The Boatmaker

by John Benditt

  He struggles up and pushes the covers off. His visitors look at each other, wondering whether they should call the nursing sister to prevent the man in the bed from rising.

  Instead, they decide without a word to move to him and steady him as he attempts to rise. The boatmaker comes up shakily, braced on one side by the priest, on the other by the monk. His legs feel weak. Pain shoots through his left foot. All the blood in his body pours into his head. He is sure he will black out, fall to the floor and smash into fragments of plaster and bandages. But the strangers support him.

  Holding his breath, he extends a foot from under the long nightshirt and takes a step. Pain shoots from his foot up to his head. He stops to rest. He can feel each man, left and right, smell their different smells. He takes another step, the pain and dizziness lessening. Without a word, he makes a stiff-legged, halting journey to the window and back. Father Robert and Neck help him into bed and exchange a meaningful glance above his head. The boatmaker feels tears he knows he must not shed.

  “What was done to you was dreadful,” the priest says, when they have covered his bruised legs with bedclothes. “A sin. Do you know who did this?”

  “Crow and White.” It sounds to him like someone else’s voice coming from within the bandages.

  “Crow and White? Odd names.”

  “Their real names are Kravenik and Weiss. I thought they were my friends.”

  “Why would they do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know. They asked about money. I don’t know what they meant. I would have given them money.” He laughs. It feels as though someone is breaking his ribs a second time.

  “Money,” the priest says, thoughtful, his hand on his smoothly shaved chin. “I see you are tired. You must rest and heal. We will return when you are stronger. Where will you go after this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps we can offer you useful work. In a godly place, where the love of money does not enter. But we can discuss that later. Until then, we pray for your recovery. All of us will pray: Brother George, myself and the rest of our brothers.”

  After they leave, the boatmaker spends an hour watching the stripe of light on the ceiling as it embraces, then abandons, the wavering crack. He is moved by his visitors. Not because they offered to pray for him. Nor because they promised him work. It was simply their bodily presence as they supported him in his painful journey to the windows and back. The warmth. The feeling that they would not let him fall. After watching the light a long time, the boatmaker falls asleep, worn out.

  Over the next few days he begins to walk on his own, first around his room, then in the corridor outside, finally out on the grounds behind the stone wall that separates the hospital from the city. It is the beginning of winter, gray and cold. The days are already short, though no snow has fallen.

  The bandages and plaster come off little by little, leaving the boatmaker bruised and swollen, white and soft in places, but intact. He even has his teeth. He runs his hand over his face and jaw, covered by rough, dark beard.

  The nurse comes every day, first feeding him and changing his dressings, later just being in the room, engaging in what passes for conversation with the boatmaker. It amuses her, when she’s not busy with sicker patients, to see how many words she can get out of him in one visit. When she tires of that game, she counts silently to see how many minutes he will go without giving up a word.

  The boatmaker enjoys her presence, though she seems less like an angel than she did when he first came back into the world and more like an ordinary, lovely Mainland farm girl. He is beginning to be healthy enough to think of leaving. He does not know where he will go. He would like Father Robert to return and talk more about the place built by brotherhood, where the love of money does not enter.

  Bundled in a blanket against the gray cold, he goes out into the hospital grounds, picks up scraps of wood, brings them back to his room and puts them in a pile on a table against the wall. He pushes the beds apart and pulls the table into the middle of the room. Then he sets to work with a clasp knife borrowed from one of the hospital workmen.

  The sister sees him working and is pleased. Though she is young, she has seen many patients: those who mend and those who do not. Instinctively she knows that for this man making things with his hands is part of the road back. She comes into the room and watches without speaking.

  As the boatmaker works, the great purple bruises turn blue, then green and finally fade to yellow. The soft white places become firmer.

  One day he stops his work and asks the nurse for various implements; she brings them. He uses scissors to cut through the dark beard and shaves with a straight razor. He trims the thick mustache, gold mixed with darker brown. The nursing sister sees the healthy animal emerge.

