The wind casts his hair over his face and each strand seems to have a life of its own, twitching along his features, pulling away to leave areas bare, pressing against him to hide his eyes, exposing the sensitive back of his neck.
Then comes the moment when I know I must still be lying in bed, dreaming about insomnia and the deserted bridge, because the wind stops touching me and the Demeter. Calm envelops us like a silence, sails and moors hanging lifeless throughout the entire ship.
And then … I can see the wind.
Condensing, congealing, first invisible, then tremulous as in the midday heat, next running in rivulets of water, deep currents of frigid sea, clear ice and haze and fog and falling snow, and finally night without light.
And in its midst, Petrofsky, slowly stripped by invisible hands, caressing concrete shadows.
His mouth is open as if to scream, but his tongue licks at something that is not there, his hands cling to nothing, his sex swings free to penetrate no one ….
A dream.
I tell myself that I am in my cabin, sleeping far from reality, and that I only dream the distant, languid moan of the sailor, the heavy panting of pleasure. Answering the wind, surrendering the self for a second, exhaling during the dense satisfaction of orgasm.
The night never ceases when we wish. I open my eyes to await the sun, the daily awakening routine, Arghezi bringing round the first meal of the day.
Instead, there is the dark sea, the gray wake fading into the distance, the brief and definitive grinding of the helm as it struggles to keep us on course. The wind again.
Olgaren keeps the route, silent.
The full sails are, in their whiteness, like another pale moon in the distance. I look sternward, at the masts of the Demeter bearing their heavy rigging. A strange foliage, trees hiding between the bolts of cloth and hemp that surround us.
We ride through nocturnal forests toward another darkness, immersed in the aroma of the hidden earth in the hold. Earth from Wallachia, where tombs are still opened to certify that their dead remain motionless, hands free of bites, of that careful, secret gnawing.
The Wieszcy.
Dead devouring themselves, black teeth finishing off dark flesh. And relatives dying at the same time, while the secret feast is consumed. Flesh of their flesh, food in death.
There are men with the habit of sleeping on the graves, waiting for the world to fall silent, for the night to breathe easy, in order to listen to those who inhabit the coffins, to hear flesh tearing deep in the earth, men who swallow their horror when they hear something, pressing against the abyss that yawns under their bodies, supported and formed by the black earth in which they hide their faces, fearing what can be found there ….
Earth we haul across the sea.
I look at my shadow on the ship’s wood, nocturnal shade cast by pallid moon.
I notice then that there are too many shadows on the bridge, crossing one another, gray ones going black where several overlap, traces of multiple wicks that have been lit.
Lamps next to the Helmsman, suspended over the bell, next to the board, illuminating the stairs leading to the bridge, Olgaren’s white face that focuses more on that watch fire dispersed widely within glass walls than on the compass.
They serve as our protection against the night, the only manner of ensuring that nothing will leap from the black without our seeing what it is.
Yet ... what if the last gift of light is the sight of something that belongs to naught but the night? What if death is more merciful than the appearance of whatever should come for our flesh?
Still, there is no more protection than fire. The insubstantial, flickering walls form the room in which we hide, the only space we count as ours in the unending mansion of the nocturnal sea.
I stand by the Helmsman, knowing that I am no true company, nothing capable of eroding the fear of the man who moves his lips without ceasing.
Well I know the prayer you mutter, a litany composed of descending numbers: the seconds that remain before dawn.
I know the wherefore of my fear. But not that of the Helmsman. There is naught here that should frighten him, only night, and darkness, and the wind that does not cease, and the fluttering sails, and a white-faced captain emerging from the shadows to say nothing, while he observes the transparent sky of the horizon, seeking that nascent light that is his only surety.
Above us, the sky is losing consistency, as if the night were a huge fish plunging into a midday sea, its dark color fading into the transparent blue.
It dawns, while the darkness leaves in search of other depths.
Together with the stars, the wind disappears. A mist rises from the sea and the sails droop. They are no longer taut skins but tired, weak limbs.
The air no longer moans around us; the aroma of earth is now redolent of salt.
The speed of the Demeter decreases, until it all-but stops. There is naught but sea around us, no other men than us.
One can perceive the nothingness that isolates us.
Something has finished. In this calm, it is possible to savor that notion, to feel it in every inch of one’s skin.
I behold the sunrise and understand.
Light cannot protect us from everything.
I stare at the bottle next to me, rigorously prepared for shipwreck.
When we sink, when at last we surrender ourselves to the waters or they claim us, the sea will leave a trail of objects to mark the place where we disappeared: blackened canvas, bits of wood, mayhap, if fortune prevails (and if one can call fortunate that which survives our demise), the brief log that I have placed within the glass, transparent memory edited rigorously at night and during storms, words that I shall not be able to say aloud and in person to the owners of the Demeter. I should like to read again what I have written, to recognize the man who pointed out the horror to me.
