“Our family blood is in the soil of this island. It burns even now in the volcanoes that slumber beneath the lava fields. It struggles for life in the sap of twisted trees. But nowhere does it struggle more than in the sea. In no other place have more lives been lost. The sea stanches the flow of lava. It surrounds this island. It must be treated with respect. It must be appeased.”
“Why?”
“With the decline in fishing and the increase in seaworthy boat designs, the sea goes hungry.”
“And the God-fish?”
“The link between the sea and us. A messenger. A very old messenger.”
“A fish?”
“More than just a fish. A creature of the deep.”
A second man stepped forward. “A creature as happy in deep waters as it is happy in the dark depths of the human mind.”
“What?”
“Dolphins and whales have intelligence, can communicate. The God-fish also, but with us.”
“You?”
“Humans.”
“Me,” said the old woman.
I turned and looked at her. “Telepathy?” I must have sounded incredulous, for the woman’s mouth puckered.
“Possession,” said a man.
The old woman muttered something in a language new to me. The men stiffened.
“Come,” said one. “I will show you.”
I glimpsed Marjory’s eyes. They were cold but curious, the earlier fright gone. She glanced at the stone table. “Wait here,” I said to her.
If looks could kill I’d be dead. I turned my back on her and walked round the end of the wall.
“Where are you going?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
“Shut up and wait,” I snapped back over my shoulder as I followed the man.
We walked to the sea wall and climbed over the enormous stones to the top. He sat down and lit a cigarette. I glanced back at the others and sat down beside him.
“The old woman has called it,” he said without looking at me. “It will come soon.”
I studied his profile. He was weathered, his face stubbly, his dark cropped hair greying. His jaw was square, the cheekbones solid, his nose slightly flat with a touch of Africa in it. He was a solid man, tough, not one to argue with.
“Watch the sea,” he said.
It was as dark as the clouded sky. The moon I hadn’t seen since we left the apartment. Small swells rolled over the lowest stones of the wall. The sound was strangely comforting.
“When you see, you will understand,” said the man.
“And then what? My wife?”
“It is up to you. The sea always acknowledges our gifts.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, a nippy breeze plucking at my sweater. And then it came, a hundred feet offshore, huge and fleshy, scaleless but not finless. Its back broke the surface, revealing thirty feet of almost glowing pink skin topped by a long spiny dorsal fin. And then it was gone.
I craved to see more. The sight had excited me more than anything else I’d ever seen. My wish was fulfilled.
It broke the surface closer this time, head first, and rose above the water, up and up, like a rocket, its mouth and teeth alarmingly close to human, its eyes that of the old woman’s. I saw large fleshy gill covers, pectoral and pelvic fins, and as it touched the sky, long soft dorsal and anal fins, then runs of finlets and finally its tail fin, wide and thin like a Marlin’s. For a second it seemed to hang motionless, a grotesque and profoundly fascinating Dali creation, over a hundred feet long, human-hued with a trace of eel in its delineation. And then it did something I’ve never seen a fish do. It bent in the middle, like a diver, and—before disappearing into the water with a minimum of splash—it turned its head in my direction, in the same manner as the old woman had done, but with its dead fish eyes suddenly imbued with a dreadful yearning that impaled me like a stake of ice. I sat shivering and stared at the spot for a long time after it had vanished. And still I craved for more.
“Now do you understand?” asked the man after a respectful wait.
“Yes,” I whispered. Oh, yes. Those eyes had soaked me with what I had lost over the years. Missed opportunities, friendships and love. They had also soaked me with the absolute mindlessness I had had to put up with, the quagmire of triviality and deceit. “Take her,” I told the man, and he stood and moved back down over the stones. A few seconds later I heard Marjory, but her scream was cut short. Very short.
I stayed staring at the sea, having no wish to know what they were going to do with her, my wife of thirty years. Thirty years, damn it! Not so much wasted as retarded. Now I would be free.
“You wish to see her before she goes?” It was the man who had sat with me. His voice was deliberately soft.
“Tell me more about the God-fish.”
“You have seen it, felt it. What more is there to say?”
I stood and stared at him. “What is it? Where does it come from? How long has this business been going on? That’s what I want to know.”
“Then you must be disappointed. For we know no more.”
“The old woman?”
He shook his head.
“What happens if no gift is made to the God-fish, the sea, whatever?”
“Always a gift is given when required. There is no choice. The call of the God-fish will be heard, the desire to comply imbued, the action guided, the victim found, the gift given. And acknowledged. This is the way it has always been. Since time immemorial.”
“You say acknowledged—how? When it looked at me I felt something, saw something, my life, mistakes, things lost. Is that it?”
“Yes, but there is more.” He started to move away. “You will see.”
“When?”
“Soon,” and he made his way to the others by the table. Something larger than before was on it. I followed after him but stopped at the foot of the sea wall. The men carefully removed the body from the table and carried it to the quay. I looked across Fish Harbor and tasted the air. It was fishy, invigorating. The men gently placed the body into a fishing boat. Already I was swaying with the swell of the sea. I moved to the table, saw traces of fresh blood on the smooth slab. Good-bye Marjory. Good-bye.
One of the men approached me. “We go now,” he said. I nodded. “When we return, you can stay at the old woman’s house. Perhaps there you will learn more.” I nodded again. “You must come with us. You know?” I nodded and walked with him to the quayside.
Before I got down into the boat I looked across to the wall where Marjory and I had first crouched. A street light eased the darkness behind it, revealing the road and path, but the wall cast a shadow on its harbor side, adding a blacker density to the night-sprung darkness along its length. As I stared at the wall, I became aware of an indistinct figure moving in front of it, as if searching the ground for something. I wondered what the old woman’s house would be like. Wondered what she was looking for.
I turned and got into the boat, the body beside me, covered with tarpaulin. I put a hand on the cover, felt a surge of guilt and tried to resist the thoughts about what they had done to her. I failed and succumbed to an overwhelming need to see.
As the boat moved off, I lifted a corner of tarpaulin; heard my name shouted from the quayside; saw bloody eye sockets in an old woman’s face, a child by her side; saw Marjory looking down at me, rubbing her head; saw her face change from anger as she shouted “They attacked me, Jack. They hit me on the head,” to shock as her eyes met mine and she screamed “Your eyes, Jack. What have they done to your eyes?” and realized then how horribly, horribly wrong I had got it all.
I touched my eyes, rubbed them; they felt normal. What had Marjory meant? Panic-stricken, I looked at the men.
“You said you understood,” said one.
“You will like my mother’s house,” said a second, glancing at the old woman’s body.