The Whispering Muse

VII. more life on the ocean wave

NOTHING STIRS; there is not a soul to be seen above deck, on ship or wharf. Even the wagons, hanging at regular intervals as far as the eye can see, to the very top of the mountain, rock noiselessly on their cable. Today is a day of no work for today marks the beginning of the Easter holiday and the locals’ rules on holidays are non-negotiable. A Norwegian who works on an important religious festival will go straight to parboil in hell. So much was to be gathered from the words of Raguel Bastesen’s deputy, who this morning made radio contact from Stavanger with the news that the loading would not be completed until the evening of the Tuesday after Easter. Unfortunately, in all the commotion following the accident they had neglected to inform Captain Alfredson of this fact. It was to be understood from the man’s words that we should not be taking it for granted that he should even pass on this bad news to us on a Shrove Tuesday, since, strictly speaking, all such radio communications counted as work and his future place in heaven was now in grave jeopardy.

We had to resign ourselves to this state of affairs, though some felt it put rather a damper on things to be forced to twiddle their fingers in this dreary spot for another five whole days. The Norwegian tried to console us by pointing out the beauty of the scenery just over the mountains. He suggested we do some sightseeing, go on a few excursions, join the cargo steamer that went at regular intervals to the small towns further up the fjord, from where one could take scheduled buses up the valleys and there go skiing and amuse ourselves in the evenings with dancing and singing; there was really no excuse to be bored. Although it was some comfort for the crew to hear this from such a well-informed local, it was little consolation for me, as I had planned to spend my vacation in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, not Norway’s Vest-Agder.

It was reported that Director Bastesen had arrived in Oslo accompanied by a nurse, and that from there he had booked a cruise to the West Indies to recuperate from the blow to his head — all at the expense of the paper mill.

The cruise ship was due to leave that evening.

And the man called himself a social democrat!

After lunch I ran into Captain Alfredson on deck and remarked in a jocular tone:

‘So the Great Cham is exiled from Fedafjord…’

He asked me in return if I would like to accompany him, the first mate, the purser and his lady friend to the nearest town. It was an approximately two-hour journey, partly by motor boat, partly by automobile. I thanked him kindly for the invitation but said I would wait to hear how they got on.

When the party returned at dinnertime the purser told me that the landscape they travelled through had been very picturesque but the ‘town’ itself was small and everything had been closed, so it wasn’t really much of an outing. However, they had taken part in a Norwegian holiday luncheon at a ski hut. Apparently it had been first-rate fare, mostly meat but they had also been offered the princess of the seas: herring, no less.

The purser’s lady friend on the other hand had found their trip a hair-raising experience and had apparently been scared out of her wits for most of the way. I overheard her complaining to the cook, describing how the first mate had driven at breakneck speed along precipitous mountain roads with the sea a thousand feet below, and claiming that she never wanted to set foot on Norwegian soil again. After this the woman sighed, rested her hand on the cook’s shoulder and laid her head on his breast.

Oho, I thought as I watched them unobserved from the galley door that stood open into the saloon. But the cook laid his hand between the woman’s shoulder blades, simultaneously moving backwards, while she took what looked like a clumsy dance step past him to the kitchen sink where she proceeded to throw up into the potato pan, which was sitting there waiting to be washed up by the galley hand.

From the ship one can glimpse a road clinging to the mountain on the other side of the fjord. It runs diagonally up the slope and for a long stretch appears to be little more than a ledge on the sheer rock wall, so it seemed only natural to me that the woman should have been car sick after being driven along it at break-neck speed.

But still I thought:

‘Oho…’

‘Looks like it’s only the two of you this evening.’

With a deft swivel of the wrist the steward placed the dish containing the entrée on the table and began to serve up on to our plates.

‘The first mate is on watch. The others are fagged out after their trip and say they’re still stuffed with Norwegian food. You two could stay here till the early hours and enjoy the same meal three times over…’

He laughed at his own joke, as young men will. Although I did not join in, I indicated by my response that I found his cheeriness far from unwelcome. It was the first sign of life in the saloon that Shrove Tuesday evening in Mold Bay. We two — Mate Caeneus and I — had been sitting there waiting for the others without saying a single word beyond the conventional greetings. He was, in fact, as taciturn as the day we met on deck (though I have to admit that his clean, pressed uniform lent the occasion a silent dignity).

However, I felt the steward’s fooling had gone far enough so I raised my brows and gestured to the centre of the table:

‘In that case, would it not be more appropriate for us to sit there?’

