Sea of Many Returns

The storm is brewing, the winds rising; Zeus the cloud gathereris at work. Martina is stirring in the next room. I leave Mentor’smanuscript on the walnut table, and sit by the bed until she settles. I move from room to room, fasten the shutters, stop in the kitchen and bring the briki to the boil. I pour the coffee and return to the livingroom. I am about to resume my translation, but on an impulse I put Mentor’s manuscript aside. It is time to move closer to the present and the chain of events that has brought me here. I approach the task with a sense of dread. Ti na kanoume. Ti na kanoume. What can we do? What can we do? Ola ine tikhe. Ola ine tikhe. All is luck. All is fate. It is an ancient lament, a dirge that villagers chant with a fatalist’s shrug, the words islanders mouth when one of theirs succumbs. Rarely a year goes by without a young man being taken by the sea. Last year it was a youth on Lefkada. He awoke to a day of spring perfection and left for the bay with his heart singing. He boarded a caique with his diving partner, and cast off in anticipation.
He cut the engines in the strait and drifted at anchor. On the lower slopes he would have made out the village he called home.

On the waterfront he would have seen the night fishermen unloading their haul. It was midday when he made the fatal dive. On shore the shopkeepers were closing the doors and shutters, preparing for the siesta. He adjusted his mask and snorkel and leapt from the boat clutching a spear gun. He held no fear for these waters. When he did not surface at the expected time his diving partner raised the alarm.

When the news reached the village the screams of the young man’s parents shredded the skies. His mother stumbled through the streets tearing at her hair, beating her fists against her thighs.

‘He was so beautiful this last summer,’ his grandmother cried.

‘I am nothing but a dead man walking,’ his father intoned.

‘The sea has finished for me,’ he vowed. The young man’s body was retrieved by divers and laid out on the waterfront. His mask-like face retained the hint of a smile. Death, it seemed, had come as no surprise.

One year later, the villagers gathered to commemorate the event. They set the table for the wedding guests and for the groom who would never be. They wept for the woman he would not impregnate and the children he would never sire. They ate and drank, and spoke of his lust for the sea, the fatal disease.

Thalassomania, the affliction is called. Thalassa. Thalassa, the Sirens hum. If you have ventured too far down, do not be alarmed. Your body is transparent, weightless. Allow the water to take you. You are safe in its cool embrace. What better way is there of passing?

‘There have been times, under water,’ cousin Andonis has confided, ‘that I imagine I possess special powers. I dive deeper with great ease, and think I can hold my breath for hours. I am overcome by a wish to dissolve in the depths. Perhaps it is the memory of the womb that lures me, a lethal desire to return to my true home, a primal yearning.’

Perhaps this is how Manoli should have died, deep within the waters of the Ionian, with a spear gun in his hand and the shores of Ithaca within reach. A smile on his face, and his body at repose, divested of the rage that would accompany him to the grave.

Extract published courtesy of Text Publishing
© Arnold Zable