Beside him, talking earnestly, was his current woman, born Mary Rutherford in 1637, died Lady Warwickshire in 1674. She was English but of an age 300 years later than his, so there were many differences in their attitudes and actions. Burton did not give them much longer to stay together.
Kazz was sprawled out on the deck with his head in the lap of Fatima, a Turkish woman whom the Neanderthal had met forty days ago during a lunch stop. Fatima, as Frigate had said, seemed to be `hung up on hair.' That was his explanation for the obsession of the seventeenth-century wife of a baker of Ankara for Kazz. She found everything about him stimulating but it was the hairiness that sent her into ecstasies. Everybody was pleased about this, most of all Kazz. He had not seen a single female of his own species during their long trip, though he had heard about some. Most women shied away from him because of his hairy and brutish appearance. He had had no permanent female companionship until he met Fatima.
Little Lev Ruach was leaning against the forward bulkhead of the fo'c'sle, where he was making a slingshot from the leather of a hornfish. A bag by his side contained about thirty stones picked up during the last twenty days. By his side, talking swiftly, incessantly exposing her long white teeth, was Esther Rodriguez. She had replaced Tanya, who had been henpecking Lev before the Hadji set off. Tanya was a very attractive and petite woman but she seemed unable to keep from `remodeling' her men; Lev found out that she had `remodeled' her father and uncle and two brothers and two husbands. She tried to do the same for, or to, Lev, usually in a loud voice so that other males in the neighborhood could benefit by her advice. One day, just as The Hadji was about to sail, Lev had jumped aboard, turned, and said, `Goodbye, Tanya. I can't stand any more reforming from The Bigmouth from the Bronx. Find somebody else; somebody that's perfect.' Tanya had gasped, turned white, and then started screaming at Lev. She still was screaming, judging by her mouth, long after The Hadji had sailed out of earshot. The others laughed and congratulated Lev, but he only smiled sadly. Two weeks later, in an area predominantly ancient Libyan, he met Esther, a fifteenth-century Sephardic Jewess.
`Why don't you try your luck with a Gentile?' Frigate had said.
Lev had shrugged his narrow shoulders. `I have. But sooner or later you get into a big fight, and they lose their temper and call you a goddam kike. The same thing also happens with my Jewish women, but from them I can take it.'
`Listen, friend,' the American said. `There are billions of Gentiles along this river who've never heard of a Jew. They can't be prejudiced. Try one of them.'
`I'll stick to the evil I know.'
`You mean you're stuck to it,' Frigate said.
Burton sometimes wondered why Ruach stayed with the boat. He had never made any more references to The Yew, The Gypsy, and El Islam, though he often questioned Burton about other aspects of his past. He was friendly enough but had a certain indefinable reserve. Though small, he was a good man in a fight and he had been invaluable in teaching Burton judo, karate, and jukado. His sadness, which hung about him like a thin mist even when he was laughing, or making love, according to Tanya, came from mental scars. These resulted from his terrible experiences in concentration camps in Germany and Russia, or so he claimed. Tanya had said that Lev was born sad; he inherited all the genes of sorrow from the time when his ancestors sat down by the willows of Babylon.
Monat was another case of sadness, though he could come out of it fully at times. The Tau Cetan kept looking for one of his own kind, for one of the thirty males and females who had been torn apart by the lynch mob. He did not give himself much chance. Thirty in an estimated thirty-five to thirty-six billion strung out along a river that could be ten million miles long made it improbable that he would ever see even one. But there was hope.
Alice Hargreaves was sitting forward of the fo'c'sle, only the top of her head in his view, and looking at the people on the banks whenever the boat got close enough for her to make out individual faces. She was searching for her husband, Reginald, and also for her three sons and for her mother and father and her sisters and brothers. For any dear familiar face. The implications were that she would leave the boat as soon as this happened. Burton had not commented on this. But he felt a pain in his chest when he thought of it. He wished that she would leave and yet he did not wish it. To get her out of sight would eventually be to get her out of his mind. It was inevitable. But he did not want the inevitable. He felt for her as he had for his Persian love, and to lose her, too, would be to suffer the same long-lived torture.
