As the Current Pulls the Fallen Under

by Daryl Sneath

  He paused for a moment and continued. ‘You’re a philosophy student—is that right?’

  I reached forward for the coffee again, gave a playful wink and a grin. ‘We’re all philosophy students, aren’t we, Michael?’

  He smiled and folded his arms, then quickly unfolded them, remembering, I can only assume, that folded arms on an interviewer is bad form. ‘I have to tell you, Vector, you do remind me a lot of your father. I hope you don’t mind me saying so.’

  I kept the grin and nodded.

  ‘We were in Seoul and Barcelona together.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember seeing pictures.’

  At this point, Michael and I were directed to pause. Someone on the research team had supplied the producers with a series of photographs: Max and Michael poolside with their arms about one another’s shoulders, a goggled Max in the blocks, a twenty-year-old Rayn on one knee in her C-1, midstroke. The pictures were filing by onscreen now: a montage of stills with zoom-in, zoom-out, and left-to-right Ken Burnsian effects put on them. The band Whitehorse in the background doing a cool folksy version of Phillip Philips’s smash hit Home. Meant, no doubt, to capture the inspirational sadness of a father and a mother lost too young. The last shot was of a fourteen-year-old me standing between Max and Rayn, all of us smiling, the medal from my first national championship victory hanging albatrossly around my neck.

  The still scene faded out.

  Michael took on a solemn tone. ‘It must be difficult, Vector. To say the least.’

  I lowered my head and paused. I was familiar with the cues.

  When I looked up I touched the corner of my right eye with my right index finger. An idiosyncrasy, an itch, the blotting of a tear. Difficult for viewers to discern for certain, I knew, but effective. ‘To say the least, Michael, is sometimes the only way to say the most.’

  I noticed someone who looked like a director in the wings. Her arms were crossed. She was grinning.

  Michael made a show of scrolling through the notes he had in his phone. ‘I have so much more to ask you, Vector, but unfortunately we’re out of time.’

  ‘Ah, Michael, we’re never really out of time. What would Billy Pilgrim say, we’re only ever in different moments of it.’

  Michael turned his head to one side without taking his eyes from me. ‘You are indeed a character, Mr. Sorn.’

  I smiled and folded my arms. Good form, I intuited, on an interviewee. ‘So I’ve been told, Michael. So I’ve been told.’

  ‘I look forward to continuing our chat after you’re through the semis.’

  Putting my hands out as if to slow traffic, I made a show of being humble and unhurried. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Michael. If I’ve learned anything in my short life, it’s not to rely on or put too much faith in unfounded, and too often confounded, certainties.’

  Michael turned to Camera-1.

  ‘Vector Sorn. The unprepossessing philosophizing phenom of the fifteen hundred. Let it be known that there’s no acting here. He is a man on a mission and knows full well what he is doing and what he has yet to do.’

  CLIPPINGS (24)

  (taken from personal email)

  Vector Sorn:

  All the best (with words from some of the best):

  No race begins at the start line. (Gebrselassie)

  All that I am I am because of my mind. (Nurmi)

  The training is my secret and I keep the secret in my heart. (Kipketer)

  If a man coaches himself, then he has only himself to blame. (Bannister)

  Somebody may beat me but they’re going to have to bleed to do it. (Prefontaine)

  I am animated by an interior force which covers my ­suffering. (Morceli)

  With hope in his heart and dreams in his head. (Zatopek)

  I don’t find unhappiness if I lose. (Keino)

  It is finally complete. (El Guerrouj)

  In anticipation & with curiosity,

  The Faculty at Quest

  ~

  It’s like they somehow knew. What had happened and what would happen. They didn’t, of course. I mean how could they? They were among the most intelligent people I’d ever meet but even intelligence has its limits.

  Strangely, though, their ‘All the best’ message (the irony) reads as though they did know everything and eerily so. Of course it’s important to remember that what a message means (and I seem so often to be having to remind myself of such things) has everything to do with who reads it.

  No one from Quest—except of course Tutor Karl who had since retired to a life of luxury funded by the windfall that accompanied the selling of Ghost—had said anything. He was now in the same (pardon this) company as Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, and all those on the list of unrecognizable magnates whose names and faces remain hidden from the public domain like Karl’s himself.

  The report (and by report I mean a direct report from him to us, to VA and I) was that he’d sold Ghost to Google for $4.2 billion. He took one of those billion and bought himself a fifty-acre island paradise off the coast of Morocco. (He’s now at one with the canaries, he said.) He kept condos in Montreal, New York, Paris, London, and Rome. I hadn’t known him to be so clichéd but now he could afford to be, so why not. He kept a place in Vancouver, too, but we hadn’t seen him for over a year. We kept in fairly regular contact (messages, I hope it goes without saying, were always filtered through Ghost) and he’d been trying to get us to Innisfree (the name he’d given his little island) since he’d bought it. (I’ll send the jet, he wrote. I have a god damn personal jet—can you believe that?) But the year leading up to the Olympics I couldn’t afford a sabbatical of any kind. Too much at stake. (Soon, though, I wrote in response. After The Games.)

  If a man ever needed one, it would be the perfect getaway.

