The Boatmaker

by John Benditt

  “At the Mint,” the boatmaker says, looking at the ceiling, “there was an argument with the woman giving the lecture. Rachel Lippsted. A man was yelling that the Jews are parasites. The police came and took him.”

  “What did he look like?” asks Crow, senses alerted.

  “Tall. Curly hair. Tweed suit. Like someone you don’t want to mess about. The girl was cool. Frightened. But tough. I think she pushed a button in her desk to call the coppers. They came and hustled him out. But they weren’t rough. More like acting.” The boatmaker feels as if the two men, one small and dark, one large and white, are making an effort not to exchange glances.

  “Well, not everyone likes the Jews,” says Crow. “Even all the way out on Small Island, where they dress in animal skins, you must have learned that.”

  Another time the boatmaker would have laughed. Not now. “Never knew any. Oh, and another thing, the man who yelled about the Jews had a copy of a newspaper called The Brotherhood. What’s that?” He raises himself on an elbow, cigarette burning down, so that he can look directly at Crow and White. They stand still, expressionless.

  “Forget all of that,” says Crow. “It’s not important. Come on out and have a drink with your friends for a change.”

  The boatmaker knows he shouldn’t go with them. But his head is buzzing like a beehive, and so he agrees. He won’t drink, he thinks. He’ll sit in the Grey Goose with them and watch while the men of the Mainland drink themselves into oblivion to mark the end of the king’s birthday and the imminent return of the working week.

  After that night the boatmaker is drunk without stopping for three months: from the first week in July through the blinding Mainland summer, when night is no more than a single inheld breath in an endless day, through August and into September. He continues to work, not drinking quite as much when he is actually on the job. When he’s on the building site, he removes his corduroy jacket and works in long underwear and overalls, letting alcohol steam out of him in the sun. He doesn’t say much, and people keep away. He accepts beer from White and the occasional pull on Crow’s flask while he’s working, enough to keep his hands from shaking.

  As soon as the crew stops for the day, the sun still high in a white sky, the boatmaker starts in again. He drinks on the tram back to the city and in his room. He goes to the Grey Goose with Crow and White and spends his wages on alcohol, letting it burn its way into him. He’s never cared for beer, hates the feeling of it sloshing inside him when he’s drunk. He likes grain-spirits: ethereal and burning, whispering demon-thoughts in his brain. He gets in fights, beating or being beaten, waking up in his bed or on his green floor with no memory of what happened the night before, his mind no more substantial than a fresh shaving of wood from a chisel.

  While the boatmaker sinks into drink, tension over the modernization program grows all around him. In spite of the precautions taken by the king and Jacob Lippsted, rumors are spreading about how much the Crown owes the House of Lippsted. Many are outraged by what they hear. There is a widespread feeling that an illness has struck the crown—and the Jews are to blame. Though Jacob Lippsted and the king enjoy each other’s company, these days they take care not to be seen together in public.

  The hatred of Jews on the Mainland is not as virulent as it is across the narrow neck of land that connects the Mainland to the continent of Europe. There hasn’t been a pogrom in the capital for more than half a century, a length of time that would be unheard of in certain countries to the south and east. But there is a disgruntlement in the kingdom that cannot be wiped away, a hatred that seems to rise from the earth itself, bubbling up like a volcanic hot spring, expelling poisonous gas across the fertile land.

  Crow and White understand far more of what is happening on the Mainland than the boatmaker does. But they don’t bother to enlighten him. Crow knows he is getting closer to being able to profit from the boatmaker; the boatmaker’s drunkenness may be good for his plan. Crow and White watch as the boatmaker engages the world with his fists and his rage.

  The man from Small Island has changed from a skilled carpenter who worked hard and said little into a man who is continuously drunk, yelling in his muddle about money, the Jews, the king, Big Island, a woman of the town, a compass, a wolf with blue fur, his mother, his brother, and other things equally unintelligible to normal, healthy people.

