43
cork, their rich cargo as useless to life as their prayers. The sun came up the next
day and shone on the wreck of the ship.
England was a maritime nation, and powerful business interests in London,
Liverpool and Bristol demanded that a lighthouse be built here. But the cost and
the scale were enormous. To protect the Turning Point, a light needed to be built at
Cape Wrath. Cape Wrath. Position on the nautical chart, 58° 37.5° N, 5°W. Look
at it - the headland is 368 feet high, wild, grand, impossible. Home to gulls and
dreams.
There was a man called Josiah Dark - here he is - a Bristol merchant of
money and fame. Dark was a small, active, peppery man, who had never visited
Salts in his life, and on the day that he did he vowed never to return. He preferred
the coffee-houses and conversation of easy, wealthy Bristol. But Salts was the
place that would provide the food and the fuel for the lighthousekeeper and his
family, and Salts would have to provide the labour to build it.
So with much complaining and more reluctance, Dark bedded for a week at
the only inn, The Razorbill. It was an uncomfortable place; the wind screeched at
the windows, a hammock was half the price of a bed, and a bed was twice the price
of a good night's sleep. The food was mountain mutton that tasted like fencing, or
hen tough as a carpet, that came flying in, all a-squawk behind the cook, who
smartly broke its neck.
Every morning Josiah drank his beer, for they had no coffee in this wild
place, and then he wrapped himself tight as a secret, and went up onto Cape Wrath.
Kittiwakes, guillemots, fulmars and puffins covered the headland, and the Clo Mor
cliffs beyond. He thought of his ship, the proud vessel sinking under the black sea,
and he remembered again that he had no heir. He and his wife had produced no
children and the doctors regretted they never would. But he longed for a son, as he
had once longed to be rich. Why was money worth everything when you had none
of it, and nothing when you had too much?
So, the story begins in 1802, or does it really begin in 1789, when a young
man, as fiery as he was small, smuggled muskets across the Bristol Channel to
44
Lundy Island, where supporters of the Revolution in France could collect them. He
had believed in it all, somewhere he did still, but his idealism had made him rich,
which was not what he intended. He had intended to escape to France with his
mistress and live in the new free republic. They would be rich because everyone in
France was going to be rich.
When the slaughtering started, he was sickened. He was not timid of war,
but the tall talk and the high hearts had not been for this, this roaring sea of blood.
To escape his own feelings, he joined a ship bound for the West Indies and
returned with a 10% share in the treasure. After that, everything he did increased
his wealth. Now he had the best house in Bristol and a lovely wife and no children.
As he stood still as a stone pillar, an immense black gull landed on his
shoulder, its feet gripping his wool coat. The man dared not move. He thought,
wildly, that the bird would carry him off like the legend of the eagle and child.
Suddenly, the bird spread its huge wings and flew straight out over the sea, its feet
pointed behind it.
When the man got to the inn, he was very quiet at his dinner, so much so
that the wife of the establishment began to question him. He told her about the
bird, and she said to him, 'The bird is an omen. You must build your lighthouse
here as other men would build a church.'
But first there was the Act of Parliament to be got, then his wife died, then
he took sail for two years to repair his heart, then he met a young woman and loved
her, and so much time passed that it was twenty-six years before the stones were
laid and done.
The lighthouse was completed in 1828, the same year as Josiah Dark's
second wife gave birth to their first child. Well, to tell you the truth, it was the
same day. The white tower of hand-dressed stone and granite was 66 feet tall, and
523 feet above the sea at Cape Wrath. It had cost £14,000. 'To my son!' said Josiah
Dark, as the light was lit for the first time, and at that moment Mrs Dark, down in
Bristol, felt her waters break, and out rushed a blue boy with eyes as black as a
45
gull. They called him Babel, after the first tower that ever was, though some said it
was a strange name for a child.
The Pews have been lighthousekeepers at Cape Wrath since the day of the
birth. The job was passed down generation to generation, though the present Mr
Pew has the look of being there forever. He is as old as a unicorn, and people are
frightened of him because he isn't like them. Like and like go together. Likeness is
liking, whatever they say about opposites. But some people are different, that's all.
