vOYAGE:O'Side

by Francis Kroncke

CHAPTER 16

  Back on the ship, Da as map upon his soul Frantz was present to the darkness which lay ahead. When he tried to plot the line of their voyage, he found that his hand wanted to draw circles—not just circles but curling circles in a whirling fashion...in his mind’s eyes all that he could imagine were swirls—most unnerving to him was that these were swirls up in the sky, not upon the ocean. Fiery swirls.

  He dared not look up at the heavens. He didn’t know why, he just didn’t dare.

  Was it a final voyage? One to the Ends of the Earth? A falling off at a place where the Earth was not round but flat as the Ancients had predicted? His confidence in the new cosmology had a hair-line crack seeping Ancient Apocalypse: Dantean Truths. Or would there be the sucking death, where the ocean just seemed to fall apart—as if there was a hole in the bottom of the earth. Dragaons and Doome Beyond! About this he had heard. He knew that the sailors would believe him if he prophesied such a dark vision.

  Although bivouacked as an officer, Frantz was aware that he was not held to be such by either the mates or the Captain and his command. This was not an offensive treatment. They did not disrespect him, rather it manifested itself in terms of mobility. Frantz could easily move between the decks. His own small cabin abutted the Captain’s, but, when he stepped below, the men did not freeze and fall into the stiff courtesy punctiliously served to the upper ranks.

  “Pass me lovely ‘ere!”

  An overheard remark from below.

  Frantz has been wandering the deck obscured within a moonless night. None had seen land for the past two months, and he began to worry about food more than about direction. He couldn’t focus on being lost; his gut distracted him.

  “Ah!”A flurry of pleasured sighs—from below.

  With a silent foot he lowers himself a step, then two. Immediately he senses that his presence is detected: there is a change in the air—it hardens.

  Two more, three and he is down. Turns left towards the storage area and, with eyes accustomed to poorly lighted, dusky passageways, he slowly—not cautiously but with a pace that permits observation—steps past the thick breathings of bunks and hammocks.

  Just as he is about to enter the storage room, he is thumped upon the head. Biting his tongue and without more than a half-breathed grunt his hands are upon his head as a round object rolls across and about his boots.

  A pillowed guffaw from a sleepless mate. Then two. Add: three.

  Frantz feels the room lighten, as if it is about to bawl.

  Biting his own laughter, he steps quickly through the portal, briskly turns, pivoting to pick up the attacking object.

  A melon.

  Out of shadowless sight, he flips and rolls it around, back and forth and across his palms. Exploring, his fingertips report its oddity. Not that he hadn’t noticed this strange fruit back when first discovered. How it was stone hard green and then within two nights had softened enough to be eaten. A pleasant taste; bettered by a flick of salt.

  Not that he hadn’t questioned the tribe’s leader about how to preserve them for long storage—such a concept proved impossible to convey.

  No, Frantz knew about these melons. But this one had had its skin hardened by something brushed on it, like a whitewash. More, it had a hole drilled into it—not just cut with a knife, but carefully drilled, as done by the ship’s carpenter with skilled precision.

  Odd. And then he rounds the hole, fingertips sniffing, fingers assessing…slowly, his index finger reads: inside the hole—tentative poke and then full plunge…with pricked fright plucks it out right at moment’s thought upon contact!

  Is it rotten? A festering of vermin?

  He roughly turns it upside down and attempts to force out this inner mass...nothing rotten drips, nothing at all crawls or seeps out.

  Cautiously and with the care of scared curiosity, he holds it at arm’s length: up, twists and turns it to catch a fracture of moonlight seeping through from the deck above. But, in all, he can see nothing. Without full light, there is little he can do. Curiosity flagged, Frantz bends and settles the melon down. It rolls under a bunk, void-black into another cosmos.

  Why am I here?

  He returns to the upper deck.

  In the morning the ship’s carpenter, Sarducci, knocks on his door.

  “Geographer,” and he walks in having said the word as if issuing a secret command, “Sir,” but he pauses knowing that Frantz is not really a Sir, “Yee won’t tell ‘bout last night?” Straightforward without any preface, catching Frantz with mouth closed and mind idling.

  The carpenter—about Frantz’s age, not nervous, but a twinge apprehensive—it shows in how his feet are slightly parted, as if he would run at a moment’s alarm...the carpenter waits for an answer.

  Amazing.

  Did they hear this report? Ha.

  Frantz fingers the folded paper, unfolds it. A thick sheet, a painter’s sketching sheet: upon it is her—not as Frantz had spent time with her but as Friar Otto had...Botticelli’s Venus. Not as Botticelli would have her, but as one somewhat skilled forger has conveyed her. She in all her splendor but only in black and white—ink upon the palely colored sheet. Almost fleshly.

