Part III
The sun ascended slowly over the cascading chalk and limestone cliffs north of Marseille, and Clark steadied the wheel with newfound resolve to make landfall meaningful and prophetic; the fulfillment of a month's drifting in the north Atlantic, identities swirled amongst floating rubbish and seaweed. This was not to say he hadn't been to shore yet; quite to the contrary, many times his feet had touched terra firma in the fast 2 weeks since he passed through the steely, gray straight of Gibraltar, the poverty and mistreatment of Africa filling the southern horizon across a scant ten miles of water. His first stop had been in Spain, in the little fishing village of Tarifa, just around the corner from the imposing stone monolith of Gibraltar Rock and the stoic, resolute control of the damn British, content on their eye into affairs of the third world to the south. Clark was not concerned with business or politics, though, mainly he was just bent on experiencing, whether it be temporally or subconsciously, anything worthwhile now days had to be felt,he thought with reeling impact, laying face up on the uneven teak deck boards.
After stocking up on fresh water and produce in Tarifa [the customs agents seemed satisfied with his explanation of personal adventure and cruising in broken, stuttering spanish] he set off along the northern Mediterranean coast, the fabled Cote D'Azure of Hollywood and summer daydreams. It proved even more phantasmagoric and bright than the movies predicted, full of tan, accented young men and women who seemed dubiously employed, spending most of their time on the beach or driving zippy little cars along narrow roads that careened over precipices into the expanse of the Mediterranean. The French were smart and inquisitive, free from the snobbery and pretense he had been led to expect by the xenophobic, zealous American populous. They wanted to know his purpose, his origin, and when he pleaded guilty to neither, they seemed content with him, the tanned creases round his smile and weather-beaten oxford shirts evidence of some noble desire he must have here, so far from home. He loved the food, the wine, the easy camaraderie of the young people, bred of discontent for authority or the government, plans and the future.
On this particular morning, August 20th 1978, his parents and friends had taken him for dead, and the immediate grief, the anguish of loss unseen and unforgiving, had begun to fade as their busy lives clouded the memory of the young man they thought they lost. The selfish recklessness of his actions were of no consequence to him now, and the future loomed so immediate and tangible that the occasional fits of regret he had alone on the boat faded quickly, like a child's tantrum over candy or television. He had been alone before, and he was alone now, pleased with the grandeur and romantic perfection of the coastline, as it never disappointed or expected anything in return. He missed the spontaneity of day to day existence at school, amongst strangers and friends, this was true, because whatever excitement that had generated was always a dead end, safe and predictable, the adoration or lust of a stranger that was never returned. This excitement was terrifying and had consequences of life and loss; emotional attachment had no room here.
He thought of the couple nights he had spent on the beaches of La Coudouliere outside Toulon earlier in the week, dropping anchor suddenly and haphazardly in shallow water in a little sandy cove, the sun beating down relentlessly on the patchwork summer cottage roofs over the water. A young man had appeared out of the corner of Clark's eye in a little wooden dory, of the type the old fisherman used to cast their humble little nets into the maw of the sea, and he had waved enthusiastically and shouted hello in half-coherent French. The young man, Guillaume was his name it turned out, was lean and tan, with a sunburnt shock of fading blonde hair and ratty cutoff shorts speckled in little bits of white paint, endearing and indifferent. With the beautiful forwardness of the French, he asked what a handsome young man like Clark was doing in Coudouliere, and 20 minutes later they were tearing at worn edges of cloth and buttons in Guillaume's little whitewashed cottage on the dunes, breathing mixed with the heavy summer air that pressed down on sweaty flesh.
