The Closed Harbour (2 page)

"You are not ill?"

"I am not ill"
brusquely.

"And you are not civil either."

"Shall I go?"

"Go."

"I will remain." Marius tried to laugh.

"You will get along," the policeman said, pushing him.

Marius, not resisting, went staggering forward.

"And you need a wash perhaps," the policeman called after him.

"Of course," thought Marius, "I might have shaved, perhaps I forgot. No matter, I must get away, I will perhaps draw a crowd."

He dragged himself off, turned a street corner sharply, this road was not so crowded, and the noise of winches came louder to his ears. Somewhere there was an end, somewhere there must be a stop.

"They will be sitting there like stones," he thought as he moved on.

He saw before him the forests of masts, the funnels, the cranes, and the winches were roaring, eating up cargo like lions. He saw all this and it was his country, the edge of the sea.

"Tonight I will go to Madame Lustigne's and I will forget myself. And then I will go home and the house will be silent, as graves are, and they sleeping or waiting or watching, the latter most likely, they are always watching me."

Suddenly he stopped dead, staring round. Then he crossed the road, sat down, his back against the wall of an old shed, shaded from the sun, he watched the
Clarté
load.

"Lucky Manos," he said, "lucky man."

The
Clarté
clouded over, the winches stopped, there was dead silence, he could see nothing but a high building, a towering wall. He was at Nantes. He was mounting stairs, he was at the desk.

"My name is Marius. Captain Eugene Marius
...
"

And the man said, "you're not the only one who knows that," and laughed, and Marius went out, and the laughter followed him down the stairs, he could feel it driving into his back like knives.

He was in Bordeaux, the Rue du Soleil, no eye could escape the brass model of the ship, high and shining in the summer sun. The Bilter Line.

"My name is Marius, Captain Eugene Marius
...
"

"Sorry—"

"And here I am" he thought, stiffening where he sat.

A ship's siren had blown, it struck him like a cry, he sat up sharply, a boat was coming in, he could see her, the sun streaming her decks, the smoke triumphant from her funnel, a voyage ended, she was coming home.

Marius got up and walked nearer to the quay. Already he could see the short stocky figure leaning against her poop rail, and knew it was lucky Manos.

"Never lost a ship, never lost anything in his life, not even a button off his coat, the lucky swine." He cried within himself, "you self-pitying bastard."

Twenty yards from where the
Clarté
lay he stopped, sat down on a bollard.

"If I could sail in her, as I was, as I used to be, at my full height, if they were not silent, all the days silent, if it had never happened."

He could see the cargo pouring down into her after hold, saw the others battened down and secure, she would soon be gone.

"In the end I will swim out of it."

He fell asleep. Later he woke, a hand on his arm, he felt chill, the sun was going, a voice said, "you ought to get home," and he got up and he went away, never once looked back, and the policeman following with his eye thought, "this place is full of bums," and watched the tall thin figure vanish round the corner.

Marius took the back streets, and here, unlike the avenue, people were not so important, the tempo was different, the very climate breathed an air of acceptance, of resignation. People passed him by and hardly gave him a glance. There was a moment in the long day when Marius's spirit lightened, he thought of his room, the climb upstairs, past the silent women, the door closing, the door locked behind him. Alone. Everything in it had become intensely personal to him. He saw everything clearly. The black bed in the corner, the plain scrubbed wooden chair alongside, some flowers in a vase, always fresh, he could never understand who put them there, but he was touched by this. The bundle of charts lying on the mantelpiece, wrapped like mysteries in their brown paper, the sextant on the table under the window, the telescope, a collection of brass buttons, a pipe, a hard plug of tobacco. Always he would look at the picture of the
Mercury
, his first ship, the proud moment. The picture of his father, resplendent in uniform, his boyhood hero. He had loved his father.

He stopped by a bistro, he searched in his pocket, counted two hundred francs, he went inside, but was out again in two minutes, his throat fiery from the brandy.

