Wandering Captain

Captain's Log. 1st day of September, 1486. We took on a Genoese captain at Palma who has done well for himself. He told me that last July his lord served ice. I asked him to repeat it. He said ice. In July. At table. They cut it from a mountain in winter, packed it in straw in a cellar dug deep, and it survived until summer. Most of it did not. Enough did. I asked what it cost. He named a sum. I will not write the sum down. I did not believe it, and I do not wish to be laughed at by whoever reads this. He said the lord passed a small piece to each guest to hold. Not to use. To hold. He said a woman wept. I have been thinking about her for two days. If any man in the future reads this, here is my dream, and he may laugh at me. I think that in five hundred years a rich man might have ice in summer perhaps twice. Three times, if he is very rich, and the winter was hard, and the straw was good. It will still cost a great deal. It should. You are asking January to survive until July, and January does not want to. I do not think it will ever be common. There is no way to make cold. You can only carry it, and it dies on the way. But if I am wrong. I hope he still passes a piece to a guest sometimes. I hope somebody at that table still weeps.

Captain's Log. 5th day of November, 1486. The rains failed in the Alentejo and bread at Lisbon is three times its price. The bakers weigh it in front of you now, because people have started weighing it at home. Women stand on the quay in the mornings to watch for the Sicilian grain ships. When one comes in they do not cheer. They go quiet, and then they walk very fast. I brought wheat from Palermo last month and have never been so popular or so ashamed. A widow kissed my hand on the gangplank. I had not done anything. I had only been lucky with the wind. If any man in the future reads this, here is my dream, and he may think me soft. I have reached as far as I can. I think a wise king might one day build a granary in every province and fill it in the good years. So that in a bad year nobody in the whole kingdom starved. They would go hungry. I cannot picture them not going hungry. But nobody would starve, and the women on the quay could walk slowly. That is the most I can imagine, and it would take a better king than any I have met. But if I am wrong. If any man in the future has bread enough to leave the end of a loaf on the table and forget it. I hope that sometimes, when it is still warm, he stops. I hope he thinks it a small miracle. It is one.

Captain's Log. 4th day of November, 1486. The ship's boy went over the side at the bar of the Tagus. Of thirty men aboard, two can swim. We got him with a boathook and he will live. If the art is ever taught, one boy in each fishing town might learn it from his father. I hope he knows what it is worth.

Captain's Log. 3rd day of November, 1486. Spoiled a sheet writing this, and wrote the rest small in its margins rather than spoil another. Paper comes from Genoa and costs like it. If the mills multiply, a clerk in the future might have a quire and throw a bad page away. I hope he writes to his mother.

Captain's Log. 2nd day of November, 1486. My boatswain has carried a letter from his wife for four months and cannot read it. He knows it is from her by the seal. He would not let anyone read it to him, because then that man would know what was in it before he did. So he carried it. Tonight he came to my cabin and asked me to teach him his letters. He is forty-one. We began with the A. He held the pen like a marlinspike and pressed until the nib split, and he apologised for the nib as though it were his mother's. Of my thirty men, three can read. I am one, the cook is another, and I suspect the third is lying. If any man in the future reads this, and I suppose he must, here is my dream. I think one day every town of a good size might keep a schoolmaster. A poor one, half a priest, paid in eggs. And perhaps one boy in ten would learn his letters before he is grown, and read the whole town's letters for it, and be thanked. One in ten. That is more than there has ever been, anywhere. I do not think it can go higher. Most men have work to do, and letters do not mend a net. But if I am wrong. If any man in the future can open his wife's letter the hour it comes, and read it himself, and know before anyone. I hope he reads it slowly. I hope he reads it twice.

Captain's Log. 1st day of November, 1486. Fernao the sailmaker cannot see his stitches and pretends he can. A friar at Seville owns reading glasses, kept in velvet. If glass grows cheap, a sail loft in the future might share one pair. I hope whoever wears them looks up and sees how sharp the world is.

Captain's Log. 31st day of October, 1486. Took on one sugar loaf at Madeira, for the owner's table, not ours. The boy carrying it walks as if it were a sleeping child. If the cane spreads, a merchant in the future might have a sugar loaf at his daughter's wedding. I hope it still tastes like a wedding.

Captain's Log. 30th day of October, 1486. At Seville they let me climb the great tower beside the cathedral. There are no stairs, only a ramp that goes round and round, wide enough for a horse, because the Moors who built it rode to the top. I walked it. It took most of the morning. At the top I could see the river to the far bend, and every roof in the city, and men in the square no bigger than lice. I stood there until the sacristan coughed. I have climbed every mast I have ever owned and this was higher than all of them stacked. A gull went by beneath me. Beneath me. I have thought about it every night since. If any man in the future reads this, here is my dream, and he may laugh at me. I have tried to imagine the highest a man could ever stand. A tower twice this one, begun by a king and finished by his son. From the top a man might see ten leagues in every direction on a clear day, the sea on one side and the mountains on the other. Only the king and his guests would go up. Once in a life, perhaps. That is as high as stone can go, and as high as legs can carry a man. But if I am wrong. If any man in the future can go up above the gulls whenever he likes, and look down on the clouds from the top side. I hope he does not draw the curtain and sleep through it.

Captain's Log. 29th day of October, 1486. Shared the inn bed with a carder and a cooper, the usual number. The cooper kicks. If inns prosper, a man of middling sort in the future might have a bed to himself twice a year. I hope he does not lie awake in it wishing for a better one.

Captain's Log. 21st day of October, 1486. Paid a woman at Cadiz to heat water for a bath. It took her all afternoon and half a cart of wood. It went cold in the time it takes to say so. If wood is ever cheap, a lord in the future might bathe hot once a week. I hope he never hurries.

