The Edge Of The World Part 4

In summer, we'd often gone to the beach under the low bluffs of Juneau Park to enjoy the sun and the water. Once, when I was a very little girl, I'd filled my pinafore pockets with stones, in the way of children, then climbed up on a pier and run to the end of it for no reason that I could remember. I'd been following a bird or the light on the waves or maybe only listening to the sound of my own feet thumping hollowly on the wood.

Suddenly, my father had stood huge over me, his face contorted, his fingers pinching my wrist. "Never!" he'd spat. "You must never run out on the pier alone!" He'd bent close and pointed at the waves shimmering-I did remember that, the sun bouncing off the facets of the water. "The mermaids live under there," he'd said darkly in German, the language of anger as well as affection in our house. "They take little girls like you, especially little girls with heavy stones in their pockets. They will s.n.a.t.c.h you with their long, wet fingers and drag you to the bottom of the sea."

"But you would save me," I'd protested.

"Sometimes, liebchen," he'd said, softening, "you must also do your best to save yourself."

I'd been duly afraid, but as he walked me back toward safety, my hand in his, I'd peeked down at the s.p.a.ces of shadowed water visible between the boards of the pier, trying to glimpse the world his warning promised.

While we'd been inside the building, the snow-swollen clouds had begun to leak. The flakes were heavy, clumping even in the air, and when they settled on the men's dark coats, their intricate fretwork glowed in sharp relief. Swaddled like a doll in so many layers that I could barely move my limbs, I followed my father and Oskar over the railroad tracks and across the road. A layer of white had already covered the boards of the dock. Our footprints, the two men's definite and mine slightly blurred from the shuffle of my too-large boots, were the first to mar it.

In the boiler room-which my father called the guts of the boat and which, with its shiny metal valves and pipes and cylinders, did indeed look like a mechanical version of what Miss Dodson had exposed when she lifted the flap of skin that covered a frog's belly-the men examined joints and pressures and had some words with the boilerman while I stood waiting, absurd in my oversized trousers and sweater and coat. Then we climbed the ladder to the pilothouse, a crystal perch, the upper half of all four walls being windows that admitted a clear view of the endless green-gray water. The lower half of the walls was paneled in a glowing birch, and in the center, like a varnished wooden sun, stood the wheel. As we came in, Gerhart Keffer turned from the chart he'd been examining at a small table in the corner.

He acknowledged my father's introductions with a curt nod. "Cold day for a boat ride."

"They're here to learn the trade," my father joked.

Keffer removed a tin from his pocket and put a dip of tobacco under his lip as he looked at me. He said nothing. I blushed.

"Trudy could be on watch," Oskar suggested. "Wouldn't hurt to have an extra pair of eyes on a day like this."

He and my father left me, their feet clanging down the metal rails of the ladder. In a minute or two, the engine began to thrum and the floor to vibrate.

"She's free!" I heard my father shout.

Keffer, a small man whose head barely cleared the top of the wheel, seemed to be listening for a certain pitch in the sound of the engine. Apparently hearing it, he eased a long lever forward. The tug slid away from the dock.

For a long while I did nothing but stare at the sky, gauzy and gray as a dirty bandage and filled with frenzied flakes, which seemed to dive straight at me, bits of the sky made solid. The effect, together with the roll of the floor as the tug alternately crested the waves and sank between them, was mesmerizing and dizzying. When I was young, I'd wished that my father captained a schooner rather than a tug. Tugs were prosaic, workmanlike ducks; schooners, with their sharp sails aligned and their sleek prows, were gulls. At every moment, I half imagined I could see the wings of a birdlike schooner emerging from the snow.

A glob of Keffer's spit clanged into the bra.s.s cuspidor at his feet, making me jump.

"It's snug in here," I said, partly to steady myself, partly to be polite.

"Huh," Keffer grunted. He worked the tin of Red Indian from his pocket and dipped again.

"In all of this water," I went on-my mother had trained me to be friendly, to draw people out-"how do you know which way to go to find the schooner?"

He shrugged.

"And in weather like this, it must be nearly impossible. Won't you tell me how it's done?"

"What for?"