  When the weather has turned dry and sharply colder, the young priest returns, alone. The boatmaker is sitting at his table working scraps of wood with the clasp knife. He sets the knife down and stands up in his robe and pajamas. They are about the same height, the priest more muscular, healthier and sleeker, his blond hair combed straight back.

  The boatmaker wraps himself in a blanket and the two men walk in the hospital grounds. The priest tells the boatmaker of the community called The New Land that is growing in the countryside not far from the capital. The New Land will renew the kingdom’s spiritual foundation, the priest says, in the voice of a man who enjoys speaking to crowds, carrying them along with him to action. The people of the Mainland have been corrupted, fallen away from God. Even the king, defender of the faith, has been degraded. A great cleansing is needed, a new beginning in Christ. The land itself, the very earth, must be purified.

  As they walk in the cold, the boatmaker feels the priest’s authority. In a simple black robe, no weapon in hand, he is a warrior, a spiritual chieftain. Men would do many things for this man—almost anything.

  “The men who are making the New Land are humble. They are like Brother George: close to the earth, working with their hands. We don’t need the wealthy or the powerful, the nobility. They are covered in the mire of their own corruption. When we raise the banner of the Lord, they will run after us so as not to be left behind, but they will never really be with us. And we don’t need them. We need men like you. You could be one of us.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to know now. There is time for you to consider my offer. But I ask you, brother, where else is there for you to go? The capital? Small Island? What awaits you in those places?”

  The boatmaker has no answers. He turns and walks back to the main building, pulling his blanket tight around him.

  Inside, he takes off his blanket and goes to the table where the scraps of wood are becoming a house. It is his gift for the nun: a Small Island house in miniature. Snug and close to the ground, with small rooms on two floors. He has carved the ground floor and the corner posts, the beams to support the roof. For the moment, the house is open to the sky, but he knows how the roof will be. He wonders whether she will like it. He knows it is not fancy or polished. But it is what he has to give.

  As he heals, he considers the priest’s invitation to become a brother on the New Land. He is drawn by the feeling he had when he stood between the priest and the peasant monk. He can see himself as a brother among men working toward the same end, and not for money, wearing a robe like the one Neck wears. Putting his hands in the dirt. Not even working in wood but in the earth. Though he knows little enough about this monastery and the brothers there, he feels in himself a growing desire to shed what he has been and join them. As he carves the pieces of his little house, feeling these things without being able to name them, he realizes that the buzzing in his head—the confusion of king, money, Jews, hate—isn’t there anymore. It hasn’t been since the priest invited him to join the brothers on the New Land.

  He works on the house and walks the grounds, wearing his blanket. Snow falls every day, covering the dead grass. The boatmaker knows he can’
t stay at the hospital much longer. No one has told him he must leave or mentioned any form of payment, which is a good thing, since he has not a bill or coin. He thinks of his cache under the floorboard. Was that the money Crow was yelling about while White kicked and beat him? He wonders whether the two of them found his hiding place. It was concealed. But the room isn’t big, and they would have torn his things apart. He knows that, despite his skill, nothing stays hidden forever.

  One day the nurse brings him the clothes he was wearing when he was brought to the hospital. Everything has been washed and folded, mended and darned. It must all have been covered in blood, he thinks. She leaves the room, and he dresses. Everything fits, though it is all loose.

  At the bottom of the pile is his sealskin pouch. The top of the bag is torn where Crow and White forced it open. Unlike his other things, the bag has not been mended. The money is gone, including the new bills from the Mint. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that at the bottom his fingers touch nothing but sealskin, the seam held tight by gut thread. The handkerchief embroidered with the picture of the harbor and the three seals, which he carried next to his chest all the way from Small Island, is gone.

