Sea of Lost Dreams: A Dugger/Nello Novel Read online

  ALSO BY FERENC MÁTÉ

  A New England Autumn

  The Hills of Tuscany

  A Vineyard in Tuscany

  The Wisdom of Tuscany Ghost Sea - a novel

  A Real Life

  SEA

  of

  LOST

  DREAMS

  a novel

  Ferenc Máté

  W.W. NORTON—NEW YORK—LONDON

  For the people of the

  Marquesas and Society Islands

  Contents

  Book One

  El Dia de los Muertos

  Book Two

  The Voyage

  Book Three

  The Storm

  Book Four

  The Land of Men

  Book Five

  Ki’i

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright 2011 Ferenc Máté

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  ISBN 978-0-920256-75-6 (e-book)

  Book design and composition by Candace Máté

  e-book composition by Erin Schultz, TIPS Technical Publishing, Inc.

  Albatross Books at

  W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 500 Fifth Ave, New York, N.Y. 10110

  http://www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London WCA 1PU

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Book One

  El Dia de los Muertos

  Chapter 1

  Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, November 2, 1921

  The Day of the Dead seemed to never end.

  The sun burned white between the masts and the heat weighed anvil-heavy on the ketch anchored all alone in the crescent bay. Between the water and the craggy, parched hills crouched the town, its church steeple leaning, houses shuttered against the heat, la plaza deserted, and the ruined pier crumpled, like a felled beast, in the sea.

  Dugger heaved the canvas bucket out of the water and splashed it on deck to keep the planks from shrinking, the seams from opening. The air filled with the smell of wet teak and hot tar. He poured the remnants of the bucket over his head, soaking his coarse white shirt and rolled-up canvas pants, then he stood barefoot in the puddle to cool his feet. Pulling his felt hat down to shield his eyes, he studied the blinding shore. Nello was nowhere in sight.

  They had rowed through the predawn darkness speaking in whispers, with greased hemp around the oarlocks and the rifles rolled in blankets to keep them from knocking. The land breeze had grown hotter through the night and brought the smell of incense and decay. Below the pilings of the pier, they’d unloaded the rifles, then lugged them, five at a time, to the mouth of the arroyo where the old man squatted, waiting with the mule.

  “You sure you’re all right alone?” Dugger had asked.

  “They want me alone,” Nello said.

  “And if they don’t pay?”

  Nello smiled. “Rebels are dreamers, Cappy. Dreamers always pay.”

  “Good,” Dugger said. “I’m sick of beans and rice.”

  The old man cinched the rifles to the wooden saddle of the mule and covered them with bundles of dry sticks.

  “Here,” Dugger said, shoving the binoculars into Nello’s hand. “Look out for the soldiers . . .”

  “I’ll be back before them,” he cut in, but put the binoculars into his shoulder bag beside the pistol. “Anyway, they’re hunting priests and nuns. Do I look like either?”

  He stood, one gray eye smiling, the other squinting. His gaunt face, lined with gullies, had been eroded by twenty-two years at sea, and his graying stubble and long hair sticking out of his weather-beaten hat gave him an air of having just stepped from a wilderness. He wore a white shirt patched at both elbows with sleeves cut at mid-forearm to stay out of blocks and winches, sailcloth pants patched likewise at the knees, and boots that were old and worn, yet supple with seal grease. A sun-bleached black vest strained across his back. He touched the rim of his hat in salutation.

  Dugger watched them climb the dead hill below the indigo sky flecked with stars.

  SHE AWOKE WITH A START and thought, Where am I? She recognized the salon where she slept to catch what air moved through the ketch, but was baffled at the man’s shirt and pants she wore and her bare feet, their tops burned by the sun. For a moment she had no sense of outside place or time, or who in her dreams was still alive or dead.

