and with that he seemed to wake from a dream, aghast. He felt the urge to scramble down the stairs, stick his head under cold water, and shake it until he cleared his mind. Damn fool, he berated himself. Damn fool, in spades. Senora Soto. I don't even know if she's living with someone or married.
He turned, stepping back in confusion. His eyes lighted on the inscription of a showcase: "Boarding sword worn during the Battle of Trafalgar...." He looked up and there was Tanger Soto, reflected in the glass. He hadn't heard her arrive, but she was there, motionless and silent, watching him with an expression between surprise and curiosity, as unreal as she had been the first time. As vague as a shadow locked inside the glass case, a shadow that wasn't hers.
COYwas not a sociable man. As already noted, that factor, along with a few books and a precociously lucid vision of the dark corners of the human soul, had early led him to sea. Nevertheless, this was not entirely incompatible with a candor that occasionally surfaced in his attitudes, in the way he would look at others without moving or speaking, in the rather awkward way he behaved on dry land, or in his sincere, confused, nearly shy smile. He had shipped out driven more by intuition than by conviction. But life does not advance with the precision of a good ship, and gradually his mooring lines slipped into the sea, sometimes fouled in the propellers or dragging along consequences. There were women, of course. A couple of them had got under his skin, into flesh and blood and mind, effecting the pertinent physical and chemical procedures, the analgesic balms and prescribed havoc. LPPP: Law of Pay the Price Punctually. At this point, that trail was faint, vague pangs of regret in the memory of a sailor without a ship. Precise, but also indifferent, memories closer to melancholy for the long-gone years—it had been eight or nine since the last woman who was important to Coy—than to a feeling of material loss, or absence. Deep down, those shadows were anchored in his memory only because they belonged to a time when everything was a beginning for him— new stripes on a brand-new blue jacket, new bars on the epaulets of his shirts, and long periods of time admiring them in the same way he admired the body of a naked woman, times when life was a crackling new nautical chart with all navigational notices updated, its smooth white surface as yet untouched by pencil and eraser. Days when he himself, sighting the profile of land against the horizon, still felt a vague attraction to persons or things awaiting him there. All the rest—pain, betrayal, reproaches, interminable nights lying awake beside backs turned in silence—were in those days simply submerged rocks, murderous shoals awaiting the inevitable moment, without any chart to give warning of their presence. The fact is that he did not really miss those female shadows; he missed himself, or missed the man he had been then. Maybe that was why those women, or those shadows, the last known ports in his life, surfaced at times, hazy in the outlines of memory, for ghostly rendezvous in Barcelona, at dusk, when he was taking long walks by the sea. Or when he was climbing the wooden bridge of the old port as the setting sun spread its crimson across the heights of Montjuich, the tower of Jaime I, and the piers and gangplanks of the Trans-Mediterranean, or was searching the old wharves and bollards for scars left on stone and iron by thousands of hawsers and steel cables, by ships sunk or cut up for scrap decades before. At times he thought about those women when he walked out beyond the city center and the Maremagnum theaters among other solitary, isolated men and women absorbed in the dusk, dozing on benches or dreaming as they stared out to sea, as gulls glided above the sterns of fishing vessels cutting through the sun-red waters beneath the clock tower. Not far from the clock tower was an ancient schooner stripped of sails
He turned, stepping back in confusion. His eyes lighted on the inscription of a showcase: "Boarding sword worn during the Battle of Trafalgar...." He looked up and there was Tanger Soto, reflected in the glass. He hadn't heard her arrive, but she was there, motionless and silent, watching him with an expression between surprise and curiosity, as unreal as she had been the first time. As vague as a shadow locked inside the glass case, a shadow that wasn't hers.
COYwas not a sociable man. As already noted, that factor, along with a few books and a precociously lucid vision of the dark corners of the human soul, had early led him to sea. Nevertheless, this was not entirely incompatible with a candor that occasionally surfaced in his attitudes, in the way he would look at others without moving or speaking, in the rather awkward way he behaved on dry land, or in his sincere, confused, nearly shy smile. He had shipped out driven more by intuition than by conviction. But life does not advance with the precision of a good ship, and gradually his mooring lines slipped into the sea, sometimes fouled in the propellers or dragging along consequences. There were women, of course. A couple of them had got under his skin, into flesh and blood and mind, effecting the pertinent physical and chemical procedures, the analgesic balms and prescribed havoc. LPPP: Law of Pay the Price Punctually. At this point, that trail was faint, vague pangs of regret in the memory of a sailor without a ship. Precise, but also indifferent, memories closer to melancholy for the long-gone years—it had been eight or nine since the last woman who was important to Coy—than to a feeling of material loss, or absence. Deep down, those shadows were anchored in his memory only because they belonged to a time when everything was a beginning for him— new stripes on a brand-new blue jacket, new bars on the epaulets of his shirts, and long periods of time admiring them in the same way he admired the body of a naked woman, times when life was a crackling new nautical chart with all navigational notices updated, its smooth white surface as yet untouched by pencil and eraser. Days when he himself, sighting the profile of land against the horizon, still felt a vague attraction to persons or things awaiting him there. All the rest—pain, betrayal, reproaches, interminable nights lying awake beside backs turned in silence—were in those days simply submerged rocks, murderous shoals awaiting the inevitable moment, without any chart to give warning of their presence. The fact is that he did not really miss those female shadows; he missed himself, or missed the man he had been then. Maybe that was why those women, or those shadows, the last known ports in his life, surfaced at times, hazy in the outlines of memory, for ghostly rendezvous in Barcelona, at dusk, when he was taking long walks by the sea. Or when he was climbing the wooden bridge of the old port as the setting sun spread its crimson across the heights of Montjuich, the tower of Jaime I, and the piers and gangplanks of the Trans-Mediterranean, or was searching the old wharves and bollards for scars left on stone and iron by thousands of hawsers and steel cables, by ships sunk or cut up for scrap decades before. At times he thought about those women when he walked out beyond the city center and the Maremagnum theaters among other solitary, isolated men and women absorbed in the dusk, dozing on benches or dreaming as they stared out to sea, as gulls glided above the sterns of fishing vessels cutting through the sun-red waters beneath the clock tower. Not far from the clock tower was an ancient schooner stripped of sails
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