The Glass Ocean(10)
Get out! Hey! Get out of there, you, Johnny Twomey! We gentlemen must talk in private, eh? Gather your bits and get out. Where? How should I know where? All of London is at your disposal! But see you are back before seven if you want your pay! cries Girard; there is a sudden, frantic stirring at the far table, and a small man, about fifty years old, dressed in a smeared smock and apron, pushes past, softly muttering—whether apologies or imprecations, I don’t know; nor does anybody else; so let it go, let it go. It is my grandfather’s ill-fated assistant, Johnny Twomey, who will be fired for incompetence before the end of the month. On the table he has vacated lie a dozen dead birds he was in the process of skinning, along with the tools of his grisly trade: scissors, knives, nippers, needles and thread, cotton wool, a jar of arsenical soap—and several more of those paper cones, idly awaiting their occupants.
He is bad, very bad, says Felix Girard, carefully picking up, and then lovingly rubbing, between his thick forefinger and thumb, a delicate skin with feathers of deep cobalt blue, which he then turns, exposing a large bald patch, like a scorched tract in a forest, which Twomey has left on one side. Careless. It is ruined! I have hired him as a favor to my friend Petrook, but . . . he shrugs mournfully . . . What more can I do? He ruins too much. Some can learn, some cannot, is it not so, Dr. Owen?
Harry Owen in his tweeds gapes slightly, hung now on my grandfather’s hook. Some persons have more potential than others . . .
Ah! You are an idealist at heart, I see, doctor! You would like to say to me that poor learning is often the fruit of poor teaching, and that the pupil’s failure is the teacher’s fault, but you fear to offend! Anyone can learn, eh? It is a good thing, this idealism, it does you credit. But I, well—
He sighs, shrugs. Great eloquence of shoulders.
I am an idealist no longer.
Then pushing aside the table’s contents, he plunges beneath it, broad back exposed, like an island, like the hump of a seal, and emerges with a large book bound in black leather, which he spread-eagles on the tabletop, contemplates, with eyes moist, red rimmed, while fingering the blazing thicket of his beard.
Yes. This is the one.
Looking up sharply.
Where is Dell’oro? Is he still not here? Leopoldo Dell’oro! Come out, shrinking violet, come out! It is time, and past time, to show yourself!
• • •
Honestly I expect no result from this. My father has interred himself in some secret space, he is lost, I can hear him rummaging, rummaging; no one will extract him; but my grandfather knows him better than I, for here he is; he has emerged; evidently he was nearby all the time; sheepishly now he insinuates himself into the room, still overdressed, hot, disheveled, sleepy. Tugging still at cuffs and collar. Nervous twitching.
• • •
Very well. Now we shall begin.
• • •
They gather around the table where lies my grandfather’s map book, opened to the sapphire Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, there where the Greater and Lesser Antilles, the Leeward Islands, and the Windward Islands sweep, like the snap of a serpent’s tail, from the southernmost tip of Florida to the north coast of Venezuela.
Gentlemen, my grandfather says, she is here.
Gently he lays his great thumb on the green protruding bulb of the Yucatan.
Let me explain. As reported by my colleague Lord Willoughby in the Proceedings of 1840, which I for you now quote, “The fossil remains of an ancient cetacean, measuring thirty feet long, were found here imbedded in a sheltered plateau approximately three miles inland from Punta Yalkubul; but could not be excavated due to difficulties of approach and terrain and resistance from the native peoples.” There, gentlemen, she lies; and so she shall continue, unless we go, and dig her out.