Four

Thomas cured the bladder, after a fashion, the next day by washing it, rubbing into it with some salt he had taken from the kitchen, and urinating on it, then leaving it for a few days, after which he washed it, thoroughly sealed off all but one opening, and poured some of his precious wine into it, which was to be sacrificed.

After dumping out the wine and rinsing the bladder thoroughly once again, he had his little bag, which he partially filled with wine and fixed under his cloak. He did not fill it full, so that it would lie flat and could be concealed by the cloak. The first day he wore it, he was convinced that at least Samuel would spot it, because he could not resist putting his hand over it. Samuel did ask what he was doing, and he said, "I have a stitch in my side," which seemed to satisfy him.

It was, of course, difficult if not impossible to take a drink while he was in the boat with Samuel, even when he was in the bow and Samuel facing the other way at the oars, because one never knew when he would turn to see where they were headed or to ask Thomas a question. He did manage a swallow every now and then, but was so nervous at it that he rocked the boat, which made Samuel turn around and ask what was wrong. The stitch in the side came to his rescue once more.

As time went on, Thomas began to discover when he could take a drink, and also to learn that it began to be more and more imperative that the drink be available. He needed the relaxed feeling and the warmth to keep going, it seemed. When the feeling wore off, he became irritable and nervous, and was apt to quarrel with Samuel for no real reason--which made their partnership difficult, until Thomas established a routine that kept him slightly under the wine's influence, but not so much as to be called "drunk."

But because of his having to be careful, he became more and more annoyed at having Samuel by his side so often, and the feeling that he was more than simply one of a pair, but an individual in his own right, grew increasingly stronger. He was living a hidden life that Samuel knew nothing of (though it became more and more evident that Samuel suspected that something, he knew not what, was going on), and Samuel became more to Thomas like the person reflected back out of the surface of the water or out of his mother's precious glass--an image of himself, but something unreal in itself.

But Samuel was real enough, and Thomas had to continue to be very careful, even though he was rapidly growing taller, if not heavier, than his father, and was, after all, an adult and not someone his father could easily punish. He had no wish to test this, however, remembering the terror he felt even more than the pain when his father had silently whipped him with the switch he had cut in the woods.

At any rate, he often longed to be free of Samuel; but when the thought occurred to him consciously, he cut it off, asking himself what kind of barbarian he was, and remembering how he had felt when Samuel had had scarlet fever when they were children. But the thought would lie there, just below his consciousness, ready to spring out whenever he was not watching. It was something else he had to be careful about.

The two were doing rather well as they progressed through their teen years, and once or twice their father praised them for work well done. Samuel glowed from it, and Thomas felt relieved that his "condition" had not done any damage. He had been careful.

The arrangement he had with Nathanael turned out to be, as a whole, eminently satisfactory. When Thomas needed another wineskin, Nathanael would oblige, only occasionally warning him that his purchases were becoming more frequent, after which Thomas would cut back. Nathanael, thus, and, in his own way Samuel, served as his brakes, because once or twice Samuel had voiced suspicions of how he was becoming clumsy and less observant, and Thomas realized that the wine was becoming too potent a force within him--though he longed to enjoy the feeling more strongly, which made him chafe the more at Samuel's presence--even though he would not really be able to fish and manage the boat by himself.

But though Nathanael did not really approve of what he was doing, he did not preach, and, even if somewhat reluctantly, cooperated with the scheme. Philip still believed that it was Nathanael who drank the wine and did not want his parents to know; and so Philip never mentioned the purchases to Thomas, because he thought Thomas knew nothing about them. Whether he remonstrated with Nathanael, even as mildly as Nathanael did with Thomas, Thomas never found out, because taciturn Nathanael said not a word on the subject.

One day, Thomas, who now habitually stayed behind to talk to Nathanael (leaving Samuel, resigned to the friendship, to precede him home alone), contemplated Nathanael reading a scroll, as was his wont more and more frequently, and on an impulse, asked him, "Is it hard to learn to read?"

"Not very," answered Nathanael. "Hebrew is much easier than Egyptian, for instance, for the Hebrew letters stand for the sounds of the words, not the whole word, as the Egyptian characters do, they tell me."

"Show me."

"Well, here is an easy word. This is a daleth, which is a 'duh,' and this is a vav, or a 'vuh' and then another daleth. 'Duh, vuh, duh.' What do you suppose that word is? Say it quietly to yourself. You have to add the open sounds in between."

"Open sounds?"

"Things like 'ah' and 'eh' and 'ih.'"

"I do not understand."

"Well, in my name there is 'nuh,' and then 'ah,' which is an open sound, and then 'thuh' and then another open 'ah' and another 'nuh' and an open 'ah' and then an open 'eh' and then a 'luh' 'N-a-th-a-n-a-e-l.'"

"Oh."

"And of course, 'oh' is an open sound. You say it with your mouth open. The only sounds that have letters are the other ones, where your mouth is closed. And so 'd-v-d' would be what?"

Thomas made a few attempts at saying the consonants over to himself, and said again, "I do not understand."

"Let me give you a hint. "Dav-d"

"You mean "David?"

