IV

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out.

—Blake

—Blessed Mary went a-walking . . .

The prow of the ship lifted from a swell, remained suspended and then dropped into the trough that followed. Everything shook.

—Over Jordan river . . .

—Please, don’t sing that, Stanley interrupted. —Not here, not right now anyhow. Clinging to the rail, he looked uncomfortably over his shoulder, where Father Martin paced the deck reciting the appointed section of his breviary. She stopped, and gazed silently out to sea. Stanley looked at her face, the only one which (next to Father Martin when he was engaged in such supramundane past-times as the one occupying him now) had preserved its equanimity throughout the voyage thus far.

It was not proving an easy crossing: several times Stanley himself had felt the saliva mounting in the back of his mouth, and tried to put his mind on something sublime and far away, or at least extracorporeal; but sounds and signs of adjacent suffering usually recalled him to the immanent prospect of his own, and he swallowed with great effort. He did so now. Behind him, beyond Father Martin’s path, a mound of human misery heaved in a deck chair, clutching a small machine which clicked at regular intervals. It was a woman who had several times made the flat reasonable demand that the captain halt the ship. She was one of the Pilgrims; and as such, firmly convinced that the sea was aroused specifically for her and her fellows, whom she was ready to inform, at one moment, that infernal hands were responsible, working from anfractuous residencies far below to hinder them on their pious mission, and at other moments quite prepared to accuse the very Deity this voyage was designed to placate. In that case, He was certainly intent upon making it as memorably uncomfortable an excursion as any those medieval pilgrims enjoyed, setting off from Venice in the most deplorable conditions that could be arranged, which, for their times, is saying a good deal. Right now, the sky was blue and brilliantly clear, permitting a moment of hope, until the ship rolled and the boiling sea was raised before her eyes, which she closed forthwith and tried to dwell on the felicitous snarl of misconceptions which she had, over many devout years, managed to accumulate about her destination. They were not, after all, going to Jerusalem, and once landed did not run the risk of being stoned by Saracens, or offered for sale such articles of commerce as the bodies of the Holy Innocents. Neither the prospect of getting hold of a shred of the True Cross, nor a casket containing the tears of the Virgin, nor even the toenail parings of some venerable ecclesiastic, all opportunities of which their earliest forebears had taken full advantage, drew them forth: but rather the reward of indulgences. That, and the spectacle of the canonization of the little Spanish martyr, whose reputation a number of these Pilgrims, and this woman foremost among them, were importunately trying to enhance by seeking her intervention in this present misfortune.

It is true, there were others on board prey to less disciplined superstitions who agreed that this plight might well be a visitation on the Pilgrims, and were inclined to be quite rude about being so freely included. The Swede was one of these. Dressed in a becoming wrapper, he lay indoors sucking a lemon, and brushing aside objections. —But Anna, baby . . . —No, don’t argue with me now, it’s those hideous vulgar Pilgrims. —But baby the reason you’re coming is to join the Church yourself . . . —You know very well why I’m coming, because the only way I can possibly get hold of little Giono is to adopt him, and I have to be a Catholic parent or they won’t give him to me. —Don’t you want to come out in the fresh air for a little? . . . you’ll feel just tons better. —I can’t go out in this. The Swede held up a pink satin hem. —Baby why did you give all your clothes to those stowaways? . . .

And among the lower echelons of the crew, those encountered mopping passages and lavatory decks, there appeared paper hats of crackled gilt and blemished colors, remnants of an exhausted carnival at some lost latitude whose banter still rode on smells and stains below the surface.

—Isn’t there any more Dramamine? The tall woman raised her head from the pillow, seeing her husband enter. Then she lay back. —Poor Huki-lau, she’s biting her nails again . . . breaking off her analysis . . .

And on deck, from the mound stacked heaving in a deck chair against the bulkhead, the clicks continued at somewhat irregular intervals. Almost gone inside her hand was the Machine, a “Recording Rosary,” with the button under her thumb to be pressed each time she reached the Gloria, and an arrow (“Keep tabs on Mystery!” the ad had said) which pointed to the next bead to be prayed.

—Why do you keep singing that? Stanley broke out, seizing her wrist at the rail. Then he loosed his hold and apologized for startling her so; and a moment later a cry escaped him, and he lunged. Beneath him a book washed up on a crest, was gone, and reappeared in the white foam. He stared at that invitation to mortal sin being borne away by the sea, and then raised his face to the sea itself, as though to try to bring it all into his vision, and he said something like that to her, something about its immensity. He looked at her. She was looking at the sea. And then she said, but not to him,

—For some fishes the sea is a great big sky.

Stanley clung beside her. Then he turned, —Where are you going?

—For a walk.

—Yes, but . . . all right, but you’re not going up to see . . . up to First Class?

—And see the Cold Man? She smiled to him; and Stanley lowered his eyes from hers. Who the “Cold Man” was he did not know, had no idea but of a tall figure he had seen, and then only at night, standing at the rail above, the left sleeve of a Chesterfield coat tucked empty in the pocket, the face motionless, obscured under the rim of a black hat. For Stanley was still pursuing the course he had set himself, asking no intrusive questions, making no demands upon her willingness which was, every moment she was near him, so candid in its expectation, so attentive to his wishes, as in the only renders he exacted of her, the devotions she secured with such care, and practiced with such grace.

Everything was going exceedingly well.

And her eagerness to learn the preparations he had set himself to teach her was sometimes pathetically touching, and sometimes it frightened him: touching, delicately absurd for there was no mockery in her when, for instance, she affirmed the dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin with that of Little Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as the only historical parallel she knew; frightening, when she brought from nowhere the image of Saint Simeon Stylites standing a year on one foot and addressing the worms which an assistant replaced in his putrefying flesh, —Eat what God has given you . . . Or her frank familiarity with the career of Saint Mary of Egypt: seventeen years of prostitution in Alexandria, talents put to good use when she was converted and paid her boat passage to Jerusalem so, all expiated by wandering unwashed in the woods for the next half-century. Or how she might ever have known of the seventeenth-century Sicilian girl Ana Raguza, who called herself the Bride of Christ and could, so she said, actually smell out sinners. Or that the right foot of Santa Teresa de Jesús is venerated at Santa Maria della Scala in Rome. Or that the pus of Saint John of the Cross smelled strongly of Madonna lilies.

Things seemed to be going exceedingly well, better than Stanley would have imagined had he paused at the beginning of this undertaking to consider the practical difficulties it would so surely involve. Her passage, for instance: he was prepared to pay it, but no one had asked him to. And though he was relieved at the apparent lack of curiosity on the part of the other passengers, it had commenced to trouble him. No one, not even Father Martin, had asked her name; and though the fat woman had, at one point, risen in a gesture of myopic kindliness to include him in her own generation, asking if the “charming young creature” were his daughter, she had as quickly relapsed, clutching a shiny-surfaced paper book stamped with the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur, and entitled A Day With the Pope, and entirely forgotten that such a question, or any provocation for it, had ever entered her busy head. Licking her finger to turn each page of pictures, she visioned herself trundling in Vatican corridors, in the Court of San Damaso, and who can say where else? when she looked up to the boiling surface of the sea rising before her, and reached for a paper bag beside her deck chair.

Nevertheless, it was working out. Though Stanley, left alone below with his stack of palimpsests, and the clean scores onto which he was copying, made more mistakes than he had ever before, some of them maddening, copying the same bar twice; some strange, for here and there he found himself inserting grace notes which broke the admirably stern transitions, slipping in cadenzas which had nothing to do with anything, and, just this morning, writing in a throbbing bass which, as he realized when he stopped, was the steady vibration of the engines.

He could not get her out of his mind. When they were together, her smile, or often when she did not know he was looking the empty sadness of her face, forced him to lower his eyes, and fumble for something to handle, or something to say; and he usually found that tooth in his pocket, as he did now, and said nothing.

At all events, nothing had gone wrong yet. Even below, where they were at close quarters when they were together, being with her in illuminated silence or in prayer proved, in fact, less difficult than he had pictured, never having known temptation as it is usually succumbed to. And even at rising, or her going to bed, he found no temptation to touch her, or to tell her she was beautiful, though the warm brush of an elbow shocked him sometimes. But directly he was alone, it was all entirely different.

