by Carlos Eyles
“No, Sea God.” The fisherman shook his head and pointed to the ocean. There was an awkward silence as if the fisherman had spoken of something that he now regretted. Compton asked if he knew Moses and his yellow brown boat.
“I know da bot.
“Are there many other fishermen in these waters?”
“No too meny.”
“Why is that when there are so many fish in the sea?”
The fisherman smiled revealing oily teeth and raised a gnarled hand. “Sea har on men.”
“Then why do you fish?”
The fisherman sipped his tea and held the cup low to his knee, as if the question carried weight beyond his words. Then thumping his chest hard, he said in a near whisper, “It is en my hard. Good dey, I wan more. Bad dey I don” quit. Alwey deffron, alwey da same. Sontim beg fish, sontim small. My hard neber hev enoh fish.”
“Do you remember the biggest fish you ever caught?”
“Yeah, yeah. A sark. Ret by dis beach. He hook up tree in mouning. I fight ’em til after da sun come. Him twel foot and aff.” The fisherman spread his arms to full extension twice and then made a splitting gesture down his face and stomach with the side of his hand. “My bot twel foot. Sark too beg. I cut ‘em wit small kneff. Tak hour to cut. ’Em live after I cut in aff. Sole ‘em for twenty dollar.”
The fisherman offered Compton his last cigarette and when it was refused he smoked it down to the filter, taking huge inhales that would have felled a horse. Flipping the butt into the sea, he looked up at the sky. “Seben o’cock, I go.”
Compton helped him launch the heavy skiff. After clearing the coral and setting out for the straits, the fisherman waved just before disappearing into the coal black sea.
Dinner was late and the mosquitoes came. Compton turned out the lantern, hurriedly finished his meal and crept under the netting. The image of Peter the fisherman, by now far out on that sable hump of rolling swell, would not leave him. He saw himself, alone on that vast and perilous water, a boy, who thought he was a man.
7
The morning sea winked its glitter through the cracks in the bamboo walls and the sounds of the soft shore break temporarily washed away the self doubts of his manhood though they lingered, as doubts do, on the peripheries of a fear filled mind.
After breakfast Compton collected his gear from a large boulder that lay in front of the sleeping hut. In his preoccupation he did not see Aprosa pole his way in from the reef. Suddenly he just appeared, standing on the beach next to his boat. Compton went down to greet him with dive gear in hand.
“Bula,” said Compton, which caused Aprosa to smile and return the greeting.
“You have been in the water looking for the red shells, getting the body ready for the sea?”
“Yeah, but it gets a little boring after a while just laying there in the water. ”
“Only the mind is bored, the rest of you is learning much, eh.”
“I suppose,” said Compton rather dismissively. “I think I’m ready for the big water.”
Aprosa grinned shyly. “We see about thet, eh.” He then instructed Compton to put on his gear, while he put on his own. When they were ready he motioned with his hand to follow. “We get into a bit of deeper water. Can you dive to ten feet?”
Ten feet was to the bottom of the average swimming pool and Compton reassured him that, “Yes, I can dive to ten feet.”
“Good.”
They followed the stretch of sand out to where the coral gardens were in full bloom, no more than twenty-five feet from shore. On the ten foot bottom lay a single coral head where danced a multitude of colorful tropical fish. Aprosa instructed Compton to dive down to the coral head without disturbing the fish. Compton inhaled a deep breath, bent at the waist and as he began to slightly sink, kicked his way towards the bottom and the coral head. Not more than five feet into his dive the fish exploded away in all directions leaving the coral head barren of any leaving creature. Compton pulled out of the short-lived dive and returned to the surface.
“The fish, they run off,” said Aprosa.
“Well, yeah. They always take off when a diver comes near.”
