The Confusion

It was three days since Jack had pulled him out of the drink and slung him over one of the longboat’s benches; this was the first time de Ath had emerged from his berth since then. His voice was still hoarse from inhaling smoke and swallowing salt-water. He had joined Jack, Moseh, Vrej, Dappa, Monsieur Arlanc, and van Hoek in the dining cabin, which was the largest and aft-most cabin on the quarterdeck; its back wall was a subtly curved sweep of windows twenty feet wide, affording a splendid view of the sun setting into the Western Pacific. The visitor was drawn inevitably to those windows, and stood there for a few moments with the ruddy light emphasizing the pits and hollows of his face. If he put on two or three stone-which he was likely to do when they reached New Spain-he’d be handsome. As it was, his skull stood a bit too close to the surface. But then the same was true of every man aboard this ship.

“Everything is idiotically plain and stark here, and that goes for the view as well,” Jack said. “A line between water and sky, and an orange ball poised above it.”

“It is Japanese in its simplicity,” said Edmund de Ath gravely, “and yet if you only look deeper, Barock complexity and ornament are to be found-observe the tufts of cloud scudding in below the Orb, the delicate curtseying of the waves as they meet-” and then he was off in high-flown French that Jack could not really follow; which prompted Monsieur Arlanc to say “I gather from your accent that you are Belgian.” Edmund de Ath (1) took this as an insult of moderate severity but (2) was too serene and poised to be troubled by it unduly. With Christian forbearance he responded with something like, “And I gather from the company you keep, monsieur, that you are one of those whose conscience led him to forsake the complexity and contradictions of the Roman church for the simplicity of a rebel creed.” That this Belgian friar refrained from using the word heretic was noted silently by every man in the cabin. Again he and Arlanc went off into deep French. But van Hoek was clearing his throat a lot and so Jack finally broke in: “The maggots, weevils, mealworms, and mold in those serving-dishes aren’t going to keep fresh all night!”

The only food remaining on the ship was beef jerky, some dried fish, beans, and biscuit. These were steadily being converted into cockroaches, worms, maggots, and weevils. They had long since stopped observing any difference between food that had and that had not undergone the conversion, and ate both in the same mouthful.

“According to my faith, I am not allowed to eat any flesh on Friday,” said Edmund de Ath, “and so someone else may have my portion of beans.” He was gazing bemusedly at a raft of maggots that had floated to the surface of his bowl. Van Hoek’s face grew red when he understood that their new passenger was making jests about the food, but before the Dutchman would leap up and get his hands around the throat of the Belgian, Edmund de Ath raised his eyes to the red horizon, delved blindly with his spoon, and brought a stew of beans and bugs to his mouth. “It is better fare than I have had in a month,” he announced. “My compliments, Captain van Hoek, on your logistical acumen. Rather than trusting to some saint as the Spanish captains do, you have used the brain God gave you, and provisioned the ship responsibly.”

The diplomacy of de Ath only seemed to make van Hoek more suspicious. “What sort of Papist are you, to make light of your own faith?”

“Make light of it? Never, sir. I am a Jansenist. I seek reconciliation with certain Protestants, finding their faith nearer truth than the sophistry of the Jesuits. But I would not bore you with tedious theologickal discourse-”

“How about Jews?” asked Moseh gravely. “We could use an extra Jew on this ship, if you could stretch your principles that far.”

“I will not stretch my principles, but I will stretch my mind,” said Edmund de Ath, refusing to be baited. “Tell me, what do the rebbes say concerning the eating of larvae? Kosher, or trayf?”

“I have been thinking of writing a scholarly treatise on that very subject,” said Moseh, “but I need access to certain rabbinical writings that are not available in Captain van Hoek’s library of nautical lore and picaresque novels.”

Everyone laughed-even Monsieur Arlanc, who was hard at work grinding a fragment of boiled jerky against the tabletop with the butt of his dagger. His last remaining tooth had fallen out a week ago and so he had to chew his food manually.

They had spent so many years together that they had nothing to say to one another, and so this new fellow-whether they liked him or not-held their attention fast, no matter what he did or said. Even when he was answering Vrej Esphahnian’s questions about Jansenist views towards the Armenian Orthodox Church, they could not look at anything else.