by Paul Lynch
Papa.
* * *
Something within him wakens. He begins to watch the sea with fevered eyes. As he sits he holds a vision of himself, can see himself leaving the strip to return home, prodigal and repentant.
He weeps quietly into his fist.
Hector watching, unsure what to do. He puts a hand to the other man’s shoulder in comfort.
He says, it is OK, Bolivar. Here, eat this. You are not so fat as you used to be.
At night Bolivar listens to Hector weeping also.
Grief is a thing that sits shapeless between them.
Bolivar says, pain is a dog that follows you no matter where you go.
He shakes himself, wipes his eyes with his wrist.
We are like a pair of old women, he says. We need to stop this blubbering. It uses up moisture.
* * *
Bolivar stands up and walks about and sits down again. He feels the need to speak. He holds Hector’s eye and does not blink.
He says, I dream about my daughter now every night. Who she might be. I dream about the emptiness I left behind. I guess now she is fourteen years old.
He falls silent.
Then he says, I do not think I can talk about it.
* * *
Later, he says, look, it is very common. You have a child with a woman and the relationship doesn’t work. There is a problem. The woman wants to have the man with her mind but the love has gone from her body. The man finds himself shut out. There are many men this happens to. No, that is not it. Look, I left because of who she was, that woman. She changed. She became interested only in the child. I ceased to exist. What was left of me she tried to control by ignoring me. I could not live any more. Anyhow, she snored in her sleep. Her snoring was so loud it used to rattle my skull. I could not take it any more. I began to lose sleep. Then I began to sleep in another room. Then I began to sleep elsewhere. There was this widow. She was young enough. There was room in her bed. Then one day I was gone. It was that simple. Please don’t look at me like that. Don’t expect me to know why I do these things. I am only a fisherman.
* * *
Later, he says, look, there was nothing to do, no work to be found. It made sense to do a little work for them, that is all. The cartel. To see what it would be like. They have money, you know. Cars, women, the easy life, all the good things. You look at the system and see how it is rigged against you. The system does not want you to live. A friend of mine got involved. One day he was a no man and the next day he was a yes man. He began to lead the good life. Then he asked me to do a few things. Small things. Just do this thing for me, Bolivar, he says. It is not a big deal. Keeping watch on this place or that. Driving somebody in a jeep. Visiting the premises of some place or other. Giving some guy a good beating – somebody who didn’t pay up – this is what happens. You get used to it. Then I began to go out with them at night. I saw things. We were up in the hills. This one thing, I saw, one night. What they told me to do. That was when a bad feeling began to come over me. I could feel it like some slow poison entering my blood. It began to eat into my bones. I could not sleep any more. I could not look myself in the eye. How can you be you when you are with them? You are no longer you. You have become them. So how can you say no? You have said yes to them. If you say yes it means yes. If you say no it means yes. If you say maybe it means yes. If you keep your mouth shut it means yes. If you are dead it is because they said yes for you. Before you stands only this one word yes. And yet I knew within my heart that I had to say no even though this word no did not exist. I went away where nobody could find me. I went on foot. Many days and nights. I said it to myself over and over, I am a no, not a yes! I said it with every step until I arrived at the coast with nothing but the clothes on my back. Maybe a little money as well. But look. I could make a simple living on the strip. A man and a boat, yes, it is simple living, this is good, no complications, nothing to haunt your dreams or keep you awake at night. Each day is a simple matter. You are presented with a choice. Do I fish or not? This type of life suited me. That is why I left.
Hector leans forward in the dark and asks in a low voice. What happened up in the hills?
Bolivar is silent. Then he speaks.
Do not ever ask me that.
* * *
Hector does not sleep. Or if he sleeps he is met with visions that shake his whole body so that he moves as though awake. He mutters and coughs and twists. Then in quarter-light, Hector suddenly climbs out of the cooler and walks about the boat. He returns and grabs Bolivar’s arm, fixes him with a piercing look.
He says, I think I am losing my mind. Again and again I keep having the same dream. I dream I am in the boat. And then I wake and find I am still in the boat. When this happens I cannot breathe. I go out and walk around the boat until I can breathe again. Then there are times when I have the same dream but I cannot wake up. In the dream there is this great panic to wake. I know in the dream that when I wake everything will be all right. Sometimes I am able to think of something to wake me up. But then when I wake, I see I am still in the boat and that I am waking into another dream that is the same as before. This is when I really panic. Then I wake but I do not know what is real any more. I think I have seen movies like this. There is no escape.
* * *
Later, Hector says, tell me, Bolivar, why would God be so cruel? Make you dream like this? Keep you neither alive nor dead? Tell me, why would God do this?
I do not know, Hector. How can I know? I do not know the answer to these things. You need to ask a priest or something. Where can we find a priest?
Bolivar seems to laugh a little.
He climbs out and checks the rain cups. The five-gallon container and bucket are full. He takes a drink from a cup and brings it to Hector.
Here drink this.
Hector takes the cup in silence.
Then he says, tell me, Bolivar, who is the dreamer?
He turns and stares at Bolivar but does not appear to see him. His skin is a yellow-grey colour.
