Conrad Aiken: Blue Voyage

“You were born in England?”

“Devonshire. Left it thirty years ago; went straight to New Orleans; and been there ever since.”

“You’ll find England changed.”

“You know, I’m sort of afraid, in a way — I don’t believe I’ll know a soul in my town.”

“No relatives?”

“All dead … Isn’t it funny? And yet I’ve got this craving to go back and walk round there. That’s what I’d like to do — walk over the country. I was a great walker then — knew every stick and stone. And I may hate it — be lonely — come running back inside a month.”

The wind whipped their coats about their knees. Green waves from the southeast, fluctuant pyramids of water tossing their points into the wind. The bow lifted gently, far ahead. The ship fell into a long leisurely swing, first greeting to the sea, the unvintagable sea … What was this strange passion for crucifixion that overcame the old man, as it overcame himself?

“You’re like Ulysses, setting out at last to find the rim of the world, the Pillars of Hercules.”

“Not much! No exploring for me. I want to get back, that’s all.”

The old man looked at him with brown eyes comically solemn, in which there was just a trace of something shy and fugitive. The arched gray eyebrows gave his eyes an odd startled roundness of appearance, childlike and charming.

“No, sir, I’m too old for any exploring!”

“But isn’t that just what you’re doing? You don’t know what you’re going to … I don’t believe we’re ever too old to explore — we’re always exploring something. There was an old ex-Senator on a ship with me once — by George, he was a wonder. Eighty years old, with gout so bad that he could hardly walk, and had to keep one leg up in a chair when he sat in the smoking room. He’d outlived all his relatives except one son, who’d taken over his law practice — outlived his friends, his own generation, every damned one. He fought in the Civil War, was one of the first Government surveyors of Arkansas — surveyed it when it was a wilderness, hostile Indians. He knew Walt Whitman — Walt used to come and see his aunt, he said. He didn’t have much use for Walt. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘why should I hang around Washington? I can’t live forever. There’s nothing for me to do here. I might as well die with my boots on. Besides,’ he said, ‘I haven’t seen Australia for thirty years, and I’d like to see it again. I hear it’s changed.’ So off he was going alone, eighty years old. A magnificent man, the kind we don’t seem to produce any more: huge frame, head like a lion, face like Gibraltar. He sat and listened to the arguments in the smoking room. When he said anything, it settled the discussion. We didn’t exist for him — were were just a lot of little yappers, still damp from the womb. I felt a sort of affection for him, and on the last morning as we were tying up, I hunted him out, on deck, to say good-by. ‘Oh, good-by!’ he said, sort of surprised, as if he’d never seen me before: and turned back to look at the landing stage … And you know, I don’t believe he ever had seen me — never bothered to focus his eyes on me, though we’d been talking together for a week.”

“Funny business,” said the old man. “How soon do they open the bar, I wonder? I wouldn’t mind a nice glass of Scotch.”

Demarest laughed. “And let there be no moaning at the bar, when we put out to sea!”

“Too deep for sound or foam, eh? That’s good — that’s good!”

“Guess I’ll go below and get a sweater. Maybe they’ll be giving out the seats in the saloon. Shall I get you one?”

“Thanks! I wish you would. My name’s Smith.”

In the smoking room half a dozen men were sitting carefully apart; they smoked meditatively, eying one another askance. They were waiting for conversational openings, each of them eager to pour forth his story. When Demarest put his head in to look round, they all regarded him simultaneously with a mute interrogation, a dumb wistful invitation: perhaps he was the necessary solvent; and at any rate the feeling was manifest that acquaintance would become easier as the room became crowded. A steel-faced clock ticked briskly on the wall of fluted and varnished wood. The small windows, with screw fastenings, were of cheap stained glass, vicious mustard yellows and bilious greens hideously devised into marine patterns. Anemic crabs, pale-ribbed scallop shells, star fish, weeds, cornucopias. The bar steward, tall and thin, leaning against a chair back, gave him an ironic smile, meant to be friendly: Malvolio. “Bar not open?” said Demarest. “Not yet, sir: waiting for the keys.” Tick-tick-tick-tick; and someone spat resonantly into a brass spittoon … Six tables … this would be his sitting room for eight days. The sound of the sea came softly here, muted, like the hush heard in a conch shell: Sh — sh — sh . A loose chair clicked gently as the floor inclined.

He descended the stairs into the main saloon, a wide, pillared room, red-carpeted, with long red-covered tables. Here the sound of the sea came fresher, through a long row of opened portholes. A palm tree stood by the pale piano, its branches faintly oscillating. Two bored-looking officers sat at the end of one of the tables with ship’s papers before them. Demarest gave his name, and Smith’s, to one of these. The other leaned forward and said in a subdued voice, “Oh — the Purser’s table. Demarest.” … So this is fame … A girl brushed his arm as he turned away. “Pardon ME!” she cried, drawling the “r” a little, and smiling. Then, to the bored officers, melodiously, extravagantly fluting—

“Are you giving out the seats?… ’Cause if you are, I want one!.. Pauline Faubion!”

Demarest was amused. A wild little person, he thought: a baggage. Small, impertinent, pretty, with large dark eyes far apart and challenging, and the full mouth a little somber. An actress perhaps. As he went out of the saloon into the corridor he heard her laughing — a fine bold trill, by George! She was losing no time … Crucifixion. Why do we all want to be crucified, to fling ourselves into the very heart of the flame? Empedocles on Etna. A moment of incandescent suffering. To suffer intensely is to live intensely, to be intensely conscious … Passionate, perverse refusal to give up the unattainable — dashing ourselves blindly against the immortal wall. “I will be crucified! Here are my hands! Drive nails through them — sharp blows!” … He looked at his face in the cabin mirror, under the caged electric light, and marveled that such madness could go on behind so impassive a forehead, eyes so profoundly serene. He looked long into his own eyes, so unfathomable, as if in an effort to understand himself, and — through his own transparent elusiveness — the world. What was it he wanted? What was it that was driving him back? What was this singular mechanism in him that wanted so deliberately, so consciously, to break itself? A strange, a rich, a deep personality he had — it baffled and fascinated him. Everybody of course, was like this, — depth beyond depth, a universe chorally singing, incalculable, obeying tremendous laws, chemical or divine, of which it was able to give its own consciousness not the faintest inkling … He brushed the dark hair of this universe. He looked into its tranquil black-pooled eyes. Its mouth was humorous and bitter. And this universe would go out and talk inanely to other universes — talking only with some strange minute fraction of its identity, like a vast sea leaving on the shore, for all mention of itself, a single while pebble, meaningless. A universe that contained everything — all things — yet said only one word: “ I .” A music, an infinite symphony, beautifully and majestically conducting itself there in the darkness, but remaining forever unread and unheard. “Do you like cigarettes?” says one universe to another. “No, I prefer a pipe,” says the second. “And what is truth?” says one universe to another. “Truth is pleasure,” answers the second. Silence. The two universes smoke cigarettes and pipes … And this universe sees another, far off, unattainable, and desires passionately to approach it, to crash into it — why? To be consumed in the conflagration, to lose its identity?… Ah — thought Demarest, drawing on his sweater — if we stopped to consider, before any individual, his infinite richness and complexity, could we be anything but idolatrous — even of a fool? He looked again into his reflected eyes, but now with a long melancholy, a mingling of pity and contempt. Know thyself ! That was the best joke ever perpetrated. A steaming universe of germ cells, a maelstrom of animal forces, of which he himself, his personality, was only the collective gleam. A hurricane of maggots which answered to the name of Demarest.