The Choir Boats (44 page)

Foremost among the stops on the circuit was the Analytical
Bureau. Best of all, at the A.B. they began rehearsals for Buskirk’s
“Hero of the Hills” to be staged at the Marine soiree in Plassy-Month.
During rehearsals, everyone forgot the roaring winds outside and the
threat of war with Orn and all the weird and dangerous adventures
that had befallen them.

They cancelled rehearsal on one Dowse-day to visit the
University, primarily to see “The Specimen,” the preserved body of
a near-human that had washed ashore in Yount. Reglum and the
other A.B.s felt the body should be housed at the Analytical Bureau,
as part of the biology and anatomy holdings, but the Sacerdotes,
who ran the University, saw the body as an exemplar of divine will
and a matter for theological discussion.

After all that they had seen since leaving Mincing Lane, the
sight of a human who was not quite human still came as a shock
to the McDoons. Sanford, in particular, did not wish to stay long;
he searched but could not find a verse to comfort or guide him. The
naked body lay embalmed under glass on a plinth in the middle of
an otherwise bare rotunda. He looked like a stork if a stork were
anthropomorphized: eight feet tall, with long, gangly legs and arms,
an elongated neck, a bony narrow chest, greyish skin with a sort of
pinkish wattle around a nose twice as long as it ought to be (even
considering the height of the man). The nose had three nostrils.

Sally stared a long time at the body before asking, “What colour
were his eyes?” The eyes were shut.

A Learned Doctor answered, “We do not know. The sea had taken
them before he reached us.”

Sally turned away and asked no more. Nothing emanated from
the body; it lay there mute, with nothing to tell the viewers beyond
the raw fact of its existence.

Somewhere out there is, or was, a world where this — man’s — kind
lived and presumably loved, warred, thought, raised their children
, Sally
thought.
I wonder if they dreamed and what they dreamed of. Did they
worship a mother or a father, or both, or neither? Were they also trapped
in a place they could not escape? If so, what had they done to merit their
punishment, and what must they do to escape it? Along what tangled,
folded route did this unfortunate travel to arrive dead on a beach in
Yount? Was he sent here as a sign of providence or as a warning?

The Specimen offered no clues.

The McDoons’ few other visits were more light-hearted. They
visited Fraulein Reimer’s sister several times, a cheerful woman
named Frau Rehnstock, who had a large family she was eager to
show off. Frau Rehnstock’s granddaughter, Amalia Elisabeth, adored
the great-aunt she had never seen and shyly nestled next to Sally:
Amalia, called Malchen by all, was the girl with the teaselled hair
whose eyes had shown as she sang so beautifully at the Lutheran
Christmas service. The fraulein and Sally read out loud to Malchen
in antiquated German from crumbling books, the family’s treasures
from their sundered Hamburg.

“See Malchen,” said Sally. “Salts of messium are best for curing
horsebites, and here are ways to predict the rain.”

“Who are these people?” cried Malchen, pointing to a plate on
the next page.

“Rose-warriors,” said Sally. “See, they have thorns for teeth.
Here are their friends, the oaken-children. Together they battle the
salamanders, see over there?”

“But who are the little men in this picture, the ones with beards,
curled up inside duck’s eggs?”

“Dwarflings,” replied Sally. “Cousins to the mandrake root and
the mare’s nest.”

Malchen lingered longest over the picture of Frau Luna, with the
leaping dolphins and the moon, and traced the silvery crenellations
in the picture of the enclosed garden.

Sally accompanied Afsana three times to meet with the Rabbi of
Palombeay.

“You want to know how there came to be a rabbi in Yount?”
he said, making tea for his guests. “The whole story would take
up volumes but the short version is this: My father was a rabbi in
Salonika, part of the Ottoman Empire (ah, I see you know that!),
who, because of his great service to the Sultan, was asked to join
an embassy to Persia, Herat, and Sind. They returned by sea, but
the ship was blown far south by a storm and disappeared into —
yes, you guessed it! — the gateway to the Interrugal Lands. My
undaunted father washed up here, where — God having a great sense
of humour! — he found eighty Jews (including his future wife, my
blessed mother) looking for his brand of leadership. By dint of his
intelligence and gentle but persuasive diplomatic talents, he became
the Exilarch, the head of not only the Jews but the entire expatriate
Karket-soomi community in Yount Great-Port. Less intelligent but
more fortunate than he, I inherited this position. So, here I am!”

