The Last Ship (66 page)

I became aware of something in her eyes which seemed to mirror my own resolve; then something else that rather sent a chill up my spine: in them, too, that certain glow, that unmistakable sense of having won out, a sense of something like personal triumph. I was baffled. And one other thing: It was as though she looked straight into my eyes and saw what she saw.

She had stood up, was holding something out to me.

“Very good, sir. I simply wanted to get your agreement.”

She handed over the envelope. And was gone.

 *  *  * 

I stepped out on my porch-bridge, for some unexplainable reason wanting a clearer view of the ship; simply quietly regarding her where she stood self-confidently aware of her beauty, her many and diverse talents; yet now something poignant about her, containing as she did a fatal flaw, as from a terrible illness: her low supply of fuel, emasculating her of her highest gift of all, which was to go as she pleased across all waters, starting with the greatest ocean-sea on earth now stretching in such ardent invitation beyond her, seeming rapturously to woo the ship. I appraised, a helpless professional habit, sea and sky as to sign of weather—of anything. The twin azures both now unstained, resting as if for oncoming night in an exquisite languor. I stepped back inside, opened the envelope, took out the single sheet of paper, and read the single-spaced type:

The Women’s Conditions

The following arrangement will take effect upon the completion of the building of the settlement; the first, itself as a condition to all other conditions, having been built into the settlement.

1. Each woman will have separate and individual quarters, belonging as exclusively to herself, and to be as sacrosanct and inviolate as any private residence.

2. The men will be divided as equally as may be possible among the women, who alone will determine the method for accomplishing this division, including which man will be assigned to which woman. In the event of incompatibility, a man may thereafter be transferred, at the women’s sole discretion, to another group and another woman. Such transfer shall be made not more than one time.

3. Each man will be granted a week on a rotation basis in which he may come to his assigned woman’s quarters. The rotation will be chosen by the men by lot. In explanation: The time frame of one week has been selected for the reason that in the event of a pregnancy, the women do not deem it to be in the welfare of the community that any person, including the woman herself, should know the identity of the father; thus no man may claim the child as his.

The above arrangement will not commence until two weeks have passed. During that time each woman’s men may visit her on a basis of three per week. Thereafter, the one-man-per-week arrangement will go into effect.

4. The women will avoid demonstrating partiality for one man over another. In identical fashion, no possessiveness, no proprietorship or control of any nature whatsoever as to the woman is to be tolerated on the part of the men, nor jealousy of any kind. Any manifestation of these elements will be grounds for shifting the man to another group and another woman, or for suspending or excluding the guilty man altogether from these arrangements, as the women shall decide.

5. Any man or woman, finding himself or herself unable to participate in these arrangements, may choose not to do so, and no obloquy shall attach to the person reaching such a decision. However, a man and a woman cannot opt out in order that they may be solely and exclusively together. Once any shipmate, man or woman, ceases to participate that person becomes a celibate.

6. Since these arrangements are in every respect new and untested in our experience, the above conditions may be altered as time goes on, and at any point they choose, on the vote of all the women, solely at their discretion. However, all planning to enter into the arrangement should know that the women anticipate that any changes that might be made will be minor or procedural in nature and that all the fundamental precepts herein set forth will permanently obtain.

7. As a final condition, the settlement’s governance shall continue as on the ship for a period of at least six months, the reason being to make certain that the above provisions are backed by the full weight of Navy authority, rule, and discipline. At the end of six months, these arrangements having worked to their satisfaction, the women will not oppose any alternative system of governance which a majority of ship’s company may choose; provided that that system, whatever it may be, agrees to the full incorporation and carrying over of all the provisions in this document.

The document was signed by all twenty-six women.

I sat there looking at the paper but not seeing it. In a little while I reread the provisions. The document was well drawn, everything anticipated, tucked in neatly. The second paragraph of Provision Three I found particularly admirable on the part of the women, demonstrating both that they knew their mathematics and that they were women of compassion, of benevolence, considering the long months of deprivation that had now existed, its meaning being that every man in ship’s company would have been accommodated at the end of two weeks, otherwise that worthy attainment being for some more like six.

