Steve Erickson - Rubicon Beach

From then on, the Crowd regarded Catherine with guiIt and dread. Their gratitude for the night she saved the village mixed with contempt for the madness of her sacrifice. When she attempted to drown the sailor, this perception of her madness was only affirmed. When she raged at herself in the water, the issue was placed beyond doubt. That her eyes held their own power inclined the Crowd to believe she was a sorceress. Her father feIt uneasy; he sensed a prevalent wish among the Crowd that Catherine had perished at her post high in the tree, for which they would only have had to deal with her martyrdom.

The sailor’s name was Coba. Fully revived some thirty-six hours after his rescue, he sauntered about the village jauntily mixing with the others. He continued telling jokes no one laughed at and conversing in a language no one fully understood, though the common Portuguese of their tongues served as an uncertain basis of communication. He also watched Catherine, and from her spot on the other side of the water she watched him. From his third spot on either side of the water Catherine’s father watched them both. When Coba saw Catherine and her father watching him watching her, he laughed as though it was one of his jokes. He plotted his revenge. From the chest that had washed up with him he pulled a deck of cards.

First he told them stories from the cards. He told stories of sensitive kings and aduIterous queens coupling with aduIterous jacks. The jokers fulfilled eponymous roles in these small dramas, but the aces might be anyone: a spy in the court, a magician, a sailor washed into port. Then after he’d been with them a week Coba took to playing solitaire across the back of a huge black pod from the reeds of the river. Once the men of the Crowd got the game, they laughed at the sailor’s defeats. He laughed too. Soon he was wagering fruit on the fate of his games. He lost a lot of fruit. Soon he wagered the scarves from his chest. He lost a lot of scarves. He’d mix up his act with more stories about adventurous jacks and chameleon aces; he’d finger the queen of clubs, flickering her image to the other men in the light of evening tires. This one, he said to them, has hair nearly as black as that one; at which he pointed across the slough to Catherine. The men watched the girl of no voluptuous value. Coba saw they didn’t understand the value of her face. Catherine’s father saw the way the men of the Crowd watched his daughter. Soon Coba wagered coins from his chest on the fate of his games. He lost the coins one by one. He laughed when he won but he laughed louder when he lost.

Her father came to her one night and said, Co away. Why? she asked him. They don’t understand you anymore, he said to her. They haven’t understood you since the night you saved us. I haven’t asked that they understand me, she said. She said, Do you understand me? Something sad came into his eyes. I don’t ask to understand you, he said. She got up and went down to the riverside in the middle of the night. When she pulled the canoe up to the shore she looked at her father and said, Oh papa, and clutched at him angrily. Ile gently pushed her from him. She got in the boat and left.

She entered the maze of the river; on a continent in which every other river ran east, this one ran west. She slid her boat into one of the river’s green and blue boxes, expecting to trigger secret panels and swiveling walls; all that was constant was the sky above her, latticed by the coils of the trees. She pushed the boat along with the oar, letting it guide itself. She descended farther into the maze of the river as the dark turned to day and the day turned to dark. She followed what she supposed to be an unerring instinct, waiting to emerge from the other side, out beyond the edge of everything that had been her world.

After many hours, when the sun rose to its apex and glared down into the river’s maze, Catherine saw her watercreature swimming right before her. Remembering how it had failed to devour the sailor at her command, she took the oar and smacked it on the head. A moment later it was there again, nagging her. I don’t want you here, she said angrily, go back to the village. It insisted on trailing along at the front of the boat. She made the disastrous mistake of turning her boat away from the creature in order to lose it behind her. Soon she was sailing down passages that looked distressingly familiar. Every time she glanced behind her the damned watercreature was still there, and the faster she sailed from it, the more familiar the maze became around her. She realized soon she was crossing her own path. She got so turned around in the maze that by dusk she was completely lost. In fury she stood in the boat and slammed the oar down hard on the watercreature over and over until the sun had set and, on a dark night, the creature vanished. If nothing else, she whispered to the water, I’ve finally killed you. She sailed on a little farther and came out of the maze, only to desperately discover she had emerged at the point she’d entered. A few minutes later she drifted back into her village, with the Crowd standing by the banks watching her return, and none too pleased about it either. She saw her father at the end of the slough, his face in conflict between the part of him overjoyed to see her again — when he’d thought he never would — and the part of him that feared for her. He folded her in his arms. When they tied the boat in the torchlight of the harbor she saw the watercreature, unbloodied and very much alive. She cursed it and it cursed her back.

The men of the Crowd became increasingly consumed with two things: what they considered Catherine’s sorcerous inclinations, and gambling. They couldn’t have too little of the former or too much of the latter. Moreover, the sailor linked the two in their minds: the queen of clubs became the very emblem of Catherine in his games, and the very appearance of the queen turned the men of the Crowd black with hate. As time went by Coba continued to lose his nest egg bit by bit, one coin after another going the way of the men in the Crowd. Both the men and Coba enjoyed the spectacle of it more and more, with the Crowd’s passion becoming more frenzied. Soon Coba wouldn’t have many coins left.

Catherine’s father was beside himself with worry. He grew alarmed at the way the others looked at her; there wasn’t much doubt they considered her a witch. He spoke to his wife from whose long deep stoicism he hoped to gather reassurance. But his wife’s stoicism was founded on her own doubts. She’s my daughter, the girl’s mother said, but I don’t know her. The other children were estranged from their sister as well. It’s nature’s fauIt, said Catherine’s father, for giving her no voluptuous gifts, rendering her without value. It’s nature’s fauIt, said Catherine’s mother, for giving her the face of a spot in space or a place in the middle of the earth. When she was young I should never have let her hair grow, I should have sewn a mask to her skull. But we never noticed it before, the father said. No one ever noticed it before, said the mother, it took them a long time.

It didn’t, said the father, take the sailor a long time.

The sailor had one coin left. He folded up his pack of cards in the squalid soggy little box from which it had come.

The men in the Crowd were in a tizzy. The games had come to an end. No more gambling. No more laughter from the man with the faggy yellow hair. But listen, said Coba sadly, I have only one coin left. He held it up between his fingers, moving it slowly in the air around the borders of the night fire so everyone in the circle could see it. My luck’s been bad. Coba shook his head miserably. You understand now the premise of a gamble? It’s not just the number of what one has but its relation to the whole of what one has. Another man may have five hundred coins. I have only one. Yet my one is worth more than four hundred ninety-nine of his because should he lose his four hundred ninety-nine, he still has one coin left. Should I lose my one, I have nothing left.