Immortal Water

by Norman Brian Van

  “Have you been home? How long have you been here?”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  “Don’t be foolish.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  A muscle twitches below her eye. She closes her eyes, steeling herself. He can only guess at her pain.

  “Should I get a nurse? Do you want something? More medicine?”

  “Not yet,” she says, fighting hard now against the spasm. “We have to talk ...”

  “What is it? Anything, Em.”

  “Don’t ... try not to be frightened, Ross.”

  “I won’t ...”

  “After I’m gone. Try not to give in.”

  “I’m alright. Really.”

  “Don’t lie to me. Get some help. Please. If not for yourself then do it for me. I don’t want to leave you so frightened.”

  “Emily, what am I going to do?” he answers hoarsely. He rests his head on the bed by her side and feels her frail hand run soft through his hair. Even now she comes to his aid.

  “I’m not scared anymore,” she says softly. “I was before but not now ...”

  Her hand quivers in his hair. He looks up at her and sees someone there he has never seen. Her eyes dark now, ringed, pierce through him. She seems to look somewhere beyond him to a place he cannot follow. Her breathing has quickened. It comes in short gasps. Her eyes never waver.

  “Emily?”

  She does not answer. Yet she is conscious. He knows she is conscious. He should get the nurse. His wife is in pain. She needs medication. But she is with him. How can he leave? Her hand is icy. He leans over the bed, over her body putting his hands on each side of her face, his own face inches from hers.

  “Emily!”

  The eyes focus. He sees her recognise him.

  “Water,” she whispers, her voice like air.

  “Yes. Right away.”

  He pulls away from her reaching for the thermos on the tray by the bed. His hands are shaking. He pours the water clear as diamonds, flowing like rainbows, into a tumbler. He spills some. It splashes off the tray in a minuscule fountain. He sets the thermos in the forming pool. Wavelets ring out around its base. He takes the cup in both hands and leans over her.

  Her eyes are open. They are no longer blue. They are colourless.

  And he is alone.

  In his hands the water cup rests like an offering then slips through his fingers: tipping, spilling, sparkling, shimmering, to the floor.

  Dank, green chlorophyll twilight around him, on each side of the path impenetrable foliage forces him down its narrow course; tree branches reach out to scratch him. Their leaves are sharp, their bark stubbled with thorns. His arms are bleeding and a gash in his temple drips blood with the sweat that rolls down from his hair. It is oven hot in the passage; a sticky, stifling heat which makes each step arduous, each footfall more lethargic. The ground beneath him is mossy mud and his shoes sink into the earth and the earth tries to suck them from his feet. He is surprised by his shoes: dress shoes. They are wing-tipped brown leather. He cannot understand why he would wear such things here. They leave roundtoed footprints in his wake, filling with water, quickly submerged.

  He wants to stop, turn, heave himself back up the suffocating trail. But there is some presence in the trees and the earth and the black oily water which urges him on. For beneath its terror lies a strange promise; a pledge so nebulous he cannot comprehend it. And yet it is there, beckoning, pushing him down the narrow, wet passage bathed in emerald twilight.

  He trudges on in his wing-tipped shoes.

  At first he has a vague feeling of being watched. He begins to glimpse faces inside the verdure. Almost unseen, he catches them with peripheral glances but as soon as he turns they are gone. Then others appear and instantly dissolve into the leaves and snaking branches. He catches sight of them in the ground peering up through the brackish water, green like moss. He feels his shirt drenched with sweat. He is wearing a suit. Charcoal double-breasted. Why, in this hellish place, is he wearing a suit and wing-tipped shoes and a striped tie hanging like a leaf down his belly?

  Ridiculous. He is ridiculous.

  Then the laughter begins: the faces chuckling at first, then giggling, then building to harsh, mocking mirth. He keeps turning and turning but he cannot spot them. He sees only glimpses of tongues like pink petals rising and receding. Laughing, moving flowers. Why are they laughing?