I know he is not me.
Who could be himself when he writes and without knowing the silhouette his words demark? The sickly glow of the facts casts a vague shadow, a specter that cannot be given form because it is not we who create it, and which we call days, facts, reality.
So few words for a thousand events.
I also am a specter when I write. It is my shadow—stripped of all that matters—that speaks through ink and paper.
A shipwreck’s voice, which—strangely—is not that of shredded canvas, of wood cleaved open like a wound, the echo of those who stopped screaming in the midst of the roiling waters.
It is the voice of the wood creaking softly, of those who whisper before anything happens.
The mere facts, their trivial accumulation.
He is not me, but I am the one who writes with haste and thrusts each sheet in the bottle, not knowing what time remains to me, or whether anyone will ever read those words.
Mayhap it matters not.
Mayhap the closeness of the bottle augurs well. I may chance to seize it in my final moments and drag it with me to the bottom of oblivion.
Then no one will ever know what happened and how I let it happen.
Mayhap my redemption is to silence my own voice (which is not my voice).
I read it written.
What else can I do while I wait for the waters to come for me?
I read the words of a man who wrote without knowing what those dry, short, unrecognizable phrases truly meant for him.
I read to remind myself that it was another voice—another man—to whom the events happened.
Mate reported in the morning that one of crew, Petrofsky, was missing. Could not account for it. Took larboard watch eight bells last night; was relieved by Abramoff, but did not go to bunk. Men more downcast than ever. All said [those who dared speak beyond a fearful murmur] they expected something of the kind, but would not say more than there was something aboard.
I dared no
t tell them that I, too, awaited a death. There is no logic in thinking that mere fear can materialize into a “something” that closes its claws round one of our throats.
Vlahutza got very impatient with them, feared some trouble ahead. He needed more than an absence: How, when did Petrofsky cease to be?
Could an explanation end the fear, diffuse the silhouette of the one who is no longer here?
Who says ghosts must be seen?
Petrofsky is in all the places where he is not found, his silhouette projected throughout the Demeter, ready to touch us at any moment.
We look at the sea and understand that—if not found on board—he has gone to rest in the depths of those waters, of that region consecrated to all sailors.
But how vast the watery cemetery whispering beyond the wood? How many tombs press against the boat, yearning to drown us?
Useless question.
How many?
Just this one.
Yesterday, Olgaren, came to my cabin and, in an awestruck way, confided to me that he thought there was a strange man aboard the ship.
He said that, in his watch, he had been sheltering behind the deck-house, as there was a rainstorm, when he saw a tall, thin man, who was not like any of the crew, come up the companionway, go along the deck forward, and disappear.
He followed cautiously, holding his storm-catching skein of rope in his left hand—the only amulet at his disposal apart from the steel of the blade in his right.
He planned to corner the stowaway, an encounter in the midst of wind and night during which one of the two must die.
But when he got to the bows, he found no one and the hatchways were all closed.
Nothing but the sea just beyond the hull.
He was in a panic of superstitious fear and I am afraid the panic may spread.
The description of the stranger is that of the enemy. Someone alien to us, hidden for unknown purposes. All carry a weapon fitting their fear, matching the magnitude of their might. Joachim has taken out an ax bigger than his arm.
Had they dared in this forest of canvas and ropes, they would have held torches, they would have thrown themselves into a pogrom against a single man.
I understood that, if everyone hunted the stranger, it was quite possible that they themselves would become the prey.
Later in the day, I got together the whole crew and told them, as they evidently thought there was someone in the ship, we would search from stem to stern.
No one said what we should do upon finding the stowaway.
No one said it while sharpening his steel.
Vlahutza, angry, said it was folly, that all we had on board were cowards frightened by shadows. He said he would engage to keep them out of trouble with a handspike, for to yield to such foolish ideas would demoralize the men.
Better to yield, however, than to allow fear to ferment.
I let him take the helm, while the rest began a thorough search, all keeping abreast, with lanterns, speaking to one another, sometimes shouting.
A line of beaters, they call it in India, when a group of men advances through the tall grass, making a riotous roar by pounding drums, clanging metal and piping whistles to provoke the tiger into fleeing from the disciplined file that can prevent an escape at either flank.
Of course, before each hunt, someone would comment that, at times, the beaters would stumble upon something worse than a tiger, their brave shouts suddenly cut off. Then a silence would fill the thicket, heavy with spilled blood, and at most, there would come a strangled shout that explained it:
“Rakshasa!”
The demon, thirsty for blood, hungry for flesh.
Yet, we were thirsty as well, eager to kill the thing we feared with a sharp blow, to shred uncertainty with our weapons.
