Albert
J.
Guerard
THE JOURNEY
/,
Harold Marichal:
operator of the radio station (on
be–
half of an entrepreneur four thousand miles away, who has not written
I
me for months, and who may even have forgotten such a small in–
vestment as the
Agracorinth).
And virtual captain of the unmoving
ship, since its three officers keep to their beds. Resident at times of
the ship hovering offshore, at times of a villa five miles away-who
see myself at twenty-nine with the slackness of limb of a man of
I
fifty, yet possessed of hidden energies. What else shall I say? The
face is crafty, dissipated, indolent, capable of brutality and scorn.
The eyes green, the copper hair neglected and curling, the teeth
neglected too. A "sensual expression of remorseless curiosity," I once
was told. So be it. The breasts swell slightly with scant reddish hair
between, there is a roll of fat at the waist.
Details of no great relevance these, since this is the ship's story
not mine. Who knows I might have had my major place in someone
else's narrative of these events? But in these pages I merely report the
things I have seen and to some degree instigated. Still I do not like
to seem a quite bodiless voice, who in fact have my own history and
flesh, my lusts and dying aspirations, and who at least feel obligated
-yes, obligated- to comment on my times. What motives beyond
that? A delight in folly perhaps, a compulsion to evoke follies and
exhaust them: an ex-intellectual and ex-part-time writer who likes to
play games. Three evenings a month, on an average, my typewriter
stilI wildly clatters, to the alarm of those listening at my door.
But that
is
enough of myself, except to mention my genuine
affection for the ship. And that I see the
Agracorinth
hovering in
blazing waters as a "force"-female, brooding and contemplative-