"Well," I said, taken aback, "because I want to know." My parents and my teachers had always applauded my curiosity. Even my friends professed to admire it.

"Waste of time," he said, his eyes fixed on the water through which we were plowing. "Begging your pardon," he added superciliously.

Chastened, I trained my eyes on the receding sh.o.r.eline, which now slipped and slid beyond a film of tears. I was cold, bored, and miserable, as Oskar had predicted.

My father clanked up the ladder again. Fresh, freezing air surrounded his body like a halo. "So, Tru," he said jovially, taking the wheel from Keffer and dismissing him with a nod, "maybe you'd like to drive?"

I saw Keffer frown, and I waited until he'd left the room before I moved to stand behind the wheel. It was a lovely thing, varnished so thickly it seemed to be encased in amber. Though I was nervous, it was easy enough steering in open water; all it required was resting my palms on the smooth pegs. Keffer needn't think he'd been doing anything so remarkable.

We went on a long while, until I could no longer make out the sh.o.r.e. For all I knew, we might be about to run aground in Michigan. We were sheltered from the wind in the pilothouse, but it was cold enough that our breath rose in clouds around us. My father frowned and trained his telescope through each of the windows in turn.

"May I go out on the deck to watch? I think I could see more clearly," I said.

"You'll get too cold."

"Papa. I'll be all right."

He sighed and opened a trunk that was built against one of the walls. "If you put this on first." He held out a life jacket. Grudgingly, I let him settle yet another layer around me, but I didn't stop to tie the vest closed before I hurried down the ladder to the deck.

I was too cold almost instantly. The bullying, frigid wind bored through all my layers of fabric, and a steady wash of biting spray stung my face. I tried to look into the storm, northeast, the direction from which the Maria Theresa should be running toward us, but the snow seemed to be driving with fixed purpose directly into my eyes. The flakes stuck to my lashes, blurring my view. I felt dizzy again, staring on and on so hard at nothing. I was beginning to feel sick, too, with the incessant rise and fall of the deck, the numbness in my fingers and toes, and the flakes rushing at me so relentlessly. Although I wouldn't have admitted it, I wished the job were done and I safely home, drinking chocolate, even writing about Napoleon. Finally, I lost my breath, as if the wind had stolen the very air from my mouth, and I had to turn away and cover my face with my mitten.

"Get inside, why don't ya?"

Oskar and Mr. Keffer had just emerged from the engine room. Keffer's tone was more than dismissive; it was mean. I bridled at it, lifting my face from my hands defiantly. It was that movement that allowed my eye to catch a fillip of red where there should have been only gray. It disappeared, and I thought for a moment that it might have been a trick of my mind, like water in the desert, but there it was again. I hesitated, not wanting to excite Keffer's impatience, but then I took myself firmly in hand. "Mr. Keffer!"

He paused, halfway up the ladder.

"What is that?" I asked. Now that my eyes knew where to focus, I could see it clearly. It looked like a red string dancing on the wind.

"There won't be no schooner there, at any rate. That direction's the sh.o.r.e. If you're seeing anything at all, it'll be the low sun catching on a roof. Waste of a man's time," he muttered, his feet ringing on the iron crossbars.

Oskar had broken from Keffer and came to stand beside me at the rail. He glanced at my face and turned toward the sh.o.r.e, following my gaze.

I couldn't look away until I'd determined for myself what I was seeing, for it certainly was not the reflection of the sun. It had nothing to do with light. There was a denseness about it, several densenesses. Later, when I thought about how it had happened, I realized that it was my willingness to accept what should not be there that allowed me to make out what was. People were hanging in the air! From one of them waved the bit of red.

"Look, there!" I pointed, pinning the sight to the sky. "Papa!" I ran to the ladder. "Look at this! You must look at this!"

Through his gla.s.s, it was obvious. The schooner, probably trying to stay within sight of land, had caught on the rocks just north of Whitefish Bay and was sinking there. Already the foredeck was underwater, the masts pitched at an angle. The crew was clinging to the rigging, six men and a woman. "The cook, probably," my father said. It was the woman who'd been waving the red m.u.f.fler that had attracted my attention.