  The boatmaker’s yelling fits usually begin at the height of his drunk, just before he gets into a fight with someone bigger than he is or passes out, listing, sinking and needing to be carried to his room in the boardinghouse, a task Crow and White perform with good humor. That is, White carries while Crow supervises, pulling on his flask and pointing out holes in the pavement that White should avoid while he shoulders the boatmaker’s dead weight.

  Within his spirit-haze, the boatmaker begins to feel that Crow and White are regarding him differently. Now that he is drinking, he would think they would make even more fun of him than they did before. But the mismatched pair don’t make fun of him. Instead, he feels them watching him, as if they are trying to decide what to do with him. He assumes it’s because of the drink. He’s seen others eye him this way when he was drunk for long periods: as if they couldn’t decide whether to try to help or walk away. But they do neither. They simply watch him with interest as they drink their own drink. Crow and White are professional drinkers: slow and steady, rarely drunk or out of control.

  The boatmaker quickly gives up trying to figure out what Crow and White are thinking. In any case, there is little room to spare inside his head, which is filled by the only two things that matter: the way wood speaks to him, which never goes away no matter how much he drinks, and the buzzing that sounds like a swarm of angry bees. The angry buzzing, the intensity of his confusion about money, the Mainland and the Jews, makes him fear he will lose his mind, something the boatmaker, for all his strangeness, has never been afraid of before.

  Not even the deepest drunk or the worst beating can silence the buzzing for long. When he’s working it recedes a little, but it comes back as soon as he wraps up his tools and leaves the building site for the city. And then he can’t get to the Grey Goose fast enough. Or someplace rougher: a cabin on the roadside where they serve spirits, distilled in the cellar from wheat or potatoes, that are guaranteed to produce blackness in a hurry.

  One night in September, under a moon about half full, Crow and White are walking him back to the boardinghouse. The boatmaker is drunk, but for a change he hasn’t started spouting the usual gibberish about the Jews, the king, the Lippsted girl, and so on and so forth. On this particularly lovely fall evening, Crow and White have not had to shut him up or carry him home. But they are still leading him, and he notices that they do not seem to have drunk as much as usual—perhaps nothing at all.

  Rather than going to the front door, they guide him by nudges and shoves into the alley behind the boardinghouse. There are only a few clouds in the sky, and the moon is reflected on the cobbles, still warm from the sun. Moonlight rolls down the stones and collects in rivulets.

  For a moment the buzzing in the boatmaker’s head quiets. In the familiar alley near their boardinghouse, he is pleased to be supported by his friends. What does it matter if they do not go inside directly? For a breath or two he is almost at home, feeling much as he would under a Small Island moon. He pauses to wonder what the woman and her child are doing.

  Then White’s massive arm shifts and the boatmaker finds himself held up from behind by two huge paws that he has tried to educate in the use of hammer and chisel, bit and brace. Crow moves in front of him, moonlight picking out the sharp features under his widow’s peak, and reaches inside his coat. He takes out his curved flask and holds it out to the boatmaker, dangling in White’s arms, toes above the cobbles.

  “Drink?” He knows Crow is acting drunk. He has no idea why.

  “No.”

  “That’s alright. You’ve had plenty.”

  “I guess so. What’s this, then?” He tilt
s his head to indicate White, holding him from behind.

  “We think you know.”

  “You think a lot of things,” the boatmaker says, laughing. He is finding himself funny, a rare occurrence. He feels as if he should shut up, but in this moment he can’t; it feels too good to laugh.

  “You think a lot of things, Herr Kravenik,” he says. “And know a lot of things. And you do a lot of things. Only none of them seems to involve work. And why is that?”

  The small man is silent. He caps the flask and starts to put it away, then suddenly uses the bottom of it to smash the boatmaker’s face. His mouth fills with blood, as if fed by a warm underground spring.

  “Where is it?” Crow asks.

  “Where is what?” He knows that later his face will ache. Now he feels nothing except the blood in his mouth.

