There is a horrendous silence, on the raft and all around. No one wails anymore. The dead are dead, the living are waiting, that’s all. No prayers, no screams, nothing. The sea dances, but slowly, it seems a whispered farewell. I do not feel hunger anymore, or thirst or pain. Everything is only an immense lassitude. I open my eyes. That man is still there. I close them again. Kill me, Thomas, or let me die in peace. You have your revenge by now. Go away. He turns his gaze toward the sea. I am no longer anything. My soul is no longer my soul, my life is no longer my life, do not steal death from me with those eyes.
The sea dances, but slowly.
No prayers, no groans, nothing.
The sea dances, but slowly.
Will he watch me die?
MY NAME IS Thomas. And this is the story of an abomination. I am writing it in my mind, now, with what strength I have left and with my eyes fixed on that man who shall never have my forgiveness. Death shall read it.
The Alliance was a big, strong ship. The sea would never have bested her. It takes three thousand oaks to build a ship like that. A floating forest. It was the idiocy of men that was her undoing. Captain Chaumareys consulted the charts and sounded the depth of the sea floor. But he could not read the sea. He could not read its colors. The Alliance wound up on the Arguin sandbank and no one could do anything to stop it. A strange shipwreck: we heard what seemed a dull groan rise up from the bowels of the hull and then the ship stopped dead, listing slightly to one side. Motionless. Forever. I have seen splendid ships struggle against ferocious storms, and I have seen some others surrender and disappear beneath waves tall as castles. It was like a duel. Very beautiful. But the Alliance was unable to fight. A silent end. The great sea all around her was almost flat calm. The enemy was within her, not before her. And all her strength was as nothing, against an enemy like that. I have seen many lives wrecked in that absurd way. But ships, never.
The hull was beginning to creak. They decided to abandon the Alliance to her fate and they built that raft. It smacked of death before it was even lowered into the water. The men sensed it and thronged around the longboats, to flee from that trap. They had to point the muskets at them to force them to board it. The captain promised and swore that he would not abandon them, that the longboats would tow the raft, that there was no danger. They ended up, packed together like animals, aboard that barge without sides, without a keel, without a helm. And I was one of them. There were soldiers and sailors. A few passengers. And then four officers, a cartographer, and a doctor called Savigny: they occupied the middle of the raft, where the supplies had been put, those few supplies that had not been lost in the confusion of the transshipment. They were standing on a large chest; we were all around them, with the water up to our knees because the raft was wallowing under our weight. I should have understood everything right from that moment.
Of those moments, an image remains. Schmalz. Schmalz the governor, the one who was to take possession of the new colonies in the king’s name. They lowered him from the starboard side, seated in his armchair. The armchair, in velvet and gold, and him seated upon it, impassive. They lowered them down as if they were one single statue. We, on that raft, still moored to the Alliance, but already at grips with the sea and fear. And him there, descending, hanging in space, toward his longboat, seraphic, like those angels that come down from the ceilings of the theaters in the city. He was swinging, he and his armchair, like a pendulum. And I thought: He is swinging like a hanged man in the evening breeze.
I don’t know the precise moment when they abandoned us. I was struggling to keep my feet and to keep Thérèse close to me. But I heard cries, and then shots. I looked up. And above dozens of bobbing heads, and dozens of hands that sawed the air, I saw the sea, and longboats far off, and nothing between us and them. I looked on, incredulous. I knew that they would not return. We were in the hands of destiny. Only luck could save us. But the defeated never have any luck.
Thérèse was but a lass. I don’t know how old she was, really. But she seemed a lass. When I was at Rochefort working in the port, she would pass by with her baskets of fish and she would look at me. She looked at me until I fell in love with her. She was all I had, down there. My life, for what it was worth, and her. When I enlisted in the expedition to the new colonies, I managed to have her hired as a sutler. And so we left, both of us on board the Alliance. It seemed like a game. When I come to think of it, in those first days, it seemed a game. If I know what it means to be happy, in those nights, we were happy. When I ended up among those who had to board the raft, Thérèse wanted to come with me. She could have boarded a longboat, but she wanted to come with me. I told her that it was madness, that we would meet again on shore, that she had nothing to fear. But she would not listen to me. There were big men hard as rock whimpering and begging for a place on those cursed longboats, jumping down from the raft and risking getting themselves killed just to escape from there. But she, she boarded the raft without a word, hiding all her fears. They do things, women, at times, that are enough to leave you high and dry. You could spend a lifetime trying, but you would never have that buoyancy they have, at times. They are buoyant inside. Buoyant.