"Tomorrow will be tomorrow" he thought, "and they will still be there", thinking of them, his mother, his sister, sitting so silently in the window, looking out, always looking out, at what, the sea? At everything, and perhaps nothing.

"If I could get away. And the sooner the better. That Philippe, blast him, he could have given me a berth on the
Clarté
as easy as winking, but no, he is so bloody upright and moral and horribly good, and Follet's no better. When you are down you are down, and there's the end of it."

He removed his cap which he crushed into his pocket, he ruffled his hair, wiped his forehead, suddenly dived into an alley. Cooler here, but the smells rose as high as heaven. He was not far from home.

"They hate it, and yet she will follow me, as though I had not anchors enough around my neck. I'll stow away. Now if I could get to Greece. Ah, that's the place. Ships there are owned by the devil, and he mans them too. Well
...
"

There was the house. He stood for a moment by the door, looked right and left, then went inside.

The whispers sounded to him like prayers, but the moment he had pushed open the door they ceased, they had seen him come, and there was silence again, and they were so still they might have been seated thus for a hundred years. Neither of the women looked at him when he came in.

They were sat side by side in the window as they always were. Often the evening hours were spent in this way, it was an elected silence. They would look out to the broad sea, and the restless breakers.
/
Their very pose, locked in this silence, gave them the appearance of conspirators, eternal watchers, an alertness against the world.

For a moment Marius looked at them, then removed his coat which he hung upon a hook inside the door. He went into the kitchen and brought back bread, wine, and an onion. He sat down and began to eat. They could hear the grind of the onion in his teeth. A hungry man. A miserable man.

The young woman rose from her chair and went out. Marius heard her climbing the stairs, and later her slow, almost ponderous movements to and fro in the bedroom. A person uncertain of something, a person tired of waiting, a person always listening.

The old woman, seated in her high-backed wooden chair, had turned round, but not to speak, only to stare. And he did not speak to her, and he did not look her way, but calmly went on eating, making coarse noises as he did so.

She was aged, pinned to the chair by weight of years, by the horrible silence. He could feel her eye upon him, as a pressure; it upset him.

The fierce light of the sun was all about them, the glass of wine caught in it seemed shimmering, forever moving, and as though Marius had sensed this he put his hand, flat upon the glass top and pressed. Watching her, he saw the day's end, her repose. The labours of it slept peacefully under her bones.

As he looked at her he saw how quickly she averted her glance, as if only now she had realised she had been staring at her son.

This house is of four rooms only, its walls a shattering white in the evening sun. As Marius ate he looked about him, it broke the stare, lightened the silence. Around them the simple furniture, but here and there an object that sharpened his memory. He looked at everything, sipped at his wine. The bones of home, of their life, of what it had been. For a few moments it served to screen off a certain blackness in Marius's mind. He heard the slow, tumbril-like tick of the old clock. Above it on the mantelpiece yet another picture of a naval man. A handsome man, his own father, whose first fruit came out of the sea.

"I, too, was born in the sea," he thought.

Looking at the picture he was conscious of a certain secret pride, then suddenly his mother, too, was there, she had climbed into the frame beside her husband, and she was young then, and innocent and charming, nothing in the severe black of her dress could hide it, she beside his father, the bright Captain.

Now he was looking at his mother again, thinking of her long life, her honourable life, it was impossible not to look at the statue-like figure.

Though she now returned his gaze there was nothing in it save a vast, stony indifference.

Marius leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette, sent smoke clouds madly climbing. He could still hear the restless to and fro movement from the bedroom above, a human pendulum, ticking out a kind of time that was not his time and never could be.

"I shall go out," thought Marius.

And he went out, leaving the old woman staring at the remains of his meal. He climbed stairs to his room, and met his sister coming down. As he passed her he was aware of her quick movement away from him, she cringed against the wall.

"I am what I am," he thought.

When she heard his door close, she steadied herself, then went down.

