Ocean Sea (13 page)

First is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the night to come, fifth those mangled bodies, sixth is hunger, seventh is horror, eighth the specters of madness, and ninth is
abnormal meat, meat, meat drying on the rigging, meat that bleeds, meat, human meat, in my hands, in my mouth, meat of men that I have seen, men that were, meat of living men now dead, killed,
broken, crazed, meat of arms and legs that I have seen fighting, meat stripped from the bone, meat that had a name, and that I now devour maddened with hunger, days spent chewing the leather of our
belts and pieces of cloth, on this atrocious raft there is nothing left, nothing, seawater and piss chilled in tin beakers, pieces of tin held under the tongue so as not to go mad with thirst, and
shit that you cannot get down, and ropes steeped in blood and salt, the only food that smacks of life, until someone, blinded by hunger, bends over the corpse of a friend and weeping and talking
and praying tears the meat from his bones, and like a beast drags it off to a corner and begins to suck it and then bite into it and spew it up and then bite into it again, furiously overcoming the
loathing to wrest from death one last shortcut to life, an atrocious road, which however one by one we all take, all of us, equals now inasmuch as we are become beasts and jackals, finally each one
silent with his scrap of meat, the bitter taste in the mouth, the hands smeared with blood, in the belly the bite of a blinding pain, the smell of death, the stink, the skin, the meat coming apart,
the meat shredding, dripping water and serum, those open bodies, like screams, tables set for the animals we are, the end of everything, horrible surrender, obscene defeat, abominable rout,
blasphemous catastrophe, and it is then that I—I—look up—I look up—up—it is then that I look up and I see—I—see it:
the sea.
For the first time,
after days and days, I really see it. And I hear its immense voice and powerful smell and, inside, its unstoppable dance, an infinite wave. Everything disappears and nothing remains but the sea,
before me, upon me. A revelation. The pall of anguish and fear that has gripped my soul fades away, the web of infamy, cruelty, and horror that has ravished my eyes falls apart, the shadow of death
that has devoured my mind dissolves, and in the sudden light of an unexpected clarity I finally see, and hear, and understand. The sea. It had seemed a spectator, even silent, even an accomplice.
It had seemed a frame, a stage set, a backdrop. Now I look at it and I see: the sea was everything. It was everything, right from the first moment. I see it dancing around me, sumptuous in an icy
light, a marvelous, infinite world. The sea was in the hands that killed, in the dead who were dying, the sea was in the hunger and thirst, the sea was in the torment, in the baseness and the
madness, the sea was the hatred and the desperation, mercy and sacrifice, the sea is this blood and this meat, the sea is this horror and this splendor. There is no raft, there are no men, there
are no words, feelings, gestures, nothing. There are no guilty and no innocent, condemned and saved. There is only the sea. All things have become the sea. We, the abandoned of the earth, have
become the womb of the sea, and the womb of the sea is us, and in us it breathes and lives. I watch it dance in its resplendent mantle for the joy of its own invisible eyes and finally I know that
this is the defeat of no man, for it is the triumph of the sea only, all this, and thy glory, and so, so let it be HOSANNA, HOSANNA TO THEE, ocean sea, powerful beyond all powers and marvelous
beyond all marvels, HOSANNA AND GLORY TO THEE, master and slave, victim and persecutor, HOSANNA, the earth bows at thy passing and brushes the hem of thy mantle with perfumed lips, HOLY, HOLY,
HOLY, womb of every new birth and belly of every death, HOSANNA AND GLORY BE THINE, refuge of all destinies and hearts that breathe, beginning and end, horizon and source, master of nothing, master
of all, let it be HOSANNA AND GLORY TO THEE, lord of time and master of the nights, the one and the only, HOSANNA, because thine is the horizon, and dizzyingly deep is thy womb, deep and
unfathomable, and GLORY, GLORY, GLORY, to the heavens on high for there is no sky that is not reflected and lost in Thee, nor is there land that may not surrender to Thee, the invincible, the
beloved spouse of the moon and kind father of the gentle tides, let all men bow down before Thee and lift up their song of HOSANNA AND GLORY since Thou art within them, and groweth in them, and in
Thee they live and die, and for them Thou art the secret and the end and the truth and the judgment and the salvation and the only road for eternity, and thus it is, and thus shall it ever be,
until the end of days, which shall be the end of the sea, if the sea shall have an end, Thou, the Holy, the One and Only, Ocean Sea, wherefore let it be HOSANNA AND GLORY until the end of
centuries. AMEN.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