He spoke with Afsana and Sally of the wisdom Jews, Christians,
and Muslims held in trust for one another and the roots they
cultivated together, all the more visible for being equally alien
in Yount. Afsana and Sally listened as the Rabbi discussed the
commentaries of Isaac Abravanel, the revelations of Yosef Karo, the
encyclopaedism of Yalaqov ben Mahir Culi.

“What about the Mother they worship here?” asked Sally. Afsana
nodded.

“Well,” said the Rabbi, nibbling a honied breadstick. “Little
enough of her stands in any of the Books we know from the
Abrahamic faiths,
but
perhaps the covenant was written differently
in different worlds. I do not know, but in my un-knowing I admit
to greater wisdom. Or so I believe. Dates and cinnamon, young
misses?”

Sanford diverted himself by visiting the commercial Collegium
and befriending Noreous Minicate in the Central Commissary to
learn what he could about Yountish merchant practices. Still, he
fretted much about the business of McDoon.

“Barnabas, what if Brandt is beset with troubles? He is ever so
young.” Sanford said, worried.

“Well,” said Barnabas. “There’s Salmius, I mean de Souza, to help
him, and Sedgewick, and Grammer on behalf of the Buddenbrooks.
Never you fear! Matchett & Frew, for another, and Gardiner . . .
we’ve many friends!”

Winter passed slowly. Sally dreamed only once. She saw the
young African-looking woman, who had been in her dreams on
the
Gallinule
, wearing the cast-off sailor’s jacket with the worn red
neckerchief. The young woman stood in a narrow, soot-grimed, red-brick courtyard under a foggy sky. At first Sally saw the woman in
profile, her black hair tightly braided but, as if Sally had announced
herself, the woman turned and looked straight at her. Sally felt the
woman had been expecting her, waiting for an answer from Sally to a
question Sally did not know. The woman looked at her out of solemn,
patient eyes, but her stance suggested a judgemental attitude, the
patience of an interrogator. The two regarded each other, as wisps of
fog crept into the courtyard and the meagre sunlight dwindled. Sally
felt she should know something, a terribly urgent something, but
what it might be, she did not know. The woman looked disappointed,
in the way a mother might look when a child fails a simple test or
neglects a basic duty. Sally tried to speak but could not. The woman,
whom Sally saw was very cold in the mean, damp courtyard, made a
tight circling motion with her left hand. Sally woke up.

She sought out Afsana straight away and found her teaching Tom
how to play the Yountian equivalent of chess, a game called
glunipi
.
Sally described the dream to Afsana and Tom, but Afsana had never
seen such a young woman in her own dreams.

“You know,” said Tom, trying to be helpful since he did not dream
the way his sister and cousin did, at least not that he remembered.
“You describe what could be a courtyard almost anywhere in East
London. Could be in Wapping, say, or around St. Giles, or St. George-in-the-East.”

Sally bit her lip and, in a tone that made Tom leave his questions
about
glunipi
, said, “The girl — just before I woke up, so maybe I did
not see it rightly — made the warding motion that the Yountians do,
when they speak ‘The Plea’ to the Mother.”

But neither Afsana nor Tom had any more idea than Sally did
about whether the young African woman might really have moved
her hand that way and, if she had, what she might have meant by
doing so. Sally walked away deep in thought, leaving Tom to lose yet
again to Afsana at
glunipi
.

Sally wrote many letters to the cook, and the Mejuffrouw
Termuyden and Mrs. Sedgewick, and one to Elizabeth Bennet of
Longbourn in Hertfordshire, planning to post them on the next
tough ship sailing for Pash in the event that the McDoons did not
sail with that ship. Nexius stopped by one day to say that the ice was
breaking and that the
Pratincole
was due to sail in two weeks, which
topic the McDoons studiously ignored at dinner for the next three
nights.

Sally finally said, “We cannot keep padding around the porridge;
we must take a bite at it before it gets cold!”

Tom said, “We can hardly leave with the debut performance of
Buskirk’s ‘Hero of the Hills’ due to take place the week
after
the
tough ship is set to sail.”

