The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories (16 page)

“The pine branches rustled. The sea wind murmured in the autumn night, whispering low and hollow as it slipped away over the hills into the darkness. An endless journey, on and away, sweeping down the curve to infinity.

“But there were two answers, the beginning and the end. Two curves joined in the fullness of the moment. The upswing of the wind's dark emergence from the sea. A fleeting passage, movement and a voice under the clear night sky, sad in its tone, the sadness of despair. Then onward into the endless night.

“Slowly, as slowly as time bearing the weight of the universe, my mind received the image of the thing that was nothing. Cold, vague, beyond dimension, flowing as the wind flows. The mind that had reached for the substance found only the shadow. And the shadow was nothing, only the absence, unseen by the eyes, but appearing.

“The lamp cast its short cone of whiteness in a circle on the paper. There the lines were clear and black, the equation set down in formulated order, the conclusion, ultimate, absolute, unvariable, the end of the end, the end of all things, x =
ffi
, y =
ffi
;. And the curve on the paper, like the sun, a moment of light bound by darkness, born to flame, to burn out, finally to become a dark star clinging to its orbital track, or to fall away and drift in the void, alone with the winds of space.

“Outside, the wind whimpered like an endless dying. It breathed the chill of late night through the half open window. I turned out the light. The moon had set, the room dissolved in darkness. I was alone with the wind. Slowly, the image that had formed crept deeper into my mind to flow like a downward coldness into my chest, a paralyzing flux that spread through all my body.

“For a moment I was held by the magnitude of a fear that passed beyond the verge of time and space, crushed down with suffocating closeness in timeless, drifting wind,
aware only of the ether hum of eternity. I closed the window and pulled the shade. I flung the heavy drapes across. Then I fell back in my chair exhausted and listened to the beating of my heart.”

Though the Captain could no longer feel the heat from the sun, nor hear the whistling of the north wind above him, his mind had grown suddenly lucid. “It seems to me,” he said, “that you were not seeking pleasure in the abstractions of mathematics as much as an escape into self-forgetfulness. But once the problem was solved and the answer set down in formulated order, a new and much greater problem arose proving that self-forgetfulness is no impregnable asylum.”

“Between every action and every thought there is a perilous moment,” Mueller said, “in which the abiding consciousness of one's essential nothingness rushes in like a cold wind from infinite space. To extinguish the intervals of nullity and keep running is the game of life.”

CAPTAIN:
“The third noble truth proclaims the release from sorrow is by the extinction of the ego with its desire for pleasure, its sense of duty, and its fear of death.”

MUELLER:
“There is only one release from ego. All others are self-deceptions.”

CAPTAIN
(sighing): “So familiar. I once knew someone who looked like you, thought like you, spoke like you. Somewhere, I'm sure.”

MUELLER:
“I have a common face so I wear no mask. Therefore, everyone sees in me someone they once knew but can't quite remember. They're troubled. They think of me between times. They search their memories. Still they'd rather I be masked.”

CAPTAIN:
“The fruit from the tree of knowledge is sometimes bitter. Truth is bitter.”

MUELLER:
“There is no truth. One man's truth is another man's fable.”

CAPTAIN:
“There is faith.”

MUELLER:
“The dead end of hope.”

CAPTAIN:
“I have known honorable men. I have practiced honesty.”

MUELLER:
“To avoid the appearance of the fact that death ends what life begins.”

CAPTAIN:
“Nothing ends and nothing begins. That's the appalling paradox.”

MUELLER
(sounding pleased): “So you recognize the dilemma?”

CAPTAIN:
“The terror beside which death is sweet. To keep from thinking the unthinkable I have studied, worked,
read, learned much, accomplished much, all in the approved fashion. I have spared others pain, even to suffering myself. To be busy with good works is the highest good.”

MUELLER:
“To whistle, hum a tune, pace the floor, count one's heartbeats to ten times ten thousand.”

CAPTAIN
(weakly): “I have known love.”

MUELLER:
“Still the paradox intrudes.”

CAPTAIN
(after a long pause): “Tell me. Who are you?”

MUELLER:
“Do you need an answer?”

CAPTAIN:
“No.”