  He can imagine how it happened, White tearing at the bag with his bear paws, Crow grabbing it away as soon as it is ripped open, pulling out the contents, pocketing the money, dropping bag and handkerchief near the boatmaker’s unconscious body. A passerby finding him and calling for help to rush the injured man to surgery. One of the Samaritans picking up the bag, thinking it must be valuable, and piling it on the stretcher with the boatmaker, in the urgency of the moment not noticing the handkerchief. The handkerchief lying in the rain under the wheels of pushcarts, under shoes and boots, until nothing is left but a few threads, green and white. Finally even the threads washed down between the cobbles to the sewer drain at the end of the alley and from there to the mighty flux named for Vashad. As he imagines this slow progression of decay, the boatmaker feels he is taking a beating ten times worse than the one White’s giant fists delivered. After it is over, he is as empty as the sealskin bag.

  When the nursing sister returns, she sees that he is dressed in his own clothes, sitting in the chair in front of the little house he’s been making from scraps of wood. At his feet is the torn sealskin bag that was with him when he came in, the thing he clutched as he floated in and out of consciousness. He seems utterly without animation. The boatmaker is often quiet, but the nurse has never seen him quite like this. She has the urge to touch the shoulder of his corduroy jacket. But she refrains and leaves the room; the sound of her shoes, squeaking on the marble floors, and the swish of fabric under her white skirt trail behind her. When she comes back, hours later, the boatmaker has not moved. She decides to send for Father Robert.

  When the priest arrives with Neck, the boatmaker is lying on his bed, fully dressed. He has not eaten or slept since he discovered the handkerchief was missing. He has gotten up only to drink a little water and use the chamberpot. The priest stands over the bed, looking down at the slight man in his corduroy jacket. It is the first time he has seen the boatmaker in his own clothes. Neck stands behind him.

  The boatmaker has no idea why the priest has come at this moment—but he knows it is the right moment. When he sees the two men of God, the desire to be part of something larger than himself surges up in him like the sea surging and foaming around Small Island. Life has exhausted him. He cannot survive any longer living for himself alone. He has come to a place of terrible dryness. If he does not find his way out of it, he will die.

  Father Robert, who has brought many to the light, knows more than to give a long sermon at this moment. All he says is: “Are you ready to join us, brother?”

  The boatmaker looks up and sees a softness in the rounded face, a brotherly welcome in the blue eyes.

  “There may be a special role for you there,” says the priest. “An important calling. I can see it in you. Isn’t that right, Brother George?”

  The neckless man steps out from behind the priest. “Yes, Father. Very special. I see that too.”

  “Now, brother, will you join us?”

  The boatmaker, feeling his tears beginning to flow at last, can only nod.

  CHAPTER 13

  After Father Robert and Neck leave, the boatmaker lifts himself up, sits on the edge of the hospital bed and cries silently. He has not cried since his brother drowned off Small Island. After that, he felt he had to care for his mother, even though she seemed more angry than sad and pushed him away when he came near. To protect her he stopped crying, has not cried since. Until now, when he feels a hot gratitude to Father Robert and Neck for finding him in his darkness.

  The men from the New Land are to return the next day. That evening the boatmaker eats again and smiles at the nurse. After dinner he goes back to his work on the miniature house. He works through the night, feeling the pleasure of working in wood return, renewed. When the weak winter sun appears, the house is finished, the walls up, roof on and door hung amid a pile of wood scraps. He has left the front of the house open so the nurse can reach in and arrange the furniture he has carved for her: beds, chairs and tables.

  The house is the one where he stayed with the woman of Small Island when he was ill. There are private jokes carved in the gift. A wheelbarrow sits by the side of the house. Three salmon hang from the knob on the front door by a thread through their gills. The nurse will not get these jokes, but she will feel his gratitude in the thing he has made.

  The priest and Neck come for him and bring him out into the country in a farm wagon on roads covered with snow. The community is set by itself, surrounded by fields and close to a stream. The cold is harsh; the animals are already in the barns for the winter. The boatmaker is given a bed in a room with many other men and a robe like Neck’s.

