The Pirate's Daughter

by Robert Girardi

  He opened his eyes after the second sneeze and found himself at the bottom of Lake Tsuwanga, where the water wasn’t water at all, but a gelatin-thick ooze of ice and something else. He waited for a moment there in the ooze and cold, the bones of the Great Carew lying close at hand, until he saw them coming: Strange phosphorous fish compressed to ultimate hardness by the pressure of the water, bringing their own light with them through the darkness like a secret.

  6

  Wilson moved slowly through the crowds along the sidewalk up Commerce Avenue. The steady thump of construction came from nearby. He felt the thud of the jackhammers along the cement pavement. The sky above the silver needle of the Rubicon Building showed a peerless blue, free of clouds. A good day in early spring.

  Minutes passed before he noticed the massive old cars waiting at the light of Commerce and Rubicon, then he realized that the street was full of these anachronistic vehicles. They were the finned glossy monsters of another era, huge Cadillacs and De Sotos, Ramblers and Nash wagons and Studebakers, made of chrome and steel and painted in light pastels and upholstered in plaid vinyl, chugging along the clean blacktop at the curb. A moment later, he noticed the pedestrians: businessmen sporting snap-brim hats and skinny ties and shiny three-button suits; secretaries with bright red lipstick and beehive hairdos, or bouffants or flips, wearing stiletto heels and poufy dresses and wrist-length white gloves and carrying big shiny purses of patent leather.

  Wilson began to feel a sinking sensation of déjà vu. He was sure he had been here before, this afternoon, this minute, this very second. He looked up and saw the bare frame of the Maas Tower like a skeleton hanging above, and the red crane and the girder swaying out on its cables twenty stories up. Then, he saw one of the cables go loose, and there was a sick snapping sound that no one else seemed to hear, echoing down the glass and steel canyonway.

  The woman in the leopard-print coat and the child walked along hand in hand just ahead, the shadow of the falling girder upon them like a long black finger. The child looked up from the tin ray gun in his hand and saw the girder coming down with all the force of destiny. A terrible wonder bloomed in his small face. He wore clumsy black shoes, an oversize tweed coat, and a silly-looking hat with flaps folded over his ears. There wasn’t enough time, a few bare seconds that would freeze the child for the rest of his life, pin his wings like a pink and yellow moth stuck to a card.

  Wilson lunged forward and caught the woman with his shoulder square in the back. She went sprawling out of the way, and he hit the pavement in the deadly shadow of the beam and twisted up to see the thing just twenty feet above, screaming down, speed increasing geometrically with each falling inch, gravity giving it the weight of a mountain. Then, all at once, the street was quiet. The beam made no sound; the traffic was stilled.

  “Look what you’ve done! You’ve made me tear my new stockings!” It was his mother’s voice.

  Wilson stood up, his joints creaking. He suddenly remembered the time he had taken a razor blade from his father’s medicine cabinet at age three and for no reason at all carefully slashed all the lampshades in the house. The look on his mother’s face now was the look that had been there when she caught him having a go at the last yellow shade in the living room.

  “Come here, Wilson,” his mother said. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself!

  “Mom …” Wilson’s voice ascended to a juvenile whine. He pointed at the beam hovering in the air like a giant black bird no more than fifteen feet above his head.

  “I know all about that,” she said, not bothering to look up. “You get out from under there. That’s not for you.”

  Wilson approached sheepishly. His mother kissed him on the cheek. Then she frowned.

  “Stand up straight,” she said.

  Wilson stood up straight, and she removed her wrist-length white glove and licked her thumb and wiped a smudge from Wilson’s cheek. Then she took a wet-nap towelette from a small pack in her purse. She tore it open and gave his face a thorough scrubbing. Wilson wrinkled up his nose at the sharp medicinal smell and tried to pull away. He had always hated those things.

  “Don’t give me that stuff, mister; you’re a mess,” his mother said, and Wilson saw that his clothes were little more than torn and bloody rags and that he was covered with dried blood and muck from the slave cage. Then he looked down at his mother and for the first time realized how beautiful and young she had been on the day she died. Her eyes were startlingly blue, her hair black and sheeny as the wing of a crow. In her pillbox hat and leopard-print coat she bore more than a passing resemblance to Jacqueline Kennedy in the days of Camelot. Perhaps all the women of that era resembled Jacqueline Kennedy in some way.