MUELLER:
“Then you know me.”

CAPTAIN
(wearily): “The voice that whispers from the bottom of the well.”

MUELLER:
“You have struggled against me, tried to lose me in this dark alley or that crowded street.”

CAPTAIN:
“One way or another, yet necessarily I believe.”

MUELLER:
“But no longer. Not now.”

CAPTAIN:
“Even now.”

MUELLER:
“There are no roads left. You have travelled them all.”

CAPTAIN:
“There is one.”

MUELLER:
“Ah yes, so I must leave you.”

CAPTAIN:
“The end of our game?”

MUELLER:
“The game is ended.”

CAPTAIN:
“And the loser?”

MUELLER:
“I concede. But I made you earn it. Farewell now.”

CAPTAIN:
“You are still going north?”

MUELLER:
“Back to the cold and the darkness, to the land of the unblest barbarians.”

CAPTAIN:
“Wait. Go with me.”

MUELLER:
“I have work to do.”

CAPTAIN:
“Keeping men busy?”

MUELLER:
“Spreading the WORD.”

CAPTAIN:
“The word for no word, the cold beyond panic.”

MUELLER:
“Only for those I can reach.”

CAPTAIN:
“Go with me and leave men in peace.”

MUELLER:
“They will not let me. I am their strength. I will unite them. Eventually.”

CAPTAIN
(reflecting in the enclosing darkness): “You have been a fearful goader with your fork, a stern disciplinarian.”

MUELLER:
“Do you regret me?”

CAPTAIN
(adrift now in full blackness): “No, not really since . . .”

MUELLER:
“Since what?”

CAPTAIN
(fading): “. . . there was . . .”

MUELLER:
“Was what?”

CAPTAIN:
“. . . no other choice.”

Hoskins, tears flowing down his grizzled cheeks, stood on the gangway platform staring vacantly at the black Ford panel moving slowly down the dock amid clouds of screaming gulls in startled flight. Near the corner of the warehouse the panel pulled over to let a cab pass through, then disappeared into the alley that led to the street.

Oblivious to the cab and the circling gulls, Hoskins continued to stare after the departed panel. Then suddenly, almost desperately, he jerked a large, checkered blue kerchief from the back pocket of his dungarees, wiped away his tears, then blew his nose angrily. “God damn son-of-a-bitch,” he sobbed. “God damn it to hell!”

The cab, a shiny new Checker, pulled up in front of the gangway and a man in a dark blue business suit got out, paid the driver and hurried toward the ship.

“Now who the hell is this?” Hoskins muttered, torn between anger and grief. “Probably the weirdo passenger old Midnight cleaned up the cabin for. Well, he better go right back to where he came from because he won't be goin' nowhere on this old tub.”

Before he could yell down to hold the cab, the man, struggling with a big briefcase, a heavy overcoat, and what looked like a portable typewriter, was already puffing up the steep incline. He paused on the deck to get his breath, then introduced himself.

“My name is Mueller, William Mueller.” He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Hoskins. “Here is my ticket. I'll be going as far as Astoria. However, if the
Caspar
is going to call at Portland, I'll stay aboard for the trip up the Columbia River.” His low pitched voice was barely audible above the wind. “You must be Captain Larson.”

“I'm Hoskins, the chief engineer. If it's the skipper you want, you're just thirty minutes too late.”

“But it's only one o'clock,” Mueller said. “Mr. O'Hare, the agent, told me you wouldn't be leaving until two or three this afternoon. I had hoped to talk with the Captain before departure and then get to work as soon as possible.”

“Talk? Work?”

“I'm from the University Press and we are doing a book on the steam schooners of the West Coast. So far our research is based mainly on Captain Larson's articles in the
Shipping News
and other periodicals. However, since he is the only living authority on the subject we deemed it indispensable to talk with him in the environment he knows so well. From his writings, he appears to be a man of intellect and, at the same time, a warm humanitarian.”

“He was all that and more,” Hoskins said, gloomily. “He was the only man I ever knew who was afraid of nothing.”

“Was?” Mueller asked. “Where is he now?”

“You passed him on your way in. He was in that black Ford panel on his way to the morgue.”