The Man Who Lost the Sea (13 page)

“You creak no better’n a straight-gut skua gull in a sewer sump,” she cried raucously. “Whyn’cha swallow that seaslug or spit it out, one?”

“Ah, go soak your head in a paddlewheel,” he laughed. He got a hand on the ledge and heaved himself out of the water. Instantly there was a high-pitched squeak and a clumsy splash, and she was gone. The particoloured mass of shadow-in-shade had passed him in mid-air too swiftly for him to determine just what it was, but he knew with a shocked certainty what it was not.

He wriggled a bare (i.e. mere) buttock-clutch on the short narrow shelf of rock and leaned over as far as he could to peer into the night-stained sea. In a moment there was a feeble commotion and then a bleached oval so faint that he must avert his eyes two points to leeward like a sailor seeing a far light, to make it out at all. Again, seeing virtually nothing, he could be sure of the things it was not. That close cap of darkness, night or no night, was not the web of floating gold for which he had once bought a Florentine comb. Those two dim blotches were not the luminous, over-long, wide-spaced (almost side-set) green eyes which, laughing, devoured his sleep. Those hints of shoulders were not broad and fair, but slender. That
salt-spasmed weak sobbing cough was unlike any sound he had heard on these rocks before; and the (by this time) unnecessary final proof was the narrow hand he reached for and grasped. It was delicate, not splayed; it was unwebbed; its smoothness was that of the plum and not the articulated magic of a fine wrought golden watchband. It was, in short, human, and for a long devastated moment their hands clung together while their minds, in panic, prepared to do battle with the truth.

At last they said in unison, “But you’re not …”

And let a wave pass, and chorused, “I didn’t know there was anybod …”

And opened and closed their mouths, and said together, “Y’see, I was waiting for …” “Look!” he said abruptly, because he had found something he could say that she couldn’t at the moment. “Get a good grip, I’ll pull you out. Ready? One, two …”

“No!” she said, outraged, and pulled back abruptly. He lost her hand, and down she went in mid-gasp, and up she came strangling. He reached down to help, and missed, though he brushed her arm. “Don’t touch me!” she cried, and doggy-paddled frantically to the rock on which he sat, and got a hand on it. She hung there coughing until he stirred, whereupon: “Don’t touch me!” she cried again.

“Well all right,” he said in an injured tone.

She said, aloud but obviously to herself, “Oh,
dear
 …”

Somehow this made him want to explain himself. “I only thought you should come out, coughing like that, I mean it’s silly you should be bobbing around in the water and I’m sitting up here on the …” He started a sentence about he was only trying to be … and another about he was not trying to be … and was unable to finish either. They stared at one another, two panting sightless blots on a spume-slick rock.

“The way I was talking before, you’ve got to understand …”

They stopped as soon as they realized they were in chorus again. In a sudden surge of understanding he laughed—it was like relief—and said, “You mean that you’re not the kind of girl who talks the way you were talking just before I got here. I believe you … And I’m not the kind of guy who does it either. I thought you were
a—thought you were someone else, that’s all. Come on out. I won’t touch you.”

“Well …”

“I’m still waiting for the—for my friend. That’s all.”

“Well …”

A wave came and she took sudden advantage of it and surged upward, falling across the ledge on her stomach. “I’ll manage, I’ll manage,” she said rapidly, and did. He stayed where he was. They stayed where they were in the hollow of the rock, out of the wind, four feet apart, in darkness so absolute that the red of tight-closed eyes was a lightening.

She said, “Uh …” and then sat silently masticating something she wanted to say, and swallowing versions of it. At last: “I’m not trying to be nosy.”

“I didn’t think you … Nosy? You haven’t asked me anything.”

“I mean staying here,” she said primly. “I’m not just trying to be in the way, I mean. I mean, I’m waiting for someone too.”

“Make yourself at home,” he said expansively, and then felt like a fool. He was sure he had sounded cynical, sarcastic, and unbelieving. Her protracted silence made it worse. It became unbearable. There was only one thing he could think of to say, but he found himself unaccountably reluctant to bring out into the open the only possible explanation for her presence here. His mouth asked (as it were) while he wasn’t watching it, inanely, “Is your uh friend coming out in uh a boat?”