We steamed toward the wreck with the engine at full throttle. I clanged back down the ladder and stood at the rail, watching my strange vision become more and more distinct and real. Now, although the cold was intensified by our speed, I didn't feel it.

Through the telescope, we'd seen the people shouting, but when the tug was near enough that their voices could be heard, they were quiet, watching, waiting to see how they might be saved. One man was slumped sideways, his eyes closed. Though one of his arms was hooked through the rigging, he seemed to be held aloft mostly by means of a rope wrapped around his waist. The rest of the men were alert but grim, their beards rimed with snow and ice. The woman's long hair swirled above her head in the wild currents of air. She'd let loose her red scarf; I'd seen it fly out and disappear when it settled on the water.

When they were a good way off, collecting these people from the schooner had seemed to me to be a simple task: the tug would sidle in close under the rigging, and the crew would climb down onto our deck. When we drew near, I could see that would be impossible. First of all, the rocks that the Maria Theresa had foundered on would wreck the Anna P., too, given half a chance. Because of the rocks, and also because of the half-submerged Maria Theresa, large waves were continually springing up and dashing themselves down again in unpredictable directions. There was no way the tug could steam in close enough without swamping or worse.

To my right, the lifeboat hit the water with a smack. Oskar leaped into it just as my father came crashing out of the pilothouse.

"Oskar!" my father bawled into the wind.

Oskar was half standing in the boat, digging furiously with his oars to keep from capsizing, steering more than propelling the lifeboat toward the schooner. He didn't spare a moment's attention for the tug.

"Dammit! Now we'll have to rescue him, too!" my father roared. "Watch him, Trudy! Don't take your eyes off him!"

Even had staring threatened to blind me, I could not have looked away.

Over and over, a wave would lift Oskar to its crown and carry him forward while he pulled on the oars, trying to stay abreast of it, to ride it as long as possible. When the wave subsided, he would spill forward, the bow of the lifeboat plowing dangerously down, sometimes so far that it scooped below the surface and water poured in over the gunwales. Then he would hurl his weight back and dig again with the oars, resisting the lake's efforts to turn him sideways and tumble him over, to pick him up and pound him against the rocks.

I couldn't tell whether he was exceptionally skilled or foolhardy and lucky, but he managed to stay upright long enough for the waves to hurl him against the schooner with a force that might have cracked his boat in two but did not. Two of the crew of the Maria Theresa had eased themselves down the rigging in antic.i.p.ation, and they somehow made the lifeboat fast to the wreck.

The tug itself was coming close to the rocks, and I could feel its engines protesting beneath me. I sensed that Gerhart Keffer and perhaps my father were turning away to see to our own safety, but I kept my eyes on Oskar, as if my steady and fervid gaze could form filaments that would pull the lifeboat out of danger. Already the crew was lowering the man who'd been tied to the rigging, and the woman, who'd scrambled up the highest, had picked her way halfway down.

When all were packed into the lifeboat, it sat far too low among the heaving waves, but it drifted well enough away so that at last the tug could do its work. My father ran neatly up alongside the little boat so that Keffer and the boilerman could snag its gunwales with their boat hooks. I was the one who made fast the bow line when Oskar threw it to me. Although the rope was frozen, I managed to bend it into the knot my father had taught me years before by pretending the rope was a rabbit.

My father helped Oskar climb last of all out of the lifeboat and embraced him roughly when he stood on the deck again. "My boy, I thought you were a goner. You can ask Trudy here. I was swearing to high heaven when I saw you jump into that boat."

"I guess I didn't think," Oskar admitted. "I just wanted to get there."

"Well, you got lucky. We all got lucky." My father drew his hand over his face to wipe his eyes and the ice from his mustache. "Trudy, was ist los?"

I'd burst into tears, overwhelmed by the strain and the cold and the idea that the man who had once been Little O might have been lost forever in the icy water.

CHAPTER 6.

IT TURNED OUT that I'd not been weary of my studies after all; I'd only needed the right teacher. That Christmas, when my parents gave me a coral necklace in the hope, they said, that it would satisfy my craving for adventure on the high seas, Oskar gave me a small volume bound in green calf, the t.i.tle, Selected Poetical Works of G. Meredith, stamped in gold.