Barnabas said, “No one has asked us to leave, not even in a polite
way that we might have missed. In fact, I think the Queen and the
Lord-Chancellor and, beyond any doubt, the Marines expect us to
stay at least through the summer.”

When they could bear it no longer, Tom came right out and asked
Sanford what Sanford wished to do.

“Well, dearest friends,” said Sanford. “I miss our home on Mincing
Lane, and our business in the port of London. I miss our garden, and
I miss the chance for another
hara masala
dinner. But I think we are
called to help the dry bones in this valley find their own way home.
It seems we McDoons cannot go home until Yount does.”

Everyone cheered. The McDoons would stay in Yount a while
longer. To everyone’s surprise, the next day Afsana made a meal
to celebrate Sanford’s decision: a
hara masala
with goat’s meat.
Unfortunately, newly slaughtered goat was hard to get at that time
of year, especially with the war on, so Afsana was forced to use
salted goat’s meat that Noreous had found for her in the Central
Commissary. Also, not all of the masala spices were available in
Yount, so she had to substitute in some cases. Try as she might, the
meal was not very tasty, but Barnabas was fulsome in his praise.

“Father,” Afsana said (the word was still new to their ears). “My
mother and grandparents always said that a family’s love had to be
rooted in hard truth or else the tree could not survive. So, tell me
truthfully, does my meal really taste so good?”

Barnabas stroked his palempore vest that he had worn to honour
the masala. He reached in his pocket for the key, which, of course, he
no longer had. He coughed twice and wished he had something more
to drink than pear juice.

“Well, to speak plainly, which is always the best course to take,”
he said. “No, my daughter, the dinner is not so fine as perhaps I have
suggested. But my praise is aimed more at the intent than at the
result.”

Afsana smiled in bittersweet triumph, and picked up her fork.
Barnabas coughed again, looking for a moment as if he might pop
with some great emotion that he struggled to contain.

“Afsana,” said Barnabas. “So long as you raise the subject of truth
in families . . . well, I must say . . . that is . . . oh,
Quatsch
.”

Afsana gripped her fork.

She means to throw it at Uncle Barnabas,
thought Tom.
If she does,
no doubt she’ll plant it expertly in Uncle’s sternum
.

“Here it is,” said Barnabas, looking down at his vest and his hands.
“You are right to be angry with me about how I treated Rehana. I told
you what I did was low behaviour that does me no credit whatsoever . . .
irreparable unless I can in some small way make it up by being a
proper father for you. But, but, your saying to me that I played a
role in your mother’s death . . . well, I do not think you can lay that
at my feet!”

Afsana trembled. Tom wanted to put his arms around her but did
not. He worried about where her fork might end up. Afsana stood
up, still holding the fork. She thrust it out like a rapier. Tom half-stood but Afsana waved him aside.

“She suffered a lifetime because of you,” said Afsana.

Barnabas stood up and said, “Yes, I know that. I can never forgive
myself but I will try to make it up to you. But her death . . . ?”

Afsana stood with the fork held in front of her. She lowered the
fork slowly. Her shoulders shook as she soundlessly began to cry.
Tom stood and Afsana did not wave him away. He put one arm
around her. She did not bow her head or put it on his shoulder, but
she allowed him to keep his arm around her.

Drawing in several large breaths, Afsana said: “No, I cannot lay
her death at your feet. I wished myself to come to Yount. No matter
what you had done or not done to her, I longed for Yount. By forcing
her to come with me . . . I caused . . . she died . . .”

Sanford walked around the table to Afsana, gently took the fork
out of her hand and stepped back. He stood there as he had in the
churchyard on the day his wife was buried, the day only Barnabas
and the cook were graveside with a grieving husband. All the credits
in the world could not right that debit but Sanford could try to help
balance someone else’s ledger.

His voice choked with his Norfolk accent, Sanford said to Afsana,
“Grief is made out of love so grief never dies until you do. But love
can make other things too, that last even longer. Join us and make
more than grief from your love.”

Afsana looked in wonder at the austere man before her, a man
whose spiky Christianity scared and angered her and whose laconic,
meticulous ways baffled her. Suddenly she saw that her own wounds
had caused her to overlook the pain of others. More than that, she
had not understood that others in pain might share their wisdom, if
only she asked for it.