Yet he had never said a word about how he felt to her. He talked to her, jested with her, showed her a concern that he found galling because she did not return it, and, in the end, got her to relax when with him. That is, she would relax if there were others around. When they were alone, she tightened up.
She had never used the dreamgum since that first night. He had used it for a third time and then hoarded his share and traded it for other items. The last time he had chewed it, with the hope of an unusually ecstatic lovemaking with Wilfreda, he had been plunged back into the horrible sickness of the `little irons,' the sickness that had almost killed him during his expedition to Lake Tanganyika. Speke had been in the nightmare, and he had killed Speke. Speke had died in a hunting `accident' which everybody had thought was a suicide even if they had not said so. Speke, tormented by remorse because he had betrayed Burton, had shot himself. But in the nightmare, he had strangled Speke when Speke bent over to ask him how he was. Then, just as the vision faded, he had kissed Speke's dead lips.
Chapter 14
* * *
Well, he had known that he had loved Speke at the same time that he hated him, justifiably hated him. But the knowledge of his love had been very fleeting and infrequent and it had not affected him. During the dreamgum nightmare, he had felt so horrified at the realization that love lay far beneath his hate that he had screamed. He awakened to find Wilfreda shaking him, demanding to know what had happened. Wilfreda had smoked opium or drunk it in her beer when on Earth, but here, after one session with dreamgum, she had been afraid to chew any more. Her horror came from seeing again the death of a younger sister from tuberculosis and, at the same time, reliving her first experience as a whore.
`It's a strange psychedelic,' Ruach had told Burton. He had explained what the word meant. The discussion about that had gone on for a long time. `It seems to bring up traumatic incidents in a mixture of reality and symbolism. Not always. Sometimes it's an aphrodisiac. Sometimes, as they said, it takes you on a beautiful trip. But I would guess that dreamgum has been provided us for therapeutic, if not cathartic, reasons. It's up to us to find out just how to use it.'
`Why don't you chew it more often?' Frigate had said.
`For the same reason that some people refused to go into psychotherapy or quit before they were through; I'm afraid.'
`Yeah, me, too,' Frigate said. `But some day, when we stop off some place for a long time, I'm going to chew a suck every night, so help me. Even if it scares hell out of me. Of course, that's easy to say now.' Peter Jairus Frigate had been born only twenty-eight years after Burton had died; yet the world between them was wide. They saw so many things so differently; they would have argued violently if Frigate was able to argue violently. Not on matters of discipline in the group or in running the boat. But on so many matters of looking at the world.
Yet, in many ways, Frigate was much like Burton, and it may have been this that had caused him to be so fascinated by Burton on Earth. Frigate had picked up in 1938 a soft-cover book by Fairfax Downey titled Burton: Arabian Nights' Adventurer. The front page illustration was of Burton at the age of fifty, The savage fate; the high brow and prominent supra-orbital ridges, the heavy black brows, the straight but harsh nose, the great scar on his cheek, the thick `sensual' lips, the heavy down-drooping moustache, the heavy forked beard, the essential broodingness and aggressiveness of the face, had caused him to buy the book.
`I'd never heard of you before, Dick,' Frigate
said. `But I read the book at once and was fascinated. There was something about you, aside from the obvious derring-do of your life, your swordsmanship, mastery of many languages, disguises as a native doctor, native merchantman, as a pilgrim to Mecca, the first European to get out of the sacred city of Harar alive, discoverer of Lake Tanganyika and near-discoverer of the source of the Nile, co-founder of the Royal Anthropological Society, inventor of the term ESP, translator of the Arabian Nights, student of the sexual practices of the East, and so forth. . .
