Lost!

by Thomas Thompson

  “Well,” he went on, “it was just like a kid going to grandma’s farm. You’ve never seen such juices flow in a man.”

  “Tell Jim about Boguslav,” said Linda.

  “Jim’s heard about Boguslav,” said Bob. “Wilma told him. They tell the story at family reunions.”

  “We’ve all heard about Boguslav,” agreed Linda. “But I want to hear it again. I’m the chairperson of this hour.”

  “Okay. Boguslav.” At Kiev, Bob and his father had inquired about making a side trip to the village of Boguslav, where the older man had been born. It was possible, said the Intourist guide, but it would require an official escort and a chauffeured car. The price: one hundred dollars.

  Outraged at such capitalistic greed in his mother country, Mr. Tininenko drew his family aside and said he had a better idea. He ushered his clan onto a public bus, and, for fifty cents, they all rode happily to Boguslav, unescorted.

  “When we got there,” said Bob, “it was like the homecoming scene out of a novel. Great throwing of arms around everybody, kissing, feasts, vodka toasts—my head still aches when I think of all the vodka I threw down. Dad doesn’t drink, of course, being an Adventist, and he would only play like he was sipping, then slip the glass to me. Dad ran all over the village—he must have inspected every inch of it. I remember him exclaiming at a pear tree that he had planted as a child, a tree now fifty years old. It all became a jumble of laughing and crying and singing. Dad seemed to know everybody in the village. It was as if he had never gone away.

  “I remember most vividly when he stooped down and let the earth run between his fingers. His face was shining. It was the most alive I have ever seen a man. At that moment, I finally understood my father. He’s Russian, a real Russian. He’s from another culture, a culture where you spring from the land of peasants, where you do as you are told, where tradition is all, where one obeys the will of the elders. All those years I was bursting out, trying to be as American as I could be, a little ashamed of my Russian name that nobody could pronounce, all those years of not understanding my father. Well, I like him now. I’m just sorry I didn’t learn about him sooner. We’ve been great friends ever since.”

  Bob stopped and drew in his breath. He had talked longer than he ever had. But he remembered another detail. “This little one—” he said, looking at his wife, “Linda was the biggest hit of all. She learned a little Russian and she flat stole their hearts. Particularly the dirty old men.” Linda laughed at the memory of the village elders bringing her flowers and bowing before her.

  When it was her turn to present a list of people she admired, Linda began with a worry. There were so many, she said, that she feared she would omit someone important to her. But she would try. Her sister. Her father. A childhood friend named Keith who at eight had had an astonishing vocabulary. Many friends that Bob had mentioned. “And my mother,” she said.

  In fits and starts, in a dry voice, in thoughts that wandered like those of a very old person, Linda spoke emotionally of her mother, how Hisako fell in love with an American she met at a dance in Tokyo in 1946, how they defied parents and authorities opposed to East-West marriages, how her father brought his new wife to Pennsylvania in 1948 because he was afraid to take her to his home state of Montana with its laws against such marriages. She told of how her mother struggled wtih English, how she adapted to life in a trailer park with a common washroom while her husband studied agricultural chemistry, how she kept a splendid Japanese ceremonial gown and obi in a box whose wood she rubbed with scented oil. “My mother went through more than most women can imagine,” said Linda, “because she loved a man. I understand that.”

  By the end of her story, Linda was crying, and Bob held her, enraged at his inability to do anything more for her.

  At the dinner hour, Linda lacked the strength to eat the bites of vegeburgers that Bob mashed carefully and tried to place in her mouth. All she could take were a few sips of water before she fell asleep, translucent lids falling across her faded eyes. Within an hour, she began to moan, and when she woke, she told Bob with enormous shame that she needed to void her bowels. None of the three had passed a bowel movement since the capsizing. She thought she would feel better, she said, crying in mortification, but she simply could not evacuate. Bob reached into Linda’s anus and forced out a hardened feces the size of a baseball.

