(12)

A yellow-finned tuna, weighing perhaps thirty pounds, swam into their chamber the next morning, idling beneath the rope beds in what appeared to be curiosity. Seeing the great fish, Bob lunged for it, almost rolling off the bed in a vain attempt to seize it with his hands. But the tuna flicked its tail and darted easily out of reach, streaking to freedom out of the central hatch cover.

Previously the men had spent several hours trying to catch the tiny silverfish that swam by the thousands in schools about them. Perhaps these were the bait that lured the tuna into the bedroom. But even with makeshift nets and seines rigged from pieces of cloth, not a single one was caught.

In his explorations immediately following the capsizing, Jim had found a spool of 150-pound test fishing line, and half a dozen metallic leaders with tuna hooks. He had affixed the hooks to the line and thrown them eagerly into the sea, with no bait. Promptly a ferocious strike from an unidentified sea creature almost tore the line from his grip, but as he struggled to stay with the fish, the cord went loose. The fish had snapped the leader. Tying another leader on more securely, Jim tried once more, only to pull in the same empty line. He kept trying until all the hooks and leaders were gone, and all that remained was the cord. That had been three weeks ago.

“I wish we could catch that tuna,” muttered Bob, imagining the supply of fresh meat, liquid, and protein for Linda.

Jim had been sleeping when Bob made his lunge, and now he turned on his side, peering into the water lapping at his mattress. He watched silently for a time, then he suddenly sat up with an idea contained in his expression. “The antenna!” he said, climbing through the hole and working his way to the submerged cockpit of the Triton. In a few minutes, Jim dropped back into the chamber, carrying the radio antenna. About five feet long, it resembled an automobile whiplash antenna.

Jim asked for the file. Bob kept it under his mattress, daily honing his knife for carving.

As Jim began working on the antenna, Linda stirred, waking suddenly with a startled look. During the night she had screamed again, waking Bob and in her hysteria insisting that the Triton was disintegrating. As he always did, he rocked her back to sleep, murmuring protection and love.

“Good morning,” said Bob cheerfully. “Jim’s promised to catch us some breakfast.”

Holding up the antenna, Jim showed how he had quickly filed one end into a razor-sharp point. It had become a slender makeshift harpoon.

Linda looked at the harpoon, then asked suddenly, “Where are we?”

Bob grew worried. Had she lost her sense of time and place? “What do you mean?” he replied. “We’re still on our vacation cruise.”

“I know that,” she said, smiling normally. Her rationality was very much intact. “I mean, approximately where are we? What part of the ocean?”

Bob’s guess, and it was little more than that, would position the Triton somewhere off the coast of southern California, perhaps out from Santa Barbara. Linda nodded, digested the information, and then spoke authoritatively.

“I read a book on fishing in the waters of the West Coast,” she began.

“Of course you did,” said Jim, continually struck by the thoroughness of her life.

“The book said there are sea bass in these waters, giant ones. They get up to seven hundred pounds.”

“That’s encouraging,” said Jim. “I’ll make the point a little sharper.”

Linda giggled. “Catch us one of those seven-hundred-pounders, Jim. That should do us for a while.”

“What would you do with it if Jim got one?” said Bob.

“Well,” said Linda impishly. “We could eat just its ear.”

Dressing in his scuba suit, Jim took the harpoon and dropped into the water beneath his bed. He would try his handmade spear here before using it in the open sea. As he disappeared, Bob and Linda leaned off their mattress, watching the murky water. Several times within the next half hour Jim emerged, grabbing air, shaking his head negatively, plunging down again. Then, suddenly, a dozen feet from their beds, the water began to churn. Jim came up thrashing, trying to lift his harpoon above water. But it was bent in half, like a bamboo pole. Presumably Jim had hit an enormous fish, one which was struggling to expel the antenna buried in its flesh.

Clapping excitedly, Linda cried encouragement. “Stay with him!” Bob crossed his finger, hoping, hoping.

The battle endured for another minute, Jim forced to dive again and follow the creature toward the bow hatch. Then the water stopped churning. Jim surfaced, ripping off his mask in disgust. He had even lost the harpoon. “I had him good,” he said, climbing wearily onto his bed and breathing hard. “But the copper wire inside the antenna started unraveling.” The harpoon had disintegrated in Jim’s hands, and the fish finally yanked it away, fleeing through one of the open holes in the Triton.

The three sat silently and dejectedly for a long while until Linda broke the morose spell. “Somewhere out there is a very funny fish,” she said, and all managed to smile at the image of the creature trailing a long copper antenna wire.

The flurry over the lost fish soon wore Linda down, and she fell back into bed, her body racked with dry coughs and the rattling noise that had become so familiar to Bob when she had trouble breathing. Now he felt it best to cancel the morning talk and games so she could rest.