Bolivar begins screwing his eye sockets with his fists. Then he pulls and twists the wires of his beard.
He says, what sort of question is that?
Hector says, I am watching my life but I cannot live it. So I have decided this must be a dream. It is the only thing that makes sense to me. But what I cannot figure out is this – am I dreaming or is God dreaming it? Or maybe it is the Devil. In which case, it makes no difference. But if I am dreaming then surely I can wake. The question is, how can I do this? If God is dreaming this then I cannot wake. It is up to him.
Bolivar stops breathing as he listens to Hector. His face darkens. The eyes tighten with a look of puzzled apprehension.
I do not understand you. How is this a dream? I am here. Look—
He leans forward and pinches Hector’s forearm.
The youth pulls his arm away.
See. You are awake.
Hector nods without expression.
He says, yes, but that does not prove anything.
* * *
Later, Hector says, maybe I am not ready to wake.
That is why she is with him. I have to suffer until he decides to wake me. I think I see this now. This is my purgation.
He climbs out of the cooler, an edge of wind lifting the hair from his face. Then he turns towards Bolivar who has followed him out of the cooler and is looking at him now with sad, alert eyes. Hector begins to nod.
He says, if this is my dream, I can do what I like. If this is God’s dream, I can also do what I like because he will not allow me to wake until he decides.
Hector stands in the rain watching the world with an unreadable expression.
He says, I will show her. I will make sure she never forgets me.
It is then he lets out a strange and rich laugh.
Bolivar feels a tremble run through his body.
What is in the laugh, he thinks. What is in the eyes of the laugher.
* * *
The sea is loosening their net. For days there is no catch. Bolivar hauls in the net and Hector combs through it, retying the knots. Bolivar keeping watch of a fulmar circling overhead. Again and again he has found the bird upon their air-drying fish. He keeps shooing at it, the bird watching him with black eyes as though it cannot see. He thinks about what he is or isn’t in the sight of the bird. He stares into Hector’s eyes. This feeling now that something has changed within the youth. He wonders about what is or isn’t in Hector’s mind. He stares at the eyes and what he sees is the creeping yellow that has begun to infect the whites of Hector’s eyes.
* * *
Bolivar meets in sleep the need to run. He dreams that his legs can’t move. When he wakes he is met with the inescapable weight of the body. All this time sitting about, he thinks. You are like an old man. Is this how you want to look when you return? You must get fit. You must strengthen the muscles. Then you will be fit for anything.
Hector twists and mutters in his sleep.
Bolivar begins to move with heavy steps. Fire in the far sky. Fire in the weight of the legs. Slowly he laps the cooler. Fire reaching into the heart and lungs. As dawn begins to brighten the boat, he arrives slowly at the strip. He runs through the trees and breathes the light. The dawn light upon the breathing green.
He thinks, we will go to Gabriela’s for a drink, see who is about.
His breathing finds a saw-tooth rhythm. He is able to run with half-closed eyes. The lagoon safe behind the trees. The path solid to his feet. He is running towards the bar but soon he is short of breath and he stops and clings to the gunwale. He opens his eyes. It is then he sees where Hector has scratched time into the hull by the under-edge of the seat. The marks are neat and hard to see. He frowns and leans closer, begins to count.
He hears himself mutter. It cannot be so.
He begins to pull at his hair.
He counts again and then looks for the knife, begins to scratch out the lines.
He sits and repeats the time in his mind.
He looks up and asks, how can this be so?
Seventy-three days.
* * *
Bolivar sits gutting a tuna pulled from a rippling sea, the first fish in days. Hector leaning a wolfish look over the trim. Then he begins to yell. Bolivar follows the pointed finger with a squinted eye. What he sees is a yellow plastic barrel. It is then that Hector climbs upon the gunwale and without word dives into the water. Bolivar gasps, reaches out his hands, watches with a lurching nausea as the youth begins to swim. He tries to shout but the air won’t release. He leans forward and grips the gunwale with both hands.
Time rushing into slowness. Bolivar watching every inch of the water as Hector swims with hooking, unhurried arms. Finally the youth seizes hold of the barrel and rolls his body over it, laughing and shouting. Bolivar finds his voice, roars out, keep your eyes open!
Hector begins to swim with the barrel.
It is slow work, pushing the barrel, kicking his long legs.
Then he grows tired, stops and rests against the container. Bolivar watching as Hector turns and lies on his back treading water. The youth staring at the sky with his long limbs spread as though suddenly transported, he is back at the strip, he is lounging in the shallows at the beach. Bolivar pulls at his hair. He climbs upon the stern seat and roars at Hector to hurry. It is then the youth stirs and begins to swim, the long limbs tired now, the body heavy.
Bolivar pulls the barrel with both hands into the boat. He lets Hector haul himself in. The youth stands in the sun, wheezing and spent yet immense with himself. A coating of light upon the wet body. He stares at Bolivar with his yellowed eyes utterly alive. Then he throws his head back and laughs. It is that same strange, rich laugh.
Bolivar cannot speak, turns his back on Hector.
He begins to examine the barrel, lifts the lid and takes a deep inhale.
It smells like some kind of cooking oil, he says. I reckon you can put fifty gallons in there.
