What sudden glance or silence, what lifted hand or piteous look, fragrance, light upon flesh, unspoken promise, knocks on the door of memory, lights the warm lamp of seeing, opens to hunger again, to the Thou-art-mine of the spirit, the I-am-thine of the heart?
Robert Nathan was a fantasy author, but he was far from formulaic in his fantasizing. His tales might involve angels or magic, but they also might rise just from unusual human kindness or – as in The Enchanted Voyage – from a slight alteration of the laws of man and nature.
Hector Pecket is a carpenter, and not a very good one. He has a house in the Bronx, and his great joy and comfort in life is the boat he built in his yard, in which he loves to sit and dream of adventure. He never intends to put it in water.
He named it the Sarah Pecket, after his wife, despite the fact that she hates the boat. She has a strong sense of entitlement, and she feels that the boat diverts Hector from useful work that would enable him to provide for her better. So one day she sells the boat to a butcher, for use as a lunch stand. Preparatory to moving it, they place the boat on a trailer.
Hector is devastated. He insists on spending one last night on his beloved boat. That night, a fierce storm arises. The sail catches the wind, and Hector finds himself coursing down the street, using the trailer’s tongue as a tiller. By morning he’s miles away, and he just keeps going. Along the way he picks up a young waitress who feels stuck in her job, and a young itinerant dentist with no prospects. The two young people misunderstand each other completely, and so fall in love. The story sails on through one implausibility after another, until the final crisis.
I’ve complained that Robert Nathan books often kind of wind down at the end, without a proper climax. There’s a climax here, but I didn’t find it entirely believable. (Unlike the stark realism of the rest of the story, ha ha.) I think people less anxiety-prone than I am would find reading it less stressful. The Enchanted Voyage is a charming tale, though, and even got made into a movie in 1946. (Nathan didn’t like it much.)