A wharf jutting out into the open sea. Waves rumble below, foam spouts from cracks between the planks. Men angle for tuna and stingrays. They cast their lines from the platform at the far end of the jetty, where the water is already deep, and wrest huge creatures from the sea that drench them in salt water as they writhe in mid-air and then again on the pier’s wooden planking. A warm breeze blows in from the interior and whips the clothing of passersby against their bodies and roars in their ears. Perched on the guardrails or on the backs of benches, children eat ice cream that trickles between their fingers and onto their bare bellies. The heat of the beach is like no other, worn like a piece of clothing.
So different from the others in their long shirts, the Borya brothers serve as their mother’s bodyguards. She holds the youngest on her hip and strides toward the fishermen, her skirts billowing around her legs. Three coins jangle in her pocket and their clinking combines with the clacking of her heels against the wharf. The biggest fish require tough bargaining, so the boys’ father sent his wife. He told her to wear her grey dress, the one with the low-cut square neck that shows off her breasts, plump with milk. She makes her way toward the men, her attempt at sensuality somewhat hindered by the presence of her sons. The eldest walks in front of her, pushing a wheelbarrow three times his weight to transport the animal once the deal has been made. The younger two run to keep up with their mother’s swaying gait. As for her, she sees only the huge fish hanging mid-wharf, the fishermen’s sturdy bodies, the blue water and the light sparkling on its surface.
Osip Borya, chasing a salamander, has stayed behind. By the time he loses the tiny creature in the tall grasses, his mother and brothers have left. He can’t see them anywhere. Immediately overhead, seagulls wheel like sparrow hawks. A pelican swoops toward the beach, throat stretched taut with its catch, and lands on a post right next to the boy. The bird is still dripping from its plunge into the water. It looks at the child, throws its skull back and, swallowing its prey in one majestic gulp, unfurls its wings. At that exact moment, several things occur. First, the pelican lifts off and returns to its position on the waves. Then, watching the seabird, Osip spies his mother at the end of the wharf and notices a tiny movement she makes: as her right foot lifts out of its shoe, she reaches down to brush sand off the sole of her foot. Just behind her, a fisherman lets out a shout and hauls from the water a five-foot-long swordfish thrashing around like a demon. Three men harpoon it to sap the creature’s strength.
Osip memorizes it all. The curly down on the pelican’s neck, the pearls of water on its feathers, the extended pouch below its beak, the exact shape of the still-living fish sliding down its esophagus from throat to gizzard, the silence of the prey’s extinction amid the continuous din of the beach; his mother’s tanned hand brushing her white foot, the ankle he’d never noticed before, her bosom as she reaches down; the raised bill of the swordfish, its death throes, the light striking the metal tips of the harpoons, the blood mingling with the salt water spilling into the sea and along the dock, gently splashing his mother’s dress and brown hand though not her foot, already tucked back beneath her underskirt.
Suddenly, Osip’s small sex stiffens. There’s no controlling the phenomenon: the rod rises, a stranger to the child. A secret part of his body has come to life and suddenly the fear of being found out by his brothers, by the fishermen — grown men — washes over him.
He sinks into the tall grasses and waits for the stiffness to pass. It takes forever. His mother is still visible; from afar, he recognizes her dress and her braids. He knows he must avert his eyes because if not — it has taken him a while to understand as much — his sex will never soften. He looks for something to distract him: a shell, a crab. Occasionally, intense concentration on a jellyfish — a medusa — restores some suppleness to his member. He catches sight of the salamander he tracked earlier and meets its black gaze. It has two yellow spots on its eyelids and he focuses all his energy there. He tries to shake off the thought of his mother’s ankle by studying the salamander’s skull, but its ocelli call to mind the circles of his mother’s breasts. He has to find a way to rid himself of thoughts of her. His mother. Her tanned wrist and the bounce to her chest, restrained by her undergarments, when she brushes her hair, when she eats, when she carries the baby on her hip.
He tugs at his pants, backs deeper into the bushes. He glances up at the dock, ever so briefly, so as not to look at his mother yet see her all the same. He strokes his member, just below its unsheathed head. His mother haggles, she moves her body like a woman of the street, swaying her hips as she measures the size of the swordfish. She sets the youngest down on the bench and ruffles the eldest’s hair.
At precisely this moment in his life, Osip Borya is mindful of four certainties: