But Trumper was giddy with relief, almost reduced to senseless giggles. It's amazing how you can drop your guard down among friends. 'I'm the Great White Hunter,' he said to Ralph. 'The Great White Duck Hunter.' But he couldn't even sustain the joke and his head lolled on Ralph's shoulder.
Ralph tried to guide him through the studio. 'This is the editing room where we ...' Bogus fought falling asleep on his feet. In the darkroom, the smell of chemicals was too much for him: the chemicals, the old bourbon, Mulcahy's coffee and the darkroom-reminder of Couth. His elbow slipped into a tub of stop bath, he slopped some fixer on his pants and threw up in a developer tank.
Ralph helped him out of his clothes, rinsed him off over the darkroom sink and searched through Trumper's suitcase for some clean clothes. He found none, but he had some old clothes of his own at the studio, and he dressed Trumper in them. A pair of yellow corduroy bell-bottom pants; Trumper's feet stopped at the knees. A cream-colored blouse with ruffles and puffed sleeves; Trumper's hands stopped at the elbows. A pair of green cowboy boots; Trumper's toes reached to their arch. He felt like a dwarf clown of Robin Hood's Merrymen.
'Great White Duck Hunter not feeling so good?' Ralph asked.
'I'd like to sleep for about four days,' Trumper admitted. 'Then I want to make movies, Ralph. Lots of movies, lots of money. Buy some new clothes,' he mumbled, stumbling in Ralph's yellow bell-bottoms. 'And a sailboat for Colm.'
'Poor Thump-Thump,' Ralph said. 'I know a good place for you to sleep.' He rolled up the absurd bell-bottoms so that Trumper could more or less walk, then called a cab.
'So that's the great Thump-Thump,' Kent said; he had heard stories. He sulked in a wing of the viewing room, holding a reel like a discus he would have liked to have thrown at Bogus. Kent saw his sound-tracking career being pre-empted by this clown called Thump-Thump who looked like an Elizabethan puppet in Ralph's big clothes.
'Get the suitcase, Kent,' Ralph said.
'Where are you taking him?' Kent said.
And Trumper thought, Yes, where am I going?
'Tulpen's,' Ralph said.
It was German. Trumper knew the word; Tulpen means tulips in German. And Trumper thought, That certainly sounds like a nice place to sleep.
35
Old Thak Undone! Biggie Puts on Weight!
BIGGIE AND COUTH were lovely to him. Without any talk about it, they made up the extra bed in Colm's room. Colm went to bed about eight, and Trumper would lie on the other bed, storytelling until Colm fell asleep.
The story he told was his own version of Moby Dick, which seemed appropriate for that sea-house. Colm thought whales were wonderful, so the story according to Trumper was the whale-as-hero, Moby Dick as unvanquished king.
'How big is he?' Colm asked.
'Well,' Trumper said, 'if you were floating in the water and his tail slapped you, you'd be worse off than an ordinary fly getting hit with a fly swatter.' A long pause from Colm. In the fishbowl above his bed, he watched the fragile orange fish from New York, the bus-ride survivor.
'Go on,' Colm said.
And Trumper went on and on. 'Anyone with any sense would have known enough to leave Moby Dick alone,' he said. 'All the other whaling men just wanted to hunt the other whales. But not Captain Ahab.'
'Right,' said Colm.
'Some of the other men had been hurt or had lost their arms and legs hunting whales, but it didn't make them hate whales,' Trumper said. 'But ...' and he paused ...
'But not Captain Ahab!' Colm cried out.
'Right,' said Trumper. The wrongness of Ahab grew clear.
'Tell me about all the things sticking into Moby Dick,' Colm said.
'You mean the old harpoons?'
'Right.'
'Well, there were old harpoons,' Trumper said, 'with ropes still hanging off them. Short harpoons and long harpoons, and some knives, and all the other kinds of things that men had tried to stick into him ...'
'Like what?'
'Splinters?' Trumper wondered. 'Sure, from all the boats he'd smashed, he picked up splinters. And barnacles, because he was so old; and seaweed all over him, and snails. He was like an old island, he'd picked up so much junk; he wasn't a clean white.'
'And nothing could kill him, right?'
'Right!' said Trumper. 'They should have left him alone.'
'That's what I'd do,' Colm said. 'I wouldn't even try to pat him.'
'Right,' Trumper said. 'Anybody who's smart would know that.' And he waited for the refrain ...
'But not Captain Ahab!' Colm said.
