by Pip Adam
The night came again and she swam. Her arm hit it before she saw it. That was the way things had been going. Seeing less and less. Her eyes worn and dry and swelling and only good for shapes. It hadn’t felt soft. It had felt full of water. She swam to treading, and looked to see what it was. It was a body. She looked around. There were lots of them. Maybe thirty, maybe more, but they were all lifeless. Except for one. Its breath was small but it moved the still water. All the bodies were different ages and sizes. Some had life jackets on. Most were floating face down. It was a swamp. Even the fish were avoiding it. Elodie wanted to avoid it but the tiny waves that the tiny breath made kept coming. She looked around, then slid splashlessly under the water and came up very smoothly beside the child. Its eyes were closed, maybe it was a year old. She touched one of its feet, still pointed and fat – it hadn’t walked yet. It sank into the life jacket it was in, but by some luck of physics and float its head had fallen backwards and faced the sky, so it breathed. Elodie shook it but it didn’t wake up. ‘You’re early,’ Elodie said, as she swam round the baby. ‘You all are,’ she said, looking around her at where they had all come to. ‘I’m not ready for you yet.’ She swallowed down and down, she couldn’t afford to cry. She couldn’t swim and cry. ‘I’ll take this one with me,’ she announced to the floating crowd. ‘For the next generation. But’ – she grabbed the belt of the life jacket in one hand and began to swim, towing the baby – ‘I need to leave the rest of you.’ Her voice cracked and she swallowed again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. But before she was clear of the group the baby was dead, so she let it go and slid into the water again, swimming well below the surface, then rising, only her mouth to the air, arching her head right back.
The next time she came up she was a long way away but she could hear someone, a woman, shouting for help. Elodie’s ears were always full of water now so what she heard was like it was coming from several floors down. She was a long way away now, and there was nothing Elodie could do. Where she was going, the woman wouldn’t want to go. The woman wanted the boat. The boat was a long way away too. Anyone in the water, except Elodie, wanted to get out. The best thing Elodie could do was leave her there. Leave all of them. That was what everyone else had done. That’s what Elodie would do. There was something dreadful about the decision but that’s what her body did anyway. It swam away. That was the way she was moving. Away.
So Elodie kept moving and moving. Arm over arm. Every now and then the waves would happen in the particular way that she felt the woman still shouting. She should stop shouting, thought Elodie. Stop shouting and try to drown herself. That is the best thing. Fast. Elodie could show her how to eat, but she wouldn’t want that. She would be appalled. She didn’t want that. She wanted home. A safe place. Away from where she had been. In the ocean was only meant to be a means to an end. Everything that came to the ocean came for a reason. Some of it stayed, some of it was just passing through. But everything ended up here in the sea. The wind would pick up plastic bags from the land and blow them and blow them until they eventually ended up here, in the water. Elodie had seen them. She’d swum through them billowing at the surface, or sunk and playing in the currents. Bigger, then smaller, winding round and round on themselves, making small circles. Flapping with no brain, no nervous system, just flapping. Trying to fly. Perhaps trying to animate themselves into life. Perhaps they would. Perhaps the sea would wake them up and make them alive. Give them hope, brains, a purpose, a way to move and be and carry on.
Nothing was stopping the plastic, though. Nothing. The plastic would carry on forever. That was how it had been made. That’s what made Carla’s plan so failsafe. That’s what kept Elodie swimming. There were smaller pieces. Sometimes Elodie would swallow them. Sometimes when her mouth was open and she was siphoning for food, something would catch in her throat. Get stuck, and she’d cough, water coming out of her nose and then into it again as she gasped. She would swallow harder, and the plastic thing would go down. It made sense there would be more and more plastic the closer she got. That if she followed the warm and the currents and the plastic, she’d find her way to the island. Carla had not said this. Carla had been tired and boozy and fuck drunk, murmuring at best. But Elodie had heard every word she said. Listened as careful as she could. Taking it all down. In her head. Not on paper. She was sure it was a message. Possibly not from Carla. Possibly from something using Carla. Elodie came from a long line of people who believed in seizing the day, taking the opportunities that life threw you by the balls.
This place. This place. Maybe Carla had read about it. Once Elodie started looking, lots of people were talking about it – it would be crowded, soon. This was why she had needed to go now. To be the first. So that when everyone else arrived, tired, wet, pushed out of their homes by the sea, living in the sea but not aquatic – Elodie would be there to welcome them, to show them. She’d help them into the property market. That was it, really. There were no houses left, none that anyone could afford, and all of them would be underwater soon anyway, but this was new land – she was the coloniser of this new land – she was prime minister, developer, real estate agent.