But Linda would not have it. She wanted the discussion hour this day.

“Okay,” said Bob. “What’ll it be? Politics? Tolstoy? Wedding gifts?”

“A new one,” said Linda. “It’s called People.”

“People?”

A simple subject, explained Linda, but one that could well occupy them. The point was for each of them to roam through their lives and remember people whom they admired and to tell why.

Instantly Bob understood. Even though Linda could not bear to look at her face in the mirror anymore, she knew how ravaged it had become. She knew her condition was desperate, and she did not want to die without saying a figurative good-bye to those who had enhanced her life. Today she would line them up and embrace them all.

“That’s an interesting subject,” said Bob. “You want to start?”

Linda shook her head. No, she wanted Jim to be first.

Still angry at losing the fish, Jim was not in a mood for games. But he recognized that Linda’s need must be attended.

“Okay,” he said. “People. Wilma, first of all. She’s the most wonderful woman a man could wish for. She works so hard, she never complains, she keeps a good home. She’s given me two children, and there’ll be another one if—when we get home.”

Then he stopped. Jim was not adroit at description. Moreover, the memory of his family and the expected child made his eyes cloud. He turned his face away.

Linda prodded him gently. “Go on,” she said. “Where did you meet her?”

“At college,” he replied. “We were both working in the cafeteria. She was on the food line, I was sort of a cleanup boy. I noticed her and I got up my courage and I asked her out and fell in love with her and we got married and I’ve never regretted a second of our life together.” Thus delivered of his instant biography, a smile crossed his face. “I remember one more thing. She told me her parents were from Russia, so I wrote my parents and told them I was going out with a Russian girl. But don’t worry, I told them. She doesn’t look like Mrs. Khrushchev. Wilma has never let me forget that.”

Abruptly Jim terminated his talk and he rubbed his eyes. When he spoke again, he fought against sobs which threatened to break. “I—I just wish I could tell her right now …” he said haltingly.

Linda reached across and touched his arm. “You are telling her, Jim,” she said. “Wilma knows. She feels your love this very moment.”

How excellent is this woman, thought Bob, as he watched her console the strange man who was his brother-in-law. Here she is, trapped in an upside-down boat, wasting away, hungry, thirsty, gravely ill, and she reaches out to comfort a man who is distraught because he cannot be with his wife.

“Bob?” Linda turned to her husband, indicating that it was his turn. Had he yielded to temptation, he would have spent the hour if not the day telling Linda of his love for her. But he would save that for the next time Jim went topside, when they were alone, in each other’s arms.

“Let’s see,” said Bob. “People I admire.” Quickly he listed several—a horticulturist and his wife at whose home he had boarded during college, a teacher who had challenged and inspired him, assorted friends, relatives, brothers, sisters. With each new name, Linda agreed enthusiastically, for she had heard her husband speak favorably of them before. Hearing the names on this morning contented her.

Bob paused. “And my dad, of course.”

Looking up, Jim appeared surprised. “You told me once that the two of you were never very close.”

Bob shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean that. There was a long time when I didn’t understand him. When I was a little kid, I looked up at him and all I saw was this very hard man, a disciplinarian. He plowed the fields, he stored the hay, he expected me to sit on a tractor without complaint for ten hours a day. He set the pace, you see, and he felt a kid should keep up. There didn’t seem to be much else in his life. Hardly any humor. He slept a little, he worked a lot, he went to church, he prayed, he tried to put God into me and my brothers and sisters. I guess I felt he was a cold, emotionless man who didn’t care about me very much.”

Jim understood. His own father was from the same hard-working, God-fearing mold. And Jim himself, though displaced from the country to the city, held much the same values.

“What made you change your feeling about him?” asked Linda. She knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it again.

“You,” answered Bob, gazing at his wife with tenderness. “And Mother Russia.”

The story began pouring from him. After he decided not to pursue the ministry in the Adventist faith, after he decided to go even further and resign formally from the church, there ensued four or five years of coldness with his devout family. Only on two or three occasions during these years, for less than an hour each time, did he even speak with his parents. And these difficult moments had been filled with their exhortations for him to reconsider. Always Bob refused, always the farewells had been chilled. Discomforted, he worried about the estrangement. But even exile from his family would not change his decision to live outside the church.

When Bob met Linda and proposed marriage, he felt it necessary at least to introduce her to his parents.

“Dad’s face just lit up,” said Bob, happy in the recollection. “I don’t think he had ever seen anything so pretty.” Shortly after that, Bob had an idea. He and his bride-to-be had decided to go to Europe for their honeymoon, a journey of several weeks. They had thought about including Russia in their itinerary. Would his parents like to join them? Both had been born in Russia, both had left as small children, neither had ever returned to the soil of their birth. They would enjoy such a trip, thought Bob, and perhaps the wounds could be healed.

