He could not say for sure, not for all the sun of the Sahara, whether he was conscious or unconscious, dead or alive. He didn’t feel a thing. He did not know whether he floated in the sea or in the ether. He could not pinch his arm to find out whether he was awake. He wasn’t even sure there was still a hand at the end of his arm, or whether he had arms at all. He was weightless and bodiless like a breath of air.
Then he heard a voice. It could have been the voice of the man on board or his own. It could have been a figment of his imagination.
‘If I had told you yesterday that you would die serene and in peace, you wouldn’t have believed me. You would have shouted and cursed and splashed and moaned. And why should you have believed me? Yesterday you were nothing but a spoilt brat who had never asked himself who he was. You’d never stood in front of a mirror and given an honest look at yourself. Now you do. Nobody needs to say now what you are and what your life has been. No heavenly judge, no eulogy from a saddened relative, no three-line obituary will define you or measure you. You define yourself. So tell me, now that the ocean has frozen and neutralised the animal impulse to survive for survival’s sake, what do you see? What’s left of you? Can you find the spark of the fire divine? Can you find a good person, a life that stands on its own? Or is there but a beast, a time more or less pleasurable, more or less honest, but apathic and absurd? If I took you know out of the water, and wrapped you in foil blankets, and inject you with whatever substances can bring your body out from the cold, if I gave you your life back, in short, what would you return to? Would you find the will within yourself to claim your place among the living, or after seeing you like you are, no instincts, no inertia, have you found out there is nothing worth claiming?’
‘But you had no right’ he said to the voice that could be that of the man on board or his own or nobody’s. ‘You had no right.’
‘When you crush an ant with the tip of your finger, do you ask permission? Do you ask forgiveness? I killed you because I could. But tell me now, man in the water, are you an insect after all, or are you a man?
When he was a child, his family had a very little boat, with the hull painted dark blue. It had a little cabin where it got really hot; his dad used to nap there after a sandwich lunch. They would drop the anchor off the shore of a little island less than half an hour away from the harbour, and spend the day there swimming and toasting under the beautifully scorching hot sun. If there was a south wind, they’d stay on the northern part, which was his favourite. It was rocky and full of hiding places, with some shallows where he’d stand, over the mossy-like seaweed that looked like a thick forest seen from the window of a plane. He’d dive six or nine feet deep and the world would explode to red, purple and green. Starfish and little anemone, sea urchins and creatures for which he had no name would waive and dance with the currents. If he was lucky, there would be octopusses. He’d get close enough to alarm them and then they would spread their tentacles and crawl gracefully away, flashing colours at him, white, maroon, purple. Shaols of little silver fish would dance away from him, exploding with a beam of gold when touched by a ray of sun. All those lidless, glass eyes watching him. He’d stay suspended under water for as long as he could hold his breath, and he felt part of it all.
When he emerged to breathe his parents would check how blue his lips were. He had to be sternly commanded before he agreed to get out. He’d climb the removable white ladders that the waves swinged and banged against the hull, sometimes trapping his fingers. His dad would get his snorkel and mask and then the flippers would come off. His feet would feel suddenly disabled and minuscule. He’d be welcome on board with a big, weathered towel that had been under the sun for hours. His mom or his dad would hold him as they wrapped him in it and keep holding him until they were sure he was out of the cold.
The man on board lifted him onto the stern platform with an groan of effort, and stripped him off his diving suit with the aid of his own knife. The blade scratched the skin here and there, even though it was handed with care, and yet no blood poured out. The snorkel, mask and flippers were tossed on deck but the knife was placed in his fist, which was clenched so tight that a couple of fingers had to be broken to allow the handle in. It was another little struggle to cross his arms on his chest. The man on board combed back the other man’s hair and examined his work. It looked like one of these sleeping figures that one sometimes finds on the sarcophagi of kings or rich merchants from olden times. He stroke his head. There was possession and intimacy in that gesture. He pushed him off the platform and into the westwards current. Had he been aware of it, the man in the water might have relished the idea of a Viking funeral.
The man on board didn’t stay to watch the body sink. I hate goodbyes, he would have said. The ocean extended in every direction and he would wander on it for hours, defying the endurance of his fuel tank, almost to the verge of being stranded for ever in the same current that was taking his victim west and then down, down, down, and then nowhere. Man and boat were so small, so insignificant lost in the boundless, indifferent ocean. Blink once and they’re gone.
THE END
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