Witness – Scene 1

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This week’s post is the first scene of my thriller Witness, set in Rome in the current day. I’m interested in your feedback. Enjoy!

The scowling twenty-something with spiky white-blond hair still trailed her by more than a block, though the distance between them was shrinking fast. Steel zippers and snaps punctuated his black leather jacket, and he hid his eyes behind mirror sunglasses, but the prickling skin on Eugenia Clarke’s neck told her he fixed those eyes on her.

She forced herself not to turn and look. Dozens of times she’d walked these few blocks along Rome’s Via del Babuino, which connects the Piazza del Popolo with the Piazza di Spagna, but the street felt hostile now. Despite the clear autumn sunlight of a Sunday afternoon, the stones of the shuttered buildings reflected no warmth.

She glanced behind her. Damn!

She should have called out to one of the young couples she’d passed when she first entered the street, but at that point she hadn’t expected he would really follow her. Even now she could hardly believe it, did not want to believe it, did not want to panic. Yet the street was unaccountably deserted, its antique shops closed tight as oysters. How ironic, she thought. An experienced travel writer, Eugenia helped tourists stay out of trouble. Thousands of readers relied on her. How is this happening? She picked up her pace.

Her gaze darted left and right, searching for refuge, help of any sort. A side street to the left, jammed with parked cars, no people. On the right, a trattoria a few doors down, closed. Even the cats took siestas. She kicked off her flapping sandals and began to run. The clomp of his boots alternated with her pounding heartbeats. He’d catch her long before she could reach the crowds near the Spanish Steps.

His bootsteps grew nearer, and the metallic taste of adrenalin filled her mouth. Another few strides and, finally, ahead on the right, the Anglican All Saints’ Church. She remembered the sanctuary’s side door that opened onto a narrow park leading to another street. She dashed across the Via di Gesu e Maria—Thank you, Jesus and Mary!—through the main doors, and into a hallway sidling along the sanctuary.

“Hello?” Panting, Eugenia called again, louder, as she streaked past the unattended offices. Silence. Desks abandoned. Phones stilled. Where is everyone? Isn’t there church business on a Sunday? Counting the collection, choir practice—something?

A hint of incense and candle smoke lingered in the empty sanctuary. Sun streaming through leaded windows stained the brickwork bloody. The tile was cold on her feet. She called out to the empty air. “Hello! Anybody here?” After a few seconds, “Anybody??”

She checked behind her, down the unlit hallway. Not there yet. At the side door, the new-looking deadbolt turned easily, but the heavy brass doorknob resisted, and she needed both sweating hands to turn it. A final glance over her shoulder before she jerked open the stubborn door.

Outside, she blinked in the sudden brightness. She sensed movement to her left, and tried to duck away. A harsh blow struck the back of her head. Dizzy, she watched her new straw hat sail to the ground. Reaching up to protect herself, she knocked off the man’s sunglasses. He seized her arm and squeezed it hard enough to bruise.

“Fatti i cazzi tuoi!” he growled. Mind your own fucking business! She swayed, stunned and staring into eyes pale and hard as silver coins, until her knees gave way and she collapsed against him. She slid down his chest, breathing the foul odor of sweat-stained leather. A zipper tore her cheek. He gripped her armpit to keep her from falling, and his fist found her face, stomach, ribs. She twisted away, but she couldn’t escape. Their bodies were locked too close together, and she managed only to bury her face deeper in the rancid jacket. Again a metallic taste. Blood, this time. She gasped for breath as a boot came down hard on her bare foot. She felt the force of his blows, but the pain hadn’t started yet.

Her vision blurred, her thoughts clouded. She stared mesmerized at the intricate tattoo coiling up his wrist and disappearing under the leather sleeve. A blue and green snake’s head covered the back of his hand, and through her hazy perceptions she could almost believe it was the snake striking her. Her gaze followed its hypnotic black eyes as it dove into the man’s pocket, and he pulled out a knife. The flash as the blade flicked open broke the spell. She tore herself from his grasp and choked out, “No!”

“Impicciona!” he spat. Meddler.

A flood of pain rose up within her, and she might have heard shouts, running feet. She fell into blackness.