  “I have a right to be here!” he screams.

  They cackle on. Yet now he thinks he knows them. He can tell from their voices. Emily. Emily is laughing at him. And he hears his father. And Robert and Anne snorting together. Jimmy White sniggering. Andy Taylor joins in and then the higher pitch of Justin. Devil Justin. Child mocking his grandfather. All of them louder. The air moving from their breath.

  “Shut up!” he shouts. “I know who you are! Shut up!”

  And they stop.

  And Ross Porter awakens. The clock radio jabbers noisily on the table by his bed. His heart hammers a painful tattoo. He is soaked in sweat. He slaps his hands over his face. Then he looks at them. They are shaking. The blue veins on the backs of his hands look like tree limbs. Peering past his hands he sees on a chair at the foot of the bed his charcoal suit, the wingtip shoes on the floor beneath it. Winter half-light seeps in through the window. It is eight o’clock, the announcer tells him. Time to get up. Time to shower the sweat from his body, dress in his suit, clear his mind. Time to shut out the laughter. There will be none of that today.

  He groans as he rises. His body aches. For a moment his vision flattens and black comets cross his eyes. He can feel his pulse pounding deep down. The room is stuffy, its windows closed to a winter morning. It will be cold today at the funeral, he thinks. He must wear a T-shirt beneath his dress shirt so he will not shiver. Someone might take it the wrong way.

  The room in the funeral home is bone white with burgundy chairs and a carpet worn beige from the trudge of mourners. Banks of flowers ring the casket. A soft little man with wire glasses, black suit and tie and soft little shoes pads here and there through the room, preparing. He plumps up the bouquets of flowers, checks his watch, straightens a couple of chairs and joins Robert by the double doors at the entrance. He speaks in whispered condolences. Ross does not like the man. He may be a good man for all Ross knows, but right now he is the manager of the business of death, and he walks too softly.

  Ross sits in a chair against the white wall. Robert joins him: Armani suit, silk shirt, rich and soft and strong. He possesses the qualities of his mother.

  They are not mine. That is certain.

  “We’re going to go back to the lounge now. George wants to open the doors soon.”

  “I’ll stay here.”

  “It’s better if you come with us. George will take care of seating people. He has to close the coffin, dad.”

  “I know. I just, want to be alone for a couple of minutes.”

  “Of course. I’ll tell George to hold off.”

  “Tell him to leave too.”

  “Alright. I’ll come back for you shortly.”

  “You’re a wonderful son, Robert. Thank you.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I just need some time here.”

  She lies, soft and fragile alabaster, the work of the sculptor mortician in the satin folds of the coffin. She is dressed in pale blue and her hands are clasped. The cancer ravages have been erased and so many have said how beautiful she looks, how peaceful. He has not looked at her until now. He has been busy receiving: warm, too long handshakes, embraces, kisses and condolences until he cannot clearly remember a single moment of these past nights. The visitations have passed like shadows. He looks down at her now and does not find her beautiful. Her beauty lived in her sparkle, in the way she would cock her head or flutter her hands, in her sense of humour and the passionate flame of her living. That was her beauty. Now she is nothing.

  A cinder.

  He moves away from the coffin, terrified. He backs
down the aisle toward the closed doors at the end of the white room. His mouth is dry. Comets slash his vision again. Something snaps in the back of his mind. He turns and opens the doors and leaves. He passes the soft padding funeral man but no longer sees him. He walks out into the cutting winter wind in a trance.

  George runs to find Robert. This will not do.

  After ten minutes Robert finds Ross by the garage where the hearse is waiting. His father is leaning on the hearse. He seems to be looking at wind, his face a blank slate.

  “Dad?”

  “Huh?”

  “Dad!”

  “Rob?”

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yes. Uh, I am now. Thanks, son.”

  “It’s time to go in.”

  “I ... I know.”

