it’s true — this is the watershed. He tries to. . stay in the moment . . but can’t shake the last few jewelled arabesques from behind his eyes, Godly integrals — Satan’s diff erentials. . the solution of which tells him time — like identity — is a relative concept . . since directly before he gains the final wave crest and reaches the safety of dry linoleum, there’s a sharp blow to the back of his neck. Claude stops swimming, goes under, comes up spluttering, Wh-Wh-What the fugg! The Chaplain’s salt-encrusted moustache is. . in my face, the Chaplain’s hand is. . round my throat, while the one wielding the Very pistol torn from Claude’s belt is raised up to. . do it again! You’re. Not. Getting. Away. So. Easily, the padre pants. I. Saw. What. Happened. Back. There! The mirage of the suburban house decades away crumples into the unceasing watery heave and Claude realises: I’ll always be here. . always. If I die and go to heaven, heaven’ll be an ocean and there’ll be assholes same as this one floating about in it, waitin’ to stick it up my keister. What. Do You. Care, he gasps back in the Chaplain’s face. What’s. Gonna. Happen. To. Me — I’m. Gonna. Die. Isn’t. That. What. You. Want? — There’s no fixed point of any kind in this ever-changing, never-changing water-world, over which flies a dispersed flock of raucous seabirds. There’s certainly no firm ground for this sophomoric debate, the kind of bull session Claude remembers having with his Columbia class men in the corridors of Buell Hall before I began seriously cutting classes. There’s satisfaction, however, to be gained from the insight — no matter how fleeting, for it’s slapped out of me by the next wave — that the Chaplain may actually drown too in the very process of calling Claude to account. He’s plainly at the limits of his own endurance: all night Claude heard his voice, ringing out over the men’s whimpers and wails — sometimes from nearby, then from way off: Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris . . By dawn he’d acquired the strange fruit of all these absolutions: a necklace of thirty or more sets of dog tags, their chains tangled round his straining neck. Claude theorises the Chaplain must believe so strongly in the afterlife he imagines these useless hunks of nickel to be amulets in which the souls of the skin angels are preserved, or perhaps he thinks they’re radios over which he’ll be able to hear the faint voices of the dead telling him what to expect as soon as he gives up paddling and joins them. But no — no such fucking luck: for providentially, as he’ll see it, a life-raft comes scooting down the face of a wave, and, snagging the rope trailing from its thwart, the padre pulls first his own miserable clanking carcass, then mine, into. . the raft of Medusa, which is some ten feet by four of canvas stretched over a balsa framework. It sits low in the water, floors awash, so the two dead bodies on board wallow in this bilge, while the five live ones are obliged to stand up on tippy-toe, hanging over its sides. — There’s some muttering from these Amos and Andies as the Chaplain and Claude are piped aboard. But the Marine master-sergeant — who fancies himself as Nimitz and has a jones for the habit of command — spots the Chaplain’s silver crosses and so quells the mutiny. Within the first five minutes they’re on the raft, ten times as many other boarders are repulsed: the saved have armed themselves with paddles, boat-hooks and spars from the wreckage — and with these they stab at chests and crack heads unmercifully. The Chaplain’s bedraggled blond moustache no longer hides the irresolution of his lip — he’s on the ropes — so Claude rides him: What the fuck didja do that for? You b’lieve I killed that kid — so lemme die, isn’t that punishment enough? The Chaplain’s eyes are swollen and unseeing, his hands are puffed-up baseball mitts — although dying, he summons the spiritual fortitude to weigh me in the balance: Suicide, he whispers, is a kind of murder, man — it’s a sin, a mortal one. Claude shakes the Chaplain’s head — but he’s not to be silenced. He preaches on, even as his congregation deal out savage blows, and his ser monising becomes his own death rattle: It’s not for you to decide when you die — no man has. . that right. You. . you — you’ll die in God’s time, not your own. Your judgement. . when it comes. . and it will. . will be in heaven, not here on earth. — Claude would enjoy pointing out to the padre the utter fatuity of this particular expression — given the circumstances — but the opportunity is denied him, for within minutes the Chaplain has gone to meet his Maker. . presumably another fuckin’ Boston Irish cut from same musty jizz-stained cloth, and a short while after the sun’s rim nudges the horizon. When the killing begins in earnest, Claude has a ringside seat, one from which he can see the swimmers in the water cling together, then fall apart as the waves. . rock my soul in the bo-som of Abraham. To begin with, it’s the dead they take, which is entirely reasonable: the listless corpses are instantly reanimated, their sightless eyes take one last look at the fading light, their arms jerk up to signal. . Time out! then they’re gone. Soon enough attention shifts to the living. Initially, it isn’t clear to Claude why one man is ravaged and the one beside him spared — then he understands: those who’ve kicked off their shoes are attracting suitors with the white flash of their tootsies. Those who’ve shed their pants are still more appealing — and those who’re bare-assed naked are the most of seductive of all. Claude almost wishes the padre were still in the land of the living. . or should that be the Island of the Dead?. . so he could draw the holy roller’s attention to this phenomenon, which might be down to murderous lust, or prissiness. . it’s hard to say. Instead it’s time to say. . So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, adieu. Claude’s shipmates are getting restive, they’ve slung the other corpses overboard and now it’s Chappie’s turn to take a bow . . over the gunwale. . Adieu, adieu, adieu! But before he goes Claude removes four or five sets of dog tags and puts them round his own neck. The master-sergeant says, Whaddya want those for, fly-boy? And since it’s a civil enough inquiry, Claude answers: Luck, maybe — or they might talk to me — he presses a tag to his ear — tell me what the fuck’s gonna happen. The Chaplain dives straight down, drawn head-first by the deadweight of his mementoes — he gets a little goosing. . his ass pinched — but what’s a girl to do? Anyway, this doesn’t last long — he’s made it through the crowded chow line . . and is gone. Claude watches him sink for as long as he can see his twirling feet — it’s a peaceful enough sight, and a distraction from the swimmers’ shouts and screams, which are