Conrad Aiken - Blue Voyage

“Which?” he said.

“Right,” said Demarest, touching the right with light forefinger, refined and arch.

“Right is white,” said Hay-Lawrence, replacing the white pawn and then the black. He turned the chessboard. Pawn to king four — Pawn to king four — Knight to king’s bishop three — Knight to queen’s bishop three. Bishop to knight five — Pawn to queen’s rook three. Bishop to rook four …

“Ruy Lopez,” murmured Hay-Lawrence haughtily.

“Ruy Lopez.”

The Major, self-conscious, smiling, blushing, stepped over the sill with the Welsh Rarebit, one hand under her arm, his tweed cap and book in the other. The gray flat sea washed in with the opening door, was shut out hissing.

“ There’s a corner,” he said, consciously a man of the world, conscious because he was from Murryville, Ohio.

“Where?” The Welsh Rarebit wiped her mouth. She peered cupidinously into the smoke.

“There.” He lifted his book and cap. “Hello! The intelligentsia are exercising their brains.”

“You flatter us,” said Demarest. “Do you play?”

“Not often. I used to play a good deal in Constantinople — I knew an old Turk general who played a most awfully good game. He’d have been too good for me — if he hadn’t constantly made howlers!” He twinkled, apologetic and vain.

“What is it?” said Peggy Davis, smiling with moist affection at Demarest and then with fleeting slyness at Hay-Lawrence. “Halma?”

“The Royal Game of Chess, Mrs. Davis! Shame on you. He he!” The Major giggled, wriggling.

“Royal crumbs!” croaked Peggy. “Let’s sit down.” They moved to the next corner, stiff-kneeing past the table edge, the Major putting his book down, then his cap on the book, then his pince-nez on his cap. Leaning his neat striped arms on the table he turned and inclined his flushed academic brow toward the Welsh Rarebit, pinkly and intimately. He began speaking in low tones. Malvolio smirked at them through the smoke, corkscrew in hand.

“God,” swore Hay-Lawrence, “that woman gives me the pip … Did you ever see such a face in your life?”

Knight to bishop three he curved with lean fist.

“Is this the face that scuttled a thousand ships? Opened the sea cocks. It’s that undershot wet lower lip that gets me,” said Demarest, castling. “Can you imagine kissing it? Holy Smackerel! It glistens!”

“Good God! Don’t suggest it: cloaca maxima . Accidental death by drowning would be the verdict at the inquest.”

“No … suicide while of unsound mind.”

Hay-Lawrence, smiling retrospectively, with slow-consuming satisfaction, lifted the king’s bishop. To king two. A careful player, orthodox and gingerly. Rook to king square, Demarest moved delicately, conscious of Hay-Lawrence’s sharp refinement and expensive dress. He must be, in England, well connected. Latent arrogance, and rudeness overlaid by good manners. Sloane Square — or a Sloane Square Mews?… Cheyne Walk?… Perhaps he had met Cynthia. There was something a little flashy about him, however. And the sort of refinement that invites coarseness in the beholder.

“She reminds me,” Demarest refinedly grinned with one side of his mouth, “of the little song about the spittoon.”

Out came the monocle.

“The spittoon? No! What is it?” The pawn in his paw went to queen’s knight four. Back, bishop. Draw in your miter! To knight three.

“Say not spittoon … Nor cuspidor … Spit not too soon … Nor yet too far … Spit on the floor … Not on the wall … Or better yet … Spit not at all!..”

“Ha!” cried Hay-Lawrence. “Jolly good! Ha! Ha! Jolly good, that.” He grinned the monocle back into his left eye. “Nor cuspidor!”

“It’s very nice sung, but I can’t sing … A doleful hymn tune.”

