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we noted the symptoms." She shook her head ruefully. "Our own bodies became our laboratories. And
then..." She flipped through sketches of barren lava, slumped and tangled yggdrasils, until the style
became much simpler, cruder: the work she had done by herself, after the death of Yeshova.
The captain's eyes filled with tears and he dabbed at them with his knuckles, glancing around in
some embarrassment. When all of us had seen the sketches, Nimzhian stood by the unglazed window,
staring at the small grove circling the spring, her voice hoarse and cracking with weariness. "I need to rest
before we do the next part of the tour."
"Of course," said the captain, and he ordered food brought out of our backpacks. We set up a
picnic lunch around the house and on the porch, and Ser Nimzhian presided like a true matriarch, resting
on her chair assembled from fallen yggdrasil leaf stems. She wore a broad, battered woven fiber hat to
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shade her eyes against the infrequent glare of sun peeping between the clouds.
"Captain," she said, "I give all our work to you. I see it all in my head, and it can only be useful taken
away from this island. I won't be alive much longer, and the weather would only break in again and ruin
everything."
The captain waved his hand as if dismissing her confession of mortality, and was about to speak, but
she continued, "Four years ago, we lost fifty-nine sketches when the roof leaked. Months and months of
work. Lamarckia is indifferent. And so was Martha, I suspect, but we loved her even so. They were
comforting delusions, ghosts of benevolence and care when we were so alone."
We rested in the flowing patches of sun and cloud shadow, alternately warmed and cooled,
surrounded by the rustling furred leaves of the grove. Salap and the captain and Randall sat on the porch
with Nimzhian, who had closed her eyes and slumped in her chair, her breast rising and falling evenly
beneath the folds of her robe and jacket.
Shirla and Shimchisko lay on either side of me, Shirla on her back, eyes tracking the clouds above,
Shimchisko dozing lightly.
"I'd like to sneak off and explore," Shirla said. "I've been bunking on the ship too long, with the mate
watching every tickle." She rolled on her side facing me. "Shall we run off to the hills?"
I smiled. "No flarking," I said. Shirla surveyed me critically, one eye half-closed, and lay back again.
"It's a bold offer," said Shimchisko, waking from his doze. "What do you see in him?"
"I can't help myself," she said lightly. "It's his mystery. Where did you come from? I know ... from
Jakarta, before you lost yourself in Liz. But you don't talk like a Jakartan, and you don't _act_ like
anybody I know ... There's a coolness about you."
"If mystery gets me out of cleaning the shithouse, I'll be mysterious."
"Well said," Shirla commented. "Droll defense. Come with me," she whispered conspiratorially into
my ear, "inland to the hills," she lifted her chest and tucked in her chin, "and you'll see my tits."
I nearly choked on my laugh, and she laughed with me. But her eyes had fixed on mine. "The old
woman's going to walk us somewhere. I'd love to run away behind everybody and sneak back in later. If
you don't want to see my tits, okay, but keep me company."
The heat in me almost overrode my sense of duty -- if that was what it was now. Duty had
transmuted into a burning curiosity and a rush of other conflicting emotions: fascination, anxiety, even a
kind of patriarchal concern. "I'd love to," I said.
"Soterio will dock us," she said. "You might be cut back to apprentice. Am I worth it?"
Shirla had never gone quite this far in her coquettishness.
"You are without doubt the loveliest creature on the ship," I said.
"Tell me more," she said.
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"Much lovelier than Shimchisko here." Shimchisko opened one eye, then closed it again. "And you're
much too smart to ruin a good sea career."
She poked her tongue out between her lips like a forgetful cat and broke our gaze, looking again at
the clouds. "One day," she said, "I will see your secret nakedness, and I will gloat."
"You may see my nakedness any time," I said, "by appointment."
On Thistledown, I had been successful with women, too much so. I had come to think of them as
delightful and valuable commodities, worth much effort, but not like me in any serious respect. I could see
now, middled in this dreamlike experience, that my attitude carried a taint of youth and foolishness. Shirla
was very much like me; Shimchisko was not, nor was the captain or Salap.
A steady patch of sun had settled over us, a long gap between clouds making the sun seem to roll
down a race course, occasionally fetching up against a wall of cloud and flashing it bright yellow-white.
"I'm too stupid," I said.
"See?" Shirla said. "Nakedness. Show me more." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]