Chapter 1
the Last Shipbuilder of El Ar
by
ANTHONY MICHAEL CORNISH
© Anthony Michael Cornish 2015. Anthony Michael Cornish has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
the Last Shipbuilder of El Ar
Do you know how my hands tremble at your touch? Or, like a love-struck boy, the words catch in my throat when I speak to you of matters of the heart? I cry out whenever we part, as something of my better self is stripped from me. But perhaps these things have been a thunderstorm in your ears as well. Beloved, I beg that you read my testimony; an imperfect account of my days spent in between worlds.
The days spent without you were hard to bear, but then came my journey from an uncertain future to safety, and from death to life. In the natural run of things I’d have reached journey’s end within the measure of a man’s lifetime, but it wasn’t to be. I blame the company into which I fell—my Teacher excepted, of course—yet in the end it was I who walked in obedience while the others in our company chose differently. An unfinished poem craves finality and should the poem of my life demand another hour, day, week, or century of me then no matter.
What of my erstwhile companions? Look out for them crossing the brow of a distant hill, or waiting impatiently at some faraway crossroad, each one hard in pursuit of their own ending.
I awoke as if from a dream, sweat-drenched and stinking, into a world that thought me dead and long since in the ground. Only I kept faith in my life. No poesy, no moving denouement for me. Could all my hoping and dreaming have amounted only to this? A simple … nothingness? I decided to put things right.
I was an unhappy boy and a most unhappy man, I know, grasping at life without real conviction. I’d written nothing of worth for too long, so to help myself I did this: I imagined my words as notes, sung out loud with confidence, skill and accuracy. And did it work? No: I would hear them, but reflected back to me a touch flat: a careless antiphony to an ancient god deaf to the prayers of men.
Yet my poetry was still a great comfort. I know I’ll never be precisely lucky in life; in all my strivings I’ve never stumbled across the divine. Instead I’d bend and twist the verses; persuade and coerce; work every day, like whittling a stick.
Only lately have I learned to put down my pen and leave the words in their place, in peace, until they’ve had a chance to work their magic on me. But perhaps I’ve left things too late. I know I hold things close: a tree can spare a little sap, but not me; I treasure too much.
Life withered my soul. I abandoned one ambition after another, narrowing my horizon, hunching my shoulders a little more each day until I could at last justify never setting foot outside the village in which I was born: Kir Moab.
But then came a day. It was unforgivingly hot. Stifling. Even raising a hand to call for more tea felt reckless. At that time of year Kir Moab’s oppressed by the heat, resentful and desperate to break the tedium. I first saw him, my other species of ghost, as he held forth his poetry in the hope of a coin or two, or so I first thought.
I’ve encountered such men before and soon understood why no one was rewarding his efforts: he wasn’t at all entertaining. Stubborn, certainly, pressing ahead in spite of everything:
“I imagine myself upon the deck of a tall ship, stout hull beneath my feet, white sail stretched above, and it came to pass. I dream myself lost in a foreign land, the air too hot to breathe, and here I am. I see myself in the company of strangers and witness where I now stand. I imagine myself upon the deck of a tall ship … ”
I saw something else, or rather heard it: a faint dissonance. There, outside Asadel’s shop, beside the King’s Highway as it winds its way leisurely through Kir Moab and on into distant Edom, a curious thing was happening. Picture, if you will, my stoop-shouldered wiseman. He’s barely able to stand; too subject to the power of the wind and humbled by the heat. Should he try to move he looks bound to fall. There’s nothing remarkable in his features. In fact, he’s thoroughly commonplace and short in stature to boot. He puzzles me: his belly’s rounded, but his eyes tell me he’s starving for something more than food.
There’s more: a rich timbre resounds in his voice, set against the poverty woven though the fibres in his clothes. He intrigues me, declaiming that curious, solitary verse over and over again, shifting his tired weight from one aching foot to the next—left to right, right to left, left to right—in the heat of the day, not a leaf of shade for comfort.
He repeats it a hundred times and more, in curious, lilting cadences and strange rhythms. Something’s altogether … wrong: secrets lie hidden from sight and from that moment on he has me, fish-on-hook.
Later, I’ll make a close study of the creases lining his face, the knots in his hair, the folds in his cloak and, later still, the caches of strange-coloured sand tucked away in the folds of his clothes and corners of his travelling bag. Otherworldly, windborne essences scent the air in clouds and no one save me seems to notice. At best, out of the corner of an eye, they might see an eccentric foreigner, or perhaps a madman surviving his life as best he can.
It’s so very hot: Kir Moab’s stifling, the heat smashing down any spur of curiosity, any reckless energy, with crushing ease. All cogent thought’s suppressed as it settles down its heaviness, fat hen upon egg. Life’s a useless burden, the days nigh unbearable, and the nights a cruel torture.
The wiseman’s hair straggles down either side of his gaunt, lined face. Time and heavy experience have carved lines so deep into his features that from my vantage point across the street they might well have been etched in kohl. Rivulets of sweat course through the dust powdering his cheeks; tears upon news of a death. He has the look of one destined to rise no higher, before tumbling low, then lower, and then finally out of sight.
His thick, greyed eyebrows are arched wings, stretching either side of a truly impressive nose. A permanent frown’s there for all to see—he’s captive to his temper—but he cares little for things of the flesh. His beard’s over-long, shot through with vocal, ash-grey lightning strikes. He’s dressed carelessly, head-to-toe in borrowed clothes of rough camels’ wool in the style of a proper Muqarribun—a Near One—but so dirty it’s merely a ragged vagrant that Kir Moab sees. Sees, and then promptly forgets. In time, his face will recover itself a little, but the dark smudges around his eyes will never leave him.
Lying at his feet is a collection of worn tools—adze, awl, plane, hammer and other things I can’t name—laid out neatly on a blanket. Could he be a carpenter, grown mad and wandering in search of his lost wits? Later I’ll discover his name—Abdul-Bari.
“And don’t ever be tempted to truncate it …”—he’ll say one day, a bony finger wagging in my face,—“extend it, or bastardise it. I’m an affable enough fellow …”—be assured, Beloved, that he’s nothing of the sort—“… but don’t defy me in this. Abdul-Bari’s the name fastened upon me by a mother, clamped down on my head by an honoured father, and their wishes will be respected.”
Maybe his clothes are borrowed rags, but he holds the nobility and provenance of his name above all things. He’s … complicated, you see; erratic. At times it’s hard to winnow out the sham from the sincere. I don’t think he’s done much studying; he’s more than likely soaked up his words and ideas from the sand at his feet. For all that he’s the wisest man I’ll ever know. I owe him so much.
I watch him, hour after hour, wondering if I’ll ever summon up the courage to speak to him. I’m at a low ebb, it’s true, and would welcome any conversation. Even his.
Set free at last from the illness that held me prisoner in my rooms for so long I’ve ventured out at last, but unsteadily, to drink tea across the street from Asadel’s carpet shop. It’s a good place sit and watch the world pass by. I’m so very tired. In fact, I’m tired all the time, but I fear to close my eyes; if I sleep perhaps I’ll never wake again.
