William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

The Anglican Chaplain (who looked like a horse) read the service, commending the body to the deep, when Harry whispered loudly in his mother’s ear: ‘The flag is hanging crooked.’

‘S — s—sh! You must be quiet,’ Aunt Molly reproved him.

‘Why must I?’ he asked.

‘Because we’re all sorry.’

‘No! I’m glad,’ he said.

‘Harry!’ And she slapped his head.

‘S’e kicked me,’ he cried grievously.

‘But Harry!’

‘ But s’e kicked me .’

Slap ! came another — nasty one — on the head. (Why always on the head?)

‘Ow — a—o — ow — o!’ wailed Harry, issuing a yell disproportionate to the whack — to impress the onlookers and enlist their sympathy on his behalf. And Captain Negodyaev’s face winced as he turned back. As if there were not enough anguish in the air to have to bear this little shrill discordant cry as well!

‘Harry, stop it! Stop it at once!’

‘Oh, children should never have been brought to see this,’ Berthe wailed aloud. ‘They don’t understand it! They shouldn’t understand it!’

Our thoughts went out to the parents as they stood beneath the tropic sun, their eyes fixed on their little daughter for ever hidden from them. The sea went out in large ripples. The gulls flew screaming and wheeling above them. And I thought that if at this moment they craved for another last sight of her the Captain would not allow it. Their child had ceased to be theirs, had suddenly become inaccessible. And they deplored that the things they had to say to her they could no longer say, unconscious of the truth that she had now forgotten even all that they had ever said to her. Berthe had tears in her eyes, and murmured:

‘ Pauvre petite .’

I have no insight into seamen’s hearts; but Uncle Tom looked grave, stern, dignified, conscious of his duty as with, head uncovered, he stood at the side of the plank, with that curious haughty servility peculiar to the old English servant class. Oxford scouts look like that when of a Sunday evening they serve in hall at the ‘high table’. A piece of rail had been displaced. The ship had been brought to as near a standstill as possible; barely perceptibly she slid along on the deep, deep, flapping sea. The plank was on ropes, like a swing: a seaman at each side — Uncle Tom and a young one. Below loomed the Indian Ocean, stretching its white paws of froth — like a big cat. A sleek pussy cat with green eyes, purring — but treacherous, unreliable.

They got hold of the ropes — Uncle Tom and the young one. The mother was held up by her husband and Berthe. She looked pale, pasty, she looked awful. Swiftly the flag was pulled off. Then they swung it — once our way, once to the sea. Natàsha slid off, and describing a curve in the air splashed into the water. A few seconds — and she disappeared beneath the foam.

The mother reeled in a swoon. They took her away down the hatchway, a crushed, crumpled thing, whom fate had struck a blow in addition to her level of burthens. The rail was replaced. Slowly the gathering dispersed.

It was mournful in the sky and the still air and on the sunny water, while the liner, stealthily, relentlessly, like life itself, went on. And as we stood there at the rail, involuntarily we gazed back at that lonely far-off spot where the sea sighed in green waves, and the mind went out in that desolate journey in the water, two, three miles, perhaps, to somewhere near the bottom of the sea, where she would sway and bounce and tremble in the current. A little Russian girl in the deep vastness of the Indian Ocean.

Once more we looked back at the sea, and went down to breakfast. But the table where the girl with the sea-green eyes had sat showed empty, and we avoided looking at it as we ate. They talked of a mishap to one of the boilers, of the ensuing delay in our voyage, and that we might have to drift to Bombay to replenish our vanishing coal supply; but I did not care whither we steamed or whither we drifted, and if we were destined to drift for the rest of our lives and never reach England, or stop drifting, or drift straight into hell, it was to me, in my mood of acute resignation, a matter of welcome indifference. After breakfast Aunt Molly came out on deck with a bottle and tablespoon, and gave Nora her cod-liver oil. Perhaps the burial had wrecked her nerves a little, but she said impatiently, ‘Get on, Nora, don’t waste half an hour over it.’

‘Wait — but I like to taste it,’ Nora pleaded, as she licked the spoon.

‘Now go and fetch Harry.’

‘Harry: your wime!’ came Nora’s voice as she ran off down the slippery deck.

He frowned. ‘Sickening Mummy,’ he said.

Clapping her hands she exclaimed: ‘Natàsha has gone to the fishes.’ And bored at playing alone, after luncheon, she asked: ‘Where is Natàsha? Is she still in the sea playing with the fishes?’

The sharks had gone.

I lay back in the deck-chair, and stared at the motionless clouds, which looked like huge mountains. And the blue sky was like the sea, and the mountainous clouds like the rocks that loom at the bottom of the deep. And behold, there sailed a small cloud like a grinning monkey — inhabitant of the deep! — it stretched out two muscular arms, and became like the bare back of an athlete, and then changed into — yes, two grinning monkeys with their heads close together, one of them pointing a hand to the sun. Then they lost shape, turned into a vague translucent mass — and behold, it developed fins, changed into a fish, an enormous white shark which swam ever so slowly and cautiously, staring towards me. I watched it, fascinated like a rabbit; like a pedestrian, glued to the spot by the closeness of a vehicle (because, to him, the calamity is already over and beyond repair: fear has done it). And I fancied that if one were to be confronted by a beast so dreadful, the self-same trance would suddenly come over one in the last few fateful seconds, causing one to feel detached from one’s own fate; one would see oneself as some third person, recall in a single moment one’s whole life, regard it over, a closed book, one’s soul returned to whence it came. I have perished: but the Universe is mine. — Then, gazing at the sky, I fancied I saw Natàsha’s little body sewn up in sail cloth coming down out of the blue, swaying lightly. Now she reached the top of the rocks; downward she came into the valley. Today the sea is calm — a dark-green mirror, and the celestial sea, a deep-blue mirror. But when the sea is perturbed, what a hole the waves make, and if they moved asunder — it’s only water — there would be a pit of many miles. What a distance to fall. What a journey to make. Now she lies, maybe, in a valley between high hills, and higher than the hills is the sea, and on the sea sail we …

The children played on. Aunt Molly knitted a jersey. Aunt Teresa suffered from headache. I basked and dreamt in the sun.

We were a raft drifting on the sea of eternity. Long, long ago, having seen it face to face, we had fought shy of it. We saw a raft, and made for it. But even safe on the raft we are on the sea of eternity. Three had now been washed off by the sea, but we others still clung to that raft. A crowd of bewildered spirits caught upon a planet. We merely brush against each other’s surfaces, and something deep down, unexplored, is ignored or dismissed. Uncle Emmanuel lit a cigar in the sunset; there was a pink gleam of light in his eye. I wondered if he had a soul. We caught a glimpse of Captain Negodyaev gazing steadfastly to sea, puffing hungrily at the remainder of his cigarette. I looked up at the sky: what shall we take from you for taking this life from us? There was no answer, save a blighting sense of our impotence. ‘Poor man,’ said Aunt Teresa. ‘We must do something for him.’ And looking at this red-eyed creature gazing at a world of red despair, Uncle Emmanuel took the cigar out of his mouth and sighed. ‘Yes, he is a good fellow, le capitaine . I will recommend him to the Ministry of War for the Ordre de Léopold 1 er when I get back to Brussels. I am really sorry for him.’ The sky was a pellucid mother-of-pearl — as though through all the shadows and clouds, the suffering, confusion and doubts, God smiled: I still knew what I was doing. And curling up into vistas of space, it spoke of what is beyond time, beyond loss, and the need of redemption.