Trust (70 page)

In the penumbra of its anti-shadow I felt myself an object of meditation. It seemed I was watched. It seemed I was contemplated. A consciousness dangled. An eye pondered. I viewed; I was viewed. A radiance lifted itself from the shoulders of the tree and hung itself, by some unknown manner of passage, close against my face, so that, to see, I had to stare through a tissue of incandescence, and saw in a spontaneity of concentration the lit water, the far and the near, the far stream of white and the glint-pointed near, the revolving veil of mites and motes in their inexorable gold whirl, and showering the swamp's edge with elusive sparkles, the extraordinary little tree. The tree was an eye. It observed me. The tree was a mind. It thought me. The tree lived because I lived. It burned for me, it leaped all whiteness and all light into being, and for me; for me it consumed itself, because I had made it, I was its god, my gaze had forced its fires, the sanctity of my wonder had quickened its awe; it had found me out in that grove of grasses, and knew me as a holy interloper; I appeared like god or goddess on a platform in that waiting water, a miraculous preparation, unaccountable in that place, undesignatable and unlooked-for in that place, and I came to the wooden lily-leaf to sit upon it and stare, as once the Buddha sat and stared, and, seeing, showed himself divine; I was nymph, naiad, sprite, goddess; I had gifts, powers; and the tree worshipped, because I could conjure flame in it, I could snuff it, I could bore it through with a devouring torch, I could deliver it into its own night, it was in my hand, having aroused it to transparencies I could at will shadow it and snuff it.

Then it was snuffed. The light went out of it. The sun slid down and away, and leaned a long leaning, so that the far water and the near water were the same; and the light went out of the tree. It stood there drab as toad's skin, and commonplace, already browning with autumn intimations. Its posture was undistinguished, it had an awkward foot with a rooted burly toe, it climbed out of the bank of that marsh—if a marsh, that most gradual of ideas, can be said to have a bank—a larger and more ragged yellow weed in a habitat of weeds. It did not notice me. I knew myself to be profane. It neither reverenced nor perceived. It was blind, it was dumb, it was a dwarf which could hallow nothing. The gazing light was dead in it. The sun had carried off its consecrations. On the rooted dock that had survived the Pink Lady I sat all the afternoon, waiting for my father. I equipped myself to converse with him. I began by introducing myself, and discovered an embarrassment, not in him, over William's surname. To counteract this I spoke to the tree (which out of convenience represented Tilbeck) of the tree: "A dryad," I said, "is an optical effect." But this was false, and not to the point. "A dryad," I said, "is one of us, ourselves. I have been," I said, "a dryad. I have given life," I said, "to a tree. Today. Here. In the swamp. At the ferry dock. Before the late afternoon." But this was fey, and full of spells, and uncertain to attract a thief and crook. Or perhaps he would not remember how they threw darts in olden times at the Brighton dryad, Allegra and himself, or how the Brighton dryad was extinguished by a cry exactly in the moment the baby's howling head was born, so that it seemed the Brighton dryad had died of her own cry. To the tree representing Tilbeck I said (but none of this aloud: solitude, so as not to be self-suspect, makes dignity), "You are not punctual. It was early afternoon when I arrived, now it is late afternoon. I have observed the passage of the day's center from a point just behind this recently looking-glass tree, silver-backed by the sun, in which I nearly saw myself, and
would
in fact have seen myself had I not been distracted by suddenly turning holy, to a hollow over there behind those very high, very erect cattails. And still you have not come. And the tree is now perfectly opaque, and even drops a shadow. Clarity has waned." This was better; it was at least explicit, and left out dryads, which he might, after all, think a stupidity if not a madness, never reminded of that Brighton dryad of his own discovery, or invention, or more probably plagiarism; but I had the fresh advantage of my mother's letters. For memory, he might apply to me. Old imaginings I could provide, but if he had no new ones he would likely not recognize the old. Perhaps through thievery, through crookery out and out, through blackmail perhaps, imagination had left him and play had left him and all the woodland flowers listed in the ENCHIRIDION had leaped with their limp stalks safe out of his buttonhole.

