We have left the coast behind, and the horizon is but a blend of sea and sky.
Gray, endless sky. Dark, bottomless sea.
One can get lost in them. This we all know. We remember, without knowing why, the names of ships and crews that reached their final port in the depths of that watery abyss.
We are alone with our schooner.
We shield ourselves from infinity with the wood of the ship, with the sails and thrumming lines that grip the wind. With our muscles under the sun, with the thundering orders of the First Mate.
We check the cargo, tightening the tense ropes as if we could secure our position, reinforce the certainty that we shall remain here, though the scale and indifference of our surroundings threaten to unmoor our minds.
Then do we remember.
Always late.
The world is naught but these men, the deck, the cellar, the gunwales, the hatches, the cabins.
We have reduced the universe to what lies between stem and stern.
To fall into the water is to leave the world.
That the world might leave us is equally unimaginable.
It must remain with us. The schooner floats firmly upon our faith that she will always be here. The notion that she might shipwreck, that the waters might penetrate her interior, is as inconceivable as that the sky might crack open, letting black nothingness swirl into the world.
Yet, it has happened.
Boats becoming coral; men feeding fish never lit by the sun.
Such truths I do not mention, do not scrawl with fresh ink.
The Captain’s log is no company, either.
Those entries I compose for the ship owners and the men who will inherit this ship when I retire.
The voice that I offer to the memory of the trip is different. To read it is to meet another man who is yet me. A man who speaks only of facts, of details devoid of nuance.
At dusk, I go on deck and I hear the men who stayed on guard speak. They do not pronounce words because they have something meaningful to share, but because silence sits heavy on our hearts when we know it looms larger than we.
The Demeter speaks. We know her language, her creaking chatter, her canvas whispers, her dry words of wood. Her voice is for us; we summon it when we push her with the wind, when we mark a route for her.
She tells me that all is well, that we leave behind knots and miles and kilometers, that she advances toward the coasts of Turkey as if something we wanted awaits us there.
The first night.
The day’s labor complete. A man at the helm, surrounded by lighted lamps that illuminate the immense darkness on which we sail. Dinner inside us, still warm, just stocked, the water untainted and the bread fresh.
Us, floating in our beds, upon that fatigue into which we can sink, clinging to the blankets so as not to drown in dreams.
There is no sound save the waves without, the snapping of the sails, the slow groaning of wood struggling to remain joined. Closer still, someone’s breathing, the only person in this cabin.
Me.
The cold enters uninterrupted through the open door. The slow movement of the schooner makes the door swing open and shut with nigh-on no sound. An eye that blinks. What does it see? A man who cannot sleep, a dark hallway.
In another place, a different eye looks upon the crew, submerged in the heat of their fatigue, the scent of their bodies a warm mist which no one disturbs.
I put my hand over my mouth, slowly open my lips, moistening my palm.
I feel my nascent beard, my rough skin, my saliva.
I slowly squeeze my cheekbones.
Were my hand but free; were there no will directing it ….
I am two skins: the one that brushes closer and the one that awaits.
But both are none, because I know who controls them.
At times, as if in dreams, I imagine that I raise my hands to find I can sink them into the night. If I make two fists, I can all but feel it slide between my fingers like a slow oil.
There is no way to catch it, to rip off a piece. Nor do I want to. Only to feel it.
I sink myself into that night; a lifeless breath against my visage, a leviathan mouth that absorbs me.
I open my lips, wishing to drown in these sensations.
Darkness is a whole, indivisible, without members. A body unto itself, uninterrupted.
I yank the sheets aside, impatiently tearing the clothes from my body and with them, the heat I have nestled close.
I arch my back on my cot. I can feel the stitch of the fabric beneath me, but it matters not. Only my chest as it surges into the night, the slow liquid sliding, an icy breath running along my muscles, lingering on my nipples.
I sink my sex into that dark flesh that neither draws back nor opens, that throbs at my entrance without ever moistening me.
I sink into that nothing, while my own sex, tumescent, spreads the skin that covers it, as if by its own will, as if an invisible hand gently pulled back the dark prepuce.
The icy sensation is no caress; it is something that happens to another, that has naught to do with me. Nor does that throbbing member. Sterile in nothingness, abandoned in silence.
Nothing caresses it. Nothing touches it, yet still it hardens. Yet still I feel it taut against its skin, as if it might burst, might tear itself open with desperation.
I cannot long maintain that position. I drop back into bed, into reality.
I touch myself, questing for a liquid that does not exist, the cold oil of the darkness, but there is only my skin, which is still no skin, only that which covers my body. A living sheet.
I touch my sex.
So sensitive that I shudder, fingers at the base, along the wrinkled flesh, on the moistened foreskin that waits in vain. I do not caress myself.
To what end?
I have drawn away from any sensation; all that passes is time, minute by minute.
Every first night is the same.
Not tonight.
