The Glass Ocean(11)

            Beatific smile then, rapture of the beard, so incongruous, he radiating joy, drooling with it practically, this big, rough man, my grandfather.

            I propose we shall go in October. Harry Ellis of Montagu House has agreed to fund us. Hugh, what do you say?

            Blackstone narrows his expressionless yellow eyes, cocks his head, says, It could be done.

            From Hugh Blackstone, it is an endorsement. And you, Dr. Owen?

            Some dithering now. Willoughby’s reports are still unconfirmed . . .

            So you do not believe our colleague Lord Willoughby? His word is not enough for you?

            Wicked provocative gleam of eye from Girard, the angelical banished, now the devil behind the beard.

            It could prove unfortunate to undertake such a venture without proper confirmation and corroboration.

            Laughter at this from Girard, Blackstone meanwhile following, with his cool glance, a hummingbird’s trajectory along the perimeter of the wall; brilliant green, bumping and bobbing beneath the moldings. As for my father, Leo Dell’oro, he glances anxiously from one party to the next, antennas twirling; rubs, quickly, one wrist against the heel of the opposite hand. Rub himself raw he would; and did, when I was a child.

            • • •

            But that’s not yet. Not yet. I don’t exist as yet, not even as a gleam in my father’s eye. Maybe I’m the intimation of a gleam.

            • • •

            Dr. Owen, says Felix Girard, stifling his laughter, you are the soul of caution! It is you who will save us all from our doom. If Harry Ellis, and the museum, trust Lord Willoughby’s report, what more is there to think about? If they will pay, what else is it to us?

            It should matter very much to us.

            Ah.

            Disappointment now, a frown among the russet fronds. Yet warmly he grasps Harry Owen’s elbow. Promise me at least to think about it, Dr. Owen. I would like to have you with us. It will be a very great thing for us, and a very good thing, I think, for you, too, if you would come. But now I think I hear my Tildy in the salon. We will talk more later.

            He takes Hugh Blackstone by the arm then, and together they depart the room, whispering of the necessary preparations, while my father and Harry Owen linger behind.

            He touches my father’s arm.

            Have you decided to go, then?

            Oh, yes. My father is quick about this, has no doubts, smiles his gentle smile. Yes, of course I shall go.

            Where does it come from, this unexpected certainty?

            Harry Owen releases him then, but my father remains behind among the orchids, which seem to float, like hallucinations, in this very hot room. Feverflowers: my grandfather’s pets. Gently he caresses the ice-green blossom, Angraecum funale—the corded ghost. It is smooth, soft, cool, lightly furred. Whose cheek is this I touch? Then a sudden stirring, a sibilant, soft rustle; Clotilde is in the doorway. Her skin is pale and cool as ivory; so pale, so cool; like one of Petrook’s sculptured goddesses.

            This though is an illusion.

            She laughs. Flesh and blood.

            Papa says to tell you dinner is served, she says, and half lowers herself in a hideously ironic curtsey. Then she runs away, like a child, boots clattering noisily upon the floor. Leaving him gawping.

            • • •

            Delectable. Delectable. Oh mother mine.

            • • •

            They will speak no more this night about the journey that is to come (for it will come, despite certain reluctances, it approaches them already, slipping quickly toward them across the waves). Instead, in a hot, dark, dining room, as the dead look on, they raise and lower their spoons and listen as my grandfather speaks of journeys past. He is eloquent, and he has been everywhere: Bain Dzak, Cyprus, the Canary Islands, the Basque regions of Spain, Argentina, Baalbeck . . . he speaks of these with affectionate nostalgia, as another might speak of long-missing friends. Yet what a dismal company they make! My mother is not there; the procuress only, she does not eat the meal; or eats it elsewhere; somewhere; in another room; somewhere else, in the warren. So it is the four men. My father, gazing at the table-cloth, starting slightly each time anybody speaks to him—Hugh Blackstone, eating little, saying less, regarding them all with his cynical yellow eyes—Harry Owen, wrapped up in his tweed, growing appalled as his glance explores the collector’s cases, finding here, stretched out in supplication, the black leathery hands of a gorilla or a chimpanzee, so like ours, yet so unlike; there, the famished, begging grins of cayman, alligator, crocodile.