John Hawkes - Death, Sleep & the Traveler

And yet with unaccustomed haste I dressed, seized my straw hat and went out on deck in search of my young friend. The ship was silent, the gulls were gone, the hot deck might have been embedded in concrete. I tapped insistently on the door to her cabin, I assured myself that no one was enjoying the use of the pool, I understood that it would be several hours at least before juice and coffee and rolls were served in the dining saloon. The locked cabins, the empty bridge, the damp blankets heaped up in the peeling deck chairs, the silence — this, the death of the ship, was what I had always feared.

I crossed from the starboard side to the port and there against the rail were a half dozen passengers and, in the dreamlike distance beyond them, the low brown sandy island that so appealed to Ariane. I joined the passengers who did not intend to visit the island, I gathered, but who nonetheless were determined to look at those who did and, further, were hoping for a glimpse of the distant nudists. With them I stared across at the hazy island and down at the white motorboat now moored to the foot of the gangway lowered against the ship’s white side.

Except for Ariane and the wireless operator seated hip to hip in the forward portion of the white launch, and except for the young crewman slouching in the stern with a rope in his hand, the long white motor launch was empty, occupied as it was by only three persons instead of sixty. I decided to become the fourth.

I descended the gangway at precisely the moment the crewman was preparing to cast off. I took my seat behind my young friend as the motor began its muffled bubbling. I glanced up at the remaining passengers propped like wax figures against the rail and under the hot sun. There was no waving, in a half circle we moved away from the high side of the anchored ship.

“Allert,” she said, smiling, reaching out for my hand, “you’ve changed your mind.”

“Yes,” I said, “I too will visit your nudists.”

“Without you it would not be the same.”

“Well,” I said, accepting and squeezing her proffered hand, “Allert also can be a good sport, as my wife would say.”

We picked up speed, there was a dawn wind blowing, Ariane smiled and tilted back her head as if to take deep breaths of the burning sun. The wireless officer and I exchanged no greeting. Behind us lay the white ship, diminishing but stationary, while ahead of us lay the scorched island that was expanding minute by minute for our watchful eyes.

“I did not sleep well last night,” I said. “I had intolerable dreams.”

“Poor Allert. You will be able to sleep on the beach.”

The sea, on which there was not the smallest wave, was now changing from opaque blackness to a turquoise transparency. Twenty or thirty feet below us shelves of white sand were reflecting the light of the sun back up through the soundless medium of the clear sea. I was relieved to notice, over my shoulder, that no smoke was visible from the blue smokestacks of the anchored ship. Ariane’s hair was blowing in the wind, the long black sideburns of the wireless officer contradicted in some disturbing way the rakish angle of his white black-visored cap. My young friend in her blue jeans and a halter of orange silk, through which the shape of her small breasts was entirely visible, was an antidote to the wireless officer’s unusual mood of sullen reserve.

“Your island appears to be uninhabited,” I said, clutching the brim of my straw hat against the wind, “since there is not even one nudist to greet the eye.”

“Allert,” she said, “don’t be skeptical. Please. There is a village on the other side of the island. The beach is momentarily concealed from our view inside its protective cove. The village and beach are connected by a dirt road which is excellent for bicycling. You must remember, Allert, that I have been here before.”

I touched her cool arm and again I saw over my shoulder that our diminishing white ship lay unchanged, unmoving. I disliked the way the wireless operator sat with one foot on the gunwhale and his tunic thrown open to display the unwashed undershirt, the cross on a chain. Also I disliked his sideburns, his bad complexion, the angle of his white cap, the hand he was hiding in the pocket of the white tunic.

“My wife persuaded me, against my better judgment, to take this cruise,” I said, smiling into the girl’s dark eyes, “and I am not sorry. Now you have persuaded me, also against my better judgment, to journey off in a mere motorboat. And though I distrust open motorboats even more than I distrust large ships, perhaps I will not be sorry. But I am not skeptical, Ariane. I am never skeptical. I know you will take us directly to the beach of the nudists and then return us safely to our waiting ship.”

But even while my heavily accented voice hung on the air, causing Ariane to laugh and the wireless operator to scowl behind an unclean hand, our motorboat veered slowly around a finger of dark sand and headed directly into a small cove that was clearly the entrance to the hidden beach of Ariane’s description. The strip of pure white sand, water of the palest blue, the row of weather-beaten bathhouses like upended coffins — it was all exactly as I had pictured it from my young friend’s words. The sky was an infinitude of burning phosphorus, the sand was as soft as facial powder, surely the empty bathhouses would smell of urine. The vision of the cove was familiar yet unfamiliar, I was drawn toward the listing bathhouses and yet repelled by them.

“Hurry,” Ariane called the moment after our prow had touched the sand and she, in childish haste, had leapt ashore, “we really must not lose a moment of this joyous place!”

The wireless operator, in open tunic and rakish cap, was the next to jump to the dry sand where, quite unavoidable, he turned and faced me. His greasy sideburns appeared to be pasted down the sides of his jawbone. He was not smiling.

“What have you done with my photograph?” he said, with his feet spread wide apart and his hands in his tunic pockets and his hat pushed in slovenly aggressive fashion to the back of his head. Obviously he was the kind of young officer who would get drunk with ordinary sailors, abandon a ship in distress, commit strange psychopathetic acts of violence.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” I said. “But I do not like the tone of your voice.”

“After all, you are not the only one who needs the stimulation of an illicit photograph.”

“I refuse to listen!”

“Return it tonight,” he said and stuffed his hands deeper into the tunic pockets, and lunged off through the sand like a crazed survivor of a wreck at sea.

“And you, Allert,” my young unsuspecting friend called from the bathhouses, “won’t you hurry?”

I wiped my hot face on my sleeve, I began to walk slowly up the beach toward the row of narrow listing wooden structures where I, like my companions, was to divest myself of all clothing. But physical nudity was one thing, I thought, whereas psychological nudity was quite another, especially when the self was being stripped to psychological nudity by a man as ruthless and devious as the young man on whom the entire ship depended. My need was for self-control against the brutal clawing of that young man’s repellent hands.

“But no, Allert, no!” she cried when I emerged from the bathhouse, “you may not wear your straw hat on the beach of the nudists!”

She laughed, standing quite naked in the hot sand. The wireless operator also laughed, though now his concentration was suddenly and unwillingly fixed on the gentle nudity of Ariane.

“What,” I said, “not even an old straw hat?”

“Nothing, Allert, nothing. Not even a hat.”

“Very well. But sunstroke is a serious problem, Ariane.”