There were eras in which it was a bad idea to not adhere to the same religious practices of those sharing the region, but this was not one of those times. Also, had I followed the dominant religion of the time, I would have worshipped the Roman gods, not the god of the Jews.
Barukh and his family likely realized that Eleazar wasn’t the name I was born with, but people were really not that concerned with real names back then, so they never pried. The benefit of using a local name was that nobody much bothered me. I was a fisherman and a “Hebrew”, just like a thousand other people, and if anyone got an idea that I should perhaps marry someone’s daughter, they only had to pry deeply enough to discover I wasn’t a practicing Jew and the conversation was over. It worked.
By the way, getting stuck in a situation where someone wants you to marry their daughter is a huge hassle, and it used to happen all the time. I think at least half of my approach to settling down in a particular area was finding a way to position myself as ineligible, because there was literally no easy solution to the daughter problem. When it happened the best recourse was to fake my own death and move on. I’m not joking.
When we were at sea I spent most of my free time talking to Nachum, who was one of the old men I mentioned. All of Nachum’s children had either died or grown up and moved on, and none of the living ones embraced the sea in any real sense. Not compared to Nachum, whose life experiences with water lined up pretty well with my own. That is, he’d spent at least as much time on salt water as on fresh water.
He sailed the Mediterranean for many years, not fishing but shipping, on a trading vessel not unlike the kind I used to own back when I was a Carthaginian merchant. So we had some things in common. Plus he was the only guy I knew who was even close to being my age. That’s a little like saying a rat is much closer to my height than a mouse, but when you live this long, you latch on to anything that looks like common ground.
Nachum was full of stories that wowed the younger members of the crew, and some of those stories might even have been true. A couple of those stories were about mermaids.
“Have you seen one yourself?” I asked one day. It was right after he told a story in which he claimed to have done exactly that.
“You heard the tale,” he said.
We were in the back of the boat stitching up the nets. The person the story had been for—Dor, who was Barukh’s youngest—had already wandered off.
“I heard the tale, but now I’m asking you for the truth of it. Seems the only tales of mermaids I ever heard come from folk who know a man who saw one. I’m asking if you tell a tale told to you by one of those men and put yourself in that tale so as to improve upon it, or if you laid eyes on one yourself.”
“It went just as I said.”
“On the great salt sea.”
“I tell you it was so.”
If you were the kind of person who hung around people who spent a lot of time on boats, you heard at least one mermaid story, but most of those came from men who sailed the ocean, not the Mediterranean. It was atypical. As was sailing the ocean, actually. Not a lot of people did it. I hadn’t, up to that point.
“Just to have this correct, you pulled a live mermaid up in a net on the great sea. This beast was half woman and half tail, and she could breathe the air and speak in the common tongue well enough to beg your captain to set her free.”
Nachum eyeballed me unkindly.
“You have heard me tell this many times now, Eleazar. You call me liar only now? You, a man who claims to have survived a serpent on those same waters?”
“That was true,” I said. And it was, but I changed some of the details. The incident in question happened ten generations earlier, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “We were chased by a Tanakh, but it did not, upon catching us, stick its head up from the water and converse in Greek.”
“It’s this portion of the tale you take umbrage with.”
“It’s one, yes. When we go to market we have one chance in five of meeting with a buyer who knows no Latin, and two in five of meeting one who does not converse in Hebrew. And these are men who share the same shore as us. You would have me believe a creature can be wrested from the bosom of the sea and arrive on the deck of a ship with a full understanding of her captor’s native tongue? I suspect a mermaid would have no understanding of language at all, never mind the correct language for her circumstance.”
“Well… perhaps it is an exaggeration on my part.”
“The mermaid did not speak?”
“She pleaded, but did not speak. She expressed well her desire to return to the waters without words. The captain, on seeing her eyes fill with tears, had pity and set her free.”
“Ah, but then you must explain the next portion, where she promises great fortune to him that release her. How might she have conveyed the availability of this spell without words?”
“Well that’s common sense. Everyone knows a favor for a mermaid means great fortune. Otherwise we would have seen a dead one by now, would we not? The captain would have to consider the value of capturing and keeping a mermaid against the value of setting one free.”
“Everyone knows, I see.”
“Do not take that tone with me, Eleazar.”
“My apologies.”
We finished repairing the net in silence, and then it was time to do some fishing, and cleaning, and salting, none of which I’ll describe because it’s pretty gross and not terribly important to the story. I will say that we did not at any time catch a live mermaid in one of our nets, though.
By day’s end, the deck was smelly from fish guts, which was unfortunate as the deck was where we all expected to sleep. Although we all smelled of fish guts too.
We slept in shifts, and it wasn’t my shift to sleep yet, so I sat at the rear and enjoyed a typically fantastic view of the sky and the water in the light of the full moon. Except for the smell of the fish, it was one of those scenes that stick with an immortal man.
