Morgan laughed: “I’d be willing to sign an affidavit that you’re not.”
“Thanks for the reassurance…. I’ll get to the point of that weekend…. The trip went off better than I’d supposed it would. My mother and grand-father sat together on the train, and I sat by myself behind them. When we got to where we were going—a little resort town called Bellstone—we were picked up at the railroad station by the husband of the woman who ran the boarding-house we were booked into for the night. That we’d been met in a horse-drawn, closed buggy threw my grand-father into one of his worry fits: how much was the ride going to cost? Or was it included in the price of the rooms? He whispered the issue to death with my mother…. Anyhow—we made it to the boarding-house. Mrs. Gamp—I’ll never forget that name—showed us to our rooms, then told us that the beach was a ten-minute walk away, to just go out the front door and continue straight down the lane…. We set off, and sure enough, ten minutes or so later, we crossed up over a set of sand dunes and there it was. The sea!” The captain’s eyes widened, and he said again in a voice that weighed of passion: “The sea… I couldn’t believe my eyes…. The extent of it and the way the waves folded over on themselves, one after another. I just stood, goggle-eyed…. And you know those lulls between the time one wave crashes on the shore and the next one breaks? I started in timing my breathing by the intervals, they seemed that natural to me. The smell stirred me too…. I didn’t know a flying thing about the workings of the sea—about currents and the like—but I formed the idea straight off that in the water before me was a bit of every named ocean in my geography book and that if I held a few drops of it in my hand, I’d have a grip on the world. It was the most exciting idea I’d ever had…. What happened next was my grand-father’s putting to me the question: ‘Well, what do you think of the ocean? and do you like it?’ I was in such a trance that the sound of his voice made me jump. I knew if I tried to tell him how much I liked it—what I thought of it—I’d start to bawl. Why? Because the next day I’d have to leave it…. In my mind, you see, just in those first few minutes in its company, it was already established for me that I belonged to it.” As if he was embarrassed by the expressed fervency of the remark, he bent his face down toward his lap. “It’s what I meant earlier when I said the week-end changed my life.”
Morgan, deeply immersed in the captain’s narrative, avowed: “That’s what it is to fall in love.”
The captain raised his head. For a moment, his face bore a look of predicament, as if he were uncertain how to respond to a comment made with such emotion and which, Morgan supposed, ran counter to his own prescriptions of masculine reserve. At last he said: “I’d not have put it that way. I lack your ease. But I won’t argue the point.”
Morgan bridged a brief silence with: “On the terms you wanted, it must have taken a lot of doing for you to get out of Suffern.”
To that observation, the captain laughed: “We’d be here this time next week if I ragged on about all I went through…. But I will tell you this much: the next summer I went back to Bellstone and got a job as a hand on a boat—a thirty-foot sloop called Elaine—owned by a grand old man named Adams. He’d had a heart-attack and didn’t trust himself to sail alone anymore. He was a fine yachtsman…. After a month with him aboard the Elaine, I was solidly hooked on the sea. I was fortunate. I mean—I don’t know many men who’ve had the luck of finding out at such a young age what they were born to do with their lives.” He smiled: “I’ve chewed your ears off.”
“It’s the best time I’ve had in weeks.”
“At least it’s been peaceful.” The captain stood up. “It’s time we turned in…. Thanks, Shurtliff.”
“Many thanks to you, sir.”
Spent and reeking from its Babylonian excesses, the crew struggled back to the ship the next day.
Sutter, never given to subtleties, let Morgan know he’d been true to his word: that he’d returned the Owl “whole.” “We walked around and had a good meal, then took in a Gary Cooper movie. Owl liked it.”
“So you were back early last night,” Morgan commented.
“Yes and no, sir,” Sutter answered, and, as Morgan did not rise to the ambiguity, Sutter, being Sutter, smiled his worldly smile and explained: “After I returned the Owl, I went back ashore—”
—on which note, by turning from it, Morgan retired the subject.
They departed Aden and passed through Bab el Mandeb (“The Gates of Hell”) into the Red Sea.
Sarkis had “done” the Red Sea as second mate on a vessel of American registry back in 1936, and described the region’s summer temperatures as being “hot beyond belief.” Each day, he said, the sun had burned “at a flaming pitch” that the humidity had been “thick as mold” the nights of the passage “gummy sweats.” He shrugged and ended with: “It’s a bit cooler this time of the year, so we’ll have it easier.”
It took the best part of a day to go through the Suez Canal…. For this penultimate fraction of the voyage they anchored twice, the first time at Suez to have the cargo inspected and to take on a pilot; the second time at about mid-point of the canal’s length, in the lay-by of Great Bitter Lake (named after the taste of its water), so that three ships proceeding from the opposite direction, could pass. At Al Qantarah, near the site of the old landmark railroad bridge, the captain announced in a winner’s voice: “Now! Now, by God, we’re within spitting reach of Port Said.”
The date was February 25, 1943.
The voyage had taken one hundred and four days.
