Excerpt
Ken had won the battle but he was also expelled from the school because
he could not be seen as having won.
A few weeks later, Louise’s brother, James – and his family – arrived
from Spain.
The two men talked about their multitude of business interests. They
dealt in a vast number of industrial concerns, including mining, road
building, steel manufacturing and shipbuilding. They agreed it would be
wise to forge an alliance in the event that the business climate became unstable,
since Spain and Portugal were ruled by dictatorships, and there was
always the chance of trouble in a totalitarian regime. Such forces might be
difficult to fight as a single businessman but a larger consortium could be
effective in bringing influence to bear on the government. Putting aside
their animosity, they shook hands on the agreement that they would come
to each other’s rescue in the event that trouble should occur.
During his Uncle James’ visit, Ken spent more time than usual at Francisco’s
shack. One day, the old man presented Ken with a big stone he had
carried up from the beach. “Draw that stone,” he said.
Ken did.
“Well, all you’ve told me is what I already know about that,” Francisco
said. “I can see that. You don’t need to tell me that. Tell me something
about the stone that I can’t see.”
Ken spent the rest of the day wrestling with the notion of drawing a
stone that would tell the old man something he didn’t already know. He
discarded drawing after drawing, and after hours of work, he presented
one to Francisco who nodded in satisfaction. For Ken, it was a mystery –
to him it still looked like a stone. But he learned that he could only draw
what he could draw. The viewer would either read something into the
drawing or not – making it significant was not his job.
When he finished his last drawing he said to Francisco, “You show me
how to do things and I make drawings that tell you stories and yet I don’t
know any stories about you. Are you married? Do you have children?
Who are you?”
Francisco told Ken the facts. Yes, he was married and he lived with his
wife in the village. He had a son who was doing his military service in one
of the colonies in Africa. The only part of his life he was prepared to tell
stories about – the only part that made his eyes blaze – was his life as a
fisherman. When he was a young man, Portugal had a vast fleet of tall ships
that sailed by the hundreds to the Grand Banks where they fished for cod.
Francisco told him it was a rough life. Many fishermen died on the
choppy, foggy seas. Once, he was hired on to a whaling ship that sailed to
the Arctic to hunt for the huge mammals, in the Baffin Island area.
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