The half-opened windows opposite, rising, scooped a rapid green evening sky; then slowly, forwardly, swooped again, scooping a nacreous cloud touched with flamingo. The evening would be cold and clear. Stars indistinguishable from mast lights. Seal up the shipboy’s eyes. Imperious surge. One of the poker players began humming the tune of “My Little Gray Home in the West,” then all began singing, furtively, fruitily sentimental. “Ante, boys,” said the glass-eyed gambler evenly in the midst of it. The words dissolved, lowering, into an ululating hum, richly harmonized. Ho-ome in the We-est . Faubion. She came out of the West, flamingo-winged, with eyes far apart, somber and absorbent. “Hello, you!” she cried, provocatively brushing past him with saucily jerked shoulders. The opera cape, flamingo-lined, streamed after her, billowing. “ Faubion !” sang all the evening stars together. “Oh, Faubion!” they sang, strumming their psalteries of gold and chrysolite. Faubion, coming out of the West, unperturbed, darkly walked eastward on the dark waters, Napoleonic, sardonic, ironic, Byronic. And what of Cynthia, sleeping in the east, deep sleep of the undefiled? “ Cynthia !” trilled the morning stars with diamond voices … And Smith, little gray homunculus, came out of the sunset, paddling furiously in his coracle, dipping now to left and now to right, birdlike nodding his cuckoo head as he paddled in the infinite. “ Faubion !” he caroled—“ Coo-hoo Faubion! O Faubion !” The paddled foam burst into trident flames to right and left as he coracled from wave to wave of the abyss. Phosphorescent foam dripped chrysolite from the paddles, from his fingers, from his drooped mustache; phosphor glowed on his arched eyebrows, outlining fierily his seriocomic eyes. “ Coo-hoo Faubion !” he sang in tiny tenor, while behind him the evening stars drew together, blue cloak to cloak, psaltery against psaltery, their mountain shoulders touching, their eyes earnest and fiery. “Deep Faubion!” they diapasoned. “ Faubion in the lowest !”…

“Say not spittoon,” murmured Hay-Lawrence, and pushed the queen’s pawn to queen three with three tiny pushes of a clean finger nail. Again orthodox and safe. The queen’s knight undefended — but mobile. Queen Faubion — the black queen; Queen Cynthia, — white as the moon; and King Caligula, corrupt and lecherous monarch, ripe Camembert of kings. “I would that all the Roman people had but one neck.” Was that a castration complex?… Ah — that dream this afternoon during his nap. The asphyxiated baby in the railroad station. Horrible and strange; for as he worked over it (the Schafer method) pressing with merciful palms the small back to induce breathing, regarding the small blue neck and wondering at the parents who had so casually abandoned it on a railway platform, he suddenly noticed that the head was not a head but a — A spasm of disgust … Sleepless Caligula, much troubled by dreams, dreamed nightly that a figure, — a form — a shape — vague and terrifying and representing the ocean — came to him speaking. This was why he had bidden his army to collect sea shells, as trophies of his victory over the sea. Pawn to queen bishop three was the move. His horse, Incitatus, he had intended to make consul. What form to represent the sea? Seaweed-bearded, arms of green water and fingers of foam; coral-branching; eyes wide, hollow, glaucous, where phosphor bubbled slow-winking, blue and lemon-yellow, vitreous, moon-mocking. And the voice? The dithering crack of two boulders smitten together under the sea? The short cruel resonance of submarine bells? The skirling lollop of a wave running vortical into a dripping cavern, weed-hung, wagging anguishedly like a tongue against the horny barnacled palate, and then out again, inarticulately noisy? “ Oo-wash-oo-wallop-are-you-awake-King Buskin?” … “Attendants! What ho! Attendants — lights!” … Sweating, staring, Caligula started up. Two frightened attendants, with torches, ran in, kneeling. “Is Pyrallis the prostitute there? Sleeping? Wake her and bring her in! Wake also Valerius.” … “My lord?” said Pyrallis … “Ah, Pyrallis, such a nightmare I have had! — you would not believe it. That wave again, with eyes, but no face. What can it signify?” … “Wine for supper, my lord.” … “Ah, Pyrallis — a throat so lovely — to cut when I like! Shall I cut it, to discover the secret of its loveliness? I have told Caesonia that I will vivisect her, so as to find out why I love her” … Pyrallis cringed, frightened, at the look in the goat’s eyes. If she said, “Yes, vivisect her,” might he not — cruel madman and pervert — vivisect herself?… “Let me soothe you, my lord,” said Pyrallis … Black slaves hoisted a canopy of purple. And Valerius, running out to weep in the street — listen, good Romans and you shall hear of the midnight ride of poor Valere! — that mysterious Catullus Valerius rag.