“Well,” Bob went on, “much to my surprise, Dad jumped at the chance. We had the marriage. It was beautiful; Linda and I flew immediately to Amsterdam. There we rendezvoused with the folks, who had come over separately.” In a Volkswagen camper which Bob bought there, they all drove to the Russian border in Finland.

“The first thing we saw was this big sign in several different languages, very clearly warning ‘Do Not Get Out of Car.’ Well, Dad was so excited at finally setting foot in Russia again that he jumped out and began jabbering at this guard. When the guard answered him, Dad turned to us and cried, ‘Imagine that! He speaks Russian!’ Dad started telling the guard all this news—how he had left Russia as a kid, how he grew wheat and cattle in North Dakota, how he had always dreamed of coming back someday. The guard just stared at him, totally perplexed, a little happy at Dad’s elation, but annoyed that the rule was being broken. Finally he just pointed, sternly, at the warning sign. Dad read it again and got back in the car, still talking, not the least bit sheepish.”

As he reminisced, Bob picked up the scale model of the house and began to carve. Linda moved closer to him, finding warmth in his work and his story. Her eyes closed now and then, and she would come to suddenly, with a start, but she wanted Bob to continue.

“Well,” he went on, “it was just like a kid going to grandma’s farm. You’ve never seen such juices flow in a man.”

“Tell Jim about Boguslav,” said Linda.

“Jim’s heard about Boguslav,” said Bob. “Wilma told him. They tell the story at family reunions.”

“We’ve all heard about Boguslav,” agreed Linda. “But I want to hear it again. I’m the chairperson of this hour.”

“Okay. Boguslav.” At Kiev, Bob and his father had inquired about making a side trip to the village of Boguslav, where the older man had been born. It was possible, said the Intourist guide, but it would require an official escort and a chauffeured car. The price: one hundred dollars.

Outraged at such capitalistic greed in his mother country, Mr. Tininenko drew his family aside and said he had a better idea. He ushered his clan onto a public bus, and, for fifty cents, they all rode happily to Boguslav, unescorted.

“When we got there,” said Bob, “it was like the homecoming scene out of a novel. Great throwing of arms around everybody, kissing, feasts, vodka toasts—my head still aches when I think of all the vodka I threw down. Dad doesn’t drink, of course, being an Adventist, and he would only play like he was sipping, then slip the glass to me. Dad ran all over the village—he must have inspected every inch of it. I remember him exclaiming at a pear tree that he had planted as a child, a tree now fifty years old. It all became a jumble of laughing and crying and singing. Dad seemed to know everybody in the village. It was as if he had never gone away.

“I remember most vividly when he stooped down and let the earth run between his fingers. His face was shining. It was the most alive I have ever seen a man. At that moment, I finally understood my father. He’s Russian, a real Russian. He’s from another culture, a culture where you spring from the land of peasants, where you do as you are told, where tradition is all, where one obeys the will of the elders. All those years I was bursting out, trying to be as American as I could be, a little ashamed of my Russian name that nobody could pronounce, all those years of not understanding my father. Well, I like him now. I’m just sorry I didn’t learn about him sooner. We’ve been great friends ever since.”

Bob stopped and drew in his breath. He had talked longer than he ever had. But he remembered another detail. “This little one—” he said, looking at his wife, “Linda was the biggest hit of all. She learned a little Russian and she flat stole their hearts. Particularly the dirty old men.” Linda laughed at the memory of the village elders bringing her flowers and bowing before her.

When it was her turn to present a list of people she admired, Linda began with a worry. There were so many, she said, that she feared she would omit someone important to her. But she would try. Her sister. Her father. A childhood friend named Keith who at eight had had an astonishing vocabulary. Many friends that Bob had mentioned. “And my mother,” she said.

In fits and starts, in a dry voice, in thoughts that wandered like those of a very old person, Linda spoke emotionally of her mother, how Hisako fell in love with an American she met at a dance in Tokyo in 1946, how they defied parents and authorities opposed to East-West marriages, how her father brought his new wife to Pennsylvania in 1948 because he was afraid to take her to his home state of Montana with its laws against such marriages. She told of how her mother struggled wtih English, how she adapted to life in a trailer park with a common washroom while her husband studied agricultural chemistry, how she kept a splendid Japanese ceremonial gown and obi in a box whose wood she rubbed with scented oil. “My mother went through more than most women can imagine,” said Linda, “because she loved a man. I understand that.”

By the end of her story, Linda was crying, and Bob held her, enraged at his inability to do anything more for her.

