The Bookman's Tale (6 page)

And while the Captain waited, watching over his glasses, another. And then another, the Captain continuing, holding down the restless pages, the new sun horizontal against his cheek, “
At whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world
” (signaling) “
the sea shall give up her dead, and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in her
” (signaling again) “
shall be changed
,” pulling off his reading glasses to focus the mate better and motioning with some impatience to get on with it. “
And made like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby …
how much more you got?”

The mate making a sort of helpless gesture indicating the situation was beyond his control, and the Captain shouting, “Dump it!…
whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself
.—Amen!”

And “Amen!” from the Reverend Marion Bickle, his arrival now at the end of the service suggesting a lingering annoyance at the Captain's having declined his offer to “assist.” He made several quick shots of the group at the rail and the mate with the upturned urn, though the light was still hardly strong enough; and several shots, a few minutes later, of the passengers at early coffee served on a starboard deck out of the wind, spoons and saucers resuming a comfortable tinkle as if included in the Captain's orders to his engine room.

Ray had gingerly added a few drops of condensed milk to his coffee and was reaching for sugar when the diver, Pyt, pointed off to the southeast at what for a moment seemed empty sun-streaked water than showed a fleck of white that brought them all to the rail, Preacher Bickle first, staring at the spot then raising both arms in a Praise-the-Lord gesture and mumbling incoherent Bible words that might have been “taketh” and “giveth”—the Captain evidently already aware of the object through his glass and ordering a change of course to bring it nearer.

Then there below them four blistered men in a weathered rowboat with a ragged makeshift sail that they loosened while they rocked on the quiet sea and shouted up for “Vater!—
De l'eau!
—
Wasser!
” and Preacher Bickle staring at the sky and mumbling something about “the quick and the dead.”

The Captain said, “Throw him a line!” and a snake's-tongue line looped out from below into the four of them, then, “Come aboard?” through his horn in a questioning tone but as if knowing the answer, which was two or three parched shouts of “Vater! Vater!”

“Where you from?” in a comradely voice that was almost playful, gesturing an order to the mate to round up some supplies. Repeating, “Where you from?” after a minute but as though not surprised at needing to ask again, and drawing out a mumble among the boatmen and headshakes and a “
Comprends pas
!”

“You
‘comprends'
plenty, I think.”

“Vater! Vater!”

Ray and the rest watching while Erik and a deck hand lowered a demijohn of water and a basket of biscuits and cans, the rowboat rising and falling on the swell, sun-blackened arms reaching, guiding, the Captain shouting, “How's everything on the Island?” in a sociable tone.

“
Comprends pas!
‘Eye-land?'
Ques que c'est
, ‘eye-land'?” but with a grin of broken teeth.

“
Isle du Diable, n'est c'pas?
”

Silence for a moment in the boat, then grumbles back and forth, then “
Merci, mon capitan. Bon voyage
!” freeing the line and shoving off with a hard push of an oar—for Preacher Bickle, shoving off among the resurrected ashes: “He counseleth the deep to receive our sister and resurrecteth three in her stead,” on his knees at the rail, the camera swinging loose as if weighted with doctrine.

Geltstein murmuring, “Four, Deacon,” and Bickle saying, “Were there four? My eyes are not what they were,” the coffee spoons taking up their tinkle, the deck its micro-tremble from the engine room, the ensign on the stern lifting out behind them.

And reminding Ray of the Navy and the young lieutenant. “Tuckwell,” he said; “did he get his Ph.D.? Confident he would, ‘goy-confident,' you remember,” and the Doctor, gazing out over the stern as if at a sea of rolling years, went on with the rest of it—accounting, incidentally, for his presence on the ship (and, without meaning to, Ray's also, as the ship became more and more a House of Mirrors reflecting himself at every turn, misshapen, grotesque, distorted beyond recognition—almost).

