Down to a Soundless Sea

by Thomas Steinbeck

  The old man shook his head in confusion and said that he didn’t recall any debts owed him. His former apprentice had paid his own way and owed him nothing. But Sing Fat said that some debts were a matter of opinion and it was his considered belief that a substantial debt was owed for all the elder Fat had taught him. He appraised the services rendered by his teacher to be of the greatest value and, as such, worthy of remuneration even if his former teacher did not consider it so. Pulling a large knife from under his duster, Sing Fat began to open the sacks and lay their contents on the counter.

  Chow Yong Fat was surprised and dismayed by the variety and value of the gifts. There were bags of wild Indian ginseng, rare mountain herbs by the pound, pickled sea urchins, dried juniper berries by the quart, and rare deepwater shark fins in dried bundles of ten pounds each. He also presented his old teacher with rolls of beautifully smoke-tanned buckskin, dried cobra root, best-quality willow bark, and the cured gallbladders of wild mountain boar as well as their curled tusks, the luster of which rivaled the finest ivory. Along with these he stacked wax sealed crocks of pickled green eels and jars of wild mountain honey still in their wax combs as well as big black wood bees preserved in their own honey. Finally Sing Fat lifted the sturdy strongbox onto the counter and opened it with a large, iron key. He withdrew eight large goose quills packed with gold dust, approximately five ounces in all. The gold, he said, was to help his teacher’s business and might finance the recruitment of qualified assistants for the shop.

  Sing Fat paused, looked at the Duchess perched on a tea chest, and then said it was the least he could do since he had left his master’s employ on such short notice. He went on to remark that every few months he would return with more goods appropriate to the arts of medicine. Whatever profits were to accrue from his contribution were to be reinvested in the business. Sing Fat let a sad smile cross his lips. He said he no longer had much need for ready cash. His life was simpler now and required little in the way of money.

  The elder Fat asked what he did and where he now lived, but his ex-pupil avoided the question by apologizing for any undue inconvenience, disappointment, or distress he might have caused his revered teacher. Sing Fat said that, though he still took great interest in medicine and collecting specimens useful in those arts, he could no longer abide the company or fellowship of other people.

  He preferred to live away from human society and craved no companionship save that of his beloved Duchess of Woo. Together with his mule, Po Lin, and his burro, General Sing, he was blessed with all the comradeship he needed.

  For habitation he preferred the mountains of the Big Sur. They sheltered him from the ravages of an unjust world and the soul-stripping flails of heaven.

  With that, Sing Fat made a soft clicking sound with his tongue and the Duchess reappeared from her feline explorations and jumped nimbly up into his arms. Then Sing Fat bowed to his mentor and wished him a prosperous and fruitful new year.

  Clutching his strongbox under one arm and cradling the Duchess in the other, Sing Fat disappeared into the night, leaving his bewildered benefactor to contemplate the power of grief over men’s lives. It seemed to him that the older he grew, the less he really understood about the intricacies and frailty of the human heart. For him it was enough to know that the organ pumped blood and kept one alive against the odds of nature.

  For all intents and by design, Sing Fat slipped from the weave of Chinese society and, indeed, from the fellowship of humanity in general. For thirty-nine years he wandered the mountains and coasts of the Big Sur. Everyone living in the area remembered having seen him on one or another of his enigmatic foraging expeditions, always accompanied by his white cat. Nobody knew what he did for money, where he lived, nor did they really care. He was always fastidiously polite to everyone, but never went out of his way to seek their company. He made no close friends and rarely spoke unless spoken to.

  There were a few odd souls that Sing Fat counted as helpful and worth the time of day. West Smith, Horace Hogue, J. W. Gilkey, and the Posts fell into that category, but the rest were shadow acquaintanceships and of little real importance aside from infrequent instances of trade.

  After the death of Master Chow Yong Fat, his erstwhile pupil bought a bigger spring wagon and went into the seaweed trade. Sometimes he would stop by the Post ranch and trade for apples, sugar, tobacco, or a portion of beef if the deer proved scarce. But other than that, the Chinaman and his reasons for living such an isolated life on the wild coast of the Big Sur remained a mystery to everyone.

  One day in spring, a passing cowhand discovered Sing Fat, by then an old man, sitting under a broad oak near his spring wagon. He looked asleep but was, in fact, dead of natural causes. He appeared quite tranquil and at peace with the world at last. He was buried on a gentle hillside not far from where he was found.

  Some years later Sing Fat’s little cabin was discovered in the mountains. In a well-preserved clearing overlooking the sea near his rude shelter, a tiny ornate grave was discovered. It was just big enough for a cat. It was surmounted by a simple Chinese shrine cleverly constructed of wood and cut stone. The legend, intricately carved and painted on the marker, was in Chinese. Translated, it said, “Here reposes the truest Heart and Spirit of Sing Fat. The humblest servant of the Imperial Duchess of Woo.”

  Below that, carved and painted in gold, was a sentiment in English: “That which the compassion and glory of heaven has united, no power in the universe shall ever divide.”

