Beyond the Sea

by Paul Lynch

  With careful strokes he cuts up chicken and places it in brine, puts it in the cooler. He unties his growing hoard of plastic bags and sorts through them. There are bags in every colour and script. He studies the bleached logos, the unknown languages. Smudged words and ideograms. For a moment he can see himself as though in some final days of man, puzzling upon these plastic bags as the remnants of lost and distant races, all such writing patiently washed to nothing by the sea. He takes a long clear plastic bag and puts it over his head, tears a hole for his mouth. Then he takes it off and puts on all the clothing he has left – two pairs of shorts, two T-shirts, two sweaters and his hat.

  Waiting for what comes.

  * * *

  The wind harries the plastic sheeting and forces the rain inside. He has been damp through for days. His teeth clacking an arrhythmic beat. He thinks, your bones will turn to putty. He climbs out into the rain and holds the plastic bag with one hand to his body. Begins to run at walking speed raising high his knees. He flexes his jaw as he moves, pumps his free hand into a fist, beats his chest. On his third circuit he slips and the sea vaults the lowered sky. He finds himself winded on his back, pain throbbing in his hip. He lies clutching at his side and is afraid to move. He stares at the vanished sun, the ceaseless rain, how the rain seems to have given time a shape, time slowly wet and lumbering and visible just for a moment. He crawls to the cooler and does not know why he is laughing.

  * * *

  He wakes upon a wild and running sea, grabs at his hip. He crawls wincing towards the cups, gathers them into a plastic bag and ties it upon a hook. He grabs hold of the seat and lifts himself up. Stands eyeing the sea, the clotted heavy light spreading downward. Soon, the temperature drops and it begins to hail. Then his skin begins to tingle, his hair rising up. He tries to move quickly to the cooler but a staff of lightning strikes the ocean before him. He yelps, crawls inside with the flash still imprinted on his eye. Trying to fit his body upon the bed of polystyrene foam without touching the cooler.

  * * *

  For days the raving sea. In the dark the rain falls as though into some timeless abyss. He becomes aware of the sensation of parting from his body. He closes his eyes and watches as if he is becoming someone else. He is sitting on the seat watching the lightning strike the sea, then he turns and sees himself in the cooler. He discovers if he holds his breath he can rise high into the storm. High above the sea he can see the panga a dim-thrown speck, the moon tossed upon the ocean.

  * * *

  When the storm abates, he can hardly move. A furious exhaustion rips through the upper body. He lies coughing wet from his lungs, his bailing arms limp. How the storm still presses in memory the dark and shrieking shape of a mouth. Watching the shadows where Alexa sits. He says, I am still here because of you. He watches the dawn blood the world. The barrel now a quarter full. He takes a long drink and washes the salt off his face. He drinks some coffee and sees that in a few more days it will be gone. He cannot go for a run, can hardly walk for his hip. He climbs back into the cooler and waits.

  * * *

  He sits staring into the well of his being. Can feel something within him move, the living will restless to escape, a shadow coming loose. At night and sometimes during the day he begins to part from his body. He comes to believe he is double. Sometimes he wakes with the empty feeling he is someplace else. He fixes his mind upon this problem of separation until he grows tired. What it would be like to separate for good, to gain control of his double, to leave the other behind for good.

  * * *

  He visits where he used to live. His breathing held as he stands within the shadows. The brass-handled door opens with a faint rasp as he soft-foots into her room. The night-breathing window. His daughter asleep. The hair spread darkly upon the pillow.

  The sea her breathing.

  Then she turns abruptly as though wakened. She stares at the dark as though she can see him. She sighs and mutters some misshapen word.

  What he whispers into her ear.

  She turns and falls back asleep.

  Maybe, he thinks, this is how it is. You are really in this room watching over her and in some way she senses it. This would explain a lot of things.

  He visits the house of his parents. Steps over the sleeping hound old and deaf in the doorway. Meets their slumped and sleeping bodies. His mother’s face held gaunt by the street light when he leans in to examine her. The familiar smells. Decongestant. Detergent on the mopped floors. Candle wax.

  * * *

  He visits places he has never been. He imagines cities vast, teeming, met with festival colour. Faces like painted masks looming as he walks down the streets. He ghosts into different rooms. Sits watching people eat, people watching TV while eating, gaping into phones.

  He enters a room and stands with men and roars at a football match. He steps into another room and watches an enormous man bent over a woman.

  He inhales cigar smoke, damp newspapers, cinder, oranges in a box. He peels an orange and puts it to his nose. He sniffs scorched chilli, epazote, squeezes a lime on his tongue. He walks into a bakery and breathes in the smell of shortbread. He crumbles some and lets it drop upon the floor.

  He places before him foods he has never dreamed of. Obscure meats and pickles. For fun he licks garlic, salt, pepper, mustard, a meat garnish that tastes of chocolate. He sucks on sugared chilli.

  Each night he visits with women.