I dare not close my eyes. I shall not let the dream come to me.
And yet, my eyelids close by themselves, as if an invisible hand forces them to do so.
To sleep is to abandon oneself to darkness.
Around me the workaday noises, the sea beyond the wood, my own stirring self. A ship in the void.
I feel that something, someone, enters the cabin. Is that not why I never close my door?
I await.
I, transformed into a servant of another skin that may leave me free of blame.
I shall do nothing, I shall not even move until those other lips commence to touch me.
But they never do.
I should like to open my eyes, see who stands in the doorway.
There must be wind out there. I feel a cold current that must envelop my visitor.
I can almost feel his icy silhouette, waiting.
Yet, it could all be a dream: those sliding steps, the whisper of fine fabrics around me, the slight-but-unmistakable smell of earth, but also of fresh linen that has not been dampened a million times.
The lips touching my lips, slippery with that dense moisture that only semen or blood possesses.
It must be a dream, for those lips are dead.
The residents of the island of Thera claim that thus arrive the vrykolakas, with slow and delicate steps, furtive, taking care that the claws of their feet never scrape the wood, never wake those whom they stalk with incandescent eyes.
When they reach their victim’s side, they unfold an incredibly long arm, reaching for the ceiling, finding some sturdy place that can support their weight, and then they cling to this perch, hanging over the sleeper with an infinite delicacy, not wishing to wake him, to have his eyes open to look upon their black faces.
As a caress settles lightly on one’s chest,
so they crouch in the air, sinking their nails into the fresh flesh of their victim.
There they remain, stealing his breath, lowering their weight gradually-yet-inexorably, till at last they let go of their perch and settle firmly in the sleeper’s dreams.
It is a time for stealing the soul. When we abandon our bodies to their own devices, leaving behind the specific appetites of the flesh.
The sleep produced by the vrykolakas is heavy and dense, oppressive.
Whoever becomes their victim dreams of dark waters that separate him from the world, of heavy shadows that know too much, of sins for which we cannot forgive ourselves, which stare at us with black faces and incandescent eyes.
The sailor of Thera said it:
“The vrykolakas are suicides, apostates, the excommunicated, those who practiced dark magic, those whose corpses a cat crossed over, those who died violently, those murdered and never avenged, those conceived during the Major Holidays, those who have eaten meat of sheep killed by wolves, those who lived immorally.”
They are all of us.
I, as well.
In the dark waters of sleep, it was I who approached, as I did in reality, a man asleep in my bed.
I had not invited him to sleep there. He lay not upon that warm bed for me, to give me caresses or pleasure.
He simply was there and I could do nothing about it. I was little more than a child.
My sex stood out from my clothes as I approached that stranger.
They introduced him to us, affirming he was our cousin Mikhail.
But that was a lie.
Mikhail was there for reasons we did not understand. His presence was the payment of some secret debt. Someone we hid without knowing why.
Who explains things to children?
They can but accept them. And my body accepted him, agreed to shelter the stranger in the privacy of my sheets.
With a price ….
The dream feeds on my memories of the night when I approached that stranger, the figure hidden under the sheets, my teeth chattering with desire tempered by fear, armed with the curious power of which I was now owner.
He needed shelter.
The feeling that something fundamental would change the moment I pressed my naked body against the intruder.
I approached ….
Not afraid to wake him, but slowly, sinuously.
Yearning for him to hear me, to realize I was there, to assess the value of his security.
A figure under sheets, a young man hidden within them, with rough clothes that I must needs strip away, buttons and laces between him and my hands; old wool, the skin of dead animals hiding his living skin. Myself hidden in clothes. Only my sex was as free as I wanted our bodies to be.
But in the vrykolakas’ heavy dream, something had changed: the images were different.
I lived a new reality.
I approached that bed knowing that the form hidden under the sheets was not that of a man.
There was something amiss, a detail that was not natural.
It was awake, restless, moving as if the sheet were the thin membrane of a cracked egg, a web the creature was spinning, an integral part of the thing that awaited me there, hungry.
And though I knew this, I ignored it.
I addressed it as if it were still Mikhail and I stood there, erect, approaching.
I touched the sheet.
More than warm: feverish, throbbing. I jerked it away because I could not help myself.
A rat.
There was a rat trapped under the bedclothes, frantic to escape. A ship rat, fat and dangerous, without fear of sailors or clubs, as huge as they say the largest grow, virtually without legs because they are not necessary in the midst of so much food, with massive teeth and mad eyes.
A rat willing to jump upon anything.
And I, desire tightening my chest, ignoring the danger, bringing my sex closer to the creature.
Jerking the sheets away ….
A sudden movement toward my cock and before I awaken to find myself screaming, the immediate pain, terrible.
I glance at my crotch, expecting to find blood, ribbons of bloody meat.
Just a white spot, the dusty scent of my semen.
