The boy knelt on the bunk and peered through the glass. Cabin 3 was on the dock side of the ship. Sacks of grain were still being loaded deep in the hold. Sailors and dock hands shouted back and forth. Fork lifts skittered about like bugs, beetles with long sharp mandibles. He was not feeling very happy about fork lifts and he turned away. He took his small stack of paperback books out of the bottom of his suitcase and arranged them in a rack where they would be easy to reach from his bunk. Then he put out his face cloth, toothbrush, and toothpaste.
Over the two washbasins was a fan, for which there was no present need. In the radiator the steam was clanking. By the side of each washbasin was a thermos flask in a holder; Simon uncorked his and peered in: ice water. He corked it again, sat down in one of the two small chairs, and poured himself another cup of tea. Then he heard a loud, deep honking: the ship seemed to shake from the vibration, and he realized that the Orion was indeed throbbing; the engines were being revved up; they were about to sail.
He knelt on his bunk again and looked out.
On the dock the longshoremen were unhooking the great ropes which held the Orion to the pier. Two dark-uniformed sailors pulled the gangplank aboard; two others leapt across the dark gap of water between dock and lower deck. Slowly the dock seemed to recede from the ship; the dark expanse of water dividing ship and land grew wider and wider. Sea gulls swooped about, calling in raucous excited voices. Deep within himself Simon felt an echoing response of excitement. He was at sea, on his way to Venezuela.
He began to whistle, softly, a minor, haunting melody, and then to sing,
I met her in Venezuela,
A basket on her head …
He was still looking out and singing softly when Geraldo returned with a heavy navy-blue sweater and a fisherman’s cap. “Mynheer Boon is lending you the sweater till it is warmer. The cap is for you to keep. You will need it to keep the sun off your nose as well as the rain off your head.” He knelt on the bunk beside Simon, not much larger than the younger boy, and they looked at the activity on the dock becoming small and almost unreal as Savannah drifted farther and farther away.
In schoolboy Spanish, Simon tried to thank Geraldo, and was interrupted by a bang on the door and Poly’s voice, “Here we are, Simon!” and she burst in, wearing a long plaid bathrobe which undoubtedly belonged to her father; her short, carroty hair stuck out in spikes from being rubbed dry. Charles, in jeans and a red turtleneck, followed her.
“All right if we come in?” he asked.
“Oh, please do come in,” Simon welcomed them, indicating Geraldo. “Do you know—”
“Oh, yes, Geraldo brought me hot tea, too, like a Herald Angel—that’s what Geraldo sounds like. I used to spell it with an H instead of a G.” Then she burst into a stream of Spanish so fluent that Simon found it difficult to follow.
Geraldo spoke slowly and carefully to Simon. “You understand that Geraldo begins with a G, which is pronounced like an H in Spanish? And the other passengers are all having tea in the salon. Mr. Phair would like you please to join them as soon as you’re dressed.”
At Geraldo’s grave courtesy, Poly flushed, the red beginning at her neck and moving up her face to her forehead. “I’m sorry, Simon. I didn’t think.”
Under his breath Charles said, “Don’t show off …”
Poly flung around as though to flash a reply to her brother, then stopped herself.
“It’s okay,” Simon assured her, “really, it’s okay. And just as I was feeling smug about my Spanish, too. Teaches me how nonexistent it really is.”
“We used to live in Portugal,” Poly explained, “on Gaea, an island off the south coast. If you learn Portuguese, which is a stinker, it’s easy to learn Spanish. Whereas it’s most difficult for someone who speaks only Spanish to learn Portuguese, and—” She broke off. “Am I showing off again?”
Charles sat down on Cousin Forsyth’s bunk. “It’s second nature,” he said, not unkindly. Then he bestowed a singularly sweet smile on his sister, on Simon and Geraldo, a slow blooming of pleasure quite different from Poly’s flash of light. “Did you see us sail? Our cabins are starboard, so we almost missed it, what with you and Poly having been so suddenly in the soup.”
Simon glanced at the porthole through which he had watched the land, rather than the ship, move slowly away. “It was exciting. I’ve never been away from home before. Even coming to Savannah was a journey for me.”
“Where’s home?” Poly asked.
“Near Charleston.”
“Charleston, South Carolina?”
Simon’s surprised look said as clearly as words, ‘Is there any other?’ Then he indicated the sweater and cap. “From Geraldo. He’s lending me Mynheer Boon’s sweater and he’s giving me the cap.”
Poly spoke to Geraldo in Spanish, but this time it was slowly and carefully so that Simon would understand. “Geraldo, would you tell them, please, that Simon and I’ll dress and be right along. And it’s a lovely cap.”
“I will tell them, Miss Poly.” Then he referred to a slip of paper he pulled out of his pocket. “On the passenger list it says Pol—Polyhymnia.”