  “Beautiful!”

  Succubi! Otto’s thought.

  No, this is Frantz’s word. The Friar is no longer in the room.

  So, how to report this. Do they already know? He doubts, in this moment, that anything he has told them was yet unknown to them. Hadn’t they been about this for a millennium or more? Blasphemous as that sounds to his own Christian Faith, wasn’t that true?

  Know: The Carpenter’s Tale: The men, aye, they be good Christians, one and all. Shyly. But like good Christians they sin. Like sailors sin badly. Is he laughing? The sin is bad, I can’t deny that, Sir, but yee know these are good men, godly…Frantz can see the story unfold as the Carpenter fumbles to defend as he describes that upon long voyages there is Temptation. Which Frantz is told is not unlike the Shepherd’s Sin—what else to do on long drives, away from their women? How else to slay Lust? Not that the Carpenter approves—no, said again, I don’t approve, Sir.

  The story: Husbandry Tale: the wound in the flesh—the Devil’s Dream. “Privy parts,” the phrase raises itself as a taunt pinching Frantz’s scalp. He sees the men, down below, passing these melons, specially created, using them as they would any piss-pot, but here being sperm-pots. Frantz lewdly smirks as the whole picture comes together. Laughs quite loudly in front of the shocked Carpenter. Otto watches the incubi and succubi pass along the melons, and like gleeful thieves steal into the night with their fluid treasure of unbaptized soul. Otto watches—but the friar is no longer on board ship.

  It is this mirth in its many masks, however, which lets the Carpenter off the hook...like a man spared an execution...the Carpenter smiles meekly; quite relieved; exits vaporously.

  Frantz’s good standing with the crew is fully staked and firmly intact.

  What else should they do?

  Isn’t this what Botticelli is for? To release the evil drive within a moment’s fantasy? A sin which can be confessed? More innocent then adultery or fornication? Simply a sin of masturbation. Friar Otto! Friar Otto! Frantz silently laughs as he roll-—up the sketch of Venus and half-mindedly sticks it inside his Bible.

  But nothing is ever that easy. Not Grace. Not Sin. Nothing.

  Another three weeks and supplies are dangerously low. Few fish have been caught. The winds have been blowing fiercely and oddly. First cool, then warm, then hot. They were—not that he had plotted it, but the Captain knew—at the Rounding…soon the howling began—howling and sucking wind and a thumping and thrashing of the ship, things flying overboard, a sailor lost from the Crow’s Nest, salt water dripping through everything, mere cups of pure water rationed into drops...in the eyes of the men he sees Father Death peeking, at first the fear of death, then the recognition of death, then the presence of deat
h...all were dead men—the Captain most dead of all: lashing and binding himself to the post next to the wheel...never leaving, day or night—willing to go down with his ship.

  Why am I not afraid?

  Then as it came, so it went. Calm into fierceness: fire into aromatic smoke. For a time—which he could never describe—they were all silent: not quiet, not without words, not holding their tongues nor biding their time—just silent: nothing moved within them; they moved nothing.

  A bell clangs: dull thud, starved echo: once.

  Its hard-tongued, harsh metallic call shatters the silence.

  Within a fainting last pulsing echo all are rushing here and there about the ship.

  Lines are hooked and cast over.

  Fish are hauled in with every pitch and drag.

  A shower bursts from the cloudless sky—steady: barrels are quenched.

  Warm smoke burps from below...aromas belch and the ship is like a belly eagerly stroked, anticipating.

  Amazing.

  South of Columbus. Water crossed, so Frantz knows but without exactness by the Papal Hand: Spanish Land. Knowing this Rounding as between Fire and Ice—cliffs as steep as Alpine mountains are high—he knows, Frantz knows, knows and sees more than he knows he should be seeing. Not just Land, but Time. They pass ships wrecked by the many dozens. Doomed sailors nakedly dancing on the ocean’s floor. Images and words and markings—Frantz comes to profoundly know them all. They all appear, at once, familiar.

  But these are not what he remembers most.

  The Call to Worship.

  It is what the Captain named it, once it was over. A serene word between them. A sealing word. Truly, a secret word. Frantz knew that few among even the officers would have called it such. But the Captain utters it as he had first the word, “Geographer.”

  It is his by Right of the Sea: Judge, Sovereign, Master…Priest: a Divine Right.

  Off the Map. Descended into Hell. Resurrected. Parousia.

  Feasting. Food all about. Birds landing and freely offering themselves for the slaughter. Roasting pits. Bones cast all about the boat. An orgy of replenishment. Divine Providence. The bodies of the men did not appear but were felt by Frantz as bloated.

  He, himself, felt bloated.

  The Call: Benedicamus Domino…!

