Robert Butler - The Deep Green Sea

I know I am to follow, but this sudden vision of him, his whole body at once, moving, is a rare thing for me. I have seen him very close up far more often. The sea runs away from me, too, and I move after Ben, but slowly, angling up the beach a bit, letting him go. He loves the water. I can feel this in him. He is twenty or thirty meters ahead of me now, slowing, watching out to sea. The fishing boats are tiny, about to disappear, the sound of their motors has dwindled into silence.

And now his shirt is off, flying back behind him up the beach. And he is stripping his pants down and my breath catches, I think to do this too, throw off my clothes and run to him, but I am still loving to watch, and he strips off his underpants and my Ben is naked and his shoulders are broad like the hills at the turn of the beach and his back is straight and his bottom is small and my hands stir, this is a part of him I have not seen yet, really, and I want to lay my palms on this sweet part of him, and he is striding forward now into the water.

He has not looked back to me. He is thigh deep in the water and now his bottom has disappeared and he is pushing hard and he still has not looked over his shoulder — it is like he has forgotten me — and something dark comes into me, an old thing, and he falls forward and I see the flash of his arms and his legs and he is lifted by a wave that does not break and he falls and he is still swimming and I know what the dark thing is, it is the dragon, how he missed his kingdom in the sea and one day simply was gone. The princess — who was his wife and the mother of his children — woke and he had gone back to the sea.

I want to cry out to Ben. I take a step forward. He is far out now — how quickly he seems to have gone — he rises on a distant swell and the swell falls and I do not see him. He has vanished. I cry out at last, a pitiful sound, a tight pathetic sound that no one can hear, and I am rooted where I am, I cannot move and I am clothed tight and I am suddenly alone. I keep my eyes fixed there, where he was a moment ago. I wait. I wait. The sea swells again and falls and there is foam and breakers and there is a vast sky, going dark, going very dark, and still Ben does not reappear. He is gone. I touch my belly. I press there. I do not want our child to follow him.

Then his head — far away — appears in the sea. He shakes his head sharply, clearing water from his face and now I can see him looking to the shore, he is looking for me. I lift my arm, I wave, and his arm comes up from beneath the water and he waves, and then he disappears again. But before the darkness can clutch at me once more, his body comes up and he is swimming, fast, lifting with a swell and speeding in and then dropping, but I can see him instantly again, and he swims and rises and falls, over and over, and now he angles upright and he is wading toward me, the water to his chest and then to his waist.

I am quaking again, for it is time. I have not looked at this part of him yet and now it is time. He moves, the water falls, a dark splash of hair appears, but the water swells, up to his chest, pushing him to me, and then suddenly the sea dips and I can see him there. Not nearly so large as it felt inside me, this part is withdrawn into the circle of the rest of him there, like a cameo, but he is coming from the sea and I know he will grow with my touch. He is striding now from the foam of the breakers and I keep my eyes on this part of him and he quakes there like this quaking inside me and he is drawing nearer and even as I am watching him, this part is changing, growing, from the touch of my eyes, no longer a cameo but a clasp now, a great clasp to connect to me and to hold me tight and to carry me along. And he stops. And I look up to his face and he is drenched and he moves his hands on his chest, as if to wash himself with the sea, and he smiles at me, a soft smile that tells me we have all the time in the world, all the rest of our lives, and he tells me this so I won’t worry as he turns slowly around to look out to the sea once more, before coming nearer.

And I find that I am moving toward him, faster, and I am yanking my skirt up to my waist, and I leap up onto his back. I throw my arms around his neck and I hook my legs around his waist and he laughs a loud, sharp laugh of surprise and his wrists come under my knees and lift at me, hold me up, and I think that one day he will carry our child on his back but for now I am glad it is me and he carries me forward and I know what he is planning to do.

I laugh, and I cry, “Wait.”

But he does not listen, he is going forward into the water.

“Wait,” I cry again but he can hear the thrill in my voice and he does not stop. Then I bend near, putting my mouth against his wet and salty ear. I say, “Don’t you want me to be naked?” He stops. I am very conscious of those places where our flesh is touching. Beneath my leg, along my thigh, my forearms against his chest.

He turns and he wades toward the shore and I cling tight to him and for a moment I think I know what it feels like to have a father. I am small upon him and I am glad for that because the way he is big makes me safe and makes me loved and makes it so that I am not alone, and these are good things, but I am more glad for my thighs clutching his naked sides and more glad that my true father is nothing but smoke and air and I am more glad for where we are heading, out of the water now, and he does not stop, he is heading for the top of the beach and a stretch of low scrub grass there, before a dune. And beyond, the only light in the sky is spread along a jagged line of mountains and the light has turned red and we are in the dark shadow of the dune and he puts me down on the grass and my hands go to work instantly at my blouse, the buttons, the bow, it is off me and he is before me as I am doing this and watching my hands, watching what will be revealed beneath them. The blouse is gone and then my bra and he smiles at my nipples and the skirt is gone and my panties and then we are on the grass and my hand goes to this part of his body that at last I can see in my head and it is ardent now for me, unimpressed and withdrawn as it was with the sea, and if I am so much more exciting to his body than the South China Sea, I have no right to delay him, for I am rich with my own inner sea and I will drench and wash him now and I draw him into me right away, my Ben, my love, he will come into this place where our child has begun to grow.

How good it feels inside her, how good, there will be many more nights to go slow but on this shore on this night she wants me inside her quickly, she draws me there with her hand, and I move onto her and I look at the sea and the moon is out there, I didn’t notice it before, though it’s been there all along, hiding in its paleness, not showing itself, but now the daylight is almost gone and the moon has appeared, fat and golden.

I look at her face beneath me and her eyes are open and she is Tien, she is herself, I move in her and there’s nothing here to fear at all. I am up Highway One in Vietnam and this alien sea lies beside me and on my skin, and there is nothing of war, nothing of death, nothing of the past, there is only this joining of me and this woman, this Vietnamese woman, this woman I love, and I am at peace.

And then I rush and she digs hard at my back and her lips are against my ear and she cries out softly there, and only now are we related, only now, only this way, as we share one body, and then we slow and we stop and we lie still. Though I shift and am no longer inside her, this feeling between us does not change and she curls against me and I hold her, and for a long time, we lie still.

And the sky goes black and bursts with stars and the moon rises and grows small but it turns so white it almost hurts my eyes. I think she sleeps for a while. Then she wakes with a little start. I draw her closer and she whispers, “Yes.”