babylon dutch continued / вавилонский голландец длительный
Three: men. maps and metal
Walking away from the hut of the fast-fingered old woman, I could see the Captain tending to the last of some cargo as it was hauled up from the dock on a treacherous looking pulley; the captain nodded to me and then raised his eyebrows at the ensuing four letter invective that I let fly. Falk had heard just about every sailor’s curse in his time at sea, but rarely so explosively and so continually. I was still swearing and spitting as I strode up to the gangplank.
“That - that… crazy…” was all I could say, juggling an egg with one hand and again adjusting myself and my clothes with the other.
“Doesn’t like me much,” said the Captain. “Sorry,” he said.
It sounded a bit feeble even to him so he probably wasn’t expecting a reply - what he got in fact was a shriek that nearly took his hat off.
“The egg!” I yelped. It was burning my hand! I ducked quickly and dropped the egg (gently) onto a patch of dewy grass. It cracked. A single tear at first like a flaw in porcelain but it spread rapidly - and pieces of shell began to fall away in plaster chunks. Finally there was an audible breaking sound and the egg split wide open as a tiny chick put out a beak and blunt looking foot. I squeaked. The chick made a very similar noise before hopping out from the egg and onto the grass. It lay there for a moment as if undecided about how to greet this wide new world it found itself in - and then all at once it folded itself in its damp fluffy wings and became a pocket book.
I was watching with wide startled eyes, but I managed a quick glance behind me to see the Dutchman’s reactions. Pah! He was already half way to the noisy beach house, striding as a man does I imagine when he is on his way to get good and drunk.
Shaking my head, I picked up the little book and put it in my trouser pocket. Then I stood up and marched off after the Captain. The Island air was still warm even though the evening was darkening about us. My ears were still ringing with the strange songs of so many tropical birds and insects, hidden somewhere in the green of the forests. I was hoping for a big fat moon to come out - though with my luck I’d be inside if it did.
Still, even as the dusk ripened, all about me the island was alive, singing itself to slumber and me to wakefulness; the songs were in my ears, my eyes and my head, there was singing inside my head, my brain. And I understood this. I understood. I could see and sense and articulate, express… because new words were pouring through me like wine, as if tasting the florid tropical colours, sensual colours, sensory colours.
Yet after so long aboard the lean SeaBird in the whiteness of the ocean and the deep brown of the hull, these sensations were almost too much - heady as a sleeping draught, and I was lurching, heavy as a sleepwalker. But all this was on the inside, what was on the surface, the rippling skin of me - well I watched THAT march sulkily up to the men’s house and scowl at the door.
Somehow the Captain had got ahead of me which meant the uneven timbered door was shut and as I opened it to slip inside I expected the celebratory din, all the shouting and singing and clashing of jugs and tankards, all the curses and delighted yells as dice and bones and counters and cards collided with one another, all the excitable half droned conversations, everything - to stop.
I should’ve known I’d be wrong. The drunken crowd ignored or dismissed me or were merely silently curious and didn’t allow my appearance to interrupt their activity.
And such a wild range of people they were! From very regal looking gentleman - of which two in particular caught my eye; one with an incredibly huge nose that was gradually reddening from the wine and the other with a dazzling pearl smile which was becoming a little wine watery itself… to the very poor, piratical looking men with hard forearms and tattoos, a man in rags like the crone outside, another group tanned as the dark varnished deck of the Seabird, and one man so pale his skin almost shone who gazed at my with moody crimson eyes.
And there was Falk, standing stiffly against a bar and flanked by strangers. The Captain nodded to me as I came over but it was one of the strangers that addressed me first, a man who was indeed almost as ragged as the old woman from the hut and with a similarly piercing pair of eyes. When he spoke it was in a bossy way, all snippy and harsh.
“Interesting… You have the feet of a girl, yet you wear the breeches of a lad, your hair is wild and dark but your chin is soft, that skin has never felt a razor’s touch. So tell me, please, just what are you?”
“Alice,” I said simply.
The man raised a finger to his lips - I thought maybe he was telling me to shush, but he had obviously been listening because he asked another question. “And you sail with the Dutchman… by choice?”
Unbidden the memory came to me in a pounding of the heart, the remembrance of darkness, fighting the wind and the cruel voices of shadows, shadows with faces that tried to bite, tried to attack as I flailed desperately with my arms, as I did still in my dreams, and then the memory of discovery; a ship, a tin bath, some books, food, simple things… and finally the moment when I threw my boots into the Sea, my ‘lucky’ boots, the boots from before, from the blank time that the shadows were part of.
So I had stayed on the Seabird, and as much as the Dutchman was a part of that, then I suppose I had stayed with him too.
“Yes, I made a choice,” I said, there was no other way to put it.
