crossed out the word ‘Love’. She was unlikely to use the word.
I was tired of hack journalism. My desire to be a writer revived. I even picked up and corrected this history which I had written of my childhood. One day it might find a publisher. The end I could not foresee, but at least I think I can bring the story up to date, and this I have done. I shall continue it as I would a journal and who knows what conclusion I may give it when I find myself with the Captain in that unknown territory of Panama.
PART
III
8
(1)
I DECIDED TO follow the Captain’s advice to Liza and I bought my ticket to Panama via Amsterdam. It would have been much easier and quicker for me, and no more expensive, to go by New York, but I thought it better to obey his instructions. He had talked of difficulties, whatever that might mean, and the word worried me a little through all the long journey: after the descent at Caracas, and during the interminable stop at Curaçao I stayed in the plane, working on this old book of mine to bring it up to date. I was disinclined to descend even for an hour into the unknown.
It was a twelve-hour journey in all from Amsterdam: there had been ice on the city canals when I arrived and there was snow on the fields outside when I left, and after that we moved steadily through the darkness towards the sun.
If it were possible for the Captain to read what I am writing now he would learn how much I have continued to wonder about him – he is to me an eternal question-mark never to be answered, like the existence of God, and so, as all theologians do, I continue to write in order to turn the question over and over without any hope of an answer. Now on this journey I hardly looked at anything but the manuscript on my lap and I left the earphones on the seat beside me when a film was being shown, for I needed silence to think, I needed it with a kind of greed. The silent images did not disturb my thoughts, for they were always the same whenever I happened to look up at the screen: bearded men on horseback gunning down bearded men on foot and riding furiously on.
A liar and a crook, those were the names the Devil had come close to calling the Captain, without any trace in his voice of condemnation, as though he were describing, with scientific precision, an interesting form of human life, and yet it was on this liar and this crook that Liza and I had depended for years, and not once had he ever finally failed us. He was the nearest thing I had known to what I thought of as a father, even though I had never been conscious of needing a father and I believed I had done reasonably well without one. It was certainly not towards a father that I was flying now – it was towards a team of mules laden with gold riding along a rough track from the Pacific, it was towards adventure, and my mind, as the plane crossed the Atlantic coast of Panama, over the thick impenetrable forest of Darién, went back to the only other adventure which I could remember happening in my life. I felt again the same excited suspense which I had experienced as a boy when I waited outside the Swiss Cottage for the Captain to reappear: I was again staring at the logs in the timber yard beside the canal while the plane carried me, like the raft I had then planned to use, towards the Pacific ocean, where the city of Valparaiso must be standing with its feet in the sea and bearded sailors drank in bars. Now I was on my way to join them. It was as though I were reliving my life backwards towards that childhood dream on the day when I escaped from being an Amalekite for ever.
Then suddenly the plane slanted down towards a flat blue liquid plain which I knew must be the Pacific. The forest yielded to the ruins of that old Panama which the pirate Morgan had destroyed and a few moments later the plane was rolling smoothly along the tarmac towards buildings which resembled any airport anywhere.
When I had passed through immigration and customs I looked
I was tired of hack journalism. My desire to be a writer revived. I even picked up and corrected this history which I had written of my childhood. One day it might find a publisher. The end I could not foresee, but at least I think I can bring the story up to date, and this I have done. I shall continue it as I would a journal and who knows what conclusion I may give it when I find myself with the Captain in that unknown territory of Panama.
PART
III
8
(1)
I DECIDED TO follow the Captain’s advice to Liza and I bought my ticket to Panama via Amsterdam. It would have been much easier and quicker for me, and no more expensive, to go by New York, but I thought it better to obey his instructions. He had talked of difficulties, whatever that might mean, and the word worried me a little through all the long journey: after the descent at Caracas, and during the interminable stop at Curaçao I stayed in the plane, working on this old book of mine to bring it up to date. I was disinclined to descend even for an hour into the unknown.
It was a twelve-hour journey in all from Amsterdam: there had been ice on the city canals when I arrived and there was snow on the fields outside when I left, and after that we moved steadily through the darkness towards the sun.
If it were possible for the Captain to read what I am writing now he would learn how much I have continued to wonder about him – he is to me an eternal question-mark never to be answered, like the existence of God, and so, as all theologians do, I continue to write in order to turn the question over and over without any hope of an answer. Now on this journey I hardly looked at anything but the manuscript on my lap and I left the earphones on the seat beside me when a film was being shown, for I needed silence to think, I needed it with a kind of greed. The silent images did not disturb my thoughts, for they were always the same whenever I happened to look up at the screen: bearded men on horseback gunning down bearded men on foot and riding furiously on.
A liar and a crook, those were the names the Devil had come close to calling the Captain, without any trace in his voice of condemnation, as though he were describing, with scientific precision, an interesting form of human life, and yet it was on this liar and this crook that Liza and I had depended for years, and not once had he ever finally failed us. He was the nearest thing I had known to what I thought of as a father, even though I had never been conscious of needing a father and I believed I had done reasonably well without one. It was certainly not towards a father that I was flying now – it was towards a team of mules laden with gold riding along a rough track from the Pacific, it was towards adventure, and my mind, as the plane crossed the Atlantic coast of Panama, over the thick impenetrable forest of Darién, went back to the only other adventure which I could remember happening in my life. I felt again the same excited suspense which I had experienced as a boy when I waited outside the Swiss Cottage for the Captain to reappear: I was again staring at the logs in the timber yard beside the canal while the plane carried me, like the raft I had then planned to use, towards the Pacific ocean, where the city of Valparaiso must be standing with its feet in the sea and bearded sailors drank in bars. Now I was on my way to join them. It was as though I were reliving my life backwards towards that childhood dream on the day when I escaped from being an Amalekite for ever.
Then suddenly the plane slanted down towards a flat blue liquid plain which I knew must be the Pacific. The forest yielded to the ruins of that old Panama which the pirate Morgan had destroyed and a few moments later the plane was rolling smoothly along the tarmac towards buildings which resembled any airport anywhere.
When I had passed through immigration and customs I looked
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