I reread once more Provision Seven. Yes, they understood its nature: power. Lieutenant Girard: that enormously brilliant comprehension that the area of women-men relationships, the territory of sexual practices, we were about to enter was fraught with such profound hazards of itself, in truth no one having any clear idea as to how these matters would work (sexual behavior at its simplest unpredictable as to outcome, this incertitude vastly, infinitely, multiplied in these arrangements), that to add that of an undetermined governance which might—as a random example—overturn all these carefully reasoned provisions was an unacceptable risk; she and the women in their profound shrewdness (in their own domain), insisting on the Navy governance which had always safeguarded them, knowing it would continue to do so with whatever measures might be required. Knowing also, to an absolute, I was vain enough to discern, that they had this flawless protection in present ship’s captain. I shook my head, felt a sardonic smile at the astonishing adroitness—for here was the genius stroke—with which she had led me into the position the women wanted, quite slyly using her sure instinct that it was what I myself also wanted; sure even to the extent of writing it in beforehand. I had been had. But then I wanted to be had. The fact that the reasons for my remaining so as given in that tour de force of persuasion were quite distinct from the one set forth in the “conditions” in no way adding up to her having dissimulated, to having “tricked” me: She was far too intelligent not to have felt that foolish to attempt. The truth was simple enough: She believed, with equal passion, equal urgency, in both circumstances as absolutely requiring a continuation, at least for now, of the existing system of a captain’s sovereignty. If the one residing in her area of responsibility—the women—perhaps loomed somewhat larger in her mind, as I suspected, that is but to cavil; it is only human to pay first allegiance to one’s own interests. Nothing in this lessened by that other hard truth: I simply would not tolerate anything that approached the terrible time we had gone through before; that part of it, even the remote possibility of such a thing, a true service she had rendered me, alerting me; doing me the favor of granting me the perfect means of putting off any question of the governance, yes, for two reasons of the greatest cogency; only one of them, the insistence by the women on it, for their own reasons, needed to satisfy the men. There would be no trouble there. They would accept almost any terms the women laid down. And in myself not the slightest doubt that she had thought all of this through precisely: her knowing to an absolute there was no way it would fail to work with me; in that exchange she had held me in her hand; even my satisfaction a part of that.

None of this served to make her saintly in my eyes, rather to make her immensely artful, and blessedly wise; and yes, infinitely cunning. Otherwise: Suspicion, once let in the door, will hardly ever let itself out again. I could not help wondering what other motives, as yet unrevealed, awaited execution in Lieutenant Girard’s mind; having to admit, again with a felt wry smile, that she was showing herself in all respects, so far at least, quite a master in her own exercise of sovereignty. The question to myself being: Did she have a still larger intention? Power is like a breeder reactor: the exercise of it irrefragably creating the need, sometimes urgent, for ever more forceful forms of it.

Finally I reread the entire document yet again, objectively dissecting it virtually word by word. I thought it just might work. Yes, altogether an admirable job. The Jesuit was right. They had ceased to be sailors. They had commenced to be women.

I
t is sometimes not appreciated by landsmen that sailors tend to be not only conservative but of a religious bent. This has been true since earliest times, and so much has been written on the subject, and the whys and wherefores of it, that I need not add to that considerable literature here. I will speak only to the question insofar as it concerned us, which was, as previously alluded to, that some of ship’s company had what could only be described as religious or moral considerations as to the course we were about to undertake. It was the element—my attention first drawn to it in the dialogue with the Jesuit on the clifftop—that was very much on my mind as we gathered finally to celebrate the completion of the settlement, the day on which Lieutenant Girard would announce the “Arrangement,” as I had begun to think of it, and on which those who chose not to be part of it would be allowed to stand aside. I was not at all sure but that their number might be considerable; the implications of such a division profoundly horrifying to me.

 *  *  * 

It was a gallant day, the kindly light of early morning radiant in cerulescent skies, the sunshine slanting through the tall trees and onto the large Main Hall where all ship’s company save for the Lookout Tower watch and the thinnest watch aboard ship (and these spelled so that all could participate) were gathered. Through the opened sides a faint and palliative westerly breeze came whispering off the sea far below and over the participants. The ceremony marking the completion was not, in some respects, unlike that held when a ship is commissioned; however, with certain other features added. A quiet sort of affair, as if deliberately containing, within the immenseness of emotion, that sense of victory, yes, triumph, that we had come through, all the fine shipshape structures around us testifying to the fact; a sense not of arrogance but of humility. A sense, too, of thanksgiving, as New World pilgrims might have gathered on shores of long ago, our prospects, I judged, more promising than had been theirs. So many elements, by God’s grace or by our own fortune, operating in our behalf: a new home blessed with favorable year-round weather, with parturient soil; an island thus far in all respects forthcoming, the bounty of the sea to feed us; ourselves to care for one another. The valiant ship that had brought us to this safe harbor and visible just below seemed herself a participant in the ceremony (how worthily so!), her single break in the aching infinity of sea nonetheless also marking our isolation, our imprisonment, knowing as every hand did the desperately low fuel supply remaining on her, all this bringing a sense of loneliness but even that seeming to bind us the more indissolubly. Further, never articulated, naming them, travails we had been through binding us as only travails can, and finally, and most of all, the future binding us. A hymn accompanied by Delaney’s fiddle, “Lead On, O King Eternal.” Lieutenant Girard had come to me with the word that the men wanted to name the island. Porterfield, she said, had suggested Deliverance Island and they seemed to like that. I had made it so and it was announced now. Toward the end of the ceremony, the words of Psalm 139 read by Porterfield falling sweet and clear over us, seeming a declaration of accomplished fact . . .