“Poly, please, Geraldo.”
Charles grinned. “Polyhymnia’s a muse. The muse of sacred music.”
Poly pulled the belt to her father’s bathrobe tight in a determined gesture. “If any of you calls me anything but Poly there’ll be—there’ll be murder.”
“Not at the beginning of the trip,” Charles said.
Geraldo picked up Simon’s tea tray. “I will tell them.”
“What?” Charles asked. “That there’ll be murder?”
“That you will shortly be in for tea.”
“Okay.” Poly followed Geraldo out, but turned at the door. “I won’t be more than five minutes. Hurry, Simon.”
Charles asked, “Shall I stay and talk?”
“Please. Please do.” Simon took clean underclothes, navy-blue shorts, and a blue cotton shirt from his drawer and went into the shower to dress.
Charles reclined on Cousin Forsyth’s bunk. “If you had all the brothers and sisters Poly and I have, you wouldn’t have room for modesty. But you’re an Only, aren’t you?”
Simon compromised by leaving the bathroom door half open. “Yes.”
“How come you and your father are taking this trip?”
“Not my father.” Simon pulled on his shirt and emerged.
“I didn’t think he seemed terribly fatherly. At least not like our father. I get the feeling he’s not used to children.”
“I don’t think he is.” Simon sat on the edge of his bunk and pulled on navy-blue knee socks.
Charles, his hands behind his head, looked up at the ceiling of the cabin. “How do you happen to be traveling with him, then?”
Simon pulled the heavy sweater over his head. The rough wool felt comforting. He pulled Geraldo’s cap over his still damp hair. His shoes were with his other wet things, so he took a pair of worn sneakers from the bottom of the wardrobe. “Cousin Forsyth offered me the trip, and Aunt Leonis thought it would be good experience for me, since I’m a country bumpkin. I guess you’ve done a lot of traveling.”
“Oh, some, but mostly we’ve lived on Gaea—the island; the younger kids were born there. Last year we came back to America and moved to Benne Seed Island, but most of us still think of Portugal as home.”
Poly appeared in the doorway, now dressed in a plaid skirt and a burnished-orange sweater which just managed not to conflict with her hair. “Daddy’s a marine biologist, so islands are very good for his work. C’mon. Let’s go brave the lions’ den.”
Charles rose from Cousin Forsyth’s bunk and Simon smoothed the coverlet, almost as anxiously as Cousin Forsyth had supervised the loading of the crated portrait.
Poly helped him. “What would he do if he found Charles had sat on his bunk? Beat you or something?”
“No, oh no, he’s very kind.”
“It’s okay.” Charles glanced impatiently at t
he bunk. “You’d never know anybody’d even sat on it. Let’s go. We’re expected to meet everybody.”
In the salon Geraldo was replacing one teapot with a fresh one. Poly led the way in; Charles slipped past her and sat on a sofa beside his father. Simon held back at the doorway, shyly looking at the people sitting on sofas and chairs around the tea table. Cousin Forsyth did not greet him; he seemed concentrated fully on the woman pouring tea, a dark, handsome woman, very Spanish-looking, though she turned out to have the incongruous name of Dr. Wordsworth. She and her traveling companion, Dr. Eisenstein, were professors on sabbatical leave from their university. Dr. Wordsworth taught Spanish—so she must be at least half Spanish, Simon thought.
Cousin Forsyth said, “It was indeed a pleasant surprise for me to find the lovely Inés Wordsworth on the Orion. We knew each other many years ago when we were both young in Caracas.”
Dr. Wordsworth replied with distinct chilliness, “It was not that many years ago, and our acquaintance was slight. Very slight.”
Cousin Forsyth raised his fine eyebrows, but made no comment, and Dr. Wordsworth went on to explain to the children that Dr. Eisenstein was an anthropologist, going to the Lago de los Dragones in Venezuela, to make what Dr. Wordsworth called an in-depth study of the Quiztano Indians who lived at the far end of the lake.
Poly said with interest, “We’re getting off at Puerto de los Dragones, too, and going on to the lake. Daddy’s been asked to—” She caught a warning look from her father and hurried on. “I think it’s lovely having a town and a lake be places of dragons. I’m very interested in dragons. Of course, one always thinks of St. George and the dragon, and he’s my favorite, but did you know that Margaret of Antioch had a dragon, too?” As always when she came close to blundering, she talked too much about something else. “Fork lifts look a little like dragons, don’t you think?”
After a slight pause among the company, Cousin Forsyth said dryly, “I hadn’t noticed the resemblance.”
“Maybe they don’t spout fire,” Poly said stubbornly, “but they can be as dangerous as dragons. Right, Simon?”
Simon nodded, and continued to observe the passengers and listen to the conversation. He learned that afternoon tea was not usually served on the Orion; this tea party was an impromptu affair; some of the passengers, seeing Geraldo brewing tea for Simon and Poly, had suggested that tea in the salon would be a pleasant and informal way for new and old passengers to meet.