  “A few days ago,” said Linda the next morning, August 5, the twenty-sixth day of their existence inside the capsized trimaran, “you were going to tell whether a person can be a good Christian and be saved without belonging to a formal church.” As she spoke to Jim, her voice was stronger. In the depths of her agony, she had found unused resources. With salt water she scrubbed her face, and then Bob brushed her hair, worried that she would notice the places where tufts were falling out.

  Now Bob stiffened at her request. “Let’s not go into that this morning,” he said. “I feel like singing some songs. Where’s the harmonica, Jim?”

  “Please, Bob. Let him answer. It’s important to me.”

  Jim nodded. He had been waiting for the time when he could speak again to Linda of his God and his faith. “I feel,” he began softly, “that if a person knows the truth—and the truth is the teachings and precepts of the church—then that person must live by the church. And it is almost impossible to live by that church without attending it regularly. You must! Because there and only there do you find the same kind of people, good people, Christian people, leading Christian lives. We encourage one another. We gain strength from the minister’s leadership, from his preaching, from his prayers, from our study of the Bible. These things get us through the week. They prepare us for the last days of mankind, which are surely near. They lead us to justification and, finally, to sanctification.”

  Bob interrupted, cutting in sharply as he had done so often in his life when he felt it necessary to challenge a presumption.

  “But, Jim,” he insisted, “you can do these things without ever setting foot in a church, even your church. Life can’t be as narrow as your church wants it to be.”

  “You’re wrong,” replied Jim. “My life isn’t narrow. My life is rich. And full. And it will be joyful beyond imagination when Jesus comes again.”

  Bob shook his head in frustration. He was chipping marble with a toothpick. “I know people as pious as you,” he said, “and they don’t belong to a church. Yet they lead exemplary Christian lives.”

  Perhaps, said Jim. But he knew nothing of such people. Nor did he want to know them. All he needed was the church, the fellowship, the nearness of Christ. “I am lost without it,” he said. “I am naked without it.”

  Moving his eyes away from Bob, Jim stretched out his arms to Linda. “I pray for you, Linda,” he said.

  “Let her alone,” Bob said hotly. “Can’t you see she needs rest?” He drew his arms around Linda again and helped her lie back. She fell asleep quickly, her breathing once more in rattles and gasps.

  When she awoke, she cried out Jim’s name. He answered quickly.

  “What is sanctification?” she asked.

  Sanctification, he said, is obedience to God’s holy word and law. Sanctification is a life led in pursuit of the truth. Sanctification is faith in Christ and the spirit of humility.

  “Please, Linda, try to get this down,” Bob pleaded, holding the spoon of food before her face. If she would only eat, he reasoned, then she would draw enough nourishment to last a few more days, enough to sustain her until rescue came. They could not be more than an hour from one of the best hospitals in the world. He cursed the irony.

  “I can’t.” Linda pushed away the spoon.

  Bob put the food into his own mouth and chewed it to the consistency of mush. Then he kissed her, transferring the food to her mouth. She worked her jaws feebly.

  “Did you swallow it?” he asked.

  She shook her head weakly.

  “Then spit it out.”

  Linda tried to expel the tiny portion of food into
Bob’s cupped hand.

  He took the water jug and filled his mouth, bending down to transfer the liquid from his lips to hers. She swallowed, coughing.

  She slept again.

  But when it was almost dark in the chamber, when only the faintest of mauve and burnished gold shadows lingered across them, Linda raised on her elbows. Suddenly she seemed cheerful, the ebbing light of dusk dancing in her eyes.

  “Why don’t we go to McDonalds,” she said. Bob began to laugh at her bad joke.

  “I want a Big Mac,” she prattled on. “On second thought, I think I’d prefer chicken. That’s it! Let’s go down to Colonel Sanders’ for some Kentucky Fried Chicken.” She drawled the name in an accent of magnolia and moss.

  “What turned you on so fast?” asked Bob, both pleased and amused at her air. But when he shifted near to her, he saw the fixed blankness in her eyes. She stared not at him, but through him, to a private world of her own. Quickly she began to cry for a lost doll, and she railed at Bob for taking it from her and hiding it in a secret place. She began to strike him, screaming, crying like a distraught child.

