I laughed shortly. “You know what the doc said to me? ‘Captain, if there were other Navy ships around and we had some sort of fleet fitness competition, the Nathan James would win sailing away. And if we had a fleet-wide Atlantic City “good-looking contest,” our ship’s company—our men, our women—the others would just take one look and give up. We’re coming to have a company of Greek gods and goddesses on our hands, Captain.’ Isn’t that fancy language for the doc?”
The Jesuit smiled. “A bit overdone, perhaps. I don’t see Preston especially enjoying being called a Greek god. Or Noisy Travis. But I take the doc’s point.” He spoke quietly. “When I look back on those half-alive creatures we were when we came out of that passage in the Sunda Sea—as a lad I always imagined hell as being something like that—into the Indian Ocean . . . the angels must have been riding on our topmasts, sir.”
“Let us trust they still are. If there are tropical angels.” I took a breath. “So much for the physical side of ship’s company. Otherwise . . .”
I lingered, hearing that sole sea sound, reflecting on the past weeks: On the whole, the ship’s company appeared well content. If beneath this one sensed the expectancy, one felt no unbridled urgency on their part; now that the women themselves were fashioning the details of a plan to be announced and execution of it to commence at the completion of the settlement—all this they had been told—the men seemed not just to accept but almost to embrace this order as to precedences, the idea that it was imperative other undertakings be attended to first; preeminently, that a settlement be established as the first essential to our well-being, to our survival. They could expect—aye, look forward to—the other thing, but they understood full well that in their own best interests this order was but fitting: first to get the community working. And we were achieving that. Far from there being the slightest sense of rapacity in the air, the men waited not just with patience but with respect. A distinct sense of a special consideration in the air operating from the men toward their women shipmates; and—if I did not misread it, an immense percipience on their part—a realization which translated into sympathy for the great difficulty the women were even now facing in trying to work out something, solve a problem filled with such infinite complexities. Along with an extra solicitation for their welfare. Delaney, for instance, coming to me one day, concerned. “Captain, don’t you think you should take the women out of the fields?” “I don’t see the slightest reason why, Gunner, but I’ll check and get back to you.” Referring the matter to Lieutenant Girard, her confirming my reading. “Why, that’s very thoughtful of Delaney, sir. But it’s nonsense. What would the women do with themselves?” I summed up the essence of this assessment now to the Jesuit. He was in substantial agreement.
“The men themselves,” I said. “Something like a feeling of contentment.”
It was a question. He waited a moment. I could sense his own independent evaluation at work. Then: “Reassured as to the way things progress. Contentment may be a little too strong a word.”
“Then of expectation, you mean? Of waiting for it?”
“Yes, that says it. They know it will be soon. They wait.”
“For the word from the women?”
“Yes. But I think they wait in trust for the most part. And a certain perplexity. Wondering themselves how it could possibly be worked out.”
“And some trepidation?” I was prying on the lid of his confession box; he would know that, and knowing, protect it; but afford me that which violated no confidence, and filled in blanks of dangerous ignorance.
“Trepidation? Oh, yes. For everybody.”
“Perfectly natural.”
“Perfectly natural.” The Jesuit gave a low laugh. “Preston said something to me.” With the name I knew we were outside the confession box. “‘Father, it’s going to be almost like incest—a man’s own shipmates.’ He was entirely serious; concerned.”
I smiled wryly. “I think when the time comes most of the men will bring themselves to overcome such sentiments.”
“Affirmative,” the Jesuit said again.
I turned a little toward him on our parapet perch on the sea cliffs. I needed to get it out of the way, that one thing that had haunted me so; fearful of its augustness, its presumptuousness; yet it would not leave me; here beside me the only man I could say it to.
“Listen to me, Father.” Deliberately, given the subject matter I was about to broach, employing that form of address. “I need to say something before we go any further. Not as to the fact of doing it. But as to another consideration.”
