Читать книгу The White Reef - Martha Ostenso - Страница 6

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It was hard to tell which was the more exciting position in which to lie on this black rock that stuck out like an alligator’s snout into the sudden, still deep off the shore of the Inlet. Little Si was almost persuaded to call out and ask the opinion of Nona-Mom, who lay reading and sunning herself in her red bathing suit on the narrow white shelf of beach a little above him, just where rocks and trees rose into the sky. But he was six years old now and Grandpa Si had told him repeatedly that a man didn’t ask unnecessary questions. He wished that he had eyes in the back of his head so that there would be no need of wondering which way he should lie—he could look up and down all at the same time.

Above him the white gulls cut the blue in beautiful patterns so intricately simple that they baffled the eye, and although he knew that they left behind them an airy wake of thin silver he could never quite see it and thus be sure it was there when he spoke to Gramp or Timothy Entwhistle about it. A few minutes ago a sea eagle had stormed down from a scarp of rock overhead and the gulls had screamed their stridulous challenge. And far, far above the quick activity of the nearer air, like flecks of foam caught up and woven into a coverlet for the cool and remote middle of heaven, were the fascinating motionless clouds—Nona-Mom called it a mackerel sky. It was riffled like the roof of a cat’s mouth, or like the sand under the shallows of that lake behind the mountains. Little Si hated to take his eyes away from that delicate white beach in the sky lest it might disappear. And without any wind, that would be a mystery.

But when he turned over on his stomach, there below him, scudding away under his ledge of rock, was a new kind of crab with claws of flame, or a creature with blackberry eyes standing out on thorns from his head. Beneath the black rock, where it fell away into the water-wonder that has no name, things unbelievable moved or paused or seemed to die of a sudden transparency and then become invisible. Si had never seen an emerald, but he had heard his mother say that when there was no wind the sheltered water of the Inlet was like one, if you looked down; like one, but more frighteningly beautiful, she had said, because it had the astounding enigma of creation in it. Si remembered her saying that to old Timothy and Uncle Jorgen, and although he had no idea what the words meant, they sounded like what he himself had often seen when he had looked down into the clear green day of that monster-world off the edge of some out-jutting rock. The water was so crystal clear that when you glanced up from it, there seemed to be something wrong with the air about you, as though you could not see things as well in it as you could down there. You felt almost uncomfortable and began to think that you belonged down there, among the starfish with the pearls on their backs, and among the silver fins that flashed by like knife blades cutting the heart of the watery twilight. The rock grottoes, farther down than a small boy’s height, were alive with a green slime that looked from above like a mysterious fog hovering about their escarpments. Sea-cucumbers, slothful and thick and horned, wound their slow and tortuous way between the dusk-gold turrets, recoiled for an instant at the dart of an unknown shadow, then moved inexorable and undeviating toward their dim and reasonless goal. Sea urchins, delicate and improbable as flowers growing out of ice, shimmered on the white sand far, far down, below the grotesque olive-green and violet castles lighted by the sudden opaque eyes of fish. And suddenly, from the unearthly shade behind the submerged fortress, staggered a baby octopus, hitching itself up on its smoke-colored tentacles and lumping its bladder-like body forward in a way that made Si laugh out loud. Poor thing—it looked like Aunt Eva knitting and losing a stitch and getting mad!

After due deliberation, Si concluded that it was better to look down than up. There was an end to looking down, if your eyes were good enough to make out that slow smudge that was a clam route fifteen feet below the green and gold and shadow-black of the water. But there was no end to looking up, because beyond the mackerel sky, which might even be a Magic Carpet, there were regions of terrible blue which no small boy could ever hope to explore.

It was August, as Si knew. Hadn’t he been attending to Grandpa Silas’s calendar for him, climbing to a chair in the kitchen beside the cupboard to tear the old month off and let the new one on, bright and shiny with red Sundays and holidays, and no flyspecks? But such an August as this he could not remember. Gramp said the same, and even Uncle Paul, although you could almost understand it in him because he looked as though he had always lived in winter. Uncle Jorgen, who had a wonderful printing shop of his own with trays full of black beetles of letters, had said yesterday, “This is what Debussy meant by ‘An Afternoon of a Faun.’ ” Si had asked him what he meant by that and then Uncle Jorgen had put a record on the phonograph. And sure enough—it was the music that yesterday played in the still sunshine. And today it was the same.