I look like my dog. I have a pointy nose and curly hair. My front legs - that
is, my arms, are shorter than my back legs - that is, my legs, which makes
symmetry with my dog, who is just the same, but the other way round.
His name's Dogjim. I put up a photo of him next to mine on the notice
board, and I hid behind a bush while they all came by and read our particulars.
They were all sorry, but they all shook their heads and said, 'Well, what could we
do with her?' It seemed that nobody could think of a use for me, and when I went
back to the notice board to add something encouraging, I found I couldn't think of
a use for myself. Feeling dejected, I took the dog and went walking, walking,
walking along the cliff headland towards the lighthouse.
Miss Pinch was a great one for geography – even though she had never left
Salts in her whole life. The way she described the world, you wouldn't want to visit
it anyway. I recited to myself what she had taught us about the Atlantic Ocean...
The Atlantic is a dangerous and unpredictable ocean. It is the second
largest ocean in the world, extending in an S shape from the Arctic to the Antarctic
regions, bounded by North and South America in the West, and Europe and Africa
in the East. The North Atlantic is divided from the South Atlantic by the equatorial
counter-current. At the Grand Bank off Newfoundland, heavy fogs form where the
warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current. In the North Western Ocean,
icebergs are a threat from May to December. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Threat.
The world according to Miss Pinch.
But, on the coasts and outcrops of this treacherous ocean, a string of lights
was built over 300 years. Look at this one. Made of granite, as hard and
46
unchanging as the sea is fluid and volatile. The sea moves constantly, the
lighthouse, never. There is no sway, no rocking, none of the motion of ships and
ocean.
Pew was staring out of the rain-battered glass; a silent taciturn clamp of a man.
Some days later, as we were eating breakfast in Railings Row - me, toast
without butter, Miss Pinch, kippers and tea - Miss Pinch told me to wash and dress
quickly and be ready with all my things.
'Am I going home?'
'Of course not - you have no home.'
'But I'm not staying here?'
'No. My house is not suitable for children.'
You had to respect Miss Pinch - she never lied.
'Then what is going to happen to me?'
'Mr Pew has put in a proposal. He will apprentice you to lighthousekeeping.'
'What will I have to do?'
'I have no idea.'
'If I don't like it, can I come back?'
'No.'
'Can I take Dogjim?'
'Yes.'
She hated saying yes. She was of those people for whom yes is always an
admission of guilt or failure. No was power.
A few hours later, I was standing on the windblown jetty, waiting for Pew
to collect me in his patched and tarred mackerel boat. I had never been inside the
lighthouse before, and I had only seen Pew when he stumped up the path to collect
his supplies. The town didn't have much to do with the lighthouse any more. Salts
was no longer a seaman's port, with ships and sailors docking for fire and food and
company. Salts had become a hollow town, its life scraped out. It had its rituals
and its customs and its past, but nothing left in it was alive. Years ago, Charles
47
Darwin had called it Fossil-Town, but for different reasons. Fossil it was, salted
and preserved by the sea that had destroyed it too.
Pew came near in his boat. His shapeless hat was pulled over his face. His
mouth was a slot of teeth. His hands were bare and purple. Nothing else could be
seen. He was the rough shape of human.
Dogjim growled. Pew grabbed him by the scruff and threw him into the
boat, then he motioned for me to throw in my bag and follow. The little outboard
motor bounced us over the green waves. Behind me, smaller and smaller, was my
tipped-up house that had flung us out, my mother and I, perhaps because we were
never wanted there. I couldn't go back. There was only forward, northwards into
the sea. To the lighthouse.
Pew and I climbed slowly up the spiral stairs to our quarters below the
Light. Nothing about the lighthouse had been changed since the day it was built.
There were candleholders in every room, and the Bibles put there by Josiah Dark. I
was given a tiny room with a tiny window, and a bed the size of a drawer. As I was
not much longer than my socks, this didn't matter. Dogjim would have to sleep
where he could. Above me was the kitchen where Pew cooked sausages on an open
cast-iron stove. Above the kitchen was the light itself, a great glass eye with a
Cyclops stare.
