Frederick Busch - The Night Inspector

“I do lead a life,” he said. “I am the man I was. I am my own secret now, however. I am my darkest, best-held secret. Do I wish to be? I would prefer not to. Do I choose? I do not. Shipmate: Like the nation, I was divided from myself; like the nation, I was wounded; riven, like the nation, I healed; like you now, Bill, I am healthy; we are whole.”

We are untruthful, I thought. But for the first time in a day and night, I felt the profoundest attraction of sleep. I had been fatigued, of course. But now, in the gently rocking barge, under the hissing of the lamp and the clinking of his glass on his decanter, under the pouring stream of his throaty voice, its rise and fall, the deft articulation of his syllables like water over rock and log and streambed, and in the absoluteness of his despair, and the charm of his denying it, I felt — there is no other description — quite at home. I had him, or would have him soon. And his possession of me, or his attraction to me, his wish to know me because I mattered to his artist’s demand for darkness, and his need to know what lay behind the apparent, and my sense of my advantage over him — the comfort of gain, which I felt with my sound flesh and through the deep ache inside my jaw and nose and neck — closed my eyes and set me, sprawling in my chair and loose-jointed, asleep.

“Ho!” he called, and I was up, blinking, my hand inside my coat and on the butt of the Colt. “A ship lies to,” he said from the door that went up the short flight of stairs to the deck of the barge. “Are you in the mood for a bit of rowing, shipmate?”

I was too stupid with sleep, too weak with ease, to answer.

“Shake a leg,” he called, seizing a heavy oilskin coat from a peg beside the door and holding it out for me. He was wearing another such coat, and a sailor’s knit cap, and he looked, for the first time, like the man who had written of sailing on small, wooden craft to the other side of the world.

I put on the coat and tied a kerchief over my head so that it hung upon the mask — the less salt of the sea, the better for its paint and varnish. I set an oilskin cap he gave me over the kerchief, and thus I protected my face — from the elements, and from men’s scrutiny — the more. Then we were out and up and down again, to a dinghy tied to the barge. M took the oars and at his direction I cast off. A lantern on a hook behind him swung in the wind and chop of the channel, and he peered above it out toward a looming, lit vessel, its outlines blurred by fog and mist, that rocked at her chains.

He worked at the oars like a boy, demonstrating great strength in his wrists and hands, and showing a fine eye as he subtly corrected his course. I did not enjoy feeling like a lump of supercargo, a leather pouch of mail, say, heaped into the back of the boat. When he did not look over his shoulder, he seemed to stare at me, leaning in and digging with the oars, then leaning back to propel us. Perhaps he looked over my shoulder to navigate according to a light onshore. I could not tell. But it seemed to me that he addressed my face, my mask upon my face, as he rowed backward into the mist.

A thumping combination of whistle and drum rolled in toward us and seemed to shatter against the mist and wind before it might strike. Several bursts of sound came tinnily in again, and he said, “Pilot’s gone for the night. Cargo to be cursorily examined — we’ll note there is one, and what its contents are. Inspection in the morning. I’ll make for the larboard in hopes of a bit less motion when we tie to the ladderway.”

I could not imagine a bit more motion, nor could I see myself, white signboard of a face lit beneath the ship’s lights, coming up a ladder without terrorizing a man on watch, or falling into the black, oily waters of the harbor to drown. But we bumped rather more gently than I thought we might into the timbers at the side of the ship. And M made us fast quite expertly. Salt and mist and the reek of rotting vegetables, the stink of rat ordure and the corruption by the sea of wood itself, blew over us. Under it all, I could smell skin, and the vomitous musk of fear on my breath as it rose and was trapped beneath the mask. M set my hands and then feet aright, and as I climbed he followed close. No one greeted us, so he put his hands on my shoulders to steer me out of his way, and then led us to the gallery outside the captain’s cabin.

The master, named Borofsky, shook our hands. I made him uneasy, and he backed toward his broad desk, which was covered with charts held down by books. He took a manifest from the drawer and showed it to M, who moved closer to the light and who accepted a glass of Polish spirits distilled from potatoes. Small and trim, careful in his motions, Borofsky poured a full one, and I knew that they had drunk together before. He lifted his own full glass before me, raising his eyebrows and averting his eyes, and I shook my head. He and M clinked glasses and drank the liquor down. Each smacked his lips and cleared his throat and made soft roaring sounds. M rubbed his full, bluntly trimmed beard, while Borofsky tugged at each end of his mustache and adjusted the buttons on his trim blue coat worn over dirty brown-red trousers.

“Ça va?” he said to M.

M answered, “Je ne sait pas cet mot ci — ah: moment! Je comprends. Vous portez, donc, le cognac en barils, et quelque fromage de France. Hein?”

“Monsieur sait que c’est comme il faut.”

“Bien sur. Mais ma verre, elle est vide.”

“Je regrette, monsieur, et je reconnais mon erreur. Voilà.”

The captain poured more of the clear liquor into the glass of the inspector, who toasted him and emptied his drink. They apparently agreed that the ship might receive its full inspection in the morning, and they shook hands. Borofsky bowed deeply, and M inclined his head.

“Thus,” he said to me, “I stand on an unmoving deck. It is what I do in my life at home and in my office. The deck may slope or sway, but it goes no place in particular. Let’s disembark, shipmate. Let’s set out on the little voyage home.”

I said to the captain, “Good night, sir.”

“Enchanté,” he said, looking away.

In the dinghy, and moving through the chop toward the docks, I looked over M and saw the yellow and golden and sometimes green-looking lights as filtered by mist and a yellow fog and blown dark smoke.

“I shall leave you,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“I must leave you at the office and return. We must not abandon the vessel, in fact, once we’re aboard.”

“You’ll wait out the morning?” I thought of the potato spirits.

“Regulations established by the Surveyor of the Port of New York. I am a servant of the servants of the people, Bill. We’ll have a night of it again, though.”

“I look forward to it.”

He said, “You’ve warmed my heart on a bleak night.”

“I’ll bring you the pistol, then.”

“I’ll find the money. How much, would you say?”

“Five dollars,” I said. “No, four, let’s say.”

“A week’s pay,” he said.

“I’m in no hurry for the money.”

“A debt’s a debt. It’s a creature I know by heart.”

We sat in silence, but surrounded by noise — the small splash of his oars, wielded with power and efficiency, against the black waters; the roaring of a furnace on the shore; the seething of the wind against the surface and the perforations of my mask; the little grunt he made as he held an oar, like a rudder, in the water while digging in with the other to turn us. The man of oceans, of three-masted ships, of naked brown girls and sailors who stalked their boys with hard hands and filleting knives: He rowed me, I thought, in a little boat. How could he bear this disintegration?