The Boatmaker (31 page)

The boatmaker hears her question, but his mind is still engaged with the riddles he has been pondering so long.

“You handled it well—when he got angry.”

“I was upset. You can imagine. But I wasn't afraid for my life. I have no doubt that Rademacher is capable of great violence. But he wasn't going to spill my blood in the Royal Mint on the king's birthday. He knew that. I knew that. Still . . .”

She reaches for him, and this time he doesn't stop her. Their coming together is as powerful as before, but also different: The outside world has entered the space between them.

Two days later the boatmaker is deep in the storeroom when the foreman comes to stand over him and his
work. It is late in the day. Sven Eriksson looks from man to wood and back. “You are again invited to dine—upstairs.” He turns and leaves.

In the boatmaker's room the dinner suit hangs in the wardrobe. The landlady has been brushing it every few days, hoping it will be worn again. He takes it out and dresses slowly. His fingers, so skilled with tools, are less deft when it comes to putting on an old-fashioned dinner suit. The landlady will help him with tie, cufflinks, studs for the boiled shirt. The boatmaker, who has never before wished he had a mirror to see himself in, now wishes he had one.

He tucks himself into the trousers, pulls the halves of the shirt together, pulls up the braces. Fingers his nose, wondering how much the scar has faded, how obvious it still is. He has told no one how he got it. Rachel has asked, of course. He gave her the usual story—an accident on a building site—a story that is little more than a painted wooden toy given to a child to stop its crying. Rachel knows that, but she already understands the boatmaker well enough not to press further. He sits on his bed, waiting for the landlady to come and help him finish dressing. It is late in spring, still light past seven.

Outwardly the second dinner is not very different from the first. The same group convenes in the
drawing room among paintings that resemble colored snowstorms. There is the whiskey, with its luxurious and elegant burn, the table heavy with silver and crystal in the wood-panelled dining room.

But under the surface different currents are flowing. Rachel Lippsted and the boatmaker glow like fireflies, pretending not to know each other. The rabbi stays away from the subject of the Secret Jews, instead making surprisingly worldly and sophisticated small talk including witty remarks in several languages. Jacob Lippsted, having been a selfless and gracious host at the first dinner, is flushed and full of himself, enjoying much of his own glorious deep red wine as he talks about what is on his mind rather than bringing the others into the conversation one at a time in their turn.

“We are racing the king. In June at the Royal Racecourse. A challenge match: his horse against ours. Medieval, don't you think? Two champions enter the lists on behalf of two great houses, sporting colored silks. But this race is the opposite of medieval. The king is a great modernizer. He is opening our small, backward country to the world. The race is a part of that opening. There is no money riding on it, nothing but a handshake. But for the king to shake
my
hand and take this wager means a deep change in the kingdom. He is the king, but he is
meeting me, meeting this house, as he would any of his citizens. That is progress.”

He lifts his glass, half full of wine the color of a ripe plum: “To our king. To a wider world where we all stand equal.” They drink, his listeners careful with their own thoughts.

“And may this race, though just a symbol, bring many opportunities to us. May the House of Lippsted grow and prosper. May our partnership with the king lift us beyond even the greatest successes of our past.” All four drink again, tasting the wine and the words.

Turning to the boatmaker, Jacob says: “Our horse is every bit a match for the king's. You must come with me to see him.” He gives his sister a look that is meaningful, his dark eyes on hers, speaking the language of a kingdom of two. He is startled to find that her eyes are opaque to him. She is flushed. She has drunk more than usual, he thinks, explaining her opacity that way.

The rabbi looks at the three young people with pride and affection. How beautiful they are, he thinks. Even the man from Small Island has crept into the rabbi's open heart. But at the same time he feels a fear that rises from the memory of his people, from all the things Jews have suffered at the hands of Christians. Jacob Lippsted's pride, his display of power, make the rabbi uneasy. The rabbi
knows better than the young people that in the history of his tribe calling proud attention to oneself and one's power has brought down disasters and punishments. First from Ha-Shem, later from the Gentiles, who might even (who can say?) be themselves an instrument of Ha-Shem. The rabbi knows that if he tries to explain his concerns, Jacob Lippsted will laugh, tell him to abandon tribal superstitions and join a world that is rapidly changing.