  “How old are you, Mom?” he said suddenly. “Twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”

  His mother frowned. “What kind of question is that for a little boy to ask?” she said.

  “I’m not a little boy anymore,” Wilson said. “I’ll be thirty-four this year.”

  His mother took him by the shoulders again and smiled. “Yes, I’m glad of that,” she said. “At least you’ve grown up good and strong. But”—she frowned again—“you’ve made some bad choices, Wilson. You look sad around the eyes. You should go and play outside more often, get some fresh

  air. I used to tell your father you read too much. Nose always stuck in a book, even when you were two. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, remember that one?”

  “Yes,” Wilson said. “And I remember those monkey books—Curious George, the man in the yellow hat. I wanted to be like the man in the yellow hat.”

  “He seemed nice, certainly very patient,” Wilson’s mother said. “Always taking care of that troublesome monkey.” Then she paused and looked away.

  “Mom …” Wilson said.

  “Yes?”

  “I couldn’t save you. I was only ten years old. I looked up and saw it coming down, and I froze. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to tell you to run. Then wham!… I’m sorry.” Tears ran down Wilson’s cheeks.

  His mother reached into her patent leather purse, took out a Kleenex, and put it to his nose. “Blow,” she said.

  Wilson blew.

  “There was nothing you could have done, Wilson sweet,” she said in a soft, motherly tone, and she put a hand against his wet cheek. “That beam was always falling and always going to fall, and I was always walking under it. My only regret is that you had to be at my side. It seems cruel for a child to witness such things. But think about Nietzsche and his gateway, maybe that will help: two roads leading to infinity in opposite directions, meeting at the gateway of the present moment. What did the man say about that? ‘Has not everything that can run already run down this road? Must not everything that happens have already happened?’ Of course he is describing a circular universe. If you don’t believe in a circular universe, I suppose you have to believe in God. Wilson, I think you believe in God. That’s charming, and it suits you.”

  Wilson was stunned. “You read Nietzsche, Mom?” he said.

  His mother put a gloved hand to her red lips and laughed a delicate laugh. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about your old mother,” she said.

  “I guess so,” Wilson said.

  “This has been nice, but it’s time for you to go,” she said, impatient now. Then she hugged him and blinked a tear from her eye, and she stepped around and took her place in the shadow of the beam.

  “Where am I going?” Wilson said.

  “Your father wants to see you for a minute,” she said.

  “Wait, Mom!” Wilson couldn’t keep a tremor from his voice. “Don’t you have any advice for me? A nugget of wisdom? Anything?”

  “The Nietzsche wasn’t enough?”

  Wilson shrugged.

  “Then my advice is very simple,” his mother said. “Stop your mooning around. Live.”

  In the next second the world rocked into motion, and the sidewalk was full of pedestrians and the big cars rumbled along
at the curb and a terrible rushing sound filled the air and the beam hit home with a monstrous roar, shattering the sidewalk and smashing Wilson’s mother to a bloody stain. Wilson felt himself borne aloft, then he felt the jerk and shuttle of a train and heard the wheels on the track and saw that he was sitting in a Pullman car beside a man in a gray homburg and a nicely tailored suit of English tweed. The man wore a yellow silk handkerchief in his pocket and yellow socks and tan and white wing tips. An unlit pipe was cradled in his left hand, a copy of the Racing News lay neatly folded on his lap atop a hardback copy of The Black Rose by Thomas B. Costain. He stared out the train window lost in thought, as a red sun set over the Potswahnamee Lagoon and the dark and icy river lay curled like a snake just a few miles ahead.

  “You’re lucky there was a seat,” the man said. “The express is always crowded,” and he turned toward Wilson and smiled in a sad way that was familiar.

  “Is that you, Dad?” Wilson said.

  His father nodded. “I suppose your mother sent you.”

  Wilson shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It might be the yonowpe.”

