As the seals could not attack, Amundsen could not bring himself to strike. To him, whaling in the olden days meant risking a life for a life. At least that’s how he and his old-school comrades still hunted whales, out of a conviction that whaling was an important part of Scandinavian culture. This was different: the seals were weak and vulnerable creatures with big eyes and pathetic cries. Amundsen just did not know how to do this. It would be okay if I used a gun, he thought. For the first time in his life Amundsen felt that for the killer to use a different tool changed the meaning of the act.
The seals were skinned right at the boat. One hunter used a razor to slice the skin, starting from the gash on the seal’s head, while another helped him slowly peel off the animal’s skin, just like removing a pair of too-tight jeans. Seal blood kept welling up, flowing onto the ice. Without eyelids, the seals that hadn’t made it off the ice all seemed to be staring at him, glassy-eyed. Amundsen was a man long accustomed to slaughter, but this sight chilled him.
“Why not wait until they’re dead before skinning them?”
“It’s quicker to peel the skin off when they’re alive,” said Kent, sensing the doubt in Amundsen’s tone. “It’s true many hunters don’t check whether the seal’s skull has been shattered. I always make sure the seal is dead, but I don’t blame those who don’t. Too slow, no dough, right?”
Then a seasoned hunter called Alfie caught two male seals, cut off their penises with a knife, but did not skin them.
Amundsen asked, “Who’s buying seal penises?”
“An adult’s fur isn’t worth anything, but its dick is. Asians eat it. They think it’s like Viagra, that if they eat it they’ll have the sex drive of a seal. If seals want someone to blame they should blame those fools who eat seal dicks. Actually, seals don’t have a very good sex drive, at least not compared with me,” Kent quipped.
Amundsen said nothing on the way back. He did not blame Kent or the other hunters or himself. He did not think his faith in whaling was misplaced. He simply sensed he’d gone hollow somewhere inside. Kent saw the qualms, the hurt and the questioning look in Amundsen’s eyes, and the self-reproach he too had once felt returned. He avoided his friend’s eyes and patted him on the shoulder, saying, “Life’s not easy for these hunters. They just scrape by. It’s the middlemen who make all the money. Sealing is the only thing some of these guys can do. It’s all they have. If you don’t let them seal, they’ll starve.”
Something wavered somewhere deep in Amundsen’s heart.
Amundsen went back to Norway several months later. He ate the pickled fish Sara prepared for him. The fish eyes had been gutted, and when Amundsen stared at the eye sockets, the swiveling eyes of those seals, so juvenile, like the eyes of schoolchildren, inadvertently returned. It wasn’t “killing” the seals that had struck him, but the “way” the seals were killed. People had to kill to make a living. Like it or not, that could not change, just like it wasn’t right or wrong for the Inuit people to kill seals for survival. But people weren’t just killing seals for survival anymore, and, more importantly, the hunters clearly had the energy and the ability to check whether the seals were still suffering, but their hearts remained unmoved. It must have taken them long years of training to turn their hearts to stone. Men who had to hunt for food did not have hearts of stone. They were full of gratitude toward the hunted animal, just as the eyes of their womenfolk and children waiting eagerly at home were full of anticipation. But the sealing he had witnessed in Labrador was nothing like that. Everything had changed.
At the dinner table, knife and fork untouched, he related his sealing experience to Sara.
“You don’t think it’s right? Daddy?”
“I don’t know. There are still lots of seals. But there used to be lots of whales, too, and people had no sympathy for them. They saw whales as disposable. Sometimes they killed massive numbers of whales, taking only the thickest strips of blubber and not bothering with the rest. Then there came a day when there were not many whales left in the sea. Lately I’ve started to feel that even if people could never kill the last whale or seal, even if there were always another, we should only take what we need to live and no more.”
“So you think …”
“Recently, I keep thinking that this isn’t about the survival of a species. It’s about why we’re never satisfied with what we need, why we always take a bit more.”
“What about the penises? Where do they sell them?” Sara was intently remembering the penises she’d seen before, two of them belonging to classmates, one to a friend she’d met working part time. She had held their penises. They were warm to the touch, and gave her the sense that there was some living thing within.
“China, Hong Kong or Taiwan, I guess,” Amundsen said, stirring the soft-cooked egg on his plate. “Sara, most of my fishing buddies have not completely turned their hearts to stone. Many have no other choice. But behind them are the corporate bosses. Counting their cash in comfy chairs in nice heated rooms, they never appear on the boat or on the ice, and their hearts never bleed.”
Sara would always remember the look of sadness that appeared in her father’s eyes. They were brimming with pathos, an expression she had never seen before on any other animal. Amundsen’s eyes were flashing, like he had an insect’s compound eyes. “Sara, I renounce my identity as a seafaring hunter. The time has come. I really feel I must relinquish my former identity. I have to try to make a change, or I will feel that I have lived my life in vain.”
Amundsen kept his vow. That year he sold his boat and joined an international organization opposed to the slaughter of seals. He went back to Canada and threw himself into the antisealing movement. He also took part in commercial whaling protests in Norway. From then on, Amundsen gave people a big headache on both sides of the Atlantic.
When Sara saw the sea her father had always called “our Pacific,” a thousand feelings thronged her heart.
Although the beach had been given a “temporary” cleanup, some of the trash from the vortex would wash onto the shore every day with the tide, as if the trash island out there wanted to unite with the island on which she was standing.
Because he had a prior arrangement, Jung-hsiang was going to have an old classmate who was now teaching at the U of D host Sara and Detlef. But then he decided another friend he’d met mountain climbing might be more suitable. “His name is Dahu and he’s aboriginal. When you visit Taiwan, especially the east coast, the aboriginal people make the best guides.”
Immediately after crossing the bridge over the last river before Haven, they saw a dark-skinned man with a red bandana waving at them. Sara had a profoundly good feeling about this stocky fellow with a mournful expression. There was an unaffected quality in his every movement.
“Sara, Detlef, so nice to meet you! I am Dahu.”
Dahu got in the driver’s seat. About half an hour later they were heading down the coast by the Sea House.
The sea they saw from there was in a different state, because as far as the eye could see across the gently curving bay they could barely make out the edge of the Trash Vortex.
“How are you handling it now?”
“Well, we start by sorting the trash on the beach. Five decomposition vats have been set up in the nearby wastepaper plant. Anything that will decompose is sent there for priority processing. The valuable trash is sent elsewhere for further sorting and recycling. Any live animals we find are sent to the local university for experts to study. You’ll see we’ve got nine work stations, but to tell you the truth we don’t have enough people to man them.”