`Aside from all this, fascinating enough in itself, you had a special affinity for me. I went to the public library – Peoria was a small city but had many books on you and about you, donated by some admirer of yours who'd passed on – and I read these. Then I started to collect first editions by you and about you. I became a fiction writer eventually, but I planned to write a huge definitive biography of you, travel everywhere you had been, take photographs and notes of these places, found a society to collect funds for the preservation of your tomb. . .'
This was the first time Frigate had mentioned his tomb. Burton, startled, said, `Where?' Then, `Oh, of course! Mortlake! I'd forgotten! Was the tomb really in the form of an Arab tent, as Isabel and I had planned?'
`Sure. But the cemetery was swallowed up in a slum, the tomb was defaced by vandals, there were weeds up to your focus and talk of moving the bodies to a more remote section of England, though by then it was hard to find a really remote section.'
`And did you found your society and preserve my tomb?' Burton said.
He had gotten used to the idea by then of having been dead, but to talk with someone who had seen his tomb made his skin chill for a moment.
Frigate took a deep breath. Apologetically, he said, `No. By the time I was in a position to do that, I would have felt guilty spending time and money on the dead. The world was in too much of a mess. The living needed all the attention they could get. Pollution, poverty, oppression, and so forth. These were the important things.'
`And that giant definitive biography?'
Again, Frigate spoke apologetically. `When I first read about you, I thought I was the only one deeply interested in you or even aware of you. But there was an upsurge of interest in you in the '60's. Quite a few books were written about you and even one about your wife.'
'Isabel? Someone wrote a book about her? Why?'
Frigate had grinned. `She was a pretty interesting woman. Very aggravating, I'll admit, pitifully superstitious and schizophrenic and self-fooling. Very few would ever forgive her for burning your manuscripts and your journals. . .'
`What?' Burton had roared. `Burn . . .?'
Frigate nodded and said, `What your doctor, Grenfell Baker, described as "the ruthless holocaust that followed his lamented death." She burned your translation of The Perfumed Garden, claiming you would not have wanted to publish it unless you needed the money for it, and you didn't need it, of course, because you were now dead.' Burton was speechless for one of the few times in his life.
Frigate looked out of the corner of his eyes at Burton, and grinned. He seemed to be enjoying Burton's distress.
`Burning The Perfumed Garden wasn't so bad, though bad enough. But to burn both sets of your journals, the private ones in which, supposedly, you let loose all your deepest thoughts and most bunting hates, and even the public ones, the diary of daily events, well, I never forgave her! Neither did a lot of people. That was a great loss; only one of your notebooks, a small one, escaped, and that was burned during the bombing of London in World War II' He paused and said, `Is it true that you converted to the Catholic Church on your deathbed, as your wife claimed?'
'I may have,' Burton said. 'Isabel had been after me for years to convert, though she never dared urge me directly. When I was so sick there, at the last, I may have told her I would do so in order to make her happy. She was so grief-stricken, so distressed, so afraid my soul would burn in Hell.'
`Then you did love her?' Frigate had said.
`I would have done the same for a dog,' Burton replied.
`For somebody who can be so upsettingly frank and direct you can be very ambiguous at times.' This conversation had taken place about two months after First Day, A.R. 1. The result had been something like that which Doctor Johnson would have felt on encountering another Boswell.
This had been the second stage of their curious relationship. Frigate became closer but at the same time, more of an annoyance. The American had always been restrained in his comments on Burton's attitudes, undoubtedly because he did not want to anger him. Frigate made a very conscious effort not to anger anybody. But he also made unconscious efforts to antagonize them. His hostilities came out in many subtle, and some not so subtle, actions and words. Burton did not like this. He was direct, not at all afraid of anger. Perhaps, as Frigate pointed out, he was too eager for hostile confrontations.