Hector moves to the barrel and peers in.
It is then that Bolivar grabs the youth by the wrist and meets him eye to eye.
Bolivar says, do not do that to me again.
Hector meets the look with yellowed eyes that light out of the thinning body, the wet hair sculpted to the bones of the face. He shakes Bolivar off and turns and spreads himself out on the seat to dry, one knee risen upon the seat, the left hand draping down in falling with his hair.
* * *
The whites of Hector’s eyes deepen fully into yellow. He has grown fearless in the water. He slides into the dusk waters to cool and does not listen to Bolivar’s pleading. What you are doing isn’t right. You are going to get killed. What will I do on my own?
Later, Bolivar looks up and calmly points to a vortex of roiling small fish.
The sea cut by fin.
He watches how the youth does not turn to look but sits with the yellowed eyes of a wolf, hunting upon some thought with a faraway look.
* * *
A disturbed smell on the wind. Bolivar studies the waters and the sky, watches a greyness gather in the east. They haul in the net and find a third of it gone. Bolivar closes his eyes and counts. Just one fish in six days. They repair the net as best they can and let it out.
When they are finished, Hector slides into the sea, a blithe shadow parting the evening waters.
Bolivar watching, squeezing his hands into fists, watching until he cannot see Hector. He stands upon the bow seat and stares at the molten light as it cools upon the water, his eyes taken to the farthest reaches, but Hector cannot be seen and there is nothing to witness. For an instant he is met with a feeling that Hector never was and that he has dreamed all this. He pulls at his hair and closes his eyes and then he begins to roar. He waves with great sweeping arms, steps towards the edge ready to dive in but his legs will not move. He looks at his legs and beats his thighs, then climbs back down and sits in a defeated slump.
It cannot be true, he says. It cannot happen like this.
He punches the sides of his legs.
You are a coward. He is not a coward.
Maybe. He is not a coward but he is a fool.
Yes. You are not a fool.
Just then the waters stir behind him. He turns to see Hector climbing sunken-chested over the dark side of the boat. The knife and some barnacles in his hand. The youth coming to be with a serene and glassy look. His yellowed skin intensified by the evening light. With two hands he sluices the water off his body.
He says, that swim has done me good.
Bolivar seizes Hector with a murderous look but the youth calmly turns away.
* * *
A dark crosshatched sea. Bolivar watches the sky with a grim look as the panga lurches upon a swell. He scratches at his neck until he breaks the skin. Then he turns and unties the Jolly Roger from the trim, throws it to Hector. Put your sweater on, he says. He unties the last of their stockinged fish and puts it in the cooler. He gathers the cups and their belongings and puts them in plastic bags and ties them to the hooks under the seat. He screws tight the lid upon the yellow water barrel. Then he pulls in the net and ties it around the bitt. Hector kneeling before the Virgin idol. They sit and watch the dark gather the far sky, the dark advancing.
* * *
The known shape of the world, their voices, the boat. All unbecome in the flung dark-sound of the sea. They lie in the cooler clutched together. The wind funnelled into a wail. Down the troughs of sea. Down the blind and bottomless fear that rests in the heart of each man. The panga then heaving upward. Hector refusing to bail. Bolivar furious, climbing out to check the rain barrel. He stands for a moment willing himself at the storm, willing at it with a feeling of his own aliveness. He grips the gunwale as the panga rides an alpine wave. The panga nearing the summit and he lifts his head and looks out from the wave-top. What he sees is a world whirled into being, a world beyond man, a chaotic and empty fury. The wind whips smoke off the wave-top and he bends into his
knees as the boat crests the wave then begins its lurch downward.
* * *
In flashing darkness Bolivar continues to bail. He checks again the rain barrel. Crawls to the front of the boat. It is then by lightning flash he sees the net is gone. He casts his hands about. What remains of the net is a wave-torn shred upon the bitt. He begins to roar, bends and bails with furious strokes. Another flash and Bolivar sees Hector’s idol under the stern seat. Something ferocious and occult in its wiry disarray as it returns to darkness, its shape imprinted on the eye. He is overcome by some ill-feeling of a curse. When the effigy comes to be again by lightning strobe Bolivar grabs it and hurls it overboard. He climbs back into the cooler and rests his stinging eyes.
* * *
What days have passed, Bolivar does not know. The living self coming out of the shell of the surviving self. How time again opens outward. He climbs out of the cooler with stung-shut eyes, stands blinking, rubs at crusts of salt on the skin. Then he unscrews the top of the rain barrel and dips a cup and takes a drink. He holds the water in his mouth, runs it against the teeth.
Staring at the sky as though he cannot believe.
Two birds beating smoothly the still air.
He turns to see Hector climbing out of the cooler. The youth’s eyes are swollen shut. He feels his way with his hands, the skin completely yellow. Bolivar dips the cup and puts it into the outreached hand. Hector takes a long drink. Then he puts down the cup and without word begins to feel under the seat. Then he stops. He fingertips water and wets his eyes and tries to see. His hands begin to move in frantic gestures. He searches the entire boat. Then he stops upon his knees, lifts his head and lets out a wail.
She is gone, he says.