Directly he was alone, he was assailed by her simulacra, in all states of acute sorrow, or smiling, of complete abstraction or painful animation, of dress and undress, as he had seen her these last few days: directly he was alone, the images came to mock everything he had seen. Her sadness became shrieking grief, and her animation riotous, immodest in dress and licentious in nakedness, many-limbed as some wild avatar of the Hindu cosmology assaulting the days he spent copying his work on clean scores, and the nights he passed alone in his chair where, instantly the lights went out, everything was transformed, and the body he had seen a moment before with no more surprise than its simple lines and modest unself-conscious movement permitted, rose up on him full-breasted and vaunting the belly, limbs undistinguishable until he was brought down between them and stifled in moist collapse.

He woke in the morning exhausted, straightening his damp disarranged clothes, and there she lay, cool and unconsciously breathing and often uncovered; and when that was the case he covered her when he stood, no more allured to try her with his hand than he might have been a flesh-tone on canvas, and went out without washing, and up without even a pause on deck for the air of day, straight to breakfast. For there was that: he found himself with a great appetite, and sometimes he went to two sittings.

As yet, things were still under control, though he found himself avoiding Father Martin as carefully as he did the fat woman who sat drawing an enamel-nailed finger down her tongue each time she turned a page of a shiny-surfaced paper book stamped with the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur, and the title in yellow, The Vatican and Holy Year. (She had caught him at breakfast, starting off the day with a covetous reference to “the lily-white flower of her virginity” which the little Spanish saint-to-be had died protecting.) Now Father Martin passed behind, engrossed in what sounded in his murmurs to be a Psalm of David. With him, Stanley had formerly led off a number of interesting conversations: the etymology of “atonement” (at-one-ment); the Augustinian doctrine (this did not get too far) of the Crucifixion as a ransom paid Satan to release mart from his power; of the decline of Satan (this got nowhere at all) from God’s official tempter to His arch-enemy. But now Stanley avoided him, as though afraid he would blurt out some betrayal of his state of mind, some image of its nature.

As for the Story of Barbara Ubrick, he had slipped that away and dropped it overboard, only to find her with Margaret Shepherd’s My Life in a Convent. “Wronged by a priest through the confessional” (he read), “when but a young girl, married to a priest, thrust into a convent with her baby and abandoned by the priestly brute who had promised to stand by her. It will hold you in its grip until through tears and heart-throbs . . .” That went overboard too, and was followed by the tale of Rosamond Culbertson (an American girl at the hands of Popish priests in Cuba), and Rebecca Reed’s Six Months in a Convent. And each time this happened, she looked up at Stanley with the same dismay anew, which sounded in her voice when she asked, —But isn’t that how it’s going to be? . . .

He swallowed with an effort at constriction which ran right down through the hand clutching the wrapped tooth in his pocket, gazing below at the shifting surfaces of white foam, and startled to see that he was not watching Paradise Lost, but a man’s hat afloat down there.

The touch of her hand on his clutching the rail startled him to withdraw it, and he watched her go down the deck, swaying with motions scarcely incurred by the roll of the ship, or even compatible with it, nothing at all to do with the sea, this brilliant unbroken expanse of sky and the sea bound only by one another, by now reality’s only terms: she walked off with the gait of the desert, the movements of a gypsy, or the ease of those women (though he had never seen such a company) who follow camels, and acquit the camels’ grace from behind, as they share the features before, with their own.

Stanley followed her. It was an abrupt decision, and he kept well behind and out of sight, hesitating round corners, behind ventilators, too heated to know if he feared being seen, or feared what he would finally see himself. At one turn he paused too long, and he lost her. He took a moment to congratulate himself on giving up such a reproachful pursuit, and then set off again frantically. He ran aft until he reached the set of outside steps leading up to First Class, and had already started up them when he saw her. She was standing alone at the rail below and she did not see him approach, nor see his humiliated retreat, for she was weeping.

Stanley went inside, and wandered vaguely through the Tourist Class smoking room. He stopped to read the weather report again, and he reread the same news bulletins that had been posted there in the morning. He had read the third item, a cargo ship which had broken in half and gone down off the Azores, twice, before he realized that he had read it earlier, and was only standing here, instead of working, waiting for first call to luncheon.

For the first time on the voyage, he drank down a glass of wine before a bit of food appeared; and during the meal he filled his glass four times from the carafe on the table. When he went below, he found her lying down. She appeared to him to be asleep, her face turned to the wall. Her figure lay entirely still on the bed, with no evidence of her breathing nor even any apparent response to the motion of the ship, which kept Stanley replacing his feet while he stood over her.

On the floor was a small folded card, lavishly decorated. It was something which had belonged to his mother, used here to the best purpose, making up to her for those damned and absurd books he had thrown overboard, and now he leaned over to pick it up: A remembrance of the venerable shrine of Saint Mary of the Angels, with a picture on the outside of Saint Francis receiving the Indulgence of the Portiuncula. Inside, on the one hand were glued three infinitesimal particles, labeled as a piece of the door of the cell where Saint Francis died in 1226, a piece of the Portiuncula, the church itself, and a piece of the pulpit where the Indulgence was proclaimed by Saint Francis and seven bishops; on the left hand were four leaves from the miraculous rosebushes of Saint Francis of Assisi, and beneath the marvelous history of how “One bitter winter’s night, Saint Francis being sorely tempted by the Devil to lessen his austerities overcame the evil one by throwing himself into a thicket of briars . . . rolling himself in it till his body was all torn and bleeding . . .” at which juncture the briars became full-blooming rose-trees, and in a heavenly brightness angels appeared to lead Saint Francis to the Portiuncula, where Our Lord with His Mother and a Heavenly Host granted the Indulgence, a “Plenary Indulgence which, after the devout reception of the Sacrament of Penance, can still be gained daily as often as one enters the Portiuncula . . . This indulgence can be applied to the souls in Purgatory.”

The card now was curled and still damp, as though she had been clutching it in the hand open palm up beside his face as he started to stand, and the roll of the ship moved him toward her, off balance and his cheek touching her hair. For a moment he hung there, as motionless as she; and then he moved his cheek very slowly, and back, against her hair. In her hair he felt his own hot breath. Her hair held it and burned his cheek, and he came down on one knee, turning his face into her fine hair and breathing more heavily, his eyes wide open. His whole face was burning, but he became aware of something else; and then of nothing else but the beat of his heart, pounding unevenly in a gigantic shape which grew from the depth of his chest to his neck, and with each beat, going more slowly.

She moaned, and came over on her back; but he could not move. She moaned something almost articulate, and then her lips stayed open, and loosened, and the lower one was drawn in. Her tongue showed at a corner of her mouth, and her lips closed, still showing the tip of the tongue as her jaw became rigid and her chin rose, and her whole body heaved up from the bed and came back delicately taut, and distended rose again, and returned with gentle force as she breathed so heavily, her face thrown back, that it seemed to empty the whole upper part of her body. Her breath felt as hot as his own, pouring over her ear which touched his lips now: still he could not move, still on one knee, gripping the side of the bed with both hands and his eyes still wide open, all his senses confused into the one he projected, listening. Because he was listening for the beat of his heart, which had not seemed to him to fill that whole room until he became aware that it no longer did, and waited, each throb heavier, and separated from the last by a dreadful distance.

Nothing moved, and he heard nothing. The metal plate under his knee was still, and he heard nothing at all, not even the engines; not even the engines which had paced his heart day after day and sustained it at night while he slept, so that its beats had vibrated through the whole ship, driving them on when it went faster and paced the engines with anticipation. Then the ship lurched, and a great surging sounded from behind. The engines started; and Stanley’s heart doubled their measure as he stood, lost his balance and fell back against the door.

She came up on one elbow, eyes open with alarm as though they had never been closed. —What is it? she cried out.

—I don’t know . . . he gasped, and pulled himself up against the door.

The engines had been reversed, and slowed now to a dull and far-off sound, as the ship rocked slightly and appeared to be still.

—Are we there? she burst out.

—There? . . . there? Where? he answered helplessly. Then he got hold of the door handle, and pulled it open.

In the passage, the fat woman had just reached that point. Her Machine came one way, a small three-penny paper book titled A Modern Virgin Martyr another, and she fell in at his feet. —I just know . . . she cried, —I just know . . . I just know . . .

Stanley stood there, staring dumbly at the wool-knit knee warmers drawn askew over knees the size of his own waist. —Cut arm-holes and I’d have two nice sweaters . . . He almost said that out loud, staring now with the glazed look of plain lunacy. Then her hand caught his knee, which almost broke, or gave way, and instead of reaching down to help her he grabbed with both hands for the door frame.

