symbolism – Page 2 – A View from the Wheelhouse

It’s time I returned to this yarn set in Mesopotamia. Our story left off when our paddle wheel steamer, the Samaramis, fetched up on a mud bank on a river bend–or did it founder in that hurricane in the narrow, rocky passes of Is Geria? in any case, dear reader, forgive my faltering ellipses; they are trifling compared to the vast stretches of time and space that lie before us as we resume our voyage up the Euphrates into the very Cradle of Civilization

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Saturnius McWhirr bent over a yellowed chart: “There’s death at every bend of this blasted river. There are treacherous sandbanks that can sink this tin-pot vessel in seconds and bandits that will slit your throat for a song. Here,” he pointed a bony finger at the chart, “is the passage of Is Geria. Winds can funnel between those rocks like the fiends of hell.”

“Aye, on top of that, the very guards appointed by the museum trustees who sponsor these excavations deal in the illicit trade of artifacts. Their collusion with Turkish authorities can land innocent shippers like us in jail. Are ye ready to ship out on such a mission, lad?”

“What exactly is our mission, Captain?”

He turned again to the window and said:

“The illicit trade in antiquities is nearly as old as civilization itself. These sites had already been plundered in ancient times by nomad treasure seekers who sold to dealers in Bagdad. Babylon was already a ruin when Alexander the Great tried, unsuccessfully, to restore the glories of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.”

“Now the plunder is conducted on an industrial scale by the Levant Company. The stones of Ishtar’s Temple are looted to build the brutal towers of Tomorrowland and the stolen images of the Holy Immortals now entice consumers, like sheep, into endless malls of mediocrity. This must be stopped.”

The Samamaris steamed past the tents of goat herds and armed horsemen whose dark eyes followed her wake with unconcealed contempt.

At last, we came the to archeological site led by the Reverend Cornelius Pritchard who, under the auspices of the Philadelphia Academy, had undertaken excavations to find physical verification of Biblical scripture. The sensational finds of British archeologists had awakened an American interest in antiquity, and this, along with a fervor to prove the superiority of the Christian faith, had led these august bodies to sponsor digs in Mesopotamia.

McWhirr yelled out the wheelhouse door as I jumped onto a weathered, mud brick quay: “Man the docklines! Ya swab!”

He then hailed the engine room:

“Slowly now, Mister Budge…”

I threw the docklines to a stout man on the dock who I took to be Reverend Pritchard.

“Welcome Brethren,” he called.

We made fast, and walked up the bank toward the encampment while the Reverend held forth with pious, stentorian eloquence:

“Yes pilgrims, We’ve found potsherds in an alluvial deposit at 60 feet. Below that, with God’s blessing, we are certain to find the lost city of the Nephilim– those whose evil ways brought down God’s wrath with a devastating flood!”

Just then, there was the loud report of a gunshot. A bullet whizzed overhead.

“Hit the deck!” yelled McWhir as we dove behind a low dune.

“It’s the blasted French atheists!” hissed Pritchard

He grabbed a carbine and returned fire, all the while expostulating in fine preacherly style:

“The nihilist heretics are encamped yonder. Thy want to reach the pre-deluvial city in a missguided effort to prove that the Good Book is fiction–that the site proves the layers below the silt deposits are merely evidence of a recurrent, natural phenomenon. They will soon regret the errors of their blasphemous ways when they are consigned to eternal hellfire!”

With that, he fired a volley into the mud brick of a distant mound.

There was silence. Then a loud oath was heard from the opposite camp:

“Sacre Bleu!”

The bewitching breezes wafting from the intermediate zone that had vexed our northerly course along the bleak, rocky coast gave way to an absolute calm as we stood off the rank harbor of Virtual Babylon. It was as though the anchorage were under the spell of some vengeful deity that held the stagnant seaport in irons-a fitful sleep of waking dream.

McWhirr called from the wheelhouse:

“All right, Mister Spencer.”

I let go the anchor. The silence was broken by a low rumble as I paid out 3 fathoms of chain into the muddy bottom of Moloch Bay.

After 2 weeks of foul headwinds and devilishly flukey breezes, we were ready to don shore-going rig for a nice row to an ancient, stone pub at the head of a dilapidated wharf to splice, as they say, the proverbial main-brace.

The melancholy treble of a loon-bot echoed over the still anchorage as McWhirr sat in the bows of the skiff brooding upon the lurid, crimson sea. Not wanting to disturb his meditations, I rowed on.

I’d heard Saturnius McWhirr was a pious man of Quaker stock who had fallen into some branch of the Zoroastrian persuasion. Or was it some Sufic offshoot of Shi’ism whose adherents await the 12^th Imam’s return and wander the storm-wracked shores of this world seeking some vestige of a golden age–a relic safeguarded from the literalist creed by occult signs that can be decoded only in the secret halls of pure imagination?

Be that as it may, McWhirr gazed into the offing as the violet light of dusk fell over his weathered brow and said:

“I first heard of the Babylonian Theme Park when but a nipper on my grandfather’s knee. He told me of the Neo-Art Exhibition, the wonders of the Pharmaceutical Pavilion and how he touched the robe of the King of Wall-mart. He told me yarns of how it’s foundations had first been laid in the 21^st Century by drones captured during the great cyber wars.”

“But,” continued McWhirr with a tone of caution, “he also told a darker tale. He said the streets were paved with sorrow, the walls built with the grief of mothers who toiled over an illusory harvest, it’s ramparts manned by desiccated souls who invested all their goods in the virtual fun-house of Mammon.”

“Yes sir,” I said though, in my green youth, I could scarce fathom the depths of his narration..

We landed the skiff and walked the cobbled street toward the the ancient, stone pub. Soon, my attention was caught by the droning whirr of something hovering overhead.

Could this be one of the fabled harpies that had long plagued unwary mariners who sail these latitudes–these droning machines of evil and ubiquitous surveillance that kill with rockets as well as with the bland, droning sameness that reduces our citizenry to penile servitude to the sexless god of materialism?

McWhirr drew his cutlass and, slashing at the malignant thing, thundered:

“Get thee hence, instrument of Satan!”