Captain's Log. 19th day of October, 1486. The oldest man in Sagres is called Mestre Gil and he is sixty-three. People walk over from the next village to look at him. I went too. I am not proud of it. He was sitting in his doorway mending a net, and he looked like a man mending a net, and I do not know what I had expected. I asked him the secret. He said he had never gone to sea, never gone to war, and never gone to a physician. He said the third was the most important. I asked if he was afraid of dying. He said he had been afraid at thirty, and at forty, and then all his friends died, and now he is mostly bored. I am thirty-eight. My father died at forty-four and was thought to have done well. If any man in the future reads this, here is my dream, and he may laugh at me. I have stretched it as far as it will go. I think that one day, when physicians are wiser and bread is cheap, a common man might live to fifty. Not a lord. A common man. Fifty, and nobody in his village would think it strange. And a lord, with every care that money can buy, might see seventy, and they would walk over from the next village to look at him. That is the very most. Men wear out the way rope does, and no splice holds forever. But if I am wrong. If any man in the future is given twenty years more than his father had, and thirty more than mine. I hope he does not spend them wishing he were younger. I hope he sits in a doorway sometimes, and mends something, and is not bored.

Captain's Log. 17th day of October, 1486. My sister lives three days inland at Evora. Three days each way, and a horse to feed. I have seen her twice in eleven years. If carts are ever made very fast, a man in the future might reach his sister in two days and see her every summer. I hope he goes.

Captain's Log. 16th day of October, 1486. A Valencian gave me an orange he had kept in sand since spring. I did not eat it for three days. I only smelled it. If ships grow very fast, a rich man in the future might have an orange at Christmas. I hope he does not eat it standing up.

Captain's Log. 15th day of October, 1486. I came home to Lisbon in the spring and my daughter hid behind her mother. She was three when I sailed. She is five. She did not know me, and I will be honest, I would not have known her in the street. I had been carrying a face around for two years and it was the wrong face. It belonged to a child who is gone. Her mother says this happens to every sailor, and that I should stop sulking and bring the girl a present. I did. She liked the present. She is still not sure about me. At Bruges I saw a painter who does likenesses for the merchants. Small ones, on wood, the size of a hand. He takes a month over each and charges what a good horse costs. The merchants keep them in a box and take them out on feast days. If any man in the future reads this, here is my dream, and he may laugh at me. I have tried to picture the very best that could ever be done, and this is as far as I can get. A painter so quick he could finish a likeness in a single week. So cheap that a captain of middling sort could have one made before every long voyage. A small one, on wood, to keep in his sea chest. So that a man would be wrong about his daughter's face by one voyage only, and not by her whole childhood. I know it is too much to ask. A good painter is rare and a fast one is rarer, and they are never the same man. But if I am wrong. If a man in the future can catch his child's face whenever he likes, as many times as he likes. I hope he does not spend the whole afternoon catching it. I hope he puts the thing down and looks at her.

Captain's Log. 14th day of October, 1486. My feet have been wet since Lisbon. The cobbler swore these boots keep out water. They kept it out as far as the gangplank. If a boot is ever made that stays dry a whole day, I hope the man in it thinks of his feet once, and is glad.

Captain's Log. 13th day of October, 1486. A dyer at Bruges keeps one bolt of blue behind a curtain. It costs more than my mainsail. If dyers grow clever, a merchant's wife in the future might own one blue dress, for feast days. I hope someone still stops in the street to look at it.

Captain's Log. 12th day of October, 1486. A Flemish trader came aboard at Lagos with forty bales of cloth and not one word of Portuguese. I have no Flemish. We stood on the deck for most of an hour and held up fingers at each other. He held up four. I held up two. He looked at me as if I had insulted his mother. I may have. In the end the cook was sent for, because the cook was once a prisoner at Antwerp and remembers some of it. He remembers mostly the words for bread and for being beaten. We made the bargain with those. I think I paid too much, and I think he believes he was robbed, and we parted friends as far as either of us can tell. That night I counted the men I have met in my life whose minds I never once saw into. Moors at Ceuta. Genoese. A Breton who wept on the quay at Porto about something, and I nodded, and I will never know what it was. Half the world is standing behind a wall of noise. If any man in the future reads this, I will tell him my dream, and he may think it a small one. I think one day a great king might keep a man who speaks a dozen tongues. Raised to it from a boy, schooled in every port, and paid like a bishop. He would stand at the king's elbow, and the king would understand anyone who came to court. Only a king. Only at court. The rest of us will go on holding up fingers. I do not think it can be done any other way. A tongue is learned one word at a time, by one man, over years, and then he dies and it goes with him. But if I am wrong. If any man in the future can stand on that quay and know what the Breton is weeping about. I hope he stops and listens to him.

Captain's Log. 11th day of October, 1486. Sat up keeping the galley fire alive, which is a man's entire occupation for as long as he is doing it. Let it go out and everyone eats cold. If men in the future have warmth that wants no tending, I hope they sit up with it sometimes anyway.

Captain's Log. 10th day of October, 1486. The water went green on the eleventh day, as it always does. We drink it through cloth and nobody discusses it. If men in the future can draw clean water out of a wall whenever they are thirsty, I hope one of them stops once a year and tastes what he is drinking.

Captain's Log. 9th day of October, 1486. Saw myself properly for the first time in a Venetian glass at Palma. I am a good deal older than I have been carrying myself as. I had been going on memory. If men in the future can see their own faces when they like, I hope it does not stop meaning anything.

Captain's Log. 8th day of October, 1486. Lost two days to a wind nobody saw coming. The old hands read the sky and are right perhaps half the time, which is to say they are guessing politely and I am paying for it. If men in the future are told the weather before it arrives, I hope they still look up.