—I just know . . . She started to sink, and mumbling something he reached for her hand before she could seize his knee again. Everything seemed to be happening very slowly. He studied the inadequate ring on the hand he held, doubly miserable for having two mean pearls mounted at an angle to the thin line of gold which had almost been absorbed in the flesh: had she been given it when the ring and her hand still complemented one another? or bought it . . .

—Water! . . .

Sure enough, there was about a saucepanful of water in a quiet pool, with neither source nor destination apparent, there in the passage.

—My rosary! . . . The Thing glittered near his feet.

Stanley retrieved it, finally closed the door upon his guest, and came back and sat down. His shoulders were just beginning to sink when he leaped to his feet again. —What has happened? he cried out, losing balance again and coming down beside her on the bed. He took her hand, and together they hurried out.

The surface of the sea was blinding on the port side where they came on deck, and where other passengers already lined the rails. The days lost count of by now, people stared stupidly at the sea. Conversations inclined to tail off and disappear, as eyes were raised to that expanse of heaving indifference, as inevitable as it had been novel the first day out, and the face of one who talked, and one who listened at the rail turned from one another and lay as open and destitute of past, or future, or anything to give, as the vacant face of actuality they looked upon.

Stanley lifted a hand from the rail to hold the white hand which had been holding his. He looked at his wrist watch, then at her face, and then looking below again he simulated her expression, subdued but troubled, curious but not to know too much.

Lines were flung out, men’s voices rose to them, and directly beneath a loading port was opened in the side of the ship. There were six figures in the lifeboat that was finally pulled up to the side, men in torn shirts with blackened faces looking up without the particle of interest exciting the faces that looked down on them. Their boat rocked as they drew on the lines, caught the end of a rope ladder, moving with agile assurance, all but one. He was laid out across a thwart, and when a canvas sling was lowered two men got him in it, and held the sling back from bumping the side as it was raised. It came up slowly, toward Stanley who was directly above, and then, almost to the port, there was a hitch in the line which caught, jerked, and one end of the sling came open. Passengers participating breathlessly shared a sound of shock, a sharp in taking of breath as the head fell back and hung from one end of the sling. The face was dark, and covered with oil-slick which shone in the sun bringing out, even at this distance, the square high-boned lines of the face, the jaw set rigid as though held by the lines drawn down from the nose, breaking the flat cheeks, and the eyes, even closed in unconsciousness, held tight as though with effort.

—You wouldn’t think . . . Stanley commenced, turning to her. She raised her face from the one below slowly to his, paling, all the color gone from her lips which quivered round a word, and she fainted.

Stanley caught her against the rail and looked up for help. He met square with a face a deck above, looking down beyond him with eyes which had their color and their substance from the sea beneath but too light, and even as Stanley looked, too watery, for the glare of the sea in the declining sun had turned to a vast surface of molten metal. The face up there was as pale as the one Stanley supported against his chest, and the figure, in a dark blue striped suit, one arm in a black sling rested on the rail, withdrew and disappeared.

—Now he’s cute . . . came from further along on the promenade deck above, and Stanley, still craning, could see through the grating a tall blond creature in an overcoat, a bright pink hem hanging out beneath it, toes of a bare foot peeping through the scuppers. —If I’d only brought just one of those Boy Scouts . . .

—My dear boy, isn’t this a divine miracle? The fat woman’s voice brought Stanley back to himself, and the weight he was supporting. He held her still against the rail, and raised her face. Her eyes were still closed but a smile moved her lips.

—Now there’s something, the fat woman said, —something I wanted to ask you. An American candy bar was flourished in Stanley’s face for a tempting moment by the pearl-laden hand. —Would you like some? he was asked as though he were standing there empty-handed himself.

—No, I . . . please, please excuse me . . .

—Now what could it have been? . . .

Stanley turned to the face close to him. —Are you . . . can you walk now? he asked, and got no answer but the unsteady lifting of her weight from against him. He supported her with an arm round her waist. She walked with her head down, did not raise her face until they had reached the foot of the first flight of steps.

—We are going to him? she asked. Stanley mumbled something, —Mmhmm, pretending to be engrossed in the effort of helping her. They finally reached the passage where the pool of water moved from one side to the other with the roll of the deck, and not until he opened the door and closed it behind them did she utter a little cry, and then, looking round, —Where is he?

She asked with a smile, as though Stanley were playing a game with her, but he said,

—Now, lie down. Lie down. You lie down for a minute . . .

—But where is he? the smile left her face as she looked at him.

—Now you lie down for a minute . . .

—Where is he? she cried out.

—Who? Stanley brought out finally, standing as though afraid to approach her for she had come more alive than he had ever seen her, ever, he realized, except at night when the lights had gone out.

—The man . . . they took out of the sea? She became unsteady for a moment, appealing to him.

—Why they . . . he . . . the one they brought up in that thing, he’s probably in the ship hospital, he . . . but you . . .

—Oh yes . . . she whispered hoarsely, —take me. She came toward Stanley, toward the door behind him. —Take me there, take me to him.

—No you . . . now you lie down. He seized her arm and they struggled. Her strength was remarkable, more than his, but desperate and unable to sustain itself, while Stanley fought to hold her away from the door, to hold her back and away from himself, as though he knew from experience what he was doing, though even this did not mitigate the terror in his eyes, struggling with certainty, and the certainty that he would finally lose: for he was shocked at her strength, but not with surprise, shocked with familiarity. It was the same strength he fought at night: the same dreadfully familiar twisting body, the same hard fingers twisted in his, nails cutting the backs of his hands bending them back, drawing them down, the same leg wound around his, the shoulder wrenching away and then dug sharply into his chest, the same arm suddenly flung round his neck, the same hot face, and hot breath, and the hair blinding him, suffocating him, wet with his own sweat and burning with his own breath, until now he got two arms under hers, and with his hands up on her shoulders from behind held her away, her head flung back, fingertips digging into his arms, he stood unsteadily with a leg through between hers and her body still twisting against his where they met.

He was weak, and he clung to her. All this time the motion of the ship had kept them up, where one who might have lost balance on a level floor and gone down was buoyed up from behind as the deck rose, but now, as the port side came up again, and no struggle to sustain them, they went down. His balance gone, Stanley managed to push one more step toward the bed, and there came down on top of her.

—Let me . . . take me . . . she whispered, almost piercing his shoulders with her nails, as he still held her, and could not let go. He could not move, though she writhed under him; he could not breathe, though her breath poured up at his face and was withdrawn sharply, raising his chest on hers; and though her eyes were closed he could not close his own but stared at all this, familiar and dreadfully light. Then Stanley’s shoulders shook, and he twisted hers back in his hands. His elbows dug into the bed and his chin came up, his legs hardened and his feet lapped one over the other came rigid and straight to the toes, the rigor of death setting into every extremity as life went out of him, dissolving his senses, melting everything in him until it was drained away, and his head dropped, eyes closed on the pillow.

He recovered suddenly, pulling himself up on his elbows, the same shock of consciousness that woke him every morning. It seemed a full minute before his heart took up beating, and then pounded relentlessly. He threw his face down into the pillow, and pulled the pillow up on either side of his head, his whole frame shaking. Then he raised his head and looked round the empty room. He threw his feet over the side of the bed and stood up, caught his balance on the back of a chair, started a step and then, his eyes fallen on his unfinished work, palimpsests on one side of the table and clean scores on the other, but vacant, staring eyes, he hung there, suspended, —Anathema . . .

Then he moved slowly. Stepping with feet wide apart he gained the chair, where he sat down and drew off his trousers and then, without looking down, his drawers. Then he got up and wet a towel and, looking away from what he was doing, saw first his face in a cabinet mirror, turned quickly to escape it from that to the wall and saw there the yellowed crucifix, moving gently on its nail. He closed his eyes and stopped, a hand to his forehead, and there was a knock at the door. He waited, his shoulders drawn tight, paralyzed. The knock sounded again. He stepped to the door, not knowing whether he was going to open it or hold it closed.

—My dear boy. . . . he heard from the passage, and waited, holding the door, until there was a snort, and heavy footsteps, receding. Then he opened the mirrored cabinet door, got out a pair of clean drawers, gazed at the blue suit unworn since his mother’s funeral, hanging there, swinging gently as though to recall him to it, and turned his back quickly. He got on the clean drawers, hopping about on one foot and then the other, informally, as though pursued by puffs of wind from different and unexpected directions. He hesitated over the trousers he’d been wearing, fell back on the bed pulling them on, and was out and up the passage a moment later, the drawers and the wet towel wadded into a bundle which he threw over the side when he reached the deck.