Our business was light, but we lived in darkness. The light had to be kept
going, but there was no need to illuminate the rest. Darkness came with everything.
It was standard. My clothes were trimmed with dark. When I put on a sou'wester,
the brim left a dark shadow over my face. When I stood to bathe in the little
galvanised cubicle Pew had rigged for me, I soaped my body in darkness. Put your
hand in a drawer, and it was darkness you felt first, as you fumbled for a spoon. Go
to the cupboards to find the tea caddy of Full Strength Samson, and the hole was as
black as the tea itself. The darkness had to be brushed away or parted before we
could sit down. Darkness squatted on the chairs and hung like a curtain across the
stairway. Sometimes it took on the shapes of the things we wanted: a pan, a bed, a
book. Sometimes I saw my mother, dark and silent, falling towards me. Darkness
48
was a presence. I learned to see in it, I learned to see through it, and I learned to
see the darkness of my own.
Pew did not speak. I didn't know if he was kind or unkind, or what he
intended to do with me. He had lived alone all his life. That first night, Pew cooked
the sausages in darkness. No, Pew cooked the sausages with darkness. It was the
kind of dark you can taste. That's what we ate: sausages and darkness.
I was cold and tired and my neck ached. I wanted to sleep and sleep and
never wake up. I had lost the few things I knew, and what was here belonged to
somebody else. Perhaps that would have been all right if what was inside me was
my own, but there was no place to anchor. There were two Atlantics; one outside
the lighthouse, and one inside me. The one inside me had no string of guiding
lights.
A beginning, a middle and an end is the proper way to tell a story. But I
have difficulty with that method. Already I could choose the year of my birth -
1959. Or I could choose the year of the lighthouse at Cape Wrath, and the birth of
Babel Dark - 1828. Then there was the year Josiah Dark first visited Salts - 1802.
Or the year Josiah Dark shipped firearms to Lundy Island -1789. And what about
the year I went to live in the lighthouse - 1969, also the year that Apollo landed on
the moon? I have a lot of sympathy with that date because it felt like my own moon
landing; this unknown barren rock that shines at night. There's a man on the moon.
There's a baby on earth. Every baby plants a flag here for the first time.
So there's my flag - 1959, the day gravity sucked me out of the mother-
ship. My mother had been in labour for eight hours, legs apart in the air, like she
was skiing through time. I had been drifting through the unmarked months, turning
slowly in my weightless world. It was the light that woke me; light very different
to the soft silver and nightred I knew. The light called me out -1 remember it as a
cry, though you will say that was mine, and perhaps it was, because a baby knows
no separation between itself and life. The light was life. And what light is to plants
and rivers and animals and seasons and the turning earth, the light was to me.
49
When we buried my mother, some of the light went out of me, and it
seemed proper that I should go and live in a place where all the light shone
outwards and none of it was there for us. Pew was blind, so it didn't matter to him.
I was lost, so it didn't matter to me.
Where to begin? Difficult at the best of times, harder when you have to
begin again. Close your eyes and pick another date: 1 February 1811. This was the
day when a young engineer called Robert Stevenson completed work on the
lighthouse at Bell Rock. This was more than the start of a lighthouse; it was the
beginning of a dynasty. For 'lighthouse' read 'Stevenson'. They built scores of them
until 1934 and the whole family was involved, brothers, sons, nephews, cousins.
When one retired, another was immediately appointed. They were the Borgias of
lighthousekeeping.
When Josiah Dark went to Salts in 1802, he had a dream but no one to
build it. Stevenson was still an apprentice - lobbying, passionate, but without any
power and with no record of success. He started out on Bell Rock as an assistant,
and gradually took over the project that was hailed as one of the 'modern wonders
of the world'. After that, everybody wanted him to build their lighthouses, even
where there was no sea. He became fashionable and famous. It helps. Josiah Dark
had found his man. Robert Stevenson would build Cape Wrath.
There are twists and turns in any life, and though all of the Stevensons should have
built lighthouses, one escaped, and that was the one who was born at the moment
Josiah Dark's son, Babel, made a strange reverse pilgrimage and became Minister
of Salts.
