The Glass Ocean(31)

            He is very serious, my grandfather, not just serious, he’s livid; his face is as red as his hair, he is shouting, he is laughing, I wish he did not have this side to his character but he does and now he must show it.

            And McIntyre, too, is furious, he must, of course, strike back, this he does by questioning the origin and accuracy of certain passages in my grandfather’s book, Felix Girard’s Ghosts of Bain Dzak.

            • • •

            One passage that I particularly enjoy is in question, the one that describes a particular sandstone formation in the desert, southeast of Dalanzadgad, at Bayan Ovoo. My grandfather writes that the rock there had been peculiarly deformed by the wind, coming to resemble, over vast eons of time, the traveling sledge of the legendary Altan Khan; upon close examination there may be discerned, carved upon the rock, whether by human hand or divine, the words “By the will of the Eternal Blue Heaven” (Köke Möngke Tngri). This object is worshipped by the local peoples, who leave upon it each evening offerings of food, coins, bells, sheepskins, walking sticks, even empty bottles of usquebaugh.

            My mother always liked that passage, too, because my grandfather was in Bain Dzak when she was born, and used to read aloud to her from this book, when she was a child, as if, in this way, to explain his absence, of which her mother, Marie-Louise Girard, used bitterly to complain.

            • • •

            But John McIntyre holds that there is no such object. It’s lies, all lies, a fabric of fatuous fibs. You are a fraud, sir; you have never been to Bayan Ovoo, to Dalanzadgad, or to Bain Dzak—why, if you’ve been a step farther east than Chicksand Street, I’ll eat my hat!

            • • •

            Why must they do it? Are they not hot enough? Now everyone’s dinner is ruined, and then my mother’s performance of the “Der Vogelfänger” aria is interrupted, my grandfather punctuating the amusing refrain, “der Vogelfänger bin ich ja, Stets lustig, tra la la!,” with his imitation of the characteristic but disputed mee-hoo! mee-hoo! of the Guianian sun parrot, to everyone’s dismay. Now the concert is over; and McIntyre, monocle blazing with fury, has stomped off somewhere—and all the time there’s that ocean, that implacable, winking object, duplicitous in delft blue; and land, Punta Yalkubul, there to the south, resembling, sometimes, a wisp of fog, pearly grey in color, at other times a ribbon that has fallen loose from my mother’s hair, deeply violet, reclining—

            And my father, nervously rubbing the heel of his right hand against his left wrist, poor sweating fool, the sailors make him uneasy. They are doing something peculiar down below; they are making faces at him behind his back—

            Malaise and murmur, murmur and malaise.

            And water. Never a shortage of that.

            • • •

            Something has to happen eventually. They can’t go on like this forever, all this floating, it has to end sometime.

            • • •

            Maybe now.

            Harry Owen, unable to sleep, rises at 3:00 A.M.; sees, by the light of a gibbous moon, as he stands on deck with his cigar, Punta Yalkubul on the horizon, dense, blue grey as smoke, slightly lighter, in color, than either sea or sky; sees it from starboard, instead of the usual larboard; thinks it looks nearer than before; then, disoriented, thinks that he is dreaming, or else that they have drifted, though there is no wind by which to account for this, and hardly any waves. A dream then. A dream wind has moved them. Who dreamed it, this wind? He has, Harry Owen has; Leo Dell’oro has; Clotilde has; they have done it, all of them, together, it is a collective dream, a collective sigh, a wished-for exhalation. This is satisfactory. Now Harry Owen can sleep. Morning, though, reveals him to have been mistaken: this is no dream; nor have they moved. A thick bank of cloud has drawn up, and approaches the Narcissus from the north. This is what Harry Owen saw, and mistook for land. It was gathering, even then; gathering, while they dreamed. Hugh Blackstone, tight-lipped, regards this object through his glass, then begins shouting, Haul the jib! Take in the fore! Furl the mizzen topgallant! Clew up the main topgallant! Suddenly the Narcissus awakes from its torpor, the men spring up into the rigging. Certainly something will happen now.