Yesterday Si had gone to the organ after the record was played and had picked out a little flicker of melody—nothing more than he did often—and Uncle Jorgen had said to Nona-Mom, “My God, Nona, we’ve got to get Si a piano if we have to steal it!” And Nona-Mom had snatched him off the organ stool and into her arms as if he were a baby, and when he saw tears in her eyes he felt queer and kicked himself free and went out into the backyard to dig the grub worms he had promised to get for Milton, his cousin who looked so much like Uncle Paul, and who wouldn’t let Si go fishing with him in Chinaman Creek unless Si furnished the worms.

Suddenly, on the shore behind him, he heard a sharp call that brought him out of his preoccupation. He got up to his slim strong height and tugged at his red wool trunks which had dropped to his buttocks. In the sunlight he blinked first at his mother, who had called him, and then at the large, thick-faced man who stood beside her. Something, Si knew at once, was not quite right. He knew it from the way Nona-Mom stood, her chest out and her arms crossed in front of her; and from the way the big man struck a match and lighted a cigarette and then flipped the match away as though he were watching where it went.

Si ran the fifty yards to the white stretch of beach. He felt important, although he didn’t know why, and he glared with a tight mouth at the big man whose suit was of light gray flannel with shoulders wider than they ought to be to fit him. You could tell that about the shoulders, because there was a little nest in the sleeve just near the armpit. The man didn’t have even the chest that Nona-Mom had, and his belt rose up on a little mound, and Major Timothy Entwhistle always said that was the wrong kind of shape to go with broad shoulders.

Nona-Mom just took hold of Si’s light mop of hair and laughed down into his face.

“Who is he, Nona-Mom?” Si asked.

“He says his name is Bart Lesher, dear,” she told him. “He has been in the Cove only a few months.”

Quickly Si took another look at the man. Yes, he had seen him in Bjork’s store. He drew back a step as Lesher’s face twisted down at him in a smile that was no smile at all.

“Don’t be afraid of him, son,” Nona-Mom said, fast as lightning, and she looked straight across at Lesher with her eyes all black and no blue in them. “He doesn’t understand our ways yet. He thinks because I have you that I ought to let him have me. But he’s going to think very different from now on.”

For a terrible moment, Nona-Mom paused and the big man seemed to go all like jelly. He grinned feebly.

“All right, Nona,” he said. “I can’t talk to you in front of the kid!”

“You can say anything in front of him,” Nona-Mom said, “—anything you can say in front of me.”

Little Si strode forward and knotted his fists. Gramp and Uncle Jorgen said that for his size and strength he ought to be ten years old instead of six.

“If my mother doesn’t like you,” he said, looking up into Lesher’s face, “you’d better go away quick, or—or you’ll be sorry.”

Lesher got red, but he laughed and tried to put his hand on Si’s shoulder. There was a ring on one finger of the hand. Si stepped back and struck the hand away.

“That’s the spirit, son!” Lesher said and laughed. “You take after your mother, all right, all right.” Then he turned away and waved his hand. “See you later, Nona. You’ll be more reasonable.”

Nona knelt with her back to him and put her arms about Si.

“He’s a horrid person, Si,” she said. “Let’s forget all about him. What did you see off your rock today?”

“Oh—” Si began, but he couldn’t think clearly of what he had seen, because Lesher swam in like something ugly—like an octopus—only worse, because the octopus was a baby and Lesher was old, with troughs under his eyes. “He had no right to come here and talk to you, did he, Nona-Mom?” he declared.

“Why—” She sang the word while she gathered her arms dreamily about Si’s shoulders and looked far off. “The oldest right in the world, darling, but you wouldn’t understand. It has something to do with a mark that is put upon you—” Then, very abruptly, she broke off and began to laugh and hugged Si closer. “My big boy—I’m only fooling. He had no right to talk to me at all. He’s just stupid and I didn’t want him to bother me. That’s why I called you over, dear. Let’s sit down and you can tell me what you saw from the rock.”