The steward and mate looked at me enquiringly. I moved my hand slightly to the left, just enough to indicate the empty seat at my side:

‘In Captain Alfredson’s absence.’

‘Oh, that’s what you’re driving at!’

‘Yes, he is our host, is he not?’

‘Well, of course…’

I need hardly explain that this exchange was with the steward since my dining companion remained persistently mute. I lost my temper with the young man:

‘You have still not deigned to inform us why the commanding officer’s seat is unoccupied this evening.’

‘Oh, I, er, he was…’

‘That is no concern of ours!’

I gave the table a sharp rap with my index finger. The steward flinched from the blow as if I had struck him.

‘You cannot evade your duties by gossiping about your superior officer!’

The steward rolled his eyes like a negro, stammering something incomprehensible in his Fynen dialect. At this point Mate Caeneus spoke up:

‘What Mr Haraldsson means — with respect, sir — is that it’s not at all clear who has the role of host this evening. Isn’t that so, Mr Haraldsson?’

I nodded to the mate who looked the boy straight in the eye, his expression stern:

‘You should of course have begun by bidding me good evening first and then Mr Haraldsson. That would have made it clear from the start that in the absence of Captain Alfredson and the first mate, I stand in the place of host.’

The tip of the steward’s tongue protruded from between his dry lips:

‘Thank you, Caeneus, sir, thank you, second mate. I shall remember that next time, thank you, thank you…’

He approached the table, gabbling his thanks and fumbling with a shaking hand for the crystal carafe, presumably with a view to pouring our wine. But Mate Caeneus was quicker off the mark. He hastily removed the stopper from the carafe and, softening his voice a little, said to the boy:

‘That’ll do for the time being. Go into the galley and take a look at the book of etiquette. Then you’ll do better with the main course.’

To me he said politely:

‘May I offer you a glass of bitter-sweet Alsace wine with your ham, Mr Haraldsson?’

I accepted his offer. By establishing our respective roles at the Shrove Tuesday dinner, I had succeeded in breaking the ice between Mate Caeneus and myself. He poured my wine with a more cosmopolitan air than one would expect of a seaman, filling only a third of the glass. Then he poured one for himself and invited me please to start.

I waited until the galley door had closed behind the steward, then whispered to my new host:

‘Mark my words, there’ll be something other than potatoes with tonight’s main course…’

‘Is that so…?’ he replied.

I said no more.

The evening passed swiftly — without any further gaffes by the boy — in amicable chat about the events of the past few days, and before I knew it we had reached the brandy, and the cigars, which I still could not accept. Ordinarily Mate Caeneus would embark on his tale at this stage, but as I couldn’t bear the thought of having to listen to him relating the next chapter for me alone, then listening to him repeat it all to the other crew members the following day, I had the brainwave of asking him about something which intrigued me, and was moreover connected to his story:

‘I should be fascinated, Mr Mate, to hear you relate the story of the prop, if I may call it that, which you use for your storytelling.’

Thus I gave the appearance of taking an interest in my obsessive dining companion, who by virtue of his role as host was the highest ranking officer on board the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen that evening.

‘Ah, that…’ he said, obviously pleased that I had provided him with an opportunity to discourse at length about himself. He reached into the inside pocket of his uniform jacket and took out the piece of wood:

‘This is a splinter from the bow timber of the Argo.’

He balanced the splinter on his palm carefully, as if the slightest draught could blow it away, and held it up to the candlelight to give me a better view. The stick looked like nothing so much as a piece of rotten driftwood of the type that used to wash up on the shore in my youth: bored by worms, gnawed by insects, polished by wind and water, hammered by rocks. I leant forward and sniffed the wood: nothing. Or was there? Yes, there was a faint tang of salt mingled with the odour of damp soil. And to my astonishment I became aware of a once familiar stirring in a certain part of my anatomy, in the nether regions, so to speak:

Good gracious me! I thought, dropping the napkin over my lap and straightening up in my chair:

‘But how does it work?’

The mate withdrew his hand and raised the piece of wood to his right ear:

‘You’ve seen me listening to it, sir…’

He made an amateurish pretence of listening to the wood chip:

‘I hear something that could best be compared to the soporific hiss of our short-wave radio receiver: as if a handful of golden sand were being shaken in a fine sieve. This sound caresses the eardrum so gently that before you know it your ear has been lulled to sleep. Then I hear a faint humming through the hiss. At first I think I’m mistaken, but no, I hear it again — rising and falling, over and over, unvarying.

