No One's Nameless
Written for Waen.
I lay in bed that evening, studying charts. I recall it quite well. We were pursuing M to what Sawyer insisted on calling his "summer retreat". Of course, the Nautilus was making good time (my Nautilus, one of the few things I am proud of, is always loyal and always quick), but there was an enormous amount of work to be done, and I was trying to do some of it, at least.
Henry was sitting on my feet.
He does that.
I am, you will understand, exceedingly fond of Henry, but he does like to sit on my feet while he reads. Fortunately he is frail enough that this is no more than mildly crushing.
I was absorbed in studying the path that we were to be taking through the ocean when suddenly I felt a shifting from the foot of the bed. Henry was pushing himself up on his forearms and looking in my direction. He caught my eyes, and I noticed a peculiar expression in his.
I knew that expression. He was about to ask a question.
I am not fond of questions.
"Nemo," he said softly.
"Yes?" I asked. I am afraid now that I was sharper than events warranted, but I do not like questions, as I have said.
"Nemo, what is your name?"
Henry has, you will understand, a very disarming gaze. He seems to me to be very childlike in quite a few ways, and having innocent eyes is one of those ways. At any rate, he was still looking at me intently and expectantly, and I wondered--because of his eyes, I believe--if I should tell him.
I decided that would be imprudent.
"Nemo," I answered.
"It is not," he said reproachfully. "You aren't no one. Please tell me."
He was wearing that silly black jacket with the tails (I once offered him some clothes of mine, but he refused them) and his high, starched collar, and this made him look very serious. As I have said, Henry seems childlike at times, but, you know, he is really much too serious for a child.
"I don't have a name," I told him.
"Of course you have a name. Hyde has a name, for God's sake." He moved, and his elbow began spearing my ankle.
I regret to say that this made me very irritable. "This is a foolish discussion," I said sharply, "and I do not wish to continue it. My name is Nemo."
"Please!" And then at once he became matter-of-fact. "I just want to know what it is. Don't you trust me? It's not as though I'd tell anyone if you didn't want it known."
I looked at him coldly. "That's quite enough. My name is Nemo, Dr. Jekyll, and I shall be obliged if that's what you call me."
Henry got off my feet. I remember this part most clearly of all, perhaps because now my mind was no longer engaged with the uncomfortable pain in my right ankle. He stretched out beside me on the bed, looking at the charts I had been reading. Now, I think this odd--I knew he was frail (I mentioned it previously, as you will recall) but I really did not realise quite how much. When I saw him lying beside me, I realised Henry was one of the slightest persons I had ever seen.
Oh! he looked small then, and sad. I knew he was a sombre man, but he looked so tired. I recalled the time I bore the Frenchman, his servant, and the Canadian on the Nautilus, and Henry seemed as though he were at once both serious Aronnax and weary, lonely Ned Land, wanting the sky.
"Dakkar."
"What did you say?" he asked me.
"My name, Dr. Jekyll, is Dakkar."
Henry took my darkish-skinned hand in his small, white one and pressed it affectionately. "You really ought to call me Henry, and not Dr. Jekyll."
He was hardly acknowledging what I had just told him, which had cost me to tell him! Of course, you realise, a decision of that nature is not easily made. For a moment, I grew irritable again, and then he murmured:
"Thank you."
I was about to ask if I could trust him to be discreet, but--I hope you understand--it did not seem quite the thing to say, and so I gestured to the book he had been reading before our conversation began, and asked instead, "What are you--?"
"Oh!" he said delightedly. "Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea!"
I was enormously put out.
I do not appreciate that book in the slightest.
I went back at once to my charts, but Henry did not return to my feet. He simply lay where he was, with his thin back curved against my side, reading that unfortunate book (I cannot think where he might have got a copy!).
"I hope I may go on calling you Nemo," he said suddenly, lifting his head. "May I?"
"I would prefer that you do."
"Well, good, then; good." He appeared to be blushing a little, and was running one hand through his red hair. You know, his hair always seems a bit unkempt.
"Yes, Henry," I said briskly, and picked up a different chart which covered the sea where my current one had left off. The sea is so vast!
Henry looked over at me and smiled an odd little smile. I am not, not even now, sure why I took so much pleasure in it. But, you know, he is really oddly warm.
It was not at all a disagreeable thing to have him lying so close...
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