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

And yet, with all this sense of a band of brothers and sisters, a tension tangible to myself hung in the air . . . doubts as to what we were about to undertake. And most of all in myself, above-mentioned, the very real fear that enough might say no to the whole thing, for the stated reasons, with the most devastating consequences: establishing within our ship’s company and our settlement two groups, one supposedly “moral,” the other supposedly engaged in “immoral” practices. I was not at all sure we could survive that particular species of divisiveness.

Then came the Jesuit’s homily.

 *  *  * 

* * *

 *  *  * 

Men and women both, they all looked up to the platform where he was standing and as he proceeded, I was witness to something extraordinary. Into those faces as he spoke came a slowly arriving . . . expectation, wonder—I do not wish to overstate this, but at times something very much like awe, as though they were being given a glimpse onto strange shores, the precise nature of which no man could predict but shores certain to be abundant with new and inexperienced behavior, conditions, yes, codes. And alloyed with all of this wonder, itself almost childlike in nature, just touching the faces through it, a sense of fear and of uncertainty, yes, the barest smattering of terror, but seeming of that kind also childlike, as children possess a fear of the dark—yet overridden, it seemed, as happens with children, by that beckoning of them into its surprises, its mysteries.

To reproduce the text of his speech would be to no purpose, for the reason that any literal interpretation of it might well obscure rather than reveal its real design. This, too, as with anything with him, all of intention—he seemed not to do, say anything, that was not of a purpose, absolutely clear one felt to himself if not by any means always, at least instantly, to his hearers. But now and then a phrase, a sentence, like a true compass pointed the way, to my mind unmistakably, provided guideposts to what was ahead; for today, I became aware, he had a very large intention; indeed, as he saw it, the largest. Always in those soft, assuasive tones. Of course, he had so much going for him to be able to accomplish all of this, this capture, as it were, of themselves. Ship’s company believed in him in a special way. If he said something was wrong, it was wrong; if he said something was right it was right. Part of the strength of it being that it was not something he abused: indeed his tolerance as to human weakness being as far-embracing as I had known in his profession. And not one ounce of proselytism on his part; not the slightest effort to be “popular.” That influence—power would be a better word . . . just flowed to him, a trust, a belief in—such as flows with all inevitability to the intelligent and to the strong and the cunning, and most of all to the resolute, to one with an absolutely fixed purpose, in circumstances such as were ours; for in the end perhaps all men are sheep, and only one shepherd. And this, also mentioned before, at this particular moment of the utmost importance: a power much abetted by the fact that into his ears in recent times had poured the pains, the anguishes, the guilts and the desires, the secret wishes and longings—perhaps these above all, the nature of the speech suggested, along with the reservations, the deeply held doubts of a “moral” nature—of such a large portion of ship’s company. He knew more than anyone what they wanted, knew they were waiting to be told, and that whatever misgivings might remain, only his imprimatur would remove them, if anything could; in fact, was the one thing that might effect that accomplishment urgent above all else if—yes, if his intention were to have any real chance at all. A phrase, a sentence, I say, sometimes—the present speech—homily a better word, though not especially at all of a religious character, but surely that—the best homilies being those that while carrying manifestly little weight of religious content in fact harbor the most. First taking care of one particular problem, absolutely essential to dispose of if his intention were ever to be given the chance to become reality . . . “Our duty not to the people back home—they are no longer in a position to be fit objects for duty, and especially so from their loved ones . . .” How I cherished him for that, for coming down so flatly against the course that Lieutenant Girard had assured me a good number of them were contemplating, even to the point of considering means to effectuate it. In fact, that was clearly one of his two principal purposes; to make them understand that “home” was now, right here. (He was leading, building up with such consummate skill, to the other and larger purpose.) Rather, he left hanging for a moment in the air, a duty to something else. The odd part being that having said to whom duty was not owed by ship’s company he did not go on to say at once to whom it was owed. I am certain the word “God” was not once spoken. He seemed peculiarly not to want to identify too—bluntly? too heavy-weighted? too vulgarly even?—the proper object of our duty; no reference whatsoever made as yet in that regard. Maybe he wanted each to seize on the concept first . . . as if it were his or her own; nothing could be more Jesuitical than that. To me—and not because of any special acuity of my own but due solely to my having been made privy to his mind and its workings—it was nonetheless as clear as the cloudless skies that hung sweetly above us on that momentous day; clear also the fact that what he was saying was that nothing in the world was by comparison of the least importance. And least of all—reiterating the theme as in a symphonic work—any desire they may have had to return to a country, or what was left of it, where not only could they do no good whatsoever, not the slightest, but . . . He managed to convey that such an act, for men—and women—in our circumstances, would have been monstrous and that—and now he drew closer—we had but one true course, given the constitution, the makeup, of our ship’s company; that we did not so much as have the right to consider any other. The providential fact of our having both women and men aboard itself dictated our choice; in fact, that given that particular and rare condition, we had no choice. We were a “mixed” crew by a higher intent, as he had said to me: so that we could fulfill a function, man’s highest—his first duty of all. And finally this: It was time for that distinction, hitherto in all our relations shipboard forbidden, to be made, declared, shouted out, gloried in, for us like a ship to come about, strike a directly opposite course. Never even by allusion so far, perhaps saving it, giving voice to that other word but seeming to me, as clear as pennants on the ship’s halyards flashing their silent messages, to declare that no loyalty whatsoever existed save there. For what he was truly saying was that not only was there no sin in the procedures they were about to undertake, but that sin lay in the opposite course; that both the men and the women had an obligation to undertake them, that indeed they were to be looked upon as being done in the name of the highest power. Yes, that was it: It was their duty, their responsibility—words sacred to Navy people—their
mission
to do so. Did he actually use those words? I could scarcely say, so mesmerically, so convincingly did his words move over us, enter our souls. As much as saying that if sin were to be spoken of, or morality, it consisted in rejecting this incomparable bounty of having women present that had been our special dispensation, making of us a chosen people, that being all to a purpose. A moral duty: to continue the species first created by that highest power in the morning of time. Nor can I say to this moment whether he used a phrase so explicit. I think not. But nothing could have been more clearly understood.

