When he had hauled on the rope a few more times, sending great clouds of pigeons reeling skyward from behind the dome of the cathedral, to be turned into flying rose petals by the pink light of dawn, he evidently felt he had let off enough steam that he could tell the stokers to leave off, rake down, and tie the valves open. By the time we docked, the town was stirring like a disturbed anthill. I spied more than a few rude gestures aimed in our direction. The captain only grinned and hoisted his round belly over the top of his trousers, stroking it with one hand as he might some imperfectly tamed animal, raising the other in an ironic salute in my direction.
I went down onto the lower deck and looked about me with the keenest interest. The passengers were a motley lot, their oddities more evident than usual thus assembled in contiguity to one another, and their crated belongings were odder yet. Armadillos plated in gold and decked with jewels; chickens in shades of vivid emerald and aquamarine; turtles, their eyes awash with lugubrious tears. There were even stranger figures upon the pier, leaping men and women with painted faces, cavorting among the crowd in manic lunges. I pointed them out to the old woman, who was standing beside me. She habitually stood beside me. As though she did not want me to be out of her sight.
“From the clownery,” she remarked, pointing to a brightly painted building along the river as she tapped her head with a meaningful gesture. “Every now and again they escape.”
“Do you know Nacifia well, madam?” I asked her.
“I have explored it,” she said. “Prior to choosing it as my place of residence for a time. I have a little house on the hill, there, up the Street of Immaculate Intentions. Perhaps you will visit me there.”
“Perhaps, madam,” I murmured.
“Captain! Ho, captain!” The call came from the pier, slightly below us and to our right. Captain Karon craned his neck to see the person waving her flowered umbrella at him. I had not seen her approach, though she was worth the seeing now she had arrived, a full-bodied and bright-haired woman, skin glowing ivory in the creamy shadow of her highly domed parasol. Her voice was softly rounded, an amorous moo, so solid and smoothly finished a sound that it seemed to writhe itself toward his welcoming ear, probably tickling all the way down as it demanded attention.
“Mrs. Gallimar!” he shouted in return, taking off his gold-bedecked cap and stumping toward the gangway where passengers were already clotting up like ants on a mango, waiting to disembark. Captain Karon slid behind the barrier and down the gangway to meet the lady on the pier. This was no doubt the lady he had mentioned to me—and to everyone—so frequently during the voyage.
She spoke clearly, making no effort to avoid being overheard. “Oh, Dear Captain Karney. Here you are again, but so late!” She tapped him on his chest with an extended forefinger, the finger bending backwards like that of an oriental dancer, flexible as cable, as she looked up at him through fringed eyelashes with an expression of admiring coquetry. “I expected you weeks ago.” Her voice lowed, like that of an amorous bovine; it sinuated like a snake—a veritable cow-python of a voice.
The captain flushed and shifted from foot to foot, as though aware of a sudden warmth in various parts of his anatomy. I wagered idly to myself that Mrs. Gallimar, with her smooth skin and her smell like a garden full of flowers, had that effect on most males. “We’re right on time,” he objected. “Not even a day late.”
“Oh, but I was so eager!” She tapped him again, smiling up at him with wide and innocent eyes. I knew those eyes. Candy had had such eyes. Such eyes made a practice both of flirtiness and of not noticing men’s response to it. It was a way of telling them not to presume upon what seemed to even the most iron-groined among them to be unmistakeably sexual signals. This contradictory manner probably left most men as it left Old Karney now, opening and closing his hands helplessly and with a distinct shortness of breath. Mrs. Gallimar was, not to be too vulgar about it, a tease. I had seen teases in the twentieth. I put my hand up to hide a knowing smile as she cooed at him. “I’m going with you when you leave!”
He was dumbfounded. His doubt showed in his face, for the lady nodded her head, slowly and emphatically, signifying that he had not misunderstood her in the slightest. “I have to go upriver, Captain. To Novabella.”
“Novabella?” He could not help his faint grimace nor I my start of slight surprise. From what I had been told, it was not a town for the likes of Mrs. Gallimar. Novabella, in the crew’s opinion, was not a town for anybody much.
“The Viceroy is sending me,” Mrs. Gallimar confessed. “It seems there’s a gallivant eating the people there, and I’m to take a provisional permit.”
“A permit?” he breathed, as though he could not believe it.
“I know it’s hard to credit, but a permit it is.” She nodded, her lips pursed in a serious and childlike expression, her eyes saying that though one could hardly believe it still it was true.
“A permit,” he said again, trying the consistency of the words to see if there was anything believeable in them. During the days of our voyage the matter of permits had come up more than once. Permits, I had been told, were mythical creatures, less common than gallivants. There were bodies