The stranger had sounded vaguely incredulous before, and now he looked openly disbelieving. “Such a thing, it cannot be! You jest surely or…” he turned to Falk and asked a question, the language was unrecognisable to me. I stamped my feet. “I can answer for myself!”
“That is true,” Falk agreed, “And it is inconsiderate to speak with an alien tongue,” he admonished.
The stranger nodded awkwardly. “My manners are… I am unused to company, forgive me.”
“Alright,” I said.
The stranger however had gone back to talking to the Captain. “But such a thing, Dutchman, is not permitted.”
“Yet here we are,” said the Captain. He looked smug to me.
I stamped my foot again. “And I love sailing - I will always love it.”
“Ah,” said the Wanderer, “I remember… youth, its vehemence… to have such fixed opinions, passions I suppose, to mistake the feelings of a fleeting moment for eternity…” His voiced dropped to a sigh that wove itself around the sound of the surf upon the sand in a somnolent whisper and he shook his head, “No… actually I do not remember.” He shook his head once again but this time to manoeuvre his hood so that it fell more closely about face - I could no longer read his expression.
Then again, when he spoke it wasn’t much better.
“Before you arrived,” he said snootily, “we were talking, that is I was telling the Dutch here about the well in the island that runs to the centre of the Earth… the well of tears, the well of joy.”
“Two wells then.” I couldn’t stop myself from correcting.
“No, there is but one - what is drunk from it depends on the…”
“Cup?”
“I was going to say that it depends on the drinker. But that is all the same thing.”
“You think too much.”
“No, you are wrong. I hardly think at all anymore.”
I was feeling dizzy - and I wasn’t even drinking. I put my hands on my hips again, enough was enough, I thought. “Who are you?” I demanded to know.
“Ah, yes, I suppose the introductions have been a little one sided… very well, I shall remedy that. I am the Wanderer. Many have claimed me and all have exiled me. I belong to no/one and in no place.”
“So that’s your - that’s what I should call you?” It sounded silly to me.
“Well, I have many names child and in many tongues, more even than I can remember. But I am Everyman, in truth, so you may call me that.”
Oh.
“I see,” I was equally solemn faced and my words were measured and slow, “well, such is life, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, is that not so Captain?” I looked across to Falk, keeping my expression serious.
But the Dutchman could not reply, he seemed to be having a small seizure - and then seemed suddenly very interested in his drink.
I coughed. “You were talking about a well,” I said giving my attention back to Everyman.
He hmmed and stroked his chin before picking up where he had left off. “Yes, Indeed… And in the centre of the well, suspended by a chain, there is a map. This map, so they say, has the gift of direction for it points ever to the north like a compass and at night it can be heard singing to the Northern Star, and at dawn it sings to the Morning Star, that falling Angel who, according to some sources, drew the map Himself for it was imprisoned like him when he was cast out from Heaven and so, the chain that holds the map, and keeps it bound, may be broken only by one who is pure of heart, for the metal is Angelic, holy. Nevertheless many and constant are the dark soldiers that strive to find and retrieve that treasure.”
I laughed and clapped the man roundly on his shoulder.
The Wanderer looked insulted as even Falk seemed amused. “Ah my friend,” the Sea Captain said, “You talk a tale as tall as the Baron here…” and he pointed towards the two run down looking noblemen.
The Wanderer hissed angrily, but he also seemed genuinely bemused. “I - I do not understand your mirth,” he said, “you of all people, Dutchman, for your have met the light bringer!”
Falk gave the Wanderer a curious look and just like always I caught the expression but could not fathom the meaning. “Ah,” the Dutchman said, “they call him that now eh? Well, so it goes.” He seemed about to say more but stopped and said only, “It’s my map. The Phoenicians made it for me.”
I understood about one word in ten that the men were saying, it all sounded half drunk to me - but that last remark made me jump.
“If it’s your map,” I had to ask, “don’t you want it back?”
The Dutchman shrugged staring down in his beer, “I have too many other things to do. It’s not important. I go… where I go.”
“Self important fart!” yelled a voice. The men looked shocked, but I burst out laughing. It was true after all. “And you’ve no stomach for adventure!”
The heckler was one of the dingy looking gentlemen from the table across from the bar; we could see the two regency figures jerking into life, like rusty puppets. One of them slurred something that I didn’t understand - whilst the other, blinking for a moment as if waking from a long sleep, blurted out “Adventure!” again. Then he seemed to subside, to forget about us completely for a minute.
“Tales…” he said slowly to himself. He coughed, dislodging a puff of talcum powder from his lop-sided wig and reached a trembling hand out for a glass of wine. His friend wailed something unintelligible and the man replied, “Nonsense, my glass is always half full!”
After sipping his wine he looked up blearily at the Captain. “Ah,” he said.
“Well, well,” nodded The Dutchman leaning forward slightly, “it IS you.”
