W
e sail against the wind.
I thought I had a silent agreement with God.
I thought life would be gracious to me if I searched for its source, its inexhaustible essence and treasure. God’s hand has let go of mine. And my guardian angel seems to have stopped watching over me.
We sit quietly, secured in our harnesses in the cockpit.
The rope beats against the mast. The howling of the wind’s turbine seems unpleasant now, like a horrible film I would have turned off or changed.
The wind suddenly increases.
Something shatters below deck. Janek screams out a tirade of obscenities, kisses his crucifix and folds his hands. He blindly trusts the old prophecies of a heavenly life after this earthly one for those who have earned it before God. However, the threat of Hell lurks constantly beneath the surface and waxes stronger every day when he appears to have lost contact with his heart.
Dark, heavy clouds are massing above us. The steam built up during the day causes storms that rage at night. The blaze from lightning bolts display pale, frightened faces in the dark. Bo starts to hum and to rock back and forth in his place.
Nora’s gaze is firmly fixed on the sky.
“There, port side!” Nora shouts and points toward a long, dark cyclone stretching from the black clouds and touching the surface of the water.
Janek secures his harness to the wheel and moves there.
“Hang on!”
He swerves the boat sharply to starboard.
Bo falls onto the deck. I try to help him up but he appeals to be left lying under the table.
Janek shrieks at him to sit up again in the cockpit and soon turns the boat vigorously in the opposite direction when a wide twister suddenly emerges a bit from us.
Entirely too close. Only a few yards away from us. Only a few yards from that fragile margin between life and death.
As its twisting touches the surface, it lashes the water up onto our boat. Some kind of rage seems to fill its energy. We move speedily away from it, but soon another whirlwind dives toward the surface of the water like a black spear whipping up the water and destroying whatever gets in its path. Our small vessel would be helpless if we ended up between these wild cyclones.
Black clouds now cover the sky. The waves grow bigger and stronger.
“Sit in the cockpit again! We won’t be able to see the twisters anyway, not when it’s so dark!” Nora tries to shout over the loud thundering of wave and wind.
Janek attempts moving back to the cockpit with his harness. He’s thrown headlong by a wave.
He crawls to his place, kisses his crucifix and says something in another language. Maybe in Polish.
A prayer, perhaps. A prayer God doesn’t seem to want to hear.
Blood is running from a gash in his forehead. He wipes it away with his arm. The white light from the lightning illuminates a bloody, terrified face.
A gigantic wave grows like a dark wall opposite where I’m sitting. I close my eyes and pray that I will be awaken.
Awaken from this nightmare.
To wake up from the dream that my life as a human should be the ultimate truth.
God doesn’t hear my prayers either.
My inner voice is now my only consolation.
Cold, hard saltwater knocks me down when the waves hit the boat and the cockpit. Everything inside me seems to break again. I scream. A scream in vain.
“Val, you have to sit up again! It’s dangerous for you to lie on the floor!”
Nora tries to pull me up.
I just have time to sit up when yet another giant, black wall of water grows.
“Must be 22 or 23 feet!”
Janek raises his hand to show the waves height.
I close my eyes.
The wave crashes violently down on us. Water courses through my ears, nose and mouth.
I cough up water. Saltwater rinses through my nostrils.
Janek’s eyes stare blankly. He raises his hand again.
“Maybe 30, 32 feet, port side.”
He bends down and buries his head in his arms.
Buries everything he has done wrong but justified in the name of his belief.
Bo’s eyes are wide-open and he screams that he can’t take another wave. He shouts that he’s wet himself, that he wants to die. Then his mortal fear assumes another language I don’t understand, presumably his mother tongue Swedish.
No-one hears us here. Only life can hear us now.
No sailing training can help us against Mother Earth’s storm winds and gigantic waves.
We can only surrender and ride out the storm in silence.
It is too late to beg for life’s mercy. Karma’s cycle turns at the same speed as the twister goes. Too late to disembark now.
The waves slam over us. Nora and I hit our heads when we both fall to the deck.
All goes black again. I am soaring among the stars. A whale passes me silently. It is immense. Its curious eyes examine me when it crosses by my pathetic being.
Nora pulls me carelessly up to my sitting place beside her.
I want to remain in the dream with the whale. But it appears I’ve not yet paid off my karmic punishment.
Some warm fluid fills my mouth. It tastes of iron. I spit blood and what feels like hard pieces of tooth slivers.
My upper body explodes and my lower body sleeps.
Saltwater runs from my nose.
Bo’s groans and cries are only faintly heard through the ear-splitting noise of the raging sea.
He vomits. Saltwater and vomit splash us all.
Janek swears and shrieks to Bo to calm down and shut up.
Saltwater runs from my eyes.
Nora squeezes my hand as the waves continue to pound down on us.
I look at the little lifeboat flying around in the waves behind us. Would that be able to save us if the boat sank? Would that get us to dry land and safety?
No, only life can save us if that is what is written.
And what is written, only life knows.
I might change my script here or there, but the script of life is nothing I can decide.
I close my eyes and let the wave wash through me. An exhalation, a resignation to something far greater and reverent.
My shape feels empty. The essence of every kind is empty.
An emptiness full of life.
A silent prayer:
If this is my last journey. If I sink in the deep, let me become one with the sea on my passage towards the bottom of the ocean.
One with life.
Thy will be done.