Death, Sleep & the Traveler: Novel (New Directions Books) Page 9

  “My wife persuaded me, against my better judgment, to take this cruise,” I said, smiling into the girl’s dark eyes, “and I am not sorry. Now you have persuaded me, also against my better judgment, to journey off in a mere motorboat. And though I distrust open motorboats even more than I distrust large ships, perhaps I will not be sorry. But I am not skeptical, Ariane. I am never skeptical. I know you will take us directly to the beach of the nudists and then return us safely to our waiting ship.”

  But even while my heavily accented voice hung on the air, causing Ariane to laugh and the wireless operator to scowl behind an unclean hand, our motorboat veered slowly around a finger of dark sand and headed directly into a small cove that was clearly the entrance to the hidden beach of Ariane’s description. The strip of pure white sand, water of the palest blue, the row of weather-beaten bathhouses like upended coffins—it was all exactly as I had pictured it from my young friend’s words. The sky was an infinitude of burning phosphorus, the sand was as soft as facial powder, surely the empty bathhouses would smell of urine. The vision of the cove was familiar yet unfamiliar, I was drawn toward the listing bathhouses and yet repelled by them.

  “Hurry,” Ariane called the moment after our prow had touched the sand and she, in childish haste, had leapt ashore, “we really must not lose a moment of this joyous place!”

  The wireless operator, in open tunic and rakish cap, was the next to jump to the dry sand where, quite unavoidable, he turned and faced me. His greasy sideburns appeared to be pasted down the sides of his jawbone. He was not smiling.

  “What have you done with my photograph?” he said, with his feet spread wide apart and his hands in his tunic pockets and his hat pushed in slovenly aggressive fashion to the back of his head. Obviously he was the kind of young officer who would get drunk with ordinary sailors, abandon a ship in distress, commit strange psychopathetic acts of violence.

  “I do not know what you are talking about,” I said. “But I do not like the tone of your voice.”

  “After all, you are not the only one who needs the stimulation of an illicit photograph.”

  “I refuse to listen!”

  “Return it tonight,” he said and stuffed his hands deeper into the tunic pockets, and lunged off through the sand like a crazed survivor of a wreck at sea.

  “And you, Allert,” my young unsuspecting friend called from the bathhouses, “won’t you hurry?”

  I wiped my hot face on my sleeve, I began to walk slowly up the beach toward the row of narrow listing wooden structures where I, like my companions, was to divest myself of all clothing. But physical nudity was one thing, I thought, whereas psychological nudity was quite another, especially when the self was being stripped to psychological nudity by a man as ruthless and devious as the young man on whom the entire ship depended. My need was for self-control against the brutal clawing of that young man’s repellent hands.

  “But no, Allert, no!” she cried when I emerged from the bathhouse, “you may not wear your straw hat on the beach of the nudists!”

  She laughed, standing quite naked in the hot sand. The wireless operator also laughed, though now his concentration was suddenly and unwillingly fixed on the gentle nudity of Ariane.

  “What,” I said, “not even an old straw hat?”

  “Nothing, Allert, nothing. Not even a hat.”

  “Very well. But sunstroke is a serious problem, Ariane.”

  “But you must trust me, Allert. You said you would.”

  The sunlight was as intense and diffuse as any I had ever seen, the kind of sunlight that would bake alive infant tortoises buried though they might be in their thick shells deep in the sand. In the midst of this directionless glare Ariane’s nude body was of the size and weight of a young child’s yet it was not childlike. She was plump but at the same time thin, curvaceous but at the same time compact, and in the glare of the sunlight, which decomposed all colors to white and hence made of the island landscape a brilliant unreality, Ariane was shrouded, softened, protected in her own emanations of mauve-colored light. In the midst of our frightening white scene she alone was desirable and real. She had allowed her black hair to fall down her narrow back, her eyes were large, her small calves were shapely, there was a curious dignity in the plumpness of the small naked belly exposed without embarrassment to the wireless operator’s watching eyes and mine. Her little familiar scar was hooked into the bottom of the belly like a gleaming barb, the small modest breasts and sex made me think of some overdressed Flemish child preserved on dark canvas.

