In truth, without deceit,
I say to you surely
As it is below, so is it above.
Tabula Smaragdina
The old cuttlefish was resting on a thick Blue Book that had come from a vessel that had sunk, and was slowly taking in the printed characters.
Landlubbers have absolutely no idea how busy a cuttlefish is all day.
This one had devoted himself wholeheartedly to medicine, and all day long, from morning to night, two poor little starfish were obliged to help him turn the pages, because they owed him so much money.
Around his corpulence, just where other people keep their waists, he wore a golden pince-nez: another piece of marine loot. The lenses were forced wide apart on either side, giving anyone who might look through them a disagreeably dizzy sensation.
All around was quiet.
Suddenly an octopus came lunging up, its baggy snout pointing eagerly ahead, its arms trailing in its wake like nothing so much as a bundle of sticks. It settled down beside the book, and waited for the old fellow to look up before composing an elaborate greeting and unwrapping a tin box from amongst its arms. ‘The violet polyp from Turbot Alley, I presume,’ observed old Sepia graciously. ‘Yes, that’s right, I knew your mother well, née von Octopus, (I say, Perch, just fetch me the Almanach de Gophalopoda, will you.) Now, what can I do for you, young polyp?’
‘The inscription — read what it says,’ oozed the other, embarrassed, pointing to the tin box. He had a rather slimy way of saying things.
The cuttlefish stared hard at the box, like a prosecuting counsel, his eyes popping out.
‘What is this I see — Blamol? This is a priceless find. Surely it comes from the Christmas Steamer that ran aground? Blamol! The new miracle cure — the more you take, the healthier you get!
‘This must be opened at once: Perch, just dart off to the two lobsters over there, will you — you know, Coral Bank, Second Branch, the Scissors brothers — and hurry!’
The green sea-lily, who resided nearby, rushed over the moment she heard about the new medicine — oh, she really would like to try some, really and truly, she’d give anything!
And she undulated her several hundred tentacles in captivatingly languorous fashion, riveting everyone’s eye upon her.
Sharks alive, was she beautiful! A big mouth, for sure, but that’s often what makes a lady so exciting.
They were all gaping at her, so they missed the arrival of the two lobsters who were already busy at the tin, chattering to each other in their harsh, outlandish dialect. With a final gentle tap the tin fell apart.
Like a shower of hail the white pills swirled out and, lighter than cork, shot upwards and vanished.
‘Catch them, catch them!’ came the cry, and they all fell over in their haste, but none was quick enough. Only the lily was lucky enough to secure a single pill and she hastily stuffed it into her mouth.
Indignation all round: the least the Scissors brothers deserved was a box on the ear.
‘You, Perch, I suppose you couldn’t manage to watch what was going on? What’s the point of your being my assistant?’
Everyone was left to swear and argue — all except for the octopus who, speechless with rage, was hammering away at a mussel with its clenched tentacles, enough to make the pearls squeak.
Suddenly there was a general silence: look at the lily!
She must have suffered a stroke: rigid and quite unable to move, with her tentacles stiffly extended, she could be heard gently whimpering.
The cuttlefish pulsed importantly over to her and commenced his examination with a mysterious air. With the aid of a pebble he palpated a tentacle or two and then probed further in. (Hm, hm, — Babynski’s Reaction: disruption of the Pyramidal Channels.) Then with the edge of his wing he stroked the lily a few times across her cup, his eyes taking on as he did so an intense and penetrating quality. Finally, puffing himself up, he said in a grave tone: ‘Lateral Chord Sclerosis — the lady is paralysed.’
‘Is there anything we can do? What is your opinion? Please just help her — I’ll go to the chemist’s,’ cried the good-natured seahorse.
‘Help? Are you mad? Do you think I studied medicine in order to effect cures?’ The cuttlefish was getting angrier. ‘It seems to me you think I’m a barber. Are you trying to make fun of me? Perch, my hat and stick, if you please!”
One after another they all dispersed. ‘The things that can happen to you in this life. It’s awful, don’t you think?’
The place emptied, soon leaving the perch grumpily casting about, looking for anything the others might have lost or forgotten.
Night descended upon the seabed. The rays of light, of which none knew whence they came nor whither they went, shimmered in the green water like a veil, tired, as though at the limit of exhaustion.
