seeing me behind him, commenced to look thoroughly ashamed.
Harry Owen makes of my father a scientific undertaking. A meal of sorts, and a disappointing one, evidently:
He speaks little, despite my best efforts to draw him out.
• • •
In the end, though, the sea itself will assist.
They are in the workroom. How many weeks in? Three weeks. Harry Owen has pressed Leo Dell’oro into assisting him. In the liquid half-light of down below they are seated together on stools, uncomfortably (but then, when, since the pressing off, have they been comfortable?—never), shelves around them bristling with beakers and vials, microscopes, wads of cotton, jars of ether, scalpels, the tools of the trade, all the necessities of capture, subdue, disembowel, preserve, these are not symbol but fact. The ship beneath and around them shuddering. Outside the porthole: wet, grey. Horizon indistinct, uncertain. They do not look out. Afraid, perhaps, to see an eye looking back? No. They are too busy; they are hard at work making a surface net. Harry Owen has designed it himself, and will use it, when they reach calmer, tropical waters, to catch tiny pelagic creatures, helpless floating things aflame with the green fire of the sea, wandering spirals and crystallines, minute plants like snowflakes, tiny dragons fierce and bristling, these really the larvae of starfish and whelks and lobsters; phosphorescent fishes, medusae with blue translucent disks, minute pulsing tentacles; spawn, goo; dream objects. The net to be lowered over the side of the quarterdeck when the sea is calm, blue, in a yielding mood. Disinclined to notice. Open to plunder.
There is so much in her, she won’t miss what we take.
All in the interest of science, of course. Hoping to discover one that will be named after him.
In this he will be successful. See:
Porpita minusculus owenii.
So it is not all in vain after all.
• • •
My father perched on his stool, sewing transverse hoops into Harry Owen’s net, doing his best to assist in the plunder. He works with severe concentration, despite the juddering of the ship, the juddering of his heart. He has seen my mother up above; therefore is hiding. Unwitting of his impending capture.
Waves within, waves without.
Then the sudden heave. Leo Dell’oro, upended, unceremoniously flung, sent sprawling beneath the worktable, arms and legs akimbo, this is so undignified, tangled in the toils of the net he has lately been sewing, hopelessly raveled; and at the same time—accompanying clatter—a small object, liberated from somewhere about his person by the vehemence of the wave, careens onto the floor, bounces, slithers, is lost.
He rights himself and within moments is crawling around on his knees, feeling around in all the convolutions of the net, searching for whatever it is he has dropped.
Aha!
Here it is, in the corner, underneath the worktable. A lunge and it is in his hand. Safe there. But he does not immediately emerge. Kneels instead, oh eccentric father, makes a short, sharp, thrusting backward motion with his arm and hand, as if intending to throw something over his shoulder that he does not in fact throw, chanting,
Black black bear-away, don’t come down by here-away!
It’s the same mysterious doggerel Harry Owen heard before, in the cabin. Only this time he won’t let it pass. He’s got a strong spirit of scientific endeavor, actually takes my father by the wrist this time. Refrains though, from the cotton wool and the ether.
What have you?
It’s n-nothing—
The nervous stammer coming out now. I wonder does Harry Owen remember Leo Dell’oro passed out in the bushes off the Embankment, that hollow vacancy, the tremor, the horrible, empty staring. The carapace.
Or is he too much of a gentleman to remember?
Purposeful pretense, that.
Show me.
Severely, as if speaking to a child.
Sulky-eyed, like a child, Leo Dell’oro opens his fist, reveals, at the center of his small, pale
Harry Owen makes of my father a scientific undertaking. A meal of sorts, and a disappointing one, evidently:
He speaks little, despite my best efforts to draw him out.
• • •
In the end, though, the sea itself will assist.
They are in the workroom. How many weeks in? Three weeks. Harry Owen has pressed Leo Dell’oro into assisting him. In the liquid half-light of down below they are seated together on stools, uncomfortably (but then, when, since the pressing off, have they been comfortable?—never), shelves around them bristling with beakers and vials, microscopes, wads of cotton, jars of ether, scalpels, the tools of the trade, all the necessities of capture, subdue, disembowel, preserve, these are not symbol but fact. The ship beneath and around them shuddering. Outside the porthole: wet, grey. Horizon indistinct, uncertain. They do not look out. Afraid, perhaps, to see an eye looking back? No. They are too busy; they are hard at work making a surface net. Harry Owen has designed it himself, and will use it, when they reach calmer, tropical waters, to catch tiny pelagic creatures, helpless floating things aflame with the green fire of the sea, wandering spirals and crystallines, minute plants like snowflakes, tiny dragons fierce and bristling, these really the larvae of starfish and whelks and lobsters; phosphorescent fishes, medusae with blue translucent disks, minute pulsing tentacles; spawn, goo; dream objects. The net to be lowered over the side of the quarterdeck when the sea is calm, blue, in a yielding mood. Disinclined to notice. Open to plunder.
There is so much in her, she won’t miss what we take.
All in the interest of science, of course. Hoping to discover one that will be named after him.
In this he will be successful. See:
Porpita minusculus owenii.
So it is not all in vain after all.
• • •
My father perched on his stool, sewing transverse hoops into Harry Owen’s net, doing his best to assist in the plunder. He works with severe concentration, despite the juddering of the ship, the juddering of his heart. He has seen my mother up above; therefore is hiding. Unwitting of his impending capture.
Waves within, waves without.
Then the sudden heave. Leo Dell’oro, upended, unceremoniously flung, sent sprawling beneath the worktable, arms and legs akimbo, this is so undignified, tangled in the toils of the net he has lately been sewing, hopelessly raveled; and at the same time—accompanying clatter—a small object, liberated from somewhere about his person by the vehemence of the wave, careens onto the floor, bounces, slithers, is lost.
He rights himself and within moments is crawling around on his knees, feeling around in all the convolutions of the net, searching for whatever it is he has dropped.
Aha!
Here it is, in the corner, underneath the worktable. A lunge and it is in his hand. Safe there. But he does not immediately emerge. Kneels instead, oh eccentric father, makes a short, sharp, thrusting backward motion with his arm and hand, as if intending to throw something over his shoulder that he does not in fact throw, chanting,
Black black bear-away, don’t come down by here-away!
It’s the same mysterious doggerel Harry Owen heard before, in the cabin. Only this time he won’t let it pass. He’s got a strong spirit of scientific endeavor, actually takes my father by the wrist this time. Refrains though, from the cotton wool and the ether.
What have you?
It’s n-nothing—
The nervous stammer coming out now. I wonder does Harry Owen remember Leo Dell’oro passed out in the bushes off the Embankment, that hollow vacancy, the tremor, the horrible, empty staring. The carapace.
Or is he too much of a gentleman to remember?
Purposeful pretense, that.
Show me.
Severely, as if speaking to a child.
Sulky-eyed, like a child, Leo Dell’oro opens his fist, reveals, at the center of his small, pale
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