but must concede.
You’re right. I don’t like my father either, and I wouldn’t follow him into the clove trade, though he’s gotten rich by it. He’s a true vulgarian—nothing but buying and selling, selling and buying—and eating, a great deal of eating. Gluttony alone, a continual gorging, on people, things, food, money—whatever he could get hold of—without even pretending to anything more. And why should he pretend? Certainly not to please me
.
Certainly not.
And certainly I’ve lived well off it. Off him.
Certainly.
They hover together, cross-purposed in the watery light, the liquid creeping of the porthole reflected across ceiling, floor, the bristling scientific apparatus, their two faces, the whiskers of Owen, bright, dark eyes of Dell’oro, aqueously lit, burbling, sea-shuddering, unbalanced.
• • •
With stink in the background. Of fish, of tar, of wet woolens, of too many men in too small a space. And of that, too, of course: of fear.
The sea-shudders are deeply felt, and not just in the wooden membrane that separates them from it. Deeper yet. Each wave is a vibration in the body itself. Entering through the legs, exiting the stomach, the mouth, the eyes. Top of the head.
• • •
Whether he will tell it or not, that is the question. Small-footed creature that he is. Whether he will dig, unearth, expose. Lay bare.
The moment tautens, then at last he decides.
I learned that he was disloyal to my mother. He did not love us; he preferred someone else. My mother doesn’t know it. All those years he deceived her—deceived us all. I couldn’t be around him anymore
,
and k-keep his secret—so I left.
Thinks,
I didn’t say good-bye.
That ocean spread out before him. Forgetfulness there, in the blue infinity. Or so he hoped.
Behind the drawn shade the sister still sleeping. Dark head recumbent on white pillow. Now as far as he is concerned her innocence will last forever, she is suspended in that final moment of undisturbed dreaming. This is a gift he tried to give her.
• • •
His anger and his bitterness are like a window, closing. Harry Owen desists, returns to untangling what he hopes will be a more successful net.
I did not feel comfortable saying further about it.
• • •
Such turning away, in my father. He is like his own father, in that. Emilio Dell’oro’s is a nature that repels questions; by his very austerity, which allows no grasp, no lever, no fingerhold to be placed upon him, he forestalls from even being asked those questions that he will by no means answer. He is like a fish that slips away, elusive, glimmering, between waving fronds of eelgrass, completely self-contained in his silence.
My father will tell Harry Owen nothing but he will think about it again, later, when he is below, in the safety of his berth. There in the dark. Remembering. Himself at sixteen, pale, indwelling worm of a boy. What he saw when he unlocked it—his father’s rolltop desk. This an act of petty larceny. What does he keep here? The desk is always locked, has been locked forever. Forever as defined by sixteen. Tedious account books, old envelopes, receipts, crumbling packing slips, crusted-over jars of ink, mucilage, frayed twine, pedestrian bits of brown wrapping paper, all the accrued business detritus of the Dell’oro Jet Works, this seems a shame, hardly a just reward for the light-fingered pilfering of the small brass key, so many drawers, mysterious cubbyholes, nooks and crannies, latch and hinge, imagine the possibilities, spring mounts, false-bottomed drawers, so much potential wasted on ink and rubber bands and mucilage.
And then he finds them, wrapped up in a handkerchief. Tiny carvings in coral, some in jet, of a woman’s face, her body. The same face, the same body, over and over. The warm, milky pinks of the coral very like flesh. So like that he must repress a fascination of his own in order to wrap these up, put them
You’re right. I don’t like my father either, and I wouldn’t follow him into the clove trade, though he’s gotten rich by it. He’s a true vulgarian—nothing but buying and selling, selling and buying—and eating, a great deal of eating. Gluttony alone, a continual gorging, on people, things, food, money—whatever he could get hold of—without even pretending to anything more. And why should he pretend? Certainly not to please me
.
Certainly not.
And certainly I’ve lived well off it. Off him.
Certainly.
They hover together, cross-purposed in the watery light, the liquid creeping of the porthole reflected across ceiling, floor, the bristling scientific apparatus, their two faces, the whiskers of Owen, bright, dark eyes of Dell’oro, aqueously lit, burbling, sea-shuddering, unbalanced.
• • •
With stink in the background. Of fish, of tar, of wet woolens, of too many men in too small a space. And of that, too, of course: of fear.
The sea-shudders are deeply felt, and not just in the wooden membrane that separates them from it. Deeper yet. Each wave is a vibration in the body itself. Entering through the legs, exiting the stomach, the mouth, the eyes. Top of the head.
• • •
Whether he will tell it or not, that is the question. Small-footed creature that he is. Whether he will dig, unearth, expose. Lay bare.
The moment tautens, then at last he decides.
I learned that he was disloyal to my mother. He did not love us; he preferred someone else. My mother doesn’t know it. All those years he deceived her—deceived us all. I couldn’t be around him anymore
,
and k-keep his secret—so I left.
Thinks,
I didn’t say good-bye.
That ocean spread out before him. Forgetfulness there, in the blue infinity. Or so he hoped.
Behind the drawn shade the sister still sleeping. Dark head recumbent on white pillow. Now as far as he is concerned her innocence will last forever, she is suspended in that final moment of undisturbed dreaming. This is a gift he tried to give her.
• • •
His anger and his bitterness are like a window, closing. Harry Owen desists, returns to untangling what he hopes will be a more successful net.
I did not feel comfortable saying further about it.
• • •
Such turning away, in my father. He is like his own father, in that. Emilio Dell’oro’s is a nature that repels questions; by his very austerity, which allows no grasp, no lever, no fingerhold to be placed upon him, he forestalls from even being asked those questions that he will by no means answer. He is like a fish that slips away, elusive, glimmering, between waving fronds of eelgrass, completely self-contained in his silence.
My father will tell Harry Owen nothing but he will think about it again, later, when he is below, in the safety of his berth. There in the dark. Remembering. Himself at sixteen, pale, indwelling worm of a boy. What he saw when he unlocked it—his father’s rolltop desk. This an act of petty larceny. What does he keep here? The desk is always locked, has been locked forever. Forever as defined by sixteen. Tedious account books, old envelopes, receipts, crumbling packing slips, crusted-over jars of ink, mucilage, frayed twine, pedestrian bits of brown wrapping paper, all the accrued business detritus of the Dell’oro Jet Works, this seems a shame, hardly a just reward for the light-fingered pilfering of the small brass key, so many drawers, mysterious cubbyholes, nooks and crannies, latch and hinge, imagine the possibilities, spring mounts, false-bottomed drawers, so much potential wasted on ink and rubber bands and mucilage.
And then he finds them, wrapped up in a handkerchief. Tiny carvings in coral, some in jet, of a woman’s face, her body. The same face, the same body, over and over. The warm, milky pinks of the coral very like flesh. So like that he must repress a fascination of his own in order to wrap these up, put them
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