  * * *

  Debris washes against the boat. He pulls some in and sorts through it. Plastic bags and bottles. Seaweed streamers. Knots of netting shredded beyond use. He examines an empty crisp bag. Fondles a fly swat and tries to picture its owner. He cuts open a shampoo bottle and pours some seawater in, lathers the shampoo into his scalp. His hair now is long and knotted. Then he remembers a broken comb Hector once found and searches for it. He finds it in a plastic bag, begins to detangle his hair, runs the comb through the matting of beard.

  * * *

  Later that evening he visits Rosa’s house. A gentle listening knock before she opens the door. She stands in the half-light and with a flick lets down her hair. Her eyes cannot hide her alarm at the sight of his body. She touches his meatless arm and gasps. Her hand tracing the ribs. She slides out of her loose shirt, his hand upon her abdomen.

  He says, I am sorry, Rosa, I haven’t had time to shave.

  Afterwards, his body spent, he lies overcome with the feeling that his double has always existed.

  He says to Rosa, if I can become him, I will be able to leave the boat for good. It is only a matter of concentration. Then I will be free to do what I like. This other me I can leave behind for good.

  Rosa runs her finger along his chest.

  She says, what happens to him will be of no concern to me.

  * * *

  Under a blank sky he idles with the knife. It is then he stops and listens. He quickly cuts at bird claws and feathers and throws them overboard. He leans over the trim and watches, listens for a long time.

  The sheer sea deepening into darker colours.

  He believes his hearing.

  He strips off his clothes and puts the knife in his mouth tasting the blade. He takes a small web of netting. With a light gasp he eases his body into the water. He is afraid to let go of the boat. He treads the water then takes a long breath and slides under the panga. The ocean below a vast dusk upturned, the water burning his eyes. He can see no sharks. He watches glimmering transports of colour. He grows emboldened and swims under the boat. The hull has taken the countenance of rock, dark and rugged and sharpened by barnacles.

  He takes the knife from his mouth and goes to work.

  * * *

  He arranges the catch before him as though on a plate. Picks up a barnacle and pinches it free of its sleeve. A spout of brine squirts him in the face. He wipes at his cheek and laughs. With slippy fingers he pulls each barnacle out of its skin and studies it. How each snail-like body looks like a reptilian foot. He takes a pinch
of brine from a cup and seasons the meal. He becomes his tongue, his mind singing the flesh as he eats. He decides the barnacles taste entirely of the sea. He wonders too if he is now like this. If now you are made of wind and rain, salty air, the blood watered to brine. How you might taste to a shark.

  * * *

  Later, he lies on his back, resting his hands on his ribs. His mind adrift and for a moment he is met with a sense of all life within the ocean. He follows the thought and stops before an untold immensity. All that has ever lived within the seas. His mind trying to reach. The time that has held all such life. The time passing. The time that will pass onwards and forever. He can imagine all the fish beneath him now. All the fish in all the world’s seas. All the fish going back in untold generation. Each fish a being, the being within the body, the body with a sense of feeling that is its own aliveness, this aliveness living briefly and then vanishing into a void of years.

  What you are in all this.

  He turns to the form that is Alexa sitting beside him.

  He says, do you know what? Man gives birth to his own problems. I see this now. The world has always been silent.

  * * *

  Days pass and he sleeps more during the day. He catches sight of his double in dream but more often now he cannot become him, the double is slipping away. His water is low and he rests each drop in the eaves of his mouth. For days and days he pulls at the sky with his eyes, pulls at it as though unrolling some great scroll, unrolling until he finds rain. He imagines growing tall enough to tear at the sky, ripping it to shreds with his hands, the fabric of the world coming undone. He wonders what would be behind it. Space. Blackness. A giant echo of laughter. He sits and sucks on his tongue. The coffee is gone. Soon, he thinks, you will have to start drinking bird blood.

  * * *

  He sits at the stern willing himself under a colding sky. He can see himself under the boat. The jabbing knife. He is filling the small net with barnacles. The will sending forth the image of the will to do the will’s bidding. How the will presses against the feeling that says, today, the waters are not quiet.

  No, he says. I will not do it.

  He finds himself moving, taking breath upon the knife, sliding silently into the cool water. In an instant he knows his weakness. How the water’s irrevocable weight binds him, pulls him down, whispers stop to the limbs. His eyes searching the fathomless gloom. He sees the passing carriage of minute yellow-dark fish. Then he sees the will’s work as though watching his double. Slowly he brings himself under the boat. Chipping at the hull while counting the breath. Lost in the work when out of the dusk curves a sickle-tailed shark. His breath flees and the hand opens letting the knife drop into the sea’s falling dark.

  The sun undone upon the sea.

  He finds himself breaking the surface, grabbing hold of the gunwale, hauling himself into the boat, coughing up water. He lies very still, waiting for the blood to warm, lying in grief for his knife.

  * * *

  The last bird in the boat, a shearwater, carried the speckled rain in its feathers. Now he talks to it a while. He asks it for forgiveness.