The first ones died at night, dragged into the sea by the waves that swept the raft. In the darkness, you could hear their cries gradually fading away. At dawn, about ten men were missing. Some lay trapped between the boards of the raft, trampled by the others. The four officers, together with Corréard, the cartographer, and Savigny, the doctor, took the situation in hand. They had the weapons. And they controlled the supplies. The men trusted them. Lheureux, one of the officers, even made a fine speech, he had a sail hoisted and said, “It will carry us to land and there we shall follow those who have betrayed and abandoned us and we shall not rest until they have tasted our revenge.” That’s precisely what he said: until they have tasted our revenge. He didn’t even seem like an officer. He seemed like one of us. The men were heartened by those words. We all thought that it would really end like that. All we had to do was stand fast and not be afraid. The sea had subsided. A light wind filled our makeshift sail. Each of us had his ration of food and drink. Thérèse said to me, “We’ll make it.” And I said, “Yes.”
It was at sunset that the officers, without a word, pushed one of the three wine casks down from the big chest, so that it rolled into our midst. They didn’t lift a finger when some threw themselves upon it, opened it, and began drinking. The men were running toward the cask, there was a great turmoil, everyone wanted that wine, and I didn’t understand. I remained motionless, holding Thérèse close to me. There was something strange about all that. Then you could hear shouting and the blows of an ax with which someone was trying to cleave the lashings that held the raft together. It was like a signal. A savage fight broke out. It was dark; only occasionally did the moon emerge from behind the clouds. I could hear the crackle of musketry, and, like apparitions, in those sudden blades of light, men hurled themselves upon one another and on the corpses, and sabers struck out blindly. Screams, furious shouts, and groans. All I had was a knife: the same one that now I will plunge into the heart of this man who no longer has the strength to escape. I gripped it, but I didn’t know who the enemy was, I didn’t want to kill, I didn’t understand. Then the moon came out once more, and I saw: an unarmed man who was hanging on to Savigny, the doctor, and shouting mercy, mercy, mercy, and he didn’t stop screaming when the first saber stroke cut into his belly, and then the second and the third . . . I saw him slump to the deck. I saw Savigny’s face. And I understood. Who the enemy was. And that the enemy would win.
When the light returned, in an atrocious dawn, there were dozens of corpses on the raft, horribly mutilated, and dying men everywhere. Around the big chest, about thirty armed men guarded the supplies. In the officers’ eyes there was a kind of euphoric confidence. They strolled around the raft, with sabers unsheathed, calming the living and throwing the dying into the water. No one dared say anything. The terror and bewil
derment created by that night of hatred silenced and paralyzed everyone. No one yet really understood what had happened. I watched all that, and I thought: If this carries on, we have no hope. The most senior officer was called Dupont. He passed close by me, with his white uniform soiled with blood, blathering something about the duties of a soldier and I don’t know what else. He had a pistol in his hand and his saber in its scabbard. He turned his back on me for a moment. I knew that he wouldn’t give me another chance. He found himself immobilized with a knife at his throat before he even had time to shout. From the big chest, the men instinctively pointed their muskets at us. They would have shot, too, but Savigny yelled at them to hold their fire. And then, in the silence, it was my turn to speak, with the point of my knife pressed against Dupont’s throat. And I said, “They are killing us, one by one. And they will not stop until they are the only ones left. Last night they got you drunk . . . but the next time they will have no need of excuses or help. They have the weapons and we are many no longer. In the dark, they will do what they want. You may believe me or not, but that’s the way it is. There aren’t enough supplies for everybody, and they know it. They will not leave a single man alive that they don’t need. You may believe me or not, but that’s the way it is.”
The men around me were as if stunned. Hunger, thirst, the battle in the night, that sea that never ceased its dancing . . . They tried to think, they wanted to understand. Lost, there, struggling against death, it was hard to accept the presence of another, even more insidious enemy: men like you. Against you. There was something absurd about all that. And yet it was true. One by one, they closed ranks around me. Savigny was shouting threats and orders. But no one was listening to him. Idiotic as it may have seemed, a war was breaking out on that raft, lost at sea. We returned the officer, Dupont, alive in exchange for some victuals and arms. We huddled in a corner of the raft. And we waited for the night. I kept Thérèse close to me. She kept on saying, “I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid.”