The Sufferer in the Mirror

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Memoir-writers would appear to have it easy. After all, whom do they know best, in theory, but themselves? The key to this question is “in theory.” Hollywood and sports stars can sail by with superficial “and then this bad thing happened, but I learned a lot” memoirs, because they are, well, stars, and in some misguided sense, we already feel we know them. The rest of us have to dig way deeper.

Aspiring memoirists may be encouraged to expose their most “gut-wrenching secrets” right up front. Chapter one. Even page one. But parading a set of difficult experiences—drug addiction, infidelity, abuse—across the literary stage like cardboard scenery is not sufficient. We’ve all read that. Seen the movie. More than once. The writer’s unique persona and individual reaction to these stock situations are what makes a new version of this play worth mounting. It may take a few—even quite a few—pages to create the character for whom these traumatic experiences have meaning. Writers who merely put their emotional debris on display treat readers like voyeurs. Less experienced writers, encouraged to reveal their darkest moments, may not have the self-understanding that is as much a part of the story as the drug-addled sex in the seedy hotel room.

Author and writing teacher Susan Shapiro in her recent essay, “Make Me Worry You’re Not O.K.,” supports the idea of immediately sharing emotional traumas, of hooking readers early in order to make readers care. Another memoir teacher and literary agent—Brooke Warner—responded to Shapiro with her own essay, “Memoir Is Not the Trauma Olympics.” Warner counters that “real misery memoir works when you drip in the painful stuff little by little.”

Following these two essays, journalism teacher Katie Roiphe wrote “This Is How Your Write a Memoir” for Slate. Her common-sense advice ends with the observation that “expressing yourself is not enough.” Just because an event is true, doesn’t mean it can be written about without the care and attention to salient detail of any other literary endeavor. In other words, it’s hard work after all.

In their words: The recent essays by Susan Shapiro, Brooke Warner, and Katie Roiphe.

The Reading Challenge

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Books I read 002

Here’s a resolution for 2013 that I haven’t broken yet: to read all the books in the pile on the left. The pile on the right comprises books read in 2012—not counting more than a dozen audio books and Mr. X, courtesy of the West Windsor Library. The number of notable books from last year near the top of the unread pile (holiday gifts) suggests I’m way behind. And some of the books near the bottom are carryovers from 2012. I hadn’t counted on needing to read 2000 pages of Dickens for my class last fall! If you’re wondering which were my favorites, they were Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies—those Tudors are irresistible—and two nonfiction volumes: Counterstrike and In the Garden of Beasts. (The latter, by Erik Larson, startlingly echoed the plot and characters in Herman Wouk’s 1971 novel, The Winds of War, which I happened to be listening to at the same time, all 46 hours of it. Although the novel begins shortly before the Nazi invasion of Poland—six years after the period covered in Larson’s book—they are probably hopelessly muddled in my mind. It would be interesting to learn whether the diplomatic family Larson portrays figured into Wouk’s planning, even if fictional daughter Madeline did not go as seriously off the rails as real-life Martha Dodd.) These favorites aside, audio books provided my most enjoyable “reading” experiences this year: The Lotus Eaters, State of Wonder, The Submission, and the truly thrilling Macbeth: A Novel. I’ve recommended that last one endlessly. Despite all the words that have passed through my brain via eyes and ears, picking up a new book is still exciting. It may hold a character to love or despise; it may offer a memorable phrase or insight or image, whose creativity I can strive to emulate. My stack of 29 books is paltry beside the average goal of 61 books that participants in the Goodreads 2013 Reading Challenge have resolved to read. I note that 32 challenge participants have already met their reading goal for the year, which must have been one book or, possibly, none. That may be an easy resolution for them to keep. Not for me.

From Page to Pixel

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So Hollywood has made a hash of Anna Karenina. That’s a disappointment. Joe Wright and Keira Knightley have teamed up before in films based on significant novels, with mixed success. Viewers liked or didn’t like their Atonement for the same reason they liked or didn’t like the book and its last-minute emotional switcheroo. Before that, they made the really awful Pride and Prejudice—a box-office success that made Austen fans cringe. (The last scene, yuck! Yuck!)

When I heard Knightley would play Anna, I admit to being skeptical. Perhaps it’s the way she’s photographed, but she’s always too “on,” too aware of her external self, her perfect face, never revealing anything inside. Is anything inside? As Anna, “there’s nothing to discover in her face because she’s too much in ours,” said New York magazine critic David Edelstein.