First

first is my name,

first is my name, second those eyes,

first is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the coming of the night,

first is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the coming of the night, fifth those mangled bodies, sixth is hunger

first is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the coming of the night, fifth those mangled bodies, sixth is hunger, seventh is horror, eighth the specters of madness

first is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the coming of the night, fifth those mangled bodies, sixth is hunger, seventh is horror, eighth the specters of madness, ninth is
meat, and tenth is a man who watches me but does not kill me. He is called Thomas. He was the strongest of all of them. Because he was cunning. We have not succeeded in killing him. Lheureux tried,
the first night. Corréard tried. But he has seven lives, that man. Around him they are all dead, his shipmates. On the raft there are fifteen men left. And he is one of them. He stayed for a
long time in the corner farthest away from us. Then he began to creep, slowly, and to get closer. Every movement is an impossible effort, and I should know because I have lain here motionless since
last night, and here I have decided to die. Every word is an atrocious effort and every movement an impossible labor. But he keeps coming closer. He has a knife in his belt. And it is me he wants.
I know it.

Who knows how much time has passed. There is no more day, there is no more night, all is motionless silence. We are a drifting graveyard. I opened my eyes and he was here. I do not know if it
was a nightmare or real. Perhaps it is only madness, finally a madness come to take me. But if it is madness, it hurts, and there is nothing sweet about it. I wish he would do something, that man.
But he carries on looking at me and that’s all. Just one more step forward and he could be upon me. I have no more weapons. He has a knife . . . I have no more strength, nothing. He has in
his eyes the calm and the strength of an animal stalking its prey. It’s incredible how he can still manage to hate, here, in this foul, drifting prison where by now there is only death.
It’s incredible how he can manage
to remember
. If only I could manage to speak, if only there were a little life left in me, I would tell him that I had to do it, that there is no
mercy, there is no guilt in this inferno and that neither of us is here, but only
the sea,
the ocean sea. I would tell him not to look at me anymore, and to kill me. Please. But I cannot
manage to speak. He does not move from there, he does not take his eyes off mine. And he does not kill me. Will all this ever finish?

There is a horrendous silence, on the raft and all around. No one wails anymore. The dead are dead, the living are waiting, that’s all. No prayers, no screams, nothing. The sea dances, but
slowly, it seems a whispered farewell. I do not feel hunger anymore, or thirst or pain. Everything is only an immense lassitude. I open my eyes. That man is still there. I close them again. Kill
me, Thomas, or let me die in peace. You have your revenge by now. Go away. He turns his gaze toward the sea. I am no longer anything. My soul is no longer my soul, my life is no longer my life, do
not steal death from me with those eyes.

The sea dances, but slowly.

No prayers, no groans, nothing.

The sea dances, but slowly.

Will he watch me die?

M
Y NAME IS
Thomas. And this is the story of an abomination. I am writing it in my mind, now, with what strength I have left and with my eyes fixed on
that man who shall never have my forgiveness. Death shall read it.

The
Alliance
was a big, strong ship. The sea would never have bested her. It takes three thousand oaks to build a ship like that. A floating forest. It was the idiocy of men that was
her undoing. Captain Chaumareys consulted the charts and sounded the depth of the sea floor. But he could not read the sea. He could not read its colors. The
Alliance
wound up on the
Arguin sandbank and no one could do anything to stop it. A strange shipwreck: we heard what seemed a dull groan rise up from the bowels of the hull and then the ship stopped dead, listing slightly
to one side. Motionless. Forever. I have seen splendid ships struggle against ferocious storms, and I have seen some others surrender and disappear beneath waves tall as castles. It was like a
duel. Very beautiful. But the
Alliance
was unable to fight. A silent end. The great sea all around her was almost flat calm. The enemy was within her, not before her. And all her strength
was as nothing, against an enemy like that. I have seen many lives wrecked in that absurd way. But ships, never.