I don’t want to remember that night, and the others that followed. A meticulous, expert massacre. The more time passed, the more it became necessary for our survival that our numbers be limited to a few. And they, scientifically, were killing. There was something about that calculated clarity, that pitiless intelligence, that fascinated me. Amid all that desperation, an extraordinary mind was required if the logical thread of that extermination was not to be lost. In the eyes of this man, which watch me now as if I were a dream, I have read, a thousand times, with hatred and admiration, the signs of a horrendous brilliance.
We tried to defend ourselves. But it was impossible. The weak can only run away. And you cannot run away from a raft lost in the middle of the sea. By day we struggled against hunger, desperation, madness. Then night fell and the war flared up again, a war that grew more and more tired, exhausted, made of slower and slower gestures, fought by dying murderers, and beasts in their death throes. At daybreak, new deaths sustained the hopes of the living and their horrendous plans for salvation. I don’t know how long all this lasted. But it had to end, sooner or later, in one way or another. And it ended. The water was finished, the wine, and what little was left to eat. No ship had arrived to save us. There was no time left for any calculations. There was nothing left to kill one another for. I saw two officers throw their weapons into the water and wash themselves for hours, maniacally, with seawater. They wanted to die innocent. That was what remained of their ambition and their intelligence. All useless. That massacre, their infamous conduct, our fury. All perfectly useless. No intelligence and no courage may change fate. I remember that I sought Savigny’s face. And I saw, finally, the face of a defeated man. Now I know that even when hovering on the verge of death, men’s faces are still lies.
That night I opened my eyes, awakened by a sound, and in the uncertain light of the moon I glimpsed the silhouette of a man, standing in front of me. Instinctively I grasped my knife and pointed it at him. The man stopped. I didn’t know if it was a dream, a nightmare, or what. Somehow I had to manage to keep my eyes open. I stayed there motionless. Seconds, minutes, I don’t know. Then the man turned. And I saw two things. A face, and it was that of Savigny, and a saber that slashed the air as it plunged down toward me. It was a moment. I didn’t know if it was a dream, a nightmare, or what. I felt no pain, nothing. There was no blood on me. The man disappeared. I stayed there motionless. Only after a little did I turn and see: there was Thérèse, stretched out alongside me, with a wound that had slashed open her breast and her eyes staring, staring at me, stupefied. No. It couldn’t be true. No. Now it was all over. Why? It must be a dream, a nightmare, he couldn’t have done it really. No. Not now, no. Why now?
“Farewell, my love.”
“Oh no, no, no, no.”
“Farewell.”
“You shall not die, I swear.”
“Farewell.”
“I beg you, you shall not die . . .”
“Leave me.”
“You shall not die.”
“Leave me.”
“We shall be saved, you must believe me.”
“My love . . .”
“Do not die . . .”
“My love.”
“Do not die. Do not die. Do not die.”
The sound of the sea was very loud. Louder than I had ever heard it. I took her in my arms and dragged myself right to the edge of the raft. I let her slip into the water. I did not want her to stay in that hell. And if there was not a speck of earth there to watch over her rest, then let the deep sea take her to itself. Boundless garden of the dead, without crosses or confines. She slipped away like a wave, only more beautiful than the others.
I don’t know. It’s hard to understand all this. If I had a life ahead of me, perhaps I would spend it telling this story, without ever stopping, a thousand times until one day I would understand it. But ahead of me there is only a man who awaits my knife.
And then sea, sea, sea.