The poor sea-lily lay immobile, gazing at them with a heart full of bitterness as they rose and vanished into the distance far above. Yesterday at this time she had been fast asleep, curled up safely into a ball, and now — to have to die on the street, like a mere … animal! Little pearls of air beaded her brow. And tomorrow was Christmas!
She fell to thinking about her husband, gadding about somewhere far away. Three months it was now since she had become a seagrasswidow. Really, it would have been no surprise if she had been unfaithful to him.
Oh, if only the seahorse had stayed with her!
She was so afraid!
It was getting so dark you could hardly see your own feelers in front of you.
Broad-shouldered night crept out from behind the stones and algae, devouring the pale shadows of the coral banks. Black shapes glided out like ghosts, with eyes aflame and luminously violet fins. Fishes of the Night! Hideous rays and sea-devils, going about their nefarious business in the darkness, lying murderously in wait amidst the wreckage of ships.
Stealthily, shiftily, mussels beckon to the belated traveller, inviting him all unwary to join in some gruesome vice amidst the soft pillows that can be glimpsed between their gently parted shells.
In the distance a dogfish barks.
Suddenly, a bright light flashes through the algal ribbons: a shining medusa appears, guiding some drunken revellers homewards — a pair of slick eels, with a couple of moray sluts twined round their fins. Two young salmon, gaudy in silver, have stopped to gaze at this scene of depraved intoxication. A dissolute verse can be heard …
Down where the green weed grew
I asked when I had met her
Did she want me to screw
Her? ‘Yes, oh yes, you’d better.’
So down she bent
And off I went
Right where the green weed grew …
‘Out of my way, bloody salmon!’ roars one of the eels, interrupting the song. Silversides bridles: ‘Shut your trap! You’d do well to watch your language. Just because you think you’re the only lot who were born on the right side of the Danube …’
‘Shh, shh,’ the medusa pleads, ‘watch your tongues, look who’s over there!’ They all fall quiet and gaze with some awe at a small group of frail, colourless figures making prim progress along the way.
‘Lancelets’ someone whispers.
‘? ? ? ?’
‘Oh, very hoity-toity they are, Counsellors, diplomats and the like. Born to it. Real marvels of nature — no brain, no backbone: quite spineless.’
There ensues a minute or two of silent amazement before everyone swims away, this time quite peaceably.
The noises die away. Absolute silence descends.
Time passes. Midnight, the witching hour. Did we hear voices? Not shrimps, surely, at this time of night?
It’s the Night Patrol: police crabs! What a noise they make with their armoured legs as they crunch across the sand, dragging their captives off to a place of security.
Woe betide anyone who falls into their clutches: no crime escapes them, and their lies stand on oath before the law.
Even the electric ray turns pale at their approach.
Lily’s heart misses a beat in terror: here she is, a defenceless lady, out in the open! What if they catch sight of her? They’ll drag her up before the beak in front of that old perjurer of a crab, the biggest crook in the sea, and then … and then …
Here they come, getting closer — they’re just a step away; the cruel talons of ruin and disgrace are on the point of encircling her waist with their iron grip.
Suddenly the dark water shivers, the coral branches creak and shake like seaweed and a pale glow illumines the scene from afar.
Crabs, rays, sea-devils dart and scatter across the sand, pieces of rock break away and swirl up in the current.
A bluish, smoothly moving wall as big as all the world comes flying through the waters.
Nearer and nearer comes the phosphorescent light, the gigantic glowing wing of Tintorera, the demon of annihilation, comes sweeping up, stirring fiery chasm-deep whirlpools in the foaming water.
Everything becomes caught up in the spinning eddies.
The lily flies vertiginously up and down again over a landscape of emerald froth. Where now are the crabs, where the shame and dread? Raging destruction has come storming through the world, a bacchanal of death, a glorious dance for the prize of a soul.
The senses expire like a smoking flame.
Then next a frightful shuddering jolt, the eddies stand in the water, but continue to spin faster and faster, flinging down on to the sea floor everything they had previously torn up.
Many a fine armoured piece meets its Waterloo there.
When at last the lily awoke from her fainting fall she found herself lying on a bed of soft algae.
The gentle seahorse (who had