Tuesday 2nd September
We did not play this week.
So here is a passage about a bit of the trip up the Emerald River.
I have written this in the style of The Ambassadors, by Henry James, 1903.
This book is allegedly a literary classic. But it is the kind of pretentious, nothing-happens, arse-conversations-crap, chick-book, that I absolutely loathe, detest and despise.
I regard it with the lowest form of contempt. Literary classic — my arse.
Be warned - this is hard-going:
It wasn't the first time that Polly had sat alone on fo'c's'le of the Endor — still less was it the first of her giving herself up, so far as conditions permitted, to its beneficent action on her nerves. She had been on the fo'c's'le with Finn, had been on the fo'c's'le with Halcyon, had been on the fo'c's'le with Ulotta (before that complicated incident with the priests of Imag), but, even in company, such a refuge from the obsession of her problem that, with renewed pressure from that source, she had not unnaturally recurred to a remedy meeting the case, for the moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but so relievingly.
This small struggle sprang not a little, in its way, from the same impulse that had now carried her across to the refuge of the Endor's fo'c's'le; the impulse to let things be, to give them time to justify themselves or at least to pass. She was aware of having no errand in such a place but the desire not to be, for the hour, in certain other places; a sense of safety, of simplification, which each time she yielded to it she amused herself by thinking of as a private concession to cowardice.
She had sat herself upon a coiled rope of sturdy hemp, a convenient if slightly knobbled seat, halfway down the fo'c's'le deck, next to the loose rope railings, and, again in the musing mood, was trying with her eyes on the verdant river bank of the Emerald, to focus on the distant machinations of some peasants toiling in the hazy fields, stuking wheat.
Turning, Polly saw that a man stood there as for a greeting, and she sprang up, smoothing her skirt, for Flung Chow Wong, who appeared to have recognised her as he passed near her on his way to the forehead companion-way door. He checked, quickly and gaily, a certain confusion in her, came to meet it, turned it back, by an art of his own; the confusion having threatened her as she knew him for the person she had lately been observing. He was the mysterious robed-monk figure; he had occupied her more than he guessed; but it came to her in time, luckily, that she needn't tell him and that no harm, after all, had been done. He himself, for that matter, straightway showing he felt their encounter as the most fortuitous of accidents, had for her a "Emerowd River very beautifoo" that despoiled surprise of every awkwardness.
Polly muttered a beneficent reply "Indeed," and turning, presenting her shapely shoulder, linen-draped, and out over the water, with a flourish to indicate a certain cultural palliation, gestured with her arm.
"The teamsters are working hard today," she commented, duly pressed to evince.
Flung, his head tilted slightly, his eyes on her briefly, turned to look down to the long heavy straining rope, as thick as his upper arm, afixed to the Endor to a massive bollard afront the fo'c's'le, and to the distant end on the bank of the Emerald it was secured to a group of eight heavy shire horses. By which means, a barquentine such the Endor, could be drawn upstream against the tumescent flow of the river.
"Many hands make right work," he retorted after a moment's punctilious contemplation, and towards her, turned.
Polly was struck with the tact, the taste of his vagueness, which simply took for granted in her a sense of dutiful things. She was conscious of how much it was affected, this sense, by something subdued and discreet in the way he had arranged himself for his walk along the deck of the ship — she believed he came from a body-guard tarriance with Halycon; the way his slightly thicker "work" sandals were fastened — a mere touch, but everything; the composed gravity of his robes, in which, here and there, a dull porridge-colour stain seemed to glisten faintly through on the collar; the charming discretion of his glabrous bald head; the quiet note, as he stood, of his muscled sinewed hands. It was, to Polly's mind, as if he stood on his own ground, the light honours of which, at an open gate, he thus easily did her, while all the vastness and mystery of the domain stretched off behind. When people were so completely in possession they could be extraordinarily civil; and Polly had indeed at this hour a kind of revelation of his heritage.
"Captain tellw me we be in Emerowd tomorrow morning," Flung continued without a respite, his eyes embroidered a pattern on the rise of her chin. "And Emerowd awso very beautifoo city."
Polly took some time to reply — her last impression was more and more so mixed a one. It produced in her a vague understanding, a drop that was deeper even than the fall of her last utterance on the light wind across the bow. She stood awkwardly in rapt apprehension, but she wasn't there to enliven him quite to the point that would have been ideal for a grand perceptive finale. So, when, after a myriad of anxious thoughts, she finally did speak, the words, that had been so sought, seemed to work themselves slowly, unbidden yet so very consummate, from her sanguine mouth. "I have never been to Emerald before."
From the crease of Flung's forehead, and the miniscule frown to his tightly-drawn lips, Polly, only then — too depressingly late to do anything but watch the unfolding spectacle — came to the affronted realization that, perhaps, she had scratched a tender nerve in him with the cat claw of her ignorance. Polly tried to ameliorate her articulation with a genuine smile, but she knew deep in her heart of hearts, that this small piece of attenuated subterfuge was, on its own, a futile gesture.
"You haf never seen Grand Basirica of Emerowd?!" Flung said quickly. "I show you when we there! Very hoe-ry prace."
Polly's subterfuge of a smile, increased, and of itself, blossomed and enlarged, into a genuine beam, full of the rigor of authenticity, and tinged with relief. At this most remarkable turn of events, most remarkable turn of luck, providence had extracted her from the potential examination of her unworldliness and philistinism, and the ensuing humilation that this would endow. Her thoughts focussed on the minutiae of the exchange, and could not help but remind her of the story of Little Velma in the thrall of the Spice Merchants, who, having sold the last of her bread, arrived in their august presence with an empty basket, and when the chief merchant demanded to see where the flowers were, Little Velma meekly pulled back the cotton cover, and rather than an empty basket — roses!