We had just made love and were singing.
That’s when our Leviathan, draped in sea-mist, wafted into the grotto.
Belkis saw the apparition first. ‘Wow!’
A voice, like susurrations in a lavender field, answered. ‘I hope I didn’t alarm you.’
I gaped at the mist. It had alarmed me.
Belkis smiled, not at all confounded. ‘Welcome, whoever you are!’
‘A Leviathan.’
‘Like the monsters in the Bible?’
The mist lifted to reveal a humanoid colossus with a congenial air. A blue corona – the blue of the Auric Field that illumines the soul’s seat and which only great painters can create – girdled his body. ‘Monsters only to Saviours.’
His reply beguiled Belkis. ‘That’s some introduction!’
He sat on the ledge. ‘We’ve been watching you two.’
Belkis teased him. ‘We? Royalty, are you?’
He laughed. ‘My peers and I.’
‘More Leviathans? Where are they?’
‘Around.’
He looked like Hrant Dink.
Belkis was enjoying the encounter. ‘Ask your peers to come in. The more of you, the merrier.’
‘They don’t want to crowd you.’
‘Waiting for us to make love again, are they?’
He chuckled. ‘We’re discreet. On those occasions we snooze.’
‘How come we didn’t see you snoozing?’
‘We can be invisible.’
‘With your size?’
‘We can also metamorphose. Turn into octopuses, horses, eagles. But we prefer our original human form.’
To prove his point, he shrank to average height.
That impressed her. ‘Shape-shifters, too!’
‘Just psychokinesis.’
Astounded, I said. ‘How long have you been watching?’
‘Since you were born.’
Belkis teased him again. ‘In the orphanages, too?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Shuttling from Oric’s to mine?’
‘We can be in two places at the same time. Several, if need be.’
Mystified, I resorted to sarcasm. ‘That couldn’t have been fun – watching us moulder …’
‘You two never mouldered. You embraced life when still in the womb. That’s what caught our attention. As you matured, you perceived the wounds in people’s hearts and minds. You read everything you could. Studied the past and the present and pondered about the future. Understood how people should love. You discovered that rocks will spout water if tenderly touched, but not if struck angrily.’
Belkis shook her head, overwhelmed. ‘You saw all that?’
‘We saw all that. We had to make sure that you really were Dolphin Children. You are, Belkis.’
Feeling excluded, I asked. ‘What about me?’
Belkis held my hand reassuringly. ‘Of course, you, too, Oric! You’re more than a dolphin, you’re a whale! Souls see into souls. He’s seen yours. Right, Leviathan?’
‘Yes.’
His response was cursory. Had he spotted my Hidebehind?
The Leviathan put an arm around my shoulders. He radiated the tenderness of the loving father who sings ballads in every orphan’s dreams.
I wished he really was my father.
‘In the orphanage, you kept running, Oric. Why do you think you did that?’
‘To escape.’
‘From what?’
‘From everything.’
‘You weren’t escaping. You were searching. You’ll never stop running. What I hope is that you’ll run as a Dolphinero. You’ll run to discover the many meanings that Life has.’
‘Will Belkis and I stay together?’
Belkis embraced me. ‘We certainly will. I’ll make sure of that!’
The Leviathan looked pleased. ‘I will, too. In any case Dolphin Children – we call them Dolphineros now – always work in tandem. You have Belkis’s spirit and you’ll keep breathing that as you run.’
I felt more confident. ‘The Dolphineros – what do they do?’
‘For now, let’s just say Dolphineros are needed to repair the world.’
‘Repair the world?’
‘You’d think after countless genocides humankind would cry “Never again!” Not so. These days extermination has become the Saviours’ primary strategy and threatens extinction. We aim to stop that. We shall – if we have help from Dolphineros.’
Belkis answered without hesitation: ‘I agree!’
Confused as I was, I echoed her. ‘Yes.’
Belkis held the Leviathan’s hand: ‘Now tell us – who are you really?’
‘From now on, your mentor.’
My confusion made me officious. ‘We should know who appointed you. Who your peers are.’
‘Leviathans are not appointed. They’ve always been around, like the earth, wind, water, fire.’
‘Some would say that’s blasphemous,’ I said.
He humoured me. ‘Let’s leave blasphemy to those who invent hollow words. Our mission is to hold Life sacred. We contest the dictum that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. We oppose violence. We toil for a future where killing will be a bygone pandemic. We expose the Saviours’ worship of death in the name of a God or whatever ideology it is that they hold sacred. We send the Dolphineros as emissaries of peace, as life’s voice.’
