182
PARTISAN REVIEW
into the filing cabinet of a civilized mind it was as
if
willy-nilly
he'd begun to think with the archaic mind of
his
remote ancestors
instead, and the result was alarming to a degree. More alarming still
was that with his civilized mind he had calmly taken what might
prove a threat to the whole world with far less seriousness than he
took a rumored threat to his home. Roderick saw that the tanker
had stolen silently right past the refinery without
his
noticing it:
Frere Jacques!
Frere Jacques!
Dormez-vous?
Dormez-vous?
went the engines, if you listened carefully.
And now, with an appalling chain-rattling, srmtmg and dither
of bells, hubbub of winches, submarine churning of propellers, and
orders sounding as if they were spoken half a cable's length away,
though she was two miles distant, and besides by now nearly invisible,
all these noises travelling over the water with the speed of a sling–
shot, she dropped anchor: a few final orders floated across the inlet,
then silence. Roderick stood gazing at the oil refinery, "all lit up,"
as Wilderness had put it, "like a battleship on the Admiral's birth–
day...." But if the oiltanker had seemed, for an inexplicable mo–
mene, to threaten the refinery, the refinery, with its hard brilliant
impersonal electric glitter, seemed at this instant suddenly to threaten
him. In a day of prodigies, the refinery, though as anything but an
absurd one, now also took its place in the series.
As
if he had never
seen the place before at night, or as if it had just materialized, elec–
trified with impersonal foreboding, it seemed now a sinister omen.
The light was on in
his
father-in-Iaw's house next door, and he
could see the old boat builder through the window, sitting in the
warm soft golden light of his oil lamp that cast gentle shadows over
the hammers and frows and adzes, the tools all sharp and oiled and
lovingly cared for, smoking his pipe, but with his three other pipes
ready filled for the morning beside him on the table, sitting under
the oil lamp with his spectacles on, reading the
History of the Isle
of
Man-
"The ruins are open to visitors daily, free of charge, from 9
to 7 o'clock. At the entrance, and even at the station, Italian, French,
German and English speaking guides (tariff!) press their services on
the tourists."
