Here I am now in our grotto.
I don’t know how I got here.
On the other hand, our island lies only a few miles from the City. Did I swim? Take the ferry? Tack into the wind?
Uncanny how deserters can waft like sleepwalkers.
There’s Hrant, our Leviathan. Droves of luminous silhouettes are gliding in: other Leviathans. My son, Childe Asher, with amber almond eyes stops paddling his Moses basket, climbs out of the lagoon and hugs me. I push him aside and stoop over Hrant. He looks soulless. Uninhabited. Scorched earth. I shout. ‘Did you see?!’
His dolorous eyes are imprinted with Belkis’s crushed body. ‘Yes.’
I wail. ‘She wanted to repair the world. In one day. Today!’
‘Yes.’
‘Why couldn’t she wait!?’
He mumbles. ‘Sometimes long waits cause despair. The soul gets battered by impatience. Staying on as human becomes unbearable.’
‘Dolphineros are supposed to be immune to despair!’
‘Supposed to be – yes.’
I am wretched. ‘Then you – Leviathans – shouldn’t have made her one!’
‘We didn’t. She was born one.’
‘And I’m not? You mean that’s why I abandoned her?’
He doesn’t answer. Fear seizes my body. Childe Asher holds my hand. ‘You didn’t abandon her, Dad. You iced up. Shell-shock: the thousand-yard stare – it’s still in your eyes.’ I am crushed. My son – only five.
Again, I shout at Hrant. ‘You said her spirit will make me a Dolphinero! Why didn’t it?’
He faces me wearily. ‘It can take time.’
‘I needed to be one today!’
‘You have her spirit. Hold onto it. Dolphineros are slain – that’s often their fate. But when they leave their bodies, they become Leviathans. Look at me! Look at those arriving to welcome Belkis! We rise straightaway – not some thousand years later like a phoenix. We erupt from ashes, dust, water, sky, fire and carry on repairing humankind, the planet, the soil, the waterways, the thermal forces ...’
‘The hackneyed mantra – death’s a lie! Is that all you can say?’
‘It’s all that needs to be said. It’s the Truth.’
‘I don’t believe it! I tried very hard! Now the Pilate in my heart asks: ‘what is truth?’ And the Saviours laugh. “Death is death,” they say.’
Childe Asher interjects again. ‘If you believe that, you wouldn’t be here, Dad. You’d have disappeared.’
‘If only I could.’
‘But you won’t!’
‘Because I love you.’
Gently, he pulls me to sit with him. ‘As a Leviathan said: “no heart is as whole as a broken heart.” The breakage begets wisdom. Wisdom asks: is death a closure or the semicolon that brings the next existence? Is life really everlasting? You know the answer is yes. But you still doubt. That’s why you’ve come back. You want to see mum and banish your doubts. Well, she won’t be long. While waiting sing the lullaby your father sings in your dreams – it’s another proof that life’s everlasting.’
I can’t sing. Instead I search the depths of Childe Asher’s amber almond eyes. No signs of uncertainty in him – only extraordinary radiance. Before his birth, Hrant predicted that he’d be a prodigy. Impatient for a new human life like all Leviathans, he’d hastened his Samsara and reincarnated prematurely. Some of his predecessors, Hrant related, composed heavenly music, painted sounds in dazzling colours, built magnificent edifices, prolonged life, correlated the stars’ gravitations to the creation of galaxies. Childe Asher, he affirmed, will be a Solonian who’ll attain Buddhahood, ingest the astral Akashi records and absorb the feelings of everything living and everything inanimate.
A sea-mist drifts in.
An albatross alights.
From under its wings, Belkis emerges. In blue chakra, she has the Leviathan look.
The albatross transmutes into a Leviathan. I remember the old belief that albatrosses are manifestations of ancestors and that when our sun loses hope, they cuddle it with their powerful wings.
Childe Asher runs to Belkis. They embrace. I watch them, my family.
Childe Asher brings Belkis over. ‘Find each other again, you two! I’ll help Hrant prepare the Agapé.’
Belkis explains shyly. ‘Agapé is togetherness, the Leviathans’ welcome.’
Hrant exapands, ‘It is our ritual, since time immemorial.’
I rasp. ‘I know what it is. You told us in the early days.’
The grotto has expanded.
The Leviathans’ silhouettes stretch endlessly.
Belkis holds my hand lovingly.
Heavy with guilt, I don’t know what to say.
I point at Childe Asher. ‘So like you – the boy. Like earth welcoming the sun.’
‘He’s like you, too.’
‘No, better. Infinitely better. Not craven. Not faithless. Not one to run away.’
Belkis caresses my face. ‘Sometimes it’s wise to run.’
‘Not in my book.’
‘You can only be who you are, Oric.’
‘I thought I’d mastered fear.’
‘You did – all this time you did.’
‘Until the crunch.’
‘There’ve been many crunches.’
‘I could fend off Hidebehind those times. But this time you needed me – and I could do nothing. Hidebehind paralysed me.’
Gently she runs her fingers over my eyes. ‘Look at me, Oric. They killed me. But I’m still with you. We’ll continue. Proof that Death is a lie.’
I absorb her eyes, her face, her aura. I want to be embedded in her. Roam over that earthly body of untold delights. But now that she’s a Leviathan, dare I breathe her perfume, hear her squeals, swim in her ultramarine eyes, cherish her sturdiness when she holds me tight? How do I become one with her as I did everytime we made love?
She feels my despair, presses my hands tightly. ‘I’m not ectoplasm, Oric. Leviathans are flesh, too, when they reincarnate. I’ll be with you forever.’
There’s so much love in her eyes.
Led by Hrant and Childe Asher, the Leviathans start singing the Ode to Joy.
Belkis brightens. ‘The Agapé is starting.’
I feel I shouldn’t be here. Not yet.
I kiss her. ‘Hrant believes I still have your spirit.’
‘Hrant is always right.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
I dive into the pool before she can stop me.