Denis Johnson - Fiskadoro

In a moment another head popped up streaming with water, eyes closed, black hair plastered to the scalp, and drew a deep breath, like a baby being born. She didn’t know this one — but it was the Lieutenant, unrecognizable, somehow, having lost not only his beret, but also his rank, his name, his personality. The Lieutenant had no life preserver, and no revolver.

Her skirt and blouse were heavy. She let herself go under while she tore her blouse open, kicked upward, broke the surface, went under as she took off the blouse, thrust to the surface, lost the world of air while she pulled at the button on the side of her skirt and yanked the garment down over her hips, and came back to the possibility of breathing again as she loosed her knees from its girth and kicked it from her ankles. She didn’t think. She only wanted a place to stand, rest, and eat and drink the air.

She kept her head up among the other heads, losing and regaining sight of them when a swell lifted and dropped her.

At first they all treaded water, not caring how the exertion drained them. Within a few minutes Marie was more tired than she’d ever been, and then she didn’t think anymore, except to wish she could lie down.

Captain Minh was the first to go over on his back. The others did so right away. It gave them a style of rest, more breath, and more time; and though it exposed their backs to a huge world of liquid and somehow, therefore, wracked their nerves, it took their eyes off a sea higher than themselves and showed them something bigger-the sky.

The sky was a major discovery, holding an element of hope that charged among them and got them talking. Marie said some things in English, and then in French, just to be heard. The others answered importantly, with interest, though no answers were required of questions like “What time is it?” and they asked each other questions of their own—“Where do you think we are?”—in French, and said other things in Vietnamese, and gave opinions and looked at the sky. Captain Minh organized an effort to stay together, getting the others to take off their clothes and link themselves like a chain by clutching shirtsleeves or pantlegs. The Lieutenant wouldn’t contribute his pants because he didn’t want to take off his shoes. Some of the others warned him against this, in French, and Captain Minh argued with him in Vietnamese. The Lieutenant, already breathless, shouted, “Fack you, body boy!”

The talk gave over to the work of breathing, and they were voiceless now except to gulp air or clear their throats. Marie answered the others only briefly, and asked only, “Ou etes vous?” and occasionally turned her head, looking for anyone. People talked only to locate themselves among others, and now it appeared they were nine. The center of the group were a man and his wife, who called to each other often and said, Marie supposed, “Here I am!” and “I see you!” Because these two signaled themselves the most, the others took them as markers in the ocean and stayed near, keeping their chain of laundry slack so as not to have to fight each other’s drift. Marie used the man and woman angrily, let them do the work of crying out, and saved her own strength for keeping her face turned away from the swells that broke over her head if she didn’t lift it slightly out of their heaving approach.

The effort this kind of floating required wasn’t too great, but her neck ached and soon the back of her skull felt flat and numb and her spine burned, all from the repeated task of lifting her head. The surface that had seemed so black and heavy from above, whose motion had seemed so blubbery and incidental, now proved active, populous, and resourceful, throwing up generations of fingers that clawed her face, worms that raced across her nose and mouth and choked her, small whirling mouths that swallowed and abandoned her hair. It was windy. The whitecaps that had seemed so widely separated now came relentlessly, their froth blasted by small gusts into rainbows. Their mist strangled her. Her lips were chapped and raw with salt, her eyes stung, and before long her face hurt as if she’d been beaten. She began to cry. She’d already passed the point of thinking that she might swim until she got out of here to continue the business of life, and had come to the point where she swam because it was, in fact, life’s business, the thing to be carried on until she died.

They watched the Lieutenant go down. He let go of their improvised lifeline and struggled to give up his shoes, and then his pants. He struggled again as he went under repeatedly, and he begged the others for some kind of help, but soon he was paralyzed and wordless and all alone, although he was right there among them, and then he was gone.

Before nightfall the wind blew gentler, the swells were born smaller and more courteous, and life got better. But then night fell, and there was no more seeing in this life.

In the dark they stayed near each other, fought to keep near when one lost hold of the lifeline, though clinging to one another was fatal, and they called to one another and answered — there was never any talk about why. It was understood that they would stay together, though Marie had forgotten by now who they were, how many, what they looked like. Hands were sought, voices chased with precious strength, the touch of hands slipped away, voices were lost. People went silent, gasped and choked. It occurred to her that these people were falling asleep. Her own changeless condition was a paralysis that somehow found a way to move when the water lapped her nostrils and she panicked, snorting and coughing, and sculled again. She passed beyond waking, but she didn’t sleep. And yet it was hard to tell the difference. For a while there were some stars, and a blurred half-moon, but they disappeared without her noticing and then there was only herself in a floating dark of no particular dimension but full of soft aimless noise. Uniformly, infinitely, and permanently it hissed, and along the fabric of this sound it burbled and squeaked, it flushed and spat. In the action of water it trilled and sang. It spoke; it rolled words over words. It knew — and, in a kind of shock, it ceased; in the water of it it reconsidered; it cleared its mind and opened its eyes and saw itself.

Her ears were filled with water, her tongue so swollen she could hardly shut her mouth on it, but still she tasted the ocean, and she heard it. Her nostrils were closed tight and she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or not. She realized the stars might not have gone away, but that the salt might have blinded her.

At some point in the dark two hands clutched and held her, someone trying to stay afloat. She poked their eyes and bit the fingers digging into her arms. She kicked their stomach and tore herself away. A little later, as she began to let herself sink, finding no difference in her mind anymore between the blackness of air and the blackness of water, something frond-like touched her cheek, and something more solid bumped her shoulder — a person — and she grabbed at the neck, held on to the collar of an undershirt. There was no resistance; the person was dead. The body went under a ways, but she was able to use it to help keep herself above the water a little longer. She rested with her head on its back, until it went under deeper, and she kept it near, straddled it a while and finally stood on it for a second at a time, keeping her chin above the swells, while it washed downward and came up again to give her feet its slight support, until she lost it.

When the sun came up the first day, its light was unbelievable. There was strength in it. Marie felt saved. The time in the water now seemed longer than all her life before. Her life before had been a preparation for this water, and the sun finally becoming a whole circle and clearing the surface, flying out of the water into the sky, paid for and explained everything. She laughed and felt powerful. Her stomach ached and the thirst, as the sun touched her lips, was all of a sudden more fateful than the need for air. She drank some water. Her throat was swollen nearly shut, and her tongue had forced itself halfway out of her mouth. She was hardly able to swallow.