The Bookman's Tale

by Berry Fleming

  “Maybe I would?”

  “‘I sing the merry, merry maidens,/Lithe and blithe of limb and look,/One in girth, in coif, in cadence—’”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “‘—Girdled here as if to cook./God rest ye, little restless lasses,/Plunging ankle-deep in life,/God save your insulated chassis,/Daring now the paring knife—’”

  “I would have pared you, Edward! Cut you up in one-inch cubes and—”

  “‘Oh, dabble, dabble, little femmes,/Unleavened in the midst of leaven,/Hang your aprons—’”

  The steward announcing lunch with his hand bell on the deck behind them—as he had announced dinner on their first night out, mid-afternoon it seemed, swinging his bell at precisely five-thirty and showing them into their white dining room-living room; seating them at a bolted-down table, four on a bench under a shelf of barricaded paperbacks, the others across in bolted-down chairs, leaving the head and foot for the Captain and his wife who might dine with them or not “depending on wind and weather and the usual temperamental behavior of a cargo ship.”

  Appearing quite promptly that first evening, a bony man of forty-five with straw-colored hair (home-cut) plastered damp against skull and showing a sort of beaten path round the sides and back where the band of his cap had spent so much time. He made a polite try at connecting faces and names on a card in his hand and signaled with it at the steward to begin serving. “Mrs. Lundquist will not be dining with us but sends her greetings.”

  When they reached their not-unexpected dessert of white icecream and chocolate sauce he refused his with a contemptuous flat-of-the-hand to the steward, who seemed prepared for it and refilled his coffee cup instead; he pulled it in front of him, fished out a pipe with a charred rim that suggested the smudged top of the Lindvagen’s smokestack and settled down to making his passengers comfortable as if on Standing Orders from the Home Office. He said it was the custom on his ship, if agreeable to everybody, to tell stories of an evening, take turnabout in relating some significant event that had happened to them.

  “Or almost happened. Or,” gold edging to his front teeth showing, “that you wished had happened,”—stirring up some “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” among them, used to talking all at the same time and with a comfortable inconsequence. But alternate diversion seemed meager (a phonograph in a salt-pitted cabinet, a recalcitrant-looking TV, the reading matter suggesting discards by passengers making luggage space for duty-free souvenirs), and everyone seemed pleased—except Ray, in the midst of what might be his most important story and not at all inclined to share it.

  The Captain proposed they would later take a vote and give the winner a Christmas party on board when he cast anchor at York Island on Christmas Eve. “I discharge by lighter at York Town,” (only half audible through the ladies’ delighted buzz set off by “party”), adding like a mother-hostess to gathered-about children that they would draw straws for position, holding out a browned hand behind his head with, “The ballots, Erik?” which he tapped even at the exposed ends and offered all round like after-dinner cigars—pausing as he reached Ray to explain that Mr. Ray was a book publisher “and may hear something he can turn into a best seller” (cut short by “Mr. Ray’s” quick protest that his house didn’t publish fiction, and that in any case he was on a holiday).

  Holiday?—Awake in his bunk for hours wondering how he could play along in the little game (he seemed to be sixth or seventh) and at the same time hold back the very story that was in the front of his mind, the story indeed of his being on the ship at all; wondering accompanied by the far-down mumbling in the engine room, by the hiss of warm air through his wide-open porthole, the sleepy rocking of the vessel that even when he put out the light continued to show the oscillating pale ghost of his white dinner jacket, on a hanger to save its being crushed by half a week in a suitcase and spoiling, marring anyway, his entrance—re-entrance—into the life of someone he hadn’t seen in so long, the last time still wrapped in train sounds, night sounds, closing doors, her face pale in the narrowing crack of a door and gone, the sharp click of the latch saying “end” as distinctly as a voice, to which was added now the uncomfortable fact that she didn’t know he was coming, that he deliberately hadn’t told her, afraid she would say—write—“Don’t you dare!”

