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ROOMMATES
Oh, yes, when the Captain moved in I feared trading privacy for piracy, but now, after he has taken over by rearranging the furniture I find that with our two cots out in the middle of the room and his sea chest between us both space an time can move more freely. If he laughed when I climbed naked into bed it was not unkindly. He sleeps in his crumpled salt-crusted uniform, but I suspect that inside his britches he is much like me. We lie there and watch TV. Never mind, he says, you don't need much sleep. It's an early sixties BBC production of an early Shakespeare, one never read in school. What's this, I say. And he knows, of course. It's Cambyses, Son of Cyrus. Sounds like something starring Jack Palance or Jeff Chandler, but everyone talks British as behooves the Empire. In this chronicle of mythic kings, I don't recognize the first. Nobody does. He is reputed the strongest man on earth, but he ambles sheepishly through his daily rounds in the guise of Humble Joe, until the jibes of courtiers and scholars provoke an explosion and, revealing his giant strength, he offs himself. Embracing a colossal monolith that serves as a bridge and hugging it to his bosom, he plunges into the canal, into the abysmal murk which (the Sybil saith) is inside each of us. Part Two concerns a king to whom I can put a name. He lounges in bed like my roommate and I, but most of his stuff is golden—bedposts, sconces, et cetera, like an incense-hazy Delacroix décor. He never takes off his gloves, except when we see him loping across a damaged landscape, stooping to touch a stone from a toppled wall, a branch torn from an apple tree, the dented helmet of a fallen soldier. Stone, branch, helmet, all turn to gold. Not gleaming gold but heavy lusterless yellow metal, much like dried horse dung. Back in his room he removes a glove and touches his face, perhaps to see himself for the first time. It is the death of him, the end of Act II. Next comes le Roi Soleil, a mincing rake whose wig bursts into flame so bright we can barely read his features to judge his mood. Enough of this! The Captain runs for the bathroom, and the open door reveals the chamber where the women live, they too missing unneeded sleep. Ignored by a woman reading by flashlight, their TV silently mirrors ours. Zoom in on the globe, on Australia, on the rhino horn of Cape York up in the north-east corner, on a stretch of beach where a three-master has run ashore. And there, beside the ship, beside the tethered whale, the sole survivor stands. A role for il Capitano! Swaggering braggart! Tackling this Moby monster and pounding him flat as a kipper under his bouncing boots. Sing, Ho! for the conquering captain! The old pro grappler! The reader, knowing nothing of this, sweeps back a curl and turns a page. All over the beach are globs of spermaceti like jellyfish. My hero scoops up a handful to massage into his boots. The very best conditioner for leather, he proclaims. And I am happy to see his happiness, all spick and span, all set for a night on shore, the boots gleaming under his slick palms.
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