Aprosa did not reply but put his face into the water and laid upon its surface. The tropical’s had returned to the coral head and picked up their dance where they left off, when Aprosa took a breath and bent into his dive. He glided downward after a small kick on the surface, then remained as still as a post in his descent. His glide down was not unlike the sinking of a single feather from a swan at altitude, effortlessly and without intrusion. If the fish knew he was present, they gave no evidence of it. It was almost as if Aprosa did not exist at all. He settled to the bottom in a sitting position, arms resting on crossed legs like a boy-size Buddha in meditation. The fish did not bolt off as Compton had expected but instead drifted over to Aprosa and began to flutter about his stilled form until he was almost obscured by the fish that enveloped him. Compton was struck by what appeared to be nothing short of some mystical power this man had over the fish and then he was similarly awed by the length of his breath-hold, which now stood at several minutes, and he gave no indication of ascending. More fish flashed to him until he was completely surrounded and could not be seen at all. When finally he began to rise from the bottom, it was with such deliberateness and in such ultra-slow motion that it seemed he did not so much unfold himself from the sitting position as he simply morphed into a fluid form that defied description. When he reached the surface he pointed back to the beach and they both swam to it. Compton, mesmerized by what he had seen, followed like an obedient dog.
They took off their gear and sat on the beach. “That was an amazing display, Aprosa. What sort of magic enabled you to achieve that?”
Aprosa smiled innocently and shrugged his shoulders. “No magic. Every Fiji spear fisherman can do that. It is nothing. It is an understanding of the sea, eh. The sea knows two things, sound and movement. If you are quiet and do not move then the sea will let you into it. The coral head and the fish are the teachers, eh. They will tell you when you move. They say when you make a sound.”
“Wait a minute. How can you move without moving?”
“You go very slow. You start a small kick and then you glide. It is the control of the body, eh. When you dive thesh see you. In the slow movement they see you get bigger but because nothing else moves they forget. They let you into their village because they know that they cannot be harmed by something that moves without moving.”
Aprosa rose and laid his gear into the boat. “I will come back when you can dive the coral head and the fish invite you into their village for some tea.” He giggled at his small joke and left Compton sitting mute on the beach.
For the remainder of the morning he sat listening to the shore break, falling in and out of its sounds. Within the sounds Aprosa’s words filtered through and he would attempt to decipher them as if they were some kind of code, the message of which presumed to lead him out of the emptiness of his existence. There was no denying he felt something vaguely come to life in him when in the water but he could not put a name to it. Had he not the time to ponder it there on the beach. It would have vanished as another unrealized thing. But it was the feeling of aliveness that made for the awareness of his deadness. How or when that occurred he had no idea because his life had become some sort of abstract idea of itself, barren of any real feeling. There was no real life to it. “The sea is real,” he said aloud as if to punctuate its reality. It feels to be the only real thing around me.
Mid-afternoon and the sun hung over Taveuni heavily veiled with leaded clouds whose silvered appendages glowed of freshly minted coin.
There is nothing remotely abstract here, he went on to himself. This scene is more real than any possession or any city or any nation.
He lay back on the sand until the sun had set, as if seeing it for the first time, vowing as he did that he would try and grasp the gift that was, by some miracle, being handed to him.
8
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After breakfast and feeling oddly confident, Compton slipped into his “shorty” wet suit, which left his arms below the elbow and his legs below the knee exposed. With a weight belt, mask, fins and snorkel, he entered the water directly in front of the beach and followed the sand path out into the maze of coral. After two wrong turns he found clear passage to the edge of the barrier reef and deep water. He swam parallel to a finger reef that jutted directly out to sea. The water was as clear as liquid glass and the coral reefs fairly shook with sea life. They appeared as if Poseidon himself had toppled from a great height and shattered into ten million pieces. Polyp covered kidneys and worm-ridden rib cages lay white and ancient, vented arteries leading to stone aortas protruded through smooth, perforated stomach linings. Alabaster spleens, soft and delicately textured, rested comfortably in the abdomen, membranes turned rigid and fixed to rock and reef filtering the sea-blood of its impurities. Clawed, bony fingers stretched hairless at odd angles to oversized skulls and brains, eyes and teeth.