You should always tell stories, Trumper knew, in such a way that you make the audience feel good and wise, even a little ahead of you.
'Do the part about the crow's nest,' Colm said.
'High up on the mainmast,' Trumper orated dramatically, 'he could see what looked like a couple of whales, way off ...'
'Ishmael,' Colm corrected him. 'It was Ishmael, right?'
'Right,' said Trumper. 'Only it wasn't two whales, it was one whale ...'
'A very big one.'
'Right,' said Trumper. 'And when the whale spouted, Ishmael yelled ...'
'"Thar she blows!"' yelled Colm, who did not appear very sleepy.
'Then Ishmael noticed there was something funny about this whale.'
'It was white!' Colm said.
'Right,' said Trumper. 'And it had things stuck onto it everywhere ...'
'Harpoons!'
'Barnacles and seaweed and birds!' said Trumper.
'Birds?' said Colm.
'Never mind,' Trumper said. 'It was the biggest damn whale Ishmael had ever seen, and it was white, so he knew who it was.'
'Moby Dick!' Colm screamed.
'Ssshhh,' said Trumper. They calmed down together; they could hear the ocean slapping the rocks outside, creaking the dock, flapping the boats on their moorings. 'Listen,' Trumper whispered. 'Hear the ocean?'
'Yes,' whispered Colm.
'Well, the whaling men hear it just like that, slap, slap against the ship. At night, when they sleep.'
'Right,' Colm whispered.
'And the whales come sniffing around the ships at night.'
'They do?' said Colm.
'Sure,' said Trumper. 'And sometimes they brush against the ship a little, or bump it.'
'Do the men know what it is?'
'The smart ones do,' said Trumper.
'But not Captain Ahab,' Colm said.
'I guess not,' Bogus said. They lay quietly listening to the ocean, waiting for a whale to bump the house. Then the dock creaked and Bogus whispered, 'There's one!'
'I know,' said Colm in a hoarse voice.
'Whales won't hurt you,' Trumper said, 'if you leave them alone.'
'I know,' Colm said. 'You should never tease a whale, right?'
'Right,' Trumper said, and they both listened to the sea until Colm fell asleep. Then the only alert life in the room was the thin, vermilion fish from New York, kept alive by constant care.
Trumper kissed his sleeping son goodnight. 'I should have brought you a whale,' he whispered.
It wasn't that Colm didn't like the fish; it was just that Trumper wished for something more durable. Colm liked the fish very much, in fact; with Biggie's help, he'd written a thank-you note to Tulpen, a most roundabout way for Trumper to apologize for the theft.
'Dear Tulpen,' Biggie said. Then, letter by letter, she had to tell Colm how to spell. 'd-e-a ...' Biggie said. With fierce concentration, Colm carved the letters with his pencil clutched tight in his fist.
Bogus was shooting pool with Couth.
'Thank you for the little orange fish,' Biggie dictated.
'Thank you very much?' Colm suggested.
'T-H-A- ...' Biggie said. Colm carved.
Bogus blew every shot he took. Couth was relaxed and played his usual lucky game.
'I hope some time you'll come see me in Maine,' Biggie dictated.
'Right,' said Colm.
But Biggie knew better. When Colm was a
sleep, she said to Bogus, 'You left her, didn't you?'
'I think I'll be back with her, sometime,' Bogus said.
'You always do think that,' said Biggie.
'Why did you leave her?' Couth asked.
'I don't know.'
'You never do,' Biggie said.
But she was kind, and they talked easily about Colm. Couth was sympathetic to the idea of Bogus finishing his thesis, but Biggie didn't see it that way. 'You hated it out there,' she said, 'and you weren't ever really interested.'
Bogus couldn't think of an answer. His picture of himself returning to Iowa alone in no way resembled his memory of Iowa with Biggie and Colm. Biggie didn't pursue the point; perhaps she saw that too.
'Well, you ought to do something, I think,' Couth said.
Everyone more or less agreed to that.
Bogus laughed. 'It's important to have an image of yourself,' he said. He'd gotten a little looped on Couth's apple brandy. 'I think you have to start with a superficial image, like Graduate Student or Translator, something with an easy name. Then you hope you can broaden the image a little.'
'I don't know what I started with,' Couth said. 'I just said, "I'm living like I want to," and that was a start. Later I became a Photographer, but I still think of myself more as just a Living Man ...'
'Well, but you're very different from Bogus,' Biggie said. There was a silence in honor of her authority on that subject.