Most of the poems celebrated man's connection with a grand and glorious Nature, a Nature that somehow lifted people above the stolid earth. But there was also a long group of sonnets that contained much about tasting and other physical features of amorousness that made me uncomfortable. They were dark and unromantic, a view of love and the loss of love that startled me. Though I didn't like them, I found myself turning to them again and again, gingerly, so that the fall of the book wouldn't reveal my interest to anyone who might casually open it. My mother, for instance. I was angry with Oskar for exposing me to such thoughts, but I couldn't chastise him without revealing that I'd read the poems, and I was far too embarra.s.sed for that.

G. Meredith turned out to be the first flake in what soon became a flurry of books that drifted into piles on the end tables and the card table and the mantel in our parlor, as Oskar began to accompany Ernst to our house in the evenings. He didn't bother to change out of his rough work clothes, and I saw my mother more than once brush at the place where he'd sat, for fear he'd brought sawdust or worse onto our furniture. When Ernst hurried off to the Musikverein or one of his other clubs, Oskar would stay, producing from his leather satchel whatever he was currently reading, torn paper bookmarks sprouting from between the pages like the feathers of an Indian headdress. He claimed he wanted to talk over his ideas with me, and I was flattered and curious.

"I've read hardly any of this," I protested repeatedly, thumbing through Emerson and Whitman and William James, to name a few of the volumes he thrust at me.

"It doesn't matter," he said, shaking his head so that his wild hair lifted like wings. "You can think, can't you?"

When he got going, he seemed to leap from philosophy to literature to science, making connections that I could barely follow, let alone understand. Ernst had been wrong about his wishing to be a tugboat captain-not that it wasn't a n.o.ble profession, but Oskar had more cerebral ambitions. He wanted to improve the engines of watercraft and maybe the design of their hulls as well. Although he was wary of limiting himself. What he wanted most was to experiment and invent, "to discover something that will help the world." It didn't matter what.

"I would have thought you'd have found it worthwhile to finish college, then," I said. His attention had awakened feelings in me that frightened me a little, and I used an acid tongue to keep them at bay.

He wouldn't be put off. "Oh, Oberlin." He shrugged. "I milked all I could out of it. If you want to discover something new, you have to break from these inst.i.tutions. As Emerson says, a man should walk on his own feet."

Trying to walk on his own feet was why Oskar had lived in so many places and worked at so many jobs. And it was why, in a few months, he was going to California, an exotic land where caballeros mingled with Orientals and people weren't afraid to strike out on their own.

He talked of throwing off the blinders of convention. "You were magnificent, spotting that schooner. You didn't let your mind convince you that it wasn't there."

"Of course," I admitted, "that's really because I didn't understand enough to know that it shouldn't have been there."

"You trusted yourself. That's the important thing."

He admired the Transcendentalists. They understood that Reason wasn't the be-all and end-all; there had to be a spark as well. Inspiration, they called it. Pa.s.sion, even. G.o.d was a part of everyone, Oskar explained. Who knew what a person might be capable of with that Greatness in him? Or in her, he added, his eyes seeking my own.

Under his tutelage, I began to feel the ribbons of my small, trussed-up experience loosening. Through the force of his conviction and his spark, I saw the world, glistening and ripe, opening before me.

A visit to the panorama in March brought my feelings to a head, and my betrayal of Ernst at that place was particularly egregious, since he'd bought the tickets, five of them, as a treat for me and his cousin and our friends Lucy and Charles.

"We'll see Greece," he said, "and then we'll eat, and then we'll go to my concert-I have a solo, you know." (This was a joke on himself; he'd mentioned his solo so often in the past month that we'd begun to chaff him about it.) "And then we'll eat again. That's the way to spend a Sat.u.r.day!"

We were to meet on Wisconsin Avenue at the entrance to the exhibit in the afternoon. The day was warm; s...o...b..nks collapsed, revealing pure, clear crystals packed beneath the winter's crust of black soot pitted with horse urine. Although my mother had insisted I carry my m.u.f.f, I left my coat open so as to show off my blue silk dress. I wore my Easter hat, a large fruited affair that slipped sideways, despite its pins, when I tossed my head.