1850 - Babel Dark arrives in Salts for the first time. 1850 - Robert Louis
Stevenson is born into a family of prosperous civil engineers - so say the innocent
annotated biographical details – and goes on to write Treasure Island, Kidnapped,
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
The Stevensons and the Darks were almost related, in fact they were related, not
through blood but through the restless longing that marks some individuals from
others. And they were related because of a building. Robert Louis came here, as he
50
came to all his family lighthouses. He once said, 'Whenever I smell salt water, I
know I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors.'
51
2.2. Перевод отрывка из книги Дженет Уинтерсон «Жизнь на маяке».
Жизнь на маяке
Дженет Уинтерсон
Посвящается Деборе Уорнер
"Помни, ты должна умереть"
Мюриел Спарк
"Помни, ты должна жить"
Али Смит
Две Атлантики
Мама назвала меня Сильвер. Я родилась наполовину драгоценной,
наполовину - пиратом. У меня нет папы. В этом нет ничего необычного -
даже дети, у которых есть папы, часто удивляются встрече с ними. Мой папа
пришел из моря и ушел туда же. Он работал на рыболовной лодке,
пришвартовавшейся у нас однажды ночью, когда волны разбивались о берег,
словно черное стекло. У его причалившей лодки с разбитым корпусом было
достаточно времени, чтобы забросить якорь в мою маму. Косяк младенцев
состязался за жизнь. Я победила.
Я жила в доме, прочно стоявшем на крутом склоне. Стулья пришлось
прибить к полу, и невозможно было есть спагетти. Мы ели то, что прилипало
к тарелке - пастуший пирог, гуляш, ризотто и яичницу-болтунью. Однажды
попробовали горошек - это была катастрофа. Иногда мы до сих пор находим
зеленые горошинки в пыльных углах комнаты.
Кто-то вырос на холме, кто-то - в низине. Многие из нас росли на
равнине. Однако я родилась под наклоном - вот с тех пор так и живу. На ночь
мама укутывала меня в гамак, крест-накрест подвешенный против наклона.
В спокойные ночи мне снилось место, в котором бы не нужно было бороться
с гравитацией из-за веса собственного тела. Мы с мамой были похожи на
пару скалолазов - приходилось привязывать себя веревкой друг другу, чтобы
52
добраться до входной двери. Стоило один раз поскользнуться - мы бы
лежали на рельсах рядом с кроликами.
«Ты не из тех, кто любит общаться», - говорила мне мама, хотя,
вероятно, дело тут по большей части заключалось в том, что бывать в
обществе требовало усилий. У всех других детей перед выходом из дома
обычно спрашивают: «Ты взял перчатки?» У меня же спрашивали: «Ты все
ремни на страховке застегнула?»
Почему мы не переехали? Мама была единственным родителем, и
родила меня, не будучи замужем. На двери не было замка, когда отец
пришел встретиться с ней. В итоге ее отправили жить на холм, подальше от
города, на который она теперь смотрела сверху вниз. Солтс. Мой родной
город. Побитая волнами и скалами, окаймленная песком ракушка города. Да,
и маяк.
Говорят, что посмотрев на тело человека, можно что-то сказать о его
жизни. По моему псу отчетливо видно, что это правда. Его задние лапы
короче, чем передние, потому что задними он всегда упирается, а передними
- отталкивается. По ровной дороге он идет вприпрыжку и из-за этого
кажется более веселым. Он понятия не имеет, что у других собак все лапы
одинаковой длины. Если он и умеет думать, то думает, что все собаки такие
же, как он, потому не страдает от болезненного самоанализа людей, которым
свойственно замечать любое отклонение от нормы, испытывая страх перед
ним или желая наказать. «Ты не такая как другие дети, - утверждала мама. -
И если не можешь выжить в этом мире, лучше создай свой».
Те странности, которые она приписывала мне, на самом деле
принадлежали ей. Это она ненавидела общаться с другими людьми. Она не
могла жить в том мире, в котором родилась. Она хотела, чтобы я была
свободной, но делала все лишь бы этого избежать. Мы были привязаны друг
к другу, нравилось нам это или нет. Мы карабкались вместе. Но однажды она
упала.