A Beggar's Kingdom

by Paullina Simons

  Late that night after the lights are off, and everyone’s asleep, everyone but Julian, there’s a rapping at his cabin door.

  She is outside. Wordlessly they stare at each other.

  Julian pulls her in, presses her against the wood, kisses her deeply. Her arms dangle at her sides. One of her hands rises to grip his elbow. She’s got such a full beautiful mouth. God, what a waste it has been.

  Outside, the Southern Cross stars shine dim cold light down on the Hinewai, but below deck there’s only the inky depths of the ocean. Julian and Shae bob and sway in the near darkness, anchored by the ice. He enfolds her in his arms, embracing her like a papa bear who’s found his mama bear.

  He wishes he didn’t have to say anything, but he knows something is required of him. She is so sad and trembling. I’m sorry, Shae, Julian whispers, caressing her face, her hair. I’m so sorry. You’re right. It’s true, I haven’t been at my best. Forgive me. He looks away. My grief has broken me.

  She says nothing, exhaling, holding on to his arms. He latches the door. Mutely she stands, her fire eyes lowered. In a fever he kisses her soft lips. A small blubber candle burns a flickering yellow light through his cabin. Blow it out, she says.

  You don’t want me to look at you?

  No!

  You don’t want to look at me?

  A soft inhale. Just blow it out.

  He blows it out. He brings her to the bed and sits, holding her hands while she stands in front of him. He looks up into her face.

  Take off your clothes and come lie with me, Mary-Margaret Patmore.

  What do you mean, take off my clothes?

  Take off everything. Be naked.

  Completely naked? No! Who does that? You’re not naked.

  I will be. In the dark Julian takes off his layers. The cabin is warm. Thank God, Niko relented and fired up the furnace a day ago, to rev the engine to help the pack ice break up.

  How do I know you’re naked? Shae says.

  Standing up, Julian takes her hand and places it on himself. She groans. Her hand clasps him.

  He kisses her. Go on, take off your clothes, Shae.

  It doesn’t seem as if she’s been naked often during intimacy, she is so slow and reluctant to get undressed. She may have given her body to men, but she has kept a layer of fabric over herself, a cloak for her protection.

  He stands waiting in the darkness, listening to her rustling noises. The ship bobs silently.

  Are you naked?

  I suppose, she says timidly. His hands reach for her. She is barely breathing. I’m sorry, too, she mutters into his shoulder. You have no idea what it’s like to live as I’ve lived.

  Julian has some idea, unfortunately. Look how beautiful you are. He cups her breasts, kisses them softly, kisses her nipples. Look what you’ve been hiding from me. He runs his hands down her back, over her buttocks, fondling her.

  I tried to show you. You turned up your nose like you were too good for me.

  That’s not why. I just didn’t want you to sell yourself short. Lie down.

  Why?

  I’ll show you. Lie down. He sets her down on his narrow cot. Open your legs.

  But Shae is not used to being on her back. It must feel too vulnerable to her, like an animal in surrender. She can’t relax—and she most certainly can’t open her legs. Julian lies on his side and for a long time caresses her with the tips of his fingers, from her face to her ankles. Almost like they’re Mary and Julian in the tiny room off the chandlery. He touches her gently. She barely responds. He circles her more insistently. She responds a little more. He presses harder on her skin with his fingers. She responds some more. He balls his hand into a fist and kneads her with his prominent knuckles.

  And to that Shae responds most strongly. To that, she curves and arches, she buckles and softens, she finally opens.

  He kneels between her legs and kisses her stomach.

  What are you doing?

  What does it look like I’m doing? He caresses her hips.

  I have no idea.

  Instead of telling you, why don’t I show you, he says, pressing his palms against her downy triangle, opening her with his thumbs.

  Motionless she lies while he gives her his mouth. She is rigid as a board, her hands not touching his head but clenching the sheet underneath her. It is only when the lunar crescent appears briefly in the sky through the cabin’s tiny window that Julian glimpses Shae’s illuminated face, her head tipped back, eyes closed, the mouth open in a breathless O.

