He realized that he had grown to love the man who had been the Intruder, and he was already weeping at the mere thought that harm might have befallen him. Now, old man, he murmured, return, come back to life, be reborn by God, and we will kill the fattest hen. Surely you will not abandon your Specula Melitensis to its fate?
And suddenly he was aware that he could no longer make out the rocks near the shore, a sign that the water had begun to rise; and the sun, which earlier he had seen without having to raise his head, was now truly over him. So from the moment of the bell’s disappearance, not minutes but hours had passed.
He had to repeat this truth to himself aloud to make it credible. He had counted as seconds what had been minutes, he had convinced himself that in his bosom he carried a crazed clock, precipitately ticking, whereas that clock had slowed its pace. For Heaven knows how long, telling himself that Father Caspar had just descended, he had been awaiting a creature who had been without air for some time. For Heaven knows how long he had been awaiting a body lying lifeless somewhere in that expanse.
What could have happened? Everything, everything he had thought— and perhaps everything his misadventured fear had caused to happen, he the bearer of ill fortune. The hydrostatic principles of Father Caspar could be illusory, perhaps the water in a bell does indeed enter from below, especially if the person inside kicks the air outside, and what did Roberto truly know of the equilibrium of liquids? Or perhaps the impact had been too abrupt and the bell had overturned. Or Father Caspar had tripped halfway there. Or had lost his direction. Or his heart, septuagenarian or more, unequal to his enthusiasm, had failed. And finally, who says that at such depth the weight of the water of the sea cannot crush leather as it might squeeze a lemon or hull a pod?
But if he was dead, should his corpse not rise to the surface? No, he was anchored by his iron boots, from which his poor legs would be freed only when the conjoint action of the waters and the host of greedy little fish had reduced him to a skeleton….
Then Roberto had a dazzling thought. What was all this mental jabber about? Why, Father Caspar himself had said it in so many words: the Island Roberto saw before him was not the island of today but that of yesterday. Beyond that meridian it was the day before! Could he expect to see now on that beach, where it was yesterday, a person who had descended into the water today? Surely not. The old man had immersed himself in the early morning of this Monday, but if on the ship it was Monday, on that Island it was still Sunday, and therefore he would not be able to see his friend emerge until the morning of its tomorrow, when on the Island it would be, at last, Monday….
I must wait till tomorrow, he said to himself. Then, however, he added: But Father Caspar cannot wait a day, he has not enough air! And, further, while it is I who must wait a day, he simply re-entered Sunday as soon as he crossed the line of the meridian. My God, then the Island I see is Sunday’s, and if he arrived there on Sunday, I should see him already! No, I have it all wrong. The Island I see is today’s, it is impossible I should see the past as in a magic crystal. It is there, on the Island—and only there—that it is yesterday. But if I see the Island of today, I should see him, who in the Island’s yesterday is already there, and is enjoying a second Sunday … And then, whether he arrived yesterday or today, he should have left the disemboweled bell on the beach, and I cannot see it. But he could have also carried it with him into the woods. When? Yesterday. So: let us assume that what I see is the Island of Sunday. I must wait for tomorrow to see him arriving there on Monday….
We could say that Roberto had definitively lost his mind, and with very good reason: no matter how he calculated, the figures would not add up. The paradoxes of time can indeed unhinge us. So it was normal for him not to know what to do; and he ended up doing what anyone, first victim of his own hope, would have done: before succumbing to despair, he prepared to wait for the coming day.
How he did it is hard to reconstruct. Pacing back and forth on deck, not touching food, talking to himself, to Father Caspar, to the stars and perhaps having recourse once more to aqua vitae. The fact is that we find him the next day—as the night fades and the sky takes on color, and then after sunrise—more and more tense while the hours pass, greatly agitated between eleven and noon, beside himself between noon and sunset, until he has to accept reality—and, this time, without any doubt. Yesterday, surely yesterday, Father Caspar lowered himself into the austral ocean and neither yesterday nor today did he subsequently emerge. And since all the wonder of the antipodal meridian is played out between yesterday and tomorrow, and not between yesterday and the day after tomorrow, or tomorrow and the day before yesterday, it was now certain: from that sea Father Caspar would never again come forth.
With mathematical, indeed, cosmographical and astronomical certitude, his poor friend was lost. Nor could anyone have said where the body was. In some unidentified place down below. Perhaps beneath the surface there were violent currents, and the body by now was out in the open sea. Or perhaps not, perhaps beneath the Daphne lay a trough, a chasm, the bell had settled there, and from it the old man had been unable to climb up and had expended his scant breath, increasingly watery, in cries for help.
Perhaps, to escape, he had unfastened his bonds, the bell still full of air, and made a leap upwards, but its iron part had arrested that first impulse and held it at half-depth, no knowing where. Father Caspar had tried to free himself from his boots but had failed. Now in this strait, rooted in rock, his lifeless body swayed like seaweed.
And while Roberto was thinking these things, the Tuesday sun was now behind his back, the moment of Father Caspar Wanderdrossel’s death growing ever more remote.
The sunset created a jaundiced sky behind the dark green of the Island, and a Stygian sea. Roberto understood that Nature was mourning with him and, as sometimes happens to one orphaned of someone dear, little by little he no longer wept for the misfortune of that person but for his own renewed solitude.
For a very few days he had escaped that solitude. Father Caspar had become for him friend, father, brother, family, and home. Now he realized that he was again companionless, a hermit. This time forever.
Still, in that disheartenment another illusion was forming. Roberto now was sure that the only escape from his reclusion was to be found not in unbridgeable Space but in Time.
Now he truly had to learn to swim and reach the Island. Not so much to discover some trace of Father Caspar lost in the folds of the past, but to arrest the horrid advance of his own tomorrow.
CHAPTER 26, Delights for the Ingenious: A Collection of Emblems
FOR THREE DAYS Roberto remained with his eye glued to the ship’s spyglass (blaming himself that the other, more powerful one was now useless), staring at the tops of the trees on shore. He was waiting for a glimpse of the Orange Dove.
On the third day he roused himself. He had lost his only friend, he was himself lost on the farthest of meridians, and could feel no consolation unless he saw a bird that perhaps had fluttered only in the head of Father Caspar!
He decided to explore again his refuge to learn how long he could survive on board. The hens continued laying their eggs, and a nest of baby chicks had been hatched. Of the collected vegetables not much was left, they were now too dry, and he would have to use them as feed for the fowl. There were still a few barrels of water, but if he collected rain, he could even do without them. And, finally, there was no shortage of fish.
But then he considered that, eating no fresh vegetables, he would die of scurvy. There were those in the greenhouse, but they would be naturally watered only if rain fell: if a long drought were to arrive, he would have to water the plants with his supply of drinking water. And if there was a storm for days and days, he would have water but would be unable to fish.
To allay his anxieties he went back to the water organ, which Father Caspar had taught him how to set in motion: he heard always and only “Daphne,” because he had not learned how to change the cylinder; but he was not sorry to listen hour after hour to the same tune. One day he identified Daphne, the ship, with the body of his beloved Lady. Was not Daphne after all a creature who had been transformed into a laurel—an arboreal substance, thus with
