Beyond the Sea

by Paul Lynch

  Bolivar stares at what forms Hector in the dark. The dark that clads the body and brings the body into itself. The body mysterious and only the hair and face traced by moonlight, the words he speaks that trace the being, the ulcered mouth he can imagine seeing as it twists the words, the yellow eyes believing what the mouth says.

  Bolivar does not know what to say.

  He tries to speak but no words come out.

  Finally he clears his throat.

  Look, he says, we can still figure this out. I have spent how many years doing this— I don’t know. Ten years, maybe. All this time at sea has hardened my bones. We can still do it. I intend to see us through. I am the captain of this ship. We have the rest of our lives ahead of us.

  The voice before him seems to issue in whisper without body as though born of the darkness itself.

  You do not understand, Bolivar. It is much too late. The true nature of your own fate is for you to discover. Maybe the punishment designed for you is that you must face the abandonment you created. You will never again see her, your child. Yes, I see this now.

  It is then that Bolivar rushes towards Hector, grabs hold of him, begins to shake him.

  Then he stops and lets him go.

  Hector does not speak.

  Without word Bolivar climbs back into the cooler.

  * * *

  Bolivar sits pinching the bridge of his nose. He watches a band of shelved cloud form maybe thirty, forty miles away. The sky become haze. He sees again an albatross rolling the high air without beating its wings. He fixes the rain cups and senses the temperature drop. Hector has hardly moved since he returned to the cooler. He does not move now when the wind carries the rain over the waters. Bolivar moving about the boat, keeping watch over the cups and the barrel, keeping watch over Hector. He is an insect again, he thinks. You do not know what an insect might do. He faces into the rain and stands as though fetching some faraway thought. Feeling the rain on his skin, stretching out his arms, lost for a moment in its touch.

  * * *

  They ride rough sea for two days. Sleep now heaving upon violent dreams. Then in sleep Bolivar hears Alexa sing. He is trying to move towards her, his legs trying to flee the boat, he is trying to climb out but cannot – his legs are dead, the blood thickened by salt, his voice hoarse and yet he manages to shout, I am coming! I am coming! He wakes into darkness and meets his own self. He listens and hears the sea grown calm.

  There is only this, he thinks. You cannot move past this. Do not listen to him. Nothing he says is. What does he want? He does not want. It is not wanting that he wants. That is the problem. His mind is being twisted by the sickness in the body.

  Bolivar listens until he can hear himself as he shouted in the dream.

  I am coming!

  It is then he hears it. Some distant ululation passing through the waters.

  He thinks, maybe it is a whale singing, who knows.

  He listens and again he hears it.

  He whispers to himself.

  Do not worry, Alexa, I hear you. For sure, I am coming back.

  * * *

  Flying fish break the waters. He watches as they soar outstretched towards the sun then make their plummeting fall.

  * * *

  He wakes to the nearby scuffling of a bird. His breathing stops, his mind passing from dream into the cooler, the cold and beyond. He moves onto his elbow and listens. It is then he finds his body leaping, his hands meeting the body of some hulked bird, the creature screeching, smashing its wings, moving with unexpected torque to strike with its beak at his face and hands. He fights until the bird falls quiet.

  He watches the east grow in a cold furnace of light. Sees that what he has killed is an albatross. He looks at his bleeding hands.

  He skins the bird and cuts it open. The insides are full of undigested plastic. He slices some breast meat and puts it into brine. He watches Hector carefully when he wakes, the way Hector sits, where the eyes rest, the sunken chest, one shoulder higher than the other. Hector has not bothered to lift his head.

  Bolivar thinks, nobody would believe it, but it is easier at sea to catch birds than fish.