  “The money. Where is the money?” Crow nods over the boatmaker to the white giant, who spins the boatmaker around like a ragdoll and begins punching him—face, shoulders and gut—with a huge balled fist, bracing him with the other hand. It all seems to happen slowly. It doesn’t even hurt much.

  The boatmaker, who usually fights like a demon when he’s drunk, takes blow after blow until he is lying on the cobbles, peering down into the rivers of moonlight that flow between the stones. The two men, big and little, lean in like shadows speaking strange tongues. “The money,” says Crow. “Where is it? This is your last chance.”

  The boatmaker tries to move his arm. It doesn’t move. He wants to ask: What money? And add: I thought we were friends. But nothing comes out. He lies spreadeagled as White kicks and punches him into blackness.

  CHAPTER 12

  The boatmaker wakes slowly, not knowing where he is. His body is a lump of pain. He sends thoughts into his trunk and legs, but they don’t respond. He stops trying to move. Light rakes in from windows on the far wall, leaps the empty bed next to his own and paints a stripe on the ceiling. The stripe seems motionless, but if the boatmaker is patient, he can see that it changes position. First the light is on one side of a thin crack in the plaster of the ceiling; then it is on the other. He feels as if he has seen this stripe of light before.

  He knows he is in a hospital, though there is no such thing on Small Island. He focuses on the ceiling, trying not to feel the throbbing in his head and his body. He waits to see when the stripe of light will move and leave the fine, meandering crack behind. It seems important for him to remain awake: He is afraid that if he goes to sleep he will never return to this room.

  When he wakes again, it is dark. The door opens, admitting light from the hall. A woman enters, dressed in white. Starched straps hold up a long skirt. A white band crosses her forehead under a headdress falling to her shoulders. A nun, the boatmaker thinks. Like hospital, it is a word he knows from books.

  The nun circles his bed, wrings the cloth she carries into a bowl on the stand beside his bed, places the cooling compress on his forehead.

  “You’re awake. That’s good. Can you hear me?” He can feel something warm seep through the bandages around his right ear.

  “Yes.” His voice is rough and faint.

  “Even better.” She pours water into a glass, supports his neck and bandaged head while she helps him drink. Pain, white and unforgiving, shoots through his head as the cool water flows into him like water flowing into a desert. Finishing the glass, he signs that he wants more; the sister gives him another. It is still a miracle, but more like water this time, less like the mercy of God. She eases his head back onto the pillow. White pain cuts through his body.

  “That’s all you can have. The doctors are worried about your insides. From the look of you, they have reason to be. Something big hit you. What was it?”

  She smiles, a little self-conscious, making clear he doesn’t have to answer. Her teeth are small, even, white. He wonders what color her hair is under the white headdress. Then thinks: blond, to go with the blue eyes and pale skin.

  “How long have I been here?” The pain returns when he speaks, but a little less each time he opens his mouth.

  “Three days and three nights.”

  Three days. That’s why the stripe of light is familiar.

  “You’ve been drifting in and out. And talking. We couldn’t understand much of it. But you did keep saying The Brotherhood.”

  She takes the cloth from his forehead, wrings the water out into the basin and replaces the cloth on his forehead. “The Brotherhood. Why were you talking about that?”

  The boatmaker looks at the ceiling. It seems to him that there are things everyone on the Mainland understands—everyone except him. Perhaps even this nurse, a nun who looks not yet twenty.

  Though he could speak, he asks for water with his hands. She shakes her head. “And you have had visitors.”

  The boatmaker tenses under the plaster and bandages. The pain returns. He assumes Crow and White came back to finish him off. He has no idea why they would do that. Then again, he doesn’t know why they assaulted him in the first place—the men he thought were his friends.

  “Who?” he croaks.

  “Father Robert, and the one they call Neck.” She smiles at the memory.

  “Who?”

  “Father Robert. A wonderful man. He often visits the sick here. No matter how ill or poor they are, regardless of whether they have friends or family. Even the doctors admire him—and they are not easy to impress.” She smiles. “Neck is one of those Father Robert has saved. You’ll understand why he’s called Neck when you meet him. His name is Brother George.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did they visit me?”