  THE OLYMPIC STADIUM

  This may sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but it’s not. It’s true.

  There was an American, an Aussie, and an Irishman who took off at the gun and led us through the first lap in :55. Opposite in tone to the first-round heat I was in. None of the lead three had the finishing speed of the Kenyans (or me—if I’m being objective) and so they were trying to drain the kick from the field by making it fast and hard the whole way through. The thinking was if you made your semi the quicker of the two then even if you didn’t finish in the top five automatic qualifying spots you’d get through as one of the small-q next fastest times. Big-Q, small-q—didn’t matter. Getting into the final was all that did. Once you were in the final anything could happen. Stories could be written. Heroes could be made.

  After one lap the field was already spread out. I was content to stay in the middle, going through in :58.

  The lead three were still out front through eight hundred, splitting in 1:52. I was in sixth at 1:56. If I did that twice I’d finish in the low to mid 3:30s. Enough to find the top five, I was sure. Certainly enough to get through with a small-q at least.

  Enter ego.

  I didn’t want to finish in the top five and I didn’t want to chance a small-q. I wanted people to talk. I wanted to send a message: I was there to win.

  At the sound of the bell I had pulled my way up to the lead three. The clock read 2:38 as we crossed the line.

  Coming off the final bend I stepped out into the fourth lane and strode by the lead three with ease. I looked at them as I went by. I wanted them to see how relaxed I was. I looked into the stands, too, and gestured to the crowd. The little hand-raise a golfer gives upon sinking a routine putt.

  The fifth and final automatic spot was two seconds behind. Both small-q spots for the final came from our semi. I was four seconds faster than I needed to be. Only three seconds slower than my fastest time ever. One of the top ten fastest Canadian times in history. Don’t get me wrong, I had extended myself. I really wasn’t sure how much faster I could have gone
. But something about having the expectation of winning and then actually winning lessened the pain. I don’t want to say it felt easy. Easy is the wrong word. But it felt natural.

  OVERSEAS CBC STUDIO

  The CBC invited me to come in for another interview that night. I was given a full ten minutes this time: five for the bio-bit, five for the interview. Walking onto their homey little stage the feeling of expectation came over me again, only it was more dread than anticipation. I could sense that certain questions which hadn’t come the first night might come tonight and I didn’t know how ready I was to answer them.

  The makeup people came flittering through and patted our faces, fussed a bit with our hair. Someone fixed the tiny mic to my collar. I could hear the bio-bit playing in the background. I recognized the music signalling the end.

  I heard someone behind me do the backwards count from five.

  ‘In five, four, three . . .’

  Michael Miller smiled, leaned forward, and began his scripted introduction.

  ‘We’re here again this evening with middle distance phenom, Vector Sorn, who has, as expected, qualified for the Olympic fifteen hundred metre final. Content to run in the middle of the pack for the majority of the semi—’

  The camera cut from Michael Miller to footage of my race.

  ‘—Sorn had his fans on the edges of their seats but coming into the third lap he found the proverbial other gear and closed the gap, holding close and easing past the leaders in the final one hundred, effortless it seemed, glancing around as he strode saunteringly by, breaking the tape in one of the fastest fifteen hundred metre times in Canadian history.’

  The camera cut back to Michael Miller onscreen.

  ‘Sorn looked easy in victory and seems to be coming into peak form just at the right moment. The experts, not to mention his legion of fans, consider him the clear favourite to emerge victorious in two days’ time. Middle distance running in Canada is in the spotlight and Vector Sorn has singlehandedly thrust it there.’

  He looked from the camera to me.

  ‘Congratulations, Vector.’

  ‘Thanks, Michael.’

  ‘Tell us, how do you feel?’

  ‘I feel good, Michael. I feel good.’

  Michael Miller crossed his legs and layered his hands on one knee. ‘I wanted to start this evening with the reaction you’ve garnered on social media. At last count there were a dozen Facebook pages with over a hundred thousand members each. Pages with names like Vector the Victor and Sorn in the USA. Americans think you’re one of theirs.’

  I grinned. ‘I didn’t think I was one of anyone’s, Michael.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure I can speak for the whole country, Vector, when I say all of Canada holds you in their hearts.’

  ‘That’s a nice thing to say, Michael. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s the truth, Vector. Believe me.’

  ‘Okay. I believe you.’

  He checked something on his phone. ‘Did you know you have over a million followers on Twitter?’

  ‘The funny thing is, Michael, I’ve never tweeted a single tweet.’

  ‘Is that so.’

  ‘It is. I set up an account years ago but never did anything with it.’

  ‘Hey.’ He leaned forward. ‘I have a great idea.’

  ‘What’s that, Michael?’

  ‘This wasn’t planned but I’m sure the producers can accommodate us.’ He looked past me and got the okay sign from someone in the wings. ‘What’s say we have you send a tweet right now. Here. Live on the show.’

  I shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say.’

  ‘I don’t think it matters. You could write in Klingon and I’m sure you’d cause a twizzard, Vector.’

  ‘Did you just make that up, Michael?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You’re quite the neologist.’

  ‘Thank you. I don’t know what that means, but thank you.’

