The Whispering Muse (10 page)

And that was the end of Jason son of Aeson.

But Corinth was not the end of the road for the herring gull Caeneus. He flew away, bearing in his claws a splinter of wood from the bow timber, which he has used for his storytelling ever since. Feeling things had become too hot for him in the Aegean, he persisted in his flight until he came all the way north to Finnmark. There a shaman took him under his wing and turned him back into the likeness of a man.

He had stayed a long time in the land of the Lapps, and since then had always worked on Scandinavian ships, generally as mate but occasionally as a telegraphist.

So Caeneus maundered on until the early hours. I must have fallen asleep in my chair and been carried by him to my quarters. I have no memory of undressing myself – it must have been him because my clothes were not in the cupboard but lay on the desk chair, though everything was neatly folded and the shirt and jacket had been hung over the back. This is still further proof that he had been well brought up, in spite of his interminable verbal diarrhoea.

I slept until three o’clock in the afternoon.

Today is Good Friday.

Need I say more?

In an attempt to make the day of crucifixion bearable for us, Captain Alfredson ordered a more lavish spread than usual, so we would have all the ingredients for a feast, as far as circumstances allowed. As the evening progressed the guests grew merry, and the captain was not behindhand in ensuring that everyone had a thoroughly good time. People told jokes which frequently raised a smile, and many of them were well received, though others were not quite as adept at finding the words for what they wished to say, and there were those who verged on the risqué. But, on the whole, one cannot deny that the evening was most congenial.

The purser’s lady friend, who seemed to have an absolute monopoly over the serving of alcoholic beverages, was now in the best of spirits and I could see no sign that she harboured a grudge against me. She served us liberally, filling her neighbours’ glasses and asking the diners please not to be shy about helping each other to wine. In fact, as it turned out, everyone had rather more than they wished for. What reason she had to play both host and hostess that evening and offer the drink so freely I cannot say, though I have a hunch that as ever the couple’s addiction to profit was to the fore, since I had gathered from Captain Alfredson that my hospitality bill, like those of the officers, would be paid by the shipping company, however high. So the couple would profit from any refreshments we consumed over and above what was considered a normal part of the meals, and alcohol weighed heavily in the balance. I tried to raise the matter with Alfredson but the woman saw and forestalled me by rising from her seat and inviting the guests to drink a toast to the captain, which we did with a good will.

Pleased as punch, Alfredson hurried to his quarters and returned with a stack of records and a gramophone. Seeing this, the first mate grabbed the corners of the tablecloth, one after another, and whipped it off the table complete with all the dishes and the remains of the rum trifle. He swung it over his shoulder like a sailor’s kitbag, swept into the galley and flung it in the corner with a resounding crash and clatter of breaking crockery. I saw the purser’s lady friend laugh out loud at this, for the purser could also charge the shipping line for loss of tableware. The captain slammed the gramophone down on the table and the second engineer was set to winding it up and choosing the music; drinking songs, as it turned out – tales of womanising and debauchery in thirteen languages.

The instant the needle touched the groove in the record the purser’s lady friend became the focus of the party. Everyone had to dance with her in turn: the captain, the first engineer, first mate, cook, steward and the three deckhands who were off duty – it was Caeneus’s watch – while I myself filled in for the second engineer and twirled the gramophone crank while he twirled the woman.

From where I sat, squeezed up against the phonograph, I couldn’t block my ears to song after song describing the sailor’s life. The most memorable for me was a comic number listing all the scrapes that drinkers can get into:

I went to Australia and there I was happy:

I bought dozens of girls for a month at a time.

I went down to Italy and there I was happy:

I poleaxed the barmen who didn’t serve me on time.

I went to Rhodesia and there I was happy:

I knocked down wry-faced old blackamores with my fists of steel.

I went to Colombia and there I was happy:

I took married women to my bed and enjoyed them for a while.

(Retold in my own words, V. H.)

The chorus went as follows:

I ended up in hell and here I am happy.

And I have this to say to anyone who’s curious about my lot:

I feel no compunction for what I have done.

I have no interest in the dishonoured –

No interest in the dead.

(Retold in my own words, V. H.)

Why should this particular song have been etched in my memory so that I can record its contents here? Well, because during the last verse the purser’s lady friend came dancing up to me with one of the Kronos line’s fine linen napkins in her hand. She had folded the napkin into a Napoleon hat. As the woman bent forward to place the hat on my head, my senses were filled with a powerful odour of mingled gin, cigarettes, eau de cologne, hair lacquer and sweat – before she straightened up and screeched:

‘
Du bist doch mein süßer Papageientaucher
...’

I laughed at this along with the rest while thinking to myself that Dr Pázmány would have been able to read a thing or two from the woman’s behaviour, especially when she called me ‘her puffin’.

Be that as it may, when the carousing was at its height and the music had begun to pierce one’s ears like the song of the sirens, I heard someone shouting above the din of the gramophone:

‘Hey, hey there! I ... you! Listen, hey, listen! Hey, you!’