  Oh, Shae, he whispers, soothing her, kissing her, caressing her with his words and his lips and his fingers. I really am sorry. Sometimes love looks like this, too, he murmurs between her legs. Not just you bending over the bed, counting the minutes until somebody knocks. He says it to comfort her, but he knows all too well this is how they live, this is how they’ve always lived. Counting the minutes until somebody knocks. His heart is filled to the brim with sorrow even when he brings joy to the one he loves, and finally even some comfort to himself.

  Only afterward, do her hands take hold of his head. Come to me, she whispers.

  Her legs quiver uncontrollably as he fits between them.

  Shh, shh, he murmurs, kissing her while he makes love to her. She won’t let him lift himself off her, two bears flattened against each other. When it’s over, she doesn’t shove him away. She doesn’t release him. In the dark, Julian hears her crying.

  What have I done, Shae whispers wrenchingly between her sobs.

  Shh. Everything’s going to be all right, Julian says. Those things I said to you, I didn’t mean them. I was very upset. He wishes he had kept his temper.

  Remember I asked you to forgive me if ever we came to combat and I said cruel things to you I did not mean?

  You meant them.

  No. If I’m angry, it’s only because I want real life to live up to my dream of your perfection. Remember I told you that?

  Not really, she says. But it’s all right. I understand. I’m not angry. Not anymore. They don’t matter, the words. They’re just words. I know you didn’t mean them. It’s this you mean. Right here, giving me your body, giving me your mouth.

  You say to her be my goddess, and she agrees and opens her legs. What a burden you’ve put on her—and yourself. She must be what she is not. You must be what you are not. She is not a goddess.

  Goddesses don’t die.

  When night becomes day, Shae does not become a different woman to Julian. She remains quiet like him, not demonstrative or loud. But on deck, she allows him to stand by her side, and together they gaze at the ice over the sea, to the horizon where Edgar’s ship is a gray smudge. When he brings her drink, her eyes stare into his and sometimes her hand rests on his. At night her warm body lies on top of him and underneath him. At night she speaks words to him, fragile words full of wounded pride and longing and tenderness.

  Words like: The things you do to me, you were going to do it to Hula, too?

  Not all of it.

  Were you flirting with her just to make me mad, to make me jealous?

  Sure, Julian says. Let’s go with that.

  Words like: Your eyes confound me. Your lips confound me. Your cock confounds me. I don’t know who you are, why you look at me the way you do. Why you fuck me the way you do, why you kiss me the way you do. Everything about you bewilders me. For years, Mother told me you’d be coming. She didn’t tell me you’d be like this.

  Like what, Shae?

  She moans.

  And later: You were so silent, she says. You could’ve given me a sign about who you were, what I meant to you, so I would know how to act.

  Sometimes, Julian says, you need to be nice to people even when you don’t know of what use they may be to you. Because most of the time, you don’t know. But you are Mirabelle, Julian wants to say. She was nothing but goodness and kindness walking on this earth. How she was all the time, to everyone, you can also be. You have it in you. I’ve seen it. I’ve known it. />
  Shae’s fingers caress his body exceedingly tenderly, as if he’s a newborn. As if both she and the human being she touches are touching and being touched for the first time. Julian has never been caressed more gently by anyone than he is by the calloused fingers of a roughened woman with the softest lips who herself prefers knuckles to fingertips.

  “Look, I understand,” Julian says, kissing her. “All human beings need someone to contend with. The contention strengthens us. To argue, to battle strengthens us.”

  “That’s true,” Shae says, not taking her hands off him. “We don’t come to our belief limply.” She squeezes him. “We come to it by combat.”

  “Yes.” Julian closes his eyes. “And it’s through this combat that we even find God sometimes. We hope this wins favor with Him, because God knows that we are contentious creatures who don’t like to follow blindly, but instead wish to come to Him by the virtue of our hard-fought choice.”

  “I’ve come to you.”

  “And I to you.”

  “I wish I could explain how much I didn’t want Mother to be right.”

  “You don’t have to. I know.”

  “I wish she had never told me the prophecy. I wish I never knew.”

