The Edge of the Earth (7 page)

We went on a long while, until I could no longer make out the shore. 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 shore. 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 shore, 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 glass, 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 muffler 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 anticipation, 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

I
T 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 title, 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 embarrassed 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 noble 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 institutions. 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. Passion, even. God 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 Saturday!”

We were to meet on Wisconsin Avenue at the entrance to the exhibit in the afternoon. The day was warm; snowbanks 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 muff, 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 classical 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 passageway; its novelty and air of mystery heightened our anticipation.

“When you emerge,” a sonorous voice said from farther up the passage (“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 passage, 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 gods. 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 assured 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 passage 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.

“So!” he said. “We’ll get a snack and then off to our next bit of entertainment! My solo!”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Oskar?” Lucy asked.

I’d thought the same but had not dared to voice it while I could still almost feel the pressure of his fingers.

“He had to go back to the boatyard,” Ernst said. “Something to finish, he said. Off on another of his tangents, I guess.”

“He’s not going to the concert?” I brought out.

After what I’d felt at Oskar’s touch, I’d not been prepared for him to take himself casually back to work. He’d not even bothered to tell me goodbye. The heightened senses I’d enjoyed that whole afternoon dulled, and the fruited hat that earlier had seemed to lift my chin now pressed heavily around my temples.

“That’s all right,” Ernst said. “As long as you’re there.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze to pull me toward him, and on top of my disappointment, I felt piercing shame. Without my willing them, my feet copied the rhythm of his as we walked toward the music hall.

I did my best to be bright in the seat near the front that Ernst’s parents and my own had held for me. I caught his eye and smiled; I applauded energetically; but when it came time for the final number and the music master turned to announce that we were all to join in, I had to gird myself for what I knew was to come.

The popular “Du, du liegst mir im Herzen” swelled from the audience like a wave, and I sang, too, although my voice was only a whisper. “Du, du liegst mir im Sinn.” The words about pining for a lover who doesn’t care enough bruised my throat, and I felt the push of tears behind my eyes. I allowed myself to be swayed back and forth in the waltz tempo, my shoulders locked with the shoulders of all in my row, but I knew I was alone.

∗ ∗ ∗

At the restaurant afterward, Aunt Martha frowned at her liberally salted
hackfleisch.
“Oskar ought to have come. We’re giving him a home, after all, even after what happened with Ida. And a job. The least he could do is show some gratitude and loyalty.” She helped herself to a large forkful of the raw meat and paused to chew it before going on. “He failed half his classes at Oberlin, you know. He’s in no position to act as if he can’t be bothered.”

“I’m sure he’s had a hard time of it,” my mother said kindly. “It must be very difficult to follow in Manfred’s footsteps.”

“You can hardly say he’s done much following. Poor Peter despairs of his ever making a success of himself.”

Stewing in my own mix of longing, disappointment, and shame, I said nothing about walking on one’s own feet.

∗ ∗ ∗

While we were out, a cheap envelope of the sort used to pay the iceman was pushed through the letter slot. It was addressed to me, so Gustina laid it on my bed. It contained my coral necklace, as well as a page torn roughly from one of Oskar’s notebooks.

Dearest Trudy,

It is not my right to call you that, but you are my Dearest Trudy. I dare to say it because you have a good and true heart, the best I’ve ever known, and you won’t laugh at my poor self but be sorry to have caused such feelings in me when of course you cannot return them. Believe me when I say I’ve fought against this idiocy—I’ve sat my feelings down and given them a stern talking-to and even licked ’em once or twice until they bled—but they only laugh at me. They know what they want and will not be dissuaded by anyone so trifling as me. And so I’m writing to tell you that I plan to leave for California at once. I would not hurt my cousin nor cause you embarrassment. I will, however, love you always.

Yours without hope,

Oskar

P.S. I’m sorry that I took your necklace. I so desired the thing that had lain against your beautiful skin that I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry I stole your necklace, but you’ve done far worse. You’ve stolen my heart.

I was powerfully moved by the idea that he planned to sacrifice himself. (Even while I recognized that his claim of hopelessness was merely proper modesty, for what was the letter itself if not hope?) I was enraptured by the notion of a love so fierce it would not be extinguished. I was nineteen, after all, too newly hatched into womanhood to have grown any protective carapace against the pressure of ardency. I don’t accuse him of guile. I believe he produced these sentiments in the same spirit in which I craved them. That is ever the story of love.

I needed no more than the passion I saw in this letter to refine the clay he’d presented me into a finely molded figure. I admired his intensity of focus, his determination to do something in the world—qualities I wished for myself but feared I lacked either by virtue of my temperament or because I was not a man. The criticisms I’d heard of him were nothing except the fears of those who had neither dreams nor daring. I saw that he had superior understanding, and with it he saw me as no one else did, as someone different, even—dare I say?—better than others had supposed. I believed that he might make my life into something I couldn’t even picture, because it was so far beyond my experience that I had not the imagination to conjure it.