It was dark, night swelling and falling around him, and there was a moon. He clung there staring at it. And in its light the ship seemed to fleet over the surface scarcely touching the water but to break its crests, a spectacular unreality which sent a shudder of excitement through his emptied frame, fleeing with no more weight than the weak ship’s lights above him. He clung as though to save himself from going over, not falling, but simply going over the side and out onto that swarming brilliance where everything would be all right at last.

When he would look back over it all, what had happened, and what was yet to happen, this was the last moment of the voyage that he honestly, clearly remembered.

Father Martin’s face was illuminated full from an uncurtained porthole, standing with his back to the rail on the First Class deck. Up the steps, Stanley started to rush toward him when a light sprang up in the face of the man talking to the priest, a light cupped in one hand against the wind, to show the face strong in profile, the eye shining from its surface. The light went down, drawn by a cigarette, flared up as the man shrugged, and went over the side a red speck. —Of course I still am, my dear fellow. We’re both probably working on the same thing now.

—You haven’t changed, the priest said after a pause.

—Semper aliquid haeret . . . you remember?

The priest turned his back and went up the deck. Had he followed him, Stanley might sooner have found what he was after, for a few yards on Father Martin was stopped by a hospital attendant to whom he listened for a moment and then followed quickly. But the shadow remained at the rail and Stanley turned away from it, and soon got lost.

In a bar, Don Bildow caught his coattail. —I didn’t know you were on board! . . . I want you to meet Miss Hall. Mrs. Hall? Mrs. Hall.

—How do you do, excuse me I . . .

Don Bildow, in a threadbare light brown suit, yellow and brown necktie, and plastic-rimmed glasses, stood up looking translucent. —Wait . . . he said, turning his back on Mrs. Hall.

—But I can’t, I . . .

Don Bildow was clutching a recent copy of the small stiff-covered magazine which he edited, and, from the stains on the cover, it looked as if he had been carrying it for some time. From his eyes, it looked as if he had had a good deal to drink. “Mrs. Hall” was watching him critically from behind. —Listen Stanley, I’ve always thought of you as a . . . somebody I can . . . somebody I share a lot with . . . said Don Bildow with a hand on Stanley’s shoulder, appraising him for some mutual infirmity, —and I . . . listen Stanley, have you got any Methyltestosterone? I’m with this girl, see? This Mrs. . . . this girl, and she . . . you know she wants me to go up to her cabin with her now but I haven’t got . . . I didn’t bring any Methyltestosterone, I mean I had some but my wife . . . I left it . . . Have you got any?

—I . . . excuse me, I don’t even know what it is, I have to go. Stanley broke away from the limp grasp, and turned a few feet away recalling, thinking he might have asked Don Bildow if he had seen her; but Don Bildow was back deep in conversation, telling “Mrs. Hall” about —My little daughter, she’s only six and she was all swollen up when I left, I shouldn’t have left I know it, I have terrible guilt feelings about it, all swollen up in the middle . . .

—And you’re the young man who wanted to trade some Dramamine for some Phenobarbital?

Stanley turned to the tall woman, automatically held out his hand as he was accustomed to do when something was offered.

—But what do you need them for, you’re all right, the tall woman’s husband demanded. —You can walk, I can’t even walk.

—They’re not for me, she said to him, —they’re for Huki-lau . . . now where did that boy go?

At the door, Stanley had to wait a moment.

—After you, Senator.

—After you, Mister Senator.

—Senator, you’ll be doing me a great service if you’ll go first and help me out, I can’t even see the door, sir.

Stanley saw her pass, outside on the deck, running. —Excuse me, I . . .

—What? . . . Senator?

—Excuse me, sir, I . . .

—Oops! . . .

—I’m sorry, I . . .

She was not in sight, but Stanley hurried in the direction she’d gone. He dropped the sticky pills into his pocket, found the tooth, and ran clutching it. Rounding another corner, he saw her feet through a flight of steps; but when he reached them, and got up them, she was gone again. He stopped to get breath. A man in a dinner jacket approached, and Stanley, thinking, stopped him to ask for the ship’s hospital.

—You don’t look ill, my boy. Stay out and get a little air, thet’ll straighten you up quicker than all the ductors . . .

Stanley ran on over the metal plates, and finally he did reach the ship’s hospital, but she was not there. At any rate he did not see her when he came in. Few of the beds were occupied, and round one stood a screen against which shadows moved, and he went there.

From within came the steady murmur of Spanish, interrupted but unbroken by subdued words in Father Martin’s voice. Stanley stood listening to the confession, bound, not understanding its features but only what it was. Then the murmur subsided, broke in a cough, took up again more rapidly and abruptly ceased. There was silence. The shadows on the screen moved, and then Father Martin’s voice took up, a monody hardly breaking the reciprocal sounds which bound the ship in motion, no more pressing or importunate, and no more faltering than the movement of the ship itself into the darkness. Bells sounded somewhere, clear tones which penetrated the misereatur, hard separate sounds which signaled the Latin syllables with consequence: Stanley was counting them. For no reason, he had never learned the simple system of ship’s bells and seven might be any hour; but now each one pinioned his tension, waiting for the next, listening, as he waited watching the shadows, for one of them to take form and move of itself. Then the bells stopped and left him swaying on the firm undulations,

—Per istam unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam . . . He smelled oil, or it seemed, burning oil, —indulgeat tibi Dominus . . . the shadow of an erect thumb drew out elongated on the screen. —Quidquid deliquisti per oculos . . . Then he saw her, moving slowly and more clear as she approached the light, her dress wrinkled and torn at the bosom, hair in disarray, and catching light her eyes were wild. —Deliquisti per aurem . . . the voice came on with intolerable slowness, and that because its progress seemed to draw her on and restrain her at once. —Deliquisti per manus . . .

When she broke and ran toward the screen Stanley stayed her no more than a shadow thrown across her. Nor did her body when she flung it forth heaving with sobs, seem to disturb more than a shadow so suddenly fallen upon him the figure laid out there, exposed for the last touch of forgiveness upon the flesh where all of its impulses reared in one. And like a ragged shadow her hair almost covered his lined face, and her left arm round his head and his shoulder in her other hand so forcefully that it appeared to rise slightly from the bed, nothing moving but her lips on his ear, —Oh yes . . . her voice broke but she would not leave it, —Oh yes, oh yes . . . Oh yes . . .

The left hand of the man on the bed came up slowly. It moved as though with life of its own into the shadow of her thigh, and there under a final hieroglyph of veins it came to rest.

Then there was no sound, of voices nor of any voice: and without, her shape flung down there appeared no longer dirigible. The only thing to bind time together was the reciprocal motion of the ship: yet in the moments of the prow dropping forth into a trough far ahead and shaking the fragments of its advance down in shudders all about them, Stanley had long since begun, repeated every motion of battle, every twist of the past convulsed nights, every skirt and dash in this sciamachy brought up firm now with Father Martin’s hand on his shoulder until he straightened himself back to its force, straining away at last, rending away his spoil and leaving a dead man laid out in the light.

Together they staggered down decks, down steps, companionways, passages, nearly fell in the pool shifting just before their own door, and once inside it was as though they’d never left: buff-painted metal walls studded with double rows of rivets, metal above transected by a steel I-beam, steel under foot in plates lapped with rivets, the closed door flush and no way out but the ventilator, and this whole severe enclosure of angles driven by vibrations, in motion with no direction, it was more than as though they had never left it, as though they could never leave it, and had never been anywhere else. Stanley looked at his wrist watch, as though knowing what time it was might confirm something.

—Why did you take me away from him? she asked quietly.

Stanley looked up from the watch face to hers, and gaped at her. —But he wasn’t . . . he isn’t . . . you . . . That’s all he could say; but she was still waiting, standing still against the roll of the ship and staring at him, her plain dress wrinkled and torn at the breast where he’d torn it, and on her face a look like she’d had that day he found her in the hospital, a day in his childhood it struck him now. He took one step toward her and raised his hand. —Now . . . and he stopped as though something had caught in his throat: he had started to tell her to lie down, as though that could ever be an innocent proposal again, and a pain of a novel and intimate sort shot through him from behind to confirm the cleaned empty feeling his weak legs supported in witness.

—Why?

