'What's attracting them?' There were more of them now.
'They come and take a look at boats, quite often. People throw garbage out of boats.'
She was sitting totally still now, her eyes on the sea, her head angled a little, the knife lying in her cupped hand, her brown legs tucked under her, the toes flexed. They were circling the whole time but slowly coming closer to the boat, and we could hear the sudden sharp splash as one of them flicked a tail, scattering white water.
Five, six of them now.
The water was clear below, and I could see the dark line of a reef running across our beam, with shadows moving as the rest of the pack circled, fathoms down.
'Could you skipper this boat if you had to, do you think?' She was speaking slowly, only half-aware of me.
'I could work it out.'
There wasn't anything I could say that would change her mind. It was her own affair.
'As I said, some people say I just want to follow my Dad, be with him again. One man, I think he was into psychiatry or something like that, said that sticking a knife into a shark was penis envy. Takes all sorts, doesn't it?'
They were close now, seven or eight of them, their bodies darkening the water just below the surface. She didn't move, looked carved out of bronze under the hot weight of the sun, the knife in her hand. It used to give me a real kick to sort of be in their presence, just sitting quietly in front of those things, knowing how much awful power there was in them.
I got out of the deck chair and stood at the rail and looked over the side. They were closer than I'd been able to see before, and one of them came right in and nosed along the beam of the boat and I felt its tremor as it grazed the timbers.
She was wiping the oil, Kim, the oil from the blade, and dropped the rag on to the stone and kept hold of the knife, moving to the rail and looking down into the water, and when she remembered me and looked up against the glare of the sun her eyes were narrowed to slits of pale green in the bronze of her face, watching me for a moment before she said, her voice clear in the unearthly quiet, 'If he's there, I'll know. I'll know the one.' Then she reached behind her and unhooked the turquoise bra and let it fall and tugged the bikini down her legs and over her long narrow feet and swung herself across the rail and broke the surface quietly, sinking as far as her head and then bringing her legs up to lie flat, just below the surface, not moving her arms or hands but only her feet, fanning with them to move away from the boat.
They were charcoal, the sharks, and she was a light bronze and of course much smaller, but she looked less alien among them than I would have imagined, floating with her body aligned to theirs as they closed in, slowing to get the measure of this other creature.
I didn't move, could not, I am sure, have moved. She was holding the knife behind her back, that is to say underneath her, so that it wouldn't flash in the light like a lure and attract their attention, and as she took a breath and turned slowly and dived the last I could see was that she was holding it in front of her now, the knife. Then she was gone.
Fear crept in me, contracting the scrotum, tightening the throat, as I watched those things from the safety of the boat, fear of them, certainly, of their huge size and their latent primitive force, and fear for her, the suddenness of her going from sight leaving a sense of shock, a sense already of loss and appalling danger, of murder down there where I couldn't see, of feasting as they closed in and their curved jaws opened and they ripped and began ravaging.
Too much, yes, too much imagination, very well, let us regain a little of our control, so forth, she must have done this before and she knows those ghastly things from long experience and all she's doing is playing with life and death and maybe putting on a show for me, proud of her obsession, flaunting it. But even so, even so, my good friend, I didn't relish this, you may well believe.
And then there was just a lot of blood on the surface, a lot of threshing about and then the blood, Christ, it was a beautiful red, he was a beautiful man, he coloured the whole sea like a flag, like a banner.
Forty-five, I would have said, it must have been forty-five seconds since I'd seen her. The great shapes were still circling slowly, not so near the surface now, as if something below were attracting them, their long tails fanning in the clear water, the light of the surface ripples playing along their smooth metallic flanks.
Could you skipper this boat if you had to, do you think?
The sun beat down on the sea, pressing it flat, spreading its heat and its molten light from horizon to horizon while I dwelled here on this gilded mote and came as close as I have ever come to praying.
Fifty seconds, sixty, perhaps, as they circled the slim bronze other-creature in the depths.
It's not my vessel. I brought it in. And I want to report a death.
More than a minute, she'd been down there more than a minute now, her lungs beginning to feel the need for oxygen.
You did nothing to stop her?
What could I have done?
You could have talked to her, surely, talked her out of it. You could have restrained her, if necessary.
She was a responsible adult with a mind of her own.
A confused adult, surely, intending suicide.
How do we know? I think she was following her karma.
Her what?
Her karma.
What is that, exactly?
Movement suddenly in the water there, over there, a fin cutting the surface and flashing in the light, the others circling wider for some reason, oh for Christ's sake come up will you, it's a minute fifteen, a minute and a half.
What is karma?
It means fate, loosely translated. Destiny. She was following her destiny. People meddle too much, you know, with other people's lives, we are not our brother's keeper when it comes to the crunch.
Slowly, very slowly from the depths there was this smaller shape now, a dull gold creature rising with its long hair rippling at its sides until the head broke surface and the body followed, turning gently to float as the weakness flowed into my legs and the breath came out of me and I shut my eyes against the brazen light of the sea.
And even then you didn't try to dissuade her?
No. It was her wish. Her will. I do the same thing myself, sometimes.
You go swimming among sharks?
No, but it's just as dangerous. We like the brink, you see. We like being there.
The great gray shapes circled, some of them just below the surface with a fin cutting through it here and there like a knife through silk, some of them deeper, no more than dark shadows, and there she was, the female biped, lying in the middle of them with her face to the sky and her eyes closed and her mouth moving as she breathed, breathed deeply to replace the oxygen she'd used down there, a human being with a history and two dead parents and a few boyfriends around and a job to do and a life to live or simply, if you looked at it that way, the way nature looked at it, a morsel of food for these fish, a delicacy with rich sweet-tasting blood and tender flesh, a small feast for them in the heat of noon, an offering in the celebration of life.
A tail threshed at the surface close to her but she didn't move, didn't turn her head. Perhaps they were playing. Perhaps, I thought with my breath blocked and my blood chilled, they were playing.
And then she moved at last, rolling gently until she was face down and then jack-knifing, her legs coming out of the water and poising vertically for a second and then sliding out of sight, leaving a small ring of ripples that melted away as the big fish drew closer and I knew what I would finally say when they pressed me to it, yes, I should have tried to talk her out of it, tried to save her life.