The Invitation(30)

‘What are you going to do with yourself, after the war?’

‘Get married, try and write.’

‘The novel, is it?’

‘Yes. And you?’

‘Play with my little boy. Make love to my wife.’

‘How old is he now? Your boy?’

‘Three.’ Suddenly morose. ‘I worry, you know, that he won’t know me. Flora says she talks of me to him all the time, but I still think—’

‘He will, Morris.’

‘I hope so, Harry.’ He was the only one that called Hal this. And then he’d said: ‘There’s something else I’d like to do, too.’

‘What?’

Morris had outlined it for him. A little magazine – collecting really good work together. Stories, thought pieces. Wouldn’t make any money, probably, but that wouldn’t be the point of it. Perhaps Hal would help him out? He’d know people, Morris imagined, from university – maybe people who could help them with advice about how to start. Morris didn’t know anyone like that.

Yes, Hal had said, he’d love to do it. And it became the thing that their friendship grew around, this future plan. They’d discuss what they’d call it – something to do with the sea, maybe – how they’d use a different theme for each edition. Sometimes it felt little more than a pipe dream. But it was a cure for the tedium. A way of invoking the future, too, a time beyond war – making it feel real. It had been one of the refreshing things about Morris. Some of the men spoke as though they were all doomed to a watery death: it was only a question of when and how, not if. Morris, by contrast, had an absolute conviction in the fact that he was going home.

He wakes drenched in sweat, his heartbeat in his ears. Something to do with his dream, though as he tries to grasp for it, it slips from reach. Beyond the porthole is the liquid slap of the water. The glass runs with rain. He checks his watch: almost two a.m. At least tonight he has managed a few hours’ sleep.

He gropes for his jotting pad, deciding that he might as well do some more work. If he leaves it, he knows that details will begin to desert him, until he is left with only the shell of events. That would be no use to him at all. All the interest of a piece like this, as the Tempo editor had said, will be in the details. Exactly what they are served at supper, the watermelon hue of Giulietta’s nail polish, the cocktail Earl Morgan drinks at sundown.

As he extracts the pad, though, he dislodges something on top of it. It falls to the floor with a soft thud. He looks at the thing, confused. It is a small, dirty book, and he has no idea where it can have come from. He picks it up. Now he can see that it is not so much dirty as extremely old, the pages between the leather covers warped and friable. Then he understands. It is the journal. Gaspari must have left it here for him. This fits with his impression of the man – everything done quietly, without undue ceremony.

All thought of the article forgotten, Hal opens it up, but finds the hand so small that his tired eyes strain to make it out in the weak lamplight. He has another idea: he will go up on deck, and read by the light of the moon, which will no doubt be brighter than this.

As he walks the passageway toward the ladder onto the deck he imagines that he can feel the sleeping presence of the others about him. Someone is snoring. And a low groan – so loud that he freezes for a second, like a burglar – before he realizes that it is a subconscious, atavistic sound, made by someone in the deepest realm of sleep.

He takes the steps up to the deck and finds it empty. A happy surprise, because he had somehow imagined that there might be at least one member of the crew awake to keep watch.

Portovenere, in the distance, is almost entirely shrouded in darkness. A solitary light, somewhere up near the castle, burns a fiery point in the black. The deck is washed with water, but the rain has finally stopped. He goes to one of the beds at the bow, sluices the water off it.

Then he opens the journal, and begins to read. It is slow going at first. The first few paragraphs are all bombast, as though the captain had, initially, intended it to be read.

We are returning from Lepanto bruised, but victorious: our number diminished, but not our spirit. The spread of the Ottoman hordes westward is stemmed. Finally, we are following our great leader Doria homeward.

It is like something written by a sixteenth-century propagandist, and the Italian is archaic, straining his powers of comprehension. Hal feels his interest begin to wane, his eye skimming the close press of text. Until a line catches his attention.

An arrow, taken straight through the eye. In one moment, a man’s life extinguished.

He reads on.

He had been only an arm’s length from me. Nothing to choose between us, except luck. Some would say Fate, or Providence, but I find it more and more difficult to believe …

I have killed forty-nine. As commander of the ship, I have been responsible for many more: though the ones that stay with me are the ones committed by my own hand. I have seen them die only an arm’s length from me, watched as the soul departs. As men who once lived and breathed and loved become nothing, merely so much cloth and inanimate flesh. I know this is not the proper way to look upon such things. These men, these Turks, are godless creatures whose influence must be curbed. Lepanto has been a magnificent victory for Christendom. And yet good Christian knights and Ottoman infidels die in much the same way. I cannot help but remark it. In dying, there is nothing to choose between them. The soul, of course, is the thing. But does it truly endure, after death? Sometimes I find it hard to believe. When I return to Genoa I will go and talk to the priest. I must confess these thoughts, because I know they are dangerously near to heresy.