Epilogue
We're leaving tomorrow!
We were ready to leave this morning, but today is Friday and no sailor would leave on a Friday. Tomorrow is Saturday, and that will be fine. As in the old days, we leave with the ebb, and that will occur at 5:15 a.m. "We ought to have cleared the land by 7:30, at the latest, and our journey will have begun!
Trade winds, here I come!
Of course, we're not entirely ready. We never would be unless we simply made a date and stuck to it. I was talking with a Bulgarian yesterday. He has been living on his yacht for two years, all the while getting ready for the great moment.
He's almost ready, he says, just one or two more changes to make and then everything will be fine. He'll see us in the Caribbean, he says. This will be the season for him, and he'll be on our trail before we know it. I felt awkward hearing this. He so much wants to go, but his philosophy is wrong. He wants to have everything tied up on shore. He wants to leave without changing his style of living. He can't do that-I've discovered something about escape in the last months-and we'll never see him anywhere. If we should come back here in two or three year's time, we would find him still tied to the slip, still tidying things up for the great move, still talking knowingly about currents, storm patterns, the particular difficulties of the Bass Strait. He studies Voss, Slocum, Hiscock, Moitessier, but he has not even sailed to Crete. If you want to go, go. Pick a date, do everything you can to get ready before that date, and then-no matter what the weather, no matter if the new turnbuckles have arrived or not, no matter whether it is inconvenient for the friends who have invited you to a party next week-go.
We're going. Moth is as ready as she'll ever be. We'll be on our own in a week, stopping only when we want to stop, moving to the insistence of the wind. There are certain cosmic necessities: if you want to get to the Caribbean before the hurricane season, you have to start now. After that, there's the question of the downhill run to the Canal and then the Pacific. But it's no good worrying about what the timing will be for the Galapagos while you're still in the Piraeus. Get to Trinidad and then worry, or, better still, wait until you reach Balboa. Oh, you should have a rough idea. January and early February are best for the Galapagos, for then you'll perhaps catch a northerly breeze for the thousand-mile passage through an area which would otherwise be characterized by calms. But it's best to wonder about that when you have a real chance of getting there. My Bulgarian friend knows all the dates for the best passages: he just doesn't know the date for his own.
I suppose I should finish the story. The way to write a story, I remember being told by an irascible professor, is to start at the beginning, write until you get to the end, and then stop. There's no point in getting you all involved in the story of our departure and cruise until r have finished the story of the escape.
We left Chateau Diableret about a week after the events reported. The departure was a sad one, for we had grown close to Agnes in the mean time. But the most distressful aspect of it was that our departure was precipitated by the report that Marianne's father was not well. He had suffered a heart attack, and it was doubtful whether he would recover completely. We left immediately for Istanbul. The old man was indeed in a bad state when we arrived. Marianne spent hours by his bedside in the quiet hospital overlooking the harbor. I wandered about distractedly. The moment of my decision had come and gone. I had not returned to work when expected, sending instead a long letter of resignation, and the protest of friends and what little family I have was beginning to arrive. Each day it was my painful duty to compose another letter to an uncle or a friend, describing what I was doing, why I was doing it, and what I thought about what I was doing. Two insights came to me during this process which I am pleased to have encountered. In the first place, I learned that there were more people who would miss me than I had thought would be the case. This was gratifying, but I also discovered that there was a deeper, underlying sense of dissatisfaction on the part of my acquaintances than I had suspected. Nearly everyone hungered to use me vicariously as a legendary force in his own life. My escape had made the boredom of these people more clear to themselves, and they needed to trade then upon our acquaintance to convince them that they were, indeed, unusual. I saw myself being spoken of proudly back in the Beacon Hill cocktail circuit as one of them who had "made it," the knowledge making their own success more probable. Like my Bulgarian friend, it was, for them, just a matter of time. That house in the country, that little bookstore, that stable for prize Arabians: it was only a matter of time. The second insight had to do with my own reaction to the escape. I was satisfied; I was doing what I wanted to do. Marianne was lovely, even in her distress over her father. I loved her eternally. (To her father's gratification, we were married ten days after we arrived in Istanbul. I had never really expected it to happen to me, I suppose, and I found that I was so profoundly content with the new state that vast changes began to surge in me. It was as though some terrific energy of regeneration, which had been held in check, had suddenly been let go.) I was doing what I wanted to do, yes, but the sensation was entirely new to me. I did not know how to handle the emotional upheavals it caused. I found that what had seemed to be a glorious prospect before it had occurred, that is, my resignation and the beginning of a new life with a new woman and a new ethos, was, in fact, fraught with pain. I literally mourned my Bostonian friends. I was in terror over the prospect of not making a steady paycheck. I wondered whether I was crazy. I was furious with Marianne, and then loving again, by turns. After Marianne's father died-he and his daughter, fortunately, had had a period of almost three weeks during which he was not in much pain and they could talk or just sit quietly, he dozing, she reading, a peace hanging over them-and we inherited Moth, I was in agony over the incredible idea of making a life on the sea. Of course, I desired it. I wanted it more than anything in the world. But I was horrified at the prospect of actually doing something I longed for. To be happy at the most basic level of your personality is no easy thing, that is, when you have not been before. What would happen? I felt that anything might be possible, and the thought was frightening. The only thing that was not possible any longer, and this was the rub, was the everlasting (and so very comforting) procrastination and resentment of the unhappy man. Suddenly, there was no outside force keeping me from doing anything: I had to take the full responsibility for my life. An invigorating, though awesome, prospect.
But it is an addictive thing, this responsibility.
The more I took, the stronger I felt, and the more I wanted. Also, it is an inspiration to others. It is odd to speak without self-consciousness of being an inspiration to others, but this was the case. I am not vain about it, but then neither am I too modest. "False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent," as Emerson said. I make my case on the reaction that Agnes had to Marianne's and my happiness. She came down from Switzerland, very kindly I think, for the wedding, and she stayed on for a week after that. She had been doing a lot of thinking since we had left the school, and we did a lot of talking when she was with us, and the upshot of it was that she determined to make a new start with the school. She loved those kids (I mean in the intellectual way), and she felt that she had been wronging them. She decided to turn over more of the power of direction for the school's development to the staff, to make herself less the dictator. Instead of the school being caned Chateau Meyer (which Marianne reported was the case), Agnes truly felt that she wanted it to be Chateau Diableret, and that she wanted her own personality to encourage, rather than to compel, the girls. We were an delighted with the growth in her ideas which had occurred, and if any more pleasantness of feeling between us were needed, this stay accomplished it. Agnes Meyer, I can now say-and I say it with some wonderment-is one of my closer friends. Well, that about wraps it up. Soon after the funeral, Marianne and I left on the shakedown cruise. Mostly, everything was fine. We spotted a few problems, which we have either fixed or are keeping an eye on, but Moth is a sound boat. We trust her. We are beginning to trust ourselves. Life, I am delighted to report, is good.
Crete was wonderful. Morocco will be better. I long to sail through the Pillars of Hercules and out of this ancient sea into the Atlantic. The Atlantic! To cross the Atlantic in Moth, with Marianne at my side, and to have the clear warm waters of the Carribean to look forward to. God, what bliss!
See you in Martinique, eh what?
Or if we miss you there, we'll anchor off Taa Hu Ku on Hiva Oa (139° W, go 50' S) in April or May of next year and wait for you there. The river is beautiful, I've heard, as it burbles down over the pebbly shore, and the coconuts will be ripe ...