  A man’s face from her dreams hovered before her—long and stern—and she bit her lip trying to remember who he was. Come on, Kate, she chided herself, you have to remember. But she couldn’t. Beyond three weeks ago, she could recall only senseless snippets from her life. The last lucid thing was a snowy winter night in an Indian village among islands and steep mountains. She remembered a snow-laden tree over the sea in the moonlight, and the smell of smoked fish along a stony beach where the tide melted the snow, and facing the beach an enormous shed with a bonfire in its middle, full of people, obscured by smoke and shadows. She remembered lots of mirrors stacked around the fire. One was broken. A long shard of it, streaked with blood, lay on the dirt floor. Shots were fired from all around above them, and then they were on the ketch.

  All that was three weeks ago. But what had happened before? She had no life “before.” It was as if she had been born on that snowy night. A mighty big baby, she thought. Then she looked in the small, bulkhead-fastened mirror at her young freckled face, and wondered, How old am I?

  She remembered with crystal clarity every moment aboard the ketch in a gray and empty ocean, sailing from the mist of icy winter to the heavy heat of this bay. She recalled the boat’s constant motion, a gentle rhythmic heaving, until one night a bludgeoning wind churned up the sea in just hours. Between the hard smoked clams of dinner and the first light of dawn, the wind had heaped the sea into towering cliffs around them, pointing toward a dismal patch of sky. And that incessant, maddening noise: the seas smashing against the hull, the rigging vibrating like violin strings until she could feel the tremor in her bones, the clattering and crashing of everything below—cans, tools, cutlery, pots—as the ketch rolled to one side, stopped, then rolled back again.

  When the sea was calm, she’d read every book on the ketch, hoping to ignite her memory: Slocum, Chekhov, one by another Russian in which a young man kills an old woman for her money but feels so bad he seeks punishment, and one by Conrad in which a man abandons his ship in panicked fear and feels guilty ever after. Fine, she thought, I’ll seek punishment, I’ll feel guilt—just let me remember for what.

  She’d hurt her arm the day before when the boat plunged fiercely and she fell against a cleat. Now she hurriedly pushed back her sleeve and looked past the fresh bruise, thinking if she could find something—a scar, a mole, something from before—maybe it would all come back. My life might just flood back. But there was nothing on her arms; white, blank, unlived, empty pages.

  She heard footfalls above. She went on deck. In her loose men’s clothing she felt like an actor in the wrong costume, the wrong play. Nothing here is mine, she thought. Not even the shirt on my back. A sad smile crossed her face: The bruise is mine.

  Climbing the companionway ladder, she shielded her eyes against the blazing sun. The day was still but for the pelicans, with beaks pointing down and wings tucked, plunging like lead weights, shattering the smooth sea. She stood opposite the big wood wheel and brass binnacle, looking into the empty cockpit where Dugger had lain with his bandaged bullet wound, his face drawn. How she loved his often-smiling green eyes, whose expression changed as quickly as the shadows of windblown clouds.

  She watched him sloshing water onto the deck, moving with such a comfor
ting sense of purpose that for a moment her unease vanished. In his drenched shirt he seemed too slight to work the ropes of a big ketch, but as he filled the bucket, his arms and back tensed with stringy muscles. He looped the rope and hung it on the horn of a cleat.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Are you feeling stronger?”

  “Much,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Fine,” she said, clearing her throat. “You?”

  “Too hot.” And he lifted up his hat and poured what was left in the bucket into it.

  “Nello’s not back yet, is he . . .” she said more than asked.

  He forced a smile. “Mexico,” he replied. And thought, What if they didn’t pay? What then? The rifles were gone, their money was gone; the only thing they had left to sell now was the ketch. He couldn’t quite think of what to say, so he raised his hand to touch her face, but something in her eyes made him hold back. It struck him that this was how she’d been at sea each morning: uncertain, guarded, as if they were meeting for the first time. Each night they were close. They shared soft whispers when the wind was low, and she’d press against him and moan softly in his arms. During the violence of stormy nights, they’d exchange fiery glances full of joy and fear; then, forgetting his wounded arm, she’d clutch him so hard he could barely breathe.