One evening, as they were sitting around a fire under a grailstone Frigate had spoken about Karachi. This village, which later became the capital of Pakistan, the nation created in 1947, had only 2,000 population in Burton's time. By 1970, its population was approximately 2,000,000. That led to Frigate's asking, rather indirectly, about the report Burton had made to his general, Sir Robert Napier, on houses of male prostitution in Karachi. The report was supposed to be kept in the secret files of the East India Army, but it was found by one of the many enemies of Burton. Though the report was never mentioned publicly, it had been used against him throughout his life. Burton had disguised himself as a native in order to get into the house and make observations that no European would have been allowed to make. He had been proud that he had escaped detection, and he had taken the unsavory job because he was the only one who could do it and because his beloved leader, Napier, had asked him to.
Burton had replied to Frigate's questions somewhat surlily. Alice had angered him earlier that day–she seemed to be able to do so very easily lately – and he was thinking of a way to anger her. Now he seized upon the opportunity given him by Frigate. He launched into an uninhibited account of what went on in the Karachi houses. Ruach finally got up and walked away. Frigate looked as if he were sick, but he stayed. Wilfreda laughed until she rolled on the ground. Kazz and Monat kept stolid expressions. Gwenafra was sleeping on the boat, so Burton did not have to take her into account. Loghu seemed to be fascinated but also slightly-repulsed.
Alice, his main target, turned pale and then, later, red. Finally, she rose and said, `Really, Mr. Burton, I had thought you were low before. But to brag of this . . . this . . . you are utterly contemptible, degenerate, and repulsive. Not that I believe a word of what you've been telling me. I can't believe that anybody would behave as you claim you did and then boast about it. You are living up to your reputation as a man who likes to shock others no matter what damage it does to his own reputation.' She had walked off into the darkness.
Frigate had said, `Sometime, maybe, you will tell me how much of that is true. I used to think as she did. But when I got older, more evidence about you was turned up, and one biographer made a psychoanalysis of you based on your own writing and various documentary sources.'
'And the conclusions?' Burton said mockingly.
`Later, Dick,' Frigate said. `Ruffian Dick,' he added, and he, too, left.
Now, standing at the tiller, watching the sun beat down on the group, listening to the hissing of water cut by the two sharp prows, and the creaking of rigging, he wondered what lay ahead on the other side of the canyon-like channel. Not the end of The River, surely. That would probably go on forever. But the end of the group might be near. They had been cooped up too long together. Too many days had been spent on the narrow deck with too little to do except talk or help sail the ship. They were rubbing each other raw and had been doing it for a long time. Even Wilfreda had been quiet and unresponsive lately. Not that he had been too stimulating. Frankly, he was tired of her. He did not hate her or wish her any ill. He was just tired of her, and the fact that he could h
ave her and not have Alice Hargreaves made him even more tired of her.
Lev Ruach was staying away from him or speaking as little as possible, and Lev was arguing even more with Esther about his dietary habits and his daydreaming and why didn't he ever talk to her?
Frigate was mad at him about something. But Frigate would never come out and say anything, the coward, until he was driven into a corner and tormented into a mindless rage. Loghu was angry and scornful of Frigate because he was as sullen with her as with the others. Loghu was also angry with him, Burton, because he had turned her down when they had been alone gathering bamboo in the hills several weeks ago. He had told her no, adding that he had no moral scruples, against making love to her, but that he would not betray Frigate or any other member of the crew. Loghu said that it was not that she did not love Frigate; it was just that she needed a change now and then. Just as Frigate did.
Alice had said that she was about to give up hope of ever seeing anybody she knew again. They must have passed an estimated 44,370,000 people, at least, and not once had she seen anybody she had known on Earth. She had seen some that she had mistaken for old acquaintances. And she admitted that she had only seen a small percentage of the 44,370,000 at close range or even at far range. But that did not matter. She was getting abysmally depressed and weary of sitting on this cramped foredeck all day with her only exercise handling the tiller or the rigging or opening and closing her lips with conversation, most of it inane.