The purser was standing apart from the milling throng, snatching at his shipmates, one after the other, in an attempt to buttonhole them. He was one of those whom Bacchus renders eloquent, and had imbibed just the right dose of spirits to fine-tune his speech organ to the point where his inability to pronounce his ‘r’s had largely disappeared. This emboldened him to make pronouncements, and he began imparting loudly into my right ear everything that he had on his chest – I was his sole audience and confidant once his shipmates on the dance floor had shaken him off – and unfortunately it has to be said that it was pretty poor, thin stuff, though it contained the odd interesting titbit.

Including the news that he had purchased his lady friend for the price of a leg of pork:

THE PURSER’S TALE

There is a type of venomous snake known as
Vipera ursini
. It is about a foot and a half long, ash-grey with brown spots and prominent black markings that zigzag the length of its spine. This snake lives in the undergrowth on the forest floor, devouring small animals, both hot- and cold-blooded, though it will sometimes undertake long forays into areas inhabited by man. Here it suddenly appears, having slithered under tree roots, down streams, along tracks and across the borders of the wood, all the way to the dark green thicket of willow that stands on the eastern edge of the old garden on the Polish estate of T
Z
—, posing as a compromise between cultivated land and untouched nature.

In late summer these willow shrubs provide the shadiest place in the garden and the
gouvernante
was in the habit of taking her little charges there to amuse themselves; the
gouvernante
being the governess who looked after the grandchildren of the elderly aristocrat and former magistrate, T
Z
—. He was a widower and usually lived alone apart from his servants, but because of the war, his daughter-in-law and her three children had come to stay with him while their father was away directing the defence of the homeland. One day, following afternoon tea, the
gouvernante
appeared in the shade of the shrubbery with the baby Opheltes, the long-awaited son, in her arms. She led the younger girl by the hand while the elder ran off at a tangent with her butterfly net aloft, trying to capture the mayflies that glowed bewildered in the sunshine.

The
gouvernante
had no sooner reached the thicket of rough willow shrub than out of it stepped seven heavily armed men. They were equipped for a secret mission, in black overalls and lace-up leather boots, with provisions in knapsacks and their faces painted camouflage green. The woman didn’t spot them until they parted the leafy branches and materialised before her. Upon which she gave a scream of terror and was about to flee with the children when the leader of the gang spoke:

‘You see before you friends of the fatherland; we mean you no harm.’

He raised his hands and showed her that they were empty. And the woman thought to herself, those are the hands of an artisan – they offer me no threat. The others also raised their hands. And their leader continued:

‘All we want is something to drink, then we’ll be on our way: our business is with the Germans at the fortress of Thebes.’

She answered:

‘I can give you water. Come with me to the house where you’ll be given both food and drink ...’

‘Thank you, good woman, but our mission is secret and we cannot afford to lose any time. So we’ll continue on our way.’

He signalled to his men to turn back into the forest and they began to part the branches of the willow, preparing to vanish into the thicket again, but the woman said:

‘Wait! There’s a well nearby that’s used to water the horses when they’re grazing here in the old garden. The water’s fresh and full of invigorating minerals, since Mr T
Z
— loves his riding horses as if they were his own children.’

The man answered:

‘The Polish steed is a divine creature. What is good enough for him is good enough for us.’

‘Then I’ll show you the way.’

But because the well could not be seen from where they stood and the
gouvernante
wanted Opheltes to enjoy the sunshine in the lee of the willows, she laid him on the grass and told his sisters to keep an eye on their little brother for the brief time it would take her to escort the men to within sight of the well. The boy had just learnt to crawl and the moment his nurse turned her back on him he rolled over on his stomach and crawled laughing under a bush where
Vipera ursini
was waiting.

Although the venom of this European species of viper is not powerful enough to kill an adult, it brings certain death to any toddler it bites – and when the
gouvernante
returned to the sheltered spot, only a minute later, the little child Opheltes T
Z
— lay dead in a tangle of willow roots, and the snake had vanished.

When the thirsty friends of the fatherland saw the tragedy that had taken place, their leader said:

‘This is an ill omen for our expedition, and the boy’s true name should be Arkemoros: “Harbinger of Ruin”.’

Sure enough, all seven of them lost their lives in the attack on the fortress at Thebes.

The T
Z
— family nursed their vengeance until the end of the war, though they compelled the guilt-stricken
gouvernante
to serve them in every conceivable manner in the meantime. Afterwards they handed her over to a Soviet tank platoon that came raping and pillaging through the region.

Four years later the purser found the woman in a whorehouse in Königsberg. The day before he had acquired a leg of dried ham, and in exchange for this he was allowed to take the woman away with him.

I SHOULD THINK TODAY
, Saturday 16 April, has been the most remarkable of the voyage so far. From early this morning till late this evening we have experienced one novelty after another. On the dot of six the rumbling and clanking began as every machine and winch on deck, fore and aft, ground into action as the loading was resumed with urgent haste. There was little chance of sleeping while this was going on so I got out of bed.

I put on my dressing gown and went out into the saloon, where I found the crew who had been turfed out of bed so that the loading of the ship could progress with all speed. Although the industriousness of the Norwegian dockers should have been cause for optimism, there was a subdued atmosphere among the deckhands at the breakfast table. Not that this was surprising. Many of them had caroused until nearly two in the morning and inevitably some had continued in their cabins, a few passing out in their bunks with a bottle tucked under their cheek – not that it bothered me.