  “She should have never told you.”

  “It’s blackened me.”

  “It’s just crust, Shae. Wipe it away from your soul.”

  “I wasn’t going to get together with Edgar, you know,” she says. “I was trying to push you away with my words.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t present enough to see it.” Julian closes his eyes.

  “I was so afraid of you,” she says. “I didn’t want to believe Mother. But after your fight with the Maori, I knew she was right.”

  “Hardly a fight.”

  “It wasn’t what you did to him that did it. It was what you did to me.”

  “Um…”

  “You and I were having the ugliest words. A second earlier, you were ready to knock me down, you looked so mad. And yet, the second you thought I might be in danger, your arm flew out in front of me. It was the first thing you did before you even took a breath. You put yourself between me and the world, Julian,” says Shae. “That’s how I knew Mother was telling the truth. I was even more scared of you then. I’ve been afraid and angry for years. You don’t know how hard it is to live under the weight of your own death lurking around every corner.”

  Julian knows.

  “I swear, I wasn’t always like this,” Shae says, her hands on his face, stroking his stubble. “Mother has ruined me.”

  “I swear, I wasn’t always like this either,” Julian says. He won’t say what ruined him.

  As soon as they deliver the blubber to the Terra Nova, Shae says she wants to sail back to Bluff and leave with Julian. “I don’t care where. New York if you want. Or if you think it’s too dangerous to spend all those months at sea, we can stay in New Zealand. I’d prefer that, no matter what Mother thinks. We can go hide in the deep mountain, near Queenstown. Maybe it’ll be safer there? Or we can move with Mother and Kiritopa to Fjordland, to Lake Hauroko. We call it Mary Lake. He has been waiting for you to come so he and Mother could retire to a cabin he built there for the two of them. Mother has been working all her life in Southland, saving her money to buy the Yarrow because it was the first tavern into town. She didn’t want to miss you when you walked into Invercargill. But Kiritopa is done. He can’t wait to sell it and leave. Mary Lake is beautiful. We can get married, if you want. We can have a baby, if you want. Kiritopa and you can build us a cabin, near them. I’d be all right with that. I would prefer not to leave Mother and go to New York, but I’ll go if you want. I know she is insane. But she’s my mother. And Kiritopa has been a father to me all these years.”

  “Yes, he loves you very much. And I agree,” Julian says. “Better not to leave your parents.”

  “Julian,” Shae whispers, “have you found me before?”

  He keeps his neutral face. He blinks away the faces of the one he loved. “Not you, no.”

  “But someone like me?”

  “Yes. Someone like you.”

  “Tell me she is wrong. Or do you not know?”

  “Wrong about what?”

  “Fulani’s prophecy.”

  Julian won’t look at her. “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  Now he looks at her. “Don’t you want some of it to be true?” Julian smiles as he holds her in his arms. “Don’t you want a man to search behind the sun for you?” The tips of his fingers touch her face. “And when he finally found you, to say, Masha, my Mashenka, my heart, my dearest one. You are the one.” Masha is Russian for Mary.

  Yes, Shae whispers, tears trickling out. But only that part. I want to be your someone, Julian.

  You are my someone, Shae. You’ve always been my someone.

  For as long as I live, I will beg for your forgiveness, she says. But what do I possibly have to offer the one from whom I seek mercy?

  Just your heart, he whispers back.

  She talks and talks, nestled in his chest, stroking his stomach, and Julian lies and listens to the murmurs of her wind-beaten voice as it carries him away.

  Sometimes the beast needs to be loved before it can be lovable.

  Love her in her sin, that’s what divine love means. Love her with the highest form of love on earth. Love everything. Then you will see mystery in everything.

  47

  The Igloo

  LITTLE BY LITTLE THE ICE BREAKS UP, ENOUGH FOR THE Hinewai to forge forward in spurts. The floes are heavy. With the engine fired up, the ship grinds through the bergs. It takes almost a week to move within half a mile of the Terra Nova.

  Niko decides that half a mile is as close as they’re going to get. Coal and supplies and tempers are running short. He orders his men to use ropes and sledges to drag the fifty casks of blubber and twenty barrels of moonshine across the wobbly ice floes.

  Shae prepares to walk across the ice to greet Edgar. She will present him with Kiritopa’s bottle of whisky and a new elk skin for his polar journey. Julian prepares to go with her. Kiritopa says he will go with Julian. The morning of the day they’re about to set out, there’s some back and forth about this fairly straightforward matter, an argument Julian doesn’t understand. Neither Niko nor Tama want Kiritopa to go out on the ice. They cite safety and old age, both of which Kiritopa dismisses, but the captain and first mate are equally firm that Kiritopa remain behind.

  Shae stays out of the squabbling except once when she says, “Come on, Tama, don’t make a thing out of it. Let him come if he wants.”

  “No, Shae. You can go. Your whiteman can go. But Kiritopa stays with me.”

  “I am charged with his safety,” Kiritopa says, pointing to Julian. “I go with him.”

  “Rangi will go with them,” Tama says. “If something goes wrong, he’ll be able to help Julian better than you.”

  “What could go wrong?” Kiritopa asks quietly.

  “Well, you’re clearly worried about something, old man. Whatever it is you’re worried about, Rangi will handle it.”

  Because Rangi is by their side over the uneven, fluctuating, slippery ice floes, Julian can’t ask Shae about the disagreement. And she doesn’t volunteer.

  It takes them over an hour on foot to navigate the distance from the Hinewai to the Terra Nova.

  The crew members of the Terra Nova are down on the ice, receiving the barrels from Niko’s men and hoisting them into the open hold. They express surprise that Julian and Shae have walked out onto the pack and warn them to return to their ship. “Once the ice starts to crack, the sea will open within minutes,” one crew member says. “You don’t want to get stuck here with us. Trust me, you don’t want to sail to Antarctica.” Neither Julian nor Shae responds. Rangi doesn’t respond because it’s not his place.

  Shae puts her hands together and yells up to the deck for Edgar.

  “Who’s calling for me?” says a deep gruff voic
e. A man peers over the bulwark and smiles happily. Shae waves but doesn’t smile.

  A bundled-up sailor climbs down the rope ladder onto the ice and takes off his flap hat as he approaches Shae. Edgar Evans is a tall, broad man, good-looking and easygoing but clearly anxious about being icebound so long.

  He embraces Shae and shakes hands with Julian but doesn’t touch Rangi. “Why is he standing around?” Edgar says, pointing to the Maori. “Shae, tell him to go help the others. They have plenty of work to do. You see how the sun’s been beating down today. And it’s warmer. The floes can break any minute. Which is good for me, but not so good for you. You really shouldn’t be here. Go,” he says to Rangi. “Is he deaf? Why isn’t he moving?”

  “My captain told me to watch over them, so that’s what I’m doing,” the Maori says.

  For some reason this makes Edgar more anxious. He glances at Shae, who doesn’t catch his eye, and at the barrels the Terra Nova men are loading into the ship.

  “How many more?” he calls out.

  Another seventeen. Another round trip for seven men.

  Edgar admits to fearing grave repercussions all around—if the ice doesn’t break soon and he can’t get free, or if the ice breaks too soon and kills Niko’s men and half of his. Sometimes the ice cracks for no reason and is gone, going from frozen solid to floating free in less than an hour. Sometimes the actions of men can loosen it, destabilize it. “My worry is compounded,” Edgar says, “because I cannot see the future.”

  Julian listens to Edgar with a small skeptical shrug. He wants to say that worry doesn’t abate when you know the future.

  Ask him.

  Ask Shae.

  “In the last four weeks, we’ve already used forty tons of coal to keep this ship going,” Edgar says. “The ice had better break soon or we’ll be out of coal. Even the additional fuel you’ve brought won’t help us. Oh, well, we’ll freeze to death drunk.” He smiles. “No whisky for me, Shae?” Above them, on deck, the men are singing wildly. “Is it any wonder there’s not a single sober man on this ship,” Edgar says good-naturedly, “including me. We’re preparing for a drunk death. But at least we’ll go out singing, right?”