The Confusion

PLAYING WITH THE MINDS of Edmund de Ath and Elizabeth de Obregon made for excellent sport, and if done right, might even keep Jack, Moseh, and company alive when they reached Acapulco. But it was a sport Jack could only watch, since neither of those two would seriously entertain the idea of having a conversation with him. To Jack, the lady showed faint, perfunctory gratitude, and to all others she showed a sort of amused tolerance-all except Edmund de Ath, who was the only one she treated as an equal. This galled Jack far more than it should have. It was years since he’d been a king in Hindoostan and he should have been used to his reduced status. But being around this Spanish gentlewoman made him want to go back to Shahjahanabad and enlist in the service of the Great Mogul once more. And he was on his own ship!

“The only cure for it is to become a merchant prince,” said Vrej Esphahnian, as they were sailing out of the Golden Gate on a cold, clear morning. “And that is what we are working toward. Learn from the Armenians, Jack. We do not care for titles and we do not have armies nor castles. Noble folk can sneer at us all they like-when their kingdoms have fallen into dust, we will buy their silks and jewels with a handful of beans.”

“That is well, unless pirates or princes take what you have so tediously acquired,” Jack said.

“No, you don’t understand. Does a farmer measure his wealth in pails of milk? No, for pails spill, and milk spoils in a day. A farmer measures his wealth in cows. If he has cows, milk comes forth almost without effort.”

“What is the cow, in this similitude?” asked Moseh, who had come over to listen.

“The cow is the web, or net-work of connexions, that Armenians have spun all the world round.”

“It has never ceased to astonish me how you find Armenians everywhere we go,” Jack admitted.

“In every place where we have tarried for more than a few days: Algiers, Cairo, Mocha, Bandar-Abbas, Surat, Shahjahanabad, Batavia, Macao, Manila-I have been able to invest some small fraction of my profits in the diverse enterprises of other Armenians,” Vrej said. “In some cases the amounts were trivial. But it does not matter-those men know me now, they are knots in my net-work, and when I return to Paris, even if we lose Minerva and everything aboard her, I’ll be a wealthy man-not in milk but in cows.”

“Avast there, Vrej,” Jack said, “I am not a superstitious man, but I do not love to hear this talk of losing Minerva.”

Vrej shrugged. “Sometimes a man must accept a great loss.”

An awkward stillness for a few moments, made more excruciatingly obvious by the shouting of the riggers as they trimmed the sails for a new course. Minerva was leaving the Golden Gate behind, and coming about into a new southeasterly course along the coast. She’d follow this general heading for some two thousand miles to Acapulco.

Finally Moseh said, “Well, I am a superstitious man, or at least a religious one, and I have been pondering this: When is my trading-voyage finished?”

“When you drop anchor in London or Amsterdam and come ashore with Bills of Exchange, or imported goods,” Jack said.

“I cannot eat those.”

“Very well, change them into silver and buy bread with it.”

“So I have bread then. But did I need to sail around the world for bread?”

“Bread you can get anywhere,” Jack admitted, then glanced at the open Pacific to starboard. “Save there. Why sail round the world, then? For entertainment, I suppose. We do what we have to do, Moseh, and are not frequently given diverse choices. What are you getting at?”

“I believe my journey ended when we crossed the Sea of Reeds and escaped from bondage in Egypt,” Moseh said. “Nothing since then has brought me satisfaction.”

“Again, though, you’ve had no choices available.”

“Every day,” Moseh said, “every day I’ve had choices, but I’ve been blind to them.”

“You are being too Cabbalistickal for me,” Jack said. “I am an Englishman and will go to England. You see? Very simple and plain. Now I will ask you a question that should have a simple answer: When we get to Acapulco, will you be in the Wet or the Dry Group?”

“Dry,” said Moseh, “dry forever.”

“Very well,” said Vrej after another of those awkward silences, “as we’ve lost poor Arlanc, it follows that I shall have to be Wet. And that sits well with me, for I am eager to see Lima, the Rio de la Plata, and Brazil, and after all we’ve endured, Cape Horn holds no terror for me.”

Dappa happened along. “For a man without a country, the ship is the only choice. Brazil and the Caribbean are awash in African slaves and I cannot learn or tell their stories unless I voyage there and talk to them.”

“Then since van Hoek obviously goes with the ship, I’m obligated to be Dry,” Jack said, “and my boys will go with me.”

They all stood silently for a few moments, caught between a raw Pacific wind and the coast of California. Then every one of them seemed to understand how many preparations lay ahead of him, and each went his own way.