  * * *

  In the days that pass Hector does not speak. He slumps in the cooler, the hands folded and faintly worrying as though spirit were something hands could wring. Bolivar studying the hands, the dry mouth, the feeling that the youth’s being is withdrawing to someplace else. He puts water to Hector’s lips and the water spills down the chin. Bolivar continues to speak to Hector as though nothing has altered. He explains aloud his dreams. He remembers events from his childhood. He says, the day my grandfather disappeared. I can still recall it. Later, he says, it is strange, you know, but my hearing is getting so good I can hear things passing beneath us in the water. I can see things clearly that are far away.

  Later, he steps behind the cooler and washes the albatross meat. He tastes a small cut. It is oily, he thinks, but it does not taste of dead fish.

  He chews quietly watching the horizon, the depthless waters in meeting with it. The mind reaching and false before both, he thinks. And yet both false before the mind.

  He finds himself before Hector with a piece of meat cut into thin strips.

  Look, he says, I caught a fish.

  Hector lifts his head to look.

  Bolivar says, I don’t know what kind it is.

  Hector raises his fingers crooked before the offering. He takes the meat and puts it in his mouth and chews. Bolivar watching him as he eats, the ulcers on the lips and tongue, the gums bleeding onto the food.

  Bolivar says, full belly, happy heart.

  Hector looks up and smiles without expression.

  Yes, he says. It is a nice piece of fish.

  He eats another piece then falls silent.

  Then he says, can I have a taste of water? For days my tongue is burning.

  * * *

  Hector moans himself awake. There is something within the moan that disturbs Bolivar. He turns to see Hector lying in an agonised curl. His hands clutching his gut. His brow wet with fever. He has vomited what little food he has eaten. Quickly Bolivar goes to lift him but Hector shrugs away the help. He crawls as though with great weight out of the cooler and curls against the hull, lies there a wretched shape, Bolivar watching, pulling at his hair. He bends over the boat and wets a hand in the sea, washes Hector’s brow. He moves the long hair out of the youth’s eyes, washes the crud off the lips. He sees that Hector has soiled himself. He takes a cup and washes him. Then he lifts Hector out of the sun and puts him in the cooler.

  He keeps Hector’s brow cool, puts drink to the lips. He tries to keep him warm at night. It seems to him that Hector’s bones are writhing under the skin. The lips whispering veiled and innermost words.

  Bolivar stares with suspicion at the meat.

  You are not sick, he thinks. It did you no harm, it is some other thing. Look at his skin, he is completely yellow, his blood must be poisoned.

  Bolivar takes a sniff of the albatross meat. He takes a little bite. It is fine, he thinks.

  He throws the meat overboard.

  * * *

  Day into night and night into day. How many days, three or four, he isn’t sure, but Hector begins to breathe calmly in sleep. Then he wakes and sits up. He stares at Bolivar who watches the youth and sees that something has changed within his expression. Bolivar studies the skin drawn yellow over the bones. The thin beard hanging past the chin. The hair past the shoulders and how it palls the eyes. How the youth sits for a long time with an absent, benevolent look. Then he seems to smile.

  Bolivar holds out food but Hector pushes it away.

  He leans forward and puts a hand to the youth’s shoulder, gently shakes him.

  You have to eat, brother.

  I am past that now.

  What do you mean?

  Hector does not answer.

  Bolivar stares into the smile that leads into the mouth. He stares into the mouth that leads int
o the mind that spoke the words. He stares as though he can see into the words but he cannot. What he sees is some faraway thought vanishing on the youth’s face.

  He grabs Hector and shakes hurt into the youth’s shoulder, Hector’s hair falling loose across the eyes.

  Bolivar shouts, what are you smiling for?

  He rushes then, goes to the cups and grabs at some other bird meat, stuffs it into Hector’s mouth, the long hair tangling with the food, Bolivar holding his hand over the youth’s mouth trying to force him to swallow, holding the hand tight against the mouth as though trying to—

  He stops, stares at his hand.

  Hector calmly pulls the hair out of his mouth.

  He spits the food into his palm and hands it back to Bolivar. He begins to smile again but something lies dead within the eyes as though the place in the mind that holds the thought cannot meet the light.

  Hector says, why don’t you see, Bolivar?