Bogus said, 'Well, it just didn't work thinking of myself as a Film Maker, or even a Sound Tracker. I never really believed it.' And he thought, or a Husband, either; I never really believed that. But a Father ... Well, that was a clearer feeling.
There wasn't much else that was clear, though. Couth commented on the appropriate symbolism of the Maine fog around the house, and Bogus laughed. Biggie said that men were so queerly involved with themselves that simple things escaped them.
With the excuse of too much apple brandy, that was too deep a subject for either Couth or Bogus to pick up. They went to bed.
Bogus was still awake when Biggie and Couth made love in their room down the hall. They were quite discreet, but it was too familiar a silent tension for Bogus to mistake it. Surprised at himself, he realized that he was happy for them. It seemed the best thing in his life that they seemed so happy - that, and Colm.
Later, Biggie used the bathroom, then came quietly into Colm's room and checked his covers. She seemed about to check the covers on Bogus, too, until he whispered to her, 'Good night, Biggie.' She didn't come near him then; it was dark, but he thought she smiled. She whispered, 'Goodnight, Bogus.'
If she'd come near him, he'd have grabbed her, and Biggie never misread signals of that kind.
He couldn't sleep. After three nights with them, he was aware of himself as an imposition. He went down to the kitchen with Akthelt and Gunnel, time for a little worn Old Low Norse and a big glass of ice water. He liked the feeling of all of them asleep, and him their guardian, taking the night watch.
Affectionately he murmured some Old Low Norse and read over the part where Old Thak is killed. Betrayed in the fjord of Lopphavet! Slain by the foul Hrothrund and his cowardly band of archers! Old Thak is lured into the fjord by a false message: that from the vantage of the cliffs above Lopphavet, he can observe Akthelt's fleet returning from the great naval victory at Slint. Standing on the prow of his ship, Thak glides close under the cliffs, but just as he is ready to leap ashore, Hrothrund and his archers let fly at him from their ambush in the woods. Thak's man at the rudder, Grimstad, turns the ship out of range, but Old Thak is too riddled with arrows to even fall down; as prickled as a pincushion, he clings to the jib like a failed hedgehog.
'Find the fleet, Grimstad,' Thak says, but he knows it will be too late. Faithful Grimstad tries to make him comfortable on the foredeck, but there is no flat surface on the old king's body; there's no way he can even lie down. 'Let me lie in the sea,' he says to Grimstad. 'I am so full of wood that I shall float.'
So Grimstad ties a line to Thak and lowers him overboard; he fastens the line to the gunwale of the ship and tows Old Thak out of the cold fjord of Lopphavet. Trailing behind his ship, Thak bobs in the sea like a buoy full of darts.
Grimstad sails out to meet Akthelt's fleet, returning all happy and gory from its great naval victory at Slint. Akthelt sails alongside his father's ship; 'Hail, Grimstad!' he calls. But Grimstad can't bear to tell Akthelt about Old Thak. Akthelt's ship comes closer, and he spots the line tied to the gunwale; his eyes follow it to the curious sea anchor dragging behind, the feather ends of some arrows still above water. Thak is dead.
'Lo! Grimstad!' Akthelt calls, pointing to the line running from the gunwale. 'What lies astern?'
'That is your father,' Grimstad says. 'Foul Hrothrund and his bastard archers betrayed us, my lord!' And while the great Akthelt beats his breast and the deck of his ship he realizes what Hrothrund's plot must have been: to kill Thak and seize his ship; to sail out to meet the fleet flying Old Thak's flag; and to ambush Akthelt too, as the ships came together. Then, commanding the fleet, Hrothrund would return to claim the kingdom of Thak, would take Akthelt's castle and violate Akthelt's tender wife, Gunnel.
All this boils through Akthelt's mind while he tugs on the line with violent heaves, bringing the body of Thak aboard. He thinks of the long, sharp instruments Hrothrund had in mind for him, and of the thick, blunt instrument he has in mind for Gunnel!
Akthelt smears his body with the blood of his father, orders himself lashed to the mainmast and commands his men to whip him with the shafts of the fatal arrows until his own blood runs with his father's.
'Are you all right, my lord?' Grimstad asks.
'Soon we'll be back at the castle,' Akthelt says oddly. But he has a curious thought; he wonders if Gunnel would have liked Hrothrund.
Early in the morning, Colm found Bogus sleeping on the kitchen table.