  “You know what I was thinking?” his father said. “Just now I was thinking that the sunset out there was about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Look at the birds rising off the lagoon into the red light. On their way south, I guess.” He put his pipe between his teeth and was silent for a while.

  Wilson heard the rustle and cough of other passengers on the train, the dull murmur of conversation. He glanced down at his father’s watch, a handsome, gold self-winding Elgin with a red arrow on the second hand. It was a quarter after five.

  “Is this the Jour forty-five express, Dad?” Wilson said.

  “You know, I was going to catch the five-thirty, but I got to the station early and just made the four forty-five. Lucky, huh?”

  “Dad, we’ve got to stop this train,” Wilson said as calm as he could make it. “It’s going to jump the tracks.”

  “Lower your voice,” his father said. “People will hear you.”

  Wilson stood up and reached for the red emergency handle fixed to the window arch, but before he could pull it down, his father yanked him back into the seat by the belt loops.

  “I know all about this train, son,” his father said in a low voice. “There’s nothing we can do. You know that. I just wanted to sit quietly with you a moment before we go off the tracks. Mind if I put my arm around you?”

  Wilson said he didn’t mind, and his father put an arm around his shoulder, and the two of them sat quietly and stared out at the beautiful red sunset.

  “After I get back from this business trip,” Wilson’s father said at last, “I should have a little cash on hand. And I promise I’m going to settle down with your mother and you and I won’t go away again. I haven’t been very good to her when you get right down to it. She is such a beautiful woman, and she could have had anyone, but—God knows why—she married me. Gambling is no life for a family man, remember that, son. Always on the road, always desperate to beat the odds. But I’ve got a nice piece of change riding on a couple of ponies running at the Fairgrounds down in New Orleans. It’s a sure thing, a boat race. After that I’m coming home for good, and you know what I’m going to do then?”

  “No,” Wilson said.

  “I’m going back to law school. I’m going to get my degree and open up a practice. Boy, will that please your mother! She always thought I’d make such a good lawyer, and you know, I think she’s right. Don’t tell her, though. It’ll be our little secret till I get back, O.K.?”

  “O.K., Dad,” Wilson said.

  A moment later, they came across the open trellis of the Trohog Bridge, and there was the long shriek of brake like a howl, and a shudder went through the train. Steel-cornered suitcases began to topple out of the racks over the seats.

  “This is us,” Wilson’s father said, and he leaned forward and kissed Wilson on the forehead. Then he sprang up, and as the car tilted out over the river, he grabbed on to the baggage rack and swung the hard heels of his two-tone wing tips against the window. The glass shattered out in a half dozen jagged shards.

  “I’m not one for advice, like your mother,” Wilson’s father said. “I always figured a man’s going to do what he’s got to do if he’s a good man. You’ve grown up into a good man, Wilson. Find what it is that you’ve got to do and do it.”

  “O.K., Dad,” Wilson said.

  “Now jump,” his father said.

  Wilson looked down at the river far below, touched with red in the last light of the sun. The train began to skitter off the tracks, and there was the sound of metal tearing and a terrible screaming.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” Wilson said, scared.

  “You’ve got to,” his father said. “Go on. Jump.”

  Wilson held his breath, and in the next second he was falling toward the black water.

  7

  “For God’s sake, Mr. Wilson, give me your hand!”

  Wilson heard the voice as he went under for the second time. He fought for the surface and caught a glimpse of green jungle before he was dragged down again, but this water was brown and warm as blood and far removed from the cold black stillness of the Potswahnamee.

  He reached up and felt a strong grip on his wrist, felt himself pulled into the sunlight, where he lay gasping like a fish against a surface of rough wood. When he could breathe, he sat up and rubbed the water out of his eyes. He was aboard a flat-bottomed Bupu dugout on its way with the current down a fast-moving river hemmed in on both sides by jungle.

  “If you attempt to jump again, Mr. Wilson, we will bind your feet and your hands for the rest of the journey, and that will not be pleasant as we have a long way yet to go.”

  It was Tulj seated in the stern, paddle raised, dripping, over the side.

  “I will make a note for the Bupandan Journal of Medicine,” said a second voice. “Half a dosage of yonowpe for a white man is quite sufficient to kill the spirit beast.”