But Si remained square and sullen, looking threateningly in the direction of the town, toward which Bart Lesher had gone.

“Why don’t you like that man, Nona-Mom?” he asked her suddenly.

She always answered him very directly; that was how he came to know that he had once had a very good father who had had to go away because of honor and a debt he had to pay someone. He had asked her and she had told him. But now, when she took up a handful of sand and scattered it, her red lips very tight, little Silas was puzzled. He was surprised, too, when she pulled him down close to her and said, “In another year or two, son, when Gramp has enough money, you and I are going to go away from here—away to a place where they never heard tell of Heartbreak Cove.”

“Will my father be there?”

He didn’t know why he was sorry just after he had asked that question. It had something to do with the way Nona-Mom’s mouth trembled up on one side into a funny smile, and the way her eyes looked so far apart all of a sudden. When she laughed then, he was so glad he could have turned a hand-spring.

“Let’s go over to your rock,” she said quickly, “and look down and see things!”

And Si bounded up joyously and found the sun spangling midway on the smooth Inlet so that it was not yet more than half-afternoon. Nor had the mackerel sky vanished. It was really as if he had told everything to stand still until he came back, and because everything had stood still in the spell of sunlight at his bidding, Si felt full of power and knew that between himself and the Inlet there was an understanding.

One day soon, he would take Jorgen’s boat—he could use the oars now so that the whole family was proud of the way he did it—and he would row out toward the White Reef by himself when there was a moon. It was just possible that he would one day be able to see the Spanish ghosts his cousin Milton was always talking about. After all, he had seen things under the black rock that nobody else had ever seen—narrow white veils of things, drifting by, deep down in that green eternal evening of water; bursting silver stars that left no ember on the sand far below; patches of black in mid-water, the shadows of nothing and therefore beyond explanation. These things Si had seen and why should he not see the Spanish ghosts, even though Nona-Mom did not believe in them?

It was fun pointing out objects to her from the flat level of the rock. She almost seemed to see what he saw himself. But he could not help thinking that she had her mind on something else and for that reason he was glad when she said they would have to get into the boat and row over to the point where the boys were having the picnic supper.

The “boys” were Uncle Jorgen and big Ivar Hansen and Dick Malcolm and they would have girls with them, too, Si reflected. Ivar wouldn’t have one, though. Perhaps that was because Ivar always thought that Nona-Mom was his girl. She never went to the dances in the community hall, or to parties or anything, but Uncle Jorgen always went. Ivar Hansen would come to see Nona-Mom and listen to the radio or the phonograph or to Gramp playing the organ. And once, when there was a big supper and a wedding dance, Si’s mother had been mad at Ivar because he wouldn’t go, though it was his own cousin who was getting married. Nona-Mom wasn’t invited to the dance, so Ivar wouldn’t go either. It was all very puzzling to little Si.

One evening he would never forget. He had been asleep for a long time and then he had awakened and the radio was going and he had stolen downstairs and there was Nona-Mom dancing around the room with big Ivar Hansen. He could hardly believe it was his mother, looking so wild with her head thrown back and laughing. But he sat down on the floor in the dark hall where they couldn’t see him. And after a while they stopped dancing and Ivar took Nona-Mom’s hands and held them and then her head jerked suddenly forward as if she had been asleep and had awakened and was afraid. And Ivar had said, “You’re pretending you’re dancing with him!” And Nona-Mom’s face became so sad that Si couldn’t bear it and he crept back upstairs to bed and lay for a long time looking out at the stars that seemed like bright teardrops about to fall into the Inlet.

But they were both in the boat now and Si had his blue sweater on over his bathing suit and Nona-Mom had her white one pulled half-way down to her middle. Si hurried to take the oars and grinned at her when she looked up and saw him sitting there in her place.

“All right,” she said, “you can do twenty strokes, you rascal.”

But he did more than that, because she wasn’t very good at counting and he was careful not to let his breath out so that she could hear it. When they changed places at last, his mother kissed him on the ear and told him that he was a tremendous man.