She cleared away the things from the table, then laid upon it a large dark-green cloth. She resumed her seat by the window with her mother.

"He is back again."

"So I see."

The old woman's mouth was as drawn and tight as a shut purse, she said quickly, "and I'll bet he has been cringing to the Heros again. Imagine it! A gang of ruffians calling themselves shipowners."

"But nothing happened?"

The old woman laughed. "He may yet drown in the sea," she said.

"Listen to him," Madeleine said.

"Aren't I always listening? He's back again in his cage. He'll be happy when he finds somebody as miserable as himself. I wish he would go. That is a hard thing to say of a son, but I say it, and every time I see him I think of how he saved himself. Your father could not have done that."

"Please, mother."

"All right, I will say no more."

"I am glad of that," said Madeleine, she took her mother's large, fleshy hand and placed it on her knee, and stroked it, and smiled warmly to her.

"Is Father Nollet coming this evening?"

"Father Nollet is coming, you seem to doubt," Madame Marius said.

"I am not."

"And I am glad you are not. Do you know I begin to feel the gutter climbing into my bones, think of it. Your father, God have mercy on him, would have cried from shame. Your brother slinking about, crawling for a ship, hands and knees to the job, no dignity, no pride, nothing. Think of that. A Marius. In and out of shipping offices. It is not so much that he lost a ship, many ships have been lost, no, it is something else about him, like a whine in the Marius flesh, I don't understand it. He belongs to the gutter. It is very strange."

She put her hands on her daughter's shoulders, looked earnestly at her.

"Mighty Jesus! That it should have happened to us."

"But it has happened," Madeleine said, "it has happened, it has—"

Madame Marius could already feel the tension rising in her daughter, she pressed downwards with her terrible strength, pressed hard on the shoulders.

"Enough," she said, "enough."

"This is not our home," Madeleine said.

"I am well aware of that. He is yet the son of his mother."

"If I were not here, I wonder if you would embrace him."

The old woman raised her hand and struck her daughter across the mouth.

"The last time I struck at Marius flesh was that time your brother uttered a filthy remark about his uncle, and I did it because it saved your father's hand. Your father at least was French, and lies in an ocean that will never drag down his son's bones."

"I'm sorry, mother."

"And you have the right to be sorry." She looked at the clock. "I will go up," she said.

"The house where no one speaks is hateful," Madame Marius said, she rose heavily from her chair, and suddenly her daughter's hand was behind her.

"Come."

Madame Marius pushed away the hand. They slowly left the room.

At the stairfoot Madeleine paused, listening. But there was not a sound from her brother's room. She often thought about him, hours behind the closed door, what did he do. Did he perhaps just sit there and think? And of what?

She allowed the old woman to precede her, and as she watched the slow, tortuous climb she seemed to feel age crying aloud to her. She put her hand behind her mother's back.

"Don't do that," her mother said. "Ah, it will be nice to be cooler."

"Yes."

"Perhaps Father Nollet will not come after all, it is gone seven."

"But if he does?"

"Well, naturally he will come up to my room," the old woman had turned and was looking at her daughter, "or is it perhaps that you are glad he is not?"

She turned and went on, the daughter following.

"How long have we been here?"

"Four months."

"It seems four years. Often I think of my lovely house at Nantes and I weep for it."

"You did not have to follow him here," Madeleine said.

"Don't speak to me, I'm too tired to listen"
...
and after a momentary silence, "I shall go on myself, I am not that helpless, leave me."

Madeleine stood still. The aged bones dragged upwards.

"But I had better follow," she thought.

She helped to undress her mother, put her to bed, crossed to the window, shut out the sun, then went away and left her. As she stood on the landing she heard her brother moving in his room.

"He is going out as usual," she thought, "it is always the same, out all day, out all night, it's a wearing out, that's what it is, a wearing out."

Behind the door Marius's hand was upon the latch. He had heard the voices, the tread upon the stairs, they had gone up.