The Glass Ocean(17)
There are memories in this.
They two curled up together in the same bed in the narrow house on Henrietta Street, warm little animals, the two of them, smelling each other’s smells, feeling each other’s little movements, kicking, elbowing, jostling, fighting each other for everything in that poor house. Now he crouches alone over his paper and writes. She like a part of him, recently abstracted. Darker of the dark twins, indulgent goddess of seventeen, striding up the Scaur in a dismal early twilight. Spit of snow off the sea. Ancient monster undulating, darkly. Her hair flashing out behind her like wings as she walks, lustrous even in this dull light. What can he say? Dear Anna. I can’t imagine this really. What, after all, is there to say about this, all this, his situation? Dear Anna. I find myself at sea. He pictures her back in Whitby, hanging out the washing. The cobbled yard there. The dingy smallclothes dangling from the wooden pegs. The slippery edge of the cesspit, acrid sweet smell of night soils, himself perched at the edge, about to heave the bucket in. Hsst, Leo! Hsst! And the workshop where his father carves jet. Him, too, once upon a time. Not so long ago. Dark things, black things, memento mori. These are home. The cliffs at Whitby are lined with dark things, entire forests embedded blackly in stone, and monsters, too, from another time. My father left there early in the morning, never said goodbye. He had his reasons, I suppose. The sea spread out before him as he descended Henrietta Street in the direction of the harbor. Dear Anna. I never said good-bye.
Dear Anna. She cuts me so, with those claws of hers.
No: he writes a great deal, but he would not write that. Some things he cannot confide.
Shortly Harry Owen comes down to make sure Clotilde’s talk hasn’t bothered Leo too much. What? What did she say? I honestly didn’t hear her, Harry, so of course I don’t mind it, whatever it was—blinking his luminous eyes, neck a pale stalk rising out of the stiff collar he insists on wearing even here as he sinks deeper into the berth, draws the thin, scratchy blanket up around him. Safe, in this shuddering, groaning cocoon.
Water rushing darkly just behind his head.
Mustn’t think about that, though.
Think instead of earthier dreads, the small scutterings beneath, rattling insinuation of vermin. Thorax, wing, carapace, tail. Seek comfort in the quivering whisker. This is where the gnawing begins in earnest.
It is not unusual for a single word from my mother to unman him completely.
Waves without, waves within.
In time he will cultivate other safe places. Up in the crow’s nest, or on the mainmast, on fair days. Down below, in the laboratories, where the specimens are stored. He will spend hours there, organizing the sarcophagus, sketching its contents. And time, too, beneath the tarp, or in the smallboat stored amidships—that is safe. Or crouching among the ill-fated charges of the cook, finding refuge among their warm, sweet, doomed breaths and the manure that repels Clotilde’s fastidious boot. As things progress he will grow fond of the railings aft, where, every night at midnight, once they have reached the warm latitudes, he will stand quietly watching Harry Owen smoke, both of them observing the miraculous phosphorescence of the million small floating animals plowed up astern by the rudder—the brilliant green sparks that come and go, rise up out of nowhere in a milky-green froth, then subside again, whirling away into watery oblivion.
• • •
Time is heavy on their hands. It’s an object that must be carried through one day, into the next, into the next. In all directions ocean, that terrible monotonous beauty. Even the birds disappear. Then they are really alone, at sea.
• • •
That will be me, too, soon enough.
• • •
They met at sea, they were at sea, they parted by sea.