The Glass Ocean(32)

            But no.

            Now it is still, with a stillness unlike any they have known before, a stillness so utter and so complete that the sound of my mother dropping a single hairpin as she completes her morning toilet could carry throughout the entire ship—a stillness of men and nature both, as if somebody, pulling a celestial plug somewhere, has suddenly let all the murmur in the world run out a drain.

            Hugh Blackstone, unpleasant over breakfast, will only say Now we will have some weather—

            Who knows what this might mean. Only that it is eerily still, that the bank of cloud grows closer, mounts the horizon, a great, grey-green fist of a cloud, shot through at the top with vivid green bursts of light. Here it is, hanging over them like judgment; but beneath the cloud is stillness, dead calm, a tepid sea, no wind, the air hot and sweet and rotten. It is unhealthy air; but breathe it they must, and so they do, cautiously, in shallow gasps, through handkerchiefs if possible. It is crackling, that air—saturated. And they are saturated. The electricity enters them upward, through the timbers of the ship, downward, through that air, the heaviness of which makes everything difficult, walking, speaking, raising to the lips a fork or a cup of tea; better to paddle through it, that would seem natural. Except that nothing is natural, least of all they, crackling with the static of the cloud.

            Surely, now it will happen.

            Instead they eat lunch.

            Now it is coming. There is a spark, a flash of monocle, John McIntyre has begun again upon Felix Girard, calling him fraud, fake, charlatan, swindler. This over an unfortunate fish stew. The entire expedition is a fraud—a trick to bilk money out of Harry Ellis—there was no intention of ever arriving in Punta Yalkubul—him at the helm is in on it, too—all of you together—crooks—cheats—thieves—confidence tricksters—! McIntyre pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket, begins waving it around, a tiny, square ghost, brilliant white and incorporeal in the sickly grey-green light. Here it is, a letter from your partner in crime, Arthur Petrook, laying out the entire scheme!

            Now my grandfather, always fiery, turns brick red, the veins in his temples bulge as he cries out fiercely, It is lies, all lies! I will show you, McIntyre, you scoundrel! I will show you, you rotten arse-kisser! You monster! You deformed abortion of a man! I will show you what is real science and what is bluff! Just wait!

            Yes, this is it: now it has happened. They are all appalled now, my mother near tears, my father shrunk down in his corner, Harry Owen dabbing nervously with a piece of bread, Linus Starling hunching and ducking over his fish stew. And yet at the same time nothing has happened, this they are made to know by an outcry on deck, where something else is happening, something altogether bigger.

            • • •

            The great fist on the horizon has taken everything into its grasp. That is what has happened. The constriction has begun, the sky dark as ash, though with an eerie cast of yellow, all hands standing silent and staring—

            (So lost are they who emerge from the saloon that they do not know where to look, what to see, looking therefore and seeing nothing but the pale, upturned faces until the mate takes pity on their confusion and points—)

            —up into the rigging, where a dazzling, white-green light is sparking and spitting along the main topgallant masthead; bouncing down then onto the topgallant yard, twirling, it’s like a top, if tops were made of fire, then down, further down it goes, bouncing onto the flying jib boom end, such a dance, a flamenco I believe, before it disappears for a moment—just a moment, leaving in its wake a black afterglow, a momentary blindness, before it reappears again, assuming a playful posture just above my father’s head, his face is lit with it, lit green—

            (Now they see it, even he sees it now, my father, Leo Dell’oro, as down it comes—)

            —down, further down, onto his chest, onto that once-starched shirtfront that he refuses to take off, oh, how it sizzles there, it sings, it pops and hisses, it cavorts, such a performance, with his chest for a stage; a jig it dances, a clog dance, as the sky above and sea below turn blacker than black, and then with a crash it all splits open, the fist tightens and the flood comes down just as, with a soft sound, a sigh, a gentle letting out of air, Leo Dell’oro’s legs fold up neatly beneath him, and he falls, too.