Stanley recovered the step he had taken forward, back. He saw streaks glistening on her face, but not tears. They were streaks from the anointed face she had thrown herself upon. And throwing both hands before him Stanley burst out, —But why did you . . . who was he? . . . how did you know who he was?

—He was? . . . she repeated, and —Oh, he was. She put fingers to her forehead and lowered her eyes, and then let her hand go down to an ear and stop at the empty lobe. —For he knows who I am, though he had so little to share . . . so precious little. And did you never know him? she asked, raising her face to Stanley, —his eyes, not the eyes of a lover, no, never but once. He brought lilies when selling them was against the law. Against the law? . . . to sell lilies? Still touching the lobe of her ear, she was looking away from him now, and went on, her voice low, —Not a lover, not looking to find what was there but for what he could put there, and so selfishly take it away. But he didn’t! He didn’t! He didn’t! she cried, and she threw herself on Stanley.

He fell back against the door, and his arms raised, prepared of their own accord to fight, for he was not, found themselves supporting her, sobbing in weak broken cries which were caught up in desperate gasps for breath. But even these sounds so close that his own chest shook with them seemed far away as he dragged her across the steel plates, staggering, catching his foot on a riveted seam, and ready to smash his head on the floor before her weight could pull him down on the bed with her distant sobs, for the sound of his own heart engulfed them both, the steel room shuddered with its pounding, a half-measure and then a full one, and both of them shut inside it, locked in the riveted steel enclosure, a heart in motion with no direction.

—Let me out! she screamed, and he pushed her, catching himself on the sharp corner of a metal bureau as she fell back on the bed, the port side rising behind him, and she hit her head against the rivet row, and the crucifix fell and stabbed her shoulder.

It was the crucifix Stanley recovered first, and he stood there with it in his trembling hand staring at the drawn yellowed legs, rigid, hard-muscled straight to the toes, and then, the chest raised stiffly motionless, the chin thrust up and the unseeing eyes wide open. He had stopped breathing. The trembling crucifix lowered from his fixed gaze and he was staring at her, only a blur before him.

Her head lay over on one shoulder, lolling gently against the steel behind her, eyes closed, and she whimpered. Faint streaks and blotches had begun to show on her pale face, and Stanley bent over her. He started to talk loudly as his heart took up again with the engines and the whole thing of metal angles straining against each other enclosed overtook him, —Listen, listen . . . listen to me . . . He dropped the crucifix beside her and took her shoulders. Her head fell forward. —Listen to me . . . He laid her back on the bed, got her legs up, and then pulled the crucifix out from under her and put it over beside her head. He stared at her still face for a moment, then got up and got a glass of water. He looked for a towel, found none, and so he dipped his fingers in and drew them over her forehead, saying now, —Listen, you can’t have . . . I didn’t mean . . . you can’t have hurt yourself, you . . . listen . . .

She opened her eyes staring straight at him, and said finally, —Will you always keep me here?

—No, no, I . . . because even I, I can’t stand . . .

—Will we go to him now?

—Yes, I . . . no, you . . . now, now you have to rest for a minute for a little while. Now we, listen, both of us have to . . . where did I . . . Where did you put that . . . that rosary I gave you, that . . . those silvery beads I gave you, where are they? . . . because we . . .

She just stared at him. Stanley got up and started looking frantically round. In a pocket, a hand as frantic as his eyes found the tooth, and two sticky pills clinging to its wrapping.

The rosary was Italian, of silver filigree beads, with a filigree cross at the end of it. He saw it in a heap on the bureau where he’d just come from, and brought it back to her, going down on one knee beside her. —Listen, now we both . . . after what we’ve both . . . listen, the Angelic Salutation. The An-gel-ic, Salu-tation, do you remember it? Ave . . . listen, repeat it with me. Take this . . . He thrust the rosary beads into her hands, still on her belly. —Ave Maria . . .

Her torn dress was pulled to the tip of her breast, which lay still as though she were not breathing. The beads lay over her motionless fingers with their colorless nails. She stared at him.

She stared at him through four repetitions, her breast just as still, the beads unmoved by her fingers and their colorless nails, the streaks on her face reddening. Then she burst into laughter.

The port side came down with a shudder; and Stanley went back on his heels: he’d never heard such a sound, thrown down on him from every side from the metal walls. All he could say was, —No! . . . No! . . . until he did manage to get hold of the crucifix. —No, now . . . now listen, you . . . Him who . . . He who . . . whose love was so great . . . whose love for us was so great that He gave up His life . . . He . . . He . . .

—He! . . . she cried out, —then take me to him!

—No, I mean, not him, I mean . . . here. Stanley thrust the crucifix into her hands raised before her, the beads in a heap in her lap. For the moment his hand held it, his fingers trembled on the rigid yellow figure. The new significance his own body had given it made him dizzy, and he swallowed with the effort sea-sickness cost him.

She was staring at it too. Her eyes shone brilliantly, and she gripped it with great excitement. Stanley stood up before her. He watched her, waiting for her to confirm him in some transfiguration of faith, what, he did not know. She raised her eyes. They were glittering from her hollow face.

—This h-horrid thing, she said, and threw it at him.

Stanley reached automatically to catch it, but the instant his fingers touched it, they stiffened and it fell.

—Your terrible little man with nails in him, she cried, —your muttering and your muttering, and that . . . terrible thing. She stood up. —For love? For love? Oh never, never, never. I know whose love must save me as I must be for love. And you cannot keep me from him. You cannot keep me from him. You cannot, nor Him dead with nails in, not for love.

There was a knock on the door, and before Stanley could open it or hold it closed, there was the fat woman filling the doorway. —My dear boy, my book, I lost it and I must have lost it here. My book about our little Spanish saint?

She stared at Stanley and beyond him. Stanley found the yellow three-penny pamphlet on the floor, and got it.

—But I won’t take it if you’re reading it, the fat woman said, standing curiously still in the rocking doorway. —The lovely child! . . . preferring death to sin. I liked the part . . .

—Here, take it! Stanley said.

—I liked the part like where she’s getting ready, for First Communion? “Take care of your tongue,” the priest told her, “for it’s the first part of you to touch the body of Our Lord . . .”

The fat woman stood there, filling the doorway. She had a small mouth, lips lined with a coral shade, which she pursed impatiently. She stood there, curiously still.

The rosary flew through the air.

—Go fuck yourself!

Stanley turned his head slowly. He saw no features, only livid red streaks. The silver filigree beads rolled all over the floor. He leaned over to pick up the crucifix.

—You are possessed, said the fat woman. Stanley brought his head up slowly before her, as he recovered the crucifix, afraid of the expression on the coral lips, afraid the fat woman would knock him down in an attack on the figure behind him, whom she’d just judged: but the fat woman was looking straight at him. She watched what he was doing, and as he stood, fixed her small eyes on his. The coral lips continued to twist silently. Then she turned from the doorway and went up the passage, the yellow three-penny pamphlet in the hand with the two mean pearls.

Stanley bolted the door, and turned his back against it. The cross he held was whole, but the figure mounted there was broken across the knees, and the chin was gone. He laid it face down on the bureau and turned with a hand in his pocket, where he felt the tooth and the two pills stuck to its wrapping.

Then he was grappling with her again. At one point they were thrown a hand or two apart, and Stanley looked up to the mirror in the cabinet door for reassurance, but he saw only himself. The ship heeled over, the door swung gently to, and the mirror embraced them both again but he did not see, for at the moment he was forced to renew the struggle, with the single mirror image before his eyes.

Her strength gave out suddenly; and he finally managed to get her to take the two sleeping pills, thinking, as the second one disappeared, that he might have kept it for himself. Then he started to pick up the filigree silver beads. He found the Portiuncula card torn in half, and paused, piecing it together, but his shaking hands could not make the edges meet. He gave that up and laid it with the crucifix, stared for a full minute at the bed, and the silent figure he saw there, then looked wildly about as though indeed himself seeking a briar patch. He shuddered as though with cold, and went back to hunting the beads.

Each time he reached for one it rolled away from his hand, as he concluded a Gloria Patri on the last. Mumbling Aves in between, each time he caught one he renewed the devotion with a Paternoster, recovering, after sixteen centuries, the pebbles which the hermit Paul threw away to keep count of his daily three hundred prayers.

The stem broke a path in the water as the ship ground its way into the night, and the sea washed well below the nineteenth-century monogram on the side, a more intricate device than the cross painted at the load line on those Pilgrim Galleys carrying devotees on their quest for relics, to Jerusalem for stones from Saint Anne’s church, for pregnant women, reeds for women in labor from Saint Catherine’s fountain at Sinai, and for barren women, roses from Jericho.

