Ocean Sea (10 page)

Ann Deverià stops. She bends over and takes her shoes off. She leaves them on the sand. She starts walking again, barefoot. Elisewin does not move. She waits until she has moved a few
steps farther away. Then she says, in a voice loud enough to be heard, “In a few days I shall be leaving here. And I shall go into the sea. And I shall get better. This is what I want. To get
better. To live. And, one day, to become beautiful like you.”

Ann Deverià turns. She smiles. She searches for words. She finds them.

“Will you take me with you?”

T
HIS TIME
there are two people seated on Bartleboom’s windowsill. The usual little boy. And Bartleboom. Their legs dangling over the emptiness
below. Their gaze dangling over the sea.

“Listen, Dood . . .”

The little boy’s name was Dood.

“Given that you are always here . . .”

“Mmmmh . . .”

“Perhaps you know.”

“What?”

“Where does the sea have its eyes?”

“. . .”

“Because it does have them, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And where the dickens are they?”

“The ships.”

“The ships
what
?”

“The ships are the eyes of the sea.”

Bartleboom was flabbergasted. He really had not thought of that.

“But there are hundreds of ships . . .”

“The sea has hundreds of eyes. You can hardly expect it to get things done with only two . . .”

Quite. With all the work it has to do. And as big as it is. There is good sense in all this.

“Yes, but then, excuse me . . .”

“Mmmm.”

“And people who are shipwrecked? The storms, the typhoons, all that stuff there . . . Why ever should it swallow all those ships, if they are its eyes?”

Dood looks almost a little out of patience, when he turns toward Bartleboom and says, “But you, . . . don’t you ever close your eyes?”

Christ. He has an answer for everything, this boy.

He thinks, does Bartleboom. He thinks and mulls things over and reflects and reasons. Then he suddenly jumps down from the windowsill. Toward the room, of course. You would need wings to jump
down in the other direction.

“Plasson . . . I must find Plasson . . . I have to tell him . . . blast, it wasn’t so difficult, all you had to do was think about it a little . . .”

He searches feverishly for his woolen hat. He does not find it. Wholly understandable: it is on his head. He desists. He runs out of the room.

“See you later, Dood.”

“See you later.”

The boy remains there, with his eyes fixed on the sea. He stays there for a little. Then he takes a good look to see that no one is around and suddenly jumps down from the windowsill. Toward the
beach, of course.

O
NE DAY
they woke up and nothing was there anymore. It was not just the footprints on the sand that had disappeared. Everything had disappeared. So to
speak.

Unbelievable fog.

“It is not fog, only clouds.”

Unbelievable clouds.

“They are sea clouds. Sky clouds stay up above. Sea clouds stay down low. They come only seldom. Then they go.”

Dira knew loads of things.

Certainly if you looked outside it was rather a shock. Only the previous evening the sky had been full of stars, fabulous. And now it was like being inside a cup of milk. Not to mention the
cold. Like being inside a cup of cold milk.

“It’s the same in Carewall.”

Father Pluche was standing there with his nose pressed against the windows, enthralled.

“It lasts days and days. It doesn’t move an inch. There it’s fog. Decidedly fog. And when it comes you can’t make head or tail of anything anymore. Even in the daytime
people walk around with a torch in hand. Trying to work things out. Not even that is much help, however. But at night you really don’t know what’s happening at all. Just think, Arlo
Crut went home one evening, but he got the wrong house and wound up in the bed of Metel Crut, his brother. Metel didn’t even notice, he was sleeping like a log, but his wife certainly
noticed. A man had slipped into her bed. Unbelievable. Well, do you know what she said?”

And here, in Father Pluche’s head, the usual gauntlet was thrown down. Two fine phrases left the starting blocks in his brain with a well-defined finishing line ahead of them: that of
finding a voice with which to come out into the open. The most sensible of the two, considering that this was still the voice of a priest, was certainly “Do it, and I’ll start
screaming.”

But this phrase was flawed by the fact that it was false. The other one, the true one, prevailed.

“Do it, or I’ll start screaming.”

“Father Pluche!”