They anchored in the roads of Port Said and for three days lay waiting for a berth. Phelps, the second mate, set up a dart-board and dragooned the crew into a ship’s competition—a diversion that but feebly relieved the ugly agitations of boredom and the lingering, dispiriting effects of the cruel fact that no mail awaited them in Port Said. In the purser’s sorry, abstract words, none had “slipped through.”
In all, the time spent ashore in the captain’s company was an oddly benign interval. He and the captain sought no diversions of an altering sort, so had none: in the main, their mood stayed pensive, almost to the point of melancholy—absurdly so, given that the interlude was meant to be (in the captain’s wry words) their “great moment.”
In the end, they were ashore only for a day…. Sarkis had gone to Cairo the previous week and suggested to them what they should do, starting with a drink at the legendary Shepheards Hotel, followed by lunch at a restaurant called Lulu’s (owned by a friend of his, Des Milburn, who had been chief cook on a ship they’d served on together before the war); then a walk through a bazaar, after which, if they wanted to, they could go see some pyramids…. Sarkis had also “set them up” with a driver who’d agreed to be at their service from the time in the morning when they left the Stubbins until they returned that night—which driver, Magdi Mohammed, awaited them, as arranged, outside the dock gates. Magdi was a ghoul-eyed, slavishly deferential, congenital grinner. His car was a dusty, ancient Mercedes, which bore a sign attached to one of its doors: TAXI TRANSPORT BY EXCELLENCE. Morgan thought it marvelous and with a laugh said so.
Under way, the captain said: “Well, Shurtliff, this is it—the start of our great moment.”
“The way Magdi drives it may be our last…. Do you agree that our ‘transport by excellence’ could use a new set of shock-absorbers?”
“You’ve read my mind.” The captain took off his cap and hung it over the knob of his knee. “But the shock-absorbers aside, I can’t get over what a motherly sort Sarkis is.”
…Cairo’s traffic moved at a snail’s pace; the blaring horns deafened. Beggars—tragic grotesques of all ages and degrees of pathos—pounded their hands on the car’s closed windows. To Morgan’s murmured “Christ—”, the captain said in a hollow voice, “Too many people.” And after a moment: “Would you mind, Shurtliff, if we forgo that drink at Shepheards Hotel and go straight to Lulu’s? I’m starved.”
Morgan’s consent was made with a vigorous nod.
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The entry into Lulu’s was through a closed, latticed iron gate guarded from the inside by a tall, barrel-chested man of indeterminate racial origin dressed in what seemed to Morgan’s amused eyes to be the dimly romantic, yesteryear regalia of a Foreign Legionnaire. The man appraised Morgan and the captain, head to toe, and then, as if they had passed some occult test, he unlatched the gate and admitted them with a wordless bow. Immediately audible were the sounds of a popular eatery in full noon-time swing. They crossed a well-planted courtyard and passed through a narrow hallway into the region of the dining room—a spacious, coffer-ceilinged chamber whose natural coolness was abetted by the slow-moving propellers of numerous overhead fans. Memories formed of Somerset Maugham’s descriptions of similar colonial haunts in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Rangoon: places now all fallen to the Japanese. There were even potted palms, rooted in immense urns painted over with vivid flowers and resting dragons. But what astonished—what caused the captain to draw in his breath and to mutter “Good God—” was that the room was thick with officers from most every branch of the Allied military services, some of positively celestial rank. The active feel these noisy eminences gave off was of spiff and prance: of that thoroughbred air captured for the eye in gravure photographs of the winner’s circle at celebrated racetracks. The high-stakes impression drew a smile from Morgan.
They were led to a table by a turbaned headwaiter whose demeanor was a cross between a Levantine Jeeves and a bodyguard to Al Capone. His manner changed though, instantly, when the captain told him: “We’d like Mr. Milburn to know that two friends of Mr. Sarkis are here.”
“Indeed. I’ll tell Mr. Milburn straight-away.”
“Hold on…. We’re in need of a drink. What’ll you have, Shurtliff?”
Morgan’s reply was cut off by a voice that came from the table most adjacent to their own: “Welcome to Cairo, gentlemen.” They turned in their chairs and faced a British lieutenant-general (in company with a Free French colonel) who raised a large hand and in resonant tones said: “These days, the only drink available in this part of the world is gin and orange.”
Morgan watched the captain handle the general with a thin smile and the simple comment: “Thanks for the tip—” and, to the lingering waiter: “Two gins, please; no orange.”
The waiter moved off.
From surrounding tables, authoritative intonements on the progress of the war in Africa drifted their way: “—the remains of Rommel’s forces on their last legs—” “—knew the tide had turned in our favor when the Martuba airfields were captured—” “—Leclerc’s victory at Kasr Rhilane—”
“They’re a confident bunch,” the captain remarked. Then, with yield: “I guess they’ve earned the right to be.”
The waiter returned quickly, bearing on a tray two soup cups and two glasses filled with what Morgan assumed was gin. He placed himself between Morgan and the captain, lowered his torso and with a mighty discretion told them: “It’s water in the glasses. The stuff in the soup cups is Scotch whiskey, compliments of Mr. Milburn.” He stood straight again: “I’ll get menus for you now.”
