In The Beginning
In the beginning was the word…. But the word is seldom only what it says.
To wordless memories and imagination we provide symbols, perhaps to make the images real, perhaps to understand them. Writers learn that words become their own reality, leaving elusive truth to lie undisturbed. Soon Willow Frederic would learn that in telling Argo’s story she would never quite capture the phantasms that haunted her memory.
“The wind had shifted southeast and with it came the sad fear of an inevitable storm. As the boat swept over an ocean still warm with summer, the whisper of hollow loss grew stronger. The Sanctum’s sails were full and proud, alive against the cobalt sky, but they were loud in the night --- sirens sighing sadly of the change that was to come. Holding back the wind and whispering a woeful warning, the sails were for the first time not powerful servants of The Sanctum but white, wailing shrouds --- waiting.
“I shuddered and went below to hide. As it always had, the fresh scent of unfinished teak greeted me before I could see it glowing amber in dim cabin lights. The sweet wood had become a sanctuary from all that was raw above, but that night its quiet warmth failed to work its charm. There would be no escape from the dread of the approaching storm, a storm not of the sea but of the man. And the man was standing dark and motionless at the helm.”
l
The New York sky was hollow gray, and on that blustery morning the black, white-capped water beat angrily against the walls of Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. On sunny days New York is as beautiful as it is in the movies, but on days like this it was as cold and as heartless as its reputation. As she leaned against the iron rail at the water’s edge watching the 9:12 ferry cross the Narrows, Willow felt the first chill of winter crawl up under her jacket. The mile-wide bay was the roiling mouth of both the Hudson and East Rivers which frame Manhattan island, and on that day only the boats that had to be on the water were out.
From her usual spot on the railing along the balustrade, she heard gulls proclaiming their territory as they patrolled the waterway, but the hollow wind called louder. Willow’s chestnut hair blew against the dark sky, and she raised her collar against the wind. She had thought about getting coffee at the terminal but decided to take the cold. In some perverse way, Willow wanted the cold discomfort.
It was the biggest news story of the century: the assassination of Pope Michael the First, and the earth was still quaking. Independent investigative bodies worldwide were working to unearth clues about who killed the controversial Pope and why, but facts were outnumbered by theories, most of them plausible but none correct. In the two weeks since his death, the Pope’s killers were as incorporeal as their motives.
As Willow shivered at the New York harbor, the Council of Cardinals in Rome was selecting the new Pope. It would also be the day Willow Frederic would begin the first pages of her manuscript. Even then she was unsure she would ever show it to anyone, but she hoped that at least in the writing she would come to understand more fully what had happened --- to capture the reality of the pangs of loss and the prick of guilt. She believed the writing itself might lessen the weight of knowing the answer to what had by then become the world’s greatest question. It would be two months before she would learn if she were correct, that if in the writing there would be relief.
Willow was a writer of legal briefs, not stories, and did not know how the narrative would come out. She did know that the story would be told simply from the beginning with no flashbacks or precious allusions to books she had read in college. It could turn out to be a book or perhaps be serialized in The New Yorker or The New York Times Magazine. It was important only that she write it out as it happened, or at least as her words could capture her memory.
It took a week to write the first pages on the laptop she propped up on the dressing table next to her bed. It was the table on which she had had her lighted makeup mirror, a trifle of vanity that seemed as useless as the lip gloss and eyeliners, which along with the mirror, now sat useless in the drawer below.
In the beginning was the word…. But the word is seldom only what it says.
To wordless memories and imagination we provide symbols, perhaps to make the images real, perhaps to understand them. Writers learn that words become their own reality, leaving elusive truth to lie undisturbed. Soon Willow Frederic would learn that in telling Argo’s story she would never quite capture the phantasms that haunted her memory.
“The wind had shifted southeast and with it came the sad fear of an inevitable storm. As the boat swept over an ocean still warm with summer, the whisper of hollow loss grew stronger. The Sanctum’s sails were full and proud, alive against the cobalt sky, but they were loud in the night --- sirens sighing sadly of the change that was to come. Holding back the wind and whispering a woeful warning, the sails were for the first time not powerful servants of The Sanctum but white, wailing shrouds --- waiting.
“I shuddered and went below to hide. As it always had, the fresh scent of unfinished teak greeted me before I could see it glowing amber in dim cabin lights. The sweet wood had become a sanctuary from all that was raw above, but that night its quiet warmth failed to work its charm. There would be no escape from the dread of the approaching storm, a storm not of the sea but of the man. And the man was standing dark and motionless at the helm.”
l
The New York sky was hollow gray, and on that blustery morning the black, white-capped water beat angrily against the walls of Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. On sunny days New York is as beautiful as it is in the movies, but on days like this it was as cold and as heartless as its reputation. As she leaned against the iron rail at the water’s edge watching the 9:12 ferry cross the Narrows, Willow felt the first chill of winter crawl up under her jacket. The mile-wide bay was the roiling mouth of both the Hudson and East Rivers which frame Manhattan island, and on that day only the boats that had to be on the water were out.
From her usual spot on the railing along the balustrade, she heard gulls proclaiming their territory as they patrolled the waterway, but the hollow wind called louder. Willow’s chestnut hair blew against the dark sky, and she raised her collar against the wind. She had thought about getting coffee at the terminal but decided to take the cold. In some perverse way, Willow wanted the cold discomfort.
It was the biggest news story of the century: the assassination of Pope Michael the First, and the earth was still quaking. Independent investigative bodies worldwide were working to unearth clues about who killed the controversial Pope and why, but facts were outnumbered by theories, most of them plausible but none correct. In the two weeks since his death, the Pope’s killers were as incorporeal as their motives.
As Willow shivered at the New York harbor, the Council of Cardinals in Rome was selecting the new Pope. It would also be the day Willow Frederic would begin the first pages of her manuscript. Even then she was unsure she would ever show it to anyone, but she hoped that at least in the writing she would come to understand more fully what had happened --- to capture the reality of the pangs of loss and the prick of guilt. She believed the writing itself might lessen the weight of knowing the answer to what had by then become the world’s greatest question. It would be two months before she would learn if she were correct, that if in the writing there would be relief.
Willow was a writer of legal briefs, not stories, and did not know how the narrative would come out. She did know that the story would be told simply from the beginning with no flashbacks or precious allusions to books she had read in college. It could turn out to be a book or perhaps be serialized in The New Yorker or The New York Times Magazine. It was important only that she write it out as it happened, or at least as her words could capture her memory.
It took a week to write the first pages on the laptop she propped up on the dressing table next to her bed. It was the table on which she had had her lighted makeup mirror, a trifle of vanity that seemed as useless as the lip gloss and eyeliners, which along with the mirror, now sat useless in the drawer below.
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