Belkis smiled. ‘Great!’ she said, and it was. Her views weren’t different from mine. But I couldn’t help feeling that we were setting out for a parallel world that does not exist.
The Leviathan became milder, almost sad. ‘I must warn you: as life’s voice, Saviours will try all the harder to destroy you. Even as we protect you from countless ambushes, one day, there will be one that will kill you.’
‘And then do the Dolphineros die?’ I asked.
‘There’s no end for Dolphineros. When they pass away – killed or not – they’re transmuted into Leviathans. But they never tarry in their Samsara. They come straight back.’
Belkis gasped. ‘As you did! Now I know who you are! Hrant Dink!’
That surprised the Leviathan.
Caught in Belkis’s fervour, I affirmed. ‘Yes! His spitting image! Struck me the moment I saw you!’
The Leviathan laughed dismissively. ‘You flatter me.’
He clapped his hands.
Figures started to emerge.
The Leviathan introduced them. ‘You asked me before about my peers …’
We stared at the figures. Faces familiar from portraits, sculptures, photographs. Some we could even name: Laozi, Rumi, Galileo, Goya, Neruda, Akhmatova …
I stop my history and watch the vendors across the road.
Five women; three men. Sooty and bent like burnt tree trunks. In tatters – probably their only clothes. Crumpled faces crisscrossed with the shame of peddling at street corners. Dimmed eyes sifting passers-by and hoping that one of them – two, if Fate turns compassionate – will buy something. They’re farmers who, ejected from the soil by industrial raids, have migrated to urban jungles where, instead of finding streets paved with bread, they found scrawny rats. The only dignity they’re left with is the dim memory of the grit their forebears had possessed.
The items they’re trying to sell are few: a couple of copper plates, a bunch of wooden spoons, a few embroidered handkerchiefs, a patched jacket, two balaclavas, a threadbare sheepskin coat, a walking stick, a pair of worn-out clogs, a handful of medals …
Is that all they have? If they manage to sell those what will they get? Enough for a loaf? A handful of rice? Some firewood? And afterwards, how will they eat without the copper plates and wooden spoons? How will they keep warm without the jacket, the balaclavas, the sheepskin coat? How will they walk without clogs and stick? How will they wipe tears without their handkerchiefs? How, how will they survive the night?
Do Numen and his lackeys ever see these people?
I have some money. Not much. Leviathans provide Dolphineros with some cash in case of emergencies.
I hand a bill to the café owner and ask him to give the peddlers some snacks and drinks. He’s not surprised. He’d do the same if he could spare a penny. People are born generous. If they can help, they will. It is a weakness of Saviours that they can’t understand that.
Belkis and Childe Asher appear. My heart swells with happiness and longing.
As ever she has read my mind. ‘Our parents must have been just as destitute. Maybe that’s why they abandoned us.’
I bristle. ‘Mine were taken. Killed.’
Pinkie lights another cigarette and starts messaging on his techset. He doesn’t see Belkis and Childe Asher.
Childe Asher has read Pinkie’s message and giggles. ‘You gave food to the poor so you’re a soft subject. He got a reply saying soft subjects are often the most subversive. I think you’ve got the Pinkie for the day, Dad.’
I snort. ‘Like hell!’
Belkis interjects. ‘We can whisk you away.’
‘I should be able to handle him.’
She kisses me. ‘I didn’t mean to interfere. Not used to being a Leviathan yet. I get jittery. See you.’
She and Childe Asher vanish.
I pay the café owner and leave.
Pinkie follows me.
The vendors shout blessings at me.
I cross to the municipal building across the pier.
I flash my holdall at the doorman.
He waves me in without looking. Oddjobbers are nobodies. Pinkie loiters outside and talks into his mobile.
I make for the toilets and go into a cubicle.
I take out a carrier bag, a pair of weatherworn moccasins, fraying shirt, brown wig, shabby jacket and trousers.
I change my clothes. I sprinkle some sea-salt on the wig to make it look dandruffy and wear it.
I transfer my journal and the spare set of clothes to the backpack.
I stuff my overalls into the carrier bag and dump it into a wastebasket.
Donning the backpack, I leave.
I walk slightly hunched like someone with a bad back.
Pinkie is still outside.
I shuffle past him.
He ignores me. He’s expecting an oddjobber.
His masters don’t know it yet but tomorrow, from this seemingly torpid me, the real me will emerge.