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"And did you found your society and preserve my tomb?" Burton said.
He had gotten used to the idea by then of having been dead, but to talk with someone who had seen his tomb made his skin chill for a moment.
Frigate took a deep breath. Apologetically, he said, "No. By the time I was in a position to do that, I would have felt guilty spending time and money on the dead. The world was in too much of a mess. The living needed all the attention they could get. Pollution, poverty, oppression, and so forth. These were the important things."
"And that giant definitive biography?"
Again, Frigate spoke apologetically. "When I first read about you, I thought I was the only one deeply interested in you or even aware of you. But there was an upsurge of interest in you in the "60’s. Quite a few books were written about you and even one about your wife."
"Isabel? Someone wrote a book about her? Why?"
Frigate had gri
"What?" Burton had roared. "Burn…?"
Frigate nodded and said, "What your doctor, Grenfell Baker, described as "the ruthless holocaust that followed his lamented death." She burned your translation of The Perfumed Garden, claiming you would not have wanted to publish it unless you needed the money for it, and you didn’t need it, of course, because you were now dead." Burton was speechless for one of the few times in his life.
Frigate looked out of the corner of his eyes at Burton, and gri
"Burning The Perfumed Garden wasn’t so bad, though bad enough. But to burn both sets of your journals, the private ones in which, supposedly, you let loose all your deepest thoughts and most bunting hates, and even the public ones, the diary of daily events, well, I never forgave her! Neither did a lot of people. That was a great loss; only one of your notebooks, a small one, escaped, and that was burned during the bombing of London in World War II" He paused and said, "Is it true that you converted to the Catholic Church on your deathbed, as your wife claimed?"
"I may have," Burton said. "Isabel had been after me for years to convert, though she never dared urge me directly. When I was so sick there, at the last, I may have told her I would do so in order to make her happy. She was so grief-stricken, so distressed, so afraid my soul would burn in Hell."
"Then you did love her?" Frigate had said.
"I would have done the same for a dog," Burton replied.
"For somebody who can be so upsettingly frank and direct you can be very ambiguous at times." This conversation had taken place about two months after First Day, A.R. 1. The result had been something like that which Doctor Johnson would have felt on encountering another Boswell.
This had been the second stage of their curious relationship. Frigate became closer but at the same time, more of an a
One evening, as they were sitting around a fire under a grailstone Frigate had spoken about Karachi. This village, which later became the capital of Pakistan, the nation created in 1947, had only 2,000 population in Burton’s time. By 1970, its population was approximately 2,000,000. That led to Frigate’s asking, rather indirectly, about the report Burton had made to his general, Sir Robert Napier, on houses of male prostitution in Karachi. The report was supposed to be kept in the secret files of the East India Army, but it was found by one of the many enemies of Burton. Though the report was never mentioned publicly, it had been used against him throughout his life. Burton had disguised himself as a native in order to get into the house and make observations that no European would have been allowed to make. He had been proud that he had escaped detection, and he had taken the unsavory job because he was the only one who could do it and because his beloved leader, Napier, had asked him to.
Burton had replied to Frigate’s questions somewhat surlily. Alice had angered him earlier that day — she seemed to be able to do so very easily lately — and he was thinking of a way to anger her. Now he seized upon the opportunity given him by Frigate. He launched into an uninhibited account of what went on in the Karachi houses. Ruach finally got up and walked away. Frigate looked as if he were sick, but he stayed. Wilfreda laughed until she rolled on the ground. Kazz and Monat kept stolid expressions. Gwenafra was sleeping on the boat, so Burton did not have to take her into account. Loghu seemed to be fascinated but also slightly-repulsed.
Alice, his main target, turned pale and then, later, red. Finally, she rose and said, "Really, Mr. Burton, I had thought you were low before. But to brag of this … this … you are utterly contemptible, degenerate, and repulsive. Not that I believe a word of what you’ve been telling me. I can’t believe that anybody would behave as you claim you did and then boast about it. You are living up to your reputation as a man who likes to shock others no matter what damage it does to his own reputation." She had walked off into the darkness.
Frigate had said, "Sometime, maybe, you will tell me how much of that is true. I used to think as she did. But when I got older, more evidence about you was turned up, and one biographer made a psychoanalysis of you based on your own writing and various documentary sources."
"And the conclusions?" Burton said mockingly.
"Later, Dick," Frigate said. "Ruffian Dick," he added, and he, too, left.
Now, standing at the tiller, watching the sun beat down on the group, listening to the hissing of water cut by the two sharp prows, and the creaking of rigging, he wondered what lay ahead on the other side of the canyon-like cha
Lev Ruach was staying away from him or speaking as little as possible, and Lev was arguing even more with Esther about his dietary habits and his daydreaming and why didn’t he ever talk to her?
Frigate was mad at him about something. But Frigate would never come out and say anything, the coward, until he was driven into a corner and tormented into a mindless rage. Loghu was angry and scornful of Frigate because he was as sullen with her as with the others. Loghu was also angry with him, Burton, because he had turned her down when they had been alone gathering bamboo in the hills several weeks ago. He had told her no, adding that he had no moral scruples, against making love to her, but that he would not betray Frigate or any other member of the crew. Loghu said that it was not that she did not love Frigate; it was just that she needed a change now and then. Just as Frigate did.