He won’t.
Her laughter is like an object in itself.
He clutches tight, very tight, until she has passed by. Repulsion and attraction, attraction and repulsion. It’s as if he can see the future, and he doesn’t like it. That stink of inevitability.
For, in fact, she’s right: he is drawing portraits of her. It’s all her. How does she know? She can smell it, that’s how: his adoration, his fear, it’s in the air, and something else, too. She senses it, fears it herself, without knowing what she fears. Of course she’s used to the rest, the admiration, the desire, the hand that longs to touch, repressed: stilled. That’s nothing new, to her. But for him. It makes him feel naked. Exposed. Flayed. Vulnerable. A poor soft creature, unshelled. And then the drawings: Clotilde at the taffrail. Clotilde at the spinet. Clotilde bending over to button her boot. She mustn’t see those. But there’s no denying it’s all her to him, as far as he is concerned, the blue of the sea her eyes, the gold sun her hair, the thrilling, vertiginous swell of the waves her breasts and belly, even the sea in its darker moments, its rages, yes, all her, already he is lost, lost, already sinking, he with his pale stalk of a neck, his awkward, ill-fitting suit, with all around him filth, discomfort, danger, bad food, foul companions, the whole wobbling scientific contraption, the career he might or might not make of it, the home he left, none of that matters, it’s all Clotilde, all around, to him.
He doesn’t want her to know.
Everything swollen, stinging with brine.
• • •
As for her, she is interested in her Papa only. He is in his workroom, studying the Proceedings. Or hunched over a map book, latitude and longitude laid out before him in wedges, exotic fruit that he longs to devour. Is devouring, with every mile of progress. Papa will not leave me. Papa will never leave his Clotilde again.
• • •
My father, though, is not neglected. In the half life they occupy beneath the billowing canvas, he, too, is pursued, though not by her. What need has she to chase that which comes to her naturally, inevitably, like an act of homage? Rather, Harry Owen is on his trail. The scientific gentleman, momentarily lacking in objects of study, studies my father instead. In the Mayfair of my existence I’ve never met anyone like him. So he writes in the journal he keeps of this voyage. That familiar, precise handwriting. Soothing it is. Soothing. They each have their methods. Here it is on my desk. In the Mayfair of my existence. And: He is a study indeed. And: Today, walking into our cabin, I found Dell’oro, motioning over his shoulder and muttering some weird incantation, thus: Black black bear-away, don’t come down by here-away. Twice he said it. Then seeing me behind him, commenced to look thoroughly ashamed.
Harry Owen makes of my father a scientific undertaking. A meal of sorts, and a disappointing one, evidently:
He speaks little, despite my best efforts to draw him out.
• • •
In the end, though, the sea itself will assist.
They are in the workroom. How many weeks in? Three weeks. Harry Owen has pressed Leo Dell’oro into assisting him. In the liquid half-light of down below they are seated together on stools, uncomfortably (but then, when, since the pressing off, have they been comfortable?—never), shelves around them bristling with beakers and vials, microscopes, wads of cotton, jars of ether, scalpels, the tools of the trade, all the necessities of capture, subdue, disembowel, preserve, these are not symbol but fact. The ship beneath and around them shuddering. Outside the porthole: wet, grey. Horizon indistinct, uncertain. They do not look out. Afraid, perhaps, to see an eye looking back? No. They are too busy; they are hard at work making a surface net. Harry Owen has designed it himself, and will use it, when they reach calmer, tropical waters, to catch tiny pelagic creatures, helpless floating things aflame with the green fire of the sea, wandering spirals and crystallines, minute plants like snowflakes, tiny dragons fierce and bristling, these really the larvae of starfish and whelks and lobsters; phosphorescent fishes, medusae with blue translucent disks, minute pulsing tentacles; spawn, goo; dream objects. The net to be lowered over the side of the quarterdeck when the sea is calm, blue, in a yielding mood. Disinclined to notice. Open to plunder.