  It was at moon’s far rise. A time when many among them were deep into sleep. On top deck, the moon bathed the boat with a bold, clarifying light.

  The bell clanged again; a tolling sound, almost mournful.

  Up from the belly rise the men, each with body painted and body festooned with feathers and body swathed in brilliant cloths, many hands holding candles—all unlit—and each going towards a great bowl, dipping a cup and drinking…then walking about as if in some clearly rehearsed and precisely choreographed communal movement…Frantz observes them as he has schools of fish and the rare billowing octopus…without thought, he joins them: having his nose slashed with a yellow mark and a fellow placing the rare and feared panther-skin hat upon his head, another handing him a necklace of beads and savage teeth…within what became the rhythmic beat of a tight drum and the shrill of a high-pitched reed pipe, so they all moved about the boat in circular and weaving dance, each alone, everyone together: it was magnetic...it was hypnotic...it was alluring….

  How? When?

  Didn’t they already know?

  The Response: Deo Gratias!

  A melon appeared upon the table mid-set on the Captain’s deck.

  Then another. Another. Apparitions: a pile. Appeared and were left. Nothing said.

  As if the last one in place was a signal, the Captain—now draped in a gasping white cloak: almost a shroud, such was its presence, its thickness conveying richness and power and value: Dominion…a whiteness more bright than solid—around him it moved as he moved and there was the blackest of stones upon a silver chain falling down the center of his chest: a blackness like the void…a void, for a renegade moment’s flash: Dana!…the Captain centers himself at the table, clearly at ease, High Priest at the altar, all eyes upon him and he lifts one, then another, then tosses overboard and lifts another and tosses and as he tosses he laughs and as he hoots and howls all laugh wildly...he is the parent laughing, catching the child in an embarrassing moment of sexual awakening—it is a harsh release, it is a grieving relief, it is a paternal exorcism...with the laughter resounding through them all, something someone? flees the ship...Frantz know not what, does not try to know.

  What follows is without words. Specific words. Words like sounds that mean something. Memory. Not words but sounds which feel something. Sounds which bind. Like hums and painful groans and the common breathing of battle:

  …the youngest. That’s all that registers with Frantz. Registers with the feeling unspoken, It is fitting.

  Up to the altar. Lifted and laid upon the altar. Disrobed and body stroked: feather stroked and smoked stroked, incensed, and blessed with water, sprinkles from the Captain’s fingertips. Body touched with common hand through the hand of the Captain, he no longer Captain but all of them: his eyes lick the beauty of the flesh, his mouth kisses the sweetness of lips, his desire melts his own flesh as it drips down and bathes this one so loved, so lusted, so craved.

  When did it happen?

  Torn flesh. Slashed and ripped apart. Always a bite, then tossing the rest overboard.

  Heart raised high above, flying upward on wings.

  After. Just moments after the Satisfaction. The insertion of the majestic cock in the mouths of God’s Chosen One. “Chosen” is chorused, in muted, reverential, awed tone.

  For what else could it be or would it be...or how else would they, could they have spoken if they had spoken?...it was common thought: One Sent From Among Us…not blasphemy, not sacrilege, not profanity…out here: after surviving the trial by storm, after the savage bout with death’s hungering mouth…this was the Oblation, the Offering, the Satisfaction—and within Frantz’s mind there was never a thought except that “It is fitting.”

  They come in turn and touch him. Some just lightly stroking him. Touching his feet. Kissing his belly. Gazing but a raptured moment upon him. But most come with a penetration: a giving of themselves, a yielding, a surrendering...into his mouth, up his ass, jerking off with seed upon his body—spreading it out, seeding his total flesh…a Purification by Moonlight—no artist could have beheld it: no mind describe it: It is fitting.

  Candles are lit: Deo Gratias!

  In the morning there was no debris of body, mind or soul to be found. The deck was as clean as the fabled baths of Rome.

  At muster no one accounted for the missing sailor. All assumed he had been the one lost in the sundering storm during the malevolent Rounding. Inexperienced. Green Shoot. Cabin Boy. “But was it one or two?” asked only once, and the asker knew never to ask again. All forgot and returned to the daily tasks and chores of seafaring.

  Frantz rises. There is a freshness to the day. The Captain is at the helm. The crew is busily about. There is a satisfying, almost cool, pacific wind blowing.

  In his own self, the Geographer’s mind is like a block of granite upon which someone is chiseling: hammer’s rapid thud by spiking strike, exploding chip by cracking chip: a map unfolds as he stares, spyglass at his side, stares out across the ocean—there, clearly where the swirling, whirling balls of fire from heaven have been leading him.

  From within his Bible, he had pulled out the sketch of her. No doubt is his—she is the map to O’side.

  Amazing.