  Bolivar stares at Hector with horror.

  What he sees in the youth’s expression is joy.

  * * *

  The wind leaps from south-east to north. A sudden rain fills their cups. Then days of white heat. A jet stream high above strews the long wake of a ship. The sun clocking around Hector where he sits unmoved. Bolivar watching how the youth holds within him some strange and immense self-possession. His hands on his knees, a faint smile on the lips. He is still refusing to eat. Bolivar watching the youth’s body. How the skin seems to hang less taut each day. He thinks, the muscle for sure is being devoured from within, the skin meeting bone, the mind devouring the body. He studies the youth for sign of the will within. He watches the youth and falls into a doze. Sees him again inside a dream, Hector smiling at him, the youth’s skin beginning to shimmer in the hazed evening light, the body trembling, the body it seems beginning to move apart from the body, the body becoming double in his vision – he tries to wake from the dream, his eyes still fixed upon Hector, for sure the youth is breaking in two, he is trying to break free from the body—

  Bolivar wakes with a start.

  He stares with suspicion at Hector but the youth has not moved.

  * * *

  A small green turtle butts the boat. Bolivar wrestles it out of the water and carefully drains the blood into a cup. He portions the organ meat, holds the liver quivering in his hand.

  He says, really, you must eat some.

  He turns to look at Hector and sees the youth weeping into the crook of his arm.

  Bolivar turns away as Hector looks up.

  He says, it is a great pity, Bolivar, that we met at the end of our lives.

  Bolivar turns upon Hector.

  Hey! Stop with this crazy talk, eh?

  He wipes from his mouth the mess of bloodied liver, rests a blood-smeared hand on Hector’s shoulder.

  We are still young, he says. We have our whole lives ahead of us.

  I wanted to be like you, Bolivar. I thought I could be like you. I tried to do as you do. The way you move about the boat. The way you move your hands. The way you think. You are so good at this. But I cannot be like you. I cannot change who I am.

  Look, this is no time to give in. You must have faith.

  Hector slowly lifts his head and stares at Bolivar, the face screened by hair, and yet Bolivar can see the wet yellowed eyes take on a sudden look of severity, the mouth pulling into sneer.

  All I have left is my faith.

  Bolivar pulls his hand back from Hector’s shoulder, turns the hand open and stares at it.

  Yes, maybe. But you do not have faith in this. What we are doing. You do not believe. You are a no, not a yes.

  It is you, Bolivar, who is a no, not a yes. It is you who does not believe.

  Hey. That is not true. Somebody is coming for us, wait till you see.

  It is you who refuses to see.

  * * *

  What days pass. Bolivar watching at the length of his vision, alert to every moving thing. The remote sea giving things up. What looks like the flashing of a signal. A distant ship in silhouette. A maelstrom of seabirds swarming some bloated dead thing. He listens to the shadows that pass beneath the boat. His hands ready to pull from the water a shark if one should surface and draw close.

  He tries to fish with a plastic bag.

  Again and again he tells himself, you will find a fish, you will find a fish and make him eat. You can save him yet.

  He sees in his mind Hector as he once was, then stares at the youth wasting away. Hector within the body yet not of the body. The eyes fixed on something inward. The body pulling inward as though following what the mind sees, the mind seeking something within.

  He can see that Hector has aged greatly. What sits before him now is the spent body of an old man. The ankles and feet swollen.

  He begins to examine his own body, pulls at loose skin. It is now a deep leathery brown but not the youth’s shrunken yellow. He looks at his hands and feet and wonders if his face has changed.

  He leans over the boat and tries to see his face on the water. The face before him an inconstant fluid thing. It is the face Alexa must see in her dreams. He thinks about her face as she once was. Who she could be now. He touches his cheeks. She will not recognise you. She will not believe who you are.

  He holds his face in his hands and weeps.

  Slowly Hector opens his mouth as though to speak.

  A tooth falls out.