It wasn’t long before Nachum hobbled up beside me. As was so with most old fishermen, he carried himself like a man whose joints were a grave disappointment.
“They’ve been spotted on this sea too,” he said, slowly lowering himself to the deck to sit.
“Mermaids?”
“That’s what I mean, yes.”
“How would a mermaid get here?”
He shrugged. “Swim, I expect.”
I laughed. “The waters of the Mediterranean are brackish and undrinkable. That’s where you find mermaids.”
“I don’t imagine the quality of the water is a need for a being such as that.”
“You misunderstand me, Nachum. There are great oceans, which I assume you know.”
“Of course.”
“These great oceans are filled with brine. If you say to me you saw a mermaid on the salt sea—as indeed you already have—I might believe this to be so because that sea is in communication with the waters of the oceans of the world. A creature could swim into and out of the great Mediterranean in the same way, and through the same means, as the waters. But this sea does not speak to the oceans. It is fed by rivers, and those rivers are also not speaking to oceans. If you imagine a mermaid to be a part of a tribe, or a herd, where would this tribe or herd live? Where do they come from and go?”
“Mermaids don’t live in fresh water, is that what you’re saying?”
“I am.”
“You could have just said that.”
“I thought there was a more thorough way to make the point.”
“But such a waste of words! And to no account. Mermaids are magic. Everyone knows this. If they wish to live in this lake, then they will live in this lake. Who are we to question?”
“I’m not satisfied with that explanation.”
“Then find one which satisfies you.”
“All right. What makes you say there are mermaids in these waters? Have you seen one?”
“Ah, no. Do you know old Menachem?”
“
You will have to be more specific.”
“Old Menachem, from the house beside mine.”
Nachum lived on the seaside, a short distance from Barukh.
“You have no seamen beside you that I know of. Farmers, I took them for.”
“Yes, yes, that’s right. Old Menachem has the larger of the farms.”
“And he saw a mermaid. From the shore.”
“I’ll tell you what we will do. It so happens old Menachem has sought me out for advice. When we next come to port he and I will be meeting to resolve his problem.”
“His mermaid-related problem.”
He smiled, which was a little unsettling, because he only had a couple of teeth left.
“I am going to bring you with me, and you can hear his tale from his mouth. Then you can decide on your own whether there are mermaids living in the waters beneath us.”
* * *
“It began before the harvest,” Menachem said. He was a little man, brown and wrinkled and frail, but with sons large enough to bring into question the faithfulness of his wife. “With the ox.”
Menachem had cows, a few goats, a bull and an ox. No pigs. I love pig. Used to eat pig regularly back when I spent most of my time in Greece, but this whole kosher thing had taken it off the menu in the entire region.
It wasn’t a large farm by most standards, but large enough to sustain his family and produce some grains for market and an occasional calf for trade. As was the case for most of the farms in the area, Menachem used the obvious direct water supply for his farming needs. That included letting the animals wade into the shallows to drink.
We were standing at that water line as he told the story. The ground was muddy and the grass trampled to oblivion right at the edge. A soggy path led from the shore to the gated pen behind us.
“The fence is new,” he said. “Before this, we only fenced the edge of the property and the field. The animals could walk from the yard to here as they wished.”
“You didn’t lock them up at night?” I asked.
“For what reason? There are no wolves in these parts, my neighbors are honest men, and none of the beasts have shown an interest in swimming to a different farm. We have a dog, but he is an old herder, and is thankful we’ve not asked him to corral any of the animals. He sleeps more often than not.”
“All right, so you had to build a fence.”
“We oversee them in the daytime and don’t allow them down here at night any longer. Not since the problems began.”
“I’m not clear on what the problems are.”
Menachem shared a look with Nachum.
“You can tell him,” Nachum said. “He will not believe you, but he won’t laugh in your face either.”
“That’s a minor comfort. Very well, friend-of-my-friend. There is a mermaid trying to entice my animals to drowning.”
“That is a bold assertion.”
“As I was saying, it began with the ox. He nearly drowned. We found him one morning at the shore, on his side, breathing unsteadily. At first we thought him near death, but he recovered and was soon about again. But it happened a second time, and so we began to cage him up for fear that perhaps he’d been possessed in some way.”
“Possessed?”
“Taken by a spirit with destructive intentions. Something that would compel an ox to take his own life. I don’t know that such a spirit exists, but the rabbi considered it possible and so I do as well. To curb the ox’s suicidal behaviors, one of my sons would walk him to the waters by day, and tie him up by night. Then it started happening to the others.”
Menachem held his hand out to one of the two sons who had accompanied us to the water. The boy took his hand gently enough that it was easy to forget the younger man was a head taller than his father. “Haim was the one who figured it out. After we lost one of the cows.”
I greeted Haim formally, as one did.
“In what way did you lose the cow?” I asked. “Did it drown?”
“It must have,” Haim said, his head bowed. Young men addressing elders when in the company of their fathers often behaved with a degree of obsequiousness that would be difficult for a modern person to comprehend. I do miss that.
