The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermout

Author:Maria Dermout
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-882-9
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2014-11-04T05:00:00+00:00

Felicia was sitting with the letter in her hands.

The sun was still shining but the mountains and hills and woods along the shore, seen from the proa here, were dark and still and drawn out into the distance, and so the inner bay seemed wider and more open than usual.

She had read the letter and was happy with it, and sad—pleased with his praise, sad that he was so far away.

She was thinking about him as so often: in one way he was far beyond his age, as if he were already prepared to give to the incomplete in his life its value and its place—to an unhappy love, for instance, the wrong profession, the things missed, lost, failed, and not only to Happiness, Success, Completion. But wasn’t that for an older man, one who has been tried, who has learned his lessons?

And then suddenly his childish: “I’ll say I’m content”—was that childish?

Domingoes, sergeant and preacher, the stiff captain, the doctor with his interest in magic, the mass-murderer, the soldiers, a Mountain Alfura resplendent in his snowy white shell string, the poor hunted heads, the surf, the Garden, his youth, the woman Toinette, a bottle of mussel sauce, the islands of Isaiah—was that, all added together, not a complete life?

The life we shouldn’t try to examine too carefully—the proa suddenly lost speed, almost came to a stop.

What was it now?

Something had come loose on one of the wings, the steersman said, the rattan ropes had to be tightened, otherwise they might even capsize—it wouldn’t take long.

Felicia looked annoyed—always something!—stared ahead, then over the edge of the proa into the water of the inner bay. There was no wind and the water was clear there, with green and blue discolorations, hardly moving, almost motionless—

Suddenly there were three young turtles, all three of the same size, their shields gleaming, almost pink, with a symmetrical pattern of dark brown and yellow and black stripes and spots; each with its four fins waving up and down, young and yet with the same old man’s bald head on a wrinkled neck, with little gleaming eyes under sleepy lids and a large yellow beak like a bird’s.

They let themselves drop, their fins upright, as if they were drowning, rose again; they kept together, swam over and under each other, carefully, not touching, with a strangely thoughtful and yet casual grace.

Then, as unexpectedly as they had risen, they dropped down into the deep and did not reappear.

Felicia looked ahead and without knowing it bent her head sideways and asked, “content with the three young turtles—can one say that?”

“Come on, you! Get a move on!” the lady of the Small Garden called out with her hard voice, “how long is this going to take? Don’t you want to get home today? I do!”

When they landed the water was so still, not one ripple, that the trees, the white pavilion stood reflected in the inner bay—that happened very rarely.

The following day Felicia stayed at the Garden. Once or twice she went down to the beach, to stand under the plane trees for a moment.

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