Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine Read online

  As for our child to be, I already knew he would be a girl: manchild while within my belly, but a girl once born. I made up lists of names and posted them around the barge for Unguentine’s approval. Beatrude? Marygret? Gertrice? Barbarence? Nancice? Jilly? I wove a set of little blankets on a loom. Speedily I knitted what few clothes she would need between birth and age six. Long hours I lay in the sun on my back, that my belly might rise like yeasted dough. Unguentine spent days below deck partitioning off a section of the hold for the baby’s room, boring a hole in the hull that she might have her own porthole and for which I sewed up a set of curtains. Peaceful days, still and calm days of quiet work, with all time stopped and only gentle, distant intimations of nibblings, flight, panic, the rush of emergencies. Arm in arm we would stroll about the garden by day, brush through banks of flowers, our hair caressed by the needles of overhanging boughs, our bare feet padding upon wood, upon stone, upon grass, the metal of the deck; now and then we would stand close to the windows and peer out to sea, whitecaps and troughs of cobalt. I remember that midnight on the bow, anchors dropped, a moon casting a strange simulacrum of daylight over the water through some haze in the sky, a tone of light almost identical to that of a foggy day; and we stood at the railing which glistened under the slightest application of dew, the sea being waveless and graced only by lazy swells that passed us like the undulations of a great caterpillar’s back; and it was then, spontaneously, that we both broke into song, into a lilting sort of aria, but unsyllabled and smooth and which trailed off into a low hum, charging the night sea until the horizon bubbled with sheet-lightning and the waters glowed with the pulsations of electronic plankton, and we fell silent. Unguentine trembled; I nestled closer to his warm body. He was about to speak, I sensed, knowing the signs. He did finally, to announce quietly that he would deliver the baby. I confided that I had never dreamed of anyone else, being so far from all land now.

  However, a month passed when there took place an event such that I realized I was not pregnant after all—and I not pregnant with a husband who measured my girth with a tape-measure each night before bed was in a perilous position, or so I felt. I had no way of knowing. Unguentine, it seemed, was frankly worshipping my womb. One morning I arose somewhat earlier than usual and spotted him kneeling on the stern deck. I approached softly, on bare feet. But my toe brushed against an empty paint can which let out a raucous clang. His back doubled, his arms swooping in. I saw candles. I saw a shiny tin form, bulbous and horned. An embroidered cloth. But he scurried away, all his objects of devotion bundled pell-mell into the cloth from which billowed the black smoke of candles still lit, and he vanished round a corner, coughing. At other times he seemed to be in the grip of a peculiar depression and took to napping lengthily in an ugly tent-like shelter made out of old carboard boxes, as if to shut out the splendours of the dome. The Plum Patricia, a heavily bearing tree from which I made my best jam, suddenly vanished one day; no explanation, no remains even, other than a shattered stump in the ground that spoke of cyclones, whirlwinds. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. As if to spare me the necessity of confronting him with my sad news he would go into seclusion somewhere on the barge for days on end, presumably in one of his several hiding-places I had discovered beneath the lawn, entered through a trap-door in the turf, invisible until that day he took up smoking down there and wispy plumes revealed its place and shape; the solar distillation tank, in disuse since the advent of our floating lake, which he entered by means of a hatch on its underside, apparently unaware that the sounds of his breathing were perfectly transmitted by the empty pipes and loudly broadcast all over the galley through the cold water tap, the familiar humming, squeaks, all his other odd noises. Or, his most prized place and favourite haunt, a nest way up in the crown of the Chestnut Anna, and many times I have chanced to watch him, thinking himself unseen, climb the trunk in the early morning and crawl out on one of the middle branches, then reach up and part a cluster of leaves and hoist himself up to a small platform. Once settled on it, he would draw the branches around him with rein-like ropes in such a way that he was completely concealed from the ground or from the dome above, a beautiful thing to see, this drawing in of the leaves around him like a flower closing for the night. Before he vanished each day he would wind up a dozen old alarm clocks hidden away in the hold, which actuated an elaborate network of piano wires and little mallets all over the barge, and which would generate a day’s worth of uncanny noises in unlikely places, the sound of a hedge being clipped, the brief clatter of tools being picked up or laid down, the tap-tap of something being driven in, worked at, broken up, distinct and life-like sounds no doubt meant to comfort me during those long hours of his absence, and that I might not try to find his hiding-places. Kind man. I never disillusioned him. I knew about it even as he secretly installed the wires, and quietly I admired the complicated mechanisms, pendulums, gyroscopes, that enabled the system to work even in rough weather and kept it from being set off accidentally with him sitting but inches away from me.