  An Interview with Thomas Steinbeck

  Q: An aura of performance, as suggested by the author’s note, permeates Down to a Soundless Sea. As a devout raconteur, do you see these stories as attempts to translate the experience of storytelling? Does the act of fixing them on the page complicate or simplify the stories?

  A: In my humble opinion, all storytelling, and in turn writing, by virtue of its human origin, entails profound elements of performance. Authors either perform on their own account, such as historians, journalists, and essayists; or, like novelists and playwrights, they fashion characters to perform specific roles at the author’s behest. One way or the other, the puppeteer remains the same.

  It is specifically because I’m a carrier of raconteur’s disease, in its most virulent form, that I have come to realize that one can never really cross-pollinate the act of live storytelling with its literary reflection. But I can think of any number of great authors who have come within a hairs-breadth of convincing me they could.

  I’ve never known a story, whether true or false, to remain fixed to any page for long. If it has legs at all, it will self-propagate through numerous generations and variations, until not even the author would recognize his own child. On the other hand, if a story’s basic structure should prove totally paraplegic, the moral hopelessly pathetic, and the general presentation tragically pointless, it will probably find great success as a television movie of the week. Which goes to prove, you can’t keep a dead man down.

  Q: These stories are animated by an attention to history and the shared import of the oral tradition. Is writing, in this sense, a collaborative venture?

  A: All reasonable stories are basically collaborative affairs insofar as they are, in the main, salvaged from an oral tradition and therefore rewoven from previously milled strands. Some are reborn from the ashes of ancient myths, some are rooted in our personal or national histories, while still others, like Robin Hood or Frankenstein’s Monster, are inextricably bound to “popular culture,” and therefore recycled and repackaged continuously as demand requires.

  It is true that I indulge an energetic interest in histories of every category, such as they are, but the one all-encompassing fact I have learned through my years of reading is that there are as many colorfully different versions of history as there are colorful authors writing about it. It then should follow that as simple weavers of entertaining stories, most writers should have plenty of room in which to maneuver their narratives. It remains a mystery that so many
plots keep colliding into each other in such an open channel. “Damn the hyperbolae! Topsails set ahead!”

  Q: We don’t use phrases like “to put the tail on the dog” or “kissing feathers” much anymore. What kind of research went into the colorful vocabulary of these stories?

  A: To unearth accurate tints of dialect, phrasing, and language long since out of common usage, I find it helpful to read letters and articles written during the era I’m exploring. I’ve discovered it interesting that many phrases in present usage have parallels in past dictums that use different key phrases meaning very much the same thing as they do today. For instance, “To put the tail on the dog” means the same as inserting a “drag-line” into a yarn with an appropriate hook to fit the moral of the story, a spontaneous “punchline” in modern terms. And the phrase “kissing feathers” means the same as pressing one’s face into the pillows of exhausted repose.

  Q: Are any of the characters, such as the faux-crazed scholar Clarke in “An Unbecoming Grace,” based on real people from the Monterey Peninsula?

  A: Almost all the characters in the book are based on real people and their life experiences. In some cases, as in the story “The Night Guide,” the key incident was related to me by Bill Post, the grandson of the boy described in the narrative. All the stories came down to me through a long oral tradition, and of course the best stories are always about real people. As a writer, one is hard-pressed to invent material that is as entertaining and informative as reality.

  Q: You seem attracted to youthful and wayward protagonists. Is this simply a consequence of genre or is it evidence of a more personal inclination?

  A: I’m not principally attracted to any one character for any particular reason. I always attempt to portray people as I find them, warts, halos, and all. I studiously avoid prejudice for artistic reasons only. Bias clouds vision, and chauvinism hobbles creativity. Since I have never come across anyone who stands without blame in one realm or another, it would appear senseless to portray them in any but the most realistic contours and hues. Pure objectivity may be impossible in a subjective world, but like Diogenes and his search for an honest man, impartiality is hardly an unrewarding lamp to follow. The process has its own tar pits, of course, but if I’d been looking for a sure thing, I wouldn’t have become a writer.

  Q: Often your characters struggle with the vast inequities of society. How has this struggle been updated since the time of these stories? Do you encounter similar characters in modern-day Monterey?

  A: Social inequity (in some instances applied on a statutory basis), and the implied manipulation of inequality, has been one of the darker hallmarks of human society since our troglodyte ancestors decided who was going to get the dry part of the cave. The struggle of any one minority to liberate its momentum from the constraints so stringently applied by the rest of society appears to be a never-ending repetition of a primeval human dilemma. Class paranoia has always insisted on the necessity of maintaining the status quo, regardless of how socially counterproductive and morally bankrupt such instincts prove to be. In that regard, one can’t swing a broken promise without striking parallels in all directions. My characters are taken from life portraits, and therefore I assume they endure the same social spurs as the rest of us. In a nutshell, little has changed in human affairs since before written history. It’s no great challenge to find identical threads binding past to present, and present to future when it comes to the conduct of human affairs.

