The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

  “Is Sallie’s lover a friend of yours?”

  “He was. I liked the son of a bitch and even though I acted like I was annoyed that Sallie would choose such an asshole for a fling, I could understand it perfectly well. He’s very handsome. He’s successful, bright, and funny. He collects British motorcycles and smokes meerschaum pipes, two flaws I homed in on when Sallie told me about it, but I couldn’t be too hard on her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I understand why Sallie would prefer him over me. Jack Cleveland is the kind of man I could have been if I had stayed on course. He’s the kind of man I had the potential to become.”

  “When did you stop?”

  “I think it began when I chose the absolutely wrong parents. I know, you don’t think children have a choice in the matter. I’m not sure. I have an intuitive feeling that I chose to be born into that particular family. Then you spend your life making a series of false assumptions and wrong moves. You set yourself up for catastrophe. You find yourself in danger and peril because of the choices you’ve made. Then you discover that fate is also busily working to set you up, to lead you into regions that no one should be required to enter. When you realize all this, you are thirty-five years old and the worst is behind you. No, that’s not true. The worst is ahead of you because now you know the horror of the past. Now you know you have to live the memory of your fate and your history for the rest of your life. It is the Great Sadness and you know that it’s your destiny.”

  “Do you think Savannah has it?”

  “She got dealt the royal flush,” I said. “Look where she is now, Doctor. She’s in a nut house with scars all over her body, barking at dogs that only she can see. I’m her feckless brother trying to tell you stories that will illuminate her past and make you put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And yet most of the time, Doctor, when I think about the past, I come to these blank spaces, black holes of memory. I don’t know how to enter those dark regions. I can tell you most of the stories behind those pained fragments you recorded on tape. I can usually explain where they come from. But what about the things she forgot, what about her blank spaces? I’ve got this feeling that there is so much more to say.”

  “Would you be afraid to tell me these things, Tom?” she asked, and I could not see her face. I only saw the spires of the city behind her rising in great pillars of light.

  “Doctor, I’ll tell you anything. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t know if I can tell you enough.”

  “You’ve been extremely helpful so far, Tom. I promise you that. You’ve already cleared up some things that have puzzled me about Savannah.”

  “What’s wrong with Savannah?” I asked, leaning toward her.

  “How often have you seen her in the last three years, Tom?”

  “Rarely,” I said, then admitted, “Never.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She said it depressed her too much to be around the family. Even me.”

  “I’m so glad you came up here this summer, though, Tom,” she said.

  She rose with the burning lights of the city behind her and came over to get my glass.

  “Let me replenish these.”

  I watched her as she disappeared inside the apartment and saw the moment she glanced at her husband’s portrait, then, just as quickly, averted her eyes. I felt then, for the first time, the sadness of this controlled, cautious woman who was playing such a crucial and necessary part in my life during this melancholy summer. I considered her role of listener, of advocate, of healer—her rising up each morning and dressing in her room, knowing she would walk out and face the pain and suffering of that part of the race who had come to her by accident or by referral. Yet I wondered if the lessons she gleaned from her patients could ever be applied successfully to her own life. Did her mastery of the tenets of Freud ensure her own happiness? I knew it didn’t, but why did her masked, expressionless face move me so much whenever she was unaware of my studying her. That face, lovely and moon-shaped, seemed to reflect every grotesque story she had ever heard, all the testimonies of injured histories. In her house, her solitude seemed to deepen. She was far more relaxed in her office, protected by the fortress of her pedigrees, and there, among strangers, she had no responsibility for the grisly stories that had brought her patients to the end of their tethers. But in this house, her own failures and sorrows moved with her in phantom legions. She and her son approached each other like councilors of enemy nations. The power of her husband’s presence manifested itself everywhere, the consequences of his fame. I had no clear image of Herbert Woodruff from anything that either his wife or his son had said about him. They both emphasized that he was a genius; they both feared his disaffection and reprisals but could not understand what shape his formidable disapproval might take. He listened to classical music at mealtime instead of conversing with the family, but after hearing Bernard and his mother in full battle cry, I could understand the inclination. Why had Dr. Lowenstein told me about her suspicion that her husband was having an affair with that stunning, aggrieved woman I had met in her office?

  Sex, the old leveler and destroyer, spreading its wicked, glorious seeds even into the houses of culture and privilege —and who knew what monstrous hybrids or what deadly orchids would blossom in these hushed salons. The flowers of my own garden, a southern variety all stunted and unoriginal, were hideous enough. I thought I would never think about sex again once I had gotten married or, more precisely, would think about it in connection only with my wife. But marriage had merely been an initiation into a frightening world of fantasy, frightening because of its furious ignition, its secret betrayals, its uncontrollable desire for all the lovely women of the world. I walked through this world burning with the love of strange women and I could not help it. In my mind, I slept with a thousand women. In my wife’s arms, I made love to shapely women who had never spoken my name. I lived and loved and suffered in a world that had no reality but did exist in some wild kingdom near the eyes. Goat, satyr, and beast roared and howled within the porches of the ear. I loathed this part of me; I trembled when I heard the lewd snickering of other men admitting to the same fevers. I equated fucking with power and hated the part of me where that flawed and dangerous truth dwelt. I longed for constancy, for purity, for absolution. I brought one murderous gift to sex. All the women who loved me, who took me to their breast, who felt me inside them, moving in them, whispering their name, crying out to them in darkness, all of them I betrayed by turning them slowly and by degrees from lovers into friends. Beginning as lovers, I turned them all into sisters and bequeathed to them the gift of Savannah’s eyes. Once inside a woman, to my horror, I heard my mother’s voice, and though my lover would be calling out “yes yes yes,” it was not as powerful a cry as my mother’s cold “no.” I took my mother to bed with me every night of my life and I could not help it.