“Naturally it’s me,” replied the man - and just for an instant I saw something, something different in the figure. The face, under its cheap theatrical make up, was handsome really, the cheekbones high and narrow, matching the eyes, quick and intelligent; the face of a hunter perhaps.
Falk raised an eyebrow at the man, whom he clearly recognised.
“Haven’t you been dead?” he asked - as if it were the simplest of questions.
“I have,” replied the other, as if that were the simplest of answers.
Then all at once he looked up and his eyes were mischievous and bright. “You know,” smarmed the decrepit figure, “this rather reminds me of the time I was swallowed by a whale - did I ever tell you the story?”
“What?”
“Oh yes indeed, swallowed by a whale!”
“Well I’m not swallowing that!” I laughed.
The Baron huffed noisily, reaching for a pinch of snuff as he did so. “That supposed to be funny?”
“Well,” said Falk, “you can’t really expect the girl to…”
“Hmmph! Children today, no manners and no imagination!”
“No romance!” cried his companion his great snout of a nose attacking the air, “no poetry! What do they know of love, eh?” The sobs when they came were violent and shook not only the burly man, but a great deal of the table as well.
I backed away with a face that said “Eww” and “yuk” as clearly as any words could have done.
The Baron was still looking at me and quite suddenly he smiled that pearly smile of his and asked, “How can you not like stories?”
I shook my head. “I never said I didn’t like stories. It’s just that you” -
“Well, then” the Baron was ALL smiles now, “what’s the difference, eh?”
We all stopped speaking - which was good because I don’t think any of us were making much sense.
“Were you making a point?” asked the Dutchman. He seemed to want the conversation out of the way, for his cup was hanging empty from his hand and I imagine he was keen to start on the next.
“A point?” The Baron echoed.
“Touché!” burped his friend.
The Baron scowled. “I have already made my point. No use for tales, no sense of adventure. It’s all quite obvious. I shall have to get the map for you - yes, danger be damned, foul evils - a pox on ‘em. The centre of the island, why that’s but a stone’s throw from here. I shall go and come back before your drunken Dutch head has hit the bar.” He clapped a hand to his hip for emphasis.
“Do what you like,” said Falk.
“I’ll come!” I heard myself say, and I was very surprised by it too! “Ha - I’ll show you my sense of adventure.”
The baron grinned. “That’s the spirit my boy!” he said.
I couldn’t be bothered to correct him. And… perhaps I was a boy anyway. I seemed to be any number of things most of the time. And I was getting used to the fact.
But looking at the hazy old gentlemen, their old fashioned clothes, Everyman in his hermit’s rags - and then Falk in his tidy uniform, so different to them (and to me once) I had a sudden thought.
“How do I know,” I started to ask and then tried again in a different way, “I mean, this is… before, you people, here, this place, the island… it’s the past isn’t it - so how do I know the map hasn’t been stolen already, that some bad guys didn’t win already? How do I know it’s worth the bother of trying?”
Even as I finished speaking, I realised I was not sounding convinced, that my argument had lost its zeal. I’ve changed so much, I thought, I really have. And it was true. Well then. OK.
“How do you know it won’t be fun?” I asked.
“Now that’s a MUCH better question!” The Baron was on his feet and looking twenty years younger.
“Do you even know what fun is?” I aimed this one at the morose looking Captain, who had plucked another beer from nowhere, but it was an honest question and his answer was equally so.
“I had forgotten maybe, but now… I…” he was embarrassed I think. “Slowly, perhaps you are teaching me to remember.”
Teaching me to remember, the Captain sometimes had an odd way of putting things, but I liked it, my smile was wide and pleased. “That doesn’t mean you’ll come along though does it?”
“I cannot.” Falk was serious again, back to his usual self.
The Baron made a disgusted sound between his teeth, strode over and clapped me heartily on the shoulder, just as I had done to Everyman. “Come on Alice,” he said swaggering as he did so, “let’s show them what real men are made of!”
This made the Wanderer step forward, his eyes fierce and his arms outstretched.
“And what of I, Everyman?” he sounded purposeful too. “I must be allowed to” -
“No.” said the Baron.
The Wanderer looked amazed, appalled. “No? But I am Everyman, I must” -
“No!” The Baron’s patience was already run out.
“But why?”
“Absolutely no sense of humour.” The Baron said, as if stating the very obvious and he added a contemptuous snort for good measure, sweeping the three cornered hat onto the powered coif of his head before pushing brusquely past, grabbing me roughly as he did so and bustling us both out of the door and into the vibrant night.
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next - adventure... of sorts.
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this was a hard chapter, i had to change and rewrite some characters altogether when i discovered them being used in a story elsewhere - i also wrote out the Baron.... but then put him back, i hope i have treated him (and Oleg Yankovsky) with respect.