The Drift

by Lloyd Kropp

  Often Tabor, Peter, and Pao would talk together late in the afternoon when the sun was near the water. For hours Peter would tell them of his past life—his empty childhood, his empty marriage, his struggle through graduate school at a third-rate university, his career at Harrington University. Sometimes he would send them into fits of laughter at the absurdities of his former life; sometimes they would listen sadly, reliving with him the frustrations of his loneliness and his disappointments. Pao, of course, was intensely interested in his account of his old life, but often she did not understand. What, she wondered, was a Chevrolet? And what was a bank loan? And how did water run through pipes? And in a symphony orchestra, why did so many people want to play their instruments all at the same time? How did buildings stand up? Did land end suddenly like the edge of a boat or did it gradually get mushy like porridge and then turn to water? Why did he teach new students every year and give up the old ones, and how did all the young girls keep from falling in love with him?

  It seemed to him that Pao and Tabor were his first true friends, and as time passed he could feel their influence upon him; he could feel himself changing, deepening into a person he hardly recognized. It was a lovely time, the best he had ever known.

  One day on The Northside Cliff, Tabor called him over to the port side of an old schooner to watch a school of large green fish that nibbled at the weeds near the stern. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Now that you’ve been married for seven days you ought to have a permanent and responsible job of some sort.”

  Peter smiled. “Like what?”

  “Well, like, why don’t you write a book?”

  “A book? Out here? You can’t be serious.”

  “I am serious. I thought we might collaborate on a book about The Drift.”

  “What could we possibly say about it that anyone would believe?”

  “You forget that the only readers would be people living right here.”

  “Then why write it in the first place?”

  “I think it might be enlightening for all of us,” said Tabor. “Many of us have no clear idea about where we are or where The Drift came from or who lived here before we did. I was thinking of a sort of history that would give an account of its time and place in the world.”

  “But I don’t know anything about the history of The Drift. I’ve been here less than three weeks. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “I have a lot of research material,” said Tabor. “Ships’ logs, diaries, letters, drawings, all sorts of written records. Some of it goes back over three hundred years. And then too I have a lot of museum pieces: guns, lamps, furniture, toilet articles, things I’ve gathered together into a sort of display room in one of the big whaling ships near The Bridge.”

  “Sounds as if you have the project well under way.”

  “I’ve done a lot of collecting and organizing, but I need a second opinion. One more educated than my own. Also I need someone who can write decently. I know six languages but I have no sense of style when it comes to writing things down.”

  “It does sound like an interesting project,” admitted Peter, “but sort of futile. An unpublished book about an unknown place that no one would read.”

  “There are scriveners over at Bluewater who would make copies so that everyone on The Drift could read it. But even if no one read it, even if you and I were the only ones, I still think it would be worth the doing.”

  Peter watched the green fish swimming just beneath the surface of the water. Worth doing, he thought. What made things worth doing? He had often dreamed of writing a book, a brilliant work of imaginative scholarship that would set the academic world on fire, something that would bring him fame, money, and admiration. Would that have been worth doing?

  When he was twenty-eight he had dreamed of writing such a work, and shortly after he had accepted his teaching position at Harrington University he began gathering notes for a book about family life in ancient Egypt. But after two years of hard work his interest in the project began to wane. He had amassed a total of two thousand five hundred and seventy-three note cards, and he had not the faintest idea what to do with them. What did one do with facts? Why, one organized them into a pattern of some sort and produced a book. But for Peter the organization was not forthcoming. And then one morning when he began using his notes for a series of lectures in his survey course in ancient history, a young man in the fourth row had asked him what significance Egyptian family life had in terms of the general course of Egyptian history. The question, he remembered, had been rather awkwardly phrased in the halting manner of a confused but sincere young man who wanted to know where Egyptian family life belonged in his semester notes. And Peter was dumfounded. It became clear to him at that moment that he had no real understanding of Egyptian history, and that history in general was for him little more than a collection of facts arranged chronologically. Why, he wondered, had it taken him so long to realize that he would never really be a historian?

  He picked up a broken piece of iron railing and tossed it into the water. The green fish that he and Tabor had been watching darted away in a silent explosion of color. Perhaps if somehow he had managed to write that book, perhaps then things would have turned out differently. But even as thoughts of money and recognition and power passed through his mind, he knew that these were not always the essential things. There were better reasons for writing books, better reasons for a lifetime of study, better reasons for being alive. Perhaps for the first time in his life he was beginning to understand that.

  The green fish had come back and were skittering near the surface in an enormous cloudy pool. It seemed that the splash from the piece of iron railing had not frightened them away but had attracted more of them. He stared into the water for a long time without speaking.

  “Tell me about The Drift,” he said finally. “What was it like here hundreds of years ago?”

  “Hundreds of years ago?” Tabor lit his pipe and puffed and smiled with pleasure. And in turn, Peter smiled inwardly, for he knew that Tabor’s great joy in life was long conversations.