  Unable to find him for days on end and unable to speak the words to him when he finally emerged from seclusion, I took to the wearing of clothes again and would not be touched; I strapped a specially sewn pillow around my middle, and above all I ate and ate, became shy. The second month I began to put on weight all over, a silky plumpness, tight and firm except for my thighs with their dimpled slackness, but only I saw that. Unguentine soon noticed, soon glowed; I was happy for him, at least. He prohibited me from all manual work and labour. He spied on me through keyholes and cracks in order to discover my cravings. A hankering glance cast at a food cupboard would bring him bursting through the hatchway five minutes later, staggering under a heaped platter of whatever he thought I might then desire. Bananas? Peanuts? Avocadoes? Milk shakes? Chocolate cakes? And he would sit there, eyes wide with adoration and fascination, until I finished the last crumb and drop. The raw materials of our child, I thought I heard him say once. Stoke the furnaces! Chew, woman, chew! The more weight I gained and the more I grew, the happier Unguentine seemed to become and the more food he prepared for me, cheeses, yoghurts, all the fruits and nuts and vegetables our barge-garden was then bearing, rare delicacies made from herbs and honeys, special preparations of kelp and algae. But this could not go on. In three months I gained a hundred pounds. One hot day as I reclined perspiring under a fir tree near the lawn, as I lay there obese and barren, a beached walrus, panting, fanning myself, I wondered through my tears how I was possibly ever going to get out of this, how I could ever discharge myself of his expectations. Even now as I lay there Unguentine was rigging up nearby a low-lying contraption of wood and canvas—a great fan, it turned out, which beat towards me with wings like those of a butterfly at rest; and to its slow pulsations and the waves of air washing over my tears and beads of sweat I composed elaborate speeches I would never have the courage to utter to my poor husband, whose life was now only an impatient wait for all my populations. ‘My dear,’ I would say to him and did even type it all out, ‘concerning my pregnancy I would like to make an observation or two, a remark. I have the feeling it might not be taking, for example that the sperm might not have been sufficiently strong to break through the shell of the egg, preferring rather to simply lie beside it. Resulting in a pregnancy rather too spiritual for the coarser mechanisms of my body which searched and longed for the less-nuanced form, the direct yes, the blunt no, without maybe, without perhaps, without in part. Therefore I conclude that though egg and sperm came together they did not in fact ever meld into one—though in being somewhat less than two, my ignorant body so interpreted their quasi-union and thus initiated this whole sequence of events which I now believe is leading us absolutely nowhere, owhere. where, here. ere. re. e.’