  Though the wireless operator was lean and muscular, while I was large and poorly shaped, still the chemical horror of the gleaming sun reduced us equally to the dead white quality of the beach itself, exposed quite equally our blemishes, our black hair curling from white skin, our genitals which in this light appeared to have been molded from cold butter. I was not pleased to find myself as unattractive as the wireless operator.

  “Ariane,” I said, when the three of us emerged from the path between the dunes and onto the beach, “I hope you do not find my weight entirely offensive.”

  “Allert,” she said, and her throat was as thin and tender as a child’s, “you are a handsome man.”

  “But tell me,” I said, raising my voice and filling it with the disarming resonance of the kindly Hollander, “if a man is not used to nudism, if he is not used to being among members of the opposite sex without his clothes, in such a situation might he not display quite suddenly all the awkward aspects of sexual desire? If so, would not this lack of control be embarrassing?”

  The sand was hot, my eyes felt sewn together with invisible sutures, the beach ahead of us was a glaring crescent. Behind us the wireless operator was shielding himself with Ariane’s purple satchel and grunting in discomfort and disapproval.

  “Allert,” she said, interrupting our walk across the sand to touch my hip, to stare up openly into my wet face, “what you describe is entirely possible. But it is also natural. To me it would not be at all embarrassing. In fact,” she said, more slowly and gently but also more clearly, “if such a thing occurred in my presence, I should be flattered. I should be warmly pleased.”

  “Thank you,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the stricken eyes, the body bent sharply forward at the waist. “Your sympathy for that situation is most beautiful. But were I in your place, for instance, and in the presence of a man who could not control himself, I would be far less charitable. In fact, toward such a man, I would show no charity at all.”

  “But, Allert,” she said, smiling and pressing her fingers against my wet forearm, “you are a good-hearted person, Allert. I know you are.”

  I saw the blue of her eyes against the white of the sand, the white of the sun. And despite the fire flickering already to and fro on the tops of my shoulders, for another moment I endured with pleasure the uninhibited inspection of Ariane’s soft eyes which, when they met mine, were bluer, moister for what they had seen.

  “Every man is an island,” I said. “I am like the rest.”

  “But Allert,” she whispered, “you are a very special person. You are the talk of the ship.”

  But before I could object and point out the obvious untruth of this curious remark, Ariane reached up and covered my mouth with the smallness of her cool hand, then embraced me by flinging her arms around the enfolded fat of my naked waist and resting her head on my chest. Then she turned and with unexpected swiftness walked to the water’s edge where, ankle deep in the clear undulating sea, she proceeded brightly up the white crescent of beach followed, as she knew full well, by her two naked companions, one of whom was already the color of sickening red.

  “You ought to see yourself,” came the voice at my back, “if you could see yourself you’d leave Ariane and me alone. A man like you shouldn’t go around without his clothes. She just doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. Couldn’t you tell?”

  I did not reply. Instead I concentrated on the sensation of the pale water a
gainst my skin and on the sight of the young woman who had thick black hair to the small of her back and who now was standing beneath the leaves of a tropical tree and waving. The island, or what I could see of it, was empty except for the eager girl beneath the tree and a far-off cluster of golden figures who, in their various sizes, suggested one of those stable families who respect the old and cherish the young and divest themselves of clothes for moral purposes. Even from this distance I noted the sweep of a patriarchal beard, the flash of a cherubic body. I looked away, I realized again that the sand of the beach was like white ash. But it was the naked wireless operator, not I, who was turning red.

  “Come,” called Ariane, “the shade is lovely.”

  Even here in the shade of the lone tree, only Ariane among the three of us looked real. Only her skin retained its natural color, only her black hair remained alive in the breeze. On either side of Ariane, where she sat upright and smiling against the tree, the wireless operator and I were merely white, except for the florid sunburn spreading like some poisoned solution across the young officer’s shoulders, chest, and listless arm. The wireless operator’s sallow face was wet with sweat, his head was hanging.

