Bruce called to her. He was tangled in a mass of cords. Renate had not foreseen that she would have to become his assistant. She unknotted cords, pulled at the sails, ran from one end of the boat to the other, watched their swelling, adjusted a hundred clasps and fought for balance against changing winds. Bruce had absorbed little from the Dutch captain. He read directions from a book. He gave orders to Renate in technical language, which she did not understand. By the time they sailed into the first harbor for the night the graceful sailboat seemed more like a wild, unmanageable bronco under their feet.
The constant rocking kept her from sleeping. She felt her hair would wear off completely from the constant friction on her pillow. Duties on board were endless, even when they were not sailing. Renate wanted to return and ask the old captain to help, even if it meant sleeping on deck. But Bruce’s pride was offended at this capitulation. At the same time he had never concentrated on any occupation for such long hours and she would find him asleep sometimes under a dangerously swollen sail which would almost tip the boat over.
They decided motoring along rivers might give them more leisure. They folded the sails and used only the motor. When they cast off anchor Renate could not unfasten the thick wet cord at the other end of the boat. Bruce came to help, and as he straddled it to uncoil it from the shore, he fell into the water, and the boat began to drift away from him. He caught up with it only by swimming furiously.
They traveled for a while down the rivers and canals, admiring the soft landscape, the browns and greys so famliar from Dutch paintings. Then the motor sputtered and died. They were in the middle of a swift flowing river, becalmed.
The boat ceased to follow a straight course. Every now and then, like a waltzer, it took a complete turn in the middle of the river.
Its erratic course did not discourage the barges passing by with cargoes and racing for the locks. They traveled at full speed alongside the sailboat, not noticing that Bruce and Renate were rudderless, and that they might at any moment circle in the path of the swift sliding barges.
At one moment the sailboat skirted the shore and Bruce maneuvered it towards the right into a small canal. At this very moment the motor revived and pushed them at full speed under too low a bridge. Scraping this they continued to speed past quiet small houses on the shore. Bruce now could not stop the motor.
It had regained its youthful vigor. He stood on the bridge and remembered his western movies. He picked up a coil of rope and lassoed one of the chimneys of a passing house. This stopped the runaway sailboat but drew a crowd around them.
“Crazy Americans,” said someone in the crowd.
A policeman came towards them on a bicycle.
“You damaged a historical bridge.”
“I didn’t know it was historical,” said Bruce.
“You will have to appear in court.”
That night, like contrabandists, they sailed away (pulled by a tugboat) to a dry dock Bruce had heard of. There he had the boat taken out of the water and loaded on a train.
“What is your plan,” asked Renate.
“We’d do better with plenty of room around us, so I thought we’d take the boat to the South of France and sail around the Mediterranean. I’m putting it on the train.”
The boat occupied an entire railroad car. They could see it from their carriage when they leaned out of the window. It was exposed to the sun, bottom up. The rigging was dismounted and tied to its sides. The sails looked like folded parachutes. The journey was long and hot, with many stops along the way.
When they reached the South of France it looked to Renate, a painter, exactly like a Dufy poster, all light blue and cream white, sea flags, dresses undulating, brown bodies, music in the cafes, intimate corners for lovers surrounded by oleander bushes, flower vendors at every corner, mimosa, violets, carriages with umbrellas opened over them.
The railroad had taken them to the dry dock with their boat. It was put on wheels.
“We are going to do some spherical sailing,” said Bruce. “In spherical sailing, the earth is regarded as a sphere (usually a perfect sphere, though some modem nautical tes allow for its spheroidal shape) and allowance is made for the curvature of its surface.”
“Couldn’t we do some parallel sailing,” asked Renate, who had been reading the same book. “Perhaps we could just sail parallel to the shore. Then we’d never get lost.”
The boat was sliding down into the sparkling sea. The men secured the anchor and returned to call for Renate and Bruce and place them upon the deck, and then left them. It was Renate who noticed that it was taking in more than the usual amount of water.
(How could the innocent sailors have known the hot Mediterranean sun would melt the caulking in the boat’s bottom during the interminable railroad voyage.)
Bruce turned to the index in the book and read all about pumping. He pumped for a while and fell asleep. Renate pumped for a while and then felt exhausted and tried to wake Bruce.
“We’ll sink if you don’t pump out the water, Bruce. Bruce.”
“Let it sink,” he said and went back to sleep.
Renate wondered if this were a symbolic indication of the pattern their relationship would follow. She went on pumping slowly until Bruce awakened.
The deck was now almost level with the sea. Quietly Renate persuaded Bruce he must put the boat in dry dock and retire from navigation. The motor failing for the last time, Bruce was forced to jump into the sea and tow. As the little boat moved silently towards the dry dock, Renate still pumping slowly, sang a song remembered from childhood:
“From now on our travels will have to be inner voyages. You are only fit to be the captain of Rimbaud’s Bateau Ivre.”
BEHIND RENATE’S HOUSE LAY THE MOUNTAIN. On top of the mountain a red-railed missile was planted in its steel cradle, pointing skyward, all set to soar.
The sea had been there once, and left imprints of sea shells and fish skeletons on stone. It had carved deep Venusian caves into the sandstone. The setting sun deposited antique gold on its walls. People on horseback wandered up the mountain. Rabbits, gophers, deer, wild cats and snakes wandered down the mountain and came quite near the house.
Renate’s house had glass all along the front. The sea lay below and at times she seemed to be standing against an aluminum sheet. On sunless days, she was profiled against a clouded pond, dull with seaweed trailing scum like sunken marshes.
The sea varie moods and tones of the house as if both were mobiles in constant mutations.
From Mexico she had brought shawls of unmixed colors, baskets, tin chandeliers, earthenware painted in childish figures, stone pieces like the gods of the Indians.
And then one day at Christmas, the terrified animals ran down from the mountains. Renate saw them running before she heard the sound of crackling wood or saw the flames leaping from hill to hill, across roads, exploding the dry brush, driving people and animals down the canyons and pursuing them satanically down to the very edge of the sea. The fire attacked houses and cars, lit bonfires above the trees, thundered like burning oil wells.
Planes dived and dropped chemicals. Huge tractors cut wide gashes through the forest to cut off the spreading fire. Firefighters climbed up with hose, and vanished into the smoke.
Somewhere, a firebug rejoiced in the spectacle.
Around Renate’s house there was no brush, so she hoped to escape the flames. She wrapped herself in a wet blanket and stood on the roof watering it down. But she could feel the heat approaching, and watch its capricious somersaults, unexpected twists and devouring rages.