Michel Montecrossa - Tarana and the island of immortality

In writing my fantastic tales, I often felt a secret joy. Yet I now had a different feeling in expectation of the coming journey: the unknown took hold of my heart and made it beat faster and faster.

With this feeling I made off on the 14th of September for the Northwood Forest where my sister, Margaret Goldfield, had a horse ranch. Margaret was quite the opposite of myself: I was a dreamer and an armchair philosopher and she a wonderful realist who was practically always with her horses and spent nothing more than the most necessary time in taking care of unavoidable household chores.

During the three-hour carriage journey, various memories passed before my inner eye. It was raining as it can only rain in England. The atmosphere of a world between two worlds. And the whispering voices of ghosts. I caught myself sliding off into new tales, dream worlds and then pulled myself back into reality with a jolt.

Indeed, it was just these sorts of dreams which Margaret, with her fine sarcasm, could expose and thereby, with a raw sincerity, bring me down to earth with both feet on the ground.

“What you’re missing are true adventures,” she said to me laconically as I had just told her a fine tale. In fact, it was her sober commentaries which helped me the most in making my writings and scientific editorial work more believable.

And now I had before me a truly adventurous journey and I wished to invite her along and I was indeed proud of the fact that I now had something true to show her. Yes, Margaret was able to sober up my imaginings which I had presented to her in fiery tones with a simple: “Hmm.” In that moment three hours of carriage dreams dissolved.

“You’re impressed by nothing, you realistic monster!” I said, ready for a fight.

“I’m so impressed,” she said in a sweet tone. “For, after all, traveling about in a barge full of decadent snobs, shuttling about in the ocean, boring oneself to tears seems to me truly a pleasure to die for.”

I was speechless and yet she condescendingly continued and said: “But I shall come along brother heart, for someone must hold you on the planks when your spirit for adventure goes overboard for lack of true adventure and, most likely, your poor armchair-trained body as well.”

I was quite impressed by her esoteric care and at the same time absolutely decided not to allow my lively joy, which had not stopped for a moment, to be disturbed.

“At least there could be a terrible storm so it wouldn’t be so boring for you!” I said bitingly, unknowing what portentous words I had spoken.

And so, three days later Margaret and I went aboard the Mayflower II, an imposing expedition ship, which, with its huge paddle wheels and decorated sails was to travel in direction of the Sargasso Sea.

I was pleased at Margaret’s threatening prophecy regarding the entertainment that awaited us on the Mayflower expedition only held true to a small extent. No doubt those traveling with us were experts in the boredom of high society and had perfected it. But it did not remain that way.

After all a large ship is something of a microcosm and it brings those aboard together but also takes away their masks, at least some of them.

Margaret and I could amuse ourselves famously imagining how Lord Snowdown must have attempted, each evening, with his long, trembling legs, to squeeze into one of the Mayflower’s small bunks. Or the stout banker, Mr. Upperpretty, who, after an enormous meal, would dream that the round window of his cabin was the eye of an enormous fish, which intended to consume him! Or the Lady Swine, red as a lobster, who understood perfectly how to articulate her unfortunate name so that it sounded something like “wine” and who generally came into conflict with the tightly measured-out planks of the ship’s deck which left so little room for distinguished strutting.

“Shocking!” was her constant commentary – “shocking” in every shade, tone and mode of expression.

Lady Swine was Margaret’s favorite conversational partner; she had always had a liking for true outsiders. “Lady Swine,” she revealed at the onset of our expedition as I was admiring the wood paneling of our cabin, “is not of noble origins.”

“How can you know that, Margaret?” I questioned as I went over to the brass work of the cabinetry and the portal window. I very much loved the golden magic of that metal on my spy glass and on my globe stand. Yet here, in what was for me the new world of a ship, wood and metal achieved an artistic interplay that gave the place a homey feeling.

Just then I noticed that Margaret had not continued speaking but had simply let me sink into my brass dreams.

A sarcastic smile played upon her full lips, a smile which was usually the prelude to a devastatingly sobering commentary. Given that I had been silently daydreaming there was some hope that she was setting her sights on someone else.

“She smokes cigars,” she said suddenly.

“Who?”

“Swine.”

“Lady Swine?”

I was astonished and I didn’t believe a word.

“And she drinks rum like a fish.”

The last remaining illusion regarding the behavior of the elegant noble dissolved into nothingness.

I laughed: “Now you’re fibbing. What strange fantasies you have, little sister.”

A dull sound from the gangway reached my ear as if a sack of flour had been dropped.

“Too much rum,” Margaret remarked dryly before I could say anything. I looked at her in disbelief. Her eyes had such a derisive spark that I sprang to the door and had a look into the gangway. There I indeed saw Lady Swine pulling herself up after having fallen down the short but steep stairs from the deck. As she stood up there was no doubt that she was not sober. To the contrary, she was quite solidly drunk. “Shocking!” I heard her screech.

I too was shocked and softly pulled the door shut after having seen that she had not been injured.

That was the beginning of our journey and in the course of time that sound lost its unsettling character as it was regularly accompanied by a many-shaded “shocking!”

I was also no longer shocked by the fact that Margaret and Lady Swine disappeared to the deck nearly every evening to smoke a cigar. I only hoped that our stately Captain Thunderbolt with his impressive moustache, his decorated uniform, his bear’s voice and his sparkling eyes was also a real captain and that Professor Pickering, the inventor of the diving sphere with which one could admire the wonders of the ocean, hopefully knew what it was he had invented.

As we all met in the salon they all seemed perfectly noble, scientific and reliable in their snobbiness, thank God, so that I was able to regain my confidence.

We had a few days to get to know one another and get fired up about the moment when the diving sphere would go into action; after all I was not the only one who was ever-and-again tiptoeing around the dully shimmering wonder of science with an uneasy feeling, on the one hand excited, on the other, terrified.

I often ran into the well-to-do Scottish pair, the McCormics, who for reasons unknown wished to involve themselves in deep sea investments – they would suddenly stop talking and we would exchange awkward smiles as if they had not just been inspecting the diving sphere. And also Lord Dunhill with his French girlfriend – supposedly of royal decent – or Mr. Bankroft from the insurance company bearing the same name were regularly in the vicinity of the diving sphere.

Yet the experiences within the closed society of landlubbers was, thank God, not the only occurrence on our journey to the Sargasso Sea. After we had already sighted whales, we were joined on the third day by an enchanting school of dolphins which expressed such a beauty of movement and perfection in their jumps that I came to realize how wrong our civilized and weak bodies have become. Margaret, who was enjoying the moment with me, held her face into the salty breeze with her eyes closed and said, “their jumps are like a language and the shimmer of their bodies like music.”