Mell entered English early on, from the Greek, Mεαλ, and at one time the language was lush with mell-derived words, of which now only a few remain. Mellifluous, originally meaning something sweetened with honey, soon was adapted to mean sweet speech, as in honey-tongued Shakespeare’s line in Twelfth Night, “A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.” Melianthus is the honeyflower, a mellivorous bird feeds on honey, and molasses is a later corruption of the original melasus. In medicine, meliceris denotes a tumor containing honey-like matter, and in some technical specialties, mellaginous still means anything that is like honey.
But it’s in the now-forgotten words that mell was at its most mouth-watering. A sweet medieval Breughelesque pastorality seems to cling to these words, as of a better world, lost and forgotten, replaced by this intolerable world. Mellation was the special time for collecting honey, meliturgy was the process of making honey, and anything as sweet as honey was said to be melled. Such things include melicrate, a drink of honey and water, and melitism, a mixture of honey and wine. And melrose was a nostrum of honey, alcohol, and powdered rose leaves used by doctors in the eighteenth century.
I only display all this erudition, of course, because of embarrassment over that slip of the tongue. I see that contact with humans is making me more like them.
Well, the slip was a small one, quickly forgotten by Susan, and the main point of the conversation was accomplished. That is, to bring her confused tangle of feelings about Grigor Basmyonov out into the light, where she can begin to study them, accept their pointlessness, and eventually distance herself first from the feelings themselves and then from Grigor. For how is Grigor to be brought to the necessary despair, if he is loved by Susan?
That is the point.
We drove on to the city, I guiding the conversation into shallower and safer waters, knowing she would return to the deeps herself, later, alone. We had dinner in the Italian restaurant I’d recommended, we walked the city streets in a rarely beautiful early autumn evening, and I escorted her at last to her apartment building, where I made no attempt to kiss her good-night but did ask her to come out to the movies with me the next night. She hesitated, but I gave her more assurances that friendship was all I was offering (or asking), and she at last agreed.
Because, in fact, it isn’t enough merely to force her to see how hopeless her love for Grigor Basmyonov is. She craves an emotional involvement, while fearing a physical one (which makes the Grigor relationship ideal at this moment in her life, of course, a truth we’ve already successfully skipped past), so until she’s given an alternate target for her emotions she won’t abandon Grigor no matter how painful the situation becomes. Andy Harbinger is personable, intriguing, companionable, and absolutely non-threatening. Until she’s weaned from Grigor, Andy will have to be an ongoing presence in her life.
Which is not at all the way it was supposed to be. Susan Carrigan is not one of my principals, but merely the proximate method to bring Grigor Basmyonov to the United States. She should be cut loose by now, she should be off living what’s left of her life, no longer my concern. But I’m not as familiar with humans as perhaps I should be; their use of free will is so frenetic it’s hard to make plans involving them at all. That Susan would so fiercely lock herself to the destiny of a doomed foreigner took me, I admit, by surprise. Alienation, foreignness, hopelessness, a growing estrangement from life, all of these were supposed to be working in Grigor now, moving him in the desired direction. Susan’s presence, her love, holds his despair at bay; it must be deflected.
And then there are my other principals. Pami Njoroge is discontentedly performing sex acts on the hard surfaces of the paved-over lots near the Lincoln Tunnel in Manhattan, in the shadow of the Jacob Javits Convention Center, completely unaware who her pimp really is. (Ha ha, no, it’s not me, the joke is much better than that!) Maria Elena Rodriguez Auston is looking at the telephone number Grigor gave her before she left the hospital, wondering if she should call. (Yes!) Frank Hillfen is living alone in a furnished room in East St. Louis, Illinois, committing small burglaries, too afraid of capture to do more than provide himself a basic subsistence — he hasn’t ever even stolen enough money all at once to pay for transportation to New York City, his goal, where in any event I’m not ready for him — and feeding his growing sense of unjust persecution. (Everybody’s on the take; why does Frank get hassled all the time?) Dr. Marlon Philpott, in his new windowless laboratory at Green Meadow III, oblivious of the protestors outside the gate, pursues the elusive possibility of strange matter.
And Li Kwan is arriving in New York; in chains.
19
Kwan did not see the arrival of the Star Voyager into the famous New York Harbor because the room they had locked him into was an interior space on a lower deck, where the vibrations of the engines could be felt on every surface but there was otherwise no sense of movement or progress; only a small metal cube, painted a cream color, furnished with a cot and a toilet and a sink, its recessed fluorescent ceiling light protected by wire mesh. This was the Star Voyager’s brig, or as close as this frivolous vessel could come to having a brig. On most voyages, Father Mackenzie had told him, the brig remained empty except for the occasional overly drunk crewman, but when it became necessary to hold someone to be turned over to the authorities at the next port of call, this was the room.
The authorities. The next port of call. New York City, United States of America. “I’ve heard,” Father Mackenzie had told him yesterday, long-faced, “that Hong Kong has already started extradition proceedings, even before you arrive.”
“They want me in and out before the media can make a fuss,” Kwan had answered.
“Of course. No one need know Li Kwan was ever in America at all.”
“And you won’t help me, Father? You won’t call the New York Times?”
But the priest had smiled his sad smile and shaken his head. “I can’t. It is not my right to endanger my order’s relationship with the company. I’m here as Norse American’s guest. I wouldn’t want to do anything to make them feel justified in removing the spiritual advisers from all of their passenger ships.”
Everyone has his reasons. Kwan was understanding that now, with increasing bitterness. Probably even Dat had his reasons.
Dat had not joined the crew until Rotterdam, three stops ago on the Star Voyager’s endless goalless circumnavigation of the globe; Rotterdam, then Southampton, then Hamilton on Bermuda, and now New York. And it wasn’t until after Bermuda that Dat began to insinuate himself into Kwan’s life.