  He has been looking forward to being among brothers working together. But he has come to the New Land at the time of year when life slows and much energy goes to staying warm. The men take their meals in silence in the refectory at heavy wooden tables while one of the brothers who can read sits on a stool at the front and reads from the Gospels. The boatmaker is surprised to find that Neck is a frequent reader; he had assumed Neck was unlettered. The neckless man reads in a warm, clear voice from the witness of Matthew. Neck asks the boatmaker whether he would like to read. He declines.

  The snow deepens. Time begins to stand still. The boatmaker finds quiet corners and reads the Gospels, swept up in their repetition, their strangeness, the unknowability of Jesus, the acts of magic that seemed designed to impress His audiences but in which the carpenter of Nazareth appears to have little interest. He goes for long walks through the snow with Neck, both bundled against the cold, the boatmaker wearing his tall woodcutter boots, Neck in his sandals.

  Neck shows him the fields where the cattle will be pastured in the spring, the pens for goats and pigs. In the warm weather, the ducks will wander freely but will usually stay close to the pond that is now under two feet of snow and visible only in ghostly white outline. He shows the boatmaker where the bees, now inside, will be kept.

  Their long walks often end in the square that lies in the center of the New Land. On one side is a small church made of boards painted white, on the other a handsome two-story building of local stone housing the office and living quarters of Father Robert and the few administrators who keep the community’s books and manage its common funds. None of the brothers owns anything: A brother will give his robe and sandals freely to anyone in need of them.

  On a cold winter day Neck and the boatmaker stop into the church. Inside it is empty and cold. There are no images, none of the stained glass that provides the beautiful colored illumination in most churches, the warmth and fire. Yet when Father Robert preaches, as he does every Sunday and sometimes during the week, the room blazes with light and color.

  The pews are divided in thirds by two rows of thin white columns that support the roof. Neck and the boatmaker go to the front
and sit in the first pew. Facing them is a simple lectern, behind that a large round window of clear glass. Strips of lead radiate from the window’s center, crossed by other strips in widening circles around the central point. The window looks like a map of the world seen from the pole.

  The two men sit in silence. Neck’s eyes are closed. His lips move slightly. The boatmaker wishes he knew how to pray. He assumes he will learn in his new home. Outside, snow falls heavily, as it has for many days. The outside world is as white as the walls of the church, covered in quiet. The boatmaker closes his eyes and recites to himself the words of one of the prayers he is learning. It does not feel satisfying. He waits until Neck is finished, and the two of them go back out into the snow that is already covering the prints they made when they entered.

  The snow accumulates in drifts as tall as the sheds. The animals go into the fields less and less, until they never leave the barns at all. The air in the barns is thick with animal breath, animal smells. The animals are never eaten on the New Land, but they are occasionally sold in a nearby town for cash. With the proceeds, Father Robert directs Neck to purchase salt, tea, nails and other essentials. Aside from these few purchases, the New Land survives on what it makes or grows.

  As winter deepens, the meals in the refectory dwindle. Fresh fruits and vegetables are long gone. Then fruits and vegetables preserved from the golden summer begin to disappear. The stored grain goes slowly, but one day there is no more bread. Toward the end, only turnips, potatoes and carrots from the root cellars are left, along with dried lentils. The brothers eat stew made from these root vegetables day after day, a little less in their bowls each week.

  The boatmaker is amazed at how little grumbling there is despite the lean rations. There is some. The brothers are human, after all. It is cold and their diet puts them not too far from starvation. But as he looks across the dark tables while Neck reads from the Gospel of Matthew, he sees that these unshaven men in their stained robes, many unable to read the words they are hearing over their vegetable stew, believe honestly and deeply in the New Land and Father Robert. And if following him means eating gruel made from potatoes and lentils for weeks in the deepest winter, that is what they will do. It is unlike any other group of men the boatmaker has ever seen or heard about.