Fantastic Metropolis

He asks for the Captain. One of the sailors looks up and nods. Now there is a yearning in Darktree for this sort of anonymity. Not the wit of the road, the fraught changing of roles between scenes of melodrama and black comedy, but the obscurity of windburnt flesh, furrowed brow encrusted with salt. Honest or not, this fellow will never be pursued from turnpike to ditch. Out there, on the oscillating belly of the sea, walruses and mermaids are the only witnesses.

Darktree expresses his desire to work a passage anywhere south of the equator. “My dietary habits are not dissimilar to yours. My skin is already ruined. I have no family, no friends.”

The Captain frowns. “Do we need another?”

“Need? Excellent! I offer you my loyalty, unswerving, and my skill at playing the spoons, self-taught. I can cook, splice rope and whistle mournful ballads. What is your name sir?”

“My name? Nothing!”

“And I can dance. My eye is wistful.”

There is something about Darktree, it is difficult to say exactly what, that cannot be denied. After examining his hands, to test their roughness, the Captain is lost for words. He calls for his ledger and signs the upstart aboard. Wages are pitifully low, but there is a vast supply of biscuits. Darktree does not yet understand the thirsty, wormy difference between biscuits on land and sea.

He is sick for a whole fortnight. They wallow down the Channel, all the way along the Exmoor coast. When they reach Lundy, Darktree believes it to be Madagascar. He is all for slipping over the side and swimming ashore to begin a new life. But with the aid of a telescope, the Captain convinces him there is a long way to go. Through the magic glass, Darktree sees figures walking the isle, magistrate-fashion, pale skin. He trembles and turns away. He was never a good judge of distance, unlike Hannah.

His duties are kept simple. He is given a position in the galley, washing the cook’s pans. When the cook catches a seagull with a gaff, as a supplement to their usual fish, Darktree foregoes supper. His manners endear him to the Captain, who has often considered the merits of hiring a clown. He gives Darktree permission to read his secret store of books, locked in a chest in his cabin. Here are volumes on sea creatures and sunken cities, ghost ships and lost islands.

The latter are especially appealing. He lingers long over the odd names, while the Captain drinks medicinal rum in the Doctor’s surgery. When the sun goes down, he has to squint at the pages. The Captain does not believe in lighting candles. To save money, he has insisted on an ingenious alternative: a tallow is arranged in front of the porthole in such a way that the crescent moon, low on the horizon, appears to be resting on the wick like a waxy flame.

Darktree moves his lips as he reads. “Cibola, Grocland, Stokafixa, Mayda, Tanmare, Drogio, Buss, Hand-of-Satan, Daculi, Salvagio, Reylla, Scipio, the rust-coloured Isle o’ Tools.”

Most, though not all, of these islands will serve his purpose. They have no knowledge of trains, seagulls or magistrates. Some, like Cibola, boast cities; others are bare of men or filled with savages. He favours Scipio, whose inhabitants are rumoured to speak Latin. Descendants of a Roman expeditionary force, shipwrecked in ancient times, Darktree knows they will give him a classical welcome.

When the Captain has drunk too much rum, and wishes to regain his cabin, Darktree must retire to his own hammock, among the sailors. Down here, they do not know what to make of him. They cannot understand why the Captain is tolerant. They grumble to themselves behind his back. Is he the Captain’s new catamite? But he is not as attractive as Xury, the cabin boy, nor as clean as Carlo, the sail maker.

Darktree takes one of the books back with him: a Latin to English dictionary. He will prepare himself for his arrival on Scipio. In the total gloom of the crew’s sleeping quarters, he reads by running his fingertips over the heavy embossed letters. In his hammock he also keeps his own book. He has softened toward the artist who drew his picture on the inside, now he cannot see it. He clutches the tome in sleep, hugging the knowledge, the power.

The Captain gives him a new pistol, to replace his flintlock. It is a revolver, six chambers, each bullet detonated by a fulminating cap. In return, he asks to see Darktree’s notebook. “Aye, aye, sir!” Darktree cries, an exclamation that never fails to make the Captain laugh. After reading the contents with a thoughtful expression, the Captain suggests a few alterations. He is familiar with steam engines and feels some of the diagrams are inaccurate. The criticism worries Darktree; he believes the Captain might be a progressive. On deck, at midnight, he plays with his firearm, loading it with cigar stubs.