  I held out my hand for one of the peaches which Ariane had extracted from the satchel. My hands were wet with the juice of the peach, the warm sweetness was dripping down my chin. In the distance a golden old man was tossing a golden infant into the air. And I noted in a casual glance that the wireless operator was drooping, dehydrating faster than ever, burning. If Ariane was aware of the seriousness of his condition, she gave no sign.

  “Allert,” she said, biting into the wet yellow fruit and unconsciously touching her left nipple as if to induce new sensation or confirm its size, “isn’t that naked family beautiful? They have no shame.”

  I licked my fingers, I nodded. Her eyes were bright, her armpit was slick with perspiration, on her other side the wireless operator was staring at me speechless and with dead white eyes. Portions of his slumped naked body were assuming the complexion of a fatal plum.

  Suddenly I heard a thin distant voice crying, “Papa! Papa!” and at the same time heard a single fragment of the far-off mother’s laughter, and at this moment Ariane and I, in perfect accord, rose to our feet and, holding hands, walked slowly to the water’s edge. I knew that behind us the wireless operator was helpless and that his lips were cracked, his shoulders blistering.

  The light was the color of merciless pearl, the sand was a sheet of white flame, together we rolled in clear shallow water.

  “Allert,” she said, stretching her little flat body beneath the water and raising her face, extending her arms and clasping both my stolid ankles, “you are so good a lover, Allert. Maybe because your mouth is so large and says so many sweet things to me.”

  We rose, we walked outward from the shore of the island that was as dry and livid as a glimpse of paradise preserved in a hostile photograph, walked outward until I stood waist deep in the placid water and Ariane stood facing me sunk up to her little shining breasts. The air was white, the sea was pale, all around us the air now smelled of invisible dead ash.

  “We do not want the ship to sail without us,” I said in a whisper.

  Later, after we had performed, as I thought of it, like two unshelled creatures risen together from the white sandy floor of the sea, and after we had immersed ourselves totally in the calming waters, and after we had quit the nudist island and regained the ship, it was then that we faced the condition of the wireless operator. We eased him into Ariane’s cabin and stripped him bare, discovered that the entire burned surface of his body was patterned with the clearly visible shapes of tropical leaves. Thus the wireless operator became the sick occupant of Ariane’s narrow bed, and thus Ariane became his eager conscience-stricken nurse. For days the wireless operator filled her cabin with the smells of his chills and fever. For days the smell of a strong unguent filled that cabin in which there was no place for me.

  The sleep of reason produces demons, as Ursula once said. But I love my demons.

  Ursula and Peter were in the nude. Ursula and Peter were facing in opposite directions, she kneeling head down on the orange rug, he straddling her slender yet slightly aged waist and playing her buttocks, slapping and beating on her buttocks like a lean African pounding his drums. Ursula and Peter were both laughing without restraint. I also began to laugh.

  The lights fell on the black water as from a sinking ship. I was leaning forward, looking down, watching as the lights, which ran the entire length of the ship, began to disintegrate and sink. I heard a splash.

  “Peter,” I said, risking an idea I had long considered, “how is it you never married? Even now the sirens must call to you in chorus wherever you turn. Is it not so?”

  He removed the pipe from between his teeth. He held the small hot meerschaum bowl in three fingers. He looked at me. And then he turned his head toward Ursula and raised his eyebrows, aimed the pipe stem in her direction, parted his lips. Then he turned again to me.

  “But the question,” he said softly, “is why you married. You of all people.”

  “No offense, Peter. I was only asking.”

  Again he looked at Ursula, and suddenly replaced the bit of the amber pipe stem between his teeth. Thanks to the smoke from Peter’s pipe, the room smelled like a rose garden in fuming decay.

  “There exists somewhere a man who wishes to amuse me, Allert, for the rest of his life. I ask only for amusement. And when I find my amusing man, I shall follow him to the ends of the earth. But we’ll never marry. Never.”

