Book 14 : 786

786 Summer 5,3

We called at Puuhtum to top up our water. And two days later, here we are, becalmed in much the same place we were becalmed before.

I’ve started a new book although I’ve not finished the old one, and I’m writing it privately, not letting Zhiishii know that I’m doing it. This feels strange to me. I’m not used to having secrets.

But I had a strange and difficult conversation with Viiniha today. She and I get on very well, but she has put me in a quandary.

“You’re a bit in love with Zhiishii, aren’t you?”

“No.” Truthfully, but misleadingly.

“Really? I find that hard to believe.”

“I don’t lie, as I’m sure you know. I’m not a bit in love with her.”

Viiniha got my meaning immediately.

“You should tell her.”

“No I shouldn’t.”

“Yes you should. She’s a lot in love with you, too. As you know.”

“Are you sure? I didn’t know. Oh, I won’t lie – I’m not lying – I suspected it. But I didn’t know. I’m not that clever.”

“You’re quite that clever, just not that confident. I’ve known you a long time, young man. You should tell her. Really.”

“I’m more than twice her age. And not so much younger than you. She must find someone nearer her age. I don’t want to make her a young widow.”

“Better to have twenty good years with a man you love, who loves you, than fifty years married to a man you come to hate, who comes to hate you. I’ve known couples like that. My own parents, for a start. I had fifteen good years with my man.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Why sorry? They were good years. I wouldn’t have foregone them just to avoid the pain of losing him. And why would you know? I don’t tell everyone.”

“Do you have children?”

“We did have. Two daughters. Lovely girls. Both died the same year, both in their twenties. Problems in pregnancies. The babies didn’t survive either. Then I lost both my sons-in-law when I lost my Liimihari.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were your sons-in-law.”

“You’re being needlessly sorry again. Tides ebb and flow. Live a long life and you’re bound to lose people on the way. Life goes on. My man wasn’t much older than me, but I was widowed young. It happens. You won’t make Zhiishii a young widow anyway. You’ll live healthy into your nineties, I can see it now. She’ll keep you young.”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right.”

“You don’t have to decide right away. I’m going to take her on as your teacher for another trip, to Meyroha and back. Just don’t leave it too late. I couldn’t do that a third time, and anyway you have to take over from me when we get to Barioha. I’m going to retire.”

786 Summer 7,4

Bhoemar.

Viiniha and Judd have been to the port office, and there’s a change of plan. We have three days here while wait-listed passengers for Vantun are rounded up. We’re going to Vantun and back again before we head back towards Laanoha.

Viiniha offered Zhiishii another contract for this trip. Zhiishii said she’d love to take it but will talk to her mother before deciding.

This worried me. For a moment I didn’t know what to do, then I made up my mind.

Zhiishii – there’s something I have to tell you...

786 Summer 8,1

The passengers are all aboard. We’re just waiting for the tide to turn, then we’ll be leaving. We’ll be well clear of the point before sunset. It’s a full moon and Greyr intends to sail all night if the wind lets him.

The last few days have been a whirlwind.

Zhiishii wanted her mother’s blessing before she made a decision. She wanted to talk to her mother first, then bring her mother to talk with me. Okay, of course, that makes perfect sense.

Her mother is lovely. And about my age, I think. Maybe even a little younger.

Nobody thinks about birthdays and birthdates and ages in Bhoemar, any more than they do almost anywhere else for that matter. Zhiishii has decided that we are not going to tell her mother how old I am. She knows she won’t ask.

I have no secrets from Zhiishii any more. She has been reading my diary, including the new book, and is snuggled up against me on the bench on the foredeck. We are betrothed. We will be married in Bhoemar on our return from Vantun. With her mother’s blessing.

I don’t know how old Zhiishii is. Just she’s obviously a lot younger than me.

I don’t know how old I am, she says. And anybody would know you’re a fair bit older than me, but there’s nothing unusual in that. They don’t have to know how much older. You don’t look that old. Plenty of people go a bit grey much younger than you.

People in Laanoha will be surprised.

I’d better start learning Laana, Zhiishii says, and laughs.

Zhiishii reminds me a lot of Aari, although they’re really very different. She’s a good deal older than Aari was when I first met her – not so many years younger than Aari was when she died. But I’m a lot older than I was then.

I don’t feel old. In fact I don’t feel any different than I did twenty years ago. Sixty isn’t very old. But if Zhiishii and I have children, I’ll be in my eighties when they’re young adults. If I’m still alive. And Oberon’s children will have aunts and uncles about their own age.

I’ve written a letter to Oberon and Viilaami, apologizing for not being home in time to greet my grandchild, hoping that all goes well, and letting them know that they will have a stepmother before long. I’ve not mentioned that their future stepmother is only a few years older than they are.

I’ve also written a letter to Miisha, telling her that Judd is well, and that we’ll be away longer than expected.

Relaying letters from port office to port office with trusted ships’ captains isn’t cheap, but it’s a lot more reliable than the method poor Biishi and Graashi tried to use. The odds of them getting there are pretty good, and they’ll most likely arrive well before we do, now that we’re going back to Vantun.