'If you come down to the dock,' Colm said, 'then I can come down to the dock too.' So they went, Trumper having difficulty aiming his feet.
It was high tide; far out in the eddy the gulls were circling a large mass of seaweed and flotsam - from the look of it, what was left of a castaway rowboat. Trumper was thinking of Old Thak, but when he looked at his son he knew what Colm was thinking.
'Is Moby Dick still alive?' Colm asked.
Trumper thought. Well, why not? I can't provide the kid with God or a reliable father, and if there's something worth believing in, it ought to be as big as a whale.
'I guess he'd be pretty old,' Colm said. 'Very old, right?'
'He's alive,' Trumper said. They looked out to sea together.
Trumper wished he could really produce Moby Dick for Colm. If he'd had a choice of any miracle he could perform, he would have chosen just that: to make the bay roll and swell, inspire a cacophony of gulls to circle overhead, raise the Great White Whale from the depths and make him leap like a giant trout, let them both be showered by the spray of his splashing fall as they stood in awe on the dock, have Moby Dick roll ponderously in the water - show them his scars, his old harpoons and things (but spare Colm the sight of the rotted Ahab lashed to the whale's great side); then watch the whale turn and steam out to sea, leaving them with the memory.
'He really is alive?' Colm asked.
'Yes, and everyone leaves him alone.'
'I know,' said Colm.
'But no one hardly ever sees him,' Trumper said.
'I know.'
But a wild part of Trumper's brain was chanting, Show yourself, Old Dick! Up out of that water, Moby! Such a miracle, he knew, would have been as much a gift to himself as to Colm.
It was time to leave. At the car he even tried joking with Biggie and Couth, saying how nice it was to see them, but that he knew he was inhibiting them. He spoke German playfully to Biggie and had a mock boxing match with Couth. Then, to part on a note of lighthearted humor, he kissed Biggie goodbye and patted her ass. 'You're putting on a little weight, Big,' he chided.
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She hesitated and looked at Couth. Couth nodded, and Biggie said, 'That's because I'm pregnant.'
'Pregnant!' Colm repeated gaily. 'Yah! She's going to have a baby, so I'll have a brother or a sister ...'
'Or maybe both,' Couth said, and everyone smiled.
Bogus couldn't think of a thing to do with his hands, so he held out one to Couth. 'Congratulations, old boy,' he said, like a voice underwater.
Couth scuffed the ground and said he'd better see if the car would start. Trumper gave Colm another hug, and Biggie, her face turned away, but smiling said, 'Be careful.' To Couth? To Bogus? To both of them?
'I love seeing you, always,' Trumper said to everyone, and fled.
36
Akthelt Beset With Doubt!
Trumper Grinds to a Halt!
IN IOWA HIS old stitches fell out. A great new hole was in his penis. He wondered if Vigneron had meant to make the opening so big. Compared with what he'd been used to, he now had a bathtub drain.
He went to see a doctor, just any old doctor; there was no provision for specialists in his Student Health Policy. He feared the diagnosis; some former veterinarian amazed at his prick?
'You say this was done in New York?'
But the doctor was a young South American; all the foreigners in the medical school appeared to be given the lowliest cases. The young doctor was very impressed.
'That's a beautiful meatoplasty,' he told Bogus. 'Really, I've never seen such a neat job.'
'But it's so big,' Bogus said.
'Not at all. It's perfectly normal.'
That shook him; it made him aware of how abnormal he must have been.
That doctor's visit constituted his sole entertainment in Iowa. He lived in his library alcove with Akthelt and Gunnel and slept in a spare room in Dr Holster's basement. By his own choice he left and entered the basement through the cellar door; Holster would gladly have let him use the front door. Sunday dinners he ate with Holster and his married daughter and her family. The rest of his meals consisted of pizza, beer, sausage patties and coffee.
A girl in the adjoining library alcove was also doing a translation. It was from Flemish: 'a religious novel, set in Bruges.' Occasionally they'd look at each other's dictionaries, and once she asked him to dinner at her place. 'I'm a good cook, believe it or not,' she said.
'I believe it,' he said. 'But I've stopped eating.'
He had no idea what the girl looked like, but in their library and dictionary way they remained friends. There was no other way for him to have friends. He didn't even drink his beers at Benny's because Benny was always trying to drum up conversation about some half-mythical 'old-gang'. Instead, he drank a few beers every night at a shiny bar frequented by the residue of the fraternity-sorority set. One night, one of the frat boys asked Bogus when he planned to take a bath.