The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 38

seen, I was awed, and just as amazed that by a twist he was on my family’s side, more, he was my family. He assumed total charge, getting the convicts and the women aboard, berating a Brigadesman who moved sluggishly, suspiciously, to take position as a guard in the bow, warning the troops on the pier to mind their own, tend their duty, for he was “the Reverend Mord Fiddle, doing the work of Lord God!” That magic tongue overwhelmed them. One wanted to believe him in order to escape his wrath. I think now they permitted us to shove off for their own release. Then again, there is the fact that Grandfather really was the would-be despot of the Evangelical Republic of Sweden; and that in revolution, it is not the prudent man who prevails, rather the fanatical, the tyrannical, the pitiless.

This is to speak prematurely of the phenomenon of a black prince. I have studied this matter as best I can. Grandfather was never in the rank of such as Savonarola, Torquemada, Cromwell, Robespierre. And I can speak with the authority of one who has seen what it is to pretend to self-elected omnipotence. Grandfather’s sense of the coming kingdom of his Lord God was always informed, however tardily, by a faith in the possibility of reconciliation. What he helped wreak in Sweden should not be forgotten, though it probably has been by now, another passing disgrace. I cannot say what happened there, in the North, after we fled. I presume that all improved once the passion of insane prejudice ran its course. The Loyalist call for purity was not a masterwork, it was a cowardly surrender. For their shame, for Grandfather’s shame, I pray to God for forgiveness. I say this with intimate knowledge of far worse, with liability for far worse, than anything Grandfather and his thugs did there. I must not telescope my story too far ahead. There is much I must record for clarity. It is appropriate here to say that aboard Angel of Death, I and my family escaped a kingdom cursed by fire, and that aboard Angel of Death, we fell into an age cursed by exile and toward a kingdom cursed by ice, and that it was in so falling that Grim Fiddle was to discover that most profound of human treasures, his own destiny.

C

HAPTER

THE

S

ECOND

THE FLEET

OF THE DAMNED

Hope Abandoned

PUNISHMENT had transformed Peregrine. And, one-eyed, emaciated, bent, he came back to us more changed than even his physical distortions would suggest. He had rid himself of his anger. He was peaceful; no, not merely that, for there was also his fascination with the sea, the food he ate, whatever we said to him. He had not relaxed—as might a man who has been broken by five years of incarceration—he had intensified about the commonplace. He spoke to me peculiarly with his new self, saying things such as, “No man has a truer son.” I had no ready reply, usually smiled, which set him at ease, as if I were the lord and host and he the wayfaring guest. Did he feel impermanent? He made being alive and on board Angel of Death seem a reward.

The metamorphosis disturbed me, not unhappily. Before, Peregrine and I engaged in conversations that circled around our love for each other, that were grounded in events, objects, history. After, all we talked about was our relationship. Peregrine had seized upon fidelity, loyalty, devotion, upon what I presume he meant with the single word true. Before, Peregrine had only rarely spoken candidly about family, America, Sweden. He had avoided the deepest truth-telling. And his deception had been most damaging when directed against himself. He had made believe more than he had believed. After, he seemed to fasten on that intangible Greek concept, the Truth, as if it were his next breath.

“He got away,” said Guy of Peregrine’s metamorphosis.

“He got her,” said Israel.

Indeed, it was not possible to determine how much of Peregrine’s new identity was self-generated and how much was called forth by his intimacy with Charity Bentham. She was with him like a new limb. She held him, sang to him, fed him, helped him on deck for exercise, slept with him in that narrow bunk. She seemed to animate his wasted body. He was my father, and Israel’s friend. He was her devotion.

Charity Bentham also changed after the rescue. From what I learned of her conduct beforehand, she had known despair but overall had been assertive, effective, self-generating. Her performance on the pier with the Brigadesmen was typical of her power. On board Angel of Death all that disappeared. She gave the impression that if Peregrine left her sight, she herself would disappear. If Peregrine was more loving afterward, Charity was all sentiment, a creature so fragile and vulnerable that one worried the sea might wash her away as she huddled with Peregrine in the gangway. She stopped speaking in complete sentences. She must have talked at length with Peregrine, for I saw them wrapped in conversation. I never overheard her. And as he grew stronger, Peregrine developed a way of speaking for Charity, as if there were two bodies, one voice, one heart. Where was the Nobel Laureate? The answer is that she was in place. She had turned inward. Charity Bentham was an extraordinary human being. Before, she had pursued fortune and power. After, she pursued Peregrine. She applied that will of hers to reawakening a man who should have died soon after his rescue. It was as if she kissed him back to life, adored him, in order to keep him from quitting us. She performed a miracle of love and hope.

And as Charity’s hope filled Peregrine, their love conjoined affected all of us on board. We did not become new men, like Peregrine, but there were changes. Israel joked less, spoke seriously, perhaps heavily, to me. He explained how wrong he had