“What did I say?”

“What did you say?”

“Did
I
say something?”

They were all in the big room that gave onto the sea, sheltered from that inundation of clouds, but not from the disagreeable sensation of not quite knowing what to do. Doing nothing is one
thing. Being unable to do anything is another. It’s different.

They were all a bit bewildered. Fish in an aquarium. The most restless of all was Plasson: in waders and fisherman’s jacket, he was wandering about nervously observing the sea of milk on
the other side of the windows, a sea that didn’t move an inch.

“It really does resemble one of your pictures,” noted Ann Deverià out loud from the depths of a wicker armchair whence she too was observing the great spectacle. Everything
wonderfully white.

Plasson carried on pacing backward and forward. As if he had not even heard.

Bartleboom looked up from the book he was idly leafing through.

“You are too severe, Madame Deverià. Mr. Plasson is trying to do something very difficult. And his pictures are no whiter than the pages of this book of mine.”

“Are you writing a book?” asked Elisewin from her seat, in front of the large fireplace.

“A sort of book.”

“Did you hear, Father Pluche? Mr. Bartleboom writes books.”

“No, it’s not exactly a book . . .”

“It is an encyclopedia,” explained Ann Deverià.

“An encyclopedia?”

And they were off. Sometimes it takes nothing to forget the great sea of milk, even as it continues screwing you up. Perhaps all you need is the harsh sound of a strange word.
Encyclopedia.
A single word. And they were off. All of them: Bartleboom, Elisewin, Father Pluche, Plasson. And Madame Deverià.

“Bartleboom, don’t be modest, tell the young lady that story of the limits, the rivers and all the rest.”

“It is called the
Encyclopedia of the Limits to be found in Nature
. . .”

“A fine title. I had a teacher, at the seminary . . .”

“Let him talk, Father Pluche . . .”

“I have been working on it for twelve years. It is a complicated business . . . to all practical purposes I study the point at which Nature arrives, or, better, where it decides to stop.
Because it always stops, sooner or later. This is scientific. For example . . .”

“Give the example of the copironus.”

“Well, that was a rather particular case.”

“Have you already heard the story of the copironi, Plasson?”

“Look, he told me the story of the copironi, my dear Madame Deverià, and you had it from me.”

“My goodness, that was a very long sentence, my compliments, Plasson, you are improving.”

“Well then, these copironi?”

“The copironi live on the northern glaciers. They are perfect animals in their way. They practically do not grow old. If they wished, they could live for eternity.”

“Horrible.”

“But be careful, Nature controls everything, nothing escapes her. And so here is what happens: at a certain point, when it is around seventy, eighty years old, the copironus stops
eating.”

“No.”

“Yes. They stop eating. On the average they live another three years, in that state. Then they die.”

“Three years without eating?”

“On the average. Some resist for even longer. But in the end, and this is important, they die. It’s a scientific fact.”

“But it’s suicide!”

“In a certain sense.”

“And according to you, we should believe you, Bartleboom?”

“Look here, I also have a drawing . . . A drawing of a copironus . . .”

“My goodness, you’re right, Bartleboom, you really do draw badly, really, I have never seen a drawing—”

“I didn’t make it . . . it was the sailor who told me the story that drew it . . .”

“A sailor?”

“You had all this story from a sailor?”

“Yes, why?”

“Oh, well done, Bartleboom, really scientific . . .”

“I believe you.”

“Thank you, Miss Elisewin.”

“I believe you, and so does Father Pluche, don’t you?”

“Certainly . . . it’s a very likely story, in fact, if I remember well, I have heard it before, it must have been at the seminary . . .”

“One really learns loads of things in these seminaries . . . are there any for ladies?”

“Now that I think of it, Plasson, you could make me the illustrations for the Encyclopedia, it would be splendid, would it not?”

“Would I have to draw the copironus?”

“Well, let’s forget about the copironus, but there are loads of other things . . . I have written eight hundred seventy-two entries, you could choose the ones you prefer . .
.”

“Eight hundred seventy-two?”

“Doesn’t it strike you as a good idea, Madame Deverià?”

