Sailors on the Inward Sea (16 page)

I watched the storm bearing down on the city through the wavy glass of the old windows, each pane dotted with tiny pockets of air that had been trapped while the glass was being poured into frames to cool. The rain had developed into a steady downpour, a cloudburst that was virtually silent since the Sailors' Ease was on the ground floor of a three-storied, half-timbered building. Gusts swept across the road obliterating the cobblestones, striking the curbs, running off in the gutters, the kind of storm that makes you glad to be inside. We remembered some weather we had sailed through off the coast of Spain, near Galicia, that had ruined half our sails. I could have gone on reminiscing, but as I was aware of time running out, I pressed Clive to tell me about his life. I wanted particulars so that when I thought of him afterward I would have a vision of a village, a house on a road with a garden, apple trees, his wife and children, that sort of thing.

Half an hour later he pulled out a pocket watch and said that he hated to go but he had to oversee the loading of some fragile cargo. We walked over to the door and shook hands, both saying that we hoped we'd meet again. He had his hand on the knob when he turned and said, “Look here, Jack. I hope I did the right thing. I'd feel terrible if I thought I'd damaged your friendship.”

“Don't worry,” I told him, putting my hand on his shoulder. “Conrad and I have known each other a long time. It would take a good deal more than this to cause trouble.”

“You're sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“I know you'll read the books because of Marlow but there's more to them than him. They're wonderful in different ways. There's a character in
Heart of Darkness
called the Harlequin who tells you . . . Marlow . . . that Kurtz enlarged his mind. That's what they did for me.”

“Well,” I said, “I can always use improvement.”

“I'm serious. I wish I were lucky enough to know the man. He must be something.”

“He is cantankerous, opinionated, moody, warm, devoted, indispensable. You'd like him, and he'd like you.”

With that we shook hands again and he went out into the rain, walking close to the buildings, his upturned collar swallowing all but the peak of his cap. I watched until he turned left at the corner and then went back inside. I intended to track down the books before going home, but since it was raining so hard I decided to wait out the storm and spent the next hour playing whist with some men who had gotten up a game at a corner table.

I do well at games of chance, Ford, but even though I was the clear winner I couldn't enjoy my luck with Marlow looking over my shoulder. I couldn't stop thinking about him. It was deuced odd learning that I had become a character in a book, my emotions and ideas, everything about me on display like the mirrors, glasses, plates, old watches that are laid out on a flea-market table that anyone can pick up and examine. I wondered if Conrad had taken liberties with me, what they were, which aspects of my character he had kept intact, which he altered or discarded, indeed, whether I would even like Marlow.

Writing about this, I can't help thinking about Fox-Bourne fresh from reading Conrad's letter. The manuscript would be close to hand, its bulk a reproach, filled with unknown hazards. The two of us were grist for Conrad's imagination (and in Fox-Bourne's case his ire), the one difference being that whereas I was worried about Conrad distorting my nature for artistic purposes, Fox-Bourne would have known that he had drawn an exact portrait of him down to the cleft in his chin. Knowing that, I wondered, how long would he wait before he began to read the novel? Minutes? Hours? Days? He had to be fascinated despite Conrad's warning in the cover letter that he had not gone easy on him. The truth is, I doubt there was any appreciable difference in the way we thought of those narratives, none in the least.

BY THE TIME
we finished the second game, the rain had let up. I thanked my companions for letting me play and went outside. The wind was still blowing but I didn't mind. In light that was the color of lead I walked a block before the heavens opened again. The wind howled under the eaves. Water rose in the gaps between the stones and pooled at intersections, where cars sent up spray that reached all the way to windows and doors, soaking an old couple tottering along ahead of me. I was dripping wet, a condition that usually causes me great irritation on land, where I entertain the notion that sailors should be immune from the elements that are their daily bread at sea, but that afternoon I enjoyed contending with the storm, walking determinedly with my head bent for upward of a mile before I reached a square across which I saw a sign for Thomas and Sons, Booksellers, glowing like a lighthouse off Lands End.

When I opened the door stained by spray halfway up to the knocker, a bell tinkled. As I closed it I noticed a strong smell of cooking,
the peculiar reek of cabbage. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the weak light of lamps set here and there with no regard for efficiency. I could just make out the spines of books and a few gilt titles. If the place were mine, I would have made sure the customers could see, which presupposed that the owner had an interest in selling his wares. As is often the case with such establishments, he probably prized everything and would only reluctantly part with a dusty tome. I walked down the dim aisles, convinced that his vision must be terrible, a price he was willing to pay to keep his treasures obscured, imagining him groping among the shelves, touching the spines of his favorites, which were arranged under signs atop the shelves announcing History, Politics, Religion, Poetry, Fiction, the last decorated with two arrows pointing downward.

I found nothing of Conrad's. After all the anticipation, coming face-to-face with Marlow had lost some of its appeal. Years later I would remember that feeling during the fortnight I waited to hear from Conrad. The rainy afternoon would come back and with it a vision of Fox-Bourne stepping out of the shadows into the space between those tall shelves. He began rummaging through them, pulling books down and tossing them aside after a cursory glance at the titles. Growing increasingly desperate as he worked his way down the aisle, I realized that he was looking for himself just as I had looked for Marlow. I didn't know what to make of that vision then and don't now. I mention it only to give you a better idea of how the past and present merged during that period, all that had happened and was going to happen coming together in an unbroken sense of duration.

In any case, on that long-ago rainy day, I was coming back up the aisle when a man pushed aside a curtain that separated the shop from the living quarters. I had a glimpse of a few chairs, piles of books, a woman with a kettle in her hands before the curtain fell back. He was biting into an apple so large that it almost dislodged
the thick glasses through which he stared at me with remarkably candid eyes. He was in shirtsleeves, and I could not help noticing that his high, starched collar was frayed by too many ironings. He came right up in front of me and stood munching. Except for the regular motion of his jaw, he could have been an iron footman bolted to the walk in front of an elegant home, waiting for the reins of blooded horses.