  But how could I ever say such a thing to a man who was spending whole days in elaborate preparations for the day of birth? Who was installing a dozen signalling cannon on the decks of the barge, to be fired off upon the birthday dawn, per
haps opposite some great port where friends still lived but whom now in my shame I never wanted to see again? Who was building an amazing series of twelve cradles, the smallest being for the first month, the largest for the twelfth, and which all fitted together in such a way that, when stored, the whole lot took up no more room than the twelfth alone, and which, beyond the twelfth month, could be effortlessly refitted to form little houses, wagons, boats, trains, and which finally, after age twelve, could be stacked against the wall as a pyramid-shaped bookshelf? As a planter? How could I say? How? I could not. One night when I was still ambulatory, the sixth or seventh month, I complained of insomnia and sent Unguentine below deck to bed so that I might wander the gardens alone in my misery and flabby unworthiness, and it was then that I resolved to escape at last and leave this barge and the gardens and Unguentine and launch myself into the blackness of the night, forever. I knew now I no longer deserved this life with him I had so often cursed for that aura of bland eventlessness which had seemed to surround him and all his works, those old accusations that he never did anything, that nothing ever happened to him, that it just went on and on. Here was an event now, an awful event: my failure. What was I amongst his subtle tools of light and air, water, growth, decay? A parasite, a parasite bloated near to madness with overeating. So I loaded up our little skiff with jugs of water and cartons of dried fruit, a few biscuits, a change of clothes that might come to fit me again after several weeks of wasting away at sea, an umbrella, a pair of high-heeled shoes, and, as future memento of all that would have been, a pot of geraniums. As I stood there on deck, the night pitch-black, flashlight trained on the skiffs little cargo complete now but for myself and ready to be lowered into the water, I remembered all the times I had jumped ship decades before and gone and hid far away from that man, in cities, in hard, unyielding landscapes. I wondered often how he always found me, why he always came and got me. Those weeks of utter silence back on the barge. Days I would lie in bed, refusing even food. Then forget. Forget it all. When now I found myself unable to move. Except, weeping, to cast the contents of the skiff into the sea, and lie down on the deck to be swept over by the cooling breezes of night.

  Still it went on and on. I could not speak the words. The ninth month I lay in a special three-ply heavy-duty hammock Unguentine had slung between two trees, the Plane Trees Martha and Judith, I lay there swinging back and forth, I lay with a horrible 250-pound excrescence coagulated upon my frail bones, unable to walk, unable even to see my feet, occasionally flapping my fleshly arms for exercise or to speed the swinging of the hammock to and fro. Above me, amid translucent trees, birds twittered. Birds! That an ounce of flesh and bones and feathers could not only fly but could sing as well—so very much! An ounce! And I, an eighth of a ton avoirdupois. I wept. That afternoon, in my ninth month, I remembered in a sort of delirium my every mouthful of food, I remembered its harvesting, its preparation, its cooking, I traced the genealogy of tiny seeds back into a past without memory, and all I wanted to do was vomit it back to earth, for I had taken and eaten what was not mine, upon false pretences. Night fell. Someone must have closed the dome windows. I had not seen Unguentine all day. The sea being rough that night, the hammock swung back and forth to the sharp creaking of ropes and the groan of branches under strain, my bottom dragging on the lawn and wearing an ugly sore in the grass. I resolved then, no matter the cost or the consequences, to tell Unguentine the truth first thing in the morning and begin fasting immediately thereafter.

  At 3 a.m. however I was roused from sleep by a sharp clicking noise followed by a floodbath of light. Grunting, I raised my head and squinted around at the gardens completely illuminated from lamps concealed in the earth, and with that peculiar effect of vegetal nudity that comes from brightness playing on the underside of leaves. Then the familiar metal clank and grinding noises, ratchets and chains, and there, to the other side of the lawn, the rising hook-like form of the freight elevator, and Unguentine’s head. He had been using the freight elevator to bring me up food prepared in the galley, also to take me down below for my daily bath; now I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth and fortified my resolve. Not a bite. Not one. I could hear his footsteps. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he was coming to murder me. I deserved it. I had brought it all upon myself. I could feel his hand steadying the swinging hammock. ‘Open your eyes,’ he said softly. I did. I gasped. For there, before me, in his outstretched arms, was a perfectly formed nine-month-old baby, grandly sexed as male, and staring at me thoughtfully. Such eyes. I fainted.