  And coming by water when a plane would have delivered him before a ship got well under way, explaining again to himself that he didn’t want mere transportation, wanted a feeling of distance, of change in keeping with his change of outlook (possible change), wanted a sense of leaving, passing through, arriving some place else. He didn’t want to look down on the Island with his head still full of the mainland, didn’t want to go knocking at her door or ringing her telephone or seeing her face until he had considered everything again—re-considered, in the sense of maybe thinking better of the whole romantic plan, sentimental in a way he should have long outgrown. The years had rained down on her as well as him; they would have passed on the street without knowing each other.

  Unless he heard her speak; he would know her voice, the tilt of her head if she laughed, the sort of thing that made her laugh. He loved her, but he also liked her, with the liking that underscores a love, the stem that carries the flower; he needed her, had felt a need of her at every clouded moment of a mostly sunny marriage, had often faced down the skeptic mocking him from a corner of himself: “The one that got away?” And now, three years after the accident, old but not old-old, hair a sable silvered (in Horatio’s terms), he needed her in ways he hadn’t known before, in ways the overheated young wouldn’t understand, or value if they did. Not just another body but another presence, another consciousness—and not just “another” but hers.

  Lonesome? No-and-yes. No, during the day; at the office with the others, a staff in more than one sense, his prop of questions and decisions (that he leaned on as he had the “walker” of his invalid months), his two or three current authors and their ingenious complaints. But afterhours was another matter, as if well-being faded with the sun. Lonesome then? Well, anyway, lonesome enough one night to half remember what the eagle said to Chaucer about his afterhours—something like, “Instead of reste and newe things, thou goest home to thy hous anoon, and also dumb as any stoon, thou sittest at another book, till fully dazed is thy look, and livest thus as an hermyte, althou thine abstinence is lyte.”

  At a bookshelf, in the midst of looking it up when Isabel phoned from Connecticut, she and Mary friends in college and the three of them in the New York years—widow now. “I’m going to Florida, Ted, to spend a week or so with Sister. I could take a plane over from Atlanta for a day or two if that’s convenient, for old time’s sale.” “Of course it’s convenient.” “If not, then on my way back?” “It’s perfect.”

  Why not Isabel? Why did it have to be Claudia? Just wanting the remote instead of the near? the chancy instead of the possible, the possibly possible?—the white pendulum of his dinner jacket melting away into the clang of Erik’s hand bell from the deck outside, pianissimo, to forte as he passed, to pianissimo, and the porthole full of horizontal, point-blank, booming-at-you sunlight.

  And then, day after day, bearing almost straight down, reminding you the Equator was just over the horizon, he and the Doctor in deck chairs in the shade out of the sticky wind, the Doctor saying he “took a dislike to the boy—man—the minute he walked in my office.” There watching the sky to the northeast light up in occasional bursts like a lantern uncovered then covered again, the back of his chair nudging his shoulders now and then as if this part of the Gulf Stream needed a resurfacing job.

  “Tall, good-looking, twenty-five to thirty. Southerner. ‘G-mawnin, Dr. Geltstein,’ (‘steen,’ as they say down there). Confident. Not put-on Jew-confident. Goy-confident, the real article. All the things I wasn’t, why shouldn’t I dislike him?” with a short laugh at himself that was like moving to protect a chess piece he had carelessly pushed into a trap. “Two or three years in the Navy, resigned, married t
he girl-he-left-behind-him and brought her up to the University while he got his Ph.D in anthropology—hoped to get it. Confident he would. Tuckwell, Oscar Tuckwell. Her name was Meg, in Barbados now—”

  Breaking off as the Captain passed on his afternoon prowl, white-top cap (once-white) on the back of his head pushing out his ears like pink ventilators, first mate at his heels with clipboard and pencil (Kristine-cat following along with monumental indifference). “Ya, a little weather, maybe,” when Ray mentioned the lightning—“vetter,” actually, pronunciation sometimes wanting but fluent in the language—moving on to pointing now and then at this and that, first mate jotting.

  Not enough to turn the Doctor off his subject but it did, and Ray said, “Tuckwell?” after a minute to pull him back, sensing the possibility of something for his Press after all (the Company on its feet again following a season of all but disastrous success—a wish-fulfillment book called Life Beyond the Grave, which hit a sort of metaphysical jack pot and trapped the Press between pay-on-delivery printers of edition after edition and jobbers paying in ninety days, if then; the Press on pins and needles about ordering a new edition, vulnerable to having orders suddenly dry up with the books still at the bindery).