Guillaume said he had a girlfriend, "Mes Parents habite en Paris", he stated beseechingly into the warm creased of the pillow, as if that explained it all. Clark understood though; summer fun was heady and spontaneous, about feeling hot and restless, not pleasing relatives or establishing a future, even one's own psyche was irrelevant amongst the pale white sand and green vines. Addresses and phone numbers, in a comically sad display of post sexual connectivity, were exchanged on yellowed bits of a phonebook, and he ran down the fading wooden dock to the little skiff to row back out to the sailboat. As he steeled himself for the emotional drain of disconnection, he heard quick, nervous footsteps behind him and felt a steady, heavy hand on his shoulder. "Wait!" said Guillaume, the Parisian with the girlfriend, and his eyes lit with such childish conviction Clark couldn't say no to staying another 2 days.
He left Coudouliere with the distinct apprehension of an opportunity spent and dwindled; the awkward slowness of parting with Guillaume still fresh in his mind. The experience had taken over his sensory functions at this point though, and he shied away from the cruelty of commitment. The sun along the Cote D'Azure was vicious and luxurious in August, and the steep white limestone cliffs cascaded angular fragments of light down into the ragged, hollow sea. He imagined the boat suspended amongst thoughts and the 3-dimensional miasma of the past, the water parting before him like Jesus on the Dead Sea. He thought with pained affection of the quizzical glance Guillaume had given him as they parted on the humble, rotting wooden edge of the dock, a glance that betrayed the hurt of having let a stranger love him.
Everyone was a stranger, in the context of the experience; even if you had been inside someone, you hadn't really known them, wound the tight gears of their soul with your own hands. Lying in the neat little wooden bed with whitewashed sheets in a geometric corner of the house, Guillaume had said he was a writer. This was to say he had family money, and after an education from a good university in Paris, could afford to pursue writing free of the harsh bourgeois struggle for bread and happiness. The daily mundanity of a commutes and deadlines was replaced by living comfortably on the edges of boredom; inspiration coming in childish bouts of creative thrashing. Clark had happened on such a moment, an opening amongst the tedium of being aesthetic and pleasing people. This was precisely the kind of spontaneity he had hoped for, yet somehow he still longed for the scary push and pull of nature, the glimpse into the endless teal abyss of the ocean, or a collision with a rogue shipping container 1,000 miles from land. He wondered what had become of the smiling Arab seamen he had exchanged greetings with across the water 600 miles northwest of the Azores, their crisp white clothing radiant in the sun, their simple trust in Allah and the shipping company, bringing them modest immortality.
Clark felt so vulnerable, to himself and to those who eyed him curiously, wondered if he was the real deal, an energy worth reciprocating. He pulled the anchor up with taunt, lean muscle and heaved the sandy, dripping iron rake onto the foredeck, the boat lurching forward on kind western breezes under sail. The craft heeled hard and bottles of cheap rum and Pinot Grigio rolled around below deck as he trimmed the main and they rounded the arrogant stone precipice of the cape. It was not a terminus of land but rather a reluctant finger into the sea, an abstraction between the next pint of land upcoast. On this sinuous and rounded coastline, it was hard to tell which way was forward and which was back, which led to Morocco and which to the aromatic, ancient ports of Sardinia and Sicily, broken volcano's dripping into the sea.
From the vantage point of a good sailboat, Clark thought contently, the world presented itself just as it ought to, mountains announcing their presence far off on the horizon, cities glowing in hazy amber fog over the calm black water at night. He set the wheel and trimmed the sail's to his liking, a long, confident tack southeast away from the raucous green coast and out into the warm, shallow gulf, the gulls and shorebirds silent and curious. Rummaging about in a little wooden compartment behind the helm [at this point, all things had a rightful place, and the workings of the yacht were of hi own sinew] he found a bottle of old gin. He bit off the bitter end of a lime and poured a little tonic water, preferring to take alternating shots of each rather than mix the three. It tasted acrid and delicious, the bitter summer remembrance, and suddenly he was so thirsty he could only drink more and more and more, crying over Guillaume and the future between squeezes of lime and gin. The tears were salty and old, running into pale stubble and the faded end's of a Brook's Brother's collar, which drooped downward dejectedly from the assault of all this unpredictable running about.
