Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet (debian ebook reader .txt) 📕

We drew closer to those gray masses, and they, I guess, were moving closer to the nets and to us as we approached them, and I couldn’t see much because Sam and Thompson were the only ones looking through binoculars as we motored. Just as we were getting in close enough for me to begin to study the weird curves of the tops of their bodies—because frankly I had no idea what I was looking at—one by one they dove, the edges of their massive tails leaving a waterfall of white as they sank beneath the waves. They were great smooth-moving crescents of gray-blue, and just like that those crescents slid under and disappeared from view, leaving only a faint, lacy wash of intercrossing waters on the surface. In fact there was hardly any turbulence at all. Those giants’ movements were seamless.

The guy at the steering wheel slowed us down; now we were chugging along a line of green oval buoys that marked the edge of a net. Beyond them was nothing but water.

“Damn it,” said Gina.

“Patience. We’re not done yet,” said Sam.

The sailor cut the engine and we sat there in the boat, the boat that was suspended on the water, dancing a bit, up and down, side to side in the lazy rhythm.

For a short time it seemed to me—and I remember this moment better than anything else from my honeymoon trip—as though the light over the ocean was a different light from any I’d seen before. It was morning, I know that rationally, but I have a strong recollection of a golden light, a gilded, amber light you might associate with retirement, peace and tranquillity. The light that seems to tremble in the air before the dusk descends, before a darkness falls upon the earth.

I’ve always liked to talk, as long as they’re someone worth talking to. I’ve always been bored by silent people. But right then I was so glad that no one was talking, that no one in that lifeboat was saying anything at all . . . I wondered: What if we’d never spoken in the first place? Where would we be, our race? Would we have machines, even?

Or on the other hand, maybe we’d already be long gone. Fallen to stronger animals, the ones with smaller brains and bigger muscles, longer claws and teeth.

Still: right then I wanted nothing more than for the wordless quiet to persist. I wished we’d never speak again, at that particular second—that the pure silence of waiting for the appearance of the blue whales, that wide-open, neutrally buoyant hope, that expectation would stretch on forever and a day.

No. Breaking the peace was the loud, abrasive noise of a ratcheting, a winching, scraping cacophony—mechanical, groaning. I understood after a second that a thick cable was creaking, the net slung beside us in the water was being moved. I wondered why; had the parent company found something? Or was this just part of the process of reduction, the process by which it was shrinking its search area and supposedly also forcing the mermaids nearer the shore, bringing them closer in?

With the hawser, or whatever it was, grinding away I had the urge to cover my ears with my hands, and at the same time I was struck with the conviction that either the whales or the mermaids were getting caught down there, convinced that the hauling of the nets was intended for them, that we were about to witness their willful death, what you might call their murder.

I was terrified, and for a while—I can’t say how long—that feeling of dread, plus the whine of the moving cable, was all I was really aware of.

Rick was filming, though there was little to see, he had the camera pointed at the patch of ocean where the whales had been. The rest of us did nothing, just watched and waited and endured the groan of steel.

With no warning except a single, slight back-and-forth rock, the Zodiac was pushed up onto one side, and we spilled out of it before we could register what was happening. It flipped on top of us, as we splashed, gurgled, and squawked. Blinded, choking on salt water and flailing around, I panicked—maybe I wouldn’t be able to get out from under the boat again, the surprisingly bulky inflatable boat that hung above me, upside-down, as I struggled to find its edge, get up around it and into the air to breathe. I felt my flip-flops slipping off my feet, and saw belongings floating near me, debris I bumped into, someone’s foot landed a heavy kick on my thigh, and then a hard, smooth surface scraped along me—not quite smooth, no, actually very rough at times, later I’d find I was bleeding all down the outside of one leg where barnacles had scraped the skin open.

There would be scars, I’d understand later. Gone, in a single instant and for the rest of my life, were the days of perfect legs. Those barnacles are sharp as hell. They’re vicious, truthfully. But at the time I wasn’t conscious of pain, only desperation as I tried to scrabble my way to the surface to breathe.

And when I got there—because I made it, obviously, since here I am, not dead, not telling my story as a sad ghost full of wisdom and longing from the grave—the water was still turbulent around me, and I was hearing shouts, faintly, and I was deeply relieved I’d put on the bulky, foolish-seeming lifejacket (Thompson, by contrast, had refused to wear one) because I couldn’t grab onto the side of the boat at first, it was too far up there and too slick/slippery and I was weak and out of breath, though I must have had some adrenaline on my side. There seemed to be chaos, and I couldn’t see right away, it took me a minute to blink the salt water out of my eyes and clarify the bobbing boat