  Bob accepted the soft blows at his chest and shoulders, weeping as he did. What more could a man do when his wife was going insane as she lay beside him.

  (13)

  For hours Linda raved on like a modern Ophelia, twisting her fingers in her hair, dancing with a macabre gleefulness across the sweet parts of her life. Her dementia became almost unbearable to Bob as she played another version of their game. But rather than speak objectively of those who had brushed her life, she found them in terrible fantasy, like figures seen through shattered glass, screaming in tantrums at childhood playmates, cooing at dolls and scolding them in imaginary anger, imploring her mother to let her dress in Japanese robes, swearing to eat her vegetables, and, most painful, fury streaking across her like lightning, shrieking at Bob and Jim for hurting her and trying to murder her.

  His face buried in his mattress, Jim cried out a muffled plea to Bob. “Can’t you stop her? She’s going to hurt herself.”

  Sadly, Bob shook his head. “What can I do? As long as she isn’t violent, I can’t do anything.”

  Near midnight, exhausted, she fell asleep. And when she woke, it was as if nothing had happened.

  “I was asleep, wasn’t I?” she asked. Bob nodded, grateful that she had returned, if only for the moment, from the dark recesses.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked. Perhaps if she would eat, then the cells of her brain would be fed and restored and their deterioration eased. Linda shook her head.

  “You haven’t got a can of peaches or a watermelon, have you?” she asked, almost merrily. “That’s what I was dreaming about. If you could have anything in the world to drink right this minute, what would you choose?”

  Instantly, Bob replied, “An Orange Julius.” He thought on this for a minute. “The funny thing is, I never even liked Orange Julius. But I’ve been thinking about one for days. After they rescue us, when I get back to teaching, I’m going to have a thermos jug full of Orange Julius at all times and carry it to class.”

  “I think I’d like a glass of iced tea about the size of a bathtub,” said Linda, “with lemon and sugar and a piece of mint. With peaches and watermelon floating in it.” She yawned and stretched her arms. They were so thin now that Bob could form a circle with his thumb and index finger and fit both of his wife’s wrists inside. Bob guessed that she weighed scarcely seventy pounds.

  For the rest of the night, Bob dared not sleep, fearful that Linda would stop breathing again. He kept his hand lightly resting on her heart, feeling it labor. But reassuringly it rose and fell until dawn when she began to stir restlessly.

  Bob took a cloth and damped it with precious fresh water. He noted that it was the beginning of a new gallon—one of three left. As he rubbed the cloth across her parched and cracked lips, Linda awoke and smiled. “Is that the best you can do?” she said, and Bob, his troubled face but inches from hers, bent down for a kiss.

  “Can we take that off?” said Linda, gesturing to the piece of wood that covered the exit hole. Quickly Bob removed it, and the light of dawn flooded the compartment. He helped her move a few inches on the bed so that she could see the morning and feel the flecks of mist from the sea.

  “I’d like some milk shake now,” she said.

  Bob shook his head in despair. “There isn’t any more,” he said. He poured her a cup of water and held it to her lips. She sipped, most of it trickling down her chin.

  Jim had put on his scuba suit and excused himself. He said he wanted to go topside and check in the outriggers for any provisions that might have been overlooked. That was his announced mission, but he tactfully realized that Bob and Linda needed these hours together.

  It was to be the longest morning of Bob’s life. He tried to play the games, but for the first time Linda was too weak, too disoriented to join him. “Come on, honey,” he said, over and over until he, too, was weakened, “I’ve got a word. Now you have to guess it. A five-letter word. I’ll give you a hint. Ask me if there are any c’s.”

  “I can’t, Bob. I can’t think straight.”

  “Okay. I’m thinking of a wedding gift. What is it? Where is it? Who gave it to us?”

  Shaking her head weakly, Linda closed her eyes. Bob scooped her frail body in his arms and lifted her. “Please, hon, it’s the game hour. You can’t sleep now. You know our rules. Now come on, I’ll give you a hint. It’s a gift from Japan …”

  A spasm shook her body.

  “Remember? That snow scene your uncle painted for us? We’re going to Japan next year, I promise.…”

  Frantically Bob raced through his mind, searching for something to rouse her.