The captain said, “Thank Mr. Milburn for us—” and to Morgan: “Always trust Sarkis.”
The food was excellent. They took their time over it, glad for the change of dining on land and in a stead so opposite from the Stubbins’s officers’ mess. That the view let on to the courtyard, and that the berry-laden espaliered trees which flanked its walls attracted a species of small, sparrow-like birds, contributed, for Morgan, the more touching part of the difference. The captain, though, kept returning his gaze to the worldlier scene: “It’s an interesting crowd,” he said. “I never thought I’d be lifting a fork in the company of a Royal Navy rear-admiral…. No…Over there, with the two commodores.”
Morgan followed the direction of his gaze. “Dazzlers all,” was his only comment.
The captain touched the knot of his neck-tie: “I feel like I’m at a costume party.”
Morgan guffawed: “Would that we were!”
At some point well along in the meal, the captain confided: “I’ve been putting off telling you…. We’ll be leaving next Friday. I got my orders day before yesterday.”
“Going back the same way we came?”
“The very same.”
They retreated for a bit into their own thoughts.
“We’re a scintillating pair,” Morgan finally offered.
“Aren’t we just…It’s a bazaar we’re up for next, right?”
Whether or not Magdi’s choice of bazaar was of the best, they would never know…. He put them out of the car into the seethe of an immense plaza carpeted with sheep and camel dung and furnished with stalls presided over by bearded, gesticulating native merchants hawking wares that ran the gamut from the gaudiest of seraglio scarves to “guaranteed” Roman vases. As in all such crowded, venal places, there was an air of menace, heightened at every turn by a human tide of beggars, fakirs, and whores—the last in startling abundance. Toward them all, Morgan felt only sorrow. He turned to the captain: “You don’t seem to be enjoying this any more than I am. What about the pyramids? Shall we ride out and see them?”
“The sooner the better. This is a zoo…. I’ve never liked zoos.”
Rated against the perspective of expectation, the set of pyramids Magdi drove them to impressed Morgan as being small. He found this sense of lesserness oddly disconcerting, for of course and in fact, they were immense. In the end, he decided it was the more silent, more solemn, more amazing experience of the circumjacent desert that scaled them down and created for him the greater, conjurable sense that, finally, they were no more or less than gestures at immortality made by mortally affrighted kings.
He had come to them replete with interest and an open curiosity, only to find that what existed and happened around them—all, it seemed to him, of a dark aspect—put his enthusiasm at hazard: above the tombs, against the sky’s unbroken blue, a congregation of buzzards wheeled in huge, ritualistic circles, round and round, round and round; cutting the horizon, far, far off, the silhouette of a caravan moved in slow degrees toward a goal he felt was beyond his capacity to imagine; a bit away from where he stood, a group of cowled native women sat without speaking in attitudes of such unaliveness and indifference as to suggest their silence was more fated than chosen; and nearer, again and again, he met the gaze of tenebrously gowned men as they walked toward him, but their eyes held nothing for him, no greeting, no surprise, no wonder, no passion either of exclusion or inclusion—only a sepulchral remoteness—itself, he concluded, a form of concurrence that he was, as they were, but another timeless soul timelessly met in the shadow of death.
“Shurtliff.”
He welcomed the call. He looked at his watch: nearly six in the evening.
He squared his shoulders, reset his cap on his head, and with long, determined steps—as if on the challenge of an uphill path—he strode forward over the sand to where the captain was waiting by Magdi’s car.
Friday night, March 19, 1943
A star-filled sky, but no moon; a calm sea.
They were a week out from Port Said, in the Indian Ocean just south of the Mozambique Channel, bound at full speed for Lourenco Marques.1
On this night, as on all others, the Stubbins showed no glimmer of light. By order, life-jackets were worn by all. In every quarter of the ship, tasks were performed as quietly as possible. When words were exchanged, voices were kept low. Morgan, making his nightly check of the armament, was greeted in such a way by the Owl, who, with Sutter, was stationed forward at the dual-purpose gun. In a near whisper, Owl remarked on the fair night, the brightness of the stars; the peace. “I’ve almost come to like the sea, sir,” he added with a soft laugh. Sutter told him he was out of his skull, but to keep talking anyhow: gab broke the boredom…. Midship, at one of the anti-aircraft guns, Vodapec too commented on the night, calling it “nice,” and the sea “smooth as silk.”
“Shurtliff.”
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He was on his way to the ship’s stern: the hushed imperative came from behind. He turned around: “Sir—”
In the diffused starlight, even standing close as they immediately were, the captain’s face under its darkened cap was barely visible. His voice, though, for all its quiet, was distinct, and the message conveyed, clear as glass: “We’ve received word of submarine activity in the area…. I’ve decided not to alert the crew. If nothing happens, it would only strain them unnecessarily, and if the worst happens—” The captain wavered, then finished with: “I can’t see that foreknowledge would arm anyone to advantage. Sarkis agrees with me…. Anyhow, there it is, Shurtliff.”
Matters of Chance Page 9