Again he waited, attentive only to my needs, and I said it, trying to present it as might any naval officer making a report, in the prescribed manner drilled into naval officers from midshipman days, straight, emotionless, but certain hard facts to be taken into account before reaching a vital, perhaps fateful decision as to course, which these facts directly bore on.
“However great we look, as the doc says, and actually truly healthy, no one knows what may have happened to us. All that contamination we went through. Changes not affecting our own health, now or—we hope—in the future. Something else: We may or may not be capable of reproducing ourselves. Some of us may be sterile. All of us may be sterile. And if we, or some of us, are not—can reproduce, some of those may be flawed as to the kind of children resulting, others not. All of us may be flawed in that way; none of us may be. The doc says that. Selmon says that. There is no way to tell as to any of these matters. No way to tell the whole from the sick—genetically speaking. No way to hide from the fact. So it concerns me. Do you understand?”
“Oh, yes. I understand. I understand the circumstance and I understand your concern.”
“I’ve been trying to come to my own understanding as to it—to the position we must take. I am still doing so.” I paused. “Father, let me give you one point of view . . . a kind of theological argument, you might say. Bear in mind that I’m an amateur in these matters of reasoning, logic, compared with yourself.”
He smiled. “That kind of statement always makes me want to grab my pocket to see if my wallet’s missing. Please proceed.”
I reached now to that quieter, more philosophical manner, tone, that flowed customarily between us, bound us in a kind of rhythm; two men quietly exploring a difficulty, a problem: seeing how far it might take them down the road to some form of solution. Now trying to reach him on his own grounds. Somehow, as I began, more intensely aware even than before of the great emptiness of the sea stretching before us, of the stillness of the green island all around.
“It goes this way. God intended to wrap it up. Otherwise, given the fact He has all that power, as you religious ones are forever assuring us, why did He let it happen? Could it be that He decided He made an error back when? That man didn’t work out, that he is a biological and evolutionary freak; that unlike any other to inhabit it only disturbs the earth, does harm to it; that he must simply disappear, and let evolution start over and see if it can come out better next time. So that to try to continue ourselves is only standing in the way of God’s intent, so far as we know pretty well accomplished except for ourselves—maybe a few others out there somewhere; in that sense such acts almost a defiance of God’s will. Consequently, our first responsibility is not to reproduce ourselves, even if we can; on the contrary, it is to make certain above all that we do not do so. In order to accord with His expressed and obvious purpose.”
I stopped, conscious of what a long and laborious speech it had been; nevertheless knowing that I had to say what had for so long been in me, burning there in a way not without its torments. I sensed his soft smile. I had entered his territory and its pursuit obviously interested him; gripped him.
“A pretty argument,” he said. “I see a good deal of cogency in it. It has one flaw, of course. Man hasn’t been done away with. We are here.”
“Are we? Men and women who, in the first place, do not know if they can reproduce at all. Secondly, that if they do,
do not know but what the result will be mutagenic babies. I hardly call that being here in the sense of whole human beings alive on the earth.”
“But those are mere conjectures, Captain. You said yourself that the doc doesn’t know, Selmon doesn’t know. They’re just throwing dice. We may be flawed. We may not be flawed. Quoting yourself, we don’t have the faintest idea. Even if only one man of us is not, one woman of us is not, then God has not done away with the human race.”
“Do you wish to take that chance of mutated babies to care for? On this island?” I said brutally. “Or worse: create a mutated race?”
I heard a certain upward movement in his tone, a detectable rise in the temperature of our dialogue.
“Captain, we have taken many chances. If there is any matter where there is no choice it is this one. If there is the slightest possibility that we have life in us . . . we simply must find out.”
“It’s quite possible that the only way we are ever going to discover the answer is for every man to screw every woman.” I meant, probably—a stupid idea—to shock him. And I could not help repeating the other argument. “And I say again, it’s whether we should, whether we deserve to be continued.”
He seemed to have had enough at least of that one.