“Uncle Jorg says I’ll be able to lick the third grade kids when I start to school next month,” Si remarked confidently.

“When you start to school.” Nona-Mom said that like an echo and looked far away across the water and drew hard on the oars as if someone was chasing them. Then her face came around toward him again and it had her beautiful smile on it. “You mustn’t think about fighting, Si. You’re going to be a great musician, aren’t you?”

Si looked down and wriggled his toes and laughed as he saw how alive each one looked—each like a separate, small brown person. Supposing each one of his toes wanted to go somewhere by itself? He leaned away back and yelled with delight at the thought.

“What’s the matter, Si?” Nona-Mom asked in a queer voice. “Aren’t you going to be a great musician?”

Then he sat up and remembered her question and remembered that it wasn’t polite not to answer people, so he said, “I’m going to be a fisherman, like Gramp.”

“A fisherman?” Everything—the light on the water, the gulls in the air, the white wake of a launch rounding an island—seemed to stand still in the sound of her voice. It was like an echo again, Si thought, and echoes always made everything around you still and clear as glass. But then she laughed and the whole glassy world splintered like music.

They came around the crouching black rocks of the Point, and there on the beach were Lydie Thorpe and Sara Magnusson, spreading the blue-and-white-checked tablecloth on the sand and tending the driftwood fire that snapped upward with red tongues at the pure sky. Farther down the beach, Ivar called and waved to Si and his mother as they came out of the boat. Si could hear Jorgen and Dick Malcolm laughing together where they were stooping over on the sand.

The girls called out, “Hello!” and Lydie rushed over and threw her arms tight around Si, while he did his best not to make a backward curve out of his spine.

“Oh, you’re getting so big and strong and handsome, I’m almost scared of you!” Lydie gasped. “Look—here’s a clam shell—I’m going to cut off one of those curls of yours and keep it!”

Nona-Mom sighed and laughed. “When will you stop treating him like a baby, Lydie?”

As he squirmed out of her arms, Si heard what Lydie said. “He’ll always be a baby to me, Nona. I was only sixteen, you know—and I’ll never forget the night when—”

“You’ll have to forget it,” Nona-Mom said, not loud but in a way that made you think she was almost angry. “Especially if you’re going to marry Jorgen—and be one of the family!”

Lydie sat back on the sand and bit her lip. But Si did not stop to wonder about that. He ran down the beach and was hoisted high on Ivar Hansen’s shoulder.

“How’s the big boy today?” Ivar asked. Si knew that he was looking past him to see whether Nona-Mom was coming.

“I’m fine!” Si said and laughed. “How are you, Mister Hansen?”

That was a joke they always had between them, so Ivar said, “I’m fine, Mr. Darnell, thank you!”

But after that they walked together toward the others, Uncle Jorgen and Dick Malcolm, and Si knew right away what they were up to. They were baiting gulls. Si didn’t like that. To make it much worse, Nona-Mom and Lydie were coming toward them. Nona-Mom didn’t like gull-baiting, either.

But Jorgen and Dick Malcolm liked it. They tied a herring to either end of a long string and threw them out where the gulls could get them. Gulls were greedy. Two of them swooped down and swallowed the herrings and then flew away. But they didn’t fly far. Almost as soon as they got off the water they found out that they couldn’t get away from each other because of the string. And so they pulled and fought in the air while the other gulls screamed and the people on the beach laughed and made bets on which bird would win. Nona-Mom didn’t laugh. She just sat still and looked away.

It used to make Si so angry that he would cry. But now he sat and looked up into the air. At last one gull gave a great tug at the twine and the other gull spat the fish out and Uncle Jorgen shouted and laughed because he had won the bet from Dick Malcolm.

But Si felt sick when he thought of grown-ups laughing at hungry gulls fighting for food and he walked away and sat down behind one of the black rocks leaning over the beach and felt like crying.

But Dick Malcolm saw him sitting there and knew what was the matter with him. And Dick called out to him, “Come on, Si—you’ll never make a fisherman if you can’t bait a gull!”

And then, quickly, Nona-Mom was beside him. “Tell him you’re going to be something greater than a fisherman, son.”

And that made Si feel very much better.