by Paul Lynch
Bolivar stands staring at the lids of the eyes inflamed around the yellowed sight.
Who is gone?
The Virgin.
Hector pulls himself onto the seat and clasps his hands to his face.
I knew this would happen, he says. I began to test her. No wonder she abandoned us. Now we are truly alone.
Then Hector begins to sob. Bolivar watching for a moment. Then he stands up and claps his hands, lets loose a mocking laugh at the sky.
That was some storm! Hey? A real ship killer. But we are not dead yet. Here we are, alive and well. Wait till they hear back home.
Hector turns suddenly with a profound and searching look. What is in the look silences Bolivar. He sees the sickness beneath the lashed skin. The sickness as it rests in the yellowed eyes and cankered mouth. The lids of the eyes inflamed around the yellowed sight. The bones that press through the yellowed skin.
Hector shakes his head.
He says, I see now this was meant to be. There is no escape. I do not know what I did to deserve this fate but I will face it alone.
Bolivar screws his face at Hector.
Face what alone? Heh? What are you talking about?
He pulls the youth by the elbow.
He says, look, brother. We are in this together. We will figure something out. One thing and then another. We will make another net. We can use the bamboo stick. You will see.
Hector sits and shakes his head.
No, he says. It is fate.
* * *
The beating sun sparks off the ocean. Then the current ceases. Bolivar listening carefully to the water. How the ocean seems to forget itself, speaks now almost without breath. The heat in the mouth and how it makes the breath stop, the chest rising and falling in a reflex of breathing without air.
They hide from the sun in the cooler.
In the evening Bolivar lies out over the waters with the bamboo stick. Now and again he turns and studies Hector who sits knees-to-chin within the cooler and does not leave. The yellowed eyes watching something inward. The mouth moving in prayer.
Bolivar’s face wrinkles with disgust. He rolls his mouth with an instinct to spit then carefully swallows.
He studies Hector again, then shakes his head.
He thinks, he just won’t.
Why won’t he?
He closes his eyes and sees the yellowed youth as he sits within his self-made solitude.
He is wrong and I am right.
Bolivar jabs at some darkening twist-shape and misses.
You try to speak to a man’s mind. His way of thinking. A man listens or does not listen and if he won’t, why is it he won’t? What is the won’t in a man’s mind? What is the won’t in his mind?
He pulls in a glob of sinuous seaweed and loosens from it dead crabs. He tastes and chews dryly on the algae. Watches a lone seabird that might be a fulmar. The meat underwing and how the bird lands plump upon a broken image.
He stands a moment watching then bends with the stick to the deep.
Why is it he won’t?
What he sees in the waters or thinks he can see.
Far below, the shadow of a school writhing like the twistings of a man’s mind.
* * *
For days now the boat is still. Bolivar with a T-shirt tied over his head, his legs spread out, his mind mugged by heat. Watching the sky held by the sea, ivory upon the waters. Then he sees a farthermost glinting. He is certain it is a ship. He turns towards Hector but does not speak.
For hours, its slow vanishing.
* * *
The dead air tastes of salt. Bolivar picks at a scab on his knee and chews it. Then he spits it out. The dead skin too has a salt taste. He runs a finger along the trim and stares at the salt crystals gathered on the skin. His eyes falling upon the sea. He stares into the water. Thought reaching down into the cooling deep until thought swims free. What he holds in his distant look are the tree-tops rising and falling. The bowing green trees as you arrive upon the strip. The leaves of the trees in their wind-breathing green. But the salt air dissolves all things. It dissolves the trees on the strip. It dissolves the strip. The jungled hill and the town are dissolving. The people in the town. Briefly he can see their faces, the places that hold them, and then he cannot.
He grows afraid.
He begins to think he will not remember any of this. It is as if the salt is eating into the place that holds the image. He moves then towards the mountains. He follows the road from the town to where she lives.
Alexa.
