by D R Sherman
On most of their dives the boy stayed down long after she had gone up for air, and when he did surface he found usually that she had already gone down again.
The boy broke through for air, and as he came up he wondered idly how many dives he had already made. He glanced round, but he did not see the girl anywhere. He rolled over onto his back, feeling a lethargic and pleasant weariness in his body. He decided that he would wait for her to surface before he went down again. He floated on his back for a time, luxuriating in the warmth of the sea. After a while he rolled over suddenly, puzzled at her long absence. He took a quick breath and pushed his head under, but he could not see her anywhere. He came up and twisted round, treading water. He saw that he was midway between the pirogue and the shore of the island, and the surface of the sea was still and empty.
Alarm prickled through him. He jackknifed quickly and went straight down, turning and twisting as he searched the water. He saw her then, ten yards in, towards the steeply sloping shelf of land which rose to the beach of Ile aux Cerf.
An antler of staghorn coral had hooked and passed through under the left shoulder strap of her bathing suit. She was struggling frantically, writhing and twisting as she struggled and fought to break free. He saw the redness smoking from her shoulder where the sharp coral had torn her and let her blood out into the silent water. The strap had worked its way down eighteen inches from the point of the antler. He saw that she would never get free, not unless it broke.
He dropped his speargun, and he glanced once to see where it was falling and then he drove himself down and forward through the water. His panic and his fear for her gave him more strength than he had known he possessed. He felt the power of it surging through his legs and his arms. It did not diminish, and more of it came. He reached her with the great strength in his body still untapped. He took hold of the thick antler, hating it with all the strong power in him.
He threw his weight against it. His body swung clumsily in the water, but the coral did not break as he had expected. He did it again, and then again, and he felt the great strength in his body begin to wane.
He tried it once again, and he put all of his strength against it. He felt the coral cutting into his hands, but the great antler did not give. He realized then with a numbing despair that he would never be able to break it.
He glanced at the girl. He saw the bursting redness of her face and the popping eyes behind her mask. Air began to leak from her contorted tightly compressed lips, and as he watched the silver bubbles spitting from her mouth he knew it would not be long before she started to try to breathe the water in like air. There was no time now to try and push her up and work the strap over the end of the coral antler.
He did not know what to do. The knowledge that he was helpless paralyzed him. He was beginning to give up hope for her when he realized that there was only one way to set her free. It was so simple he did not know why he had not thought of it before.
He dragged himself down the antler hand over hand. He took hold of the strap, slipping his fingers under it. He wrenched at it with all his strength, but it held firm. He felt a hopeless despair. He had been so certain that it was the one way to free her. He jerked at it again in a sudden fury, but the material was tough and elastic. It gave, but it did not tear.
His lungs felt as if they were going to burst. He wanted to go up and breathe, and then come down and try again, but he knew that he did not have the time.
He ground his teeth together in pain and impotent rage. The idea hit him in that instant. He drew himself down a little further, and he pulled the strap against his mouth. He bit and gnawed through the double thickness of the inner hem, and then he ripped the cloth with a savage jerk of his head and bit through the other hem with a furious grinding slash of his teeth. He pushed her away from the antler of coral.
She floated free, almost unconscious, bubbles streaming from her mouth. He put his hands against her back, and then he found a platform of coral branch for his feet. He straightened his legs suddenly, pushing off with the last of his strength, and he pushed against her body and started her moving upward through the water.
She struck out for the surface, unoriented. He pushed from below, the muscles in his thrashing legs numbing from the effort and the strain. The surface film above him gradually grew brighter. He thrust against her once more, and the still film shattered. He clawed his way past her trailing legs, and with one last tremendous downward sweep of his arms he shot to the surface.
She was floundering helplessly, trying in vain to keep her head above the water. The pent-up breath exploded from his mouth in a mist of spray. He drew a gasping breath and turned to her.
“On your back!” he shouted. “Get on your back!”
She did not hear him, or she could not comprehend. He knew nothing about lifesaving, but he rolled her over onto her back and took the weight of her body on his own. He dug his fingers into her hair and then knotted them into fists. He kicked out for the shore a few yards behind him.
He swam with all his might, and it seemed to him that he had never swum so far. He felt utterly exhausted, and he did not think he could go much farther. Suddenly he felt his feet brush against something solid. For a moment he did not believe it. He turned his head and dipped his face into the water. He saw sand and rock three feet below him, and he felt a sweeping relief. He allowed his legs to sink. He put his feet flat down on the bottom. He rolled out from under her and stood up, his fingers still knotted in her hair. He hauled her upright, and then he threw her left arm across his shoulder and around his neck.
“Paul,” she whispered chokingly.
“Come on,” he said, and he started up the steeply sloping beach, fighting the drag of the ebbing water.
He lowered her gently to the sand, his muscles quivering with the strain. He sat her down with her back against the side of a towering granite boulder. He tore his own mask off and dropped it, and then he knelt beside her in the sand. He slipped an arm behind her neck and gently eased the mask off her head and laid it on the sand beside his own.