  One starry night they drank rum and danced to the sound of Nello’s harmonica, holding each other on the slowly rolling deck, with the sails of the ketch moving among the stars. She had swayed effortlessly to the roll of the ketch, all the while heeding his least movements—the lean of his legs, the turn of his hips—until he could no longer tell where he ended and she began.

  Now she stood in the bright light, tying her auburn hair back with a string. Her face looked beautifully innocent, yet weary. Her long legs and thin arms made her look frail, and he felt an enormous fatigue from worrying about her and her recurring sadness. He caught himself thinking, Is love worth the trouble?

  “I’ll bring you a dress from town,” he said apologetically.

  Her face turned sadder. “We spent everything yesterday on provisions.”

  “When Nello brings the money, I’ll buy you a dress,”

  “Oh, good,” she said brightening. “Like all the senoritas wear,” and she drew a dipping line down to her breasts.

  At her smile, Dugger felt relieved. “Lower,” he said.

  She undid a button on the shirt. “Like this?” she smiled.

  A pelican crashed nearby into the smooth sea. “Like a mirror breaking,” she said quietly, and sat down on the cabin. “Why do I remember a shard of a mirror, Dugger?”

  He turned away. What could he reply? Because you stabbed your husband with it to save my life? He watched the empty shore in silence. Only a handful of fishing skiffs with sails furled lay askew on the blinding sand.

  “I’d better go find Nello,” he said.

  He picked up his hat, pulled on his boots, climbed into the skiff, pushed off, and set the oars.

  You have to tell me one day, she thought.

  Chapter 2

  Nello lay flat on the flank of the arroyo, with his hat over the binoculars to keep the sun from reflecting off the glass. He watched the horse soldiers come over the crest, kicking up dust, the sea breeze blowing it into long, playful plumes. The soldiers reined their mounts for the descent, pulling the horses’ muzzles against their chests. They spread out on the path that wound down to the shore, close enough that he could smell the acrid-sweet sweat of the horses.

  He focused the binoculars on the lieutenant in the lead: the deepset tired eyes, the bony hand working the reins to and fro, guiding his horse’s every step down the broken slope. Behind the lieutenant he caught sight of a boy. The boy rode carrying a strange black flag: a priest’s cassock tied by the sleeves to his rifle. He had small, steely eyes and his jaw was set tight as he urged his horse ahead.

  “Madonna puttana,” Nello muttered to himself. “What a nasty-looking runt.” He felt something bad in his gut about the boy. Then he saw the dead man. With skin whiter than his underwear, he was slung across a palomino halfway down the pack, his legs dangling and swinging to the rhythm of the horse.

  He turned the binoculars toward the ketch and caught sight of Dugger rowing with long pulls toward town. If only the soldiers hadn’t come back early. There was nothing to do but wait until the soldiers finished eating and getting drunk, and lay in torpid sleep with kelp flies on their faces. Without rising, he crawled backward among the rocks into the speckled shade of a dying mesquite. He leaned against its trunk, covered the pouch of gold coins with sand, pulled his hat over his eyes, and hoped he would dream of a place cool and dark.

  WITH THE SKIFF GROWING SMALL in the distance, Kate stepped out of her ill-fitting pants and slammed them on the deck. Now, this is more like it, she thought. This is me. She stood half naked with legs slightly parted, her eyes as determined as if she were about to stand her ground come what may. She crouched to jump in when she saw the birthmark. It was halfway up the inside of her thigh, and like lightning came a clear image of a man kissing it, and she wondered if Dugger had ever kissed her there—before—in the time she could not remember. With a leap, she dove into the sea.

  She let herself sink. I remember diving like that when I was little. But where?

  Below the keel of the ketch she stopped; through the deep, clear water, she could see her shadow on the sandy bottom. She stayed under longer than she thought she could, and was surprised at how much she wanted to remain. So calm here, she thought. There’s no place on earth so calm.