Dr. Wordsworth did not offer tea to the children but began to refill the adult passengers’ cups. Simon looked at her hands, which had long, scarlet nails. They were not young hands, and the flashing rings and bright nail polish accented rather than minimized their age. Aunt Leonis did not wear nail polish, and though her nails were horny with age, Simon compared Dr. Wordsworth’s hands unfavorably with the old woman’s.
Dr. Eisenstein appealed more to Simon—a brown mouse of a woman, brown all over, suit, eyes, the shadows below the eyes; there was considerable brown remaining in the greying hair, which she wore braided in a thin crown on top of her head. Her smile was friendly, Simon thought, and did not exclude the children.
He turned his regard to the three other passengers, two old men and one old woman—all three probably considerably younger than Aunt Leonis, but nevertheless old. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were both plump and beaming; they were from New Hampshire and were en route to visit their granddaughter and great-grandchildren in Costa Rica, and were obviously thrilled at the prospect. Mrs. Smith was knitting a blue baby’s bootee, and with her pink cheeks and curly white hair she looked like a magazine illustration of the perfect grandmother.
The last passenger bore the formidable name of Emmanuele Theotocopoulos, and Simon was relieved when they were told to call him Mr. Theo. If Dr. Eisenstein looked like a friendly field mouse, Mr. Theo was small and frail as a sparrow, but he emanated enormous vitality, and he had lively dark eyes and a mop of yellowed white hair which stood out in a thick ruff around his head; he looked, Simon decided, not in the least like a bird, but rather like an aging lion.
Cousin Forsyth’s words caught his attention. “ … a portrait of Simon Bolivar which I am taking to Caracas as a gift to the Venezuelan government.”
Simon’s shyness was overcome by Cousin Forsyth’s proprietary air about the painting. “The portrait has been in our family always. It is the greatest portrait ever painted of the General—and I’m named after him. Simon Bolivar Quentin Phair Renier. The portrait was given to my ancestor, Quentin Phair, by Bolivar himself, and it belongs to my Aunt Leonis—” He stopped short. Cousin Forsyth had bought the portrait from Aunt Leonis, the portrait which otherwise would one day have belonged to Simon. It was no longer Aunt Leonis’s. It would never be Simon’s.
Read all of the continuing adventures of Poly O’Keefe and her friends
The Arm of the Starfish
Adam Eddington is spending the summer in Portugal working for the world-famous Dr. O’Keefe. But when he meets a beautiful girl named Kali Cutter, he becomes involved in a battle between good and evil. Knowledge that could affect the future of the human race is at stake, and Adam doesn’t know which side is good, and which side is evil. Then Dr. O’Keefe’s daughter, Poly, is kidnapped. Adam better pick a side soon, before kidnapping escalates to murder.
978-0-312-67488-5, $9.99 US / $10.99 Can
Dragons in the Waters
Simon Renier is on an ocean voyage to Venezuela with his cousin Forsyth, a man he’s never met before, who may not be altogether trustworthy. Then Forsyth is murdered and everyone on board is a suspect. Simon and his newfound friends, Poly and Charles O’Keefe, are determined to track down the murderer, but will they succeed before they land? Or will the murderer escape into the jungles of Venezuela?
978-0-312-67442-7, $9.99 US / $10.99 Can
A House Like a Lotus
Poly O’Keefe is excited about taking her first trip alone to work at a conference on the island of Cyprus. During a stopover in Athens, she meets Zachary Gray, a wealthy and handsome young man who shows her the sights. Poly enjoys their fleeting friendship, but she’s also eager to get to work. Then Zachary shows up at the conference and tries to persuade her to skip out on her responsibilities. But his reckless behavior and desire to impress her might end up getting both of them killed.
978-0-312-54798-1, $9.99 US / $10.99 Can
An Imprint of Macmillan
THE ARM OF THE STARFISH. Copyright © 1965 by Madeleine L’Engle Franklin. All rights reserved. Printed in April 2011 in the United States of America by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia. For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Macmillan and are used by Farrar Straus Giroux under license from Macmillan.
Originally published in the United States by Farrar Straus Giroux
macteenbooks.com
Square Fish logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
Book designed by Betty Crumley
eISBN 9781466814462
First eBook Edition : March 2012
Library of Congress catalog card number: 65-10919
The verse quoted is from “Two Tramps in Mud Time” from Complete Poems of Robert Frost. Copyright 1936 by Robert Frost. Copyright renewed 1964 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
Please note that the action of The Arm of the Starfish is not strictly contemporary [to 1965]; the story should be read as taking place in the near future.
First Square Fish Edition: June 2011
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The Arm of the Starfish (O'Keefe Family) Page 26