His earlier mistake has made him cautious with respect to the art of navigation. When they reach Portugal, he compensates for his error by assuming it to be Cornwall. They stop in Lisbon for a couple of hours. Darktree wanders the steep lanes, marvelling at the climate. Penzance was never like this in his imagination. Now he regrets not visiting it sooner. The locals, apparently, persist with the old regional tongue. He strains to catch an English word.

Occasionally, when he is in a pensive mood, he broods over the life he is leaving. He writes long letters to Lucy, but does not seal them in bottles and cast them over the side. He uses them to scrub the pots. The sailors are bewildered by the expressions of love and hatred that often surface in their soup on scraps of torn paper. Darktree dreams of balmy Scipio, where he will be made a senator. His Latin is improving. Now he knows how to praise a mosaic, express gratitude in a public bath, claim insurance on his broken chariot.

In West Africa they pick up a cargo of monkeys in crates. Darktree is thoroughly confused. Are they in France? The monkeys are amiable, but Darktree is scared to approach. He is suspicious of their breath. Is not garlic a favoured food among the French? He does not venture down into the hold to tease them. He persists with his studies. “Domus et placens uxor,” he recites. Suddenly, he has a beard. It has crept up on him like a congealing shadow. His fingers twist it into the shape of fusilli, a pasta.

When they cross the equator, the sailors bounce him overboard on a spare sail and retrieve him with a net. He is furious for a whole week. He strikes objects in the galley with a ladle, producing a harmony that is utterly new. His percussive anthem is demented and exquisitely sad. I am an empty biscuit tin, he tells himself, a lonely soul, crash of anger shaking crumbs of feeling inside. But the crumbs grind smaller and soon only the weevils will dance.

In the fogs that shroud the Namibian coast, his world is reduced still further. Now he can merely clutch at the rail and peer at the vast nothingness. He sips black coffee, holding his mug out into space, as if the fog will cream the blend. Then the mists part and he is granted a vision: an island, less than a mile distant, beaches crowded with men and women in togas. It is Scipio! So he descends and returns with a real biscuit tin. Inside are his notebook, the Latin dictionary, his pistol. He throws the tin over the side, climbs the rail and prepares to launch himself after it.

He is restrained by the First Mate, who snatches his shirt tails and hauls him back. The fool wishes to complain about the condition of the cutlery at mealtimes. Darktree remonstrates with him; he is eager to depart. When the First Mate has finished, the fogs have closed. There is no sign of Scipio; his possessions have vanished. Darktree retires to the galley a second time and composes another piece with the ladle. This time, pans are heads. But one day, he vows, the First Mate’s head will be a pan. His skull will bubble.

They round the Cape of Good Hope and a storm makes similar music on the vessel. Now Darktree is inside the pot, aghast at the fury. All are agreed this is a special tempest, greater than any they have a right to witness. “A rum wind,” the Captain claims. Darktree pants into the gale, but can taste nothing. He remains on deck, unable to move, while others retire below. A wave breaks over the side and deposits an object. It is a pipe. He kicks it away. The three corners of his tricorne hat, secured to his chin by a black ribbon, unravel and bend upwards, making him look like a candelabrum.

Now the sea throws a leg, which lands upright before him. The briny shoe is familiar. He shudders at what might follow: the whole man, piece by piece. Arm outstretched to clutch throat; head to roll up the rigging to the crow’s nest, to be crowned by St Elmo’s fire before tumbling the other side, nimbus sparking; pelvis to rattle mockingly on the boards. And what of the torso, the sundered heart?

He hides, he takes himself away. A tall hat bounces after. Garlic is preferable to an accusatory ghost. In the hold, he comforts himself aloud: “Muffins, muffins, muffins!” Others are not above using the ploy. The monkeys chatter excitedly, no doubt recalling wine and the girls of Paris. The solicitor must have been following him all the way from the scene of the crime, in detached parts, waiting. Storms are to spirits what weddings are to mortals. A time to preen in public, to make efforts to consolidate personal image.

This observation is confirmed by a brief exchange between the First Mate and Captain. Darktree can hear their voices clearly, amplified by a freak acoustic. They are back on deck, enduring wind, wave and wraith, standing at the rails, heaving words.

“Look! A phantom vessel!”

“Aye, the Pickled Finger, well known in these parts. Its master is a friendless corpse who seeks companions. Once in his clutches we’ll have to endure his anecdotes.”

“Abandon ship! Let us flee this garrulous ghoul!”