CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The tide was on the rise. I waded into the warm
bay water and clambered into the Place. A slow ground swell moved
in and out of the entrance, flowed through my trousers. The fat
billfold in my hip pocket swelled against my hip and then grew
thinner under my weight as it water-soaked. The summer sea was
crowded with little jellyfish the size of gooseberries, dangling
their tendrils and their nettle cells. As they washed in against my
legs and belly I felt them sting like small bitter fires, and the
slow wave breathed in and out of the Place. The rain was only a
thin mist now and it accumulated all the stars and town lamps and
spread them evenly—a dark, pewter-colored sheen. I could see the
third rock, but from the Place it did not line up with the point
over the sunken keel of the Belle-Adair. A
stronger wave lifted my legs and made them feel free and separate
from me, and an eager wind sprang from nowhere and drove the mist
like sheep. Then I could see a star—late rising, too late rising
over the edge. Some kind of craft came chugging in, a craft with
sail, by the slow, solemn sound of her engine. I saw her mast light
over the toothy tumble of the breakwater but her red and green were
below my range of sight.
My skin blazed under the lances of the
jellyfish. I heard an anchor plunge, and the mast light went
out.
Marullo’s light still burned, and old Cap’n’s
light and Aunt Deborah’s light.
It isn’t true that there’s a community of light,
a bonfire of the world. Everyone carries his own, his lonely
own.
A rustling school of tiny feeding fish flicked
along the shore.
My light is out. There’s nothing blacker than a
wick.
Inward I said, I want to go home—no not home, to
the other side of home where the lights are given.
It’s so much darker when a light goes out than
it would have been if it had never shone. The world is full of dark
derelicts. The better way—the Marulli of that old Rome would have
known it—there comes a time for decent, honorable retirement, not
dramatic, not punishment of self or family—just good-by, a warm
bath and an opened vein, a warm sea and a razor blade.
The ground swell on the rising tide whished into
the Place and raised my legs and hips and swung them to the side
and carried my wet folded raincoat out with it.
I rolled on one hip and reached in my side
pocket for my razor blades and I felt the lump. Then in wonder I
remembered the caressing, stroking hands of the light-bearer. For a
moment it resisted coming out of my wet pocket. Then in my hand it
gathered every bit of light there was and seemed red—dark
red.
A surge of wave pushed me against the very back
of the Place. And the tempo of the sea speeded up. I had to fight
the water to get out, and I had to get out. I rolled and scrambled
and splashed chest deep in the surf and the brisking waves pushed
me against the old sea wall.
I had to get back—had to return the talisman to
its new owner.
Else another light might go out.