“Now no Liege can take away the fruit of my labor, burn my home, rape my women, and kill my sons. Now I am free. I have won.”
The old man hawked furiously and spat contemptuously into the sea; it was as if he were spitting in the face of the past, as if he hoped the insult of that saliva would be carried by the ocean currents to the shores from which we’d sailed, staining them with his scorn and proclaiming his victory.
I had watched him, night after night, observing the stars in their heavens, and, day after day, wiping his forehead and lifting his face to look at the sun.
“Do you know where we are, Pedro?”
“Very far to the west.”
“So I imagined. That was our course.”
“But not this far south. We’re so far south now, you can scarcely see the northern stars. And the sun sets very late but goes down very fast. The whirlpool must have dragged us far off our course.”
I listened to him in silence, considering the unshakable truth of the one thing I think I know, for as I heard those words I felt my destiny was sealed; return was impossible, and once again the warring motivations of adventure and security struggled within me. The old man did not want to return. I had nothing to return to. And this time resignation did not intervene in the conflict between risk and survival, neutralizing them as before; now it denied them by uniting them.
“Old man, when will we venture inland? There must be a fresh stream near here without those flies, for the lands seem well watered, and we can’t live forever from the water of the palms. Aren’t you eager to know whether we’re on an island or an isthmus or on terra firma? Don’t you want to know whether this land is inhabited, and if so, by whom?”
“No, you go alone, if you want. I won’t leave this place. I have what I’ve always wanted. My piece of land.”
He nodded emphatically, and as I bowed my head — confused because adventure and survival had become one, and resignation, once a saving grace, had become certainty that to stay here meant death — Pedro did something unexpected; he rubbed my head and then hugged me to his breast and said:
“Yes, the wheel did prove to be lighter than the terrible force dragging us toward the center of the vortex. I closed my eyes when we were thrown into it, but then tried to hold them open in spite of the fact I was blinded by the speed and the vertigo, the flood of waters, and the changing light in that whirlpool. I felt as if I were immersed in a sea of metal, my son, where every drop of water was a golden coin sparkling and shimmering before my eyes; at one moment I would see the glittering face of the coin, and the next, the shadowy cross on the reverse. My bones told me we were ascending, like the limes and the shattered mast and the sails. And then, as we burst out of the whirlpool to the level of the whitecaps, my eyes told me the same. I prayed for our salvation, for the vortex had vomited us up only to deliver us unto the will of God.
“All night long we were whipped and battered by the storm and the lines holding us grew slack; more than once I attempted to bind us both, but the ropes securing you yielded to the power of the storm and finally I had to hold you with my own hands. I clutched your arm until there was no feeling left in my own arm and I couldn’t tell whether I was holding you or not; I prayed I was, I prayed you would hold on to my arm, that it would be my arm that saved you, son, but as I prayed I was overcome by a deep and lugubrious fatigue; I gave us up for lost; I sank into the tomb of sleep. The gulls awakened me to a peaceful sea. My arms were entangled and I saw a bed of seaweed. I saw land; I moaned the word, but my parched throat prevented me from shouting it, as I wished to shout after twenty years of hope … Land! land! the new world! All I could do was turn to you to whisper it. Only then did I realize you weren’t with me. I’d been unable to save you. I wept for you. I wanted a young man to be the first to step onto the land of the new world.”
Pedro was silent a long moment as I stood, eyes closed, my head resting against his chest, imagining the scene, imagining how Pedro had saved me, imagining what it was to have a father.
Then the old man continued: “I thought you’d been swept away by the great waves of that terrible night. Now you see I could do nothing to save you. You saved yourself. And you knew that, son. For during the stormy night, bound so close together on the wheel that was keeping us afloat, you didn’t seem conscious but you murmured these words…”
“I’ve lived this before…” My eyes still closed, my head against his breast, I repeated the words with Pedro. “I knew already … I’m living this the second time … it happened long ago … two shipwrecks … two survivors … two lives … only one can be saved … one must die … so the other may live.”
The old man caressed my head again. “Yes, that’s what you said. What were you trying to tell me?”
“What did you think, then, Pedro?”
“That you’d given your life for mine, your young manhood for my old age, and it seemed a cruel fate. Didn’t you believe, when you were saved, that I had died?”
“Yes. I despised the pearls of that fabulous beach, for I’d gladly have exchanged them for your life.”
“Ah, yes, the pearls; you’d have exchanged the pearls for my life. But would you also have given your life for mine?”
I was troubled. “That doesn’t matter now, old man. We’re here together. We both survived.”
But Pedro said then with great sadness: “No, no, remember, what did you mean that night? Try to remember: you knew everything that happened before it had happened. That’s why I believe you must know what is going to happen next, what is going to happen again. Tell me: do you remember? In the end, which of us will survive here? You, or I?”
Sire, I never had the opportunity to answer.
THE EXCHANGE
Whoever lives amid sound is frightened by silence. More than darkness, silence is the terror of the night. And more than his confinement, the captive suffers the absence of the sonorous rhythms of freedom. We were surrounded by soft and regular murmurs: the warm waves of the sea, the crackling of the fire on the beach, the rustling of the palm fans.
Why did those sounds that had become customary after more than a week suddenly cease? I listened, my head still against Pedro’s breast, and heard the beating of his heart. Then, like an alert bird with eyes on each side of its head, I looked nervously from the jungle to the sea and from the sea to the jungle. I saw nothing at first: nothing to cause or justify the sudden cessation of sound.
My senses quickened. I imagined I had penetrated the forest at our back: there the green was so intense it was black. Again I looked toward the sea: the lemony-green waters, too, were growing dark, taking on the colors of the jungle: the sea, Sire, was a forest of trees.
I withdrew from the embrace of my aged father and, unable to move toward the shore, stood as if enchanted, perceiving finally that the sea was filled with tree trunks, as it had been the other day with the shells of the turtles, and that those floating trunks were advancing toward our beach. I whirled, frightened, as the fire crackling on the beach was echoed in the sound of snapping twigs and branches parted behind us in the jungle.
Stupidly, I managed to pant: “Pedro, did you bring a weapon?”
The old man shook his head, smiling. “We won’t need them here in our happy land.”
Happy or unfortunate, was it ours alone? Was it really ours? Or did it belong to the beings whose heads I could now see over the edge of the floating tree trunks? I don’t say men, Sire, because the first thing I saw were long black manes which I mistook for horses’ tails and for a moment I had a strange vision of floating trees manned by dusky centaurs. Only as that armada of trunks drew closer could I distinguish faces the color of the wood itself, and in the interior of the tree trunks I saw heads, round shields, and another forest — this time vertical — of ferocious lances.