“For the entry
sea,
I should perhaps do without the illustration . . .”

“Father Pluche draws the pictures for his book himself.”

“Elisewin, never mind . . .”

“But it’s true . . .”

“Don’t tell me we have another scientist . . .”

“It’s a very beautiful book.”

“Do you really write, too, Father Pluche?”

“Not really, it is a rather . . . particular thing, it’s not exactly what you would call a book.”

“Yes, it is a book.”

“Elisewin . . .”

“He never lets anyone see it, but it’s very beautiful.”

“I say it is poetry.”

“Not exactly.”

“But you were close.”

“Songs?”

“No.”

“Come, Father Pluche, must we pray you?”

“That’s it, in fact . . .”

“In fact what?”

“No, I mean, apropos of prayer . . .”

“Don’t tell me that . . .”

“Prayers, they are prayers.”

“Prayers?”

“Adieu . . .”

“But they are not like the others, Father Pluche’s prayers . . .”

“I find it an excellent idea. I have always felt the lack of a good prayer book.”

“Bartleboom, a scientist should not
pray,
if he is a real scientist he should not even think of—”

“On the contrary! Precisely because we study nature, nature being none other than the mirror . . .”

“He also wrote a very fine one about a doctor. A doctor is a scientist, isn’t that so?”

“How do you mean
about
a doctor?”

“It is entitled
Prayer for a Doctor Who Saves an Invalid and at the Instant in Which the Latter Gets Up, Cured, the Former Feels Infinitely Tired.
”

“What?”

“But that’s no title for a prayer.”

“I told you that Father Pluche’s prayers are not like the others.”

“But do they all have titles like that?”

“Well, I made some titles a bit shorter, but that’s the idea.”

“Tell us some others, Father Pluche . . .”

“Oh, so now you are interested in prayers, eh, Plasson?”

“I don’t know . . . there is the
Prayer for a Little Boy Who Cannot Say the Letter R,
or the
Prayer of a Man Who Is Falling into a Ravine and Doesn’t Want to
Die
. . .”

“I don’t believe it . . .”

“Well, obviously it is very short, a few words only . . . then there is the
Prayer of an Old Man Whose Hands Shake,
things like that.”

“Extraordinary!”

“And how many have you written?”

“A few . . . they are not easy to write, every so often one feels like it, but if inspiration will not come . . .”

“But roughly how many?”

“For the present . . . nine thousand five hundred and two.”

“No . . .”

“Fantastic . . .”

“Good heavens, Bartleboom, your encyclopedia is a little notebook in comparison.”

“But how do you do it, Father Pluche?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yesterday he wrote a very beautiful one.”

“Elisewin . . .”

“Really.”

“Elisewin, please . . .”

“Yesterday evening he wrote one about you, sir.”

Suddenly everybody fell silent.

Yesterday evening he wrote one about you, sir.

But she did not say it looking at one of them.

Yesterday evening he wrote one about you, sir.

She was looking elsewhere when she said it, and it was there that everybody turned, taken by surprise.

A table, alongside the glass door at the entrance. A man seated at the table, a spent pipe in his hand. Adams. Nobody knows when he arrived there. Perhaps he has been there for a moment, perhaps
he has always been there.

“Yesterday evening he wrote one about you, sir.”

Everyone remained motionless. But Elisewin got up and went over to him.

“It is called the
Prayer for a Man Who Does Not Want to Say His Name.
”

But gently. She said it gently.

“Father Pluche thinks you are a doctor.”

Adams smiles.

“Only now and then.”

“But I say that you are a mariner.”

All silent, the others. Motionless. But they did not miss a word, not one.

“Only now and then.”

“And here, today, what are you?”

Adams shakes his head.

“Just somebody who is waiting.”

Elisewin is standing in front of him. She has a precise and very simple question in mind:

“
What
are you waiting for?”

Only five words. But she cannot say them because a second before she does, she hears a voice murmur in her head, “Don’t ask me, Elisewin. Don’t ask me, I beg you.”

She stands there motionless, without saying anything, her eyes fixed on those of Adams, which are as silent as stones.