The Boatmaker (36 page)

“The horse seemed like he was in a trance. I thought maybe they'd gotten to him after all with the syringe.”

“I don't think so. I think he was grieving for Donelan. And he snapped out of it just in time.” The foreman paces silently on his long legs. Then he says softly, “The scum. Killing an old man with arthritis who was trying to protect a horse.” He spits to the side of the trail. Silence resumes.

The foreman leads him to a small tent standing by itself in the woods. “There you go,” he says, turning to leave, shotgun over his shoulder.

Inside the tent Meyer Goldman sits on the floor cross-legged, an unfinished jacket in his lap. He untangles himself and rises. “So, the famous man of Small Island comes to visit the humble tailor.”

When the boatmaker is silent, Goldman continues. “Come for the wedding suit, have you? I'm told you wear a dinner suit well, though no one could tell that by looking
at you.” He has the same accent as his brother, the same love of words. But some of the twinkle is missing.

“Well, don't just stand there. Take off those boots and overalls. How do you think suits get made? By themselves? That's not the way it happens. Not even here in the forest. No. We take the measurements, then cut and sew and back and forth until the garment is finished. And if we find ourselves in the woods, sitting in the dirt like barbarians rather than in the capital like civilized men, then that is where we do our work. Step lively, Small Island man. If you are going to marry Miss Rachel Lippsted tomorrow in that huppah they're building next door, you'll need to do as you're told.”

The boatmaker wonders if the rabbi's brother is a drinker. He doesn't smell alcohol, but the stream of words reminds him of a certain kind of drunk.

He takes off his clothes and stands naked. He is short enough that he does not have to stoop under the roof of the tent as the tailor takes measurements for the first suit of clothes that has ever been made for him. From the moment he arrived at the camp he has felt the power of the House of Lippsted around him, arranging everything. He feels that it would be easy to let himself go and allow these arrangements, made effortlessly smooth by the lubricating power of money, to carry him along. But that is not the way the boatmaker has set his course.

“I have a dinner suit. I don't need a new one.”

“What?” the tailor says, tape measure around his neck. “Don't play the fool with me, man of Small Island.”

“I'm not. The one I have is the one I'll wear.”

“Then what are we bothering with all this for?” The tailor flings his arms wide. On his face is an expression like curdled milk.

“I'd like a suit like the ones Herr Lippsted wears. In brown tweed. With a vest.”

“And you think we're running a dry-goods store out here in this goyishe wilderness?” But there is a hint of amusement in his outrage, and the boatmaker sees a little more of the rabbi in him.

“We'll see what we can do. But I can't promise it for tomorrow. Now put your Small Island potato sacks back on and be gone from my respectable place of business.” He is mumbling to himself as the boatmaker leaves the tent, glad to stand outside in the sunshine, fully clothed.

He walks back alone through the woods, the warmth of a summer's day spreading under the leaves. The square between the tents is empty. He lifts the flap of Jacob Lippsted's tent, asks permission to enter.

The scion of the House of Lippsted sits behind a folding desk, papers and account books stacked neatly in front of him. His jacket hangs on the back of his chair. He
looks clean and collected as he motions the boatmaker to a camp chair.

The two men talk over the events of the past few days and discuss the future. Jacob is certain he will be able to return to the capital and rebuild. He has confidence in his relationship with the king, though he says nothing about whether they are in communication. He is interested in the boatmaker's plans for returning to Small Island and building something of his own there. He is sober when he hears about the Sons of Vashad. He seems distressed only when the boatmaker describes the bodies under the broken pushcarts. Then he puts his head in his hands. But his composure returns quickly.

The boatmaker leaves the tent and stands on the platform. The sun, moving toward the peak, warms his back and arms. He turns his face up, feeling for the first time in many weeks the release of the tension that was bound up in the race. Even though his secretary is nothing but pools of gray ash, Sven Eriksson has seen it and blessed it. The boatmaker is no longer an apprentice. And he knows where he is going from here.

As he stands, face offered to the sun, he feels her leave her tent, step on the boards and press herself against his back. Holding him, she pulls him back, a step at a time, until they are moving backward in a gliding dance:
a fantastic animal with four legs, their heads facing the same direction. She lifts the flap of her tent with a free hand, and they pass into her world.

She releases him and turns him around. He sees that an oval metal tub has been brought into the tent. She removes his overalls slowly, looking him in the eye as she undoes the buttons at the shoulders, pulling the fabric down. She removes his longjohns a little at a time, reaching her hands inside. She pulls them down and descends with them until she is kneeling before him. He lifts one foot, then the other out of the garment, which she lays on the floor. She embraces his knees, kissing the flat knob of each in turn, allowing the rich, loamy, acrid smell of him and his time on the road to fill her.

She moves behind him and guides him into the tub. The water is hot but not scalding. He lowers himself, soaking while she sponges him. She washes him now as the man who is about to be her husband, not as the odd stranger she meets in a shabby rooming house in the Old Quarter. Each part she touches is part of her husband, the father of her child, who will soon be a member of the House of Lippsted, playing a role that is yet to be written but for which she is sure he was born. He closes his eyes, enjoying the sensation of being touched by her.

Kneeling beside the tub, she says: “You know, in being with you, I didn't know whether I was doing what my brother wanted or something that he would be shocked by—or even hate. He does not explain everything. That is not his way. He puts things in front of people and sees what they do. Do they come forward and take what is offered? Do they run? Do they freeze? I've seen men—and women—do all of those things while he watched without giving a sign. I can tell you it made some of them crazy. He hasn't yet given me any signs. And I'm still not sure I know the answer. But it doesn't matter. He seems happy. And I know I am. I'm sure he will put things in front of you and see how you react. You are free to choose what you wish. I will be with you regardless of what you choose and what you leave from among what he offers.”