We left no corner unsearched. We discovered how vast our little Demeter can seem, how many hidden corners she has, how many hiding places abound.
Between the ropes, under the bunks, atop the forecastle ….
We went down to the hold all at once. We surrounded the big wooden boxes, searching for the fugitive.
Once again, he had fled.
We found no one. Nothing faced our fury, which became diluted with every yard that we advanced until dissolving into relief when we reached the last corner and realized that, in some way, we had eliminated not only the possibility of the stowaway, but his very existence.
“He was onboard,” said Olgaren.
But not anymore.
“He might’ve jumped,” said Acketz. “Might’ve preferred the waters to a noose.”
“Aye, or mayhap he went to join Petrofsky,” Vlahutza shouted from the helm.
And why not? Everyone recalled the dark mark of a violent caress on the neck of the missing sailor.
What if he who had left that mark was the killer? He couldn’t have got on board without Petrofsky’s help. Wouldn’t he have weakened over time from hunger, sharing half of his ration with the stowaway?
Mayhap they had fought in the shadows. Perchance pleasure had spawned violence.
I listened to my men and I understood why they joined the two shadows as one: They were twinned by our ignorance, made accomplices because we had seen nothing.
But the search had expelled the stranger: better water as revenge than blood spilled on deck.
The men were much relieved when the search was over. They went back to work cheerfully. Vlahutza scowled, but said nothing.
It took me a while to realize. He was the only one who was still afraid.
Not finding the stranger had terrified him more.
Such strange things are happening that from now on, and until we again reach land, I shall write everything down with care.
Rough weather last three days, and all hands busy with sails—no time to be frightened.
At the end of the day, when exhaustion covers us like a heavy mantle and our muscles thrum with the incessant rhythm of a storm pressing against every line along the wood of the ship, it is fair to say that we have forgotten our dread.
Nothing sinister save the dark clouds, the rumble of thunder, the continuous and deep voice of the sea. Vlahutza is cheerful again. The storm is a tangible thing onto which he can hold. He can dilute his concerns by imposing his will on the elements. All that matters to him now is that the Demeter not founder and sink.
Oddly enough, harmony reigns. I have praised the men for their work in bad weather.
We have passed Gibraltar and come out through the Straits.
All is well.
The previous entry of the 22nd looks up at me, a mockery of Chinese ink.
There seems some doom over this ship.
Already a hand short, entering on the Bay of Biscay with wild weather ahead, and yet last night, another man lost.
Arghezi has disappeared in the midst of the storm in which we have sailed all these days.
I went to look for him at his post. There was only the black presence of the rain.
I screamed his name and the roar of the waves was all that answered.
I sent the men to look for him and they returned, covered in rain and fear.
“Mayhap a wave swept him overboard,” said Acketz.
Mayhap, yet the storm has not made the ship list, nor have the thousand neglected objects tumbled from the deck into the sea.
If Petrofsky was a silent ghost, Arghezi shouts throughout the Demeter, a voice of creaking wood, of sails about to rip, of things that fall and roll from side to side.
The men, as one might expect, are all in a panic of fear. It was grave enough that silence devoured one of their number, but they are more afraid of the storm, of the waters that rise from the depths and search them out.
The crew have sent a round robin, asking to have double watch, as they fear to be alone: four men awake at each turn. S
even of us remain, but the impossibility of their demand does not matter. Not when the wind knocks on our doors, eager to enter.
The First Mate is angry. The calm that the storm gave him was exhausted when he read the petition.
“It’ll wear us out, you fools ….”
He hurled the paper back at Olgaren, who only backed away. His responsibility ended with the delivery of the document. What we did was up to us.
If there were more blood, it would be on our hands.
What if fear should convince them to take command of the Demeter? Two voids, two nothings making their spectral way through the ship might inspire a mutiny.
I fear there will be trouble, as either Vlahutza or the men will do some violence.
Olgaren came back to my cabin and left his talisman on the table, that skein of lines that binds the wind.
I look at that rotten hemp, the dark-black fungus that has eaten through the knots that form that pagan hex.
I understand.
The amulet has been undone.
The storm has released itself.
Four days in hell, knocking about in a sort of maelstrom, the wind a tempest.
Four days during which we discover how fear can be devoured by exhaustion, that to be scared one needs an energy we lack.
The storm took care of the signed petition: We have all had to work regardless of schedules. Who can think of watches when the mast groans, near breaking, and the lines in the rigging unravel before the gusting wind and the water licks our ankles, reminding us that it has embarked with us?
Nine men on a ship is not an arbitrary number. We fully understand this arithmetic now that we are only seven.
No sleep for anyone.
It cannot be called sleeping when, for a couple of hours, we practically faint in a dream full of open sea, showing its obscene interior of sunken ships and drowned sailors.
The Route of Ice and Salt Page 7