T
HE
D
OCTOR'S
C
OLLEAGUE'S
T
ALE

My colleague—I'll call him “X”, Dr. X, you'd probably know him, high up in his field (
the
field, you might say, “digs” and all that)—he had his handsome wife Donna invite the two young people to dinner, had my wife and me, cooks and maids in those days, all very elegant in a modest way (Donna with money in the background, I believe), the newlyweds arriving hand-in-hand at the doorstep and disappointed, politely, at being separated at table, he between Donna and my wife and she, Meg, between X and myself.

All four of us older, but not by much—as
we
understood much—ten or fifteen years, maybe twenty. Anyway, a good bit farther along the road than Tuckwell, farther up the tricky ladder. His stint in the Navy set him back but it certainly wasn't lost time for him because, on shore leave in some dim port he ran into an archeological troupe from some American university and fell in love with anthropology. Maybe a year or two somewhere else, I don't remember. All kinds of credentials, smart, presentable enough in every way, and yet somehow a whisper of small-town. You could hardly spot it, maybe nobody else did. No sign they did. Or cared. The ladies obviously found him charming (“Sweet smile,” my wife said later—three times), Donna showing, it seemed to me, a glimmer of interest in how he viewed the twelve or so years between them—a much bigger span looking up from twenty-eight than down from forty.

And something of the same on our side of the table between young Mrs. Tuckwell—Meg, possibly twenty-three—and X and me, a much bigger span, maybe twenty-five or thirty years, enough to make us insist on “Tom” and “Norman” (no trouble about “Meg,” a daughter's age if we had had one). X behaving like a boy walking on his hands before the new girl in town—talking about the
Oedipus
that the Thespians had staged the night before: “The good King just overreacted. He should have called in the Royal Shrink, who would have assured him every man wants to kill his father so he can marry his mother” (Meg smiling at her wedding ring as she tried to listen to our dated patter through wanting to hear what this Mrs. X was presuming to say to her husband). And tolerant of my own exhibitionism when I threw in my uncalled-for bit about “You seek and you find but what you find is not what you were seeking.”—A smallish fair-haired girl with the sort of unconscious self-confidence you get from a mixture of approvals in your backgouund, social and personal. Friends, yes; lovers no; would-be lovers,
mille é tre
. Truthful eyes; something in them my wife's didn't have, and certainly Donna's didn't, maybe something you naturally outgrow.

I remember glancing at X for his impression if his manner showed it. He seemed attentive to what she was saying but his old eyes had wandered to her throat and a chain of some sort round her neck with a pendant falling between her breasts, and I thought he is only half hearing her and I couldn't blame him—breasts that might have been tailored to her measure and that she accepted and wore with the sort of unconscious satisfaction I used to feel in the days when I had my suits custom made not lifted from the rack and never quite right. I caught myself thinking they must have traveled with her Oscar boy-friend, nursed him on the high seas and brought him back to her safe and sound—and smiling.

As anybody knows, and certainly X and Donna had been out in the great world long enough to know, you are wasting your time to fall in love with someone, or even think you might, until the someone stops feeling deprived at being unable to hold the other-one's hand beneath the table. Which I thought that evening might not be for some time. They weren't exactly amateurs among the pros but the thought did occur to me the day my wife and I joined the gallery on donated tickets and followed a few holes of the U.S. Open not far away. I mean some amateurs are better than some pros, so there is no built-in disparagement in my thinking of Lieutenant and Mrs. Tuckwell—Oscar and Meg—as amateurs.

They found a small garage-apartment not far from the Graduate School, Donna and Meg found it, Lieutenant Oscar diving into his curriculum like a swimmer at a tournament hitting the roped-off lanes of the pool. We had them over one evening out of politeness, just the two of them (still holding hands, nourishing each other like Siamese twins), and they had us back after a time, just my wife and me. They spoke of Donna and X, casually. He did: “The Doctor runs a tight ship,” she quiet, smiling at her free hand.

And that was just about the end of it for us. A word about them now and then from X when our paths crossed and I asked. “Sharp. Top-quality work. You don't tell him twice.”

“You think he'll swing his Doctor's,” not so much a question, which seemed already answered by his tone, but to keep him talking because he seemed through with it.