Asleep in the chair, Stanley had a bad dream, the worse for its dreadful familiarity, though, waking in the dark, he could not remember what it was. But at hand he heard twisting, turning, moaning —Yes, if there is time yes, oh yes . . . Oh yes . . .

Stanley found himself perspiring freely. His clothes were damp and his drawers almost wet, still he did not dare turn on the light, fearing its confirmation of everything he imagined the darkness to hold in abeyance as he pulled a coat round him and shivered, listening, to her sounds, and the pounding of his own heart driving them forward toward Gibraltar and the inland sea, as hearts have driven them down through centuries, from the ones peering into the cave at Bethlehem where the bodies of the Holy Innocents were hurled (and more than willing, upon turning round, to pay a hundred ducats for the knife-slashed body of a still-born Saracen child), to their descendents gathered at the burning of a celebrated poisoner of Paris, the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, her gifts thus solemnized at the stake, and her ashes sought as preservative against witchcraft.

Dawn broke, in the full glory of the dawn at sea. Some white birds had appeared. They hung behind the aftermast, breaking now and then to come down to the water for a look at anything thrown over the side. The rising sun found Stanley running damp and disheveled down a starboard deck. He paused at a ladder, hung on its wet railing to get breath, and then buttoned himself up in a number of places. He looked slightly surprised at the sun, as though it were an intruder, and might be a helpful one; but soon gave that up and carried on. His mustache looked like something he had fallen into, and his hair stood out in a heavy tangle behind. A waiter from the Tourist Class dining room stood to the rail out of his way, apparently taking for granted that Stanley was being pursued. But Stanley slid straight up to him, making a grab for him with one hand, waving the other,

—Have you seen her? Have you seen her?

—Ma signorino, che . . .

But Stanley was off again; and the waiter stood there at the rail for a good half-minute looking in the direction Stanley had come from, with the unhealthy expectancy of someone who has seen a number of American moving pictures.

Stanley covered a good part of the ship. At one point he almost made the chart room. At another he skidded into a tall white-haired man in a blanket robe and straw slippers, with the same question.

—Heving a bit of a run, eh? Good thing, better for you then all the ductors . . . good heavens. Ghood heavens! . . .

Stanley caromed off the rail, made another ladder, and was up it. In the ship’s hospital he found the bed which had been a center of activity the night before, empty. Though Stanley could hardly know it, waking as he had, alone and moist, to jump up and spill those silver filigree beads all over the floor again, she hadn’t got much head start on him, and perhaps as little idea, he did realize when he found her still running, of where she was going as he had.

And —Dead! she said when he did find her, and caught her wrist to hold her back.

Up the deck, now a covered one and near the water line, a group of silent men surrounded a long canvas sack, where Father Martin presided, a book in one hand, raising the other at the regular somnambulistic intervals of ritual.

—Dead! . . . and that damned black andro-gyne. He did it.

—But now you . . . now you . . . now . . .

—You know, you saw him, too, apply the poison, and the envenomed words . . .

—Now now now . . .

—No! . . . don’t hold me here . . .

—Some Spaniard’s all it is, I heard him talk. I heard the Viaticum last night and heard him talking Spanish.

—Let me go!

Upwind on the deck, none of them heard her cry out, none of them turned at any rate; and holding her, Stanley finally realized that she was making no effort to escape him.

With a sign, Father Martin was still, and the other figures took up his motion, as slow and as careful, they slid the weighted canvas bundle over the side.

With the splash, the birds came down immediately. The men and the priest had left the rail and gone forward, for the dawn was very bright on the water, and dazzled the eyes. Then she broke away from him and ran toward the rail. Stanley hesitated in surprise, and then started after her to hold her before she could jump.

But she stopped, and stared down at the dazzling sea.

Stanley stopped, and recollected enough to cross himself. Then he looked out, at the glare of the sea stretching everywhere the sky was not, and the notion of land as impossible to him as daylight on wakening from a nightmare, the sea the man had come out of, and gone back to. Then he recalled his dream: he had been crossing the street, carrying a tiny shawl-wrapped figure, and he met Anselm.

—No! . . . she cried out at the rail; and Stanley shut his eyes on the dream, opened them again on the sea, which had lost the glare of sunrise. The sea, romantic in books, or dreams or conversation, symbol in poetry, the mother, last lover, and here it was, none of those things before him. Romantic? this heaving, senseless actuality? alive? evil? symbolical? shifting its surfaces in imitation of life over depths the whole fabric of darkness, of blind life and death. Boundlessly neither yes or no, good nor evil, hope nor fear, pretending to all these things in the eyes that first beheld it, but unchanged since then, still its own color, heaving with the indifferent hunger of all actuality.

Stanley looked down, to steady himself as he took a step toward her, and the lines in the grain of the wooden rail swam over against themselves in imitation of the surface of the water, stretching like this beyond the morning mists which belied the horizon to where Africa lay, unknown to the senses, but borne in insinuations on the wind from the south. The ship heaved, shuddered, dropped its bows on the water. Down below, the white birds, finding nothing, startled by the clap of the hull, fled coming up all together, and away, like the fragments of a letter torn up and released into the wind.

—O Christ, the plough . . .

—O Christ the what?

—the laughter, of holy white birds . . .

—What you reading? a poem? You know, you don’t look so good. The man at the rail held out his glass. —Take a swat at this? He shrugged at the look of horror with which his offer was received, but continued to stare at the figure in the deck chair, a man who, in any other circumstances, might have been described as of comfortable middle age. Engulfed in the flow of a tartan lap robe and folds of Irish thorn-proof, he stared fixedly at an open book and moved his lips with precise effort.

The man at the rail took a bottle from his pocket to replenish his glass, and stared out over the water, through the morning mists toward the indistinct mound on the horizon. —That broken-down bump doesn’t look like a life-insurance ad from here, he muttered, spat over the side, and wiped his chin. He had appeared on all fours, though somewhat taliped because of the glass he maintained upright in one hand, growling at a dog leashed to a tall woman who passed in the opposite direction, —a Hawaiian poodle dog, he explained. —Did you see what it’s wearing? I asked her what the hell it was. A chastity belt, it’s made out of plastic. Made in England. Huki-lau will need it among those naughty Spanish doggies, she says to me. Jesus. Grrrr-rouf! he lunged after the dog. —You getting off at Gib too? The figure in the deck chair responded with a feeble sound, amended with a nod. —Me too. Some spic sued my newspaper, they pay the bastard off and then send me all the way the hell over here to see what the hell is going on. They think he’s blowing the money on a patron saint. You know, you don’t look so good. He had straightened up and leaned back against the rail, sipping. —What you got in the paper bag? To be sick in?

—Bread.

—Bread?

The figure in the deck chair made an infirm gesture overhead.

—Oh, for the birds? The newsman steadied his glass at the rail and got a handful of bread out of the bag. —You look fermiliar somehow, you know? It’s the first time I’ve seen you on deck the whole trip. The man in the deck chair made a vague gesture, down. —Oh, you been sick in your cabin? You missed all the fun then, you hear about it? the shipwreck? The man in the deck chair startled visibly. —We picked up these poor bastards in a lifeboat, one of them died yesterday and they dumped him back where they got him. An old tub called the Purdue Victory, it busted right in half. He paused to dip a bit of bread into his glass, and throw it at a seagull. —A foot of barnacles on the hull, salt water leaking in the fresh water tanks, rust flakes like your fist painted right over, they get in this storm and the rudder chain snaps, the sea swings it right around like a fighter turns a guy around in the ring when he’s groggy to finish him off. Pow! The damn thing broke in half and went down in two minutes, both ends of it. They were going to scrap it anyway after this trip, you know? But that company’s got a good lobby in Congress or it would have been scrapped ten years ago. So now with deep remorse for the guys who were drownded they collect a quarter of a million bucks insurance. Breaks your heart. He flung another whisky-soaked wad of bread heavenward, and watched his new deck companion labor a deep swallow and return to the printed page. —Whose poems? He squatted to look at the cover. —John Mansfield? You get them out of the First Class saloon? The man in the deck chair nodded. He tried a smile but it was obliterated by a grimace of swallowing.