  These thoughts came unannounced, unbidden. Sex, I thought, as I watched Susan Lowenstein walk toward the terrace holding the two brandy snifters, the central issue of my conflicted, unsuccessful manhood.

  She handed me my glass, slipped out of her shoes, and sat down in a wicker chair.

  She sat quietly for a while before she spoke. “Tom, do you remember how we talked about what a closed man you are?”

  I shifted in my chair and looked at my watch. “Please, Lowenstein, remember my age-old contempt for psychotherapists. You’re off duty now.”

  “I’m sorry. But I was just thinking as I was pouring the drinks, that as you tell me story after story about your family, Savannah is emerging slowly. And Luke. And your father. But I still don’t know or understand your mother at all. And you, Tom, remain the vaguest of all. You reveal almost nothing of yourself in these stories.”

  “I suppose that’s because I’m never sure of who I am. I’ve never been just one person. I’ve always tried to be someone else, live someone else’s life. I can be other people far too easily. I know what it’s like to be Bernard, Docto
r. That’s why it affects me so when I see him suffering. I find it easy to be Savannah. I feel it when the dogs are on her. I want to take her sickness and lay it on my own soul. I don’t find it easy to be me because this strange gentleman is unknown to me. Now that nauseating revelation should satisfy even the most scrupulous therapist.”

  “Can you be me, Tom?” she asked. “Do you know what it’s like to be me?”

  “No,” I said uneasily, taking a sip of cognac. “I have no idea what it’s like to be you.”

  “You’re lying, Tom,” she said with conviction. “I think you’re very perceptive about me.”

  “I see you in your office and I run my mouth for an hour. Or we’ve had some drinks. We’ve now had dinner three times. But there hasn’t been enough time to get any clear picture of you. I thought you had it made. You’re beautiful, you’re a doctor, you’re married to a famous musician, you’re rich, you live like a queen. Bernard, of course, has made the picture a bit cloudy, but overall, you’re way up there in the top one percent of the world’s brawling masses.”

  “You’re still lying,” she said in the darkness.

  “You’re a very sad woman, Doctor,” I said. “I don’t understand why and I’m deeply sorry. If I could help you, I would. But I’m a coach, not a priest or a doctor.”

  “Now you’re not lying. And I thank you for it. I think you’re the first friend I’ve made in a long time.”

  “Well, I appreciate what you’re doing for Savannah. I really do,” I said, feeling dreadfully uncomfortable.

  “Have you been lonely?”

  “Lowenstein, you are speaking to the prince of solitude, as Savannah referred to me in one of her poems. This city exacerbates loneliness in me the same way that water makes Alka-Seltzer fizz.”

  “Loneliness is killing me lately,” she said, and I could feel her eyes upon me.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m very attracted to you, Tom. No, don’t leave just yet. Please listen to me.”

  “Don’t tell me, Doctor,” I said, rising to go. “I can’t even think about this now. I’ve considered myself incapable of love for so long that the mere thought of it terrifies me. Let’s be friends. Good friends. I’d be a terrible addition to your romantic life. I’m a walking Hindenburg. Pure disaster no matter how you look at it. I’m trying to figure out how to save a marriage that I don’t have much chance of saving. I can’t even consider falling in love with someone as beautiful as you are and as different from me. It’s too dangerous.

  “I have to go now, but I thank you for telling me that. I’ve needed someone to tell me that since I’ve come to New York. It’s good to feel attractive and wanted again.”

  “I’m not very good at this, am I, Tom?” she said, smiling.

  “No,” I said. “You’re terrific at it, Lowenstein. You’ve been terrific about everything.”

  I left her on the terrace as she looked out again at the lights of the city.

  16

  It was almost summer when the strangers arrived by boat in Colleton and began their long, inexorable pursuit of the white porpoise. My mother was baking bread and the suffusion of that exquisite fragrance of the loaves and roses turned our house into a vial of the most harmonious seasonal incense. She took the bread fresh from the oven, then slathered it with butter and honey. We took it steaming in our hands down to the dock to eat, the buttery honey running through our fingers. We attracted the ornery attention of every yellow jacket in our yard, and it took nerve to let them walk on our hands, gorging themselves on the drippings from our bread. They turned our hands into gardens and orchards and hives. My mother brought the lid of a mayonnaise jar full of sugar water down to the dock to appease the yellow jackets and let us eat in peace.

