Chapter 7: John Silver; The Light at the End of the Hall
John Silver's term of improved economical freedoms seemed to have a promising longevity. No longer confined by his fear of the fierce society he had been born in, he stepped lightly along out in the sunshine, which fell on all alike, who cared little, and did not seem aware of its glow.
Although hardly progressed in the scale of age—disregarding the progression of a number of eight months passing—John did appear more mature than his first night alone as he now traversed down the stone streets of the wharfs. He no longer flitted on birdlike feet with his sprightly quality, but clung to the ground with his feet, as though he could no longer float above it as he could when he was younger. His unattended footsteps in the sunlight on the ports landed with a deaf thunder in the midst of the ubiquitous crowds', and his eyes, ever watchful, now regarded the pockets of the creatures he walked among acquisitively. His guise was beggarly and tattered, for he only bought food from what he gained from the pockets of others, and his clothes very conspicuously betrayed his sad heritage.
The sun—which shone on all alike, as said before—was a bright, impeccable beacon of gold that poured over the ports and creatures who walked it. Its inescapable presence beamed down on all who stepped from the shadows, and cheered them with its warmth and affection, as any child would take comfort in the affections of a mother. John, however, with the sun on his face and his stout stance impervious to its affectionate rays, took on the sun with a kind of sick and morbid mistrust, for, in his lonely heart that was thrown from childhood so quickly, he perceived its only purpose to shine and reveal the malignant debtors' prison of Marshalea, where his father remained trapped.
John's father had grown pallid and thin as his imprisonment persisted. Oftentimes, John would visit with a small amount of candy or rich foods he could gather from the market place in the square near the prison, and Jonas ate edaciously, but only after he forced John to certify and repeat that he had satisfied his own hunger first. Very rarely did John admit to having hunger, for he learned that if he did, his father would not eat what he brought him, but beg him to eat it instead.
Jonas's cell was primitive and filthy, as so many prison cells were in those times of John Silver's youth, and it was prohibited for Jonas to exit beyond the bars of his dungeon under any circumstances. The weight of the confinement bore cruelly down on Jonas's weak character, and the Ursid became speedily frail from lack of enough food—quelled slightly by the slices of meat or cheese his son occasionally managed to bring him—and John could detect that his father had diminished in health.
John's visits dwindled.
Thievery was a humble occupation, and although John's scrounges through other people's belongings placated his most basic needs, this employment could not offer John a great amount of money to save for Jonas's bail from the Marshalea. John's larceny was then increased when he realized his father was fragile, and John would commit his crimes for days to earn money, but could never gain it fast enough to keep himself alive and still pay for Jonas's release.
"Maybe I have not found my expertise after all," John mused aloud to himself one day while visiting his father in the Marshalea. "I seem to be able to stand on it when it's just me, but I can never get enough money to help you get out of here."
Jonas regarded his son with remorse, and offered quietly, "I'm sorry I brought this on our family, John. If you've found a way to support yourself without my help, please, then: Don't worry about me."
John lifted his eyes to his father's face, feeling a dull stab of grief upon seeing the thick iron bars close in around him. Shifting his weight and leaning his head on one of these bars, John's eyes fell again to their former inspection of the floor, and he chewed on one of his nails. "But I have to get you out," John responded at length, dropping his finger from his mouth and placing it in his pocket. "I've already promised to get you out."
John heard his father chuckle and he lifted his eyes again inadvertently, but did not look at his father, for his gaze was caught by a shaft of streaming sunlight pouring into the dim prison from the little window at the end of the short corridor of cells.
"John, I understand if you can't help me out of the Marshalea. It's perfectly fine—no one will be offended if you can't single-handedly rescue me from my debts. You're my son; I want to see you succeed, not help me to."
"But that's just it!" John rejoined, his eyes dropping once more to the floor as his voice rose slightly, "I am your son! Just as you are my father. If I was in there and you were out here, would you not help me to get out? Don't I have the same obligation, then?"
"Only if you want to have it, John," Jonas said, with an even and deep tone to bring John's voice down. "Only if you want it."
"I want it. I want to help you out of here. I want to take you far away. I want to make us rich on another planet… I want to make you happy."
Jonas smiled simply, and slowly rested his own head on the opposite side of the same bar John's head was against. "You said it yourself: you are my son. John… you have brought me more joy than any riches could ever have given me."
John did not speak after this last expression of—what registered to John as—oppressed despondency, and did not, as he should have, register it as a sign of Jonas's devotion. John reflected upon himself briefly during this mutual pause between them, and felt undeserving of such a comment as that—despite the lie John assumed it to be, presented forth because of the resignation of a doomed failure. John had done nothing to make his father joyful; he only brought another mouth to feed into Jonas's home, which then brought Jonas into debt, which brought him here, where he was closed off from the world and the sunlight from the window by the thick iron bars. And now he only spoke of John failing to release him and making him rich—the only way John could make him happy!
The little Ursid felt a sting run up his nose and to the corners of his eyes.
"John?" Jonas spoke again.
"Yes, Father?"
"…Will you say it with me? Who are you the child of?"
John's eyes now welled with this brutal reminder of their once unencumbered lives outside the prison world, but he responded to this question—after a sigh—as he had for twelve years in a steady voice: "I am the son of my father, Jonas Silver. I am John Silver."
"How could you be the son of him? You look nothing like Jonas Silver."
"That is because, my father tells me, I am mostly my mother's child, but I was given as a gift by her to him."
"And tell me of your mother, John Silver."
"She had the eyes of the stars, hair the color of the earth, the lips of the rose, and the skin of the moon."
"And as do you, John Silver?"
"I have all but her eyes of stars, for I have my father's eyes, whose eyes are but of the blue sky."
This last clause of their recitation crumbled inside John's mouth as he tried to control his sorrow. He repeated the words in order to repair his error: "whose eyes are but of the blue sky." John was then able to regain his composure, and told his father gravely, though strangely mournful at heart, that the sunlight called him away from the prison, and that he could ignore its beckon no longer.