Conrad Aiken - Blue Voyage

“He’s clever,” murmured Demarest. “He knows we’re playing chess.”

“Chest,” corrected Silberstein. “In the army they call it chest.”

“What army?” Hay-Lawrence scowled.

“The Grand Army of the Republic.”

“I’m surprised they ever heard of it,” said Hay-Lawrence.

“That’s all you know, is it …” Silberstein leaned backward against the settee back, half standing, half sitting. He expanded his chest, lazily, narrowing his eyes. “My boy, the best checker players in the world are in the American army. They know all the numbers.”

“Checkers! What the devil is checkers?”

“Never heard of checkers? No?”

“The same as drafts,” simpered Malvolio; “they often ask me for checkers … You wanted something, sir?”

“Yes, will you repeat, gentlemen?”

“Not I, thanks,” said Hay-Lawrence.

“Two double Scotches, then … You don’t mind if I watch, do you? Of course not. Everybody likes an audience.”

Hay-Lawrence pondered, brown right forefinger lying on ruddy right cheek. With the other hand he revolved his oporto fleep . He was annoyed. Liberties were being taken with him by one who was not a gentleman. A frosty silence. A pity to have the game spoiled, nevertheless. If one could only keep separate the things one liked! Bawdy conversation with Silberstein — chess or literary conversation with Hay-Lawrence. Philately with the Major. With Smith — what with Smith? Poor old Smith. I wonder who’s kissing him now? Where is our wandering Smith tonight? Pawing her dresses in his stateroom: like the fawn. M-m-m-heliotrope!

“Go away, man! How can I think with you sitting there, a mass of expert knowledge?”

“Go away? Not by a damn sight. I came here to drink.”

Rook to knight square. So: Hay-Lawrence would fight for command of this file. Bishop to queen three. Attack the rook’s pawn. Can he save it?

“How!” said Demarest.

“ Gesundheit, ” said Silberstein. “While he’s thinking how to save his little goy — Christians, that’s what they call them on the East Side, where they used to play you for a nickel a game — I rise to remark that there’s a clairvoyant on this ship … A full-fledged clairvoyant. I dug him out from under a palm tree in the second-class dining saloon, where he was deep in the Occult Weekly or the Mystic Monthly, or some such thing — horoscopes on every page and ectoplasms running all over the place. Clairvoyant and clairaudient, — he’s a wizard! You’ve got to take your hat off to him. A most peculiar specimen. And full of bright little predictions. ‘You,’ he said to me, after one look at my hand, and a glance at my left eye—‘are hoping to sell chewing gum in England.’ How did he guess it?”

“Too easy,” said Demarest. “Probably your bedroom steward.”

“You may be right, you may be right; the usual method — find out in advance. And easy enough on a ship. He also observed, sadly, that there would be a death on this ship. Not so cheerful, that. Who’s elected? A chance for a pool. The dead man wins.”

“Well — does he say how he’ll die?”

“Murder.” Silberstein was placid, but stared a little.

“Murder? On this ship? He’s off his head.” Hay-Lawrence sipped his flip. A signet ring on the fourth finger.

“This grows interesting,” said Demarest. “Also of personal concern.”

“It does … He felt something wrong with the ship when he got in — something wrong with the ship’s aura.”

“I noticed that myself. Especially in that corridor beside the kitchen!”

“Then last night he had a nightmare. He woke up thinking someone was in his room, turned on the light — no one. Looked out in the hall — not a soul. Everybody asleep. Then he remembered his dream. An old man with a hole in his head, walking toward him, stretching out his hands — in his pajamas, he was — as if asking for something.’

“An old man? That lets me out,” said Demarest.

“And me,” Hay-Lawrence sighed. Rook to king square … Bishop to queen two, Demarest moved smiling. All as anticipated.

“An interesting question. He says he’s sure to recognize the victim — hasn’t seen him yet. When he does see him, ought he to tell him? If so, what?”

“He’s cuckoo,” said Demarest. “No harm if he did .”

“Would you like to be told?”

Silberstein stared with lazy penetration, his eyes cruel, at Demarest. A shiver went up Demarest’s backbone and coldly, slowly, flowered phosphorescent in his skull. Singular! No, he wouldn’t. Not by a damn sight. Another shiver, more fleeting, followed the first. He felt it also down the front of his arms. Death. Murdered at sea. Demarest dead, with a hole in his head. A murder at sea — why was the idea so peculiarly exciting and mysterious? Blood — blood — blood —throbbed the ship’s engines. A pale steward creeping along the corridor. Two bells. The steward threw something white over the side. His white linen jacket — bloodstained. An inspection next day—“Tompkins, where’s your jacket?” … “Burned, sir.” “Burned? How was it burned?” “Well you see, sir, I was smoking, and …” The knife discovered; a cook’s knife from the kitchen. Usually a belaying pin. Or one of those red axes hanging in the corridors For Use in Case of Fire .