I'd meant to wear my coral necklace, but it wasn't in the box where it belonged. My mother had surely picked it up from wherever I'd left it lying, but I didn't want to ruin my happy mood by asking and being scolded for not taking care of my things.

Ernst and Oskar were waiting, Ernst smiling, with a fan of tickets in his chestnut leather glove; Oskar frowning and stroking his mustache distractedly. I kissed Ernst lightly on the cheek in greeting, and then, on a whim, kissed Oskar, too. He started and furrowed his brow, looking quickly away.

"Are you in one of your moods," I teased, "or merely contemplating the riches of the cla.s.sical world?"

"Hmph," he grunted. "Are those my only choices?"

By this time, a group of about thirty were chattering near the entrance, and the door to the panorama hall was opened by a man in an oxblood uniform with gold braid along the shoulders. He collected our tickets and directed us into a dark pa.s.sageway; its novelty and air of mystery heightened our antic.i.p.ation.

"When you emerge," a sonorous voice said from farther up the pa.s.sage ("Our spirit guide," I whispered) "you will be transported to a different place, a different time. You will find yourself in Ancient Greece, land of poets and philosophers, of architecture and sculpture, of olive groves and wine-dark seas."

"Of cabbages and kings," I added to my group, resisting being swept away by this manufactured drama.

At the end of the pa.s.sage, we remained in the dark, but the panorama was lit up before us. We seemed to be seeing the city-was it Athens?-from a roof or perhaps from the top of a high wall. To the left, a market bloomed and bustled, patterned fabrics were draped over lines, terra-cotta pots were strung on ropes, silver fish were packed head to tail in long, low baskets.

"Look," Ernst said, pointing to a wolflike dog that was running down an alley trailing links of sausages, "the Greeks had bratwurst!"

Fountains poured and gardens wound, each botanic specimen delineated. In an olive grove, men sat under the gray-green trees; near one of the fountains, women with hair braided and twisted into crowns stood talking, their earthenware water jugs resting at their feet. Interiors were visible as well: a hand plucked an olive from a dish; a woman played a small harp. The whole of it was so lovely, such an exquisite mixture of liveliness and tranquillity, that I instantly surrendered my ironic distance and wished that I could step into the scene, put my foot on the stone path that scarred one of the green hills, and simply run up it to the Acropolis, where the temples stood intact to welcome the G.o.ds. Just as the spirit voice had promised, I'd been transported to another place.

"Look here, Trudy!" Lucy tugged at my sleeve.

She was studying a green plain that became a yellow beach that became the sea, not wine-dark, as poetically promised, but a blue as brilliant as the sky. In the foreground, long black ships crowded the harbor, and in the background were more sails, sharp-edged and white, like the triangles of paper a child drops when she is cutting snowflakes.

"I don't believe there is any real sky that color," I said, attempting to break the spell that gripped me. "The sky must be the same wherever you go."

"I've read that it is different," Oskar a.s.sured me. "Something about the intensity of the sun and the dryness of the air, I suppose."

I turned and turned again, trying to take in every vista at once-the sea, the mountains, the olive groves, the gleaming white buildings under the marvelously warm sky-"Oh, don't you wish we really could go there? Just for an afternoon! It would be like stepping into a dream!" Spinning, I felt exhilarated and also slightly giddy, and my hand, when I put it out to catch myself, grasped an arm. It was not Ernst's. Had I known that?

Immediately, Oskar laid his hand over mine. I kept my eyes firmly fixed on Greece, though the whole of my being was focused much nearer to home. For seconds his long fingers encased the whole of my hand, his warm skin pressed against mine.

In those seconds, the lights dimmed, and the spirit voice descended on us again. "The time has come to bid farewell to Ancient Greece. Please step down the pa.s.sage to your left, so as not to collide with the incoming group."

By the time we reached the sidewalk, Lucy and Charles and I had been pushed by the crowd a little apart from Oskar and Ernst, and when Ernst came up to us a few seconds later, he was alone.