“That’s not the least of it, but I will spare you the details. Now look to his left. That young fellow, with dark hair, they call him ‘Teak Harry.’ I don’t know his real name. An Armenian from Baku. His father was a timberman, who licensed steamers to carry Siberian wood from the northern shore of the Caspian Sea to its southern coast. For a time, they say he controlled the entire market into Persia, until he was assassinated ten years ago. The whole family fled, some to Arabia, others to Europe. Teak Harry headed east, for the Indo-Chinese market. Reputation as a swashbuckler and adventurer. There are rumors that say he even funded Garnier’s journey up the Mekong to find its source, although there is no proof of this, and if it is true, Harry has been discreet, to preserve his British shipping contracts. Harry will probably be with you all the way to Rangoon, although he will take one of his company steamships to Mandalay. He has a mansion, no, a court, lavish enough to make the kings of Ava jealous. Which apparently it did. They say Thibaw twice tried to have Harry killed, but the Armenian escaped. You may pass his quarters in Mandalay. He lives and breathes teak. Difficult to talk to unless you are in the business.” The Captain scarcely stopped to breathe. “Behind him, the portly fellow, a Frenchman, Jean-Baptiste Valerie, professor of linguistics at the Sorbonne. They say he speaks twenty-seven languages, three of which aren’t spoken by any other white men, not even the missionaries.”
“And the man beside him, the man with the rings? A striking fellow.”
“Ah, the rug dealer Nader Modarress, a Persian who specializes in Bakhtiari rugs. He made this journey with two mistresses—unusual, because he has enough wives in Bombay to keep him too busy to sell rugs. He is staying in the royal cabin. He can always afford the fare. As you saw, he has gold rings on each finger—you must try to look at them, each ring is set with extraordinary jewels.”
“He boarded with another gentleman, a large blond fellow.”
“Bodyguard. A Norwegian, I think. Although I doubt he is much good. He spends half his time smoking opium with the stokers– nasty habit, but it keeps them from complaining much. Modarress has another character in his hire, a spectacled fellow, a poet from Kiev, whom Modarress hired to compose odes to his wives—the Persian fashions himself a romantic but has trouble with his adjectives. Ah—forgive me—I am gossiping like a schoolgirl. Come, let’s take some air before I have to return to work.”
They rose and walked outside to the deck. In the bow stood a lone figure, wrapped in a long white robe that fluttered about his body.
Edgar watched him. “I don’t think he has moved from that spot since we left Alexandria.”
“Perhaps our strangest passenger of all. We call him the Man with One Story. He has traveled this route for as long as I can remember. He is always alone. I do not know who pays his fare or what his business is. He travels in the lower berths, boards in Alexandria and disembarks in Aden. I have never seen him make the return journey.”
“And why do you call him the Man with One Story?”
The Captain chuckled. “An old name. On the rare voyages that he chooses to speak, he tells only one tale. I have heard it once, and I have never forgotten it. He doesn’t make conversation. He only begins the story and doesn’t stop until it is finished. It is eerie, as if one is listening to a phonograph. Mostly he’s silent, but for those who hear the story…they are rarely the same again.”
“He speaks English?”
“A deliberate English, almost as if he is reading.”
“And the subject of this…story?”
“Ah, Mr. Drake. That I will leave for you to discover, if you are meant to. Really, only he can tell it.”
And as if rehearsed, there was a call from the galley. Edgar had other questions, about Anthony Carroll, about the Man with One Story, but the Captain quickly bid him good night, and disappeared into the dining hall, leaving him alone, breathing the scent of the sea air, loaded with salt and premonition.
The next morning, Edgar awoke early to the heat pounding at the porthole. He dressed and walked down the long corridor and up to the deck. It was bright, and he could feel the sun even as it barely hovered over the eastern hills. The sea was wide, and both shores could still faintly be seen. Further aft he saw the man in the white robes standing at the rail.
He had become accustomed to taking this stroll every morning, circling the ship’s deck until it became too warm. It was on one of these walks that he had first seen the man unroll his prayer rug to pray. He had seen him often since then, but he said nothing.
Yet on this warm morning, as he followed the same route of his usual stroll, aft along the railing, toward the man in the white robes, he felt his legs weakening. I am afraid, he thought, and he tried to tell himself that this morning’s walk was no different from the previous day’s but he knew it wasn’t true. The Captain had spoken with a seriousness that seemed oddly out of character for the tall, lighthearted sailor. For a moment, Edgar thought that perhaps he had imagined the conversation, that the Captain had left him in the dining hall, that he had risen to the deck alone. Or, he thought several steps later, the Captain knew they would meet, a new traveler and a storyteller, Perhaps this is what is meant by the gravity of stories.
He found himself standing near the man. “Fine morning, sir,” he said.
The old man nodded. His face was dark, his beard the color of his robes. Edgar didn’t know what to say, but he forced himself to remain at the railing. The man was silent. Waves washed against the bow of the ship, their sound lost in the roar of the steam engines.
“This is your first time in the Red Sea,” said the man, his voice deep with an unfamiliar accent.
“Yes, it is, this is my first time away from England, actually—”
The old man interrupted him. “You must show me your lips when you speak,” he said. “I am deaf.”
Edgar turned. “I am sorry, I didn’t know…”
“Your name?” asked the old man.
“Drake…here…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card which he had had printed especially for the journey.
The sight of the tiny card with curlicue lettering in the wrinkled hands of the old man suddenly embarrassed him. But the old man puzzled over the card. “An English piano tuner. A man who knows sound. Would you like to hear a story, Mr. Edgar Drake? An old deaf man’s story?”
Thirty years ago, when I was much younger and not crippled by the pains of old age, I worked as a deckhand, traveling this very route from Suez to the Strait of Babelmandeb. Unlike today’s steamers that plow directly through the sea without stopping, we rode by sail and crisscrossed the sea, dropping anchor at dozens of tiny ports on both the African and Arabian shores, towns with names like Fareez and Gomaina, Tektozu and Weevineev, many of which have been lost to the sands, where we stopped to trade with nomads who sold rugs and pots scavenged from abandoned desert cities. I was traveling this same route when our boat was caught in a storm. She was old and should have been forbidden from sailing. We reefed the sails, but the hull sprung a leak, and the rush of the water split the boat. When the hull ruptured I fell and struck my head, and entered blackness.
When I awoke I was lying on a sandy shore, alone amidst some wreckage of the hull that I must have clung to by good fortune. At first I found myself immobile and feared I had been paralyzed, but found only that I was wrapped tightly in my headdress, which must have unraveled and clung to my body like a child’s swaddling or the mummies they pull out of the Egyptian sands. It took me a long time to regain my wits. My body was badly bruised, and when I tried to breathe, pain shot through my ribs. The sun was already high in the sky, and my body was caked with the salt of the sea, my throat and tongue parched and swollen. Pale blue water lapped at my feet and at the piece of broken hull, which still bore the first three scrawled Arabic figures from what was once the ship’s name.
At long last I unraveled my headdress and retied it loosely. I rose to my feet. The land around me was flat, but in the distance I could see mountains, dry and barren. Like any man who has grown up in the desert, I could only think of one thing: water. I knew from our travels that the coastline is marked by many small estuaries, most brackish, but some of which, according to the nomads, merge with sweet water streams draining aquifers or the snows that have fallen on the peaks of distant mountains. So I decided to follow the coast, in the hope of finding such a river. At least the sea would keep me oriented, and perhaps, perhaps, I might sight a passing ship.