—Sail on! sail on and on and on, you remember that one? Columbus? Behind him lay the blue Azores, behind him lay the Gates of Hercules, you remember that poem? Speak, brave Admiral, what shall I say? Why say, sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on . . . The newsman struggled to an almost vertical position against the rail and drank off half his glass. —He knew where he was going all the time, Columbus did. Did you know that? he confided. —Sail on, sail on, he knew he wasn’t going to India. You know how he knew? Because the Portuguese already discovered America. The King of Portugal took one look at it and said to hell with it. You know who his mapmaker was? It was Columbus’s brother. All the King of Portugal wants to do is get the spics the hell out of competition in the spice trade, so his mapmaker slips Columbus these maps so he can go discover America for Ferdinando and Isabella, give them something to keep them busy and get the hell out of the spice trade. The stout mate said, lo! the very stars are gone. My men grow mutinous wan and weak . . . And all the time Columbus is keeping two sets of logs on the ship, he fakes a set to pretend they’re only half as far out as they think, while he knows they’re going to America all the time. You know what Columbus discovered in America? Syphilis. They all crossed the ocean to get laid. Now speak brave Admiral, what shall I say? . . . With a full slice of whisky-soaked bread, he lunged into —Sail on! . . . tripped over the foot rest of the deck chair, and caught a foot under the rail. The bottle flew from his pocket, slid down the scuppers and smashed. He lay for a moment staring at the glass still gripped upright in his hand. Then without changing his position he raised his chin from the deck and drank it down, struggled to his feet, and calling out, —Here, chum, to a seagull flying as though hung suspended beside the ship, threw his empty glass at it.

The man in the deck chair opened his eyes. The hulk of Gibraltar was closer. Direct above, a white gull fixed him with a cold eye. He looked back at his book, and a few minutes passed while he looked up nervously and back at the page, until finally he got the paper bag and with an indecisive gesture attempted to toss a bit of bread up. The bird swooped.

—What’s the matter, scared you?

—Up there flying, they’re beautiful, but so close . . .

—Scared you, huh? The newsman recovered the rail limping, and pulled up his trouser cuff. —It’s going up like a balloon, he said looking at his ankle. —Look at that broken-down rock, they ought to sink it. But oh no! Not the limeys. That would make too much sense. Instead they have this crazy superstition about these baboons that run all over the place there, that they’ll lose Gibraltar when there aren’t any more. So what do they do, they fly these sunset-assed baboons in from Africa when the stock gets low. They run all over the place there. How would you like to look up and see some sunset-assed baboon looking in your bedroom window? he challenged. —They don’t hurt anybody, you know. Except the Y.M.C.A. It’s yellow, the building. It makes them mad as hell. They come down and throw rocks at it. How’d you like to be a member of the Gibraltar Young Men Christians Association with a bunch of sunset-assed baboons throwing rocks at you? Favoring his swelling ankle he leaned on the rail and gazed back at the wake of the ship. —Behind him lay the Gates of Hercules. The blanched mate showed his teeth and said, brave Admiral, speak!

The man in the deck chair mastered a liquid swallow, and heaved slightly fixing his eyes on The Everlasting Mercy, reading under his breath in precise gasps, —Chra-hist, the laughter of hu-ho-white birds flying . . .

—A light! A light! Sail on, sail on. The son of a bitch knew where he was going all the time.

Stanley woke to cold hands opening his pants from behind, and lay there with his eyes wide open for a moment as the fingers became more intimate.

From somewhere, there came music. It was the tango, Jealousy.

Then he almost leaped out of the bed. —What are you . . . who are you? he cried, turning on the woman in white. She had a generous Scandinavian face. —Now wait, now wait, now wait . . .

—Now you lie down, she said. —You just lie down. I want to give you this suppository, sonny.

—This what? He stared at the cone between her fingers. It was Nembutal sodium in a cocoa-butter base. Then he stared at her. She smiled, and got his shoulder in a bone-breaking grip. Then he looked round him. The place was rocking gently. —I’m in the ship hospital? he asked. Then he looked at his wrist and said, —Who stole my watch?

—You’ll be all right, now you just roll over and let me give you this suppository . . .

—Get me out of this bed, he burst out.

—You have to stay in bed for a little while longer . . .

—No but not this bed, not this bed . . . look all the other beds are empty, put me in another one, put me in that bed but not this bed . . .

With a pleasant smile and a turn of her wrist, she spun him round and his face went into the pillow. —But you . . . can’t you . . . wait . . .

—Just relax the buttocks now . . . tha-at’s it . . .

—But can’t you . . . ummp!

—That will help you rest, sonny.

—But I don’t want to rest. You can’t just keep me here. Where’s my watch? What day is it? And where . . . where is she?

The woman looked concerned for the first time, and she said, —Now we mustn’t start that again, must we.

—Start . . . what again?

A waiter entered and started to approach with some food on a tray. Then he saw Stanley was sitting up, with eyes wide open. He put the tray down a safe distance away, and said, —Coraggio . . .

—Now what was that? Stanley demanded as the waiter got out the door.

—He’s the one who saved you from jumping over the side.

Stanley lay back slowly. —The side of what? he murmured, but she did not hear him. She was busy unmaking a bed.

Spots of sun danced brokenly off the ceiling and down one wall. Stanley’s head came back to rest against a metal bar of the bed. —But no . . . why would I . . . he commenced, raising a hand to his face. He touched his cheek, then his chin, pulled his hand away and stared at it, then began to rub his chin again. It was rough with stubble. —But how long have I . . . how long have I been here?

—Lie back and don’t try to remember everything now, sonny boy, said the woman in white. —Lie back and get some sleep. She emptied a pillowcase briskly.

—But I do, I remember everything. I remember everything perfectly. Everything except . . . except that, if I did that, but I . . . I wouldn’t do that. No! . . . He came up on his elbows again, —No it wasn’t me that tried it, it was her, don’t you remember? But wait, listen, first put me into another bed, I can’t stay in this bed. Any of the other beds, they’re all empty and it doesn’t matter but . . . Then he stopped. There was someone two beds away from him. A face, clean-shaven but weary looking, rested on a doubled-up hand, the elbow dug into the pillow, watching him with patient curiosity. The covers were pulled up over the head, so that only the face showed. —What do you think I am, a seagull?

—Oh no, I’m . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t see you, I hope I didn’t disturb you but I . . . I didn’t see you.

—That’s all right, chum. I been listening to you for a long time now, I’m used to it. Have a swat at this? A bottle appeared, from under the pillow.

—Oh no, no thank you, no but listen . . .

—Play cards?

—No but listen, what do you mean you’ve been listening to me for a long time?

—Right up until you were excommunicated, since then you been real quiet, you know?

—Since I was what?

—You got excommunicated, right up at the high altar with a bishop and twelve priests, don’t you remember? It sounded pretty swell, all of them carrying lighted candles and talking Latin, you know? And then they all shouted Fiat! Fiat! Fiat! and threw their candles down. And then she gave you a shot.

—Who? Stanley asked helplessly.

—That squarehead. She’s got a nice ass, hasn’t she.

The woman in white was approaching again from the far end, carrying some linen. She stopped to put the tray in front of the man two beds away, and smiled threateningly at Stanley, who sank back.

—It sounds like you were in trouble with some dame, said his neighbor, trying the mashed potatoes with his finger. —Just tell me one thing, will you? Who the hell is Saint Mary of Egypt?

—Why she . . . that’s when I came down and found her in front of the mirror making up her face with make-up and lipstick and everything, and black around her eyes, and she had those streaks on her face, from the poison, I mean that’s what she said, from the poison the black androgyne, I mean that’s what she called Father Martin, the poison Father Martin put on him and it came off on her but only on her face. Because she said, See? and pulled up her dress to show me her . . . to show there weren’t any marks on her . . . anywhere else on her body.

—You mean on her snatch?

—I mean then she said, This was covered when she lay with him, for he was poisoned here and so he died, but she shall not. That’s what she said and then she said we’re going to the Holy Land and she’s going to be Saint Mary of Egypt going to the Holy Land on the boat.

His neighbor looked at him a moment longer, and then started to eat, saying —Thanks, through the first mouthful. —That clears up everything.

—And talking . . . Stanley mumbled, looking down with a fixed stare, —about the beast with two backs, he mumbled to himself, —about . . . making the beast with two backs.

It was quiet for a minute, except for the sounds of his neighbor’s eating, and the distant radio playing something Italian. Then the blond woman loomed over him, and Stanley jumped as though she were going to strike him.

—Now you just lie back and try to get some rest, sonny boy. Don’t try and remember everything.

