As I surrendered to this silly descent I slowed down. It was easy for me to see the jets of turbulent zeros bubbling past my face. This clouded cream-soda gave way to foam, to parcels of color, green and yellow-blue, like silks tossing a little way off, striping me as they moved. I made a fishy motion and the formless pressure of the fountain wrung me apart, scale by scale, and I glittered, sifting down in pieces like sequins from a torn gown.
If I had not known better I should have said I was flying. But I had been here before, drowning in the wayward magic of the eye, stricken by glory — long ago, when I had still believed in the power of the photograph to drag the victim into its depths. Now I was ashamed of my helplessness at having pitched forward into one of my own photographs. I plunged toward a whimper of light.
It was a drunken experience of dying — separation and the sucked-down sensation of finality — like someone stretching me out of my tights. Shapes were clarifying below me, but I was conscious that the vision that was animating me would destroy me — I was being tickled to death. I knew that it was too late to do anything but endure it. I would not have a second chance.
The photograph (once through the floodgate I scarcely remembered what it was) had worked. It had defied and drowned me, and for those first instants upside down I thought damn, because I was learning the hard way what I had always known. And the deeper I went the more convinced I was that beyond this fatal blinding light there was only darkness and no one to tell.
My ears roared with the racketing laughter of the torrential water. This decreased in volume, but I was still aware of sound — of sound fading — as if I were being deafened by it. Then the silence was perfect. There was a room down here, and bodies, and voices — marine whispers.
— I was supposed to guard it with my life.
— She’s in London. She’ll never know.
I tried to reply, but nothing happened. I wasn’t there — my body wasn’t. I had shrunk to a vivid speck suspended in circular time.
— Look at all the pretty pictures. Lengthened voices, ribbons of them repeating ictures, ictures. The conical echo of that room.
— I’ve seen them all before.
— Cookie saved everything. That’s a sign of loneliness.
— Put them away.
— No. There you are. Your white dress. Your hat.
— And you showing off.
— There’s Papa.
— That’s all.
— Wait. Her boogie-men. And this must be Florida.
They were children in danger. I wanted them to stop, to go away, for their own good. But they were stubbornly playing, toying with risk. I thought: The past is not illusion — it is ignorance, it is all needless danger; inaction saves us. But they would not go away. They continued to sift through the trunk of pictures, compelled by their curiosity and the love that made them foolishly bold.
— Oh, God. Look.
In that moment they were lost. The water surrounding me rubbed their moans in my ears.
— How could she?
— It can’t be us.
— It is. I won’t look at it.
— We’ll have to do something.
— Put it away. Pretend we didn’t see it.
— It’s too late. She knows. She always knew.
— Put it back!
— She wanted us to see it.
The speck I inhabited trembled tamely touching bottom.
— We’re sunk.
— I won’t give you up.
— It’s impossible.
— I don’t care if they find out.
— They’ve found out.
— They’ll have to forgive us.
— No. There’s only one way they’ll understand.
— Tell me.
— Don’t make me say it.
A chance current disturbed the ribbed sea-floor and took their voices away. I was still listening, but their voices were gone. Ploop, ploop— a fish tank’s murmur. There was a shadow, time turning blue; day, night; light, dark; the light changed, nothing else did.
— You’re wrong. It’s not a choice. It’s the only thing left.
— But so soon. You!
— Don’t cry.
But they were both crying and I knew that this sea I was lost in and had no hope of leaving was made immense by their tears. In this moonstruck tide I was pushed by their sorrow.
— I can’t live without you. So I’m not afraid to die.
— What they know won’t die.
— I want them to know everything.
— Then we’ll leave the picture and go.
— I’ll go anywhere with you.
— There’s only one place for us. There.
Now a small flare of heat in that ocean of tears, the winking deception of this depth in which nothing solid moved — only the light invading from above and losing itself at this motionless limit. I had died. I knew what they didn’t. But I couldn’t save them. His courage was partly pretense — he had gone too far to deny it. And she who had been quick to love was impatient to die, recklessly believing her passion to be reason enough.
— People kill themselves for less.
— Maybe they only kill themselves for less.
Not even worms lived here. The dust-motes and droplets of color simulated life among the shell splinters, stirred like me in the shallow troughs of the sea bed. Did they know that beneath the erupting waves the sinking light was pulverized to dust and darkness?
— We’ll show them.
And they showed me I deserved this death for my blind treachery. They were whispering, excited, full of plans, setting sail. Soon they were tacking toward the open sea. In all that buffeting they were silent and the voyage out was over before they knew it — too soon. Already he was dragging the sail down, paying out the sea anchor, comforting her as they bobbed madly in the little boat, prolonging the moment.
— Let’s wait till it gets dark.
— Then I won’t be able to see you. I want to hold you. Will it hurt?
— Not if you keep swallowing.
— I’m afraid. I want it to happen, but I’m afraid. Help me.
— I love you.
— Yes, yes.
— What’s wrong?
— I just thought of Maude.
— Poor cookie.
— Poor everyone.
A boom ran through the sea, causing a swell, lifting the boat, tipping it and rattling the lines. The shoreline, lightly penciled on the horizon, was indifferent. Neither earth nor sky mattered. So they kissed, their feet already in the water.
— It’s cold!