The only person who ever really taught me anything, an old man called Darrell, always used to say that there were three types of men: those who live in front of the sea, those who venture into the sea, and those who manage to return from the sea, alive. And he used to say, “What a surprise you’ll get when you find out who are the happiest.” I was a young lad then. In winter I would look at the ships hauled up on the beach, supported by enormous wooden props, their hulls exposed and their keels cutting the sand like useless blades. And I would think: I’m not going to stop here. I want to venture into the sea. Because if there’s something true in this world, it’s down there. Now I’m down there, in the deepest part of the womb of the sea. I am still alive because I have killed without mercy, because I eat this meat ripped from the corpses of my shipmates, because I have drunk their blood. I have seen an infinity of things that are invisible from the shores of the sea. I have seen what desire really is, and fear. I have seen men fall apart and turn into children. And then change again and become ferocious beasts. I have seen marvelous dreams dreamed, and I have listened to the most beautiful stories of my life, told by ordinary men, a moment before they threw themselves into the sea to vanish forever. I have read signs I didn’t know in the sky and stared at the horizon with eyes I didn’t think I had. I have understood the true nature of hatred on these bloodstained boards, where the seawater makes wounds putrefy. And as for compassion, I didn’t know what it was until I saw our murderers’ hands spend hours stroking the hair of a mate who could not manage to die. I have seen ferocity, as men kicked the dying off the raft; I have seen sweetness, in Gilbert’s eyes as he kissed his little Léon; I have seen intelligence, in the gestures with which Savigny embroidered his massacre; and I have seen madness, in those two men who spread their wings one morning and flew away, into the sky. Were I to live for another thousand years, love would be the name of the light weight that was Thérèse, in my arms, before she slipped into the waves. And destiny would be the name of this ocean sea, infinite and beautiful. I wasn’t wrong,
back ashore, during those winters, when I thought that truth lay here. It took me years to descend to the farthest depths of the womb of the sea: but what I was looking for, I found. True things. Even the most intolerable, atrocious truth of all. This sea is a mirror. Here, in its womb, I have seen myself. I have really seen.
I don’t know. If I had a life ahead of me—I who am about to die—I would spend it telling this story, without ever stopping, a thousand times, so as to understand why truth gives itself over only to horror, and to arrive at it we have had to pass through this inferno, to see it we have had to destroy one another, to have it we have had to become ferocious beasts, to flush it out we have had to rack ourselves with pain. And to be true men we have had to die. Why? Why do things become true only in the grip of desperation? Who has turned the world around this way, so that the truth must be on the dark side, and the repulsive swamp of forsaken humanity is the only loathsome earth in which there grows the only thing that is not a lie? And in the end: What truth can this be, that stinks of corpses, and flourishes in blood, feeds on pain, and lives where man humiliates himself, and triumphs where man rots? Whose truth is this? Is it a truth for us? Back ashore, during those winters, I use to imagine a truth that was tranquillity, womb, alleviation, mercy, and sweetness. It was a truth made for us. Which expected us, and would have looked down on us, like a mother found anew. But here, in the womb of the sea, I have seen truth make its nest, meticulous and perfect: and what I saw was a bird of prey, magnificent in flight, and ferocious. I don’t know. This wasn’t what I dreamed of, in the winter, when I used to dream of this.
Darrell was one of those who returned. He had seen the womb of the sea, he had been here, but he had returned. People said he was a man beloved of the gods. He had survived two shipwrecks and, they said, the second time he had done over three thousand miles, in a piddling little boat, before he found land again. Days and days in the womb of the sea. And then he returned. That’s why people would say, “Darrell is wise, Darrell has seen, Darrell knows.” I would spend days listening to his talk, but he never told me anything about the womb of the sea. He didn’t like to talk about it. He didn’t even like the fact that people would hold him to be wise and sagacious. Above all, he couldn’t stand that someone could say of him that he had saved himself. He could not bear to hear that word: saved. He would lower his head and half shut his eyes, in a way that was impossible to forget. I would look at him, in those moments, and I couldn’t manage to put a name to what I read on his face, and that—I knew—was his secret. A thousand times that name was on the tip of my tongue. Here, on this raft, in the womb of the sea, it has come to me. And now I know that Darrell was a wise and sagacious man. A man who had seen. But, before all other things, and to the depths of his every instant, he was an inconsolable man. This is what the womb of the sea has taught me. Those who have seen the truth will always be inconsolable. Only he who has never been in danger is really saved. A ship might even appear, now, on the horizon, and speed here on the waves to arrive a second before death and take us away, and have us return alive, alive—but this would not save us, really. Even if we ever found ourselves ashore somewhere again, we shall never again be saved. And what we have seen will remain in our eyes, what we have done will remain on our hands, what we have felt will remain in our souls. And forever, we who have known the truth, forever, we the children of horror, forever, we the veterans of the womb of the sea, forever, we the wise and the sagacious, forever—we shall be inconsolable.
Ocean Sea Page 10