All of Poseidon was there as if he had fallen yesterday and his life’s blood shouted in color and form. It rattled and trembled with kaleidoscopic fecundity. Fish of every shape and color probed the reef like garish jungle birds, splashed with the brilliance and fervent style of Hieronymus Bosh. Oranges stirred with electric blue, ruby dots studded with chocolate browns, waves of chartreuse upon bracing cerulean, egg-white bellies laid beneath pulsating purples, coal lacks co-mingling with swords of silver, pinstripe copper across mottled greens and dollops of gold trimmed in emerald. There were fish with huge heads and scarcely a tail. Some were all tail and very little head. There was a fish that looked like a stone, (and there were stones that looked like fish). There were fish with eyes that filled their heads and fish whose eyes were lost in tiny dots. There were fish with oversized mouths and a fish with hardly a mouth at all. There was a fish as thin as a shadowless thread and fish so fat it moved as an anchorless balloon. pon
Somewhat apart from the multitudes lay a coral head swarming with fish. Twelve feet directly above it Compton rested on the surface and gathered himself, taking deep breaths and concentrating on the notion of moving without moving. Bending into the water he began his descent. Almost instantly the fish departed the top of the coral head as if swept by a wind and he halted in mid-dive as the fish continued to scatter. Returning to the surface, having no idea what or how he had spooked the fish, he waited until they had returned to their chores and again pumped up breaths and prepared to dive. Slowing his pace he descended with diligence and the fish held to their positions as his fins cleared the surface but as soon as he reached for his nose to clear his ears the fish retreated. Halting his dive he turned for the surface thinking, all right, I need to go even slower and have everything in place beforehand. When the fish reclaimed their positions, he dove. Again and again they sprinted off, this time when he was within six feet of the coral head.
And so it went for most of the morning. Sometimes he knew what he had done to cause the fish to flee, an inadvertent kick, a hand or arm movement, even a head turn. It became a discipline and exercise in body/mind awareness. While resting on the surface it occurred to him that it was with careful deliberation that Abraham had demanded a hundred pounds of fish a week. In that pursuit he would have to move out of his cerebral world of ineffective thought patterns and into a reality where one focused on the very basics of existence -- moving, observing, eating -- in general, paying close attention to the world at large and letting the trivial and extraneous business of the mind fall away to simply watching oneself move.
The failures mounted and he grew frustrated. It seemed the more intense his concentration, the clumsier he became. In the course of his defeats he spotted a large fish that appeared to be a twenty-pound grouper lying in deeper water beyond the coral head. He pumped up several breaths and carefully made a dive for a closer look at the fish. As he closed on the fish it turned tail and disappeared into a crevice. However, in the dive he became aware that when he passed the coral head the fish remained undisturbed on the head. They had apparently accepted him into their world as he had swum by, then at almost the exact moment of that realization the fish scattered in all directions as he rose to the surface thirty feet away from them. It was as if they had read his mind. Compton became fascinated by the implications. Something else was going on that transcended his body movement. Perhaps it was his eyes, could the fish see his eyes? Or was it even subtler than that? His intention? Was one linked to the other? He had grown cold and hungry and the sun called to him from the beach, as did a whole new set of questions to be pondered in its warmth.
Compton sunned himself while lunching on cooked spam and the theory of intent. Lose the intent of getting close along with its communication through the eyes and perhaps the fish would let him in if his body did not betray him. Anxious to test the theory he prepared to enter the water again, adding another five pounds of weight to his belt to lessen his effort to reach the bottom and insure a more pronounced glide pattern earlier in the dive.