“You don’t know?”
“We have many times over found two of our cows lying in the mud come morning, much as with the ox. We were discussing what sort of spirits to address on the subject when a cow went missing entirely. It happened overnight. We think she must have drowned and been taken further in. The water is very deep at about five paces, you understand.”
“I do.” There were several places on the sea that I knew of where the dropoff was drastic enough to allow for a deep-draft vessel right at the shore. “But what if—and forgive me, Menachem, I know you speak highly of your neighbors—what if she was simply stolen in the night?”
“We checked,” Menachem said. “Discreetly, of course, but we checked. On the five nearest farms, no new cattle manifested.”
“You are ignoring a more obvious possibility: Someone put your cow on a boat.”
Menachem laughed, as did Nachum, and soon Haim, once he decided it was okay to.
“Have you ever tried to put a cow on a rowboat, my friend?” Menachem asked.
“I admit, I have not.”
“If you had, you would understand why I laugh. Neither you nor the cow would be on that boat for long, I promise. Besides, this is not speculation. We saw the mermaid.”
“You did?”
“Haim did. And so did Levi. I did not, but I am old and need sleep. I have sons to do things such as stay up all night.” He turned to Haim again. “Go on and tell him.”
“It was after the cow drowned. Father and the rabbi thought we faced evil ghosts, and asked us to hide nearby and wait for one of the spirits to take another cow, either in possession or in a song.”
I thought of the sirens in the Odyssey, who are often depicted as mermaids, and wondered if young Haim was learned enough to make the reference a conscious one. I decided he probably was not, and that the phrasing likely came from the rabbi, who could have been sufficiently learned to know his Homer.
“We stacked a pile of rushes over here.” He pointed to a spot beside a tree. “And hid beneath. This we did for four nights, with nothing happening. On the fifth night, we saw her.”
“The mermaid.”
“I promise you, it’s true. She was only a head in the water at first, but even had we not seen that we would have heard the sound she was making. It was like a song, only not a song. I can’t explain. But the cows knew the sound, and they went to it.”
“How do you know it was a woman, if you could only see the head?”
Haim blushed. “She… emerged more thoroughly once near the first cow. We’d have missed any details had it not been a full moon on that night, but we both saw her from the waist up, and she had on no garments.”
Levi, the younger of the two and therefore not expected to speak, did his part by nodding and looking deeply embarrassed.
“What did she… do, when she emerged from the waist up?” I asked.
“That was difficult to see. It looked like she was hugging the cow, speaking in her ear or… I will be honest, we didn’t know what to do. We were expecting a spirit, not this. We were afraid.”
“You didn’t talk to her, then.”
“We didn’t move. We would have… father, you know we would not have let another cow drown, but…”
“It’s all right,” Menachem said. “If you had confronted her, I might be mourning the loss of two sons for all we understand about this creature.”
“So what do you think now, Eleazar?” Nachum asked.
I was thinking Haim and Levi sold one of their father’s cows and made up a ridiculous story to cover the crime, but I didn’t want to say that and I didn’t want it to be true.
“Has the fence worked?” I asked.
“It did at first,” Menachem said. “But lately it has failed as well.”
; “It looks intact. Are the cows jumping over it?”
“No.” He looked sheepish. “This will sound odd…”
“We’re discussing mermaids, I believe we have passed odd already.”
“The fence won’t lock,” Menachem said. “We latch it at night and on three occasions we have found it unlatched in the morning and the cows at the water. We have not lost one, but we can’t figure out how they’re opening the gate either, so I’m sure we will lose another in time.”
“She might be opening the gate herself,” Haim said.
“You’re right, that does sound odd. If this is a mermaid, surely she would be unable to make it to this gate, as she would not be expected to have legs.”
Menachem shrugged. “If she’s not confined to the water, I’m not going to leave my sons out to fall victim to whatever other surprising monstrosities she might reveal.”
Nachum clapped me on the shoulder. “No, that’s what we’re here to do.”
“We are?”
“Yes, my uncertain friend. Let’s catch ourselves a mermaid.”
I sighed.
“All right. But we’re going to need a net.”
* * *
We also needed time ashore. Barukh was surprisingly understanding.
“Evil spirits are more important than fishing,” he said. “We can manage a week short-handed.”
Not unlike mermaids, it was assumed by most people that spirits—evil and otherwise—were real beings that required attention periodically. People still think this way, but most of the time we call it something else.
I was slightly less confident in the reality of the unseen. I won’t say I had quite the same minimum empirical standards I employ for most things now, but I’d seen enough things taken as true, which turned out to be figments of somebody’s imagination, to question conventional wisdom.
You’d be surprised how many things people believed that began as consciously employed tall tales or hoaxes. A whole lot of history can be understood the same way as an episode of Scooby Doo, to be honest.
Immortal and the Island of Impossible Things (The Immortal Series Book 4) Page 5