Carla had talked about it and read about it, but she had been there too. Elodie was sure of that. Carla had been there as well. She had got in the water at Mission Bay one night in the 1990s and swum out and gone there and this was why she was telling Elodie, because she knew – it was a hot real estate tip. Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Avondale, Mangere Bridge – they’d all been hot tips before they’d been hot suburbs, increasing in value by the hour. Elodie listened to everyone she knew. She was always listening out for it. She knew nothing her father or mother talked about held anything for her, but she listened to them just in case they let it slip. She listened to her brother. Her brother the DJ. She listened to him – and she listened to Tommy. She tried not to ask too often, because then she’d only get the answers for the questions she already knew. What she was looking for, she needed to listen for. It was listening that would get her what she wanted. So she listened. Quietly, invisibly, made invisible by kindness and smiling – no one was wary of an optimist. Pessimists were smart and wiry and people stopped talking around them, but someone who was smiling was like a big ball of acceptance – like a big hug that they just wanted to talk into. So that was Elodie. She found a job where she could listen. Stand back and do her job, but listen. And there had been a lot of hopeful leads. High mountains. Charity work. One of the models was raising money to give a woman in Africa a fistula repair operation. She talked a lot about it. She made Africa sound big and deep and safe and empty. Elodie worked with the model a lot, so she heard a lot about it, and for a while she wondered if this was it. She’d taken some of the money from her trust fund and sent it to the organisation, and one woman in Africa had fistula repair surgery, but it wasn’t what Elodie was looking for. In the end, even Africa would sink.
Elodie found that if she gave people what they wanted they would talk more. A smile worked well, but sex worked better. Tommy had given her nothing. He talked about money, he talked about aesthetics. He talked about the way the world of fashion worked. He didn’t seem to know anything about land or making a home – he already had a home; anyone who had a home didn’t understand how to get a home. But then he told her about Carla and about how Carla had gone away. He’d thought religion, but then Carla had gone down on Elodie and then Elodie had gone down on Carla. And Carla had started talking about the ocean. ‘If it was floating past us out there, we’d do something,’ she said. And she was probably right.
The people Elodie had been listening to all seemed to take a lot of notice of what was directly in front of them, and diminishing amounts of notice of the things that were further away. Unless they had family somewhere else, which seemed to change things. It always changed things.
Elodie knew that. Elodie swam on. Not thinking about how far away it was, thinking about how she was here, and here, and here. Exactly where she had wanted to be.
He
r whole life had led to this. Being here. Meeting Carla. Being here. All this was bullshit. It was just the noise her mind was making as she splashed, arm over arm in the wide, deep sea under the bright clear sun while life exploded around her. The sun was shining through the sea.
She stayed quite high in the water now, for a while, but then something caught her attention well below her. The water was pitch black after a point, but the large object came in and out of the dark. It was like there was a separate sea below Elodie. A dark endless sea that the light didn’t hit. It was like she was flying. She gave up the arm over arm when she realised the object was going in the same direction as her. She went back to swimming underwater and coming to the surface for air. Trying to draw the intervals between surfacing out more and more. Whenever she did this, there would be a point where she asked herself if she still needed air. Because it felt like, at this moment, if she just relaxed, took the pressure off her chest, she would have everything she needed in the closed system of her body. But then she would surface again. Because she didn’t trust her body. Not after so long on land. She’d been a long time in the sea by now, but outrunning the long time she’d been on the land would be tough. Her body didn’t know what it was doing – not really.
This was her mind.
Her body knew exactly what it was doing. Exactly. But she would surface, then drop down again. Each time trying to get deeper, closer to the dark other sea. The large object would bring its large grey body up and then dive again into the dark. Like it was playing with her. Humans always thought like that. Like everything wanted to make contact with them, like everything they hunted and ruined wanted to be friends. Humans were stupid.
When she was driving at night, on a long drive after a hard day’s work she would often find herself convincing herself that she could close her eyes for a moment. Have a brief sleep. Just for a moment. Driving. In her car, as it spewed out all that trash. So she could get from one place to another. So she wouldn’t have to walk. Now she was swimming under her own speed. The wetsuit would have caused some awful waste when it was made, but it had already been made when she found it. It was going to sit on the boat and do nothing for a long time. It was good she was wearing it, good she’d taken it. Her skin felt better. She would let her mind tell her whatever it needed to, so she could keep the wetsuit. She didn’t want to die. Not like that; her insides seeping out of her rotting skin. So she listened to her own press – the justification of the wetsuit already there. Maybe if she hadn’t taken it, the wind would have taken it instead and dumped it into the sea, where a fish would suffocate on it. The higher good of her taking the wetsuit hid the selfishness of her not wanting to die, ever; that was the truth.
The grey was large. She suspected she’d known what it was the first time she saw it, and now she was certain. It was Moby-Dick. A grey version of the white whale. The whale is a he, the boat is a she. The octopus is a he. She was swimming with a whale. It was huge. She could see now how it stayed away from everyone. It was so deep and so smooth. There were probably hundreds of them, moving around all the time, and here was one. Why was there only one? Then she looked behind her and saw there were more. She realised she hadn’t surfaced for a long time, and realised the whales hadn’t surfaced for the whole time she’d been following them, or were they following her?
