The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 40

that she could feel herself most righteous and indomitable when she could strike at me. I provided her a certain sense of identity in her confusion of roles, for to revile me was to demonstrate that she remained unreconciled to her fate. Seeing me would hurt her, hurting me would hurt her, knowing I was hurt would hurt her. All this pain, cruelty, hardheartedness would make her feel justified. It does seem contradictory that one can cling to pain, and pain-making, as firmly as one can cling to joy and joy-making. That is what Cleopatra seemed to do, passionately. In this peculiar way, from the first, I was Cleopatra’s passion. She lavished on me a nakedness of soul that one would ordinarily give to a lover. This confounded me as it compelled me. I risk to argue here that I became Cleopatra’s passion as Peregrine had become Charity’s. As we were father and son, they were mother and daughter, by blood, by manner, and by persuasion to love and to hate and to remain unresolved.

This investigation will have to end for now, perhaps for always unless I am further tempted by it. The truth of it might be that I did not understand Cleopatra then any better than I do now. I admit my failure to render her. I wish that I had Israel to turn to, or perhaps a book of these things—crimes of the heart. That is the depth of it. I was attacked by Cleopatra. She was arresting, dangerous, fast. Perhaps I loved her in defense of my self. We fought on the battleground of our hearts for the satisfaction of revenging our parents’ wrongdoings, for the satisfaction of conquering each other’s very reason for being. We were conceived in a confusion of fate: she could have been my sister, I could have been her. How could there ever be a finish to our contest? We both lost as we both won. How I still can feel my fear of her as I feel my love for her! I wonder if she feels the same of me. The single conclusion I offer myself, after all this time, is that our love was, from the first abrupt exchange at Vexbeggar, as unlucky as it was hopeless.

Grandfather was the first of us to notice the new shame in the world of men. He had kept apart from us the first few days out of Stockholm harbor, busy commanding a makeshift crew as Angel of Death cleared the Baltic for the Kattegat and Skaggerak and then passed into the North Sea. He was indifferent to our recapitulations and peacemakings. He looked to his ship and to the sea. He gained a clear vision of certain eerie irregularities in the merchant traffic, the shoreline, the sea.

The evening he took me into his confidence was humblingly bright with stars, Castor and Pollux nearly straight above, like eyes of heaven. Wild Drumrul and Lazarus had the watch at the wheel; Orlando the Black, Babe, and Earle had the deck watch. They were bantering playfully as we came on deck. Grandfather, somber and gruff, invited me forward, making it clear he disapproved of the watch’s conduct. He sat me down by the foremast. We were soon drenched in a cold mist as Angel of Death, trimmed for slow running in a rolling sea, cut a steady course westward. Grandfather gestured above to the Milky Way. He said something odd about signs, in Old Norse. I was impressed and delighted to discover that Grandfather knew the heavens as keenly as he knew the Bible, and in the same way, a celebrant not a critic. He began loudly, “You are a prize! I see that. No man could have raised you better.”

“You will like my father. He wasn’t always like this,” I said.

“No matter now. Do you know what they have in mind?”

“Israel and Guy?”

“That heathen lot. They want me to take you halfway around the earth. To this Baja California. They do not know. I shall not tell them. I shall tell you.”

“You’re a fine teacher. We’re a better ship every day,” I started. I thought he meant that his ship’s hands were amateurs. Initially I had worried about this, but I could see that Angel of Death, even with Black Crane lashed down between her masts, was a muscular beauty; she had originally been built for weathering the brutal Gulf of Bothnia. Grandfather once boasted to me that three men and a Bible could sail Angel of Death to the moon. I discontinued my defense of the crew, however, when I felt Grandfather’s impatience. I asked, “What is it you know?”

“I am not one to quit a rough business,” he said, gesturing to the west, “but we have no chance for this Mexico.”

“It’s where the Furores live,” I tried. I was wrong again. He turned on me slowly, his hair and beard matted like stone by the sea spray, his face filled with a dreadful certainty. He wiped his eyes. He studied me. It was not then possible for me to imagine anything Grandfather could not do, or anything that was too rough for him to try.

“You think me a monster. Is that what they tell you? For what I did? My work with the League? A monster?”

I struggled to say I did not understand.

“Speak your face,” he said.

“It was ugly, what you did. Yes, you were wrong,” I said.

“What I did, what I had to do, what we did—we were saints compared to what is out there,” Grandfather said, pointing to the west. “I have served Lord God all my life. I would sooner put this knife into your heart than disobey Lord God. Understand this, Grandson. When Lord God told his servant Noah to build him an ark; and when Lord God told Noah, ‘The loathsomeness of all mankind has become plain to me, for through them the earth is full of violence, and I intend to destroy them, and the