  * * *

  Bolivar sits in the cooler chewing the last of the turtle meat. He offers some to Hector who does not look at him. Then Bolivar leans out of the panga and scoops water, carries it in his hands. He washes Hector’s face, wipes the hair out of the eyes, wipes the brow. The skin is clammy and cold. He puts his arms around the youth and tries to warm him. He is trying not to let Hector see he is weeping again. Hector’s eyes closed now for what seems like days.

  Bolivar finds himself shouting at him.

  You cannot do this. You must wake up.

  He pushes himself away from Hector, walks up and down the boat in a rage, then goes for a run.

  He wakes in the middle of the night and hears himself roar, you are behaving like a fool. You need to wake from this thing.

  He finds himself upon his knees begging Hector to listen. He pulls at his arm.

  Look, why won’t you look? If you think this is a dream then it is you who are dreaming. You can do this. You can wake up. I know you can do it. I really know it. I need you to do it for me. You cannot leave me here on my own.

  * * *

  Bolivar goes for a run around the cooler then stops breathless, crouches against the hull. A long time just watching. The making and unmaking of the sea in some sourceless ancient reflex. What are you? How a body can part the waters but never a thought. A thought can move the body to part the waters but the waters never meet the thought. He studies a seabird black and solitary against the sun. The bird spirals then planes towards the panga. He sees a red sac at the throat. It is a frigate bird and it pulls its long black wings into its body as it lands on the trim.

  Bolivar places it staggering and wingless in the aviary.

  Hector begins to weep. He sits with the mouth parted as though searching for the right words. The lids of the eyes are swollen. Then he points for a drink of water. Bolivar puts a cup to the youth’s lips.

  As he drinks, a shiver suddens through Hector’s body. His eyes meet Bolivar’s eyes with a strange and pure expression. Then he speaks, his voice barely a whisper.

  I have not lived well, Bolivar.

  Bolivar sits with a sad and frowning face.

  That is not true. How can that be true?

  I have been a burden, to you, to others. There are many ill-doings I must account for.

  What are you talking about? You are not some murderer, a car thief or something.

  All these small things I have been doing. They add up. I am the sum of all this. I can feel this now. This is what has been growing inside me. I can feel it here in my chest. It is
a feeling that is greater than any pain in my body. Every ill-doing I can see before me now. I have not been a good person. So I am spending this time remembering. I am revisiting each action. I can see myself back there as I am doing each thing. I see the action and I experience pain when I see it. I have not been kind to my mother and father. My sister and brother. I have not been kind to Lucrezia, that is for sure. It is no wonder she has run away with him.

  Look, Hector, you have no idea what she has done.

  The only thing left for me to do is to seek forgiveness for each action. I have been thinking that we create our own fate. This is so, Bolivar, don’t you think? Every single thing you do takes you to where you are now and not any other place. This can only be so. But every deed you do gives rise to a feeling inside you. So we are what we have done. This is what I think. We are accountable because we act upon what we feel. I think I understand this now. Maybe not. Maybe this is not how it is. But I feel this to be true. I have not been kind to you, Bolivar. I am sorry about this. There have been many times when I let you down. Will you forgive me? Will you be kind in your memory towards me?

  Bolivar sits trying not to listen. He puts his hands over his ears, then his face. He stares at his hands and wills himself to believe. He can see a ship coming to be on the waters, pulling up alongside the panga. He can see a red plane coming low over the waves. It is a seaplane. He is climbing inside it. He is going straight to Rosa’s place with a foil blanket on his shoulders. Hector is with him. This is what happens. You have seen this on TV. Angel beside you. Rosa holding your hand. Everyone leaning in to listen. Everybody offering you a drink.

  He thinks, it is not the body that is the problem. The problem is the mind.

  Hector says, she is with him now. She is in his car and they are driving about. I can see them. It is a nice day, a little humid maybe. She is happy. They are caught up in their lives, in the doing of each thing. It is the doing that makes us forget ourselves. She will not notice I am gone.