  “Sewanee, Washington & Lee, some such place. Masters from Emory—a long story,” dropping it as Preacher Bickle snapped their picture with the new camera he said his church had given him (his “5-church circuit”) and sat down beside them.

  “I spent twelve years with the circus before I found the Lord,” as if dealing words off the top of his mind like cards off a worn deck already shuffled to suit him. “Drove the famous Forty-Horse Bandwagon through the streets of Paris for Barnum & Bailey. Frogs everywhere. Cheers. Vivre! Toujours! They had never seen the like. Took eight hours. Stopped now and then for ten minutes to rest my hands. Mayor of Paris gave me a medal. Lost it to the lion tamer in a poker game. I was a bad boy. Then I saw the light. Coming at me like the headlight on a steam engine.…”

  They had been to the races, the Holiday Steeplechase (not the Preacher, who was done with “playing the ponies”), the Captain and Mrs. Captain, Geltstein and Ray—the Captain in double-breasted going-ashore brown, shiny in places, and white-top cap, Mrs. in something dark and Sundayish, years-ago Sundayish, had watched through the thick tropical glare as the lead horse in the third race stumbled, rolled, pitched off the black jockey in his Christmas-tree shirt, tried to get up, fell back, lay quivering in the powdery sand and in less than a minute had a bullet in his head from a pistol in the hand of a small man in a derby dressed in blue serge—everybody on his feet in the flimsy stands, Mrs. Captain turning her head, the Captain watching it all as he might watch a deck hand chipping paint, the Doctor tensed, one hand tight on the seat-back in front of him.

  Mrs. Lundquist wanted to leave and Ray thought the Doctor did too but all of them stood there for a minute or two while a barefoot boy went scampering off toward the stables, danced round a skinny stable-hand already walking out behind a pair of mules hitched to a singletree dragging a chain and returned with him, eager to help with looping the chain about the horse’s flat neck; she turned her head as the cortege got under way, the chain pulling up the long jawbone and stretching out the neck like old rubber with no elasticity left. They followed her out, picking their way between the half-filled benches, the Captain following last, stopping in an aisle to see the rest of it, reluctant to go until everything was shipshape again.

  All of it wiped out of Ray’s mind by the churn of life in the Square, the din of motor horns and motors, the imperturbable thereness of the blue-black cop at the crossing, solid on his thick-soled shoes, three-inch red slash down the seam of his black pants, white jacket, leather belt, white British helmet; by his signaling to a rattletrap car from the hills with an elegant forearm and wrist to his shoulder: everything shipshape in the Square.

  “Don’t shove off without us,” shouting through the racket as they separated.

  “Na-a!” with his Norwegian laugh. “I vistle,” pulling twice on a make-believe cord by the rim of his cap, gold dental work shining (the Preacher in a doorway catching all of it with an inaudible click and a country smile).

  And he and Geltstein had frosted pineapple drinks in the garden of the hotel and talked a little about themselves, not much—the Doctor going to Barbados to give three lectures at the College, “Codrington, know some people with a place near Bridgetown” (the words later popping into Ray’s mind at the Doctor’s, “Her name was Meg, in Barbados now”); Ray mentioning San Juan de Pinos and saying he had a friend there (wondering if he really did). Both of them clearly more at ease on their shipmates: Pyt who said he was a diver, a thin man with an old sunburn and a reddish beard getting gray in places (passing round a gold coin he said was a Spanish doubloon, “Minted in Colon, 1621. Off the San Fernando”), Frank Hardly and his wife from Colorado who had never seen the sea and thought a boat ride to Surinam and back would be a nice way to spend the Holidays (“Gave the boys at the plant two weeks, I manufacture pickles, store the cukes a year in brine, Colorado’s famed for cukes, the Japs grow the best ones”), Preacher Bickle with his camera (“Gift from my flock, boat ticket too, they love me, God bless ‘em’), the two young woman from Alabama going to Paramaribo where the husband of one of them was in the Consulate (“Romance is my hobby,” Geltstein quoting the younger as saying with a bright laugh).

