Ocean Sea Read Free

observing him. In fact, he was talking to him.
    “Have you ever seen Bosendorf’s Circus?”
    “Pardon?”
    “I asked you if you had ever seen Bosendorf’s Circus.”
    Bartleboom sat bolt upright on the bed.
    “What do you know of Bosendorf’s Circus?”
    “Nothing. I’ve only seen it, it passed through here last year. There were the animals and everything. There was the fat lady, too.”
    Bartleboom wondered whether he ought to inquire about Aunt Adelaide. True, she had been dead for years, but this lad seemed to know a thing or two. In the end he opted to get off the bed and
walk over toward the window.
    “Do you mind? I need a little air.”
    The boy moved over a little on the windowsill. Cold air and a north wind. Ahead, stretching to infinity, the sea.
    “What do you do sitting up there all the time?”
    “I look.”
    “There’s not much to look at . . .”
    “You’re joking, aren’t you?”
    “Well, there is the sea, agreed, but then again the sea is never any different, it’s always the same, sea as far as the horizon, on a good day a ship may pass by, but it’s
nothing to go overboard about, you know.”
    The boy turned toward the sea, turned back toward Bartleboom, turned again toward the sea, and turned back again toward Bartleboom.
    “How long are you going to stay here for?” he asked him.
    “I don’t know. A few days.”
    The boy got down from the windowsill, went toward the door, and stopped on the threshold, where he lingered a moment to regard Bartleboom.
    “You’re nice. Perhaps when you leave here you’ll be a bit less of an imbecile.”
    Bartleboom felt a growing curiosity about who had brought up those children. A phenomenon, clearly.
    E VENING . The Almayer Inn. The room on the first floor, at the end of the corridor. Writing desk, oil lamp, silence. A gray dressing gown with Bartleboom
inside it. Two gray slippers with his feet inside them. A white sheet on the writing desk, a pen and an inkwell. He is writing, is Bartleboom. Writing.
    My beloved,
    I have arrived at the sea. I will spare you the trials and tribulations of the journey: what counts is that now I am here. The inn is hospitable: simple, but hospitable. It stands on the
     crest of a little hill, right in front of the beach. In the evenings the tide comes in and the water almost reaches a point below my window. It is like being on board a ship. You would like
     it
.
    I have never been on board a ship
.
    Tomorrow I shall begin my research. The place seems ideal to me. I am not unaware of the difficulties of my task, but you—you alone, in the world—know how determined I am to
     complete the work that it was my ambition to conceive and undertake one auspicious day twelve years ago. It will be of comfort to me to imagine you in health and in a cheerful state of
     mind
.
    As a matter of fact I had never thought about it before: but I really never have been on board a ship
.
    In the solitude of this place far removed from the world, I am accompanied by the certainty that you will not, far off as you are, mislay the memory of the one who loves you and will
     always remain your
    Ismael A. Ismael Bartleboom
.
    He puts down the pen, folds the sheet of paper, and slips it inside an envelope. He stands up, takes from his trunk a mahogany box, lifts up the lid, lets the letter fall inside, open and
unaddressed. In the box are hundreds of identical envelopes, open and unaddressed.
    Bartleboom is thirty-eight. He thinks that somewhere in the world he will meet a woman who has always been
his
woman. Every now and again he regrets that destiny has been so stubbornly
determined to make him wait with such indelicate tenacity, but with time he has learned to consider the matter with great serenity. Almost every day, for years now, he has taken pen in hand to
write to her. He has no names or addresses to put on the envelopes: but he has a life to recount. And to whom, if not to her? He thinks that when they meet it will be