Peter Beagle - The Line Between

Not in me life. Nobody in me life has ever spoke that word about me. Nobody. Not me, not nobody, never. I can't do nothing but sit there and gawp. She goes on, «He has not many friends either, my Enrique. You, me — maybe one of my brothers, maybe the abogao, the lawyer. Not so many, eh?» And she puts out her hands toward me, a little way. Not for me to take them — more like giving me summat. She says, «I do not know what he have done to make you angry. So bad?»

I can't talk — it ain't in me just then, looking at those hands, at her face. I nod, that's all.

No tears, no begging, no trying to talk me round. She just nods herself, and gets up, and I escort her out to where her coachman's waiting. Settling back inside, she holds out one hand, but this time it's formal, it's what nobby Portygee ladies do. I kissed her mother's hand at the wedding, so I've got the trick of it — more like a breath, it is, more like you're smelling a flower. For half a minute, less, we're looking straight into each other's eyes, and I see the sadness. Maybe for Henry Lee, maybe for me — I never did know. Maybe it weren't never there.

But afterwards I couldn't stop thinking about her. I don't mean her, not like that, wouldn't have occurred to me. I mean what she said, and the way she looked at me, and her coming to see me by herself, which you won't never see no Portygee lady doing, high nor low. And saying that thing about me being lonely — true or not ain't the point. It were her saying it, and how I felt to hear her. I plain wanted to hear her again, is all.

But I didn't. It would have meant seeing Henry Lee, and I weren't no way up to that. I talked to him in me head every time I saw one or t'other of our ships slipping slow out of the harbor in the morning sun, sails filling and the company pennant snapping atop the mizzenmast. And her hold full of poison. I had time enough on me hands to spend with sailors ashore, and shillings enough to buy another round of what's–your–fancy, and questions enough to keep them talking and me mind unsettled. Because most of them hadn't noticed nothing — no shipmates turning, no buyers swimming out to sea, no changelings whispering to them from the dark water.

But there was always a couple, two or even three who'd seen summat they'd as soon not have seen, and who'd have to down more than a few jars of the best before they'd speak about it even to each other. Aye, I knew that feeling, none better.

They wasn't all off our ships, neither. Velha were still a fairsized port then, not like it is now, and there was traders and packets and merchant–men in from everywhere, big and small. I were down the harbor pretty regular, any road, sniffing after work — shaming, me age, but there you are — and I talked with whoever'd stay for it, officers and foremast hands alike. Near as I could work it out, Henry Lee were right, in his way — however much of the salt wine were going down however many throats all over the world, couldn't be more than almost nobody affected beyond waking next day with a bad case of the whips and jingles. Like he'd said to me, just a few, a very few, and what difference to old Ben Hazeltine? No lookout of mine no more, I were clear out of that whole clamjamfry altogether, and nobody in the world could say I weren't. Not one single soul in the world.

Only I'd been in it, you see. Right up to me whiskers in it, year on year — grown old in it, I had. Call it regret, call it guilt, call it what you like, all I knew was I'd sleep on straw in the workhouse and live on slops and sermons before I'd knock on Henry Lee's door again. Even to have her look at me one more time, the way she looked in me house, in me best chair. I've made few promises in me life, and kept less, but I made that one then, made it to meself. Suppose you could call it a vow, like, if that suits you.

And I kept that one. It weren't easy, whiles, what with me not finding nobbut portering to do, or might be pushing a barrow for a day or two, but I held to that vow right up to the day when one of Henry Lee's men come to say his master were in greatest need of me — put it just like that, «greatest need» — and would I please come right away, please. Tell the truth, I mightn't have come for Henry Lee himself, but that servant, trying to be so calm and proper, with his eyes so frantic … Goanese Konkany, he were, name of Gopi.

I didn't run there, like I'd last done — didn't even ride in the carriage he'd sent for me. I walked, and I took me own time about it, too, and I thought on just what I'd say, and what he'd do when I said it, and what I'd do then. And before I knew, I were standing on the steps of that fine house, with no butler waiting but Henry Lee himself, with both hands out to drag me inside. «Ben," he keeps saying, «ah, Ben, Ben, Ben.» Like Monkey Sucker again, saying Mr. Hazeltine, Mr. Hazeltine, over and over.

He looked old, Henry Lee did. Hair gone gray — face slumped in like he'd lost all his teeth at once — shoulders bent to break your heart, the way you'd think he'd been stooping in a Welsh coal mine all his life. And the blue eyes of him … I only seen such eyes one time before, on a donkey that knew it were dying, and just wanted it over with. All I could think to say were, «You shouldn't never have left the sea, Henry Lee — not never.» But I didn't say it.

He turned away and started up that grand long stair up to the second floor and the bedrooms, with his footsteps sounding like clods falling on a coffin. And I followed after, wishing the stair'd never end, but keep us climbing on and on for always, never getting where we had to go, and I wished I'd never left the sea neither.

I smelled it while we was still on the stair. It ain't a bad smell, considering: it's cold and clean, like the wind off Newfoundland or when you're just entering the Kattegat, bound for Copenhagen. Aye … aye, you could say it's a fishy smell, too, if you care to, which I don't. I'd smelled it before that day, and I've smelled it since, but I don't never smell it without thinking about her, Senora Julia Caterina Five–names Lee, Missus Henry Lee. Without seeing her there in the big bed.

He'd drawn every curtain, so you had to stand blind and blinking for a few minutes, till your eyes got used to the dark. She were lying under a down quilt — me wedding gift to the bride, Hindoo lady up in Ponda sewed it for me — but just as we came in she shrugged it off, and you could see her bare as a babby to the waist. Henry Lee, he rushes forward to pull the quilt back up, but she turns her head to look up at him, and he stops where he stands. She makes a queer little sound — hear it outside your window at night, you'd think it were a cat wanting in.

«She can talk still," says Henry Lee, desperate–like, turning to me. «She was talking this morning.» I stare into Julia Caterina's pretty brown eyes — huge now, and steady going all greeny–black — and I want to tell Henry Lee, oh, she'll talk all right, no fear. Mermaids chatter, believe me — talk both your lugs off, they will, you give them the chance. Mermaids gets lonely.

«She drank so little," Henry Lee keeps saying. «She didn't really like any wine, French or Portuguese, or … ours. She only drank it to be polite, when we had guests. Because it was our business, after all. She understood about business.» I look down at the quilt where it's covering her lower parts, and I look back at Henry Lee, and he shakes his head. «No, not yet," he whispers. No tail yet, is what he meant — she's still got legs —but he couldn't say it, no more than me. Julia Caterina reaches up for him, and he sits by her on the bed and kisses both her hands. I can just see the half–circle outlines beginning just below her boobies, very faint against the pale skin. Scales…

«How long?» Henry Lee asks, looking down into her face, like he's asking her, not me.