  “To help you. And to save you.” As she speaks, he sees how young she is. Younger even than he had thought: maybe only seventeen. Calm and competent even so.

  “And I would say you could use a bit of saving, judging from the way you came here. Are you fond of drink, then?”

  The boatmaker says nothing. He wonders whether a cloud of alcohol was sweating out of him as she dressed his wounds. Out of a man who had decided, firmly, that he wasn’t going to drink on the Mainland. He groans.

  “What?”

  When he doesn’t answer, she props pillows under him, goes into the hall, returns with a bowl and begins feeding him beef broth, a little at a time from a heavy, nicked hospital spoon.

  Taking in the soup, the boatmaker puts his feet, tentatively, on the path that leads back to the world. Broth spills into dark stubble on his face, and she wipes it away with a clean cloth.

  At first he is awake only an hour a day, then two, then a few hours, which he spends watching the stripe of light. Then he is awake for almost a whole day, waiting for the sound of her steps in the hall.

  He is not listening for her because he wants to be saved. The boatmaker has no interest in being saved. For him, being saved can mean only one thing at this moment: not drinking. And he doesn’t see how anyone can help him do that; it seems like something he must do for himself.

  But he can tell the sister wants to see him saved, and he is willing to hear whatever she has to say, because he is grateful to her. And he is grateful for something else. Saved or not, he will be able to take care of himself. Though his jaw and several ribs are broken, his hands are unharmed.

  When he has been sitting up for a full day, is nearly ready to get out of bed to try to walk, the nurse comes in to inform him that his visitors have returned. She asks whether he wants to see them. He tells her that he does. He would like to know who wants to save him.

  The first man to enter is of medium height, taut and well-built, with a body like a wrestler’s: strong arms and a chest larger than you would expect for his height. He is wearing the black robe of a priest, belted at the waist, a square of white showing through the collar. He is blond, with sharp blue eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses. His movements are graceful and purposeful. He is a man accustomed to being obeyed. The man behind him and to one side is shorter, almost squat, wearing a much-lived
-in woolen robe and leather sandals. His head, tilted to one side, joins his shoulders directly. He has no neck.

  The boatmaker feels himself staring at the neckless man, then pulls his gaze back to the priest. The priest is examining the boatmaker’s discolored face with a look much like that of the doctors who visit patients in the afternoon: kind but distant, evaluating the patient’s state against a large body of unshared knowledge.

  “How are you feeling, brother?”

  “Alright.”

  “I am glad to hear it. You must be on the mend. We came to visit you several times when the outcome was very much in the balance. I’m sure you don’t remember.”

  Nothing in this requires an answer; the boatmaker offers none. The sheer novelty of having visitors is receding. Now he wants to know what has brought these men to his bedside. He is curious—and suspicious. The beating he took from Crow and White has changed something in the boatmaker.

  “Pardon my rudeness,” says the priest. “You must be wondering who we are. We feel we know you already, having been here with you when you were struggling for your life. But of course you do not know us. I am Father Robert. And this,” he says, turning toward the neckless man, “is Brother George.”

  “I am,” says the other, bowing slightly, hands clasped in a gesture that might express prayer or embarrassment. His hands are strong and rough, the hands of a man who works the soil, the brown nails cracked and broken.

  “I am Brother George, but you may call me Neck. Everyone does, sooner or later.” The man named for what he does not have laughs. His head is broad, his brown hair close-cropped, his nose dented as if he had been a boxer. It is a face difficult not to like: the face of a man who is not pretending to be anything other than what he is.

  The neckless face makes the boatmaker want to weep. He holds himself still. I must be getting soft, he thinks, lying here in this bed. Soft like the bed itself, or the young nurse. Everything around him is soft. He knows he must harden himself, rise and walk, rejoin the world before he splits open like a milkweed pod at the end of summer, revealing soft seeds.