  She swam with wide kicks like a frog, rounded the dark slab of the rudder, along the curve of the bilge, and then surfaced amidships on the ocean side of the ketch, out of Dugger’s sight. She floated on her back and felt alone; completely alone. Almost happy. Then she swam deeper still, down at a sharp angle, toward the anchor that lay, flukes buried, in the rippled sand.

  DUGGER ROWED THE SKIFF slightly crabbing shoreward, alternately eyeing the town behind him and Kate standing on the rail, her white skin aglow against the dark blue sky. When he saw her dive, he held the oars. He counted: one second, two seconds. At forty seconds he spun the skiff and rowed back with such vehemence the oarlocks groaned. When near the ketch, he leapt with a twisting motion into the sea. The skiff rocked and the oars slid free.

  He swam down and clutched the keel to stay under. He searched but couldn’t find her. He twisted and turned until his eyes burned. Then his lungs began to burn and he had to surface. He dove again, spiraling down into the shimmering light, and far, far ahead, where the anchor chain hung in catenary, he saw her. Much deeper than he thought she could be, she was floating beside the anchor in the blue light, her long ghostly body paler than the sand.

  He tried desperately to will away what lay before him, to roll back time so he could do something, anything, that would prevent her from being down in that blue light.

  He shot up, gasped for air, then dove again. With tremendous pulls on the anchor chain, he rushed toward the bottom. He’d have to pull her to the surface, hold her against the hull, and squeeze her hard to jolt her diaphragm to pump the water from her lungs. His mouth on hers, sucking the last bit from her lungs until she coughed and breathed. Dear God, please make her breathe.

  As the chain shook, Kate looked up, then waved. Kicking hard, she swam straight to the surface.

  They hung on to the gunwale of the skiff gasping for breath. “I didn’t realize I’d gone so deep,” she said, going pale.

  He didn’t reply. Loving her and hating her, he lifted her and shoved her into the skiff over the gunwale.

  No love is worth this, he thought.

  SHE SAT IN THE SKIFF, shivering despite the heat. Dugger held her as one would a frightened child.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I’m all right.”

  He pushed the hair out of her eyes. “You could have drowned,” he said, keeping the anger from his voice.

  “I saw the cha
in had wrapped around the anchor,” she said. “You told me to watch for that in wind shifts. I went to clear it. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m crazy.”

  “I worry, that’s all,” he said.

  “That I’ll drown myself?”

  Dugger didn’t know how to reply.

  “I’m not crazy, Dugger. I may be missing a few pieces . . . confused—that doesn’t mean I’m nuts.”

  He kissed her forehead and her face and clutched her in his arms.

  “Don’t worry.” She smiled. “I’m not going anywhere until I find out how this ends.”

  She gathered the hair that hung behind his neck and squeezed the water from it. Then she spread her legs slightly and pointed at the birthmark. “Dugger,” she said softly. “Did you ever kiss me there?”

  He wiped beads of water from her goose-bumped arms. “How could I have missed it?” he said.

  She smiled. Then took his salt-cracked hand and held it to her lips.

  “I better go find Nello,” he said.

  Chapter 3

  The lieutenant held back his horse and let the steel-faced boy ride by. He watched the rest of his soldiers with mild disgust as they lurched awkwardly on their bony horses. Sad peasants riding in rope sandals, he thought, but he felt pity for their sadness and unease on the horses, when all they longed for was a bit of land and a hoe. Who knows? he mused. If the revolution comes . . . The only one he disliked was the boy, who held his rifle stiffly and rode with arrogant skill and unfettered pride. The boy loved his horse, his rifle, and his boots. He dusted and soaped the hard saddle with great care every night. The rest of the world seemed to mean nothing to him.

  The lieutenant envied him this indifference, perhaps even hated, envied the intensity and relentlessness that propelled him out of bed each morning. He would have given anything to be as possessed as the boy.