by Tad Crawford
At last Tsukino-san began moving his right index finger in a slicing gesture over his left wrist. I didn’t understand this pantomime. I shook my head. Again he sliced the finger over his wrist, then raised the wrist to his lips.
With what felt like a superhuman effort, I crawled to Mayonaka. If I could have risen, I would have swung the blade at the gulls that watched from the perimeter of the raft like avid celebrants at a ritual. Squinting against the light, I raised my left wrist while my right hand gripped Mayonaka. I could see the blue rivers of my veins beneath the browned earth of my withered skin. My hand trembled as I brought the blade to rest against the confluence of two tributaries. Firmly I pressed until blood filled a narrow trench. Blood pooled on my wrist and glistened on Mayonaka. Careful not to spill a drop, I brought my bleeding wrist to my lips and sucked.
With my desperate thirst, this drinking of myself was infinitely delicious. My blood tasted fresh, rich, and, for want of a better word, heavy. I suckled at the gash until the blood was momentarily exhausted, then let my arm fall to replenish the supply. Again and again I did this, drinking even as I doubted that this could do more than ease my final discomfort. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. It would violate nature’s laws. If I could drink of myself and survive, gain strength, flourish, I would be as much a lawbreaker as such a machine. The wetness pleased my tongue, and I felt an energy that I suspected came as much from my excitement as from the blood trickling to my stomach.
When I could drink no more, I closed my hand around my wrist and sat propped against the side of the raft. Tsukino-san and Tex watched me without expression or movement. I kept my head bent to look away from the luminescent sky. I let my eyes close, but the crying of the gulls grew closer and more raucous. Opening my eyes, I saw them crowding toward me, dozens packed together and just out of my reach. If I stopped moving, whether to sleep or die, they would be on me in a flash.
Tex and Tsukino-san smiled at me. For whatever reason, their gentle smiles seemed to me farewells. I opened my lips to protest, feeling them my last link to human life and friendship. Tex raised his hand to stop me and pointed over my head. Then I heard bells, shifting tones of great beauty and strangeness. They played on a scale unknown to me. I turned, expecting to see the barren ocean reaching to the horizon. But there, no more than a mile away, rode the high prow of an enormous ship, its wooden hull painted gold, and the scarlet sails on its many masts puffed full by the wind and lit by the ethereal fire in the skies above. I waved Mayonaka back and forth, back and forth, with the desperation of a man who has seen his salvation and fears he may nevertheless be passed by.
Seconds became minutes. I wondered if I waved at a mirage, a phantasm that had risen from the depths. Suddenly Mayonaka slipped from my grasp. I lunged to catch it, and could only stare at the spot where the metal had pierced the soft surface of the ocean. When I raised my head, a longboat had been lowered on the swells. A scarlet banner emblazoned with a dragon fluttered above its stern. White-suited sailors dipped and pulled their oars in unison until their boat skimmed over the waves and, ever so quickly, closed the distance between us.
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Where we found him, he could not have been. It is endless ocean. A raft might float there, but a man cannot survive. I thought him possessed because he spoke a language of the strangest sounds. But when we put water on his tongue, he drank. When we put rice to his lips, he ate. Finally I knew that this man had walked down the foaming steps to the kingdom far beneath the restless surface of the waves. There he learned a language unknown to men, a language of the secret world. Then he ascended those vast and shifting steps to return to the world above. To the rarest goods of trade, the precious gifts from mighty kings, and the celestial unicorn, I add this man, to be brought in safety to my glorious emperor Chu Ti. So will it be done.
From the log of Cheng Ho, admiral of the western seas, voyage of the fifth armada
About the Author
Tad Crawford’s stories and articles have appeared in such venues as Art in America, The Café Irreal, Confrontation, Communication Arts, Family Circle, Glamour, Guernica, The Nation, and Writer’s Digest. He is the author of The Secret Life of Money and a dozen other nonfiction books, chiefly on the business lives of artists and writers, and has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts award. Crawford is the founder and publisher of Allworth Press. He grew up in the artists’ colony of Woodstock, New York, and now lives in New York City.