Did you really need to write that? Doesn’t everybody realize?

Oh dear. You really do remind me of Aari sometimes, sweetheart.

Laughter. Don’t forget I’ve read quite a lot of your diary, Gom.

And now you’re reminding me of Dempsey.

Yes, I know. You think it’s accidental? More laughter.

And you’re being paid to teach me Bhoemari, which I need to learn, because in just a few weeks I’m going to be captain of this ship, and I need to be able to talk to people in port offices all the way from Meyroha to Vantun, not just in a few offices at each end of the line.

And you wrote that all in one breath.

Yes, Aari, so I did.

Slap. You can say I remind you of Aari, because it’s obviously the truth. But DON’T call me Aari!

Sorry. I only said it because you were deliberately imitating her. And Aari never, ever slapped me.

Sorry. I won’t do it again. But don’t call me Aari. I’d be more comfortable if you called me Dempsey. But you won’t.

You write fast, Gom. And even written as fast as that, it’s still legible. And yes, you need to learn Bhoemari. And I need to learn Laana as well. You and the crew speak Laana all the time, and we’ll spend time in Laanoha, too.

With rudders fore and aft, Vinhaassa has two wheels in the wheelhouse, and the helmsman stands between them and works both. Typically, that’s Viiniha as we arrive in port or leave, the rest of the crew being busy with ropes. It’s also usually her when we’re beating, for similar reasons. It used to be Aibram.

Today, it’s Judd – under Viiniha’s watchful eye. He’s maybe just turned nine.

The tide is just turning. They’re casting off. We’ll watch Bhoemar shrink in the distance, and then we’ll get on with lessons.

Look! There’s my mother, running and waving!

Does she want us to wait a moment for her?

No, I don’t think so. She’s just waving goodbye and good luck, I know that wave.

She arrived at the quay while we were still close enough to see her throw a handful of something in the water. Some cultural thing I don’t understand?

Yes, says Zhiishii, samphire seeds.

O...kay. That’ll have to do. For now, at least.

Bhoemari culture, or Vantunese?

Vantunese, of course.

Of course. ?

785 Summer 10,4

Puuhtum. Topping up water. This is, not unreasonably, an expensive place to top up water. But you can’t carry six weeks’ worth with a safe margin. You can’t carry six weeks’ worth at all. Not when you’ve got a full complement of passengers to feed and water.

At least we’ve not been becalmed anywhere on the way this time. Rather the reverse – we’ve been sailing with the sails reefed in half the time, and making good time the rest.

Zhiishii says my Bhoemari is coming on really well. I hope she’s not just being kind.

Judd is doing almost as well as I am, and he’s only with us about half the time. The rest of the time he’s learning the ropes or being helmsman. He’s a natural sailor – there’s nothing he likes better than being right up the rigging signing down what he can see.

Kazhiir appreciates this no end. It’s usually his job, and he doesn’t enjoy it. Peyrham hasn’t done it for years, not since Aibram retired and they’ve started visiting Zhaam in Vinhaassa and all taking their breaks at the same time. He laughed and reminded Kazhiir that he’ll have to do it again when Judd gets home.

Maybe we should take him on as crew, Kazhiir suggested. Viiniha vetoed it. Exploitation, she called it. And he has a mother at home waiting for him.

Zhiishii’s Laana really is coming on well. She says it’s because everyone’s talking it all round her, as well as me actually teaching her a bit – writing in particular. But I think it’s mostly the difference in age. And maybe that she’s just naturally cleverer than me.

Pah, she says.

She says.

786 Summer 13,6

Vantun.

Timber for Puuhtum next. And just two passengers, and only as far as Puuhtum. Whether there’ll be any cargo or passengers from Puuhtum is doubtful, to put it mildly. Ho hum. Such is life.

Vantun is in a bit of a crisis. There’s a volcanic eruption going on in the mountains thirty miles to the south-west, and the glaciers are melting and the rivers are very full. The weather has been absolutely foul and the roads to the villages are impassable.

Zhiishii and Judd and I have been ashore for a couple of hours, and had a meal at the cafe at the other end of the harbour – same place Zhiishii and I went before. I think they remembered us, but they didn’t mention it.

We possibly confused them by talking Laana – because Judd was with us – whereas they might have noticed us before because we were talking Zhiishii’s kind of English (more or less, in my case) in an establishment more likely to be frequented by speakers of the other sort. That, and my simply outlandish looks.

Who knows?

It started pouring with rain as we were walking back to Vinhaassa.

Kazhiir and Peyrham are helping two dockers loading the timber. In the pouring rain. Greyhairs like Greyr and me are excused such work, and Judd’s too little.

Our passengers have been told to be on board by this evening, and we’re leaving on the tide at first light in the morning.

We might try to avoid being in Vantun in the dead of winter in future. Or not. The eruption is just bad luck, after all. They can happen at any time of the year.

Aari and Riini and I missed one in the middle of the Maze by just a few weeks, Greyr tells me. They were in Triampi, and could actually see the glow in the distance during the night.