The boatmaker doesn't know whether he should take seriously Jacob's suggestion to come and see the great horse that will run for the House of Lippsted. But not long after this dinner, on a fine day when spring is flowing into summer, he finds himself in the black carriage that brings Rachel to his boardinghouse. He thinks he can smell her scent rise from the black leather. By now he is aware that this scent, of spring flowers under rain, has a name: Lily of the Valley.

As the carriage rolls toward the countryside, the boatmaker is embarrassed by his jacket, the costume of an apprentice. He is not ashamed of his work. Not at all. He is proud to serve under Sven Eriksson, to work among his men, every one a serious and capable worker, some revered masters of their craft. But next to Jacob Lippsted, who leans back on black cushions smoking a cigar and letting his smoke drift out the window, wearing
a brown tweed suit cut and sewn by hands as skilled as the ones that make Lippsted furniture, the boatmaker feels poorly groomed.

Jacob Lippsted's suit fits him as if it knew him as well as his mother did, giving him room where he needs it, holding him snug where it should do that. It is a suit for the country, matching brown boots and the brown gloves held in his left hand while he smokes with his right. It is not only the suit that makes the man seem so well groomed. Jacob Lippsted seems more at ease with himself than anyone the boatmaker has ever known. It does not surprise him that the man with the dark eyes and neatly clipped beard can speak as a peer to the king.

“I'm glad you're coming with me. I am. I want you to see this horse. And meet his trainer. An odd little man, Donelan—but a genius with animals. He knows this horse. No one could have told us when we bought him at auction as a colt that he would come this far. He had courage—no question of that—and raw power. But he was ornery. When he raced, you never knew whether he was going to run like the wind or bolt to the stables when the gun was fired. He was a handful—more than a handful! I was ready to give up on him and put him out to stud. And he will be a great stud horse one day. He has wonderful bloodlines, going all the way back to the
Byerly Turk. You can't have nobler blood than that, even if you are the king himself. Who's a very good chap, by the way, with a wonderful sense of humor, even about himself.”

“Donelan?”

“Yes, Donelan. Oh, you mean the name. He's an Irishman. I see why you're puzzled. Not many of those on the Mainland, are there? He came with the colt when we bought him. Refused to be parted. He was as ornery as the colt. But he must have known what the horse could be. There are many kinds of knowledge in this world. The rabbi has one kind. I know you think he's a cracked old egg, with his babble about Secret Jews, but you will see in time. He's a man of rare depth, Nachum Goldman. You have another kind of knowledge. My sister has another.”

Jacob Lippsted leans out the window, exhaling a long stream of smoke, eyes turned from the boatmaker to the rich farmland left by the glaciers when they retreated thousands of years before.

“When we bought the colt, Donelan knew something about him that no one else could see yet. He was willing to make powerful people angry in his stubbornness and his refusal to be parted from the colt. But he's been proved right, many times over. He's made something great of this horse. I wouldn't say tamed, because
he isn't tamed. You'll see. You wouldn't want him to be tamed. The same way you wouldn't want your best general to be tamed. The way Napoleon was never tamed. They could chain him to a lump of rock no bigger than Small Island—but never tame him. Well, here we are. Soon enough, you'll see for yourself,” Jacob Lippsted says, tossing half of a very expensive cigar out the window.

The carriage turns through a gate in a wooden fence. At the end of a gravel drive stands a group of large, well-kept stone buildings. On the front of the largest, in the center, is a metal
L
. The carriage stops in front of it, and the men climb out, stretching their legs. The black horses snort and shake their heads. The driver leads them around the corner and out of sight.