She relaxed and it was like she had everything she needed in her body, for a lot longer than she thought she did, so she made the decision to go deep. It took a lot of kicking, because her body, too heavy to float completely, was too light to sink completely. Which made it useless, of course, but it was all she had to work with. This body, these legs, these lungs. She kicked and kicked, then she was deep, and then she was in the dark. She was pushed and then again, as the huge animals slid past her body and then she needed air and it was dark all around and she didn’t know which way to go. Which way was up. She blew bubbles out of her mouth and they floated past her lips, her chin, past her neck. She was completely upside down. She somersaulted and followed the bubbles, and then she was in the light again but still a long way from the surface and her lungs were aching, but pain was just resistance to sensation. Pain was only really good as a warning but because she knew the situation she was in – knew the exact nature of where she was and who she was – pain was of no use at all. So she ignored it and kept kicking towards the surface and the sun and the air that was a prison. The whales had turned and were swimming away. In the distance she saw them surface, too. They were shackled to the air, like she was. Like they were sisters. Stuck in the rhythm of the break of the surface and the deep breath. One of them breached and slapped its huge tail on the surface to say goodbye. To warn her. To remind her she wasn’t welcome. Elodie watched for a moment as they went away. She knew she wasn’t wanted. There was a part of her that knew the truth, and it knew she wasn’t wanted, and she spat at the whales. Well, she was here and they would have to live with it, or kill her, all of them would. The octopus, especially. She was moving in. Making a home.
The rage was short-lived. Everything that came from her head was. Her body took over. Her mind just rattled on and couldn’t be trusted. It was her body she needed, and she identified more and more with it. It was her, now. It was louder than anything. It was repairing as fast as it could. The openings in her skin, the burn of the salt on her insides. It was working hard to repair and change. She’d been living for so long in her head. Listening to everything it said, like it was the truth. But it wasn’t the truth now. Her body was the truth. Her body and the sea. As her arm folded over one more time, it hit something. She stopped. It was something from home. A plastic bottle. She looked at it bobbing. Floating just in front of her, and she knew she was close.
In her thoughts, she used to play with the possibility of it. In the thought experiment she used, she would come to it and swim under it and then see a column of bright, shining light coming through a gap and she would climb up. Her legs would be sore and unused to climbing but she would pull herself up by her strong arms and fall flat on its strong surface. Welcomed home by all the things from home. She imagined arriving with no clothes on, but she imagined there would be clothes there. Blown out to sea. Brought to the Gyre. And she would collect the clothes. Pulling them on as she walked around on the surface. Seeing all the things from home. Coke bottles, water bottles, the lids off bottles. Containers for having lunch in. Sushi containers. Cords from things. Fishing lines. She hadn’t thought about it much while she was swimming, but now, as the waste became more and more, she remembered the dream of it. As her hands hit more and more, bottles, bags, it all swam with her now in the current like a flotilla. She began to think about it again. To summon it in her head like Carla had said it was. ‘There’s an island of rubbish,’ she’d said. Lazily. ‘All the waste in the world.’ Elodie thought about it as she swam. Closer and closer. She’d find them all a home there.
Carla had come back. Carla had never been away, probably. Elodie laughed as the water became soupier. Really, it had been all Elodie. Really. She’d looked it all up. Taken the dog. Left the shore. Dived into the water. Carla most probably never got this far. Carla probably went away somewhere else. Probably, if she’d asked Duey, Duey would have said, ‘The sea?’ and laughed softly. ‘No, she was with Krishna.’ And the thought experiment would have been over. That’s why she had never talked to Duey. Duey would end everything. Probably it was all Elodie’s idea, probably she had collected evidence to make it work. Probably.
Elodie knew she was never coming home. She would find a home on the island. She could fish. There was so much waste and it all belonged to her now. It was the only way forward. Everyone was trying to stop it – they charged for plastic bags in supermarkets, now – but really, they wouldn’t stop it. People loved throwing things out, people loved using something once and throwing it out – it made them feel like they were rich. Her father wouldn’t change it. ‘There’s no island of rubbish.’ He was convinced of it when she’d asked him over dinner
one Sunday. ‘And if there is, someone will find a way to tidy it up.’ Someone new, someone young, someone Elodie’s age. But Elodie knew better. Elodie would live on it and wait for everyone else, because it wasn’t going away and neither was the heat. Maybe she would make a house. She would definitely have shelter, and it was growing. That was the thing. It was growing. It was the only thing that was. It was all about growing. That’s what it was all about. Growth. And growing. And growing.
That was what it was all about and she would make a home for them all on the thing that was growing the most. There might be people on it when she got there – maybe a small child like the one she’d left, maybe a woman like the one who was calling out for help. Maybe there would be a family already. It made sense, because real estate was getting ridiculous. There were so many people on the land. So many people that surely some of them had to come to live on the sea, on the new island. The water got soupier and soupier, and it was harder and harder to swim. She swam down and looked up. It was like a roof of plastic. The sun played at it. She swam up again to where she thought there was a break in the roof the island made. It wasn’t a break, but she pushed through it easily. She couldn’t see much. There was rubbish everywhere and she was tangled in something. A large piece of packing polystyrene floated past and she pulled herself high up on it so she could look around. All around her was plastic, floating and floating.
