of your time and you won’t regret it. The poem is called ‘Ithaka,’ but it might just as well be called ‘India.’”
He sat down close to Viva and started to read.
“As you set out for Ithaka,
Hope your road is a long one,
Full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
Angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
You’ll never find things like that on your way
As long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
As long as a rare excitement
Stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
Wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
Unless you bring them along inside your soul,
Unless your soul sets them up in front of you.”
“Sorry,” interrupted Patricia Ormsby Booth, “I don’t do poetry. What’s he on about?”
But Viva and Frank shushed her. Nigel continued:
“Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
With what pleasure, what joy,
You enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
May you stop at Phoenician trading stations
To buy fine things,
Mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
Sensual perfume of every kind—
As many sensual perfumes as you can;
And may you visit many Egyptian cities
To learn and go on learning from their scholars.”
“Did you go ashore at Egypt?” Patricia asked Tor. “The shops were—Oops! Sorry!”
“Carry on, Nigel.” Tor put her hand over Patricia’s mouth. In the silence that followed Tor heard the rush of the sea.
Nigel began again. For some odd reason he didn’t stutter when he read poetry.
“Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
So you’re old by the time you reach the island,
Wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
Not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
“And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
You’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.”
There was a silence after he’d finished. He popped the champagne cork and filled their glasses. “To marvelous journeys,” he said. “To all our Ithakas,” and Tor saw that his eyes were bright with tears.
“Bravo, Nigel,” said Viva quietly. She put her hand on his arm. “Who wrote it?”
“Cavafy.” He looked at her. “I knew you’d like it.”
“I do,” she said, and they looked straight into each other’s eyes.
“So here’s to Phoenician harbors and to Bombay.” Frank took Tor’s hand in his and made her giggle nervously.
“To fabulous journeys,” said Viva.
“And to all of you for making this one so ripping,” said Tor with such fervor that they all laughed, except Rose, who was looking pensively toward the horizon.
A little over an hour later, they put on their hats and sat in the upstairs salon, which had been made into a temporary church for the last service at sea. A Union Jack had been draped on a temporary altar, and from the windows they could see the faint blurred outlines of the coast of India.
A large, sweating woman plunged her fingers into the harmonium, and then one hundred or so voices floated out into the clear blue yonder. Tor glanced at them: the long rows of memsahibs, all dressed up today, the colonels, Jitu Singh, the missionaries, the red-faced man who was something in jute, the little children who knelt with their mothers and whose ayahs you could see outside the door in their brightly colored saris.
The hymn ended, they all knelt down, Rose, who was sitting beside her, was praying so hard her knuckles shone.
Viva walked in late with the boy. He was wearing his outsized suit and looking molelike and dazed.
Frank came late, too. He stood on the other side of the aisle from them, looking so handsome in his full uniform that Tor had to dig her nails into the palm of her hand.
Last night, she’d had a conversation with him that had hurt her very much, although he would never have known it.
They’d taken a turn together around the deck, and it had seemed so romantic with the silky breezes, the ship all lit up like some fabulous glass castle against the starlit night, that she’d thought, If he’s ever going to kiss me properly, it will be now. But instead he’d looked out in the blackness and given such a heartfelt sigh that she’d asked in what she hoped was a casual tone, “Frank, what are you going to do when you get to India? You’ve been very sphinxlike about the whole thing.”
He’d looked at her blankly. “Have