Her voice pours over him like the warm water she uses to rinse his body. He hears what she says about her brother. But he knows he will make his own way, not simply choosing from among what his wealthy, powerful brother-in-law sets in front of him. He has already shared his plans for Small Island with Jacob Lippsted. He feels no need to explain them to Rachel yet. She will find out soon enough. He closes his eyes, and she begins sponging him off.

He stands. She wraps him in a towel and leads him to her camp bed. Her world remains strange to him, but
he does not question his decision to come here, to enter that world. He has not questioned it since he burned the letters in his room, took his bundle and set out on the road leading to this forest. Lying with her, seeing himself reflected in her eyes, he is thinking of the words in her letter:
There will be a child.

The child is already with them on this camp bed, he thinks. It is simply waiting for the right time to join them, to enter the space where the moonlight was when they lay in his little room over the alley.

He thinks of the girl on Small Island. She was sometimes clinging, sometimes grave. Sometimes she seemed afraid of him, perhaps because he was so different from her father. His child will not be afraid of him. He knows it will be a boy. He will teach his son everything he has learned on Small Island, on Big Island and the Mainland. The child will know so much more than the boatmaker does.

“Must I be gentle with you now?” he asks, reaching out to touch her belly.

“Be gentle with me? Always,” she says, looking at him with a smile. She pulls his face to hers, covering his eyes so that he is blind, bound to her, and speaks directly into his ear. “
Always. You must always be gentle with me.
” She pauses a moment and then resumes, her lips on his flesh: “
Always. Never. Always. Never. Always.
”

CHAPTER 26

The boatmaker wakes early and disentangles himself from his bride. He pulls his clothes and boots on and steps out into a bright day. The foreman is standing on the platform, drinking coffee from a tin mug. He finishes the coffee and ducks into Jacob Lippsted's tent, where he stays a few minutes, emerging without his mug. He touches his cap to the boatmaker and goes down a path into the woods.

As the boatmaker stands on the platform in the sunshine, the things that happened in the capital are difficult to believe. He wonders what the Old Quarter looks like, how much of the city is controlled by men wearing the triangle armbands of the Sons of Vashad. He steps off the platform and takes the path to Meyer Goldman's tent.

He has no idea how the tailor managed to find the fabric, but his suit is nearly finished. He expects a harangue
along with the suit, but the smaller Goldman has nothing to say beyond what is necessary for the practice of his craft:
Enough room? Does this pinch? Raise your arms.

The tailor's eye is superb: The suit fits beautifully, needs only a last few adjustments. There is no mirror, but the boatmaker needs no mirror to see where he will go in this suit. His plans for Small Island are taking clearer shape every day. As he did in the compound, on Small Island he will do something that has never been done there.

“Thank you,” the boatmaker says. The tailor says nothing.

“I also need shoes to go with the suit, along with shirts and ties. All of it must be shipped to Small Island, to the general store in Harbortown on the steamer. It must arrive within the month.”

Giving orders has already begun to feel less strange. But the tailor doesn't make it easy for him; his face shows no expression. He can't decide whether Meyer Goldman is happy to be of service, outraged or something else that can't be read in his features. As he leaves the tent, the tailor is sitting cross-legged on the floor, bent over his work, humming tunelessly to himself.

In their tent the bed is empty. The boatmaker sits in the chair listening to the birds crying the headlines from tree to tree:
Very curious events! More tents than usual
in the woods! A virtual city! Erected by humans who have guns but are not hunters! Fine weather continues through the week.
Rachel enters bearing plates. They eat without talking, conscious that it is the first meal in their home.

When they are finished, she takes him by the hand and leads him into the tent to the left, where the rabbi is sitting at a camp table. The table is identical to the one in Jacob Lippsted's tent. But instead of neat stacks of documents requiring action there are mountains of books in Hebrew, German and the language of the Mainland. The tent cannot have been pitched more than a week, yet it has the feel of a scholar's study, uncleaned for decades. On the camp table are layers of paper, a tin of watercolors and brushes in a glass. A broad white sheet sits in the middle, covering something brightly colored that peeps out from underneath. Behind the desk sits Rabbi Nachum Goldman in shirtsleeves and skullcap, perspiring.

“
So
. The man from Small Island,” he says without getting up.

“Yes.”

“And under such different circumstances. About to become a member of the family. Although my theory is that you were one of us already—whether you knew it or not.” The rabbi smiles a childlike smile that says:
You see, I can't help myself. Don't be angry!

“Rabbi, you promised you wouldn't bring that up again,” says Rachel, pressing herself into the boatmaker.

Her warmth pleases his body. Nothing anyone could say at this moment would hurt very much. It feels as if there is a layer of something soft between any possible pain and his brain. He has felt this before only when he was drunk. Yet he has drunk nothing in many months, except a little at the townhouse, out of a desire to be polite.
There will be a child
, he thinks. He wonders if the rabbi knows, whether Jacob does. He assumes they do. Even that knowledge, which would ordinarily make him feel as if layers of his skin had been peeled off, leaving his entire body raw, red and exposed, causes no pain. The boatmaker is foolish in his happiness.

Rachel moves to the camp table and lifts the large white sheet that sits in front of Rabbi Nachum Goldman. Lying under it on a sheet the same size is a large circle in black ink. Inside the circle are fields of bright color. Over the fields of color are lines of Hebrew, places for signatures at the bottom.

“The
ketubah
,” she says, “our marriage contract. Here in the woods the rabbi has been practicing his magic.”

“Not magic, child. Tradition. The customs of our people.
Baruch Ha-Shem
.”