  As we bantered the producers brought Twitter up on the big screen.

  ‘We’ll get you to sign in, Vector, if you don’t mind.’

  I was given a wireless keyboard. ‘I hope I can remember my password, Michael.’

  ‘I have confidence in you, Vector. I’ve heard you have a photographic memory.’

  I grinned. ‘Let me tell you, Michael, there are a few photographs lurking in the cobwebby domains of my limbic system I’d like to forget.’

  He laughed but I could tell he wasn’t sure exactly why.

  ‘There. I’m in.’

  Michael looked at the camera. ‘He’s in, folks. Get ready. Who will be the first to retweet Vector Sorn?’ He looked at me. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘There is providence in the fall of a sparrow, Michael. The readiness is all.’

  Michael raised an invisible starter’s pistol over his head. ‘On your mark . . . get set . . . tweet!’

  I typed a line and hit enter. ‘Greetings from the The Olympic Games. This is Vector Herman Kent Sorn. XO to VA.’

  Michael was right. Scrolls of retweets and @VectorSorn tweets came pulsing in.

  ‘I told you.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s a twiluge.’

  ‘Nice one.’ Michael snapped his fingers. ‘A twinundation.’

  I nodded and rattled off three more. ‘A tworrent. A twurge. A twsunami.’

  Smiling he returned his attention to the camera and the Twitter page faded behind him. ‘I have to ask, Vector. Herman? Kent?’

  ‘Nicknames.’ I winked. ‘Secret identities.’

  He nodded like he understood. ‘And I’m sure everyone wants to know. Who is VA?’

  ‘She’s my wife.’

  It was the simplest explanation, if not the truth.

  ‘You’re married.’’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’m not sure anyone had the slightest idea, Vector.’

  I leaned forward to take up my mug and winked again. ‘I hope she did, Michael.’

  Smiling he flipped through a series of pages on his phone. A finger to his lips, he nodded once. ‘Ah. Here it is.’ He looked up. His face and voice went interviewer serious. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Vector, but whenever we profile athletes we like to get to know them on a personal level.’

  ‘Tough to know someone on an impersonal level, Michael, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ He pursed his lips. I’d interrupted his train of thought. ‘As I was saying, we like to, you know, delve into who the athlete really is. Find out what makes him tick.’

  ‘My heart, Michael. It’s my heart that makes me tick.’

  He wagged a finger at me. ‘Ah, yes. And in more ways than one, I’m sure, Vector. In more ways than one. I was wondering. Could you tell us about your childhood?’ He glanced at his phone. ‘About Max and Rayn?’

  I sat back in the chair and folded my arms.

  Michael opened his eyes a little wider and said nothing. He waited. I wondered how long he would let the silence go. What was the tipping point between a dramatic pause and an awkward silence. Three seconds? Four?

  I counted to five and continued. ‘Max Sorn was my father. He was an Olympian in every sense of the word. He drowned in Lake Ontario.’

  They ran images of Max competing at the Seoul and Barcelona games.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear to that, Vector. Really.’

  ‘But you knew it, Michael. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked.’

  He nodded indiscernibly. ‘He was a swimmer, isn’t that right? A two-time Olympic silver medallist in fact. A terrible irony.’

  ‘Michael. You know he was a swimmer. You were on the relay team with him. We talked about this just last night. They showed a picture of you and him on deck together. I’m sure your viewers will remember.’

  ‘Right. I was just—’

  ‘And to
be clear, there is no irony in death, Michael. Irony, like life, is for the living.’

  He asked if I might clarify what I meant.

  ‘Take me, for example,’ I said. ‘I’m struck and killed while out for a run. A neurosurgeon whose mind slowly fades, who loses all motor control and succumbs in his final hour to an inoperable brain tumor. A writer who meets the same tragic end as his eerily autobiographical protagonist. A woman who for years tried to get pregnant, finally does, and dies in childbirth. Or the child dies, or both. Or, as we have it here, an Olympic swimmer who drowns.

  ‘Let’s get archetypal for a moment: a figure of pure evil who shoves a figure of pure goodness in front of an oncoming train. The train is an image of progress, of connection, of human innovation. But it’s underground, so what does that mean? Here it means nothing more than what it is: a blunt instrument of death. In each scenario I’ve drawn there is no symbolism in the death event, Michael. Death is death. The only irony is that the living are always trying to find meaning in the absence of life.’

  Michael nodded once and looked at the camera. Not what he expected, I’m guessing.

  ‘Vector Sorn, ladies and gentleman. Athlete and philosopher extraordinaire. The long distance existentialist.’

  ‘Let’s not get carried away, Michael. I’m middle distance at best.’

  He smiled. I didn’t.

  ‘And Rayn? Is she the figure of pure goodness?’

  I repeated the five-count. ‘She is, Michael.’

  ‘She was your mother.’

  They were running images of Rayn. Of the three of us.

  I counted to five again. ‘She was.’

  ‘I bet you wish she were here to see you run.’

  Michael at that moment made me think of Baron. He began to look like him. For the first time I understood how Max, when he looked at Lyle Govern, had seen Michael Norman Boon.