The hull was beginning to creak. They decided to abandon the
Alliance
to her fate and they built that raft. It smacked of death before it was even lowered into the water. The men sensed
it and thronged around the longboats, to flee from that trap. They had to point the muskets at them to force them to board it. The captain promised and swore that he would not abandon them, that
the longboats would tow the raft, that there was no danger. They ended up, packed together like animals, aboard that barge without sides, without a keel, without a helm. And I was one of them.
There were soldiers and sailors. A few passengers. And then four officers, a cartographer, and a doctor called Savigny: they occupied the middle of the raft, where the supplies had been put, those
few supplies that had not been lost in the confusion of the transshipment. They were standing on a large chest; we were all around them, with the water up to our knees because the raft was
wallowing under our weight. I should have understood everything right from that moment.

Of those moments, an image remains. Schmalz. Schmalz the governor, the one who was to take possession of the new colonies in the king’s name. They lowered him from the starboard side,
seated in his armchair. The armchair, in velvet and gold, and him seated upon it, impassive. They lowered them down as if they were one single statue. We, on that raft, still moored to the
Alliance,
but already at grips with the sea and fear. And him there, descending, hanging in space, toward his longboat, seraphic, like those angels that come down from the ceilings of the
theaters in the city. He was swinging, he and his armchair, like a pendulum. And I thought: He is swinging like a hanged man in the evening breeze.

I don’t know the precise moment when they abandoned us. I was struggling to keep my feet and to keep Thérèse close to me. But I heard cries, and then shots. I looked up. And
above dozens of bobbing heads, and dozens of hands that sawed the air, I saw the sea, and longboats far off, and nothing between us and them. I looked on, incredulous. I knew that they would not
return. We were in the hands of destiny. Only luck could save us. But the defeated never have any luck.

Thérèse was but a lass. I don’t know how old she was, really. But she seemed a lass. When I was at Rochefort working in the port, she would pass by with her baskets of fish
and she would look at me. She looked at me until I fell in love with her. She was all I had, down there. My life, for what it was worth, and her. When I enlisted in the expedition to the new
colonies, I managed to have her hired as a sutler. And so we left, both of us on board the
Alliance.
It seemed like a game. When I come to think of it, in those first days, it seemed a
game. If I know what it means to be happy, in those nights, we were happy. When I ended up among those who had to board the raft, Thérèse wanted to come with me. She could have
boarded a longboat, but she wanted to come with me. I told her that it was madness, that we would meet again on shore, that she had nothing to fear. But she would not listen to me. There were big
men hard as rock whimpering and begging for a place on those cursed longboats, jumping down from the raft and risking getting themselves killed just to escape from there. But she, she boarded the
raft without a word, hiding all her fears. They do things, women, at times, that are enough to leave you high and dry. You could spend a lifetime trying, but you would never have that buoyancy they
have, at times. They are buoyant inside. Buoyant.

The first ones died at night, dragged into the sea by the waves that swept the raft. In the darkness, you could hear their cries gradually fading away. At dawn, about ten men were missing. Some
lay trapped between the boards of the raft, trampled by the others. The four officers, together with Corréard, the cartographer, and Savigny, the doctor, took the situation in hand. They had
the weapons. And they controlled the supplies. The men trusted them. Lheureux, one of the officers, even made a fine speech, he had a sail hoisted and said, “It will carry us to land and
there we shall follow those who have betrayed and abandoned us and we shall not rest until they have tasted our revenge.” That’s precisely what he said: until they have tasted our
revenge. He didn’t even seem like an officer. He seemed like one of us. The men were heartened by those words. We all thought that it would really end like that. All we had to do was stand
fast and not be afraid. The sea had subsided. A light wind filled our makeshift sail. Each of us had his ration of food and drink. Thérèse said to me, “We’ll make
it.” And I said, “Yes.”