In the early days, as fresh Dolphineros, Belkis and I dreamed of perfection. Wanting to do something dolphinesque that would justify our distinction, we decided that the sea would be our Pegasus; that whenever possible we’d start our missions by swimming from our island. That’s how we went to yesterday’s demo.
Today I’m taking the ferry that serves the city’s coastal hamlets. Swimming without Belkis would be another betrayal.
I’m going walkabout. A valedictory communion with my city to prime myself for tomorrow. I want to reabsorb people’s hopes; inject my marrow with the fortitude that enables them to persevere while hunchbacked by oppression. I must bear witness to their plight. It is my understanding of the part I must play as the Dolphinero that I am.
Tomorrow’s crowd should be larger than yesterday’s.
I board the ferry. There are not many commuters. Hardly any work in the city for islanders.
For once I don’t mind not swimming. The sea is a wonderful womb, but like all wombs it’s a refuge. It diverts one from the horrors – and the miracles – happening outside.
It is time for me to achieve a miracle, to accept that existence has purposes, that life is meaningful because it has aspirations. Overthrowing Saviours is a cardinal one. That should be possible if we consider the Saviours’ psychology as formulated by, of all people, my son, Childe Asher.
This is what he says: Saviours rise from embittered factions which postulate that there’s no creator, no universal scheme, only the variable concepts of good and bad. To compensate for life’s meaninglessness – and especially its loneliness – these factions exalt the nihilistic solipsism of an unquestionable reality. Besides precluding inquiry, this condition provides the Saviours with blank tablets on which they can engrave their rationales.
Numen, Childe Asher further theorises, is a variation of this archetype. He seeks to be the epitomic alpha-man, the wiliest statesman, the supreme juggler of power. But he knows that power, too, is subject to evolution, that a hyper-virulent species of Saviours has already incubated and that to ensure his survival he must emerge as the first Millennial. His choice of the turgid epithet Numen is indicative not only of this compulsion but also of his resolve to cauterise the insecurities haunting him.
I move to the fore deck. Moni, who uses ferries as squats, is asleep on a bench, curled up with his Shepherd dog, Phral. Phral gives me a quick glance, wags his tail, then resumes watching a Pinkie sitting nearby. In Numen’s ‘government that listens to the people’, Pinkies, the eyes and ears of Homeland Security, are the only listeners. They’ve been watching Moni for ages but don’t seem to have an inkling of his quicksilver persona. Belkis and I keep wondering whether he’s a Leviathan. The Pinkie gives me a cursory look, ignores my ‘good morning’ and lights a cigarette.
Argus-eyed and omnipresent they may be, but Pinkies are mere ciphers of their precursors. True, they still burrow everywhere and still point their fingers at ‘different drummers’ – hence their name – but, increasingly dependent on state-of-the-art electronics, they lack the vulpine guile and the Daedalian ingenuity of past fingerers. They trawl for diabolical conspiracies even in vacuums. If the adage, ‘where there’s shit, there’s flies,’ needs proof, Pinkies provide it.
I watch the Pinkie. He’s blowing smoke rings. He’s not interested in me. Yet for some time now Belkis and I have featured in all the wanted lists. The fact that this Pinkie ignores me when my flight from Genovese Plaza yesterday should make me a priority target suggests that, in the main, Pinkies are a horde of opportunistic riffraff. That’s partly true. Certainly, their ranks abound with mildewed men and women clinging on to the Security bandwagon, but not far behind them young and ravenous cadres are creeping up the ladders.
Belkis and I are adept at outsmarting them. Imperceptibility is the first skill Leviathans teach. Also, we have a retired French couturier who can make us look as dazzling as film stars or as down-and-out as men ‘between jobs’.
Today my disguise is that of an oddjobber in splotched overalls and baseball cap, dragging tools in a tattered holdall after a boozy night.
The ferry departs.
The rising sun stipples the water with hues of Belkis’s titian hair.
A wave, riding the headwind, breaks on my face.
Belkis and Childe Asher appear.
They’re visible to me but invisible to the Pinkie. As a Leviathan Belkis can camouflage herself – or anyone she chooses – and render conversations inaudible. I want to hug her but hesitate. So does she, I think. We – or rather I – must get used to the fact that despite her changed status we’re both still flesh and blood.
Childe Asher scrutinises my disguise. He looks impressed. ‘We thought we’d just come by.’
I ruffle his ebony hair. ‘To make sure I’m all right?’
He nods sombrely. ‘Children are their parents’ parents.’
Belkis holds my hand. ‘About tomorrow, Oric. You don’t have to demonstrate – not for me.’
‘It’s not for you. It’s for me. And for Childe Asher.’ I have to prove myself to my wife and son that I really am a Dolphinero. And things have to be said and done – repeatedly – until we repair the world. Maybe we’re brainwashed, too – not unlike suicide-bombers. Maybe while they’ve been radicalised by death-worshippers we’ve been indoctrinated by the Leviathans.
‘Oric, yesterday was my fault. I was impetuous. I moved before I should have.’
‘Even so I should have backed you.’
‘You are what you are, my love.’
‘Then it’s time to be what I should be.’
She kisses me. ‘I can’t convince you, can I?’
‘No.’
Childe Asher hugs me. ‘We’ll be around, Dad.’
They vanish.
Pinkie lights a fresh cigarette.
I open my holdall. Take out a girlie magazine – another item in my disguise.
My journal’s tucked inside. I brought it to strengthen my resolve.
Before I started writing my journal (around the time Childe Asher was born) I was supposedly in the throes of Mal du siècle – restless, sleeping badly, having nightmares. Then one night I had a good nightmare – the sort that makes melancholics happy. I was sitting by the sea sobbing like a hired weeper at a funeral when a toddler appeared (Childe Asher later admitted the boy was him).
‘Why are you crying?’ He asked.
‘Mal du siècle,’ I replied.
‘You don’t have Mal du siècle. You’re an orphan – you suffer from saudade,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Portuguese term. Defines the bitter-sweet mood that possesses one when the memory of a time or a person is lost forever. Saudade – the yearning for the loss – provides some solace.’
‘Is there a cure?’ I asked.
‘I doubt it. But jotting things down might help. Pessoa tried it,’ he said and disappeared. And so I tried it too, on my son’s advice, at first to assuage my own suffering but as time went on and the patterns of the crimes the Saviours inflicted on the people started to change, Hrant recognised the journal as an important aid for the Dolphineros and Immortals alike. It is a record of all that I have borne witness to as a Dolphinero. I have kept it ever since.