  Q: In Down to a Soundless Sea, you’ve created a well-rounded world in a relatively limited geographical area. Were you intentionally seeking to showcase this microcosmic diversity?

  A: The fact that all the stories in the book concern people who once lived in the Big Sur was no accident, but the location was by no means chosen as a literary device. Though I would not fault a reader for coming to that conclusion. In truth, the microcosmic aspect of the completed work didn’t occur to me until after I’d finished the manuscript. I had spent so much time immersed in the details of each individual story that the ultimate impact of the format never came to mind.

  Q: In these stories, each sentence benefits from a lush architecture of language. Do you approach writing as an arduous craft that requires intricate planning and careful construction or is your method more organic and improvisational?

  A: If I could truly understand, and calibrate for the edification of others, how I do what I do, I probably wouldn’t do it at all. Everything in life is relatively arduous, and most human endeavors require some degree of careful planning. I find this human concern admirable every time I drive my car or board an aircraft. But I must confess that writing for me is a means and an end in itself. I write to become a better writer. Like all great crafts, the more you do, the better you get. Many times this requires grasping for technical literary straws, which rarely serve the purpose, and other ventures seem to come into bloom with little or no assistance from me whatsoever. But if one can’t resist the search for labels, then I will plead no contest to “organic” and “improvisational” for lack of a better list of charges.

  Q: Redemption, when and if it arrives in these stories, is marked by a quiet, simple, and lonely sort of dignity. What is it about this dignity that appeals to you as a writer? As a person? Does it strike you as a specifically small-town or California-coast kind of dignity?

  A: I rarely think in terms of downfall or redemption as a central theme, if only because spiritual journeys between those two well-defined extremes are literarily predictable as a plot vehicle. I really don’t concern myself with the moral ambiguities of society or individuals unless those insights might lead to a greater comprehension of instinct, motive, or conduct. Whether or not the struggles of individual characters are worthy to be labeled as ‘dignified’ is speculative. At the very least, it’s a decision I would rather leave to the reader.

  Q: In congruence with the title, the strongest character in Down to a Soundless Sea is perhaps nature itself. Many of the stories are centered on man’s timeless struggle with nature and end with his eventual concession to it. What do you see as the proper, or necessary, approach that man must take in his relationship with the natural world?

  A: It has been my general experience that mankind, though doomed to fiddle and fudge with everything within reach just for the hell of it, habitually ignores the subtle fluidity and changing pulse of the natural world, usually with horrific consequences. Gilgamesh, Osiris, and Noah could all testify to the challenging implications of rising water. The human lexicon of myths repeatedly chronicles mankind’s run-ins with the deadlier forces of nature. As always, the moral rests on the once and future premise that survival requires not just insight, but ever-vigilant flexibility. And it appears, according to most mythological and meteorological references, that only those creatures capable of swift adaptation, and prepared to take advantage of natural chaos, survive it. In other words, if the waves have already covered the temple, don’t bother building a damn boat. At that point you have better odds with prayer.

  For a writer with a terminal case of historic curiosity, I find the interplay among humans, their all-prevailing self-delusion, and the dynamic forces of nature, an abundant source of intellectually nutritious material; manna from chaos, as it were. As an unbiased observer, I prefer not to take sides in the struggle between man’s nature and Nature itself. Suffice it to say that I never bet on long odds, and from my vantage point, the forces of nature have the deck stacked and the bones loaded against us. If it weren’t for mankind’s inflated image of self-importance, humans would have realized that they don’t own the world. The world owns them. Perhaps it’s this secret knowledge that fuels the contest between the savage and the coming of the night.

  Reading Group Questions and

  Topics for Discussion

  Discuss the implications of “home” in Down to a Soundless Sea. The collection opens with Bill Post constructing a home for his new family, Chapel Lodge in “Blind Luck” never has a real home gr
owing up, and Dean in “An Unbecoming Grace” makes his home by throwing its original settler over a cliff and renaming the homestead for himself. What does the concept of “home” imply specifically in these stories of the newly settled Monterey Coast?

  “The Wool Gatherer” ends with the line, “John kept that receipt for years to remind him of his bear and the expense incurred by magic visions.” What might this reference to “expense” imply, especially in a family of storytellers like the Steinbecks, who hold the “magic visions” of fiction in such high esteem? In the end, was John Steinbeck’s pursuit of his Great Sur Bear worth the expense and trouble of tracking it that summer of 1920?

  Many, if not all, of the characters in Down to a Soundless Sea are self-made. What are some pressures of the West after the turn of the century that force them to practice their personal industry? What are some freedoms that the Monterey County of that era allows them?

  In his “Author’s Note,” Steinbeck notes how difficult it can be to “attempt duplication of language used by the original participants and make it ring true for the modern car.” Steinbeck does so in a number of ways: for example, the Portuguese captain seeks “a fitting dog’s body to take the axe when the cards turned sour,” the Partington brothers of “The Dark Watcher” were “not known for salting the mines of accuracy.” How do such phrases contribute to a tone of live storytelling? What other devices does Steinbeck use to emphasize these stories’ oral history?