I’ll talk over strategy with Viiniha later. There are advantages and disadvantages to ports at both ends of the line in either winter or summer.

786 Autumn 3,5

Puuhtum.

I don’t usually try to write while we’re at sea in Vinhaassa – lessons are strictly oral – and of course I forget a lot of the things I would have written. But I haven’t forgotten the last night at Vantun. In the quiet of the night we could hear the eruption. From thirty miles away. With wooded hills in between.

We do have a cargo from Puuhtum to Bhoemar. Not a large one, but a reasonably profitable one – high value goods, with a premium for careful handling if we manage not to break any. They have an industry here whose existence I would never have guessed.

They make glass. Not just any glass. They’re real glass specialists, with secret processes to make special types of glass. They make coloured glass in colours other producers cannot match; optical glass for lenses for telescopes, binoculars and the best quality spectacles; and large sheets of perfectly flat glass for the best quality windows.

Our cargo is just four of these large sheets – each twelve feet by seven, by five-eighths of an inch thick. Almost half a ton each.

The agent has been aboard to check that our hold is suitable and that the specialist workmen will be able to manhandle the glass into position and secure it safely. There will be specialists at Bhoemar to unload.

The workmen will be here this afternoon to instal the mounts for the glass, and the glass will be loaded tomorrow morning.

786 Autumn 3,6

Zhiishii, Judd and I took up the offer of a visit to the glassworks yesterday afternoon. Viiniha spent the afternoon in the port office, and the crew kept an eye on Vinhaassa and the workmen in the hold.

The glassworks are impressive. They’re out of town, further inland, the other side of a line of small hills. The manager, who showed us round, is very proud of them.

“Other glassworks use a lot of charcoal just melting the glass. We don’t use any at all, although we have processes needing far more heat than they do. All our heat comes from the sun. Just as well, really – as you can see, we don’t have a lot of trees around here.”

They have a few – very few – in the town itself. But not a scrap of vegetation to be seen anywhere outside the town.

They have hundreds of huge mirrors on two hills to the south of the works, each mounted on gimbals, with its orientation controlled with ropes from the works. The light – and heat – from all the mirrors can be made to converge on whatever part of the works needs heat at any given moment.

The other thing Zhiishii and I found most impressive was the sheet glass process. The glass floats on a pool of molten metal, hot enough to melt the glass at one edge, and cool enough at the other for the glass to be solid – but the metal is still liquid. The solid glass carries straight on, onto rollers, while a thin stream of molten metal pours over the edge of the pool into a channel, from which it’s returned to the pool by labourers with buckets – and thick heat-proof clothes and gloves!

“Another town, further south on this coast, tried to copy this process. But they kept getting little blemishes in the surface of the glass. We have a secret method of avoiding that problem. They gave up in the end, and we bought their metal and their mirrors from them and extended our own works.”

Judd was most interested in all the “magic” – the fascinating chemistry of the coloured glass work. Melting mixes of different kinds of stone and sand and salt and lime together – and getting coloured glass!

The whole operation belongs to the town. And so does the water trade. How different from arrangements in Laanoha – or anywhere else I know about, for that matter.

The glassworks employs over four hundred people, half the adult population of Puuhtum. Most of them working the ropes controlling all those mirrors.

We would have liked to have seen where the water was coming from, but we didn’t have time. The endless files of donkeys stretched past the glassworks and over the next line of hills. Judd wanted to know how many times a day each donkey went back and forth, and of course we couldn’t tell him. We’d no idea how far the water source is, and not much idea how fast they walk really.

What a place for a town. Sand and rock, sand and rock, as far as the eye can see. And the sun blazing down unmercifully on it all, and not a cloud in the sky.

Yet the people seem happy.

Zhiishii wonders about the donkeys. So do I, I suppose, but how else could they fetch the water, realistically? And without the water, how would the town survive, and how would ships manage along this coast?

How did they manage before the town was built?

And how do you know whether a donkey is happy or not? They work hard, but they’re fed and watered.

So many questions, no answers. And someone else’s responsibility, not ours.

Most of this morning we’ve been practising Bhoemari writing, while the workmen have been loading the glass and making it secure. Someone in Bhoemar must be made of money, to want glass like that for their windows.

“It’ll be a fancy shop belonging to a rich family,” Zhiishii says. “A shop full of fancy stuff for rich people.” She looks as though she’s about to spit, and I can’t help laughing.

Yes, but it means we – you, me, Viiniha, Judd, and all the crew – can earn our living for a few weeks.

Zhiishii looks as though she’s about to spit again.

“Yes. The poor live on the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table. And the middlers, like us, catch a few more of them on their way down. You’re going to tell me you can’t change the world, aren’t you? Well, a bit here and there. You’ve written it in your diary more than once. And I know you’re right, I know. But it still makes me cross.”

It used to make me cross, too. That’s how I had to leave my mother and my sisters and my aunt. It made me too cross. Truth to tell it still makes me cross, but I know my limits now. I’m sorry, I’m an old man and you’re a youngster.

“You’re not old. And you love me, and I love you, and really that’s all that matters.”

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