—But I do, Stanley whispered desperately, —I remember, I . . . because all that time I repeated the Angelic Salutation and then I repeated the Apostles’ Creed, and those beads were rolling all over the floor and the . . . the crucifix was . . . I couldn’t hold it because . . . and then Father Martin came, you can ask him, he came in, that fat woman must have sent him because he came in and he put a hand on me and said something, and she was laughing. And I said thank God you’ve come Father she needs you and he just looked at me and she kept laughing. She called him a funny old hermaphro-ditic and asked him if he could relieve a possessed camel like Saint Hilarion did once. And then he held up his crucifix and she changed all of a sudden and said, Take him away he’s hurting her, and she spat at him. But he kept looking at me, and he had his hand on me and I said, Do something for her, Father, I kept saying that, but he didn’t pay any attention to her. He sprinkled some plain water around and nothing happened and then he sprinkled some holy water around and she started to cry then and she said her shoulder hurt her.

Stanley shivered, and stopped speaking. The woman in white had turned away, and was walking with a firm silent tread toward the other end of the place, down the aisle of beds. The man two beds away spilled the last forkful of his lunch in his lap, and swore.

—And then when I confessed, all the time I was kneeling, she kept . . .

—You better have a swat at this, said the other man, getting the bottle out again. He took a long swat himself, and offered it.

—No, because listen . . . Stanley commenced again.

—How about a hand of casino?

Stanley sat in the bed with his knees drawn up, and he let his head fall forward on them. He swallowed, and started to talk again, more rapidly, less loud and, with his head like that, less coherent, —Because when he said, “I exorcise thee, Stanley, being weak but reborn in Holy Baptism, by the living God, by the true God, by God Who redeemed thee with His Precious Blood, that thou mayest be exorcised, that all the illusions and wickedness of the devil’s deceits may depart and flee from thee together with every unclean spirit, adjured by Him Who will come to judge both the quick and the dead, and who will purge the earth with fire. Amen. Let us pray . . .” when he said that she just looked at him and I could see her there, and she looked . . . she looked . . .

The blond woman had returned with a small tray full of bottles and syringes. She stopped at the other bed to clean the mashed potatoes off the counterpane, and the man slid a hand round her waist and ran it up and down her starched thigh. As she bent over him he blew into her ear.

—“to bestow Thy grace upon Thy servant who suffereth from a weakness in the limbs of his body,” Stanley mumbled on, —“that whatever is corrupt by earthly frailty, whatever is made violate by the deceit of the devil, may find redemption in the unity of the body of the Church. Have mercy, O Lord, on his groaning, have mercy upon his tears . . .”

—In a minute, said the woman at the next bed, pulling away with a giggle and a snap of elastic.

—You see? I remember all of it, even all the words, Stanley burst out, as the woman in white put the small tray down on his night table and pulled one of his arms out straight. —And then . . . because then the streaks, those red streaks she had on her, it seemed like they were leaving her face, like they just sort of disappeared and she was as white as . . . as this, and then he said, “Therefore, accursed devil, hear thy doom, and give honor to the true and living God, give honor to the Lord Jesus Christ, that thou depart with thy works from this servant whom our Lord Jesus Christ hath redeemed with His Precious Blood. Let us pray . . .” and she . . . she’d started to talk too, and she was crying too, and she said, She will be a nun and sweat blood too, and sweat blood like Blessed Catherine Racconigi, and like Saint Veronica Giuliani and like Saint Lutgarde of Tongres, yes and like Blessed Stefana Quinzani on every Friday the sweat of blood, and conceal the Four Wounds, and hide the Crown of Thorns under her veil like that Poor Clare of Rovereto . . . Owwwoww! . . . Stanley screamed.

—Jesus Christ, chum . . .

—Now hold still, sonny boy, this doesn’t hurt, just a little needle.

—But you . . . but you . . . no, listen! No! No, because I’m . . . don’t! He cowered back at the head of the bed, away from her. The sun no longer danced off the ceiling and down the wall, but it shone in a steady weakening light of its own, no longer reflected off the water, but shining in through a porthole upon a heavy glass ashtray on another table, where he stared. The corner of the ashtray caught the sunlight and broke it into colors which changed slowly before his eyes, red, to green, to violet, to green, as the ship rocked gently. —Listen! . . . Stanley whispered hoarsely, drawn up rigid against the bars of the bed, the tendons in his neck standing out, —Listen . . .

There were distant voices, indistinct, broken by shouts from closer by, and sounds totally unfamiliar by this time, all sustained on the throbs of a dull pulsation, which went on, and had been going on all this time like the beat of another heart, but not his own.

—Listen . . . he repeated weakly. Then he appeared to fall off the end of the bed; but he was up, and with energy not his own, so far as he knew, for he knew his heart had stopped, he got to the door and pulled it open. What he saw stopped him. He staggered, and fell in two or three steps toward the rail where he caught himself.

He stared at the static landscape. It would not move, and he could not accept it that way, not moving, and so crowded. Here and there fragments moved sharply and separate, small boats offside, and people on the dock, cars moving slowly but steady against the hard land, and everything separate; even the noises rose with the discordance of differences, whistles and sharp cries, bells and motorcars breaking their edges against one another.

—Where are we? he said, as the woman in white caught him there at the rail.

—Naples, but you . . .

—But Naples, I have to get off, I have to get off here, I have to get off at Naples, tell them . . . wait . . .

—All right, sonny boy, you come back in to bed, we’ll stop at Livorno and Genoa, and you can . . .

—Wait wait wait look look there she is, there she is, don’t you see her? Look don’t you see her?

He twisted out of the grip on his shoulder and almost went over the rail, pointing to the figures on the dock below. —Look don’t you see her? . . . there she is, don’t you see her? . . . with that man, don’t you see her with that man, with that man in the black hat and the black coat and the . . . with the sling, don’t you see them? Don’t you see her? Wait! Wait! Wait! he cried, over the rail. —Wait . . . wait for me! . . .

The woman caught him by both shoulders, and dragged him back on his heels, back from that sudden landscape so crowded with detail. The ship’s whistle shivered every fixture aboard. Stanley was heaving helplessly when she got him back inside. His eyes were closed, but he kept mumbling, —Now wait . . . now wait . . . now wait . . . as she filled the syringe again and thrust the point of the needle into his arm.

He lay shivering in the dim light, the sheet drawn perfectly straight across his shoulder, trying to speak but even as his lips moved, he could not make a sound. In his staring eyes, the image of the woman in white came up the aisle between the beds, carrying a screen, up the aisle. His lips formed, Now wait, not this bed, any other bed but not this bed, now wait . . . But he could not make a sound. He choked on a scream, Not this bed . . . but he could not make a sound. He felt for his pocket, but he had no pocket. He found his left wrist with his right hand, and all he felt was the naked wrist.

—Not here . . . not this bed . . . not yet . . . he whispered; and the screen stopped there two beds away, and came open.

Stanley listened: he thought he could hear the beads rolling on the floor; mounting, pausing, rolling back. —Pater noster, he whispered as they rolled, —qui es in coelis . . . His tongue found the hollow on his gum. —Qui tollis peccata mundi . . . no I mean qui . . . qui . . . who . . .

He coughed, and tried to say, Wait! . . . but found he was throwing up, and put his head over the side of the bed. Then he put a foot out, and it touched the cold floor. The sound of the engines rose, and with that his heart took up beating heavily, and he caught his breath and was able to breathe. Both feet on the cold steel floor, he steadied himself with a hand on his night table and tried to whisper Wait . . . but he heard, —What? . . . what am I . . . doing here? all I have . . . all I have lost . . . He was dizzy, standing.

The ship bumped, and shook. He held to the foot of the bed, and held the more tightly when the whistle sundered the only sounds he had, and failed, coming back from the harbor in fragments to augment them: the steady energumenical force of the engines, filling his heart to a shape rising from his chest to burst the bounds of his throat, and the squeaking, squeaking, squeaking behind the screen. That sound had begun unevenly, and then stopped, and commenced again with the regular mounting thrust and withdrawal of the engines and of his heart, faster, all of them as he came closer to the shadowless screen and behind it a moan, and gasps, the wary and then attacking steps and panting of the beast he approached silently, whispering unheard, —Wait . . . don’t . . . don’t . . . leave me alone.

It was nearly dark. The whistle sounded again, halting everything. Even the reversed engines stopped; then there was a consummate pause, and the engines, and his heart, took up slowly, as the starboard side rose, and he took another step forward. He had seen Naples.