  Wilson twisted around to see Colonel Saba grinning from the prow. He tried to speak but came out with a half-strangled cough. For a few minutes, he stared mute at the green riot along the banks. He watched the dark places between the trees for the pale beams of the Iwos and saw only shadows. Unknown animals moved in the green dusk there like animals in a dream.

  “This isn’t the Mwtutsi,” Wilson said when his head cleared. He looked up, and at that moment a patch of sunlight touched his brow.

  “I think our friend is back with us.” Colonel Saba flashed a grin over his shoulder.

  “You are right, Mr. Wilson,” Tulj said. “This is not the Mwtutsi, this is the Hilenga.”

  “What happened?” Wilson said. “How did we get here?”

  “You remember nothing?” Tulj asked. A green and red dragonfly danced around his head like a halo.

  “Last I remember, those sons of bitches were supposed to skin me alive,” Wilson said.

  “Yes, you are a lucky man,” Tulj said.

  “Where is the Iwo?” Wilson said.

  Tulj waved his paddle at the jungle. “Who knows?” he said. “Back with his own people. Might as well ask where the birds go when they fly into the air.”

  “And are you a new man?” Colonel Saba said to Wilson. “Did the spirit medicine work?”

  “I’m not sure,” Wilson said. He still felt a little thick. He watched Saba dip the paddle into the water and draw it out again. “Actually I don’t remember a thing. We escaped from M’Gongo epo?”

  “Yes,” Saba said, splashing him with water. “This river is real; it is not a yonopwe-inspired fantasy.”

  “How did it happen?” Wilson said.

  “In the usual manner,” Tulj said. “A little money, a carton or two of cigarettes. A single human life isn’t worth much here, I’m afraid.”

  “But you almost ruined the whole thing, Mr. Wilson,” Saba said. “You wouldn’t shut up. Last night we had to tie a rag in your mouth to keep you q
uiet. You were ranting. Out of your head. Who is Curious George?”

  “A friend,” Wilson said, then he turned to Tulj. “How did you find us?”

  “I was waiting for news in Ulundi, as we had arranged,” Tulj said. “Then an Iwo brought word of trouble. I started upriver two days ago. That was a stupid thing you did back there, Mr. Wilson. You blew your cover. We cannot use you as an agent after this.”

  “Couldn’t wait any longer,” Wilson said quietly. “Not a single second.”

  “Did you think they wouldn’t kill you for what you did?”

  “I don’t know,” Wilson said. “I didn’t think at all. I just went out and set them free, every Iwo I could find—” He couldn’t go on.

  Tulj nodded as if he understood.

  An hour or two passed before Wilson felt lucid enough to help with the paddling. He took the position in the prow, and the tired colonel went to sleep. The labor felt good, the muscles in his arms and shoulders working, the sun dappling his back through the trees. But it wasn’t until twilight turned the river a deep shade of lavender that Wilson was struck by the singularity of the situation. He stopped paddling and turned around. A dustlike haze sifted through the canopy of leaves. Colonel Saba dozed, mouth open, hand dangling in the water. A soft snoring sound issued from between his lips. Wilson could barely make out Tulj’s face in the jungle shadows.

  “The two of you …” Wilson said.

  “Yes,” Tulj said, and he smiled.

  “He’s an Anda, you’re a Bupu,” Wilson said.

  “Yes,” Tulj said.

  “How come you’re not at each other’s throat?”

  Tulj put aside his paddle and thought for a moment. “Last night, when I came to help you escape, I found an Anda officer and an Iwo in the dirt at your side. And I said to them, ‘Are we not all brothers here?’ and I took their hands and led them away. Colonel Saba, he is weary of the war and all the killing, as I am weary. He has decided to resign from the APF, and he is joining a new party which I am starting with the support of certain friends of mine. I will call my new party the BUP. The Bupandan Unification party. And one day, when the slave trade is suppressed, we will put an end to this madness. Bupu and Anda will rebuild Bupanda as it was in the great days of Sequhue, when the countryside bloomed with flowers and the streets of Rigala were full of music and singing and there were beautiful women in every doorway.”