Vilet sighed. “Hoy, I bet them three was the real panjandrums of the outfit, wasn’t they?”
“You don’t understand these things, woman. Man’s han’ling a holy object, y’ own life depending on it, stands to reason you treat him respectful. Ayah, boy Davy, that’s the blind side of nothing when you’re out of sight of land. You work in skiffs, maybe six-seven hours labor with the big nets, and mustn’t leave the main outrigger out of sight for that’s wheah the compass is — come a sudden fog or a great wide wind, what then? — needn’t ask. And when the last net comes in, then it’s fight y’ way back over the cruel water to make camp, get the fish smoked before they spile. To this day I can’t abide the stink of fish, any fish, couldn’t if I was sta’ving. It’s a judgment onto me for a sinful youth. The sea’s not for men, boy Davy. Le’ me tell you — when I came home at last, sick and punied-out though I was I had me a woman-hunger fit to drive a man hag-wild, and — well, I won’t go into that now, but on my first night back in Kingstone I succumbed to the urging of the evil one, and I got robbed, ever’ penny of my seven months’ pay. A judgment.”
Sam said to the fire: “You claim God would gut a man just for heavin’ it into a chunk of nooky?”
“Language! Nay, why was I robbed, if it wa’n’t a judgment? Answer me that! Ah, Sam, I pray for the time when scoffing will pass from you. You harken to me, boy Davy: at sea you be a slave, no other word. A devil’s life. Work, work, work till you drop, then comes the old chief’s boot in y’ ribs, and sea-law says he’s got the right. I wish ever’ vessel ever built was to the bottom of the deep this day moment. I do. You listen to me: it stands to reason, if’n God meant men to float he’d’ve give us fins.”
We got moving soon after that, to look for a location where we might spend the night in better safety. I learned a few things from Sam as I walked with him, out of hearing of Jed and Vilet. Jed, he told me, was short-sighted, objects twenty feet away from him not much more than a blur, and he was sensitive about it, regarding it as another punishment dealt out to him by the Lord. I couldn’t see Jed as any kind of sinner, let alone a big one, but Jed firmly believed the Lord had it in for him — testing him to be sure and maybe friendly at heart, but tough all the same, never giving him a break without taking away something else or reminding him of the Day of Judgment. The poor Jo could hardly turn his head to spit or square off by a tree-trunk to take a leak, without the Lord’s jolting him up about something he’d done wrong ten days ago, or ten years. Unfair, I thought, and unreasonable-but if that was the way Jed and God wanted it, Sam and I weren’t about to butt in with our ten cents worth of suggestions.
In Old Time it was possible to help people with poor vision, by grinding glass into lenses that let them see almost normally. Another lost art, gone down the drain of ignorance in the Years of Confusion; recovered, however, and brought with us to the island.
At Old City, in the underground workshops adjoining the Heretics’ secret library, there’s been a man at work some thirty years on problems of lens-making; he stifi is, if he’s alive and undiscovered by the victorious legions of God. Arn Bronstein was his name originally, but he elected to adopt the first name Baruch after reading the life of an Old-Time philosopher who also inflamed his eyes grinding lenses, and who built a curious bridge of reasoning to carry him a remarkable distance beyond the bumbling Christianity and Judaism of his day. Our Baruch could have sailed with us; it was his own decision not to. When Dion was trying to persuade him to join the group who would sail with the Morning Star if we should lose the battle for Old City, he said: “No, I will stay where there’s enough civilization, never mind its quality, so that a man can achieve obscurity.” “Obscurity’s all very well,” said Dion — “do you want the obscurity of grinding spectacles for people who can’t wear them without being burned for witchcraft?” Not answering that, having very likely not listened to it, Baruch asked: “And what facilities do you provide for contemplation aboard your — hoo, your beautiful Morning Star?” He asked that, crouching in the doorway of his musty workshop and blinking pink angry eyes at Dion as if he hated him; crying and swearing, Dion called him a fool, which appeared to gratify him.
Baruch was past fifty when the rebellion began. He said his manuscripts and optical gear made a load too heavy to carry, and he would have no one else burdened with it if you please. I remember him so, in the doorway, stoopshouldered, shrunken, tortured eyes winking and watering, garments haphazard rags although he had money for good clothes, saying this and plainly meaning instead that he would not trust others, heedless ham-handed blunderers, to carry a load so precious. Then — ready to reject instantly any show of affection — he gave Dion a small book bound by himself, painfully handwritten by himself, a labor of pure love. It contains everything that Baruch knew and could tell of lens-making, so that granted the brains and patience (we have them) we can duplicate the practical part of the work at any time.
Many times since that day of retreat it has disturbed me to think of a lens-maker afflicted with something like blindness; of a man with a love for humanity who can’t stand the sight, sound, touch of human beings near him. I can imagine nothing more ridiculous or insulting than “feeling sorry” for Baruch; I suppose his rejection of communication is the thing that wounds.
We killed a stag that afternoon. I saw him in a clump of birches and let fly my arrow for a neck shot. He went down and Sam was beside him at once, the knife swift and merciful in the throat. Jed was generously admiring. Vilet watched us, me cocky and proud, Sam still-faced with his reddened knife waiting for the carcass to bleed out, and I saw a waking of lust in her, her eyes dilated, lips a little swollen. If Jed had not been there, present but not really sharing the heart of the excitement, I could imagine her inviting Sam to spread her on the ground. There was that in her smoldering gaze at him — and at me, who after all had shot the arrow. But Jed was there, and in a few minutes we were busy cutting what meat we could carry, the heated moment gone.