When I saw a small boat approaching the beach, I imagined the women would board it for the afternoon dive, so I jumped down and ran. I didn’t have time to consider what I wanted to say to them. When I got there, I saw the same woman I had spoken to earlier and asked her if I might be allowed to board the boat with her group. None of them liked the idea when they heard my proposition. Though my clothes were perfectly casual for any normal city, in that village where everything seemed to follow the dictates of the sea, I was clearly overdressed. But work was at hand, there was no time to waste, and eventually they allowed me on board.
My new friend’s name is Tokumi. Except for a kind of fundoshi that covered her pubic area and left her buttocks exposed, Tokumi was completely naked, as were the rest of the women. In the few minutes it took the boat to reach the diving spot, Tokumi explained that she had recently been promoted to funado, which means she’d become part of the group of veterans, the ones who belong to a higher rank thanks to their skillfulness, and now she usually fishes at a medium depth of eighty feet, though at times she goes much deeper. After a year of apnea training, I’d reached the respectable maximum depth of a hundred feet, but I know that to descend and ascend is not the same as to descend, work, and ascend. One needs a great amount of physical and mental talent to work like that in water whose temperature never goes above sixty degrees Fahrenheit.
As soon as we arrived at the diving spot, they all leaped into the water equipped with nothing but goggles, fins, a kaigane for scraping mollusks from the rocks, and a basket to collect the quarry, which also served as a buoy to help them rest between dives. The fastest way for the divers to reach the bottom is to carry iron or stones, and to return to the surface they tug twice on a cord tied to their waists like a lifeline, and the ship’s captain, the only man on the expedition, pulls them up to facilitate their ascension.
I watched from the boat how the divers went up and down, grabbing on to a single basket, throwing their catch into it while preparing to go back down. Between dives they would make a noise when they breathed that was so beautiful, it alone was worth all the sacrifice to be there. They breathed in a special way in order to fill their lungs with more air, which produced a kind of whistle. To hear one of them is remarkable. But to hear three or four at the same time is astounding, because each one emits a different tone in their whistling. I counted Tokumi’s dives between one whistle and another, and tallied up to forty, which was more than she had done in the morning.
Those sounds, the sounds of a body submerging itself every few minutes, the smell and taste of green tea that spilled from the pot the captain would refill whenever it was empty, and the slight bobbing of the boat brought pleasure to four of the senses: sight, sound, smell, and taste. Each one of these networks had been activated, except for the sense of touch. And yet I didn’t need to touch a thing or be touched by anybody in order to feel sexually aroused after such a long time. I felt excited and attracted to the cluster of women or, more precisely, to the women who were in the water at that precise moment. So I got up, grabbed a pair of goggles that had been left in the boat, undressed, and jumped into the sea. The captain said something, but I didn’t understand and he didn’t get in my way. The water was a lot colder than I had expected. I started swimming away from where the divers were in order to warm up, trying not to disrupt them at work. Once I got used to the water, I returned to where the group was and looked for Tokumi. Seeing all those nude women swimming about with fins seemed like the utmost freedom within the enslavement that is work. Natural bodies, each one in its own shape, not being hidden but not flaunted either, in a group where nobody lorded over anyone else, each one restricted by nothing more than the capacity of their lungs. It was the freedom that excited me. I knew the importance of being able to take off one’s clothes without fearing reprisals. If only I could become like one of those women, I think now, after all the identity that was denied me, the operations that were never completely successful; if someone were to give me a normal body, my body, I would look for an occupation that allowed me to be naked most of the time. I’d show up at the bank to receive your life insurance payout, naked. Did you ever notice how dull and gloomy the employees are at our bank branch? All that time counting money they can’t spend mustn’t be very good for them. I would waltz in bare naked and make myself a tanga with those dollar bills right on the spot; oh, so sorry, I mean a clitanga. Clitanga . . . Oh, look at that, I didn’t mean to say the name of an animal. Everyone would be staring at me by then. “What’re you all looking at?” I’d say. “Has nobody ever seen a clitanga before? Clitangas are pets from the Pacific regions; they feed off small crustaceans.”
My fake breasts didn’t change shape when I submerged myself in the water. The other women’s breasts lifted, were ductile, as alive as any other marine creature. I didn’t want to break the group up, creeping like spiders along the marine floor with their knives, so I decided to take advantage of the day to do my own set of immersions.
