XXXI

L

ed too far from harboured shores, I cast my ship once more into danger. Hands scrambled across the churning deck, making all lines secure while sure loftsmen grappled with the whipping sails. A brisk and biting wind came from the starboard storm but we fought against it with great tenacity and some terror. Two sails, purest white beneath those heaven-high black clouds, were half specks upon the tossed horizon.

Know that I gripped the sides of my hastening craft and leaned full into the wind, urging the ship and crew onward as though will were enough. Nearing, I startled saw that my quarry was with the wind! They sailed straight and true toward us. It seemed as though a storm propelled them but the truth struck all of the crew and I at once: The wind was in the wake of these witchcraft, following them like well-heeled porpoises. Every inch of glistening canvas filled and those two ships flew before the tempest. No, they were of that maelstrom, made of the same material and guiding it, dragging it. The dark cloud of ruin filled the sky from side to side and came on.

Still, daunted yet determined, we steered our course. Great walls of waves rose up as she hauled full on into this great oncoming gale. Held aloft by wind rushed waves then crashed to sea mid hurled sprays, the timbers of my aged vessel cried out for respite. There would be none.

For now, this Christmas, both Beatrice and sister Phaedra were coming home to publicly perform.

And my vessel was steered into the path of that hurricane vast. Once more I ought have heard my blinded pilot and so put our ship to some safe shore but I could not turn away. The universe was rising up to full height before me. It challenged me and I would sure respond.

So the storm now fades away and only still upon this stage remains a long, sad, simple sigh.

"Not again," the reader says.

I did not do it though. Not again.

We cast our course across the gale and sailed on to it. Rouse up, once more, that tempestuous choir and behold as my craft plunges headlong into the embrace of that terrific storm. A third prow, grey and unadorned, broke waves behind the two frontrunners. Nothing could be made of its crew or its kindness for I was yet too far away.

What sort of man would this man be that won the hand of Beatrice? Was he the better me? Ought I, for better, be composed upon his model? Was he handsome? I knew him to be so and more, he had intelligence and talent. Tenderness would flow from his fingertips or my Beatrice would not have had him. And she did love him. I did abide amid the meanwhile moments of ten thousand wasted days and never once did I rise up to make myself that man that Beatrice could love or even like.

If my goal had been to be what that woman might have loved then sure I should have earlier seen this ship oncoming I ought have strove to be taller and darker and more handsome. Foot massage classes should have filled my evening hours until I was a master. I once took up the violin but circumstances set it down again. Definitely I would have been better served by being a coffee drinker.

It is, I remark, a crucial drink that anyone seeking intellectual society must imbibe. If one neither drinks coffee nor nibbles muffins, they will forever have their noses pressed against the outside of coffee shop windows, left to imagine the sparkling conversations held within. Good taste necessitates coffee beans. There might too be tea but I could never develop a desire for any hot drink upon my tongue. Adults like hot drinks but I do not. Water too, to me, is tasteless. My cups must be sugared sweet.

But never, not ever, was there either hope or intention to occupy a place in the life of Beatrice like that, which her husband now luxuriated in. I would neither hope nor wish to ornament her firmament. That did not prevent me from being, in part at least, envious. His world must be more successful than mine own by virtue of his marriage, if not for what had allowed it to come to pass. Maybe he would have made a better muse for me. I might have made myself his merit's match.

It was trivial though for he was as crafted a character by my conscious as was she. My Beatrice was not the one that he had married and my Beatrice did not love a husband that was any shade of reality. My illusion loved the perfect he and suddenly a whole community of illusion was spinning merrily and selfishly out of control.

My Beatrice is a lie. My Beatrice's husband is likewise a lie. My Phaedra is a lie. That Beatrice that strides the earth is but an anchor to my inspiration. She is not my northern star but a flesh and bone finger that points it out to me. Her breathing body is only carrion to the vultures of my imagination.

And everything that has left this world is too a lie. Memories and histories cling to photographs and monuments. They haunt their keepsakes in the same way that the falsehood of a sitter's soul hovers ever on the surface of her portrait. The lie has long outlived the lady that we know as Mona Lisa and that lurking illusion in the eyes of that painted dame has done so much more for man than ever did that girl. Sure, she lived and laughed. Yes, someone thought she had a nice ass. Sometimes, in good light, you could see her moustache. The phantom that soars from that panel is an ennobling and inspiring lie.

What matters any metaphor, what merit is in any imagining if the lie it tells is not told in ultimate aid of truth? No philosophy can justify itself if it does not get us out of bed, out of the ivory towers, and out into life. No idea is worth having that does not finally settle upon the physical world.

We cannot pretend that da Vinci's ethereal oil painting has ever directly resulted in a single plate of food before any starving children but if, by perhaps the workings of one inspired, another man is made a moment more heroic and so sets himself upon a certain path, if beauty had someway aided his soul in finding strength then surely it has aided mankind. But all the beauty in all the worlds matters for naught if man is not made better by its being.

Onrushing came that trio of ghosted ships and with them came a storm as real and terrible as any wrought. There would be, could be no collision though for my craft hauled away half the points of the compass and set our course in parallel. We would beside them ride the waves and I, on my deck, strained my eyes to see through that thick and salted dark.

XXXII