Antonio Tabucchi - The Woman of Porto Pim

Ce qui rend cet hymen touchant et grave, c’est qu’il y faut l’expresse volonté. Ils n’ont pas l’arme tyrannique du requin, ces attaches qui maîtrisent le plus faible. Au contraire, leurs fourreaux glissants les séparent, les éloignent. Ils se fuient malgré eux, échappent, par ce désespérant obstacle. Dans un si grand accord, on dirait un combat. Des baleiniers prétendent avoir vu ce spectacle unique. Les amants, d’un brûlant transport, par instants, dresses et debout, comme les deux tours de Notre-Dame, gémissant de leurs bras trop courts, entreprenaient de s’embrasser. Ils retombaient d’un poids immense. . L’ours et l’homme fuyaient épouvantés de leurs soupirs.

Michelet, La Mer, pages 240–42

So intense and poetic is this passage from Michelet it would be wrong to tone it down with a translation.

Those days of intense sunshine and oppressive stillness when a thick sultry heat weighs on the ocean — it occurred to me these might be the rare moments when whales return in their physiological memory to their terrestrial origins. To do this they have to concentrate so intensely and completely that they fall into a deep sleep which gives an appearance of death: and thus floating on the surface, like blind, polished stumps, they somehow remember, as though in a dream, a distant, distant past when their clumsy fins were dry limbs capable of gestures, greetings, caresses, races through the grass amid tall flowers and ferns, on an earth that was a magma of elements still in search of a combination, an idea.

The whalemen of the Azores will tell you that when an adult whale is harpooned at a distance of five or six miles from another, the latter, even if in this state of apparent death, will wake with a start and flee in fear. The whales hunted in the Azores are mainly sperm whales.

Sperm Whale. This whale, among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa Whale, and the Physeter Whale and the Anvil Headed Whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottfisch of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm Whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known in England as Greenland or Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became known its original name was still retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity.

Melville, Moby-Dick, chapter XXXII

Sperm whales are great whales which live in areas of both hemispheres where the water temperature is fairly high. There are important differences between their physiology and that of other whales: the whalebones, which fortify the mouth of the latter and which are used to grind up small elements of food, are replaced in the sperm whale by sturdy teeth firmly inserted in the lower jaw and capable of snapping a large prey; the head, an enormous mass which ends vertically like the prow of a ship, accounts for a third of the whole body. These anatomical differences between the two groups of whales assign them to distinct territories: other whales find the thick banks of microscopic organisms they feed on mainly in the cold waters of the polar regions, where they absorb this food with the same naturalness with which we breathe; the sperm whale, on the other hand, mainly feeds on cephalopods which flourish in temperate waters. There are also important differences in the way these giant whales behave, differences which whalemen have learnt to recognize to perfection in the interests of their own safety. While other whales are peaceful animals, the older male sperm whale, like the boar, lives alone and will both defend and avenge himself. Having wounded the creature with their harpoons, many whaleboats have been snatched between the jaws of these giants and then crushed to pieces; and many crews have perished in the hunt.

Albert I, Prince of Monaco, La Carrière d’un navigateur, pages 277–78

No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. . How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen.

Melville, Moby Dick, chapter XXVII

The island of Pico is a volcanic cone which rises sheer from the ocean: it is no more and no less than a high rocky mountain resting on the water. There are three villages: Madalena, São Roque and Lajes; the rest is lava rock on which are dotted meagre vineyards and a few wild pineapples. The small ferry ties up at the landing stage in Madalena. It’s Sunday and many families are taking trips to the nearby islands with baskets and bundles. The baskets are overflowing with pineapples, bananas, bottles of wine, fish. In Lajes there is a small whale museum I want to see. But since it’s not a workday the bus isn’t running very often and Lajes is forty kilometres away at the other end of the island. I sit patiently on a bench under a palm in front of the strange church that stands in the little praça. I planned to take a swim, it’s a fine day and the temperature is pleasant. But on the ferry they told me to be careful, there’s a dead whale near the rocks and the sea is full of sharks.

After a long wait in the midday heat I see a taxi which, having set down a passenger by the harbor, is turning back. The driver offers me a free ride to Lajes, because he has just made the trip and is going home, and the price his passenger paid included the return trip and he doesn’t want any money he doesn’t deserve. There are only two taxis in Lajes, he tells me with a satisfied look, his and his cousin’s. Pico’s only road runs along the cliffs with bends and potholes above a foaming sea. It’s a narrow, bumpy road crossing a grim stony landscape, with just the occasional isolated village, dominated by an incongruously large eighteenth-century monastery and an imposing padrão — the stone monument that Portuguese sailors used to set up wherever they landed as a sign of their king’s sovereignty.

The whale museum is in the main street on the first floor of a handsome renovated townhouse. My guide is a youngster with a vaguely half-witted air and a hackneyed, formal way of talking. What interests me most are the pieces of whale ivory which the whalemen used to carve, and then the ship’s logs and some archaic tools of bizarre design. Along one wall are some old photographs. One bears the caption: Lajes, 25 de Dezembro 1919. Heaven knows how they managed to drag the sperm whale as far as the church. It must have taken quite a few pairs of oxen. It’s a frighteningly huge sperm whale, it seems incredible. Six or seven young boys have climbed up onto its head: they’ve placed a ladder against the front of the head and are waving caps and handkerchiefs on top. The whalemen are lined up in the foreground with a proud, satisfied air. Three of them are wearing woolen bobble caps, one has an oilskin hat shaped like a fireman’s. They are all barefoot, only one has boots, he must be the master. I imagine they then left the photograph, took off their caps and went into church, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to leave a whale in the square outside. Thus they spent Christmas day on Pico in 1919.