“Gives me the creeps,” said Demarest. “What else did Jeremiah say?”

“Jeremiah, as a matter of fact, is a fatalist — that’s funny, isn’t it? Says he never interferes, even when he knows, because it’s sure to happen anyway, and the knowledge merely adds to the victim’s misery. Nice, isn’t it?… It occurred to me that it might be me. Why not? I’m not young. Maybe somebody has discovered that I’ve got a trunkful of chewing gum under my bed. Maybe it’s Jeremiah himself who’ll be the murderer.”

“Nothing more probable,” said Hay-Lawrence. “If you don’t shut up and let me think, I’ll murder you myself.”

“Don’t be snotty, Clarence. Remember the freedom of the seas.”

He took the pawn. Demarest retaliated. Bishop to bishop square moved Hay-Lawrence — to free the rook. — Was Silberstein making up all this yarn of the clairvoyant? “ Well? It convinces you? It sounds fairly circumstantial ?” Yes — it was circumstantial.

“Who is this bird?” he said, lifting the king’s rook to the knight square.

“Clark, Seward Trewlove Clark, from California. Unitarian minister, clairvoyant and clairaudient. Smokes a kind of herb tobacco which looks like confetti and smells like hell. Turns in his toes when he walks, and is only four feet high.”

“You’ve made a careful study of him. Does he wear B.V.D.’s? Boston garters?”

“A hair shirt, probably … Are you castin’ asparagus on my story? Are you — as they say — questioning my veracity, Mr. Demarest? Have a cigar.”

“Not in the least … Thanks; I’ll smoke it after dinner …”

“Oh, he’s full of it. Astrology, mediums, trances, crystals, table rappings, and the cold and slimy ectoplasm. Who knows? It may be an ecoplastic murder … Hello! Is that our friend the Major? Getting his hand in already, is he? Fie.”

“Easy money,” murmured Hay-Lawrence.

Silberstein, turtle-faced, impassive, watched the Major with reptile eyes.

“Check!” said Hay-Lawrence, taking the rook.

“Check, says he.” Demarest recaptured the queen’s rook. How much of the game was Silberstein taking in? A good deal probably. He had seen that Hay-Lawrence was uncomfortably placed, and that his vanity was suffering. This “check” too — no doubt Silberstein saw it to be partly histrionic. Hay-Lawrence stared, flushed, at the pieces, fists on cheeks. Then, frowning, he moved the bishop to knight two. The conception of defeat. Blood — blood — blood —throbbed the engines, impersonating the furies. How delightful, this discovery of Caligula’s about the clairvoyant! Just the sort of thing he would unearth. One could see him coldly and implacably questioning the little fool — taking off his very B.V.D.’s. “You believe in these things, do you, Mr. Clark?” “Yes.” “Well, I don’t: but I shall be interested to hear any evidence you have to offer. Speak up — don’t be frightened — I’m listening!” … “We must go forward with caution, reverence and hope,” replied the clairvoyant … Now, then, knight to knight six — and the crisis arises. My horse for a kingdom. Hay-Lawrence stared, immobile, an expression of stupor, or perhaps terror, in the fixed unseeing eyes: loss of psychic distance. One could almost hear the blood hammering at his temples — gush, clang, throb, thrum, pound, pulse, boom. Blood — blood — blood —sang the furies. Hay-Lawrence is doomed. Hay-Lawrence is being done to death. Demarest is murdering him, murdering him in little on a chessboard. There lies Hay-Lawrence, disguised as fourteen pieces (still living) and two pieces (dead) dispersed on a checkered board, fighting for his life. There Demarest, disguised as fourteen pieces, articulated like the adder, coils, hisses and straightly strikes. Death in miniature. Death in a cobweb. Was there a tear in Vivien’s left eye? No — the reflection of a light in the rondure of the monocle. A tear falling in Vivien’s heart, like the reflection of a moving light, tiny, down a lacquered edge — the cold secret tear of a nobleman, falling remotely and soundlessly. Miss Gadsby, of Andover. “Why do people come to me in their trouble? It is strange. They come — they come. There was the case of Henry Majoribanks, only last month. He telegraphed from Chicago — or was it St. Louis? — to say that he was coming. When he came he walked straight into the drawing room, where I was sitting, knelt before me without a word, and buried his face in my lap. I put my hands on his head. ‘What is it, Henry?’ I said. He wept — for five minutes he wept, shaken by sobs. Then, without a word, he rose and went away — went back to Chicago, or St. Louis … Why?… What is it in me that is so unconsciously beneficient, so comforting, so healing? I am only an ordinary woman. Why should Henry — whom I have never known very intimately — come all the way from Little Rock — to weep in my lap? Tears from the depths of some divine despair!.. Yet I am grateful for this gift which God has given me, even though I cannot wholly understand it … They come to me for solace …” Knight to knight square, moved Hay-Lawrence, the murdered man.