At the dinner hour, Linda lacked the strength to eat the bites of vegeburgers that Bob mashed carefully and tried to place in her mouth. All she could take were a few sips of water before she fell asleep, translucent lids falling across her faded eyes. Within an hour, she began to moan, and when she woke, she told Bob with enormous shame that she needed to void her bowels. None of the three had passed a bowel movement since the capsizing. She thought she would feel better, she said, crying in mortification, but she simply could not evacuate. Bob reached into Linda’s anus and forced out a hardened feces the size of a baseball.

“A few days ago,” said Linda the next morning, August 5, the twenty-sixth day of their existence inside the capsized trimaran, “you were going to tell whether a person can be a good Christian and be saved without belonging to a formal church.” As she spoke to Jim, her voice was stronger. In the depths of her agony, she had found unused resources. With salt water she scrubbed her face, and then Bob brushed her hair, worried that she would notice the places where tufts were falling out.

Now Bob stiffened at her request. “Let’s not go into that this morning,” he said. “I feel like singing some songs. Where’s the harmonica, Jim?”

“Please, Bob. Let him answer. It’s important to me.”

Jim nodded. He had been waiting for the time when he could speak again to Linda of his God and his faith. “I feel,” he began softly, “that if a person knows the truth—and the truth is the teachings and precepts of the church—then that person must live by the church. And it is almost impossible to live by that church without attending it regularly. You must! Because there and only there do you find the same kind of people, good people, Christian people, leading Christian lives. We encourage one another. We gain strength from the minister’s leadership, from his preaching, from his prayers, from our study of the Bible. These things get us through the week. They prepare us for the last days of mankind, which are surely near. They lead us to justification and, finally, to sanctification.”

Bob interrupted, cutting in sharply as he had done so often in his life when he felt it necessary to challenge a presumption.

“But, Jim,” he insisted, “you can do these things without ever setting foot in a church, even your church. Life can’t be as narrow as your church wants it to be.”

“You’re wrong,” replied Jim. “My life isn’t narrow. My life is rich. And full. And it will be joyful beyond imagination when Jesus comes again.”

Bob shook his head in frustration. He was chipping marble with a toothpick. “I know people as pious as you,” he said, “and they don’t belong to a church. Yet they lead exemplary Christian lives.”

Perhaps, said Jim. But he knew nothing of such people. Nor did he want to know them. All he needed was the church, the fellowship, the nearness of Christ. “I am lost without it,” he said. “I am naked without it.”

Moving his eyes away from Bob, Jim stretched out his arms to Linda. “I pray for you, Linda,” he said.

“Let her alone,” Bob said hotly. “Can’t you see she needs rest?” He drew his arms around Linda again and helped her lie back. She fell asleep quickly, her breathing once more in rattles and gasps.

When she awoke, she cried out Jim’s name. He answered quickly.

“What is sanctification?” she asked.

Sanctification, he said, is obedience to God’s holy word and law. Sanctification is a life led in pursuit of the truth. Sanctification is faith in Christ and the spirit of humility.

“Please, Linda, try to get this down,” Bob pleaded, holding the spoon of food before her face. If she would only eat, he reasoned, then she would draw enough nourishment to last a few more days, enough to sustain her until rescue came. They could not be more than an hour from one of the best hospitals in the world. He cursed the irony.

“I can’t.” Linda pushed away the spoon.

Bob put the food into his own mouth and chewed it to the consistency of mush. Then he kissed her, transferring the food to her mouth. She worked her jaws feebly.

“Did you swallow it?” he asked.

She shook her head weakly.

“Then spit it out.”

Linda tried to expel the tiny portion of food into Bob’s cupped hand.

He took the water jug and filled his mouth, bending down to transfer the liquid from his lips to hers. She swallowed, coughing.

She slept again.

But when it was almost dark in the chamber, when only the faintest of mauve and burnished gold shadows lingered across them, Linda raised on her elbows. Suddenly she seemed cheerful, the ebbing light of dusk dancing in her eyes.

“Why don’t we go to McDonalds,” she said. Bob began to laugh at her bad joke.

“I want a Big Mac,” she prattled on. “On second thought, I think I’d prefer chicken. That’s it! Let’s go down to Colonel Sanders’ for some Kentucky Fried Chicken.” She drawled the name in an accent of magnolia and moss.

“What turned you on so fast?” asked Bob, both pleased and amused at her air. But when he shifted near to her, he saw the fixed blankness in her eyes. She stared not at him, but through him, to a private world of her own. Quickly she began to cry for a lost doll, and she railed at Bob for taking it from her and hiding it in a secret place. She began to strike him, screaming, crying like a distraught child.

Bob accepted the soft blows at his chest and shoulders, weeping as he did. What more could a man do when his wife was going insane as she lay beside him.