And so it was. In the blessed and noble name of that endeavor he had given his blessing to the exceptional sexual practices, the trial and error of numerous combinations of men and women, on which our ship’s company were about to embark. When he stopped, finished with this avatar of oblique clarity, and a stillness unlike any before, different in character if not in degree from any I had ever experienced, the subdued sea from below the cliffs sounding suddenly like an overloud drumbeat—a stillness seeming active and alive with the slowly awakening understanding on the part of ship’s company of what had just been said to them . . . when he finished and simply stopped, I felt a sense of something like exhilaration. If there had been any doubt remaining as to these practices before the Jesuit’s speech there was none after it (or almost none, as we were shortly to learn). He clinched it. He had given them his, therefore God’s, blessing, and without ever using the latter’s name. When he had concluded and they stood speechless looking up at him with that wonder in their faces I knew . . . In those faces not the slightest hint of lasciviousness, light-years from anything like leering, lust, concupiscence, that whole litany of the covetousness of the flesh. I do not wish to be misunderstood here. Neither was there in them the remotest hint of what has been called religious fervor, as scary in itself as the other. There was simply calm acceptance in the most practical sense, of the simplest, sailorlike nature. In what they were about to undertake they were doing no wrong. That was all they had asked for, that reassurance, and the Jesuit had given it to them. I knew we were on our way.

To conclude the ceremonies, Lieutenant Girard stepped forward and in as equable a voice as if she were announcing ship’s orders of the day, read the text of “The Women’s Conditions”; asked ship’s company if any wished to stand aside and not participate. I felt I was holding my breath. One by one, seven men only stood up, including Seaman Barker. I gave a vast inward sigh of relief. And one woman only, Coxswain Meyer. (This of course, by the women’s terms, while indicating that they had finally decided to let any woman, as well as any man, decide not to participate, granting Barker and Meyer nothing beyond the continued freedom to dispense with sexual activity altogether, most sternly as between themselves.) Thereupon, again as calmly as if she were reading out watch bills, read the assignments of the various men to the various women of ship’s company . . . “To Storekeeper Talley . . . Machinist’s Mate Brewster . . .” The readings proceeding like a most proper liturgy. “To Signalman Bixby . . . Lieutenant Bainbridge . . . To Radioman Parkland . . .”

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Few men, as I have elsewhere suggested, are more directly acquainted with the effects of sexual deprivation than are ship’s captains. Any captain can readily apostrophize to an interested listener the sharp difference, tangible in the very air, between a ship’s company which has been six weeks at sea and that same company after three days of liberty in a port such as Naples, New York, or New Orleans, to name but three beguiling cities where that availability has never been in short supply to the seamen stepping foot on their piers. This is far from being an unimportant matter to the efficacy of a ship. Men thus accommodated make for a decidedly better functioning, if occasion arises, gallant ship than men who are not; more dutiful in their shipboard tasks, less apt in their edginess to make perhaps crucial errors. I would be certain that centuries before psychology “discovered” that the privation under discussion is a primary cause of neurosis, uncounted thousands of sea captains starting before the time of Homer, and without benefit of the terminology, had routinely reached the identical finding.