He tries to see the house. But the salt dissolves the road. It dissolves the house. He steps through the door into the room and sees the salt dissolving her skin. The air around her skin. It dissolves her voice.
He listens.
He listens through the dissolving image as though to discern some faraway whisper. He listens until he can hear the dissolved voice trembling, the voice speaking to him. What it says.
You did not know you loved.
* * *
A bird rides the evening zephyr. When the bird clips along the hull Bolivar follows soft-foot behind. The head twitching this way and that. Black cap and orange bill. It looks like some kind of tern, maybe. The flutter and then furling wing. It is then that Bolivar finds himself moving through the air, finds his hands at the bird’s throat. Hector’s yellowed eyes watching in disgust as Bolivar fights the bird with blood-pecked hands then skins it. He complains when Bolivar slices the meat off the breast and thighs. Then he climbs out of the cooler and sits with a sorrowful look.
He says, you cannot eat that.
Bolivar says, why not?
It is a sin.
Bolivar stops with the knife.
How is it a sin?
It is not food. It is not clean.
How is this not food?
Bolivar turns muttering and shakes his head. Then he twists the knife into the meat, cuts a piece and slides it off the blade into his mouth. The youth’s face puckers in disgust and his teeth flash as Bolivar slowly rolls the taste. He stares at the youth who suddenly looks away. Then Bolivar swallows and his mouth shrinks with distaste. He takes a small drink of water and smiles.
It is very oily, he says. It tastes of rotten fish. But you are what you eat, no?
Hector does not answer.
Bolivar leans closer to him.
You are getting sick. Really, you should eat some.
* * *
Hector watches Bolivar now with a yellowed sneering look. One bird and then another. How with two quick motions he leaves each bird shorn of its wings, pens them with driftwood into the bow. Stands over the birds and calls them chickens. When it is time to kill, Bolivar slices the meat into portions and puts them to soften in brine. Hector drinks water but refuses to eat. In hunger the birds begin to peck at each other, to call through the night and the day in their squawkings, Hector growing more and more aghast as their faeces litter the hull. He shifts about, he cannot sleep, lies with his hands over his ears. He takes the bamboo spear and tries to fish with it, stabs uselessly at the water. Then some dark fish takes the spear in its back and Hector whoops but the fish pulls the spear free of his hand. He watches it pass into the waters. Stands wringing his hands, Bolivar stamping about the boat in a rage. Then he stands before Hector with his hands on his hips and shouts at him. It is just like you to do that. As he turns the boat makes a sudden lurch. Bolivar looks up to see Hector moving swiftly down the boat, the youth taking a cup of bird meat and throwing it overboard. He cups with two hands a wingless bird and tosses it over the trim, reaches for another.
With a roar Bolivar is upon Hector. He grabs the youth by the nose and throat, Hector with his head thrust back, he is beating an arm up and down upon Bolivar as though trying to take flight. Then he reaches with a thumb and hooks Bolivar in the mouth.
In silence they grapple among the scattering birds, the panga swaying upon the even sea, Bolivar sensing now the weakness within Hector’s body, an infirmi
ty in the limbs, the spent and wheezing breath. He can sense too his own power. He shapes Hector into a headlock and twists pressure, mutters coarsely into his ear.
What are you? You are nothing—
Some feeling of might and justice surging through the blood, squeezing as Hector ceases to struggle.
It is then that Bolivar lets the youth drop.
Hector falls bent onto his knees sucking with great serrations on his breath, his eyes popped-out. Then he fixes upon Bolivar a wounded and hateful look. He crawls towards the cooler and begins to sob. Bolivar keeping watch before turning to survey his birds.
He begins to pull at his beard, sits down with great shakings of his hands, stands up again.
He turns and roars at Hector.
It makes no difference to me whether you die or not. You can die all you like out here. But destroy my food? Take away my chance? That is a crime. I will kill you for that. I will tear out your eyes.