In his first few attempts the movement in his body revealed him to the fish. But he now knew, or had a pretty good idea, when each movement startled the fish by way of the simple telegraphic nature of the exercise. They would only move when he moved and whatever moved or twitched was instantly recorded on the collective eyes of the school. It was late in the day when he was finally able to get all movements under control, as well as divert his eyes to the point of observing the fish in a peripheral sort of way and, at the same time, keep his mind clear of all intent. In that dive they held their place on the coral head. He had entered their realm and in that realization came the satisfying awareness of being fully accepted by the school. It brought a convincing sense of connection, not exclusively to the fish but to all that lived in the sea, perhaps more specifically to the sea itself. He dove in that manner until exhausted and returned to the beach in a state of self-imposed grace that expressed itself in joy filled dolphin kicks to the tune of losing his way back in. On the beach he watched the sun settle over Taveuni, igniting the leaves of its coconut trees with the fires of the departing sun, a self-satisfying pleasure etched upon his face, lighting him from within as if another sun had descended into his soul.
Compton slept better than he had in months, perhaps years, perhaps since he was a boy during the last full summer vacation of his life. He arose as a boy might, with an entire day before him and no real plans to fill it other than play. When one enters a new day where nothing is planned, anything can happen. One is prepared to embrace all events great or small and there comes an awareness of the unfolding of life as each act is revealed. In this state of grace he fairly bounded to the shoreline after breakfast and entered the water as a boy in the midst of summer vacation might.
The fish awaited him as he awaited them. Initially he was out of balance on the first few dives and the fish scattered but soon his movements came under control. His eyes sought out the edges of the coral head rather than its center and his mind released the intent of its occupation. He soon fell into its midst. He laid upon the sand in stillness and observed the fish in their comings and goings, nibbling on the coral, establishing territories for who knows what, the pairing up of same species. They went about their day as if he didn’t exist. He had entered a sacred realm and forgot his breath. Such a small thing it was to watch fish, yet it was their acceptance of him as an aspect of nature, a part of the whole, that elevated the experience into the province of the extraordinary. He was unprepared for this inclusion and the feeling that came with it. It was as if he had entered another dimension of reality, one that had always existed long before man had set foot on the planet and one that will exist eons after he departs. One that felt true, and with it came the hint of connectedness, to the fish and with the sea itself as a living thing. There were times on the bottom when his breath-hold was forgotten and in the stillness of the moment he would forget himself and merge with the whole. Then when the demands of oxygen cre
pt into him and he remembered his breath and thus himself, the separation would occur and he would feel it as he rose to the surface on his need. Exhaling with a rush, breathing deep breaths, he would look down into the colorful sea feeling himself breathing, empty of thoughts, at peace in the moments between breaths.
Through the morning he dove seeking the peace that lay within the moments of his breath-hold on the sea floor and between breaths on the surface. He had not known such peace in a long time but did not think about it for the thought itself could erase the moment and somehow he knew this and his body knew this and together they kept his mind quiet. He dove up and down from coral head to coral head watching fish, extending his breath-hold until it was forgotten.
When finally the cold awoke him to his body and its demands he swam with easy, purposeful strokes to the beach and cast upon the hot sand and lay as a basking turtle sheltered in harmony.
In the afternoon he went to the sea again seeking all that he had left earlier. But his intent was great. He wanted it too much and it did not come. The harder he tried the more elusive it became. The fish scattered, his mind worked on its pursuits and he struggled within himself. It was as if the sea knew all that was contained in his mind and unless he could free his mind, empty it into the sea, then it would not permit him entrance. On some vague level knew this but could not relax into the reality of this ephemeral knowledge and eventually in frustration, swam back to the beach.
In the preparation of dinner his mind drifted to the morning and he wanted to share that experience with Moses and wondered when he would next see him. As the thought drifted from his mind, Moses appeared on the beach stepping out of his boat with a large sack over his shoulder.
“Bula”, he said. “I have brought you fresh vegetables and some fish.”
Compton greeted him warmly. ”Thanks so much for bringing the food.”