When he came, he had no buttonhole. He had no shirt. In surprise I heard the crisp plummeting of oars—I had thought he tillered a motor. Plash followed plash. The middle water chirped at the slap of the blade and trilled at its lift. Steady margins of interlocking whirlpools touched at my raft. I stood to see over the grasses. A naked back glided, tensed, again glided. Naked arms slowly propelled themselves up and around and down in a cleverly timed, infinitely leisurely, superabundantly self-possessed orbit, and at each rise I spotted an arc of unexplored skin reaching from under the armpits to the waist, where no passion, not even the sun's, had ever lain.

I was no private visitor. The boatman was a boy.

He was not a very large boy, but he was master of his craft. He drew one oar in and raised it dripping over the side and set it down in the hull, doing all this with a single competent thin-wristed hand; the other held on to the second oar. Then he took the second oar by the handle and altered its angle to that of a paddle, and turned the boat efficiently within the narrowest possible radius, and coaxed it toward the dock, whispering it through the grasses, and blinking out now and then an eager little nose supporting eye-glasses twinkling light like semaphores. He moved in his craft, like a Viking child, or like a sort of Norse centaur, the top half human, the lower half presumably the parts of a boat; his arms circled as though air were a familiar kind of pool, and his boat circled skimmingly, as though water were as yielding as air.

Twice I heard my father's name. Was it boy's voice or water's voice? "Tilbeck," I heard. And again it came: "Tilbeck."

"Hello," I called.

A scared green frog no longer than a hairpin landed in front of my feet, gave me a primordial glance, and shuddered into a flying arc when the boat bumped.

"You want me?" I said.

"Mr. Tilbeck does. He said to look for a lady on a dock and yell his name so you'd know who I came instead of." He stood up; he had legs after all. He said critically, "He didn't mention a valise or anything."

I handed it down all the same. "In that case he doesn't think very practically. No, if you take it that way you'll overturn."

He took it that way and did not overturn. "Yes he does. He's
very
practical. That's why in the end he decided to let me come. You don't have to be afraid. I'm a good rower. Put the other foot in first. Hold on to that old rusted ring sticking out from the side there. Of the dock. That's all right, don't worry if she tips a little. She'll be fine once you're in. That's the way. You'll be safe with me. I'm a good swimmer too. I've already got my junior lifesaver's certificate. I don't mean
with
me. Next year I get my senior lifesaver's certificate. That's the one that says carry on person at all times to prove competence. You have to be thirteen to qualify. My birthday isn't till next April. Actually I can qualify for it right now, if you don't count age requirements. I'm not saying that for self-praise though. My father says never indulge in self-praise except when absolutely necessary for the purpose of reassuring others. I just thought you'd like to know you'll be pretty safe with me. Safe as if Mr. Tilbeck came himself. He didn't on account of the motor."

"Safer maybe," I said, settling on the plank seat in the bow, next to the suitcase. It was crowded.

"Well, I wasn't thinking of
that.
"

"You weren't thinking of what?"

He said proudly, "I never get sick on water."

"I hope that doesn't count as indulging in self-praise," I said. "Does Mr. Tilbeck?"

"Well, I'd hate to say. I think i've
heard
him say things that sound like self-praise now and then, but I might be mistaken. It's hard to tell what's just plain self-praise and what's reassurance for the safety of others. Anyhow my father hasn't mentioned it to him."

"I meant does he get sick on water."

"My father never gets sick. Oh, I see. Mr. Tilbeck you're referring to. Once in a while he does. He told my father. He said 'I get sick on water, but never on anything stronger.' Actually "that's a sort of joke because even though my father didn't laugh my mother did. She says all ministers are humorless. When my mother laughs at anything it means it's Over My Years. The first time I ever heard her say that I thought she meant
ears.
I used to feel up around my ears to figure out what was over them. I was afraid something funny was growing there, that's why people were laughing."

"Is your father a minister?"

"Oh no, but I'm going to be, D.V. D.V. stands for Deus Volens, it means God willing. Don't you know my father? He's not very obscure. He's Purse the paleontologist. Oh wait, you'd better not. She's kind of puddly down there." I was lifting the suitcase with an uneasy jerk, setting it down on the bottom, out of the way. "Here," he ordered, "I'll put that right up with me, there's plenty of room. I'm very narrow at the hips. That's all right, I've got it. I'm very strong."

I said, surveying the damp-darkened floor, "She
is
pretty wet, I didn't really notice. Have we sprung a leak?"