  The two men link arms and re-enter the building. They wait with their family in the lounge. They are given the signal from George and go into the service. Ross sits through it all very quietly. The people attending watch him carefully. He thinks they whisper to each other how strong he is, how courageous. But he is not with them at all.

  He will not accept this service, even as he hears it.

  This minister speaks of an afterlife.

  We all guess and hope.

  It ends. It just ends.

  No. It is something more.

  It comes in the final words of the dead, mystical, as it came from Emily.

  Water.

  That which gives life.

  A sacred water.

  In a secret place ancient and deathless.

  I have read of this.

  From the past comes knowledge.

  I was meant to do this.

  All my life.

  I will find this water.

  Emily told me.

  I will find the water of life.

  19

  Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

  —KEATS

  Spring — The Past

  Their sails filled; their sails big and white as the scudding clouds racing above them, the two caravels ran before the wind like thoroughbreds in full flight. The sea heaved around them and they, made for this, took each swell with grace and speed. The sea, turquoise now and muscular, tossing restlessly, seemed to help them along, carrying them sometimes on big waves as fast as the moving air, spray flying from their prows, swiftly toward their destination.

  On board the ships, sailors revelled in the salt spray which would leap from the sea to lick at them affably. The sun peering out from the clouds would dry them with its glowing light and change the sea’s colours before it departed once more behind some big nimbus. Across the water shadows sped into the distance checkering the liquid expanse from grey to blue to aqua and sometimes a shimmering silver. Even the helmsmen, struggling to keep their course amid the ocean’s gigantic playfulness, laughed aloud from the joy of the day.

  And at the prow of his ship, his preferred place at times such as this, Juan Ponce de Leon grasped the larboard rail and rode the waves as he would a warhorse. Beside him was his boatswain, Medel, the old sea dog who had been with him on other such voyages, on other such days. Medel needed no handhold. His thick legs rolled with the moving deck as though he were part of it. He was smiling.

  “At this rate, your honour,” Medel said, voice booming, “we’ll see land by day’s end!”

  “Indeed,” Juan Ponce responded. “But I wait to hear from Sotil of the northerly current. Until we’ve hit that we are not so close.”

  “I’ve seen flotsam around us this morning. A good sign.”

  “You’re right, Medel. I am too pessimistic.”

  They gazed back along the caravel’s deck at the humming activity all down its length. The men on watch worked the fine art of sailing, deftly going about their business, responding to Sotil’s shouted orders almost before they were given. Sailors worked high up on the cross-beam of the topsail while others climbed the ratlines into the shrouds. Still others on deck clamped and held the step of the mast to its cap while more grasped the sheets, hauling and tallying sail. More men could be glimpsed clambering and chasing from one place to another through the rigging so they seemed like cats chasing through trees. The sailors sang their shanties giving rhythm to their work. Soldiers and colonists had come up on deck to avoid the grimmer conditions below: to enjoy the day, play a little dice, and feel the warm sun on their faces.

  “We’ve shared many leagues together, Fernando,” Juan Ponce said, turning to the boatswain.

  “Aye, that we have, your honour.”

  “You’ve been a loyal friend, since the early days. You recall them?”

  “I do, sir. Exciting days. Not like now. In them days every voyage seemed magical-like. You never knew what you’d come across.”

  “As Balboa finding a new ocean,” Juan Ponce muttered bitterly.

  “But ‘twas with you, sir, we found Florida. And after that you took us southwest. There was grumblings, your honour, especially when we come across no islands those many days till we landed. I remember a good many thought we’d hit on Cathay. We know better now.”

  “It is a great disappointment of my life,” Juan Ponce said, sighing deeply, “not to have explored inland there, found that narrow neck as Balboa did, and crossed it.”

  “No sense regretting the past, your honour,” Medel said, “for you know now Florida can be no island. I’ve heard tell of some magical water up that way. There’s stories, sir, among the natives ...”

