Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco Read Free Book Online Page B

collective fantasy where the clear gaze of the explorer and the haunted look of the shipwrecked produced images that were sometimes identical, and tales that were illogically complimentary. He
lived among marvels. For this reason a preestablished and maniacal order reigned in his house while his life flowed along in accordance with an immutable geometry of habits that came close to the
holiness of a liturgy. He defended himself, did Langlais. He bound up his own existence with a web of extremely elaborate rules capable of cushioning the dizzying effects of the images to which,
every day, he opened his mind. The hyperboles that reached him from all the seas of the world subsided against the meticulous dike delineated by those minute certainties. One step farther on, the
placid lake that was Langlais’s wisdom awaited them. Still and just.
    From the open window there came the rhythmic sound of the gardener’s shears as he pruned the roses with the certainty of Justice intent on handing down redeeming verdicts. A sound like any
other. But that day, and in Admiral Langlais’s head, that sound communicated a decidedly precise message. Patient and obstinate—too close to the window to be accidental—in it
could be heard the memory of a commitment. Langlais would have preferred not to listen to it. But he was a man of honor. And so he laid aside the pages that told of islands, wrecks, and
butterflies, opened a drawer, took out three sealed letters and placed them on the desk. They came from three different places. Although they bore the distinguishing marks of urgent confidential
correspondence, Langlais, out of baseness, had let them lie for several days in a place where he could not even see them. But now he opened them with a crisp, formal gesture, and forbidding himself
any hesitation, he set to reading them. On a leaf of paper he noted down some names, a date. He tried to do everything with the impersonal neutrality of a royal accountant. The last note he took
read
    The Almayer Inn, Quartel
    Finally he picked up the letters and got up and went to the fireplace, where he threw them into the prudent flames that kept watch over the indolent spring of those days. While
he was watching the fire crumple the affected elegance of those missives that he had never wished to read, he distinctly perceived a sudden and thankful silence from the open window. The shears,
until then as tireless as the hands of a watch, had fallen silent. Only after a little did the gardener’s footsteps engrave themselves in the silence as he moved away. There was something
precise about that departure that would have amazed anyone. But not Langlais. He knew. Mysterious for anyone else, the relationship that linked those two men—an admiral and a
gardener—no longer held any secrets for them. The custom of a familiarity made up of many silences and private signals had guarded their singular alliance for years.
    There are many stories. That one came from long before.
    O NE DAY , six years previously, they had brought into the presence of Admiral Langlais a man who, they said, was named Adams. Tall, robust, long hair
hanging down to his shoulders, skin burned by the sun. He might have seemed a seaman like so many others. But they had to hold him up; he was unable to walk. A disgusting ulcerated wound marked his
neck. He remained absurdly motionless, as if paralyzed, absent. The only thing that suggested some vestiges of awareness was his gaze. It looked like the gaze of a dying animal.
    He has the look of an animal stalking its prey, thought Langlais.
    They said that they had found him in a village in the heart of Africa. There were also other white men down there: slaves. But he was something different. He was the tribal chieftain’s
favorite animal. He would stand on all fours, grotesquely decorated with feathers and colored stones, tied by a rope to the king’s throne. He would eat the scraps that the king threw to him.
His body was