The Boatmaker (3 page)

The doctor stops at the bottom of the stairs. His look is controlled, but the woman feels his condescension. She is Valter's wife—and yet she is not. Another man is upstairs in her bed, sick with fever.

“Nothing can be done.”

“Nothing?”

“It's in God's hands now.”

“Nothing?”

“Good night.”

He walks past her without a word. She feels her anger rising. Small as she is, she isn't afraid to hit the doctor. If Valter was up there sweating in the bed, she thinks, he wouldn't say that. It would not be
in God's hands
. At this
moment, he would be scurrying to do
something
.
Anything
. Not
nothing
.

He hesitates at the door. She realizes that in her anger she has forgotten the money. She takes folded bills out of the pocket of her coat, slides them into the pocket of the doctor's, between warm fur and fat.

“My best to you and your daughter.”

“And to you.”

She closes the door and leans her forehead against the wood. The anger recedes, and she feels as if she might cry. Although the door is closed, she knows exactly how the doctor looks as he walks away in the moonlight. Despite his roundness and his white hair, he looks as if he might rise, click his heels and waltz away on the snow, which is as hard and smooth as a dance floor.

She takes her forehead from the door. Ribbons of light drip down her cheeks. After a few minutes, she takes off her overcoat, hangs it on a peg on the back of the door, leaves her boots in a corner, pads up the steps in stocking feet. She falls into bed beside her daughter, still wearing her clothes.

In the morning he is singing. She hears him and thinks she is dreaming, then realizes she is awake. Her daughter is curled into her mother's body, still asleep. She untangles herself from the sleeping child, gets up, crosses
the landing and stands in the open door. He is sitting up, his brown eyes open, purple half-moons under his eyes. She knows he is not seeing her—or anything in the waking world.

       
Oh, on land the duck is a clumsy thing

       
A clumsy thing like a pregnant woman

       
Waddling from side to side when it walks

       
Not made for land, not made for land

He sings as if he were in a choir, head up and shoulders squared. There is only one church on Small Island, a little wooden building in Harbortown with a small congregation, mostly old women. In the days leading up to Easter, the women congregate to hear the broken-down pastor preach the eternal guilt of the Jews for crucifying Our Lord.

Small Island is a far-flung possession of the Mainland. The Mainland has been a Christian kingdom for almost a thousand years, since a peasant boy named Vashad converted the king from his pagan gods to faith in Jesus Christ. Vashad had been urged to journey to the capital and convert the king by a flock of shrieking blackbirds whose message only he could understand.

Every child in the kingdom—from the capital all the way to Small Island—knows the story of Vashad. But
the woman can't imagine this man has ever been inside the church in Harbortown. And yet here he is, just as though he were in the choir, singing at the top of his lungs. She can't imagine how the girl can sleep through it.

He has a finer voice than she would have thought, rough from smoking and drinking, but clear and tuneful.

       
In the water, when the duck is swimming

       
He's a little less clumsy than on the land

       
But not much better, really, not much better

       
Bobbing on the water like a child's toy

It's a folk song from the part of the Mainland where his father's people come from. She knows the song, though her people come from a completely different part of the Mainland.

       
But, oh, when he takes to the sky

       
Then the duck is filled with grace, filled with grace

       
Because the duck was made for the sky

       
And when he flies, there's none more graceful

The verse about the duck taking to the sky, being a thing of grace, comes back again and again. There are many other verses that tell how the duck learns his nature, who
he learns it from and many other things. It is the kind of song that can be made to last for a whole evening—accompanied by fiddle, guitar and bottles. The man sings several verses, his voice growing louder and firmer. She watches, as surprised as if her little girl had suddenly been changed into a beautiful golden dog, barking and licking her leg, asking to be taken out for a run.

Then his voice begins to slide down and away from good clear singing. It blurs until he is mumbling. His eyes close, and he topples over into fever sleep, his head missing the pillow. She lifts him and slides the pillow under his head. Her hand comes away wet. She tucks the covers under his chin, hoping they aren't drenched, that he won't freeze in bed. She doesn't have the strength to get him up and change the sheets one more time.

After this strange burst of singing, she begins to feel that despite her anger the doctor was probably right. Nothing can be done. All of this is beyond her: his fever, sweats, talking in his sleep and now his singing. Nature must find its course and take it, whether it is the will of God or not. It is time for her to go back to her life. She works at the general store in Harbortown. Her boss has given her time off. He has been understanding—because Valter's family owns the store—but it is time to go back to work.

She dresses herself, gets the child up and dressed. They walk out over the frozen snow, the girl rubbing blond hair out of her eyes. As they walk, warmth flows through their mittens, reconnecting them, and it feels the way it did before the man with the mustache and the bald spot entered their life.

By the time they leave the house, he is back in his dream. He has accomplished the first task the wolf gave him. Now he must go back to the oak, where he knows the wolf will be waiting. He holds the linen napkin with care. As he approaches the tree and puts his foot on the patch of grass darker than the rest, the wolf comes out from behind the oak, stepping so lightly the grass does not bend. The green eyes take in the napkin, and the boy thinks he sees approval in them.

The wolf steps closer on its long white forelegs. The boy knows the wolf will ask much of him, and he wonders whether he will be strong enough to do what is asked. He knows that if he shows fear, the wolf will leave in a blink of its green eyes and never return. The boy takes a step forward, holding the napkin. He knows that he must fasten the napkin around the wolf's neck and then hold on. He twines and knots the ends. Like all males of Small Island, the boy has spent his life near the water and on the water, tying and untying lines. The knot is firm.