"You see? I am reading about David and Bathsheba."

"Teach me how to read."

"You are serious?"

"Quite serious. I wish to learn to read."

"So the secret drinker is going to become the secret scholar."

"There need be nothing secret about this. It would help in our business if one of us could read. My father makes attempts at it, but is not very good."

"And it would also help, I suspect, in getting oneself out of the business."

This hit a little too close to home, and Thomas squirmed and said, "Will you teach me to read, or not?"

"Let me think on it. It might be amusing. --If you are intelligent, as you seem to be. If not, it sounds like work, and so far I have avoided all contact with work."

"Try me."

Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas noticed Ezra coming a bit closer, paying careful attention.

"Well, if I decide to do so, I will be here tomorrow with a small wax tablet for you, with the alphabet on it. I will tell you the names of the letters and what sounds they make, and you are to memorize them, and then we will see whether it is worth while to continue."

Thomas went home elated. He was sure he could learn to read easily; even his father could read to some extent, and he was convinced in his heart of hearts (as were all adolescents) that he was brighter than his father (which in his case was true). He kept silent about his plans that night, however, since he was not certain that Nathanael would undertake the task of teaching him; he would have to be very sharp indeed, or Nathanael, he was convinced, would give up at the least sign of "work."

The next evening, there was Nathanael with the tablet, and he very carefully went over letter by letter, pronouncing the name of each one and its sound, making Thomas repeat what he said after him. As he did so, Thomas was half-facing Nathanael, and half-facing the tablet which Nathanael showed him. And behind Nathanael, out of his sight, was Ezra, imitating Thomas to himself.

At one point, Thomas shyly glanced his way, and was greeted with a startled, almost guilty look from Ezra, followed by a dazzling display of his white teeth, which disappeared in an instant, as he put a finger in front of his lips.

That night, when Thomas carried home his tablet, saying the alphabet over and over to himself, marveling at the subtle differences between the letters and the music of the sounds they made, convinced that he would have it perfect by the morrow, he showed what Nathanael had given him to his brother and parents, who, after their first surprise (and Samuel's initial scoffing) expressed themselves contented with his project, seeing benefit to the family from it.

"You see?" said Thomas to Samuel. "I told you that it would be useful to know someone like Nathanael."

"Oh, of a certainty," said Samuel, full of irony. "Some day he will rescue you from the depths and start you on a life of greatness!"

"One never knows. One never knows."

"Must you two always be picking on each other?" said his mother. "I never heard of twins that looked so alike and were so opposite!" She was actually bursting with pride at Thomas, and saw what Thomas did not, that Samuel was jealous.

In any case, the result was that Thomas, who was indeed very intelligent and quick to learn, spent two or three hours of his evenings after he came home with lessons from Nathanael (which Philip also attended in a desultory way) poring over them. Ezra continued surreptitiously to learn along with them. He never looked at Thomas again, or gave any sign that he was doing anything but waiting for his master's commands. Presumably he studied by himself when he was alone.

As time went on, Thomas would bring home a scroll that Nathanael had lent him, and begin reading real books, not simply exercises that Nathanael wrote on his tablet.

He was startled one day when Philip told him that Greek used entirely different letters, "And they write backwards!" he exclaimed. "And Latin is the same! I see what they are doing in my father's shop. He wishes me to learn Greek and Latin also."

"How will you do that?"

"Oh, he has hired a tutor for me. --Why do you nod thus when you speak?"

"Nod?"

"When you speak, you nod your head. For instance, when you just said "that," you nodded, and with your huge nose, it looked as if you were trying to chop at me."

Thomas's face burned scarlet. Much earlier, he had learned to imitate someone he saw, who nodded for emphasis when he spoke, and seemed to carry his points across better than others. But he had no idea that his nose was anything special, let alone that it made him look as if he was using his head as an axe. He turned aside without a word and went home. Philip was occasionally too naive for his taste; anyone older than five years must have realized that one simply did not make such personal remarks.

He tried for a few days to break himself of this habit, but it had become too ingrained, and he found himself too constrained by the effort. Eventually, he decided that everyone had his own idiosyncrasies, and if his annoyed others, they would simply have to put up with them or not associate with him--as he had to do with everyone else he met.

But what Philip said about Greek and Latin whetted Thomas's appetite, though it rather daunted him. He knew that the Greeks and Romans spoke whole different languages--how could one not know, with the Romans occupying the country, and speaking Latin among themselves and Greek to their subjects, never stooping to Hebrew? Thomas resolved that after he had mastered reading Hebrew, he would undertake Greek and Latin if he could, somehow. Nathanael, however, demurred at teaching a whole new language to him (and truth be told, Nathanael knew little enough of either of the foreign tongues), and so that was to be at some time in the future. It was out of the question that Philip would be his teacher, since from what he said from time to time, he was making rather heavy weather of his studies.

All this while, the wineskins were spreading their warmth and relaxation over Thomas, apparently not hindering much either his fishing or his studies.

And thus things passed for two or three years, with Thomas learning more and more and gradually weaning himself away from Nathanael's instruction and using him only as a kind of library, supplying books, and Samuel resigned to a brother who was drawing farther and farther away from him, and for some reason, at least while they fished, mildly befuddled most of the time.