Alas, what gives many novels their power is that internal stuff. Somehow moviemakers have to move the story and the characters with their balled-up and conflicting desires/histories/strengths/flaws from page to pixel. This week, at the last session of my class on Dickens, we watched excerpts from a 1983 video/film adaptation of one of the books we’d read, Dombey & Son. Squeezing a 950-page novel into even 300 minutes (10, 30-minute episodes) inevitably loses a lot, especially a book like Dombey, where the main plot drivers are characters’ internal “heart,” not external events. (That would be A Tale of Two Cities.) Still, it captured much of the essence and was not nearly so awful as 1998’s “modernized” Great Expectations.

It isn’t easy to modernize the classics, though Clueless did just fine in updating Emma. Pip’s determination to “be a gentleman” doesn’t resonate today. Dombey’s wife’s desire for a divorce doesn’t carry the same shock as 160 years ago. Pages of exposition that help readers today understand the characters’ view of the world and why particular issues are fundamental to them are necessarily lost. When they are put before us on screen without all that context, they feel like cardboard cutouts, “a bright red heart without a beat,” as film critic Peter Howell said of the new Anna.

Lack of a heart, a center, isn’t confined to films of the classics; even movies of modern books can be frustratingly opaque. Those are the films where you say to yourself, “What does she see in him?” or “Why is he doing that?” Oddly, what would seem an unlikely novel to make a successful transition to film was Life of Pi. The filmmakers used the long stretches at sea to present uncluttered narration that revealed Pi’s character. The movie works because the people in it and their motivations are understood, viewers can empathize with them, and they find a little piece of Pi’s struggle within their own hearts.

Loose Ends and Dead Ends

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Last spring my cousins Jola and Calva emailed pictures of their pilgrimage to the Edwards family plot at Osage Cemetery, Coryell County, Texas. The Edwardses are my mother’s father’s family, and as a child visiting my grandparents in Lubbock, I felt lost in a forest of legs. Tall men, my many uncles and great-uncles were made taller by their sweat-stained Stetsons.

Seeing the cemetery pictures, I started thinking about these men and their wives, where they came from, and what their lives were like. All much too late to ask my mother, who would eagerly have recounted stories about her family and her own childhood, riding a horse to school and helping as all kids did then to farm the flat, uncongenial land.

In August Jola and I picked up the thread, visiting Wilson County, Tennessee, just east of Nashville, where we knew our great-grandfather had lived before resettling in Central Texas in the late 1860s. Central Tennessee was devastated by the Civil War, and thousands of families picked up and moved, leaving little more than “GTT” painted on their front doors—Gone To Texas. For me to write up our findings and follow the few new leads we uncovered would take a week or two, I thought. The task has consumed me all fall. And I still have a bulging e-file named “loose ends and dead ends.”

One of my first challenges was to disentangle our family from much spurious genealogical information about the “Edwards family fortune.” In the 1700’s, the legend goes, a Welsh sea captain named Robert Edwards leased 77 acres of land in New York to a church, which was to return it to his heirs after 99 years. By the time the lease expired in 1877, much about New York had changed. The church was Trinity Church in lower Manhattan and the acreage included Wall Street and (now) World Trade. A multi-billion dollar trust fund is supposedly attached to the property, with the convincing detail that it is housed in the Chase Manhattan Bank. Periodic efforts to claim this land—the most recent only a dozen years ago—have accomplished little more than bilk money from gullible Edwards family members. The claim has been unsuccessfully brought before the courts numerous times and the families’ documentary “evidence” shown to be forgeries. Yet, misinformation persists, along with fake family trees connecting this or that Edwards branch to the Robert Edwards.

A few years ago, I met a doctor whose last name was Edwards at a social function, and I mentioned my mother was an Edwards. He immediately said, “I’m not one of the rich ones!”  And, if my researchers are correct, we aren’t either.

It’s the Chills that Count!

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Two weeks ago, this blog started a discussion of the differences between mysteries and thrillers. As reader David Ludlum pointed out, there can be elements of mystery in thrillers and vice-versa, since both contain suspense. Here are a few items from Carolyn Wheat’s handy list of the differences: mystery is a puzzle, suspense is a nightmare; in a mystery, the detective has skills, and in a thriller, the hero learns skills; mysteries have clues, while thrillers have surprises; and a mystery offers red herrings, whereas a thriller contains “cycles of betrayal.” John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy comes immediately to mind.