  And going on after a silence, “Years ago a chap came up to Princeton to work with a colleague of mine for a Ph.D. in anthropology,” Ray thinking later it was the mention of the Southern women that put him in mind of the Southerner who was “Goy-confident, the real article,” though still later he wondered if it wasn’t the business at the racetrack that reminded him, the pistol-shot in the sunny afternoon; stopping as if sorry he had begun and pointing off at the top-heavy palms and the buzzards high up in the sky like the cookbooks’ “freshly-ground pepper,” circling idly as though waiting for bedtime to tumble into the hotel trees. “Friends of mine at Emory wrote me he was coming, top-grade student and—” the deep “vistle” rolling in over the palms like a gust of wind that might have shaken them, lifting both to their feet, the Doctor downing the last of his drink, Ray leaving the rest of his.

  They overtook the two women on the dock, halfway out among the pink stacks of pine, barrels of salt fish, cylinders of oxygen, bags of maize, crates stenciled Quinine Tonic (with a tropical overtone), all of it under a squeaky spicy rosin smell mixed with ocean smell. They were talking to a bearded white man in a ragged straw hat and torn-off shirt sleeves who seemed to be asking for money and looked as if he could use it. One of the women was opening a hand purse when a man who might have been the head stevedore—khaki jacket, swagger stick in his armpit, sharp black features like a white actor in a minstrel show—approached them at an easy stroll and the beggar hopped away.

  “Save your money, ladies,” cigarette moving in the middle of his front teeth. “I chase him off every time a ship ties up with American dollars.” As they passed Ray heard, “… on the beach … got in trouble, lost his papers … Q-mum,” pocketing what would have bought another drink for the wino—making Publisher Ray wish he had time to overtake him and maybe get a book for his Sunwise Press (even if Conrad and Stevenson had already written it).

  Geltstein said, “All aboard, ladies,” and a few steps on, the ladies passed them, running on ahead and up the gangplank—in jeans this time. Skirts the morning they joined the cruise in Tampa, joined the four passengers in one of the ships boats, the vessel alongside the wharf but taking on the travelers from the harbor side because of the shifting engines, the cranes and winches and cables swinging the blond lumber. “Not much more, folks!” from the first mate, shouted through the clatter with a sympathetic grin from where he stood on a thwart to hold the boat against the ten-foot vertical ladder lashed to the dock while one of them (who became Frank Hardly from Greeley, Colorado) gallantly climbed part way up to assist the ladies—specifically to help them
hold down their skirts against the Gulf wind; which he managed very well with the first one, standing close against her and guiding her down almost in his arms. The other one, impatient at waiting, took to the ladder on her own, pulling her skirt between her legs and trying to hold it there but needing both hands for the ladder and the skirt whipping free against her elbows; glancing round the boat with a pink-and-white laugh when she was down and, “Sorry!”, dismissing it with, “I’m Mrs. Ackworth, everybody. Sarah-Wesley. And this is my cousin Rebecca, Miss Newberry.” Miss Newberry gaily exclaiming, “Oh, ‘Becky,’ please!” (Mrs. Hardly’s broad fingers still against her blushes at the flash of white underpants), the mate pushing off and rowing under the salt-eaten crag of the bow—

  “Ready, Mr. Edward Ray of the Sunwise Press?” as if exulting at snapping handcuffs on a fugitive, handing him the newspaper folded back to show “Arrivals & Departures” at the bottom of the front page and what looked like (without his glasses) “Book Publisher among those arriving today by the Lindvagen” and a little more he couldn’t read, she all spic and span in cotton skirt and blouse and bright silk handkerchief at her chin, leaning a forearm on the high back of another chair and watching him as if half expecting him to deny it, he for a moment thinking less about her seeing the lines than about the possibility (probability?) of Claudia seeing them too, trying to reassure himself that Claudia wouldn’t be studying “Arrivals & Departures” as this woman had been—and no doubt her husband too—drawn to it by wondering about this visitor they had rescued; and then telling himself “Book Publisher” wouldn’t give him away to Claudia (he hadn’t been in that end of book publishing in those days), then completely reassured at remembering Claudia wouldn’t have seen the paper, wasn’t on the Island, was “expected by lunchtime tomorrow, sir, is there a message?”