Inside the barn is the rich smell of a place where horses live: sweat, hay, grain, manure, saddle soap, leather. Everything is quiet. No one seems to be waiting for the two men to arrive, even though one of them owns everything in sight, right down to the last water bucket and the dipper in it. Each stall they pass has a brass plate bearing a name. They walk through the straw until they come to a stall twice the size of the others, with
Bold Prince
inscribed on its brass plaque.

In the stall are a pony and a man wearing a worn tweed suit with a vest and flat cap. Towering over them
is a brown horse with a black mane and tail. The horse is tall, but his leanness makes him seem even taller than he is. He tenses at their appearance. The boatmaker remembers the newspaper in the barbershop. One of the silhouettes facing each other on the front page has sprung to life.

“Hello, Donelan,” says Jacob Lippsted, at his ease but not barging into the stall. “How is the mood today?”

“Changeable as always, sir. Thunderclouds early, then patches of sun. But we're always on the lookout for sudden storms. It's spring, after all.”

Donelan speaks the language of the Mainland well enough to banter with Jacob Lippsted about the horse in their own code. But he speaks with an accent. It is unlike any accent the boatmaker knows, like an English accent but not quite the same. The big horse relaxes at the sound of the little man's voice.

“Donelan, this is a friend who has come to us all the way from Small Island. I would appreciate it if you would all make him welcome. Do you think the weather will hold long enough for us to come in?”

“I think it might,” Donelan says, coming to the gate. At he reaches to open it, the boatmaker sees that the Irishman's hands are twisted. He uses them like blunt tools.

Donelan gets the gate open, and they step in. The big horse backs into a corner of the stall, his eyes expanding until white shows all the way around the irises.

“Come on,” the Irishman says, closing the gate, “it will be alright. We'll be friends soon enough. Give this to the pony,” he says, pressing a lump of sugar into the boatmaker's palm. “Here you go, Fannie. Let's see what this fellow has brought you from town.”

The boatmaker shows the sugar and the pony comes toward him, looks him up and down, accepts the sugar and lets him stroke her muzzle. Some of the tension leaves the stall. The brown horse takes a step toward the rest, less white showing in his eyes.

“Ah, yes, your majesty,” the Irishman says, “it's alright. We're all going to be friends, whether our bloodlines go all the way back to the days of the prophet Mohamet or only to Small Island.”

He moves quietly to the big horse and leans into his shoulder, as if he were leaning against a brown-and-black wall. The horse turns his head, reaches down, takes the flat cap in his mouth, holding it up and out of reach.

“Well, well, well. We are playful, are we not, my prince? The air of Small Island must agree with you.”

He turns and swats the horse on its shoulder, at which the pony comes to intervene, putting her head
under the Irishman's armpit and demanding her rightful place in this small kingdom.

After his visit to the barn, the boatmaker's life settles into a new rhythm. When he is in the compound, he spends more and more time in the storeroom. And he spends his time mostly as he wishes. Eriksson does not come after him to pull him back into his apprentice duties. What he is working on in the storeroom grows toward completion. When he leaves after wrapping the canvas around it, it is taller than the boatmaker himself.

In the courtyard he sometimes passes Rachel Lippsted stepping down from her carriage. As they pass, neither betrays the other. When she goes into the house, he couldn't say what she is wearing. She, on the other hand, notices everything about him. The scar on his nose, which is now just two light lines. His brown hair, which is continuing to thin. In the end he will be bald, she sees, unlike her brother, who retains all of his thick black hair. The boatmaker's baldness won't matter. In fact, the differences between the two men please her.

When he is not working, the boatmaker often goes out to the stables. The barns are on the other side of the city from the New Land, in a different landscape. Here it is green and rolling, with big estates among the farms and houses, glossy horses in rich pastures. He rides the
tram to the end of the line, looking out the window and thinking about Father Robert and Neck. At the end of the line he gets off and walks the rest of the way or gets a ride in a wagon filled with vegetables.