This week, I’m reading a mystery—Maze in Blue, by fellow U. of Michigan alumna Debra Goldstein—and the pages are littered with clues, potential clues, and red herrings. The fun is sorting them out, not to mention the familiarity of the Ann Arbor setting!

Coincidentally, the book mentions a real-life murder I was familiar with, one in a serial killer spree that began shortly after I graduated. A law student was murdered and her body draped over a tombstone in a local cemetery. Reading about the case several months after I moved away, I had a horrible flashback. On a warm spring evening in my senior year, I was pacing my second-floor apartment in a chopped up Victorian house, talking on the phone to a friend. I noticed a man standing across the street looking up into my tall second-floor windows, open to the fresh air. I didn’t pay much attention until he crossed the street, headed toward my house. The back of my neck tingled. “I think he’s coming over to look at my mailbox,” I said, slightly embarrassed to sound so paranoid. My friend and I talked a little longer, and the man recrossed the street, disappearing into the apartment building opposite. As soon as we hung up, my phone rang. “You don’t know me, but . . .” and he gave me his name. Yes, he had read my name on my mailbox, and he asked me out. “I don’t think this is a very good way to meet people,” I said and hung up, shaking, even though in those days such a casual meet-up was common. I called my friend back. “If I’m not in class tomorrow, here’s the name he gave”—the same name written in the calendar of the murdered law student on the day she disappeared. So Goldstein’s book has some resonance with me.

The most recent thriller I’ve read is Alan Furst’s latest, Mission to Paris, and while I don’t have the same kind of personal connection with pre-World War II Europe, Furst’s evocation of the era through his wonderful series of books immediately puts me there. In this one, Hollywood actor Fredric Stahl find himself enmeshed deeper and deeper in the snares of opposing spy machines and Carolyn Wheat’s “cycles of betrayal.”

Another superb read this year in the pre-war thriller mode is Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, with one big difference: it’s all true.

In their Words: Interviews with Carolyn Wheat, Alan Furst, and Erik Larson on the books mentioned here.

A Week in Room 1435

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This short-short story is a holiday thank-you for friends, family, and fellow authors near and far who continue to support me in my writing. Be of good cheer!

Monday Check-in:  Julia

The orchid on her pillow did it.  Julia arrived in Oahu on a late flight from Chicago, ill-fed, stiff, wearing too many clothes. In the fourteenth-floor room of her Waikiki Beach hotel, the fuchsia jewel suggested a treasure chest of possibilities.  She slid open the lanai door, shed her clothes, and melted into bed. The flower-drunk air kissed her good night; the ocean sang her to sleep.

At daybreak, a teasing breeze investigated her room, slipped through the closet’s louvers, and ruffled the clothing hanging there, light as a pickpocket’s touch. Rose and gold clouds hugged the horizon and framed a tourist’s view of Diamond Head. Surfers waited, their bobbing heads sprinkling the ocean like peppercorns.

A lone man swam back and forth across the blue cattleya that glowed from the bottom of the hotel pool. She sat on her lanai, drank coffee, watched . . . interested. He flipped onto his back and regarded the bank of hotel rooms. The sun broke the horizon, and, gradually, people appeared on the beach. Early people, stuck in wrong time zones.

Sundressed, sandaled, the bright orchid pinned in her hair, Julia strolled to breakfast at the House Without a Key. The swimmer sat at a nearby table. Over the top of his menu, his eyes smiled at her. She smiled back. One of the seven brides she would see that day posed for pictures in the garden alongside the restaurant. The air was that precise temperature where it cannot be felt at all, and the world held its breath.

A waiter brought pineapple juice and a note.  “Dinner – La Mer – 7 pm?”  She rubbed the orchid’s velvet petal between her finger and thumb and with the offered pen wrote, “Sharp.”

Thursday Check-in:  Kurt

Business meetings in Hawai`i are an affront, Kurt thought, scowling at the view. From his fourteenth floor lanai, every single thing he could see was infinitely preferable to another marketing meeting. The orchid pool. He hadn’t surfed in years, but . . . Girls in bikinis decorating the beach bars. The snorkeling bay hidden behind Diamond Head.