By the length of the cables I gauged that the amas were working at around sixty feet, but one group was busy in a basin just a little farther down whose intense color of blue, a blue verging on black, gave a sense of increased depth. I positioned myself where the surface coincided with the opening of the basin and began to descend, a few feet more with every new immersion. When I would surface and breathe, I’d grab on to the boat for a few minutes and then dive again. Fully relaxed, I crossed beyond the level where the group of amas worked and lost myself in that black hole. I wasn’t sure exactly how many feet down I was reaching, but for at least half of the descent I didn’t need to move in order to fall, since the body starts falling on its own as the depth increases. The effect triggers at fifty to sixty-five feet, so back at the surface, when I could think clearly, I calculated the depth of my dive at somewhere in the area of 115 feet. This was unquestionably too much for me, especially since I didn’t have a spotter, but the call of the depths, which had always enthralled me, was powerful and I felt compelled to dive again, to gain if only a few more feet with each plunge. The pressure squeezed my lungs, and my body, free of breathing, was so receptive that I felt a sense of the whole in each of the parts; in my fingertips, in my belly button, in my throat. I was alive again. My heart put distance between one beat and another, and allowed me to slip into that space where you hear the pulse descend like an echo saying goodbye, growing weaker and weaker. The sound of a heart in repose. Silence, I told myself, don’t think, your heart is at rest. The last echoes were almost inaudible, but I remained motionless several feet down because I know that before the echo gets lost completely, the human angel would appear, warning me that it was time to surface. Usually I could feel it tickle softly the nape of my neck, the breath of life that called me back upward. But for some reason the angel didn’t show up that time or I didn’t hear it. The lack of oxygen and the pleasure of it lured me into that most dangerous state: the feeling that I could live without air. And so I fell into the abyss, with a pleasurable feeling of immense serenity.
I felt warmth in my skin and a hot liquid in my mouth. I opened my eyes to see Tokumi’s face. She was holding my head to raise me up and give me some tea to drink. I understood. I had passed out while diving. But that’s not all. Before passing out, I must surely have experienced what divers know as the narcosis of the deep, they said. I forgot to surface because I was experiencing the kind of euphoria certain narcotics produce, which occurs when nitrogen is exposed to high pressures. I told the amas exactly what had happened, how at first I felt a sort of happiness that made me think I didn’t need air anymore, I belonged there now, in that aquatic environment. So I just continued diving, not even considering surfacing, completely oblivious to the state I was in.
The next thing I remember was seeing, as I was falling to the bottom of the basin, all of them, the amas, around me. At first I thought it was so strange, but as is true when you are under the influence of certain drugs, you don’t question what you are seeing. In t
he space of a minute’s time I lived in a much vaster world, like in a dream. At one point I saw my new companions looking at me with expressions of wonder through the glass of their goggles. They opened their eyes, as if trying to say there was some sort of danger behind me. So I looked around and saw a huge whale vagina. It was astonishingly beautiful, so much more than human ones, a slightly paler shade of pink, and more slippery in texture, like fresh ice. I wanted to gesture to the amas so they could observe it with me, but they were unperturbed, floating like creatures from this underwater world daunted by nothing but the danger I was in. I stared at the vagina, which was like a huge heart beating as it engorged; she’s in heat, I thought, and when I looked back at the amas, it was me this time who had to alert them with my eyes and point with my finger for them to look behind them. A male, about a hundred meters away, was speeding toward the female just behind me. The amas darted, disappeared, and I had to swim with every ounce of strength from my position between the male and the female so as not to be crushed in the heat of those two cetacean bellies. When I finished telling my story, still caught in the emotion of the scene, it was hard to accept that it hadn’t really happened. It’s true that hallucinations happen rather often at certain depths and under certain conditions. It’s also true that I’d once heard Jacques Mayol mention this same danger of being flattened by the desire of two cetaceans. Still to this day, Jim, I’m not entirely sure that it didn’t actually happen, and that the amas, in order to protect the world that is their birthright, chose to keep it hidden from me.
Eighth Month: 1978–1999
Always alone, my love, but since I was so close to Tokyo, I decided I might as well pay a visit to S. She’d already told me in our correspondence that her business was thriving and she’d even given it a new name: A Thousand Bloods. I think the name is brilliant. In fact I’ve put a lot of thought into this idea of purity through bastard blood, from the blend, the mongrel, the mixed race. There was a second when I thought maybe S had heard me mention it sometime. But no matter, wherever the idea came from, the name is perfect for her business, especially when you think of how the AIDS scourge is making people afraid of fraternizing, first among the same sex, but now among heterosexuals too. S added a second part to her sign that reads A THOUSAND BLOODS. The addition, written between parentheses, reads Yes to AIDS. It’s meant to contradict these countrywide publicity campaigns with a supposedly global reach that read No to AIDS. The media picked up on the slogan, and her enterprise came out of hiding as a business that caters to large minorities. Some people may see her Yes to AIDS as offensive, an unnecessary provocation, especially those who aren’t sick or who think they’re out of the disease’s reach, but AIDS persists, and it endures in the people who suffer it. If you say no to AIDS, it means you are denying that the disease exists. All that such an unfortunate slogan accomplishes is that the carrier interprets the no to be hostile toward the person suffering from AIDS; you don’t marginalize the sickness but the person who is sick. You can’t imagine the number of people diagnosed with the virus who have been in contact with S to thank her for this resounding yes, which means inclusion for them, and of course, a way of resisting the illness through acceptance.