“Is yours?” she asked shyly; and suddenly they were laughing together like a brace of loons. It was one of those crazy sessions people will at times find themselves conducting, laughing explosively, achingly, without a specific punchline over which to hang the fabric of the situation. When it had spent itself, they sat quietly. They had not moved nor exchanged anything, and yet they now sat together, and not merely side-by-side. The understood attachment to someone—something—else had paradoxically dissolved a barrier between them.

It was she who took the plunge, exposed the Word, the code attachment by which they might grasp and handle their preoccupation.
She said, dreamily, “I never saw a mermaid.”

And he responded, quite as dreamily but instantly too: “Beautiful.” And that was question and answer. And when he said, “I never saw a …” she said immediately, “Beautiful.” And that was reciprocity. They looked at each other again in the dark and laughed, quietly this time.

After a friendly silence, she asked, “What’s her name?”

He snorted in self-surprise. “Why, I don’t know. I really don’t. When I’m away from her I think of her as
she
, and when I’m with her she’s just … 
you
. Not you,” he added with a childish giggle.

She gave him back the giggle and then sobered reflectively. “Now that’s the strangest thing. I don’t know his name either. I don’t even know if they have names.”

“Maybe they don’t need them. She—uh—they’re sort of different, if you know what I mean. I mean, they know things we don’t know, sort of … feel them. Like if people are coming to the beach, long before they’re in sight. And what the weather will be like, and where to sit behind a rock on the bottom of the sea so a fish swims right into their hands.”

“And what time’s moonrise.”

“Yes,” he said, thinking, you suppose they know each other? you think they’re out there in the dark watching? you suppose
he’ll
come first, and what will he say to me? Or what if
she
comes first?

“I don’t think they need names,” the girl was saying. “They know one person from another, or just who they’re talking about, by the feel of it. What’s your name?”

“John Smith,” he said. “Honest to God.”

She was silent, and then suddenly giggled.

He made a questioning sound.

“I bet you say “Honest to God” like that every single time you tell anyone your name. I bet you’ve said it thousands and thousands of times,” she said.

“Well, yes. Nobody ever noticed it before, though.”

“I would. My name is Jane Dow. Dee owe doubleyou, not Doe.”

“Jane Dow. Oh! and you have to spell it out like that every single time?”

“Honest to God,” she said, and they laughed.

He said, “John Smith, Jane Dow. Golly. Pretty ordinary people.”

“Ordinary. You and your mermaid.”

He wished he could see her face. He wondered if the merpeople were as great a pressure on her as they were on him. He had never told a soul about it—who’d listen?

Who’d believe? Or, listening, believing, who would not interfere? Such a wonder … and had she told all her girlfriends and boyfriends and the boss and what-not? He doubted it. He could not have said why, but he doubted it.

“Ordinary,” he said assertively, “yes.” And he began to talk, really talk about it because he had not, because he had to. “That has a whole lot to do with it. Well, it has everything to do with it. Look, nothing ever happened in my whole entire life. Know what I mean? I mean, nothing. I never skipped a grade in school and I never got left back. I never won a prize. I never broke a bone. I was never rich and never hungry. I got a job and kept it and I won’t ever go very high in the company and I won’t ever get canned. You know what I mean?”

“Oh, yes.”

“So then,” he said exultantly, “along comes this mermaid. I mean, to
me
comes a mermaid. Not just a glimpse, no maybe I did and maybe I didn’t see a mermaid: this is a real live mermaid who wants me back again, time and again, and makes dates and keeps ’em too, for all she’s all the time late.”

“So is
he
,” she said in intense agreement.

“What I call it,” he said, leaning an inch closer and lowering his voice confidentially, “is a touch of strange. A touch of strange. I mean, that’s what I call it to myself, you see? I mean, a person is a person all his life, he’s good to his mother, he never gets arrested, if he drinks too much he doesn’t get in trouble he just gets, excuse the expression, sick to his stomach. He does a day’s good work for a day’s pay and nobody hates him or, for that matter, nobody likes him either. Now a man like that has no
life;
what I mean, he isn’t
real
. But just take an ordinary guy-by-the-millions like that, and add a touch of strange, you see? Some little something he does, or has,
or that happens to him, even once. Then for all the rest of his life he’s
real
. Golly. I talk too much.”