  “Only a few of the logs and diaries go back that far,” he began. “I’ve only finished one of them, a fragment of a journal by a sea captain named Faulkland.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It’s very fragmentary. I’m not even sure about the order of the pages. He talks about old galleons filled with spices and gilded furniture where a few men lived like oriental emperors. They had servants and chamber music in the evenings, and balls and elaborate torchlight ceremonies or celebrations of some kind that moved in double lines from one boat to another. But only a few lived this way. Most of the people, and there were apparently hundreds of them, fished and collected seaweed, or worked for the rich captains of the galleons and capital ships. Faulkland also mentions a strange group of men dressed in sailcloth who called themselves The Servants of The New Atlantis. He says they were originally thieves and perverts bound for a penal colony somewhere in The New World. When their ship was wrecked in a storm they escaped and killed their guards a week or so before they came to The Drift. They worshiped the sea and bathed in a fishnet pool as an act of purification. So far I’ve had to take Faulkland’s word for all this. There doesn’t seem to be a shred of evidence to prove any of it. Nothing but the fact that parts of some very old boats still exist, which does prove at least that The Drift was here three or four hundred years ago.”

  “I don’t understand. You think the diary may be a hoax?”

  Tabor shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps not a hoax exactly. But it’s just possible that Faulkland was amusing himself by writing a romance. The style seems—I don’t know—perhaps too literary to be a diary. Perhaps it was something to entertain his friends when he got back home. His reference to the ‘New Atlantis’ cult may have some satiric intent. Perhaps he had read Francis Bacon. But then on the other hand it may refer in some way to the notion that Atlantis lies somewhere beneath The Sargasso Sea. The Drift,
then, would become a kind of New Atlantis.”

  “You mentioned his going home,” said Peter. “Did you mean that at one time people could leave The Drift?”

  “Yes. They were continually repairing boats, and every few months one of the captains would sail away with a hundred or two hundred people. They would row for a hundred miles and then the wind would carry them to The New World or back to England, depending on whether they had rowed north or south. But apparently the number of derelicts floating in more than equaled the number that sailed away.”

  “I see.”

  “Recently I’ve been trying to trace down some evidence for Faulkland’s diary. He mentions, for example, that there was a Poet of The Drift, a man they called Damian, who wrote fifty volumes of poems on all subjects. But so far I haven’t uncovered any of his works. Faulkland writes that Damian spent most of his time with The Servants of The New Atlantis, and like them he refused to leave The Drift. The Servants stayed because they were slowly gaining control and because there was nothing for them in The Old World except prison or the noose, but I suspect that Damian may have had other reasons. The diary says that Damian could improvise verse on any subject for an hour at a time and that most people thought he was mad or possessed by angels or the devil.

  “The closest I ever came to verifying even a small part of this came about ten years ago. One of the divers from the old Daybreak Clan discovered a galleon caught in the weeds about twenty feet under his own boat. It was filled with the remains of books and ships’ logs; apparently it had been a sort of library. The diver brought back a sample. I went down the next day, but the galleon had sunk during the night. Apparently he had cut through the weed beds that held it up. When I went under I saw the boat about a hundred feet or so below me. It was just barely visible.”

  Peter was silent for a moment. He pictured the boat in his mind, a boat filled with the works of a lost poet, sinking into the green silence of forever. “What about the book the diver brought back?” he said finally.

  “Just a pair of swollen wooden boards and a pulpy lump of paper. There were some smudges of ink, but no visible letters. But there was something interesting about the boards. The words ‘je suis’ were carved on the inside of one of them, and under them, the letter D.” “D for Damian,” said Peter.

  “It’s possible,” said Tabor. “That is, if there ever was such a man.”

  “But what happened to everything?” said Peter. “I mean to the rulers, and The Servants of The New Atlantis and the hundreds of people?”

  “There’s a legend that around this time—three hundred and twenty years ago—there was a great storm on The Drift, the only one that’s ever been recorded here. It sank hundreds of boats and killed hundreds of people. In a young girl’s diary there’s a story about how her parents were killed in The Great Disaster of sixteen thirty-seven. Perhaps that was it. Apparently only a few dozen people survived, and since then no one has ventured out into the sea. We swim in net pools and some of us can dive ninety or more feet under the boats, and the children go weedwalking, but no one sails out into the open sea.

  “The girl—I think her name was Mary Bellamy—writes that afterwards The Priests of The New Atlantis (as they then began to call themselves) told a story about how the spirits of the sea had made The Drift and had brought the storm to punish those who had tried to escape. Finally, when the feudal captains died off and The Priests gained power, it was forbidden for anyone to leave. Of course The Priests had good reason to avoid contact with the outside world.”

  “So the great storm changed everything,” said Peter.

  “Perhaps it did,” said Tabor. “That is, if there really was a storm.”

  Together they walked across a narrow bridge that led down from Northside back toward The Mary Strattford. “So how about it?” said Tabor.

  “How about what?”

  “The book, remember? That’s how all this started. I’ve been trying to enchant you with the mysteries we might solve and with the secrets we might uncover. Have I succeeded?” He held out his large brown hand and waited for an answer. Peter took his hand and smiled.