  * * *

  He wonders if he is on the edge of a shipping lane. In four days he has watched two great ships edge the horizon. Seen the lights of another at night. He wonders who they are, what they are doing. He closes his eyes and sits at the officers’ table. He dances with their wives. He takes hold of a woman and hears her gasp, begins to waltz her about the deck. A rich laughter falls out of him. It is Rosa.

  * * *

  His arms beat against the cold. Watching how fire lives on water as the illusion of fire.

  * * *

  He dreams of who she is now, her form as she moves within him, a woman soon, moving through the world, his form moving within her, unseen, unknown. He sings to her at night in a hoarse low voice. Sometimes she speaks to him. You must survive, she says. You must return home. I know you will.

  He laughs a little, says, I am doing what I can but it is getting harder and harder all the time. I am weak and very hungry now. My body is tired. Look at this. My arms are like sticks. I have not caught a bird in some time.

  * * *

  He lies watching her move. He watches the forms of others he has known as they move through their lives. He stands on the street or in the room watching. He thinks he might be a ghost. The motions of the living. This is what he sees now. How each person moves burdened within time yet time moving without. How each moves through life in pain and fright, in suffering and bewilderment, feeling through the darkness, their hands grasping like the blind for there is no real seeing. He closes his eyes and breathes softly and feels a spreading light within. He sees them all before him, those that he knew.

  He is crying.

  He knows now that he loves them all. He sees his younger self and loves him too.

  A strange feeling of bliss.

  * * *

  Without sight he can sense a lone bird far off. He turns to see a chevron of falling light. The bird plunging into the sea. He stands up and calls, waves with a plastic bag.

  * * *

  Little by little he becomes aware of it. A deep quiet in the mind. For a long time it has been so, the days passing in silence. But now when he wakes his mind is still. No more the bullying voice he has heard all his life. He cannot explain this to himself. Without thought, he sits.

  * * *

  Storm.

  * * *

  From bottomless sleep he is startled awake. He meets a fierce and blinding light. He pushes back the plastic sheet and visors his hand over his eyes. From upon the night sea a torch beam is directed upon the boat. He can hear low voices, the rumbling of an engine that reverberates through the hull of the panga. He sees the light of a cigarette moving in brief hand arcs.

  This is happening, he thinks. This is not a dream.

  With disbelief his body is moving out of the cooler. He waves his arms and shouts with furious hoarseness. What he sees is a short but powerful cruiser sheathed by the dark, not a single light on board, its outline faint by moonlight. The shapes of three men. He continues to shout as the light travels down the length of the panga then fixes back on his body.

  A man shouts in a foreign tongue.

  He hears another voice, high and urgent, and he thinks it might be Japanese but he has no idea why. The beamed light goes black and the vessel becomes complete with the darkness. He watches a cigarette brighten as it is sucked and then the butt is flicked towards him, lands by his feet.

  The cruiser engine is throttled into a roar.

  His mouth goes dry. He cannot shout.

  The boat powering away.

  * * *

  He lies on the deck heaving great sobs, sucks the dying cigarette. He tells himself, perhaps it is the case you are only ever met with one chance. There are no other chances. This was your chance and you let it go. He wonders if this is true. He wonders what he could have done. Jumped overboard. Swum towards the boat.

  A feeling of something black creeping under the skin, the black seizing tight around the heart.

  The moon rounding upon quarter-light.

  He rolls and begins to punch the hull, breaks open a knuckle.

  It was real, you saw it.

  He stands up and stares at the dark.

  He roars at the sea. Goddamn you! Why could you not leave me alone?

  * * *

  When he wakes in the morning he sits and wonders if what happened during the night was true. He cannot tell for sure. He can see the boat as it was in darkness upon the water, no masthead light, side light or stern light. Criminals no doubt, pirates or traffickers, and yet, when he thinks about it, he cannot be sure what it truly was. He looks for the cigarette butt and cannot find it. He sits on the stern seat and hears his hoarse voice laughing.

  * * *

  Time empties out of the body. His mind resting again in silence. Hunger now is at its deepest and yet he sits beyond it. Then it rains from a white sky and he is th
ankful. He measures two fingers of water in the barrel. He studies the chalk face of the moon and speaks to it as an old friend. The moon rising again upon its lustre. He counts how many cycles have gone by and is astonished. It is eleven months since he left home.

  * * *

  Sometimes he sits and simply watches the body as if he has never seen it before. He sees the old hands, the blemished skin, the raw-boned fingers, the crinkled nails, the gaunt ankles and feet. There is an ache that is always present. The slow heavy blood has stiffened the limbs, brought short the breath. He no longer has the energy to run. How suddenly youth is old age, he thinks. Now you are an old man.

  * * *

  All day now he sits in the cooler or on the deck, his mind present with the water, his mind present with the sky and the wind, he is both within and without them.

  * * *

  He feels as though the great silence has entered the body, is running through the blood, quietening the heart’s longings.

  He listens to the silence and it meets him as feeling.

  He wonders if the same silence he can feel within is the same silence of the deep. The silence within the silence. The silence behind all things. He does not know what this means. His mind begins to rest in the feeling of the thought until it cannot be reached.