she hates it there!

They came from Italy, from a place on the Adriatic, a place of green and blue and gold, to this place of black stone. To this place of surreptitious Catholicism, where even in a creeping minority redoubt they are a minority.
Crazy filthy furriners. Crawthumpers. Pikeys.
To break a living out of the rock, form it into obsequious memorials, brooches, earrings, lockets, mourning-wear. Emilio Dell’oro is very good at that. He is an artist, a craftsman, a slyly obsequious salesman who succeeds, despite all, and prospers, in this place of bitter rains and hard rock and cold, unyielding unacceptance.

My other grandfather, that would be. The one with the little, round spectacles, the rather severe manner. I’ll never meet him either.

My father, though, is having none of this. He has chosen the sea instead. He has his reasons.

And does everything he can to avoid her.

It’s a wonder I’ll ever be born, at this rate. Such ineptitude on his part. Also on hers.

Yet, of course, it’s inevitable, it’s going to happen. For am I not here, at the edge of the world, getting ready to jump off it, the whole ginger length and breadth of me? My father feels this inevitability, he senses it, feels me, perhaps, readying my leap, and hunches all the more tightly over his pad of paper, clutches tight to his pencil, as if this will make him safe, and me, too.

Mr. Dell’oro, what is that you are drawing? Is it a portrait of me? Or is it a porcupine fish? I’m sure you are a very talented artist, Mr. Dell’oro! Won’t you let me see?

He won’t.

Her laughter is like an object in itself.

He clutches tight, very tight, until she has passed by. Repulsion and attraction, attraction and repulsion. It’s as if he can see the future, and he doesn’t like it. That stink of inevitability.

For, in fact, she’s right: he
is
drawing portraits of her. It’s all her. How does she know? She can smell it, that’s how: his adoration, his fear, it’s in the air, and something else, too. She senses it, fears it herself, without knowing what she fears. Of course she’s used to the rest, the admiration, the desire, the hand that longs to touch, repressed: stilled. That’s nothing new, to her. But for him. It makes him feel naked. Exposed. Flayed. Vulnerable. A poor soft creature, unshelled. And then the drawings: Clotilde at the taffrail. Clotilde at the spinet. Clotilde bending over to button her boot. She mustn’t see those. But there’s no denying it’s all her to him, as far as he is concerned, the blue of the sea her eyes, the gold sun her hair, the thrilling, vertiginous swell of the waves her breasts and belly, even the sea in its darker moments, its rages, yes, all her, already he is lost, lost, already sinking, he with his pale stalk of a neck, his awkward, ill-fitting suit, with all around him filth, discomfort, danger, bad food, foul companions, the whole wobbling scientific contraption, the career he might or might not make of it, the home he left, none of that matters, it’s all Clotilde, all around, to him.

He doesn’t want her to know.

Everything swollen, stinging with brine.

•   •   •

As for her, she is interested in her Papa only. He is in his workroom, studying the
Proceedings
. Or hunched over a map book, latitude and longitude laid out before him in wedges, exotic fruit that he longs to devour. Is devouring, with every mile of progress.
Papa will not leave me. Papa will never leave his Clotilde again.

•   •   •

My father, though, is not neglected. In the half life they occupy beneath the billowing canvas, he, too, is pursued, though not by her. What need has she to chase that which comes to her naturally, inevitably, like an act of homage? Rather, Harry Owen is on his trail. The scientific gentleman, momentarily lacking in objects of study, studies my father instead.
In the Mayfair of my existence I’ve never met anyone like him.
So he writes in the journal he keeps of this voyage. That familiar, precise handwriting. Soothing it is. Soothing. They each have their methods. Here it is on my desk.
In the Mayfair of my existence.
And:
He is a study indeed.
And:
Today, walking into our cabin, I found Dell’oro, motioning over his shoulder and muttering some weird incantation, thus: Black black bear-away, don’t come down by here-away.
Twice he said it. Then seeing me behind him, commenced to look thoroughly ashamed.