“Deserve? Are you God?” he said viciously.
It had come suddenly. For a moment a tense impasse held between us. We stepped back from it as from a chasm; fearful, equally both of us, of dangerous emotion. Serious rift between us greatly inexpedient on my part, his influence with the men. Though this tolerance had its limits, not yet reached. I quieted down, felt him doing the same. He waited a moment. Then turned from looking at the sea to looking at me, a certain quiet fixity of gaze in those deep-set, anthracitic eyes; that face I had always thought with its curious mixture of spirituality and sensuality. His voice was quiet again, no attempt at being persuasive but rather as though stating a home truth or two.
“Do you realize what a fluke it is, Captain, that we have women aboard? God put them here for a purpose. The most important purpose of all.”
I always had profound reservations about people who enlisted the Almighty on their side, with no visible permission on His part. In fact one of the things I liked best about the Jesuit was that this was a practice he almost never engaged in. Until lately, when he had begun, to me an ominous, almost sinister sign, to drop the name of the Divine now and then into our dialogue, as if that Being were automatically in his corner in all matters. There was nothing I suspected more in human intercourse. He said now:
“It is not by accident that we have women aboard.”
I came away from it; feeling that to pursue what God had in mind when the most pressing concerns were coming right down on top of me was a waste of precious time . . . Besides, there suddenly occurred to me another way to resolve this matter . . . another source whose decision and province it more rightly was than that of either of us.
“Let us leave that matter aside.” I waited a moment. “In letting the women decide, as planned, the nature of the arrangements, some usual restrictions as to the matter of sexual practices will quite possibly go by the board.” I turned and looked straight at him, feeling an almost malicious pleasure in confronting him with that. “If you—or God—has objections in that area, I would like to hear them stated now.”
His smile actually soft; part the ridiculousness of my thinking he was in any way to be shocked; part his invincibly resourceful way of dealing with anger: Don’t even recognize its presence. He spoke with an almost impudent delight.
“The Church is marvelously adaptable, Captain, even versatile. Hence its endurance. So was our Lord. It was He who spoke of the ox in the ditch on the Sabbath.”
I could play that, too. I had not been a missionary’s son for nothing. “Also I hear there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage in heaven. Mark 12:25.”
He gave me a half-arch glance. “Have we arrived in heaven?”
He went on quickly to something that obviously had been on his own mind. “Captain, I have to say this. There are some—there are more than a few who . . . knowing that whatever the arrangements, they will have to be . . . let us say, different . . . are beginning to question the morality of it.”
“The morality?” The word shot out of me.
I knew at once I had been given access to his confession box—no names . . . thus okay . . . valuable information . . . his trying to prepare me. I led him on.
“Did you say the morality?”
“To the extent some might choose to abstain altogether.”
The idea was instantly disturbing; the implications all too clear. The idea of a divisiveness wherein one portion of ship’s company, themselves forgoing, looked upon another portion of it as engaging in immoral practices. Nothing could be more dangerous to our community.
“I don’t like it,” I said. “It would be absolutely unacceptable.”
“Maybe I can do something there,” he said quietly. That was a gift.
“It would be greatly desired if you could.”
Something told me not to pursue it, to let it rest exactly there. I turned away from it.
“As you know, Girard and the women will presently come up with . . . whatever they come up with.” I had sensed, as noted, a certain rising tension between himself and that officer . . . its source uncertain to me, but my speculations defining it as something rather precisely having to do with what was in progress at this very moment between ourselves: the women. Girard’s influence with them, over them: the priest’s influence with them. I felt I needed to know more as to the reality of such a possible conflict. Furthermore, a reminder might be in order that there were other forces at work, perhaps as strong as his own, in this area we had been discussing. Maybe as well a touch of baiting in my intention. “How lucky we are to have Lieutenant Girard. A smart, capable officer. Sometimes, forgetting gender, I think the smartest we’ve got aboard.”