* * *
For days Bolivar moves about the boat around an unwilling and wordless Hector. Then the youth climbs out of the cooler, stands very still, calls to Bolivar in a reluctant voice. Bolivar pretends not to hear, lies spread out under sheeting, chewing on a rind of toe-nail. Hector calls again in half-whisper. He raises slowly a crooked hand and points. Bolivar lifts the sheeting and watches the youth rapt it seems by some vision. He drops the sheeting and climbs out of it. Watches with narrowed eyes.
The ocean in fields of final light.
Then within the half-sun an image.
He closes his eyes and opens them. It is as though something had been burnt into his retina.
Something huge and slow and darkened.
It cannot be—
His voice cracks.
Then he says, it is coming our way.
They watch a container ship come to be.
Hector turns with a fearful look.
Do you think they have seen us?
Bolivar begins to move. He looks for something to wave, grabs hold of a bleached-orange plastic bag, ties it to the plank.
He says, they have seen us, for sure.
He begins to wave the plank and shout.
They watch the ship cruise towards them.
Then Hector shakes his head.
He says, it is really going to happen.
They jump and wave and cheer with torn voices. They come to see a great tonnage of coloured containers stacked seven-high upon the deck. Bolivar studying the bridge hundreds of feet above the ocean. Not a person to be seen. A sudden ripple of fear passing through his body as the ship’s hum carries through the water. What he begins to see is something unremitting in the ship’s fixed intent. They watch as it comes upon them. They watch and each man comes to know it. They stand then within that knowing. They stand and feel the passing breath of the ship as it shuts out the sky. Then the panga goes dark within the ship’s faceless expression. Hector’s face turns wretched. The men scream and shout and wave their flag but the ship carries onwards without a sailor in sight. It passes into shadow. Passes into the night. Hector a rucked shape pulling at his hair. Bolivar pinching the cords of his throat.
He lifts his head to stare into what has just happened.
The ship as it was. The ship nevermore.
* * *
Bolivar watches Hector sitting in a ball and he looks at the sea and he looks at his own sun-browned skin. It is then it comes upon him, a quaking laughter that rises from some deep unknown. Hector turns with a mute shudder. Bolivar would like to stop, he pulls at his hair, he shakes his head, he slaps his thighs, but the laughter continues to come. Then Hector stands up. He moves towards Bolivar and fixes him with a rancorous look. His hands curl and his eyes seem to spit out of his face.
Then finally he speaks in a plain, factual tone.
It is your fault.
Bolivar stares into the eyes that sit now as though dead in the speaking face. It is then he stops laughing.
Hector says, they saw what you had. Your little zoo of birds. They could see you for what you are. A cruel and twisted man. I have always known it. Letting the birds live like that without wings. Such a sight before God. They would have heard the screeching for sure. They watched you in their binoculars and they said, that there is a sicko, take a good look at him, he goes to sea to torment birds, he pulls off their wings and lets them live in agony and distress until he eats them, he is among the damned for sure. And so they passed by. So you see, Bolivar, it is your fault. Nothing is of any use now. I had an opportunity to go home, to catch her doing those things she has been doing behind my back. And now she will never know that I know.
Bolivar stares at Hector’s yellowed teeth, at the eyes vanishing into the caves of the skull.
He thinks, he is losing his mind. He is growing old. It is now an old man’s face, for sure.
* * *
Hector’s black pebble eyes. He seems no longer aware of Bolivar, has sat for days within stillness, his eyes unseeing yet open. Bolivar watching the youth. He tries to see what might be in the youth’s mind but cannot. Sometimes he can hear Hector whispering some prayer. Bolivar cuts bird meat into strips and lays it on the cowling to cook. Their water is getting low but sooner or later, he knows, this humid weather will give rain. He studies the flats of sea and sky. Then he sees it, a giant bird. He squints at it a long time. He is sure it is an albatross, the bird white on darkened wings is expertly motionless. He tells Hector to look but the youth does not stir.