Hours later, in the windowless downtown conference room, the afternoon dragged, participants grew edgy, needed breaks, shifted in their chairs. Early adjournment.

For a forty-eight-year-old man, at least that many pounds past trim, Kurt moved fast. Within a quarter-hour of re-entering the hotel, he was downstairs again in turquoise swim trunks, t-shirt, and flip-flops, gleaming with suntan oil. In even less time, he hugged a longboard and splashed into the sea.

The surf shop’s rental manager, a skinny kid with sun-whitened hair, took out his camera. He wasn’t going to miss this.

Saturday Check-in:  The Thorntons

Standing on the lanai, Bill sighed first. The Halekulani—“their” hotel—had grown and changed since their honeymoon, but the ocean hadn’t. The welcome hadn’t. The feeling they’d found a place where everything was good hadn’t. Dee twirled the pink orchid and let it draw her into memory’s arms, fourteen floors above the beach where they’d been young.

Mystery or Thriller?

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Is this book in my hand a mystery or a thriller? Not until I started writing stories myself did I run up against the startling realization that a lot of the books I liked best—starting with Frederick Forsyth’s Icon—were not mysteries at all. They were “thrillers,” “suspense.” To me, they were just exciting books that kept me turning pages. Think Silence of the Lambs. Think Reamde. Think The Little Drummer Girl.

Oh. So? People who have actually gone to the trouble of analyzing the differences between these two genres can present quite a list of them, along with which go different reader expectations. Looking back, the short stories on my publications list (this website) were all mysteries—puzzles—especially “Evidence” and “Premeditation.” I’ve also written a novel—Witness—and it’s definitely a thriller. In writing it, I fell into thriller mode automatically.

What is the difference? Carolyn Wheat in her excellent How to Write Killer Fiction (a title that tells you these are words to live by) describes “the funhouse of mystery” and “the roller coaster of suspense.” Readers of a classic mystery identify with the detective—from a professional like Harry Bosch to an amateur busybody like Miss Marple—who is attempting to solve someone else’s problems, usually a murder or two. We readers follow “two steps behind,” Wheat says, as our detective gathers and analyzes evidence and tries to figure out who the bad guys are.

In suspense novels, the main problems belong to the main characters. They’re the ones in danger, who must figure out how to save their own lives even as they may be saving others, too, of course. Jason Bourne. Jack Ryan. We know who the bad guys are and what the threat is, because the author has shown them at work. As a result, we typically know more than the hero, and are actually two steps ahead. We’re thinking, “Don’t take that call,” “Take that call!” and “Don’t trust that guy,” and “Don’t go into the British Embassy wearing that electric blue sequined dress and that Tina Turner wig and think you can pass as a legitimate party guest,” we telepathically yell at Whoopi Goldberg in Jumpin’ Jack Flash.

Detectives, like tv’s Inspector Lewis, have legendary ability to see through layers of disinformation and assemble logical pictures from the slimmest clues, clues equally available to us, as readers, but whose significance the author has deftly obscured. The writer’s challenge is to present all those clues without either giving away the game on page 20 or being so obtuse the reader feels unfairly dealt with. In the end, every piece is in place, and the reader’s reward is the intellectual satisfaction of tidied loose ends.

By contrast, suspense heroes, even if they achieve their goals and avert World War III, may not make it out alive. Or not in very good shape, if they do. Daniel Craig’s James Bond needed recovery time at the end of Casino Royale. And his nemesis got away, to plague him yet another day. Still, our hero has prevailed, and the reader’s reward is the emotional satisfaction of that victory, even if it is temporary and we see another battle looming over the sequel horizon.

“30 Days and Nights of Literary Abandon”

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The first question almost everyone asks when they learn I’ve written a novel is, “Do you plot everything out in advance, or do you figure it out as you go?” The answer is “Both.” I have a general idea of where I will end up, and I point the plot in that direction, but the route is unclear until I get there. Thousands of people—many of whom have never written a book before—are discovering their fictional paths this month.