He said nothing. I said, “Or do you disagree?”
“Oh, no. Doubtless an accurate evaluation. Captain, may I say something?”
We were somewhat back again, fortunately—if not completely so—to our more customary, emotion-excluding tone of discussion. “Could I stop you?”
He grinned. “Just this. Lieutenant Girard is all you say and probably a good deal more. She is a great asset to this ship’s company. Her gifts are numerous. I’d say she’s quite aware of them—not at all necessarily a negative quality; in fact, on the whole I think a favorable one: Modesty is a much overrated attribute. Unless I’m badly mistaken, she has another. I risk the sin of redundancy in telling you something you surely already know. She has a hunger for power.”
“Quite possibly true. With the undertakings that are about to come to pass, that could work to our advantage—maybe make all the difference. Assuming her decisions and judgments are the right ones, the best ones—I lean heavily to the side that they will be just that—she can lead the women to her will. And, of course, if she—or they—venture into areas not their prerogative: I am still captain of this ship.”
Somehow, perhaps because of that last expression, it came then, my entering his confession box as I knew all along I would at some point do. Speaking with the quietness one does then, half to myself, half to him.
“Starting over,” I said. “I have no illusions, Father. However good a ship’s company, this is something new, different. Something men and women, at least men and women of this kind, have not tried. Only a fool would predict what will happen. I’ve lived all my life with sailors. I wouldn’t choose any other men in the world above them. One doesn’t have to sanctify them but I know for a fact that sailors have more caring for the man alongside than . . . well, than any other collection of people I’ve ever run into or heard about. Will that hold on land? Will it hold with the women business? Aye, there is my concern, Father. And it seems—well, that only the question of the women stands between us and every chance at making a good life on this island.
And that, now, we’re about to begin. The men—the women . . .”
I paused, sea-listening, went on. Came to the point that was the chief author of my anguish.
“‘The men will be better for having the women.’ There is a trap in the truism. Whatever the women come up with, given the mathematics of our situation, the men are not going to have them at will; any time they want it. Far from it. At the very best a tough rationing system.”
It was almost as if this problem had not occurred to him, something I did not for a moment believe.
“Any priest knows that full-time celibacy is far easier than not-often-enough fornication.”
He gave a mordant laugh. “Sex!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Everything connected with it. Causes more problems, people spend more time thinking, worrying, agonizing over it than all the rest of the woes of man put together. Of all the verbosity I’ve listened to in confession . . . nothing so drives people—men, women—off the rails. The presence of it, the absence of it: Which of those two did more so I never could decide. If it were not heresy to suggest, I would sometimes think God had begun to doze, was excessively fatigued, hadn’t worked it out properly, when he put that part in place . . . Forgive the homily, Captain. But Christ, how sick I used to get hearing it sitting in that box! Strictly in confidence, this.”
“I shall keep my vows not to tell anybody.” I sat, amused, and something else: speculating that that outpouring might well be a halyard signal of his own not fully vanquished carnality. I returned to course.
“Men are possessive of their women,” I said. “There’s my great fear.”
“It’s not the men I’m worried about.”
I turned to him. “Then you’re worried about something. What is it?”
He looked out to sea, speaking as he did, myself sharply surprised at the rather hard, wheel-over degree turn our dialogue now took, a matter obviously for some time of urgent concern to him; his more formal tones.
“You won’t mind, sir, if I repeat what I remarked to you a while back; and amplify a little? ‘You regard women too highly,’ I put it then. In what you say I perceive that I may have been in error.” He gave a nonchalant shrug. I recognized that circuitous gentleness which he quite often employed with me, invariably undergirding a most firmly held point. “Also I may not have been sufficiently precise then. What I meant to say was that I thought you may fail to recognize their capabilities when possessed of power—true of all of us human creatures to be sure. Accented in their own special ways in the case of women. Women aren’t very polite.”
The Last Ship: A Novel Page 57
