L
ightning shoots from the coal black clouds on the horizon. A sudden gust of wind causes the railing on the port side to nearly touch the sea surface. I pull myself up to stand with the help of the mast. The wind tears aggressively in the boat and in my body. It whips my face and tosses me unwillingly about the boat. Its constant whining in my ears is intolerable.
I fight for my life against these monumental powers as I crawl down below deck.
I am always blinded at the moment when I get below. My eyes need to adjust to the great contrast from white, glaring sea that I, with no UV protection, observe the majority of my waking hours.
My body is wet and it shakes. It huddles into a foetal position on my narrow bunk on the port’s after side.
The wind shoves against the thin wall that divides us. With frightening determination, it seems to want to get in, tear the floor apart.
I cover my ears with my hands and close my eyes. A constant roar howls within.
A short moment of panic that I cannot make, the wind’s nagging howling quiet is replaced by a more distanced, objective observation of my internal body sensations.
The wind howls in my ears, nothing more, nothing less.
The last I hear prior to falling asleep is the first I hear upon awaking.
Missiles are fired within and my obligatory pain threshold cramps my face and my body as I rise from my bunk.
It patters above. It has rained for three days.
I attempt to straighten my spine and walk on my toes to see myself in the mirror inside the tiny space of the head.
White, wrinkled lines from all my squinting radiate from my eyes.
I perceive light behind the colour of my eyes. A light I’ve not noticed before. Light which has perhaps not been given permission, space to come out before.
My skin feels transparent, pellucid and without protection.
A wave casts the boat to starboard. A bruise takes shape on my left elbow.
Everything fades to black again. I sit down on the toilet lid and close my eyes. That doesn’t help when one’s balance is deranged.
The room spins round and a claustrophobic sensation grows within me.
I stumble up on deck.
I hang onto the mast and see if the rain can wash away whatever is pushing inside. Quench my thirst. Quench the fire burning within.
The white fire burning from my heart now feels like a heavy, black fire blackening my insides and issuing out poisonous energy.
The whale’s lament vibrates within me below the surface somewhere.
The rope on the mast in my right hand is clasping, it wishes to let go. To fall headlong into the deep.
A gap in the clouds makes a strip of sea glimmer with light. Over there a fountain spouts.
A dark shadow approaches the boat. I squint, place my hand routinely at my brow as protection from the sun in an attempt to discern what is closing in.
A school of fish? A fountain spouts again. Now it is only a few feet away from me.
The rhythm of my heart is out of sync when my mind comprehends it is a gigantic whale swimming in the water right up next to me.
Its prodigious body is larger than the boat. A terrifying delight fills me. One trifling little beat of its massive tailfin could mean devastating consequences for our boat.
Tears and rain sluice over my face.
A smaller, yet still enormously big whale body looms beside the whale’s side. A mama and her baby! I want to shout for Bo but cannot make a sound.
I don’t know if I’m dreaming. Saltwater from her fountain splattering my already wet body makes it all seem ‘real’.
An inner torrent is released and sobbing cries escape. It quenches the dark fire that was just burning and rinses out the remains of arrogance and distrust to life.
I keep watching the two whales when they dive and disappear.
My desperate grip on the rope at the railing makes it nearly impossible to let go and open my closed fist.
“Valentina, why are you standing in the pouring rain without rain clothes?” Nora calls from the cockpit under the tarpaulin.
I look in her direction but am not able to let go of the rope I am clutching. As if something within me still fears my mind might be unpredictable and make me dive after the whale and her calf.
Nora’s presence next to me makes me let go and hug her.
We stand a minute and hug each other.
“I saw a whale and her calf, they were swimming just at the surface next to the boat a while before they dived again. I was showered by her spouting!”
“Haven’t you seen whales before? They’ve been here the whole time in these waters… but it is a terrific feeling to experience when they come so close to the boat!”
She laughs and carefully wipes the saltwater from my face with her hand.
I laugh, too, at the metaphor that they’ve always been here but I hadn’t discovered them – just like the light within.
It has always existed but never received my attention. My attention has been elsewhere.
“Bo wonders if you’ll bake bread with him for breakfast. Janek and I need to try to repair the engine, as it’s malfunctioning a bit again.”
She smiles broadly.
I nod and we hug again before we separate to contribute with what we can to get our vessel and its crew ashore. However, just now it feels as though it wouldn’t matter if I were to spend the rest of my life at sea. I have no idea the hour, or what day it is, nor what date. But this human-created ‘time’ doesn’t matter in this deep abiding condition. A condition beyond fear and desire.
Bo’s bare feet stick out of his bunk. I laugh quietly at the mind’s madness and irony when the urge to tickle him passes.
I pull the duvet over his feet and let him sleep.
Janek whistles from the shower and something falls from his pile of clothes outside the door when the boat unexpectedly turns to port.
I bend and pick up his golden cross. Tiny letters I haven’t noticed before are seen engraved on the back.
I read the short sentence I’d heard him convey to Bo right before I fell asleep last night. The short sentence that was the first thing I remembered when I woke up.
The short sentence that passed my mind again when the tidal wave of tears washed through me after my magic meeting with the whale and her calf.
The short sentence written in Latin above the cross of Jesus in the church where I received my first communion as a child. That short sentence we pupils had to learn. It means ‘Thy will be done’. That was more than twenty years ago.
Now I know what it actually means: trust in life.