  Linda opened her eyes. They had no color. “I’m afraid I’m pretty sick, Bob. I don’t feel well at all. I can’t breathe … I can barely talk.”

  All right, then Bob would talk. Nonstop. He wrapped her in a blanket of memories—the tea cozy they bought in Leningrad that looked like the ballerinas at the Kirov, the antique sideboard they were stripping down and refinishing, the breakfast of wild blackberries growing on the slope of Mount Rainier, the foot of fresh powder they broke with their skis on a cold February morning, the bicycles, the time in Hungary when Linda had no coin to pay the toilet attendant and emerged from the room running, a fierce matron in pursuit.

  At midday, Linda rallied for a few minutes. Now she wanted to talk. Bob had to place his ear to her lips to hear her fading whispers. Friends in their college town were having marital difficulties, were on the brink of divorce, and she asked Bob to be their conciliator. “Tell them it is my last wish that they resolve their problems and stay together. Life isn’t meaningful without someone to love.…”

  “Don’t talk about last wishes, Linda. That’s silly.” Bob picked up the half-finished carving of their dream house and held it before her eyes. “Where do you want the washer and dryer to go?” he asked. “I could put the outlets in the garage …”

  “I’m serious, Bob.… Unless rescue comes pretty soon, I’ll have to go …”

  “No!” Bob pressed his head against her breast and refused to break down in front of her.

  “Haven’t we had the best marriage?” she said. “I’m so sorry it has to end this way …”

  Bob raised his head to look at her. Now it was beyond deception. The truth must be faced. She simply had no more resources to stay alive. “I’m sorry, too,” he said, his tears falling freely. “I do love you so.”

  She began to talk of her father, how she was concerned that he was growing stale in early retirement, that he had few interests to stimulate him. She remembered Jim’s telling of the tropical fish. “Maybe you could talk Dad into raising fish,” she said. “I think he’d like that.… And Mother could make the most beautiful Japanese aquarium …”

  Suddenly she stopped talking. She fought for air. “I can’t breathe,” she said, frightened.

  Bob threw his head to hers and blew a
ir into her mouth. For half an hour he worked until her chest began to move, almost imperceptibly. When her eyes finally opened, they could not focus, rolling about unfastened in their sockets.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Around one, I think.”

  She blacked out again, and Bob gave her mouth-to-mouth, until his own lungs were bursting and his lips aching.

  Dizzy, his own consciousness beginning to dim, Bob called to Jim, still outside, looking for ships. “Can you help me with Linda?” he cried. “I’m scared.”

  Quickly Jim dropped through the hole and onto the bed and pressed his lips against Linda’s, giving her a new supply of breath. Trembling, Bob fell back. He watched and turned his head, watched and turned his head.

  Then he heard Linda whisper, “Am I sanctified, Jim?”

  Jim lifted his lips from hers and nodded. “Yes,” he said solemnly. “You are sanctified.”

  Bob could not let her die in another man’s arms. He pushed Jim away. He resumed breathing for her, but she did not speak again. Her faced turned from gray to blue. Bob pounded on her heart, trying with his clenched fist to shock it into beating once more. But after a time, he raised his hand and said resolutely, “Linda’s gone.”

  It was not Bob who screamed, but Jim. Raising his head, he wailed, the cry of an ancient moaning a death he did not understand. Lunging over her lifeless body, Jim clawed his way out of the cabin and up through the hole to the light. He stumbled across the Triton’s surface and fell into the cold shallow water that covered the separation of the main hull and the outrigger. Splashing, falling, holding his knuckles to his chest, he leaned against the submerged rail and he sobbed. The sea rose up gray and menacing against him, crashing waves to mingle with his tears. For half an hour he bent doubled over the railing, ignoring the waves that pounded him, feeling perhaps for the first time the enormity of his doomed voyage.

  Below, Bob sat beside Linda for a while, stroking her cheek, touching her stomach, and wondering when the baby had died. Was it at the moment of her leaving, or had the child perished from malnutrition long ago? He had never possessed the will to ask, nor had Linda spoken of it.