  “It will make a good colony,” Juan Ponce said, his voice hardening, cutting the boatswain’s conjecture off. “When we settle it, I’ll make sure you’re given good land, a place to retire. Now on with your work, boatswain, get us there quickly.”

  “Aye sir,” Medel answered. Abruptly he moved into action, bellowing orders to the sailors aloft. He thought no more of rumours. He was not the kind of man to think deeply. Rather, he was a tool: efficient, hardened, capable. Juan Ponce de Leon valued him and valued more his simplicity, for though he had come close to the mark, he had not known it.

  The tool must not comprehend the building.

  And no one must suspect the secret water.

  At the height of my powers, before Colon, the Carib and the anger of my son, when each endeavour brought fame and profit, I mounted a voyage of exploration. At the time there were rumours of great, rich lands to the west of the Indies; stories of enchanted islands and golden cities, of mermaids in obscure lagoons, and legends of a mystic water. The natives seemed to believe such stories enough to convince our men and so as they spread they attained a kind of veracity even among the most cynical of us.

  I set off northwest. Columbus had explored to the south, followed by Velasquez and a host of others, and found good lands but little gold. It was the lack of that precious metal, promised to the Crown and unrealized by Columbus, which disappointed Spain and got him into such trouble.

  I determined another way.

  I have never had better sailing. It was as if destiny took a hand. We maintained a western course passing outside charted waters. We found ourselves caught in a current, running north northeast, very strong. One day when the wind was light we lost our smallest ship to that current, the water drifting her away from us, more powerful than the wind. It took days for her to rejoin us. Since that time many have used that current, taking themselves north to catch the winds which will carry them back to Spain.

  And then on a bright, flawless day in the season of Pasqua Florida, the Easter season of Resurrection, we came across the most beautiful land, in a life of looking, I have seen. This soldier’s pen cannot do it justice. Across a wide, golden beach lay verdant groves speckled with rainbows of blossoms and fruits. Behind them stood lofty parks of live oak bearded with strands of that grey moss which floats from their branches. The only word I
can find to describe it is soft. It was soft and fragrant and made us feel somehow at peace. It was level land, not mountainous. One of the sailors who’d farmed my plantation in Salvaleon told me it was the best land he’d seen for growing. A colonist’s dream, he said.

  I have not forgotten his words.

  I have not forgotten the feeling as I landed to claim this marvellous realm. I felt a strange significance even then about the place. I remember as I named it recalling my mother’s gardens and the flowers which grew so abundantly under her care. As the priest led us in prayer and my soldiers planted the standard, I knew that this was important for me. I named it Florida in honour of the season, of its rare beauty, and for my mother.

  I named it well.

  Later, we found another current running south and as we followed just offshore we began to sense the size of the place. It took us nearly a month to reach what I called the Cape of Currents where we rounded our course again to the west. As we passed the islands at its southern tip we came to a place where the ocean was filled with sea turtles. In one night we took one hundred and sixty; good, sweet meat for the men. Then we went north again and did not see the shore for two days.

  When we came upon the coast once more we discovered forbidding, impenetrable mangrove for leagues along the shoreline. It seemed a fortress land protected by this mangrove wall. And just as we despaired of landing we happened upon a huge bay. It offered snug protection and room for the ships to manoeuvre. A perfect anchorage; I remember it well, for that is our destination now.

  By this time our ships were in need of repair. We found a hospitable island filled with pine trees beyond its beaches and laid up there, careening our ships, scraping off barnacles, tarring the leaks. The island itself was remarkable. Its beaches were sand but with a plethora of shells washed up somehow by an ocean current. The men spent their spare time collecting the most unusual of these.

  The first natives we met, those who lived on that island, seemed friendly. They called themselves Calusa, the “fierce people” in their language. They told us, through our Arawak translators, of their king called Calos, the most powerful man alive. A god, they said. They told us of his vast treasures, his sorcerer powers, his cities built deep in the mangrove. But they would not take us there. Nothing could persuade them. They said Calos would know we were here and would come to us in his own time.