God help him, says Hugh Blackstone, laughing, he’s just mad enough to succeed!
Everyone’s looking at the horizon now. If the Narcissus is a smut in a saucer, then what is Felix Girard in a smallboat?
All that immensity.
And my father, sleeping. He doesn’t even know. He’s dreaming, maybe; of what, who can tell. Far distances, perhaps, or the opposite of that, the delicate pink whorl of one particular ear.
I’ve taken him this far. The rest is inevitable.
He won’t be back, my grandfather. The search party, sent out despite Hugh Blackstone’s reluctance, will run aground on what they think is Punta Yalkubul, finding there, instead, a small island, ten miles in circumference, consisting of an east-facing coral-sand beach and a west-facing red mangrove swamp crouched over a shallow lagoon formed by a coral reef. Sand flats extend prettily, at low tide, perhaps three quarters of a mile to the south. All that will be left here, of my grandfather, is the mark of his keel in the sand, and a plug of tobacco, left behind when he pulled his smallboat through the shrubbery, and rowed off the other side.
All the days they spent, staring out at this crust in the sea. We all have our illusions.
Though Felix Girard could not be produced, the search party brought back samples of what life there was. There were beauties there, in the place where my grandfather disappeared, the place where I, too, now, am bound: honeycombed corals, some growing in thin, perpendicular points, others forming thick, fawn-colored antlers, still others round, green knobs, some convoluted like brains; brittle, whip-legged starfish, delicate shrimps, minute, sparkling amphipods, alive, still, in the jars, before Harry Owen kills them; sea whips and sea fans; the sea cucumber, Holothuriae, in bright yellow and brown; sponges in every color, every shape; beautiful shells; and a diminutive sole, two inches long, marbled gold and black above, creamy white below—named, for the first time, by he who catalogued it, Owen’s Darling Solenette, Monochirus amatus Owenii.
He would have loved this stuff, my grandfather, if he’d seen it.
There’s solace here for some, for Harry Owen, for my father. He is interested in the smallest finds, in the sand that turns out, beneath the microscope, to contain shells, miniature in size but magnificent in architecture, glorious spires and intricately incised whorls, cathedrals, each one smaller than a grain of rice. I can imagine him, after the wind turned (because it did turn, finally), drawing these, spending many hours on that long journey home hunched by a candle, separating out, with a pin, these tiny beauties from among the dross, then sketching, sketching. I have seen what he found there: entire cities, miniature worlds, ancient and beautiful catacombs, mysterious curving passages leading to who-knows-what-or-where, glimmering opalescent walls signposted with the runes and hieroglyphs of the sea. I imagine he sees, within their pale pink or golden or creamy white curves, curves softer yet: of a certain cheek, the nape of a neck, of the closed and slightly trembling lid of a downcast eye—
For her there is no solace. There will be no miracle, no chance sighting, no encounter with another vessel that has picked up a ginger-bearded Frenchman, floating. No matter how many days she spends at the rail, gazing at that empty blue mirror of a sea, she will never find him. She finds nothing but herself reflected there. Felix Girard is lost, as quick and as sure as her blue shawl would be lost, if she flung it upon the water. He will not be retrieved.
• • •
You see we have so much in common, she and I.
• • •
I turn my face away from what comes next, her loneliness, his obsession, attraction overcoming repulsion, the edging toward and away and toward again, the first touch, then the second, the loss in her, desire in him, that’s it: that they will be together is inevitable now. What else is there for her, after all? Rooms in Bury Place, dead things, and, down below, that vulture Petrook waiting, preening himself, sharpening his claws.