But then things changed one rainy day when both returned home thoroughly soaked, and with meager results. They had hoped that the weather would have made for a larger catch of fish, but apparently the fish thought as little of it as they did, and sought out the depths below which their nets could not reach. Nathanael was, of course, not there, since he had as much of an aversion to bad weather as to work; so both went home together, eager to get out of their sopping clothes and close to the warmth of the hearth.

That night, when they had washed and changed their clothes and put the wet cloaks and tunics to dry by the fire, Thomas was so exhausted that he went right to bed, skipping his nightly reading, and even forgetting to take away his wine bladder, and so it spent the night covered by the cloak, baking by the fire as the cloak dried.

In the morning, as Thomas put his cloak on once again, he saw the bladder, which seemed much emptier than it had been. He almost panicked, thinking that Samuel or his parents had discovered it, and taken wine from it. But immediately he realized that this was absurd. If they had found it, there would have been a confrontation, not surreptitious thievery of the contents.

He did not know what to make of it, and when he went out in the morning to relieve himself, he opened the bladder, and noticed a different, and much more pungent, odor.

He poured out a few drops of a brownish liquid into his hand. Had someone replaced the wine? But with what? He poured a bit more our into his palm, and licked it up.

And his eyes widened. It was the very essence of wine! If wine went down his throat with warmth, this was fire! It was an explosion in his mouth and throat that almost choked him, and gave promise of straightway spreading right through his whole frame. He took a tentative swallow from the bladder, and immediately realized that a very small amount was enough; any more, and he might be as he had been on that day when he was eight years old.

As he walked--a bit less steadily than he would have liked--with Samuel to the boat that morning, he made non-committal remarks in answer to Samuel's usual chatter, pondering what must have happened. He must have cooked the wine somehow, leaving the bladder by the fire all night. That was why there was so much less in it; it had become concentrated, somehow.

He had not heard of anyone saying anything about ordinary wineskins that for some reason had been heated; it must be connected with the fact that this "skin" was not a skin at all, but a bladder.

". . . did you not?" asked Samuel.

"I am sorry. I was not attending," answered Thomas.

"What is the matter with you today? You are off in Greece or somewhere."

"It is nothing. I was pondering something that I had read yesterday." That should shut down the investigation, thought Thomas.

"You read too much. For all the good it does us."

"One never knows. Did you know that the Greeks and Romans write backwards?"

"Backwards, forwards. They could write upside down for all I care. But it is like them, I suppose, to be backward."

"Of course, Philip says that they think that we write backwards."

"You see? That is what comes of doing things like writing."

He obviously intended that to put an end to the conversation, and succeeded admirably. What could Thomas reply? They walked on in silence and then busied themselves with making the boat ready for the day's work, Thomas relieved that Samuel had not remarked that he was a little less sure of his actions than he had been. If he had had to be careful previously, he would have to be doubly watchful now.

But the discovery was too glorious not to pursue. He would have to add wine to the bladder tonight and find some way to hide it next to the fire, and see what happened the next day. It was a fine day today, though a little cold, and he would have no excuse for putting his cloak next to the fire.

--Unless, of course, he "accidentally" got it wet. He habitually stripped off everything as the day wore on and he began to sweat as he threw out the net and he and Samuel hauled it in; it was easy enough, but after a few hours of it, especially if, as now, the catch was abundant, it became back-breaking.

This day, as he took off the cloak, he laid in over the gunwale, and in the course of casting the net, hit it with his foot and knocked it into the lake. Silently (everything was done in silence for fear of scaring the fish) he reached out with the hand that did not hold the net and grasped the sodden cloak (which still held the bladder fastened to it) and dragged it aboard. Samuel looked round at him with disgust, but shipped the oars when Thomas signaled that he had a large catch and helped him haul the net in and remove the fish from it.

"How could you have put your cloak there?" Samuel whispered. "You must have known that it would surely fall in!"

"I was not thinking."

"You were still pondering your reading, I suppose."

"Well, no harm was done."

"I hope for your sake that it will not be cold when we go home; it is too wet for the sun to dry it here, especially with all the wet of the fish splashing about."

"Have no fear. I will manage."

It was fairly cold that evening, made a good deal chillier by the damp cloak Thomas carried over his arm as they made their way home after emptying their rather sizeable catch into their father's pails. (Thomas was happy to see that their take was perhaps even a bit larger today that his father's, who had decided to try a new part of the "sea.") But Thomas's goal had been accomplished. He went to the hollow tree on the way home, using the excuse that he had to relieve himself, and filled the bladder almost full from the wineskin hidden there, and then took the cloak back and hung it next to the fire, where it had been the previous night. Now he would see if what he surmised would come to pass.

And come to pass it did. The bladder, he noticed in the morning, was only half full, and it was half full of the magic liquid. Thomas drank a very small amount that morning and felt it spread joy all through his body. The desire to drink more was almost overwhelming, but Thomas restrained himself by telling himself that if his father ever found out, the punishment he had received would be nothing in comparison to what he would get now.