“How is it with you now?” he asked softly.
The girl did not open her eyes. She sat without moving, her mouth open, with only her rapidly heaving chest to indicate that there was still life within her body. The boy dropped his glance to her lacerated shoulder. He touched the skinned flesh with a great gentleness, examining it carefully. It looked worse than it was, but he knew that it would heal soon. Staghorn coral was nothing. If it had been fire coral it would have been a different matter.
His glance moved down across her chest. He stiffened suddenly, and his eyes grew round with surprise. The torn suit had slipped, and it had fallen forward in a flap across her belly. He stared in wonder and awe at the soft swelling nakedness of her bared right breast. Something came to life within him: it moved gently, without heat or passion, and it moved in his loins and near his heart.
The girl moaned softly and stirred. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. She saw the direction of his stare and glanced down. She cried out weakly and sat up a little, reaching for the sagging bathing suit.
“Wait,” the boy said gently.
There was something in his voice. She paused, looking up into his eyes. They were very pale, and very gentle, and there was a light in them which she had never seen before in the eyes of any man. Her hand shook, and then it dropped back into her lap.
“You are very beautiful,” the boy said.
She made no reply. She watched him silently, and she knew he was speaking of her and of her naked breast. It filled her with a sudden warmth and contentment.
“I love you,” the boy said, kneeling beside her in the damp sand, staring at the secret swelling of her breast.
He had never used the word before, only to his fish, but not to another human being. He loved the man, but he had never spoken of it, because such things were understood between men without the need to speak of them. He listened in his mind to the echo of the words he had
spoken. He felt a great weight in his heart, because ,hey did not say any of the things he wanted her to hear.
He bent down suddenly, and he laid his cheek against the exquisite softness of her breast, because it was the only way he could think of to give true meaning to the feeling deep inside him. He felt her arm steal round his neck. He kept his cheek pressed lightly against her breast a little longer, and then he drew away from her. He straightened up, looking clown into her upturned face.
“You are very beautiful,” he whispered again.
“You also, my Paul,” she murmured. “You are also very beautiful.”
He stared into her eyes, and deep down he thought he saw her soul. The message in it filled his mind and his body with a great strength and a great gladness, and in that moment he knew that it would never again natter to him that he would always walk with one leg limping. He stood up slowly, his eyes still on her face and the things that were written on it.
“Would you come with me if I did not have a dolphin?” he asked suddenly, quietly.
“I would come with you.”
“But in the beginning you would not have come with me if I had not had a dolphin?”
“Perhaps not,” she said simply. “But we are very far from the beginning now.”
The boy nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, we are far from the beginning,” he said, and he knew that it was the truth she had spoken.
He bent from the waist in a sudden swooping movement and picked up his mask. He swung it up by the strap and then turned towards the sea.
“Wait here and rest a little longer,” he said. “I will go for our guns, and then I will bring the pirogue into the beach.”
“I can swim to the boat, Paul,” she protested, a little of her old defiance coming to life.
“It is better if you wait and rest,” the boy said. “You must wait for me and promise it.”
His eyes were green and fierce, but they were also gentle and full of concern for her.
“I will wait,” she said. “And thank you, Paul.”
The boy shook his head irritably. He swung on his heel abruptly and walked into the sea. She watched him limping into the water, and she thought that it would be strange to see him walk without a limp. She did not think he would be the same Paul, the one she had come to know so well.
THAT night the boy spoke to the man. The small lamp burned on the table between their beds, and the little flame stood up straight and fat and filled the room with its half-dark orange-colored light.
The boy sat hunched down on his bed. He kept his eyes on the floor and he did not look at the man. He told him that the big fish had not come, and right away he heard the long sharp breath of disappointment that the man drew into his body. There was the sound of resignation in it, also defeat, and it was the kind of defeat that is final and without hope. He looked up quickly.
“He will come again, Papa,” the boy said. “This is something that I know.”
The man brightened instantly. “Do you think it possible, Paul?”
“I am sure of it.”
In his mind the man saw the harpoon going deep into the heart of the big fish, and the money that would come from the dying of its death. He thought about it for a while, and all of it was very beautiful and clear. He glanced at the boy, his eyes beginning to burn and flash. He remembered then that the boy did not share his dream. His body sagged and the light went out of his eyes.
“Then I wish you many more rides on his bask,” the man said, and his voice was dull once again and without life. “While you have the chance, that is,” he added.
“Why do you say that?”
“In two days we will still be owing the rent, and if it is not paid you and I will have to move,” the man said. “I do not think your dolphin will know of this.”
“I will ride him to wherever we go,” the boy said defiantly.
“You will not have time to play,” the man said, and there was bitter relish in his voice. “Not while we are looking for a shack with nothing but promises in our pockets.”