He stands shoulder to shoulder with the wolf, holding the napkin, which circles the wolf's neck like a priest's white collar. Their shoulders are the same height. The boy's head is higher than the wolf's, which extends forward, with its white stripe down the muzzle. They stand for a moment, linked by the napkin. Then the wolf pads forward, slowly at first, then faster and faster, with a power unlike anything the boy has ever felt. All he can do is hold on and try to keep up. Amazingly, he can.

They trot across the familiar surface of Small Island: grass, trees and rocks spilling down, gray on broken gray, to the ocean. They pass Harbortown, go down the bluff overlooking the harbor, the wolf picking up speed with every step, the boy holding the napkin as tightly as he can. As they descend the bluff toward the water, the boy closes his eyes. He isn't afraid. He doesn't want to know the way back.

Then, the boy's eyes still closed, they're on the water. In the coldest part of winter, Small Island is held in a ring of ice that reaches out toward Big Island. They move across the water as if it were midwinter ice: solid as a church floor. Holding the napkin, the boy keeps pace with the wolf. When he needs more speed, he has it. He's there, stride for stride, even though they are moving faster and faster, loping over an ocean that is strangely solid under their six flying feet.

They run for what seems like hours, the boy holding the linen napkin, afraid to let go. After a time, he feels a message come through the napkin into his hand and travel up his arm like a shock: He must open his eyes. There, coming up before them as they move across the ocean, is a body of land bigger than anything he has ever seen. They approach a rocky beach, move swiftly over it and up a bluff to the headland beyond. The land is covered in long grass, bent low in the steady wind off the ocean.

If the ocean they crossed seemed frozen solid, on this land it is summer: hot and still. Wolf and boy run, legs in rhythm, over grass, through meadows, across streams, up and down hills, into a forest so dense the boy can't see the sky. Then out onto a plain with farms bigger than any the boy has seen. Cows, goats, sheep and hogs, fat and peaceful, are settled in the pastures. Smoke curls from farmhouse chimneys.

They keep running, across another plain, this one drier, not farmed, covered in a stubble of grass. The fields are parched, the trees stunted. The wolf slows to a trot, then to a walk. They stop in the arid landscape, with its sandy hills descending to streams shriveling from lack of water.

The boy looks around. He releases his grip on the napkin. His left arm feels so heavy that it might drop to the ground. Instead, it falls to his side, his hand holding
a linen ring. The wolf is gone. The boy lifts the napkin and examines his mother's careful green stitching and the emptiness at the center, where the wolf was. He is alone among stunted trees in a landscape dying of thirst.

This must be the Mainland, he thinks. It is the only place that could possibly be as big as this, the only place that has as many landscapes as this place does, the only place he's ever heard of where the sea is not always close by. He's seen pictures of the Mainland in books. All the people of Small Island came from there centuries ago. Their ancestors were sailors, pagan warriors.

The man's eyes open slowly, crusted with sleep and fever. He feels as if he's been unconscious forever, as if he's not just waking up, but being born again. He has to think hard to know where he is, who he is, what his name is, how he came to be in this bed. Then it comes back—his waking life and his dream. He can feel the place where he held the napkin that was looped around the wolf's neck. It feels as if there should be a place rubbed raw on his palm, as there is after you work a rope without gloves. But he feels his palm and finds nothing but smooth skin.

When the woman gets home he's sitting up in bed. He is thin and pale, but the red spots on his cheeks are gone. He still has dark half-moons under his eyes, but the sheets are dry. So is his undershirt, which he hasn't
taken off the entire time he's been in her house. She tried once or twice to get it off him, but he wouldn't give it up, wrestling with her even in sleep.

“You're awake,” she says. What she means is:
You're alive.
After the doctor's visit, she had tried to let him go. She hadn't known what else to do. She feels guilty that she tried to do that. Guilty and overjoyed, overflowing with gratitude.
He is alive and on the mend.

“Awake,” he mumbles, his voice raspy. Even when he is healthy, he is not a man of many words. He seems to believe words are precious, to be doled out a little at a time. Perhaps he believes each man is given only a certain number for a lifetime and, when he speaks the allotted number, must die.

She goes downstairs, still wearing her coat, makes a fire in the stove, heats soup. Comes back up the stairs, sits on the edge of the bed and spoons broth into his mouth. The broth is made from the salmon Valter left behind in his bootprints. They were beautiful fish, and they made a rich broth to which she added carrots and turnips. She and the girl have been living on this broth, and the fish in it, for days. He accepts the soup gratefully and cautiously.

Awake now, his head clearing, his first thought is concern that he has been a burden to her. He feels clumsy and unused to his body. Soup drips from the corner of
his mouth. She lifts the napkin she has fastened around his neck and pats the clear drops. He doesn't enjoy being touched, except at certain moments, but he wills himself to allow her touch.

“How long have I been here?”

“Not long.”

“Have you been working?”

“Yes, I went back to the store.”

“That's good.”

“The doctor wasn't sure you would get better.”

“The doctor?”

“You don't remember?”

“I think I don't remember much until today.”

“You're cooler. It looks like the fever is gone.”

“I'll take myself off your hands.”

“That isn't what I mean. You're not a burden. And you don't have to leave right away. You're still weak. Wait until you've got your strength back. Then you can go.”