Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [9]
“Of course, Father,” I said. “But after this, Europe?” I said. “My tour?”
“Son, I promise you, assist us first in this matter and I will send you immediately thereafter. Remember, your mother was always a kind person. For her, family came first…”
“Yes, Father.”
“There is one more thing.”
“Yes, Father?”
He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk, took out a small pistol, and offered it to me.
“Father?”
“Remember, the world is not always kind. A man needs protection while traveling,” he said. “The weapon is at the moment unloaded. Tomorrow I will buy you bullets. You are a man now, going about your father’s business. Carry this weapon always on your person. You may see some things down there in the South…well, never mind.” For a moment I stared at it and then took it from him.
He next reached into his pocket and took out his gold timepiece, as if to establish that it was time for one thing and now it was time for another.
“Your grandfather’s watch,” he said. “Which he consulted often while sitting in his office and looking out at the Carib palms. And which was next mine, and now yours. It is your watch, son, and from now on you will have to wind it.”
Chapter Three
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In My Margins
What Are the Origins of Man?
Where had they come from? Out of the earth? Fire? Water? Water!
When the mountains sprung up out of the sea, and the cleft of water sprung into the light—
Because it does come first—
Yes, tell me the first part, first—
The mountains arose, and the water poured down their slopes back into the cleft left behind by the rising land, and fire seized the surface of the sea, and the rains came and the fire turned to smoke and the smoke rose to cover the face of the sun. Where once large animals wandered the land when it was hilly and covered with trees, and cleaved to another great mass of land that no one had a name for because no one had yet been born to give things names—
And after another great rain the sea remained burning, the smoke and steam rising higher and higher, and all the animals and trees went up in flame.
Pillars of fire and burning bush…?
Mountains melting and ice arising…and the seas in tumult…?
Do we know, do we know when and where it all began except to say that the oldest rocks came out of Africa and somewhere on those shores some fishy creature probably pushed its snout for the first time up from the sea into the air? This in a long life of reading and speculation is what we have come to believe. But the preachers say otherwise. What do the imams and the rabbis say?
Chapter Four
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Boarding the Godbolt
On this important morning, the first day of a new turn in my life that would change forever the direction I would take, I could feel the weight of that timepiece, wound and working, in my pocket—and the pistol—as I took a moment now to study my father’s face, and tried to imagine someone who looked nearly alike but weighed twice as much as he. I had some questions. But I gave up the thoughts as my Aunt Isabelle, looking, because swaddled in bed-clothes, twice her own normal size, came tottering down the steps from her room.
“Dear boy,” she said, “dear, dear boy…”
Her eyes were still dull from sleep, but nothing diminished the effervescent nature of her soul.
“I shall miss you!”
She glided up to me and touched a long extended finger to my collarbone.
“Oh, how I shall miss you!”
“He’s not going that far away,” my father said. “Imagine if he were going off on his tour how long he’d be gone.”
“I wish I were,” I said.
“Don’t be ungrateful,” Father said. “You accomplish this mission, and I’ll send you on your travels for two years rather than one.”
“Truly, Father? Thank you, sir, thank you.”
“That would make me sadder still,” said my Aunt Isabelle, turning away as if to mourn in solitude