John Gardner - The King's Indian - Stories and Tales

“ ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said.

“ ‘Please, Jonathan!’

“But I’d discovered something. I knew every flicker of thought that went through her, because her nature, however deadly, was like mine, like Wilkins’, like wise James Ngugi’s: Whatever the age and continent that framed her, she housed no fear, no hope, no shade of opinion we ourselves had not also housed. I made my mind a blank. I could control her body as surely as could any Mesmerist. I could soothe away shyness, self-hatred, support her against a flutter of guilt, eighth and most deadly of the deadly sins. If I tyrannized, seduced her, it was by becoming her, not a cry of Believe in me! but I believe! Her right hand touched my shoulder, stopping me. With her left she tried to hide the swellings on her face. ‘Jonathan, don’t,’ she whispered. Age-old withdrawal of the female into shadows, the secrecy and cunning at the heart of things. I gazed at her, thinking nothing, drowned in sensation, desiring her. At length, Miranda closed her eyes. When I pulled my shirt off she said nothing and did not look at me. I took off the rest of my clothes and lay down beside her, carefully not touching her. I knew what she was thinking, watching her with my vague left eye. The splendid possibility of life without flesh, love without tyranny.

“ ‘You must come with me to southern Illinois,’ I said. ‘It’s a whole new geography, beyond philosophy and stabilizing vision. Terrible tornadoes, unbelievable winds. In the springtime the hills are more green than emeralds, the sky more blue than cobalt, with clouds of unthinkable white. No dangerous animals high or low, except the Harpe brothers and the Baptists, and we can outwit them, wait and see.’ I touched her breast. She reached to me suddenly and pulled me to her. ‘You’re so wall-eyed!’ she whispered. I saw on her face a wild, unintentional idea. ‘Jonathan, I love you,’ she whispered. ‘You’re grotesque.’

“I was alive, all at once. It seemed to me the whole ship was alive. My hands stopped moving on her shoulders, understanding ahead of my mind. ‘Wind!’ I whispered. She stopped breathing, listening. ‘Wind!’ we said, both of us at once. Outside the ports, the sky had changed. There were blooms of lightning. ‘Sleep, Miranda. I’ll be back when I can.’ Without waiting for her answer, without stopping to dress, I left her, ran out on the poopdeck. ‘Ngugi! There’s wind!’ I shouted. Ngugi snapped out of his sleep like a puppet jerked upward, and the rest of the crew came awake the same instant. ‘Wind it is!’ he shouted back, his eyes popping open, his smile as wide as the Milky Way, as full of strange joy as the black-green sliding Congo. The heavy air echoed mysteriously, Is! Our skeleton crew was all on deck, waiting for someone to give or take command. Charlie Johnson stood clapping, ready to start running — a smiling little black in spectacles. ‘Sails!’ I yelled. ‘Stitch sails together — sheets, shirts, hankies, anything the wind can get its fingers in!’ They went scampering down through the hatches to tear the beds apart, rip seams out of clothes, clamp sails together with thread, rope, nails, knives, marlinspikes. I stripped the Captain’s cabin, tore away the covers from Miranda, ‘A thousand pardons,’ I said, and began on her dresser. ‘Jonathan!’ cries she, white arms over breasts. Her good eye was wide with indignation.

“The stirring ocean and the gentle wind were moving our sailless hulk to southward, edging us down toward sullen darkness and a milky sea where a strangely luminous glare arose, a kind of vapor that shifted here and there like a theater curtain. Ngugi had already a man at the helm, a man who knew no more of guiding ships than we did. Gigantic, pallid white birds were now flying great circles around us, emerging from behind the glowing veil. I went up with six men to lash on sail, snatch a little wind and put on such distance as we could toward the Cape before the weather turned. I shouted to our helmsman, ‘Tack alee!’ The sky rang with echoes. Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li! The Jerusalem yawed and leaned, then righted herself. From my perch on the yard I saw ships in the distance — two of them, then three, sent as witnesses. Far below I could see, like mechanical toys, our orphan’d crew running back and forth, each taking orders from all of us. Them too I understood. Rankless, ruleless, they were learning to be a community of sorts on the mutilated ship. No more geniuses, no more great kings. Only wild pale-faces, contemplative Apaches. They ran about crazily (but gentle, sure-footed) like children eager for Mama’s praise. Miranda peeked out the cabin door. ‘Hooray!’ she yelled. The wind came steady, we had all the time and space of the wise Chinese, though not their dignity. The whiteness of the sea to southward darkened; a huge sad man rose up from the water, standing on newly emerged dry land, his arms laid out lightly on an oak tree’s limbs and his antique garb as white as snow. I addressed him, shouting: ‘So it’s thee our Captain came to hail! God bless you and good day!’ I kept my right eye steady on the bowsprit, the solemn white monster blurry in my left. ‘Tack hard alee!’ I shouted. The pale white birds were as large as the three ships circling us. ‘Homewards, my sea-whores,’ I shouted from the masthead. ‘—Homewards, you orphans, you bandy-legged, potbellied, pig-brained, belly-dancing killers of the innocent whale! Eyes forward, you niggers, you Chinese Irish Mandalay Jews, you Anglo-Saxons with jackals’ eyes. We may be the slime of the earth but we’ve got our affinities! On to Illinois the Changeable!’ I stood on the yard, letting go with both hands, below me a sail of shirts, sheets, trousers, rain-slickers, underwear, and below that my shimmering fellow Cains. At the Captain’s door, for inspiration, stood our blushing wild Sister. Perched like a bird, an archangel teetering on Nowhere’s rim, I intoned, dramatic, orbiculate: ‘Discipline, lads, is a World full of hardness, abounding in disagreeables, till we’ve learned to chew through to the eternity hidden in its pits.’

“ ‘Tack alee!’ the Holy Ghost exclaims, disguised as a sea-boobie sitting by my shoulder. His head hung down, disgusted by rhetoric.

“ ‘You better hang on there, bird,’ says I.

“ ‘Hang on thyself,’ cries he, ‘thou fucking lunatic!’ ”