“If he doesn't sprain something up here” (waving at his head). “I told him once to ease up, take his wife up to the Big City for a week. He said, ‘Later.' I think Meg's not too happy about it all. His wife, Meg.”

“Yes, I remember Meg. But he won't let up?”

“He's on to something he's trying to prove for his dissertation, something about frogs and salt water. First thing I told him, of course, was keep it quiet, don't tell
anybody
, not even your wife. I said, ‘There're pirates on this ocean, Lieutenant,' and he said, Yes, he knew. I think I know where he's headed but I'm keeping out of it.”—I told him he was quite right.

I saw Tuckwell in the cafeteria one lunchtime, across the room, he didn't see me. He was there with two young people. I suppose from the lab. Later when I looked again he was alone and I thought I would stop by and speak on my way out even though he was intent on jotting in a notebook—without glasses, prompting me to take mine off and wipe them on a paper napkin (very good for cleaning glasses). When I had them on and could see him again the situation at his table had changed considerably. He was talking across the notebook to Donna. Or listening, smiling a little,
the
smile. I had never seen her in the cafeteria before, though of course she had every right to be there if she wanted to, faculty wife, and probably there meeting X anyway; dressed very fittingly for a visit among us academic diners, ornaments (‘accessories,' as they call them) held to a minimum, but still more decorative than the general run of our lady professors.

I thought he seemed rather impatient at being interrupted, tapping his pencil on the notebook page, one end then the other—but listening, attending, nodding, bringing up a smile, the smile. I left them; I had a graduate seminar coming up. The door was in another direction but I think I might have walked past their table without catching their eye, hers anyway. I thought X would be joining them any minute and I considered waiting outside to have a word with him, it had been weeks since I had seen him. Just as well I didn't wait; he was at a symposium on the Coast, Berkeley, had connections at Berkeley, did his training there.

Not long after that I had a phone call from an old student of mine in Washington who had gone up the ladder to a very good thing on the staff of a highly respected scientific magazine (some Government tie-in, I don't know what—neither here nor there). He said it looked as if they might be in the market one day soon for a young Ph.D. in Anthropology and if I knew of somebody there at the University to let him know. They had all kinds of applicants of course but a Doctor's from Princeton would carry weight. They were putting in for a foundation grant that would cover most of the salary; he mentioned a figure but I've forgotten—except that I said I'd like to apply for the job, which made us both laugh.

Of course I thought of Tuckwell, though he was hardly in line for it with almost another year to go before he would meet the requirements; the opening might well not exist by the time he got the doctorate. I hadn't seen him all winter, in fact not since the moment with Donna in the cafeteria. We had asked him and Meg over to dinner once but they were busy and we dropped it; too many years between us anyway.

But one morning in spring I happened to meet X coming out of the Chemistry Building and we talked for a few minutes on the steps. He seemed in good shape but he surprised me by lighting a cigarette. He had given up smoking long ago; as I had too, shaking my head when he held out the pack. I asked about Tuckwell, mentioned the opening in Washington, or what had been an opening, possibly filled by then.

He knew about it. Tuckwell knew about it, had talked to him, wanted his advice on applying for it. “What was my frank opinion—as if I'd give any other kind—on his doctorate going through? Fair? Good? Excellent? It rather annoyed me, Norman; pushing me to some sort of commitment six months before he'd finished the disquisition. I told him it was the Board's decision, not mine. He pressed me, not one to underestimate himself, you know. Asked if I would feel like backing him. I said that depended on the paper, and he said with his little sideways laugh, ‘It's a good paper.'”

I asked if he had seen any of it and he said, A few parts. “Essentially, trying to show that tadpoles will grow from eggs whose nucleus has been replaced by the nucleus of an adult frog's skin cell. Fair enough, if he can do it. And somebody else doesn't do it first.—How's your wife?”

Of course I said, Fine, and asked after Donna. It surprised me a little that he just nodded (though that was really adequate as response), stepped on his cigarette, said we must have lunch one day soon, he would call me (the ready-to-wear dismissal) and hurried off—a little testy, I thought, a little up-tight? Maybe not.