‘Once the ear has fallen asleep, the humming takes on a new form. It becomes a note, a voice sounding in the consciousness, as if a single grain of golden sand had slipped through the mesh of the sieve and, borne on the tip of the eardrum’s tongue, passed through the horn and ivory-inlaid gates that divide the tangible from the invisible world.

‘At first it is wordless, like crooning over a cradle, then it swells into a song. The singer is a woman.’

‘Now, there’s a surprise…’ I remarked rather loudly, inadvertently interrupting Mate Caeneus.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Never mind…’ I answered, adding, ‘I think the pork chops must have disagreed with me.’

While the mate droned on about his piece of wood, I wondered whether oak trees had genders and whether the reason for the unexpected response in my nether regions to the smell of the splinter was that it had been split off a female tree.

‘As you will remember, sir, Athena fitted the bow timber into the many-nailed Argo and the nature of her gift was such that it had the power of human speech. Without it we would never have found our way through the Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to Colchis, up the Donau and her tributaries, into the Baltic and North Sea, and from there north across the Atlantic to cruise off the chill island of Thule, that strange land shrouded in eternal darkness, where the water boils of its own accord in the snow. Indeed, it was on the black sands of Ultima Thule that we Argonauts, first of mortal men, saw the gleam of Helios’ harp strings as he dwells with the Hyperboreans and tunes his instrument beneath the vault of the world. Without the guidance of the loquacious oak we would not have known to turn our ship south-south-east and thus find the way home to the civilised world of the Mediterranean.

‘After this journey we mortal men had somewhat humbled the pride of blue-haired Poseidon, for by our successful voyage one could say that we Argonauts had conquered great territories in his watery realm.’

‘Excuse me…’

Here I raised a finger:

‘Pray excuse me, good host, I have to go and spend a penny.’

Mate Caeneus:

‘Of course…’

I hurried to the lavatory and relieved myself. ‘He’ was perhaps not quite as sprightly as the last time this fit was upon him — but he was lively enough. Yes, it gladdened my old heart to see how much vigour the scent of the precious speaking wood had injected into ‘the old chap’.

When I returned to the saloon I noticed that Caeneus had refilled our brandy glasses. His glass, that is to say, for I myself had been sipping my drink sparingly — not wishing to abuse Magnus Jung-Olsen’s hospitality — whereas the mate was becoming a little the worse for wear.

I sat down beside him without comment, then ventured to suggest something that had occurred to me in the lavatory:

‘I was thinking: could the voice you detect in the humming of the wood be your own voice? Like the poet who obstinately believes that he is writing about the world but is in reality only telling yet another story about himself?’

The idea was not entirely my own. My brother-in-law, the psychiatrist Dr Pázmány, had said something similar when the invisible people moved in with me during the winter of 1910–11. However, Mate Caeneus’s response to this little theory of mine — which was only a friendly suggestion — was to scowl and pout and rest his cheek on his hand while his black eyes stared into space.

A good while passed in this manner. I kept silence with him, and it didn’t occur to me to try and explain my words or elaborate. I was becoming used to the crew members’ tendency to behave as if everything I said was incomprehensible, to remain silent for just as long as I was speaking, then carry on from where they had left off, treating me like some guano-covered rock that one must steer a course around. While we two sat in silence over our brandy glasses, I amused myself by trying to work out what the mate was staring at — no doubt he would soon take up the thread from where he had left off when I slipped out to answer the call of nature. It seemed to me that his gaze was resting halfway between the teaspoon and the crumb of French bread just above the middle of the table, a little to the right from his point of view.

But, as it happened, the mate did not yield, any more than a chess piece that has already been played. I had, so to speak, the floor. The clock was ticking on my side. But instead of following up my previous comment by stating the obvious: ‘when your gaze is so abstracted that you seem to see beyond field and forest, you are in fact staring at what stands closest to you; yourself’, courtesy bade me say:

‘Has this awe-inspiring object been in your possession long?’

Mate Caeneus’s large, curly head lifted from his hand. He looked at me enquiringly. To my horror I saw that his left eye, which had been resting on his palm, was full of tears. He cleared his throat and answered as if from the dregs of sleep:

‘You read my thoughts, sir. I was just recalling the terrible night I acquired this talkative stick.’

The mate seized his brandy glass from the table, raised it to face level and looked over the brim — straight into my eyes:

‘Your health, shipmate Haraldsson!’

The saloon clock struck twelve.