Going out in the sun is a necessity, though the dawn mists retain some trace of darkness and sea within them.
Going out to a fading fray.
I behold the waters and they are no different from the fog that surrounds me. Dawn in the distance, as though it had naught to do with us.
The waters begin to lose consistency; they are no longer liquid shadows under the Demeter, but depths, an abyss over which we sail.
Joachim is at the helm, vigilant, and Acketz examines something in the gunwales. Too active, despite the changing of the watch.
They should be nearly still, yearning for the warmth of their blankets, a cup of rum inside them, hungry for some lively bare skin to free them from the cold in their bones, from the moisture that has seeped under their clothes.
But they work under the weight of the First Mate’s watchful eye.
They fear him. They know that Vlahutza firmly believes that pain is the best argument.
They glance at him askance, hoping he is also tired, that the night hours have chipped away at him.
But the Romanian treads the bridge as though he will never tire.
He looks more a captain than I.
He is warmly swaddled, but his clothes have not bunched up upon his body; disciplined, they cover him, giving him a martial appearance. His shirt clings to his shoulders, his strong chest, his broad arms, his thick neck; pantaloons that embrace his legs, tucked inside his leather boots, hugging his narrow hips, molded lightly to the bulge of his sex.
He looks good.
He hides not in his coat. He carries it upon him, an instrument to defend himself from the weather, like unto the instruments of his warm blood, his strength, those hard muscles that ripple.
His clothes are not a heap of skins on some common body. I repeat, he is not me.
Upon seeing me, he gives a short gesture of greeting. It is not that he wishes to greet me, but that I am the Captain, and such is his duty.
He believes in the chain of command, that there is a logic to my assignments.
In taverns, captains are wont to declare: “Aboard my ship, there is only God above me. But as long as God does not approach, I am the one in charge.”
He believes in the insignia of the uniforms we seldom wear.
I am the Captain of the schooner and above me there is only God, but before the Captain is he.
He need only ascend two rungs to be God.
I contemplate his face. Strong and firm. The cold has ruddied his skin. Under his beard, one can descry the enduring freshness of his face. It is but the fourth day of sailing and the Demeter glides smoothly through the waters.
I like his face, his firm jaw, the muscle that twitches in his cheek when something bothers him.
He is stone, rock. I know.
I should like to penetrate that hardness, enter its warm interior, ejaculate inside it, seeking to dilute the sand that composes it.
I am not unaware that he might kill me if I try.
Aboard the ship that is his body, above him there is not even God.
I know not whether he enjoys the women he buys. I have seen him lead them away from the tavern with near indifference.
The chain of command, the insignias: He has the money they want; they have the sex he requires. He offers both copper coins and semen.
His caressing a woman in the presence of the other sailors is not meant to excite or please them: It is a way of telling us that the deal is made.
Grim kisses, tongue forcing lips open, no pleasure for either. Grim struggles to feel the merchandise.
“Vlahutza.”
He looks at me carefully, mayhap wondering whether I have awakened screaming from another nightmare, like the first night.
With a gesture, I say no, but I did scream. I know not whether in wakefulness or in sleep. My throat is dry and sore, but this proves nothing. Fear spreads salt in the lungs, dries out the mouth, makes saliva bitter.
I examine the deck as though making certain all is in order, that he has carried out accordingly all his nightly tasks.
I am all-but contemptuous. There is no sense in revealing that the same fear that infuses the sailors snarls in his Captain’s heart.
I walk the schooner, stroking its wood, afraid that it will erode to dust between my fingers, like touching the fragile membrane of a dream, till it bursts and I awaken to discover myself alone in the water, the Demeter merely the beautiful fantasy of a drowning man.
There is naught but the harsh whisper of my fingers running along the grain, the hollows, the pockmarks in the flesh of my ship.
Are you well?
But one cannot inquire thus of inanimate things, of the corpses on which we travel the world.
One must instead examine each rope, touch the sails, harken unto the precise rhythm of the vessel. Certify that the dark sea does not penetrate the dead wood, that there is no other influx of water than our own anxiety.
I regard the sky above our heads, searching.
Something feels wrong, as though there is something amiss aboard our ship. Things are not as they should be.
Yet, they never are.
And in the sky, there is nothing. Not even strigoi wheeling down in search of live meat. The demonic birds of the night, Vlahutza once told me, mocking the very notion of such things. Mocking his father, who had smeared garlic on his flesh to ward them off, to keep that unimaginable bird-shaped darkness from taking him away.They have no body, his father told him. They should not be able to grip anything. They are night, simply, holes in reality, and they want naught but a little blood. Those who survive their attack bear black wounds that, it is said, ooze only cold.They appear after sunset, in the ocean of darkness, a darkness that spreads with hunger ... which seeks human flesh, and the setting of the sun is but a flood of those birds.
The Route of Ice and Salt Page 3