We are reaching the middle of National Novel Writing Month (awkwardly abbreviated NaNoWriMo). Participating authors from countries around the world already report they have set down some 1.2 billion words. Skimming the long list of NaNoWriMo participants whose books drafted during this annual literary frenzy were ultimately published, I found Hugh Howey’s Wool, Kindle Book Review’s 2012 Indie Book of the Year. I happen to be listening to Wool on my iPod. I’ll bet there are authors in the list whom you know, too.

NaNoWriMo encourages participants to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in 30 days. In its first year, 21 writers participated, and six reached the finish line. (I use that term loosely, since completing the first draft of a novel is pretty darn far from anything resembling a “finish.”) Last year, the 14-year-old program had 256, 618 participants, 14 percent of whom reached the goal. Though they undoubtedly will have further work to do, this is a tremendous accomplishment.

The whole idea of NaNoWriMo appeals to me as a helpful boot camp for writers, aspiring or accomplished. It stresses the importance of writing every day—sustained effort—and shows writers they are capable of actually finishing something. Too many of us have promising, half-complete manuscripts languishing in drawers and Word files,  awaiting the return of a Muse who has apparently decamped to Brazil. NaNoWriMo’s fixed and tight deadline requires writers to power through at a blistering 1700-words-a-day pace, barely leaving time to roast the Thanksgiving turkey.

NaNoWriMo offers moral support and coaching through regional support groups. It took my breath away to learn that my region (Central New Jersey) has almost 3500 NaNoWriMo participants! The “shared experience” this encourages is based on the founder’s first experiment with the concept in July 1999. “We called it noveling,” he says. “And after the noveling ended on August 1, my sense of what was possible for myself, and those around me, was forever changed.”

A wistful look comes over people’s faces when they find out I’ve written a novel and published short stories. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” they say. If they do, there will be a rocky road ahead, but what I tell them about is the joy in traveling it. In future, I’ll also tell them about National Novel Writing Month.

As the NaNoWriMo folks say, “Win or lose, you rock for even trying.”

Sandy, Sandy

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Such an easy-going name, and such a wallop. Rain, wind, and fire. Six days later, the aftermath continues. For some, it will never end. For people who have lost loved ones—tragically, preventably. For people who must rebuild their lives from nothing but determination and an abundances of resources they will not find at Home Depot.

When he came back inside the store [as the storm approached], a woman was sitting at the bottom of a rolling ladder in the cabinet fixtures aisle, crying. She had her face cupped in her hands. He thought to sidestep the hassle and let someone else explain that the store was sold out of everything she would need. “Waterwalkers” in Corpus Christi: Stories, Bret Anthony Johnston, 2005.

The overwhelming reaction among my local friends is, “We were lucky.” There may be a 40-foot tree resting on the roof, they may have no power (or heat or light or refrigeration), the Internet may be down, work and school may be closed, gasoline may be rationed, the quiet inside may be deafening, and outside, the drone of chain saws like a wasp in the brain, but, “We were lucky.” A response that displays a sense of perspective and respects the storm’s startling power.

How a confluence of natural forces can create a “perfect storm” was minutely examined in Sebastian Junger’s 1997 book, whose title has become an overworked metaphor for catastrophic events of all kinds. Junger’s straightforward descriptions don’t allow misinterpretation: “A mature hurricane is by far the most powerful event on earth . . . and could provide all the electric power needed by the United States for three or four years.” No surprise, then, that such a storm could turn oceanfront homes into kindling in a matter of hours. Yet, for some, even the term “mandatory evacuation” didn’t command sufficient attention.

Not giving ground to Nature is a persistent human error. The poor folks who settled around Lake Okeechobee in Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, saw the Seminoles, the buzzards, then all the animals leaving the low-lying area around the lake in a determined procession. Some folks heeded these signs and the hurricane warnings, but others paid a hard price for waiting too long.

Another man clung to a cypress tree on a tiny island. A tin roof of a building hung from the branches by electric wires and the wind swung it back and forth like a mighty ax. The man dared not move a step to his right lest this crushing blade split him open. He dared not step left for a large rattlesnake was stretched full length with his head in the wind.

Writers, painters, composers–all have worked to capture the fury of wind and water and the terror and searing grief people feel in the grip of uncontrollable forces.

The King’s son, Ferdinand, with hair upstaring—then like reeds, not hair—was the first man that leaped, cried, “Hell is empty, and all the Devils are here.” Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene ii.