The boy bowed his head, and shadow hid his face. He thought about what the man had said. The knowledge that he might lose the big fish saddened him, but it did not fill him with dread as it would have done before. He would still have the girl, and she meant more to him now than the dolphin. He looked up suddenly, and the little flame of the lamp reflected steadily in his eyes as he stared at his father.
“Papa,” he said softly. “In the beginning, I think the girl came with me only to play with my dolphin, but now it does not matter so much about the big fish, because I know she likes me for myself. I love her more than I love Marsouin, or perhaps it is only in a different way, and even if the fish does go away I will still be able to come and see her.”
He felt a moment of remorse for what he had said, because the fish was his friend and it had saved his life. But he would always love the fish, he knew, as he would always remember it, and so there was no real betrayal of its love and friendship.
In any case, he thought, Marsouin would surely understand.
“She means that much to you?” the man asked, his eyes softening suddenly with the love that was in him for the boy.
The boy nodded with embarrassment. He did not trust himself to look at the man: he kept his face averted, watching the little flame of the lamp. He thought of the girl, and what had happened in the morning. He felt a nameless pain inside him, but there was a great sweetness in its hurting. There was a shy uncertainty in his pale eyes as he turned to face the man.
“I —I have a strange feeling in me, Papa,” he began hesitantly. “When I look at her, when I am with her, and even when I think of her, it is as if a great light is on fire inside my heart. There is a strange pain mixed with it, and I do not understand why this should be so. What is it, Papa?” he went on. “Is it that I have become a man?”
The man shook his head gently. He smiled at the boy who was his son. “You have been one a long time already,” he said. “A boy does not always have to grow up before he becomes a man.”
“But what is it, Papa?” the boy pleaded. “This strange pain that seems to be a part of my happiness.”
“There is pain in everything, mon garçon,” the man said. “In every beginning, and in every end there is pain, and in between there is also pain.” He paused, and his voice grew very soft. “And remember, that for every beginning, there is always an end.”
“Why should this be so?” the boy said, frightened almost at the note of dark depression in the man’s voice. “Why should something that is beautiful also hurt you?”
“I do not think I can explain such a thing,” the man said. “Try, Papa,” the boy whispered.
The man looked away quickly from the groping uncertainty in the boy’s eyes. He stared at the little flame, but he did not really see it. He was looking into his mind, searching for the words which would take the look of anguish from the face of his son.
“Think think if you can of a seed pod,” he began slowly, and then his voice grew firm and strong as the picture which he was translating unreeled before his eyes. “It ripens and bursts and scatters its seeds into the fertile womb of the earth. That is a beginning, and there is pain in the pod as it bursts. And so it is with a man, my Paul. When his heart is ripe with love for a woman it bursts open, and the seed of his love and his life flows from his loins into the womb of the woman, and there his seed is nourished as the seeds of the pod are nourished in the earth, and the seed of the man grows in his likeness just as the seed of the flower one day brings forth another flower. There is pain in that bursting, Paul, just as there is pain in the pod before it bursts and scatters its seeds.”
That is the way it should be, the man thought, but a man being a man, it is not always what happens.
He glanced at the boy and then he looked back quickly at the little flame. The room was very quiet, and it seemed darker to him now. He wanted to tell the boy of the thought which had passed through his mind. But he knew
it would only hurt, so he held his tongue. He stared in silence at the orange-colored flame, and he forgot about the boy and all the things of which he had spoken. He began to think of the room, and the rest of the house.
He remembered that he had lived in it for a very long time, and then he remembered that he would not be living in it for very much longer. He stifled the groan which almost burst from his mouth, and he stirred heavily on the worn mattress of his bed. He turned away from the flame and stared moodily at the boy. His was another kind of pain, but it hurt just the same. He shrugged abruptly, trying to push it away.
“Tomorrow we must begin to tie our lines together and get other little things ready,” the man said, and his eyes began to move slowly round the small room.
The boy sat up straight with a start. He had been far away, thinking of the pain and the bursting which the man had told him about.
“Whaaat?” he asked plaintively.
“I said tomorrow we must begin to tie our lines together and get other little things ready,” the man told him impatiently.
The interruption had broken the thread of his thoughts. Where was I, he wondered. His glance went round the room again, and he saw the nails which made a bracket on the wall for the big harpoon.
Ahhh yes, he thought, the nails.
He stared at them, and he remembered driving them into the wood, and the day he had done it came back into his mind as if it were only yesterday. His glance moved on lovingly, and there was a day and a month and a year of his life in every little thing he saw, even the knots in the rough wood.
“I have lived a long time in this house,” the man murmured aloud.
The boy made no reply: there was nothing that he could say. He watched the man, and he saw the love and the pain in his eyes as they went slowly round the room. He felt a choking tightness in his throat. There would be much agony in the man, he knew, because he had said that there was pain in every ending, and this was a kind of ending for him.
He swung his legs up off the floor and onto the bed. He lay down and turned his face to the wall. He felt a desperate sad loneliness, because there was nothing he could do.