  I came to as the dome of night above me, above the plane trees, pulsated and glinted with the outrageous colours of Unguentine’s home-made fireworks whose detonations set the five hundred panes into a frenzy of rattling. The sea, calm and moonless, responded with ripples of reflection, drank flames. At dawn the twenty cannon blasted away until exhausted. And through all this the child slept, tiny creature in a cradle bedecked with gaping orchids. From the trees Unguentine finally emerged again. He was covered head to toe with soot, his overalls in a shambles. It was a magnificent moment. On the grass we were to lie all together then, the three of us, for hours while I learned from Unguentine the number of nappies per day, the preparation of the child’s cereal and vegetables, milk, his sleeping hours, his periods of optimum petulance, his attitudes towards sun, baths, drafts, ice, fire. But no name. Unguentine refused. To name, he said, would be to clasp the near and present end of the chain called history and thus to forge another link, and how sad! I agreed. He remained nameless. Child, baby, son. Quite enough terms to cover his condition. He spoke early and ignored both our admonitions, Unguentine’s that he should seek silence and speak not at all, mine that he should speak only the purest of truths at whatever length he wished to do so up to twenty-four hours a day; instead he turned out to be an average talker, a casual but charming liar by virtue of averagely not knowing what to say during that always crucial moment, of talking constantly in hindsight and in foresight and thereby eating up more and more of the endless time now, though with what a sweet voice, my God! He matured a genius at five, became an excellent swimmer, grew modest and swam away one day, no doubt having had his fill of us, the barge, these seas.

  IX

  The barge, magnificent barge, a jewel cresting upon the high seas those thirty to forty years when the weather was still a true marvel, when one could see stars at noon, when the rare clouds were so fine and gauze-like and so much more transparent to moons, when rains were frank and without whining drizzle and cleared without lingering—such was the bright and empty space we sailed across seemingly to no end, and where my simple chores could have gone on for days and days without me minding—there could never be too many decks to sweep and wash, too many sails to mend, too many windows to clean amid that everlasting radiance. I remember the morning, if it is the one, that I brought the dishpan up from the galley in order to wash the dishes out in the rising sun and cool breeze of the stern deck, the galley being hot and steamy and infested with one of our infrequent plagues of crickets and cockroaches. Unguentine knew about them, would be down there this very moment unleashing the domestic snakes. By noon the galley would be all cleaned out and the reptiles, fat and lethargic, put back in their cages out of my sight. Are you sure? I always asked. Did you count them? You checked the dark corners to make sure they did no breeding down there? He would nod reassuringly. Meanwhile I went on with the dishes, clearing them off the table and tossing the scraps overboard into the water of our fresh-water lake fluorescent green with strands of algae, the water-cress and water-lilies where perched and floated heavy, complacent bullfrogs with fast tongues, strange body of water which swelled and shrank in size according to some principle I never grasped, changes in temperature perhaps. But the air, which had seemed clear and fresh before I went below deck for the dishpan, now was gathering up a humid haze, tarnishing the sea beyond our lake with a scum-like effect such as I could not remember having seen in years; or in the drowsiness of early morning I had simp
ly not noticed: perhaps it had even been with us for days. I was out of time. I hadn’t slept well the night before, had mistakenly attempted a midnight stroll through the gardens in the dark only to walk right into a field of ripe peaches and apricots fallen on the ground, the awful squishing noises beneath my bare feet, the slime and stickiness, and from which I finally ran slipping and screaming to the lawn where I was able to light a candle and hose myself off. Why I refused to eat any fruit that morning. Our abundance at times was gagging. I was grown too plump anyway, though it was all still firm this body of mine, spangled with the reflections of wavelets in the dishpan, naked in the sun, every bone and muscle ceaselessly active and fresh, my skin tanned to a glowing sienna with only a vein surfacing here and there near a breast, a wrist, an instep, to indicate the warm flood which sometimes seemed to flow out and beyond, to feed the rainbow colours of it all, dishpan and stern deck, our lake, the sea, back to the sun.