  “Wonderful,” said Tabor. “It’s a bargain then. You know, I think we’re going to have some interesting times together.”

  “I’m sure we will,” said Peter. “But I think perhaps we ought to put this off until—well—until I get used to being married.”

  Tabor laughed. “I understand,” he said. “I won’t bother you until the honeymoon is over. But then,” he added with a look of mock resignation, “your honeymoon may never end at the rate it’s going. In which case we’ll never get anything done.”

  As Peter walked back to his own schooner to look for Pao, he heard someone shouting from The Cliff. It was a Madrid pointing out into the sea. At The Mary Strattford, Bright, Reuben, and Javitt were straining to catch his words. Peter made a funnel with his hands and called out to them: “What is it? What’s he saying?”

  “It’s a ship!” said Bright. “A ship on the north horizon!”

  Fourteen

  THE SHARK

  Tabor and Peter sat on the edge of The Cliff and watched the ship for nearly five hours. In that time it circled The Drift twice. At first it dipped and bobbed at the edge of the horizon, a gray and hazy silhouette in the afternoon sun. Tabor’s eyes never seemed to leave that dim, elusive shape, and he passed the time by telling stories of other ships that had come to The Drift in other times—tales of half-crazed seamen, of strange treasures, of empty and soundless ships with no trace of life and clues of disaster that had baffled him for years.

  By the next afternoon the ship had made several more circles and was much nearer. Peter could see now that it was an old fishing boat, a three-masted sloop with two jibs and gaff rigging. It listed badly to the port side, and there were no signs of life on deck. From the poop fluttered a flag that he did not recognize: blue and white stripes with a white square in one corner that contained an emblematic sun.

  “Any signs of life?” said Peter.

  Tabor surveyed the stricken ship through his binoculars. “I don’t see anything moving,” he answered. “Part of the ship is charred and the lifeboats are gone. But there may be things we can use. Sometimes we find fishing equipment and tools.”

  “Yes. But I was hoping there would be people. News from the world.”

  Tabor looked at him. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I often hope for news from the world.”

  Peter watched the sloop make its slow journey around The Drift. “Perhaps someday we may all go back to that world,” he said.

  “Perhaps someday you will, my friend,” said Tabor. “I’ve always said that no one leaves The Drift, but perhaps you will.”

  “And why not you too? You’re a strong man, and much of your life still lies ahead of you.”

  Tabor smiled and put his large hand on Peter’s shoulder. “My life ended years ago,” he said. “And all my strength lies in the fact that I’ve accepted defeat. Perhaps that’s the difference between us.”

  “But I don’t understand that,” said Peter. “What could ever have defeated someone like you?”

  Tabor was still smiling, but Peter could see clearly now the melancholy that had always been a part of that smile. “The war,” he said. “Watching young men burning to death in the oil slicks of the ships I torpedoed. Fighting for a hopeless and wrongheaded cause. Depth charges. Water leaking into compartments. The death of all my friends. Days on a raft. A lovely woman I met on The Drift who died when our second child was born. Middle age. Many, many things, I’m afraid.” He stared out into The Sargasso Sea and watched the derelict ship that with every passing came closer to The Northside Cliff.

  Four boats below The Cliff, The Elders—embarked on The Long Journey—dropped hands and arose one by one from their closed, silent circle. Slowly they made their way up to where Peter and Tabor were sitting, to watch the ship from the world beyond The Drift.

  “It’s my husband,” said Rose with
an air of triumphant finality. “He’s come at last.”

  A few minutes after The Elders had gone back to The Long Journey, Peter felt a small hand press his shoulder. Behind him he saw a beautiful face and a long streaming of black hair. Pao.

  “What do you think of the new boat?” she said, looking into his eyes, letting him know that she cared nothing for boats.

  “Oh, it’s a fine boat,” he answered. “A lovely boat.”

  Tabor smiled at them. “I think I may go down to have a closer look. I’ll see both of you later,” he said.

  And soon Tabor, Reuben, Javitt, and three men from The Madrid had managed with the aid of ropes and Reuben’s raft to bring the new ship to the edge of The Cliff. Peter and Pao watched from above, while below the others explored it. Soon it was clear that everyone was rather disappointed; the boat was nearly empty.

  “There’s nothing much here except this,” said Tabor, calling up to them after the others had gone. In his arms he held a pair of aqualungs and a black rubber diving suit. “Do you know how to use these things?” Peter nodded.

  “Then how about coming down here and giving us all a demonstration?” He waved in the direction of the dozens of men and women who sat along the edge of The Cliff, people who had come to watch the men who had secured and then explored the old sloop.

  Peter and Pao made their way down the incline of small broken sailing ships to the place where Tabor waited for them. It had been years since he had been deep-sea diving with Miriam, but the equipment looked familiar after he had lifted it and turned it over in his hands. “It’s really very simple,” he explained as he removed his trousers and crawled into the rubber suit. “You breathe through the rubber mouthpiece and you adjust the flow of air by turning this lever. The whole thing fits over your back.”

  “And you can breathe underwater?” said Pao in a whisper of suspicion and disbelief.