“Conrad,” I blurted out. “Do you have any of his work?”

His blighted eyes lit up.

“Of course, of course. I specialize in the literature of the sea. I have everything of his. Which are you interested in?”

“The Marlow books,” I said self-consciously.

His eyes glowed as if I had uttered a magical incantation.

“Ah, yes,” he answered, laying the nibbled core on a table. “I might have known. He's very popular. Extremely popular. Marlow. Everyone asks for the books with him. Quite interesting when you think about it. Can't say I've seen the like of it all the time I've run the shop. Even a bit on the mystical side. Poor Conrad seems to have disappeared inside his character. Come along.”

We went to the front, where a sign proclaimed
THE LITERATURE OF THE SEA
. The collection filled a dozen shelves, maybe more, all marshaled as neatly as sailors on the deck of a ship awaiting an admiral's inspection—Marrayat, Bulwer-Lytton, Melville, French and Spanish authors, the whole crew so far as I could tell.

“The best collection in London if I do say so myself, the best. And there's a reason. It's what I've always wanted to do—not write, I haven't the skill—sail. I'd wager you feel the same.”

Since it was so obviously important to him I said I did.

“I can always tell, always. We're the same under the skin. That's what I tell my wife. Kindred spirits and all that. Just hold on a moment, please.”

He stepped up on a milk stool and removed three volumes, which he handed to me.

“What do you know about Marlow?”

“Oh,” I replied, “just that he's said to be interesting.”

“He's that, all right. Very interesting, very interesting indeed. A whole man—that's how I think of him, from boyhood to middle age, not as a character. A remarkable performance. I hope Conrad hasn't used him up.”

While he was extolling Marlow's virtues I thought of how much Conrad would enjoy his enthusiasm. You know how he worried himself sick over the way the public responded, complained night and day that so few people read his books. It would have done him a world of good. As the man expanded on his views of the sailing life, it was clear that he knew what he was talking about. Since it was impossible to believe from the look of him that he had ever been on anything larger than a dinghy, his knowledge must have been gleaned from his reading. I like to see a man's enthusiasm—it always tends to bring out the best in him—but I cut him off, saying that I had a busy evening ahead of me.

After I paid he said he was sure that I would enjoy the books.

“Can't be helped, really. You see, there's a little of all of us in Marlow.”

I grinned at that, Ford, couldn't help myself, and said, “I suppose that's true.”

The rain had stopped and the lamps inside the shops reflected on the wet road as if it were black ice, the shapes shimmering, the whole of the square inviting as a picture. I thought of people inside their rooms, getting ready to sit down to their evening meal, pleased that I had conjured such happiness from the reflected lights even though it was an illusion, subject to change with the next gust of wind. I don't know why I was put in mind of that.

I
SPENT THE NEXT
five days sitting in the corner of my room beside the big window with a view of the street below, each successive book on my lap illuminated by a cone of yellow light falling from an old-fashioned lamp whose faded green shade was fringed at the edges, a self-contained space that shut out the world. The steady rhythm of Conrad's sentences muffled the sound of traffic. The occasional shout rising from the street might as well have been uttered halfway round the world. What I found went beyond the bookseller's prophecy. My adventures were intact, true in letter and spirit to my experiences, all so powerfully rendered that even when I rested my eyes or went to bed the ambience remained, infusing the atmosphere of my mind like a woman's perfume lingers in the air after she has passed you on the street and disappeared into the crowd.

If I had been able to fast or live on bread I wouldn't have left my rooms, the desire to stay in touch with those stories, with the world emerging sentence by graceful sentence, not far from what you must feel in the midst of composition, fearing that if you step away from your desk you'll lose your sense of contact. But even though I hated to interrupt the flow of thought and feeling, I had to eat—the fact of the matter is that by dinnertime I was ravenous—and so I went out for dinner, always to a restaurant near the boardinghouse that served passable shepherd's pie and other simple dishes at a decent price. I took a book and pored over it while I ate, occasionally looking up and noticing the odd glance from fellow diners, who
must have thought I was a scholar searching for some bit of information that would justify his labors and perhaps shed a light the world was bound to notice. Those glances fed a sense, already well developed by then, of being exposed. Who wouldn't feel naked when his most private thoughts are paraded before the eyes of strangers? It was as if the door of my bathroom had been pushed open while I stood in the tub, drying off, and people were crowding in for a look at my pasty shanks. But that didn't dissuade me from ordering tea and lighting a cheroot and reading on to the end of the chapter, unwilling to break off for the time it would take to walk back to my rooms.

It seems as though I spent that time lost in a huge tapestry of words, each story flowing into the next, each more complex than the one before. It was intoxicating, Ford. Most of us live our lives bottled up in ourselves, at best with two or three people who care enough to notice what we regard as our singular virtues. When they speak of such things our response is almost always accompanied by a flush of pleasure. Conrad flattered me with his attention. The man in the books is better than I am, more idealistic, more generous, the man I'd have liked to be. Conrad had filtered my ideas through his mind—ingested me, made his thoughts flow in my thoughts, his blood in my veins! I remembered the bookseller saying, “It's as if the author had disappeared into the character,” and felt as possessed as a man who thinks spirits are trampling about inside his head. For those five days I lived in the midst of Conrad's creative ferment, in another man's imagination, my life transmuted before my eyes in an act of alchemy—I could practically see Conrad busy over alembics and burners—into magic signs that fascinated me. My irritation all but vanished. I wanted to know how he did it, what he felt as he knitted the two of us together and named the product Marlow.