"It's just general splashing from before. Kick-back from the motor."

"But there isn't any motor."

"That's the whole point. They've been trying to fix it all afternoon. They oiled it and everything. It starts and sort of splashes all over and then stops. When it stops it makes this very peculiar noise. Mr. Tilbeck told me it's just exactly like the sound eunuchs make between their teeth once a month to convey a message to the sultan. That's just a figure of speech. He's never really been to Turkey or any place like that. Of course there are very few sultans any more. He was referring to a time before they had modern democracy. I don't know if they ever had sultans in Pakistan though. You've heard we're going to Pakistan, haven't you?"

"I don't remember your mentioning it," I said, "so far."

"It was in the
Times.
Do you read the
Times?
It's this very famous dig they have out there. This bunch of archaeologists found these very interesting humanoid bones. They nearly went crazy. Jotham—you know Jotham? Jotham the anthropologist?—well he said Piltdown all over again. Fraud. Of course they don't
know.
They're having this terrific argument about this toe-bone they found. You know you can tell by the toes what their posture was. Do you read
Popular Ancients?
It's having this terrific argument with
National Antiquity
because
National Antiquity
had a special color photograph of this toe-bone and under it they had 'Creeping Shikarpur Man.'
Popular Ancients
put 'Bending Shikarpur Man.' Anyhow that's why
we're
going. For all
they
know it could be a marsupial toe. They have to have my father out there right away. He got a speed-up on his Ford. Do you know what a Ford is? It's money. I bet you thought it was a car. Shikarpur isn't even where the dig is, it's only near, but we have to start out from there. It's a city. They named the bones they found after it. All nine of us are going, even Dee. The visa man said we've got the longest papers of 1957. Two feet at least Dee's my brother but only a baby so my grandma thinks ifs awful."

"Is she going too? Your grandma?"

This made him laugh. "
She
never goes anywhere except to meeting. She's too old. She had to have this wheelchair, so my mother built her one. It's an invention. It can climb stairs one by one all by itself. It's got a motorized ratchet on it. It's set for an eight- by six-inch step. The thing about our meeting-house is it has all these stairs."

I leaned to search over the water for the dock: it existed as an invisible point, a platonic hypothesis, below a small smudge of decaying cabbage-head, which I took to be the little far tree. A white line of highway sat like a rigid hat on top of the swamp. Where we had been yielded to distance. Where we were throbbed with progress. The boy rowed his toy. His feet were wedged against its sides as if in stirrups. He commanded it the way a rocking-horse is commanded. We pursued our arc of advance seriously and without whimsy, fitting the crescent of our keel to hollows beneath us, the water rapidly vacating like a cheek drawn in. "She's moving beautifully," I told the boy.

"I'm a very fast rower," he acknowledged.

"Is it far?"

"It took
us
only fifteen minutes. We came over from New Rochelle in this very small launch my father hired. You know New Rochelle?"

"I was there once," I asserted without grace.

"Well, you know Polygon's Boat Yard? It's right off Echo Bay. That's where we got this launch. It's named
The Polygon,
after Polygon. We just about all fit. It's really pretty small for a launch. You can't squeeze everything into a purse, but you can squeeze a Purse into anything. That's a joke my mother's always saying about us. Polygon's man is coming back for us in a couple of days. We've been here practically a whole week. He's a Japanese man, but Polygon's a Greek. Did you ever see him? Polygon? He's very fat, that's why I ask. When
we
first saw him my mother said he'd had all his angles filed off, but then he wanted to charge us a whole lot and she said he
knew
them all just the same. Then Polygon said he had to charge us so much because he charges per passenger, but my father said with nine of us it wasn't fair, he should charge us just for the launch and the Japanese man to run it. Then my mother said it was injustice for Polygon to fill his purse by filling
The Polygon
with Purses, because you could put a Purse in a Polygon and still make a profit, but if you put a polygon in a purse it would stay just as flat as before. So then Polygon laughed and said lady that's Greek to me. And then my mother said well, Polygon has a point,
several
points in fact, you can't deny that if you put
Mr.
Polygon in a purse it would turn out nice and round after all, points or no points. Then the Japanese man said lady don't try to bargain with Greeks. Then my father paid."