  In my dream I am standing alone in an open second-story window on a warm day. There is not a person in sight, the trees are still, I am troubled by the fact that in all the surrounding trees and heavy foliage there exists not a single bird. But I am alone in the window and basking in the atmosphere of the tender midday sun and the slant of an exterior brown beam and an expanse of powdery tiled roof that juts into my sight above a structure that is either a carriage house or a barn. Though empty, still, even desolate, it is a peaceful scene. For a while longer I resist the temptation to look down and instead concentrate on every other portion of the warmly lighted courtyard where I find no life. Apparently the courtyard belongs to a farm complete and real except for the total absence of animals and human beings. Ahead of me stands a fragment of mustard-colored wall, the trees are green, there are motes in the sunlit air. Behind me the empty room in which I stand is dark with shadows. I am wearing a gold watch chain across my vest, I am standing in full view of anyone who might suddenly walk into the cobbled area below or who might already be watching me from some concealed doorway or crevice in the yellow wall.

  Then I look down. I lean forward to rest my spread hands on the broad sill and, thrusting myself partway out the window, stare down at the tableau intended for no one else’s sight but mine. I am perfectly aware that what I am looking at I must never forget, so that if my scrutiny is unemotional it is nonetheless slow and intense. I am also aware that I am making no sound, though I am momentarily moving my lips as if for speech, and that I am comfortable but quite unable to feel the slightest sensation of my own breathing.

  What stands directly below my window is a large box-like wooden wagon that rides on two high wheels with wooden spokes and iron rims and is equipped not with the usual shafts for horse or donkey but with a wooden crossbar clearly intended for human use. The splintered and high-sided old vehicle remains horizontal below my window. I observe the gray wood, the heavy wooden hubs of the wheels, a wisp of dry hay caught in a joint. And what I see, what fills my mind, is the sharp-seamed and extremely narrow tin coffin which the cart contains and which is angular and unadorned except for a long single strip of fading white flowers—carnations, perhaps, or roses—stretched as on a piece of cord from the head of the tin coffin to its angled foot. The wood that absorbs the light, the cheap bright metal that reflects it, the string of near-dead collapsing flowers that divides the lid of the coffin from head t
o foot, instead of lying conventionally in a rich full bunch above the breast of the dead person concealed within—these are the details that make me realize that eventually the coffin must be carted away and that death is the true poverty.

  But there is something still more unusual about the sight below. Feeling my brow tightening in a single crease, it is then that I see that the poor tin coffin rests not on the bottom of the old cart but rather floats in perhaps a foot of dark water. Yes, I see now that the cart is partially filled with water in which the coffin is gently rocking. And then I understand. I stare at the shining tin coffin and at the standing water and listen to my own breath and understand the reason for the water in the old wooden cart: originally the coffin was packed in ice, a great quantity of ice, which has melted.

  Am I the person to pull the slow cart out of the courtyard and, lodging my stomach against the wooden bar and hearing the coffin bumping like a small boat against the wood at my back, drag this inexplicably grief-ridden assemblage to whatever resting place awaits it?

  I do not know. I stand in the window. I hear the buzzing of a single fly.

  When I finished reporting this dream to Ursula, who had listened with more than her usual lassitude, she made two quite toneless comments while rising, as she did so, to leave the room. She said that obviously the coffin contained the body not of a man but a woman, and that this was the telltale dream of the only son.

  I sat alone for an hour, two hours, hearing the fly and contemplating Ursula’s remarks.

  I stood in the twilight of our smoothly plastered white hallway, alert yet immobilized on my way from parlor to den or den to living room, where I had lighted a fire in the fireplace some minutes before. And in this stationary moment, caught in one of the trivial paths of domesticity in the light of late afternoon, suddenly I understood completely the nature of the atmosphere in which I was so keenly suspended. What else could it be if not the air of private catastrophe? The silence was gathering into a secret voice. The light inside the house was soft and clear with the muted quality of the frozen snow outside.