S introduced me to the first person I’ve ever met from a continent that you and I never visited: Africa. S is, like me, a seeker of identities, though her motivations are different from mine. Singularity is to her like finding a new treasure every time she encounters it. Wealth, luxury, and social standing mesmerize some people; K’s only wish is to ascend to spiritual realization by way of that spiral staircase whose every step represents a distinctive style: sexuality. It’s the singular that is so attractive to her. So, as I was saying, S conveyed the Yes to AIDS message to the first African woman I’d ever met. Her name is K. She’s from Bamako, a city in Mali. When S introduced me to her, I had no idea where to place Mali in Africa. S spent years working out the administrative details that would allow K to travel to Japan. The woman had been repudiated in her country because female circumcision, the removal of the clitoris, had made her unable to give birth. And I say specifically give birth, because she is able to conceive; it’s just that when K is in labor, for some reason the babies die in that transit between the tenuous light inside and the brightness outside. From what I was able to find out, cases like hers are relatively common and are not generally reason enough to force a woman to leave her country entirely, since some of them are able to find help and survive in cities that are far enough away from their hometowns. What pushed this woman into such a radical break and prompted her to leave her country, her language, and her customs behind was another tragic occurrence. Her most recent and botched attempt at giving birth had resulted in the creation of a fistula, which is a conduit, a hole, uniting her vagina with her urethra and her rectum. This means she has to deal with the perpetual incontinence of her bodily fluids, producing a stench that leads to not only moral but also physical rejection. Even if she had received a helping hand, she would still probably have been rejected by others simply for a reason that, though callous and inhumane, is at the same time very human: she stinks to high heaven.
K has been in Tokyo for only a few days. They’re going to operate on her fistula next week, and luckily it’s a relatively simple operation. I noticed how she stays far away from everyone; it’s hard for her to believe that the diapers and smell-neutralizing creams available in Tokyo actually do their job. S had already explained her problem before she introduced us and I wanted to respect her need for distance, though I would have liked to give her a hug right from the get-go. I don’t know if I ever told you, my love, but I’m not put off by odors. Not that I like them, mind you, it’s just that they don’t seem to bother me as much as they do other people, and certainly if I feel fond of someone, a bad smell isn’t enough to keep me from giving him or her a hug. You know how often one homeless person reeking of perspiration and old piss can empty out an entire subway car in New York. People cover their noses and mouths with a hand or a scarf and stay that way till the next stop, when everyone scuttles over to the next car. They don’t care whether the homeless person feels humiliated by all the rejection. Take a shower, they think, without taking into consideration all the reasons that a person doesn’t wash himself or herself. If exorbitant hospital bills left me homeless, I don’t think I’d ever wash up, I’d waltz my stench around all the public places. That’s why I never cover my nose. Of course the smell bothers me, but it’s not offensive, and above all, it opens my sensory canals to a new perception: that smell, whomever it’s coming from, is always the same; it’s a democratic smell. When we’re clean, we all smell different. But when we’re piss-stained and sweaty, we all smell the same. I don’t like our common odor very much, but it nonetheless offers an unusual and mentally satisfying experience. There are things that do make me sick, like seeing some lady hold her nose ostentatiously over a stupid smell. So yes, no question, if I didn’t have a home and lived on the street, I would let layers and layers of stench accumulate too, just to make sure I couldn’t be confused with all those people clutching their noses while kissing any old ass necessary to make the money to buy the perfumes that camouflage their spite.
K is twenty years old now; she was mutilated when she was nine. One night her mother and aunt woke her up. Stroking her hair, they told her how for the next few days she would eat better than her brothers and she would receive special attentions. She didn’t understand. Everything was so quiet, her mother and aunt spoke in whispers the whole time. So she was already frightened before knowing what was going to happen to her. For the first time, she was afraid of a family member, though deep down, she told S, she understood that they would do to her what they’d already done to her older sister and other girls in town. She’d often heard how the act was necessary so that nothing bad would happen to her family. After telling her she should be happy because she would be treated with deference for the next few days, that she was becoming a woman now, they held her down, o
pened her legs, and sliced off her clitoris. The pain was so severe that to this day she can’t stand the sound of someone crying out in agony. They used acacia needles to sew her up, which was even more excruciating, and she screamed until she passed out.
K spent the next month in bed following the amputation. The slightest movement made the pain worse. The hemorrhages were so abundant she became anemic. She panicked every time she had to urinate, the pain was so excruciating; as a result her bladder swelled to the point of bursting. The more details S and K gave, the more I realized K’s experiences mirror my own painful ones. Both of us suffered the extirpation of the organ that originates as a hermaphroditic core and defines itself around the seventh week of gestation as either a penis or a clitoris, a procedure that goes beyond what a young girl can bear physically, beyond what an adult can bear psychologically. Though I had writhed in pain in Hiroshima and she in Bamako, we both shared the same dearth of care. Nothing for the pain. Nothing for the scarring. Nothing to alleviate the dread. Not even the fact that her town was at peace and her family and neighbors safe differentiated our experiences because when you are facing affliction on that scale, it’s hard to take stock of what’s happening outside of you. It’s not that it didn’t matter to me whether my family was alive or dead, it’s that at the time I was nothing more than a throbbing piece of skin covered in sores, pus, and burns and burning up with fever. The absolute pain, when it comes, was the only family that matters; pain that is my mother, my father, my siblings, my whole country. Only when the pain was alleviated could I think about all of them, the real ones, the blood of my blood, about whether they were alive or dead. And they were. Forever dead.
The Story of H Page 21