* * *
At sundown he goes for a hobbled run. His sun-browned back grown crooked. The knees arthritic, the elbows protruding, the lungs buckling under the body’s weight. His mind watching himself as he once was on the strip. The body firm and upright upon the beach. The blood circulating. The body supple and proceeding and automatic in what it does. The flesh alert and tasting the air. He can see himself moving by the panga on the strip. There is Hector alongside Arturo walking towards him. He is watching Hector’s flimsy body, his long arms and legs, his inner being projecting outward some kind of sickness of spirit, that is what it is, a great not-doing within him. A man cannot become some other man. You are made of what is in you.
Bolivar stops running and leans at the edge of the cooler fighting for breath. He can see Hector inside, whispering himself into being, he has not moved today.
It is then he finds himself shouting in Hector’s face.
Look, Hector! A ship!
Hector does not stir at Bolivar’s mocking laughter.
Bolivar now within a rage. He juts his face within an inch of Hector’s yellowed skin, the quarried lips, the rotten breath. The edgeless, calm indifference.
He shouts, what is wrong with you? You need to wake up! You need to eat! How many times have I told you to take heart? Why won’t you listen?
He grabs Hector by the shoulder and shakes him.
Hector lifts his head and fixes a blank stare upon Bolivar. Then he shuts his eyes and rests within. When he opens them again a glimmer of something stirs in the eyes as though a thought has come into being, the thought resting there, growing in its own light. Then Hector’s mouth opens. He speaks in a resigned and distant voice.
Something is growing within my body. It is like weight, only different. It is always there now. It is growing within me. I can feel it here.
Bolivar watches the finger point to the chest.
He goes to speak but falls silent.
He rubs his hands and looks up.
Look, brother. You just need to eat. That’s all there is to it.
Hector says, yes, I am hungry. I will eat some fish.
But there is no fish.
It is OK. I know what you did.
What is OK?
What you have done.
What do you mean, what I have done?
You have been hiding the fish from me all this time, eating it at night.
Bolivar’s mouth falls open.
But there is no fish. We lost our net in the—
I
want you to believe it is OK, Bolivar.
No, it is not OK!
Listen, I forgive you.
Hey! I haven’t done anything.
Bolivar stands before him grinding his teeth, his hands squeezing open and shut. He stares at his fists.
Hector smiles and closes his eyes.
* * *
Into black night Bolivar wakes. He pads his hand to where Hector should be, sits suddenly up. What his mind sees. Hector sliding himself into the water that wraps around him his grave. With quickness then he is moving out of the cooler. There is Hector on his knees, the skin thinly etched by moonlight, the face lifted towards the night. The sound of whispered prayer. Then Hector stops. He is aware now of Bolivar and rests back on his heels. A moment later, he speaks.
Did you know, Bolivar, that we are already dead? I’ll bet you didn’t know this. But it is a fact.
Bolivar’s mouth goes dry. He tries to speak but no words come out. He rests a hand against the cooler, stands very still sensing the air between them, sensing the silence that rests in the air, sensing what rests in the silence.
Hector says, we died during that first storm. I died that time I fell in. I did not even notice. The line of life and death. How strange and slim it is. It is something we do not experience. Just a simple passing through. You come up out of the water gasping for air not knowing you are already dead. It is so simple. And now we are here, adrift in this place. You see, Bolivar, this is neither heaven nor hell. That is our punishment. We have been cast out. We lost sight of God. Now we are being taught what not seeing him truly means. Not seeing. Never seeing. Never will see. Maybe always not. This is what absence truly is. It must be met as suffering.
Hector falls silent. He pulls his hair out of his face.
A moment later, he begins to speak.
Maybe now this means it is OK she is with him. This is what I am thinking over and over. She has given herself over to sinning while I have the sinning thoughts. And so I see how all this has been designed for me.