“No you don’t. I think that’s real nice, Mr. Smith. A touch of strange. A touch … you know, you just told the story of my life. Yes you did. I was born and brought up and went to school and got a job all right there in Springfield, and …”

“Springfield? You mean Springfield, Massachusetts? That’s my town!” he blurted excitedly, and fell off the ledge into the sea. He came up instantly and sprang up beside her, blowing like a manatee.

“Well no,” she said gently. “It was Springfield, Illinois.”

“Oh,” he said, deflated.

She went on, “I wasn’t ever a pretty girl, what you’d call, you know, pretty. I wasn’t repulsive either, I don’t mean that. Well, when they had the school dances in the gymnasium, and they told all the boys to go one by one and choose a partner, I never got to be the first one. I was never the last one left either, but sometimes I was afraid I’d be. I got a job the day after I graduated from high school. Not a good one, but not bad, and I still work there. I like some people more than other people, but not very much, you know? … A touch of strange. I always knew there was a name for the thing I never had, and you gave it a good one. Thank you, Mr. Smith.”

“Oh that’s all right,” he said shyly. “And anyway, you have it now … how was it you happened to meet your … him, I mean?”

“Oh, I was scared to
death
, I really was. It was the company picnic, and I was swimming, and I—well, to tell you the actual truth, if you’ll forgive me, Mr. Smith, I had a strap on my bathing suit that was, well, slippy. Please, I don’t mean too
bad
, you know, or I wouldn’t ever have worn it. But I was uncomfortable about it, and I just slipped around the rocks here to fix it and … there he was.”

“In the daytime?”

“With the sun on him. It was like … like … There’s nothing it was like. He was just lying here on this very rock, out of the water. Like he was waiting for me. He didn’t try to get away or look surprised or anything, just lay there smiling. Waiting. He has a beautiful soft big voice and the longest green eyes, and long golden hair.”

“Yes, yes.
She
has, too.”

“He was so beautiful. And then all the rest, well, I don’t have to tell you. Shiny silver scales and the big curvy flippers.”

“Oh,” said John Smith.

“I was scared, oh yes. But not
afraid
. He didn’t try to come near me and I sort of knew he couldn’t ever hurt me … and then he spoke to me, and I promised to come back again, and I did, a lot, and that’s the story.” She touched his shoulder gently and embarrassedly snatched her hand away. “I never told anyone before. Not a single living soul,” she whispered. “I’m so glad to be able to talk about it.”

“Yeah.” He felt insanely pleased. “Yeah.”

“How did you …”

He laughed. “Well, I have to sort of tell something on myself: This swimming, it’s the only thing I was ever any good at, only I never found out until I was grown. I mean, we had no swimming pools and all that when I went to school. So I never show off about it or anything. I just swim when there’s nobody around much. And I came here one day, it was in the evening in summer when most everyone had gone home to dinner, and I swam past the reef line, way out away from the Jaw, here. And there’s a place there where it’s only a couple of feet deep and I hit my knee.”

Jane Dow inhaled with a sharp sympathetic hiss.

Smith chuckled. “Now I’m not one for bad language. I mean I never feel right about using it. But you hear it all the time, and I guess it sticks without you knowing it. So sometimes when I’m by myself and bump my head or whatnot I hear this rough talk, you know, and I suddenly realize it’s me doing it. And that’s what happened this day, when I hurt my knee. I mean, I really hurt it: So I sort of scrounched down holding on to my knee and I like to boil up the water for a yard around with what I said. I didn’t know anyone was around or I’d never.”

“And all of a sudden there she was, laughing at me. She came porpoising up out of deep water to seaward of the reef and jumped up into that sunlight, the sun was low then, and red; and she fell flat on her back loud as your tooth breaking on a cherry-pip. When she hit, the water rose up all around her, and for that one second she lay
in it like something in a jewel box, you know, pink satin all around and her deep in it.”

“I was that hurt and confused and startled I couldn’t believe what I saw, and I remember thinking this was some la … I mean, woman, girl like you hear about, living the life and bathing in the altogether. And I turned my back on her to show her what I thought of that kind of goings-on, but looking over my shoulder to see if she got the message, and I thought then I’d made it all up, because there was nothing there but her suds where she splashed, and they disappeared before I really saw them.”