  We had almost finished the bread when we saw the boat, The Amberjack, bearing Florida registry, move through the channels of the Colleton River. No gulls followed the boat, so we were certain it was not a fishing vessel. It lacked the clean, luxurious lines of a yacht, yet there was a visible crew of six men whose sun-stained burnt-amber color announced them as veteran mariners. We would learn the same day that it was the first boat ever to enter South Carolina waters whose function was to keep fish alive.

  The crew of The Amberjack were not secretive about their mission and their business in these waters was known all over Colleton late that afternoon. Captain Otto Blair told a reporter from the Gazette that the Miami Seaquarium had received a letter from a Colleton citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, that an albino porpoise frequented the waters around Colleton. Captain Blair and his crew planned to capture the porpoise, then transport it back to Miami, where it would be both a tourist attraction and a subject for scientific inquiry. The crew of The Amberjack had come to Colleton in the interest of science, as marine biologists, inspired by a report that the rarest creature in the seven seas was a daily sight to the people of the lowcountry.

  They may have known all there was to know about porpoises and their habits, but they had badly misjudged the character of the people they would find in the lower part of South Carolina. The citizens of Colleton were about to give them lessons free of charge. A collective shiver of rage passed invisibly through Colleton; the town was watchful and alarmed. The plot to steal Carolina Snow was an aberrant, unspeakable act to us. By accident, they had brought the rare savor of solidarity to our shores. They would feel the full weight of our dissent.

  To them the white porpoise was a curiosity of science; to us she was the disclosure of the unutterable beauty and generosity of God among us, the proof of magic, and the ecstasy of art.

  The white porpoise was something worthy to fight for.

  The Amberjack, mimicking the habits of the shrimpers, moved out early the next morning, but it did not sight the porpoise that day and it set no nets. The men returned to the shrimp dock grim-lipped and eager for rumors about recent sightings of the Snow. They were met with silence.

  After the third day, Luke and I met their boat and listened to the crew talk about the long fruitless days on the river, trying to sight the white porpoise. Already, they were feeling the eloquent heft of the town’s censure and they seemed eager to talk to Luke and me, to extract any information about the porpoise they could from us.

  Captain Blair brought Luke and me on board The Amberjack and showed us the holding tank on the main deck where specimens were kept alive until they could reach the aquariums in Miami. He showed us the half mile of nets that they would use to encircle the porpoise. A man’s hand could pass easily through the meshing of their nets. The captain was a cordial middle-aged man and the sun had burned deep lines in his face, like tread marks. In a soft, barely discernible voice he told us how they trained a porpoise to eat dead fish after a capture. A porpoise would fast for two weeks or more before it would deign to feed on prey it would ignore in the wild. The greatest danger in the capture of a porpoise was that the animal would become entangled in the nets and drown. Hunting dolphins required a swift and skilled crew to ensure that drowning did not occur. He then showed us the foam rubber mattresses they laid the porpoises on once they got them on board.

  “Why don’t you just throw them in the pool, Captain?” I asked.

  “We do usually, but sometimes we’ve got sharks in the pool and sometimes a porpoise will hurt himself thrashing around in a pool that small. Often it’s better to just lie ’em down on these mattresses and keep splashing ’em with seawater so their skin won’t dry out. We move ’em from side to side to keep their circulation right and that’s about all there is to it.”

  “How long can they live out of the water?” Luke asked.

  “I don’t rightly know, son,” the captain answered. “The longest I ever kept one out of the water was five days, but he made it back to Miami just fine. They’re hardy creatures. When’s the last time you boys spotted Moby in these waters?”

  “Moby?” Luke said. “Her name is Snow. Carolina Snow.”

  “That’s what they�
�ve named her down at Miami, boys. Moby Porpoise. Some guy in the publicity department came up with that one.”

  “That’s the dumbest name I’ve ever heard,” Luke said.

  “It’ll bring the tourists running, son,” Captain Blair answered.

  “Speaking of tourists, a whole boatful spotted the Snow yesterday morning in Charleston Harbor as they were heading out for Fort Sumter,” said Luke.

  “Are you sure, son?” the captain asked, and one of the crewmen leapt to his feet to hear the rest of the conversation.

  “I didn’t see it,” Luke said, “but I heard it on the radio.”

  The Amberjack left for Charleston Harbor the next day, cruising the Ashley and the Cooper rivers looking for signs of the white porpoise. For three days they searched the waters around Wappoo Creek and the Elliott Cut before they realized that my brother Luke was a liar. They had also taught my brother how to keep a porpoise alive if the need ever arose.

  The call to arms between The Amberjack crew and the town did not begin in earnest until the evening in June when the crew tried to capture the white porpoise in full view of the town. They had sighted the Snow in Colleton Sound, in water much too deep to set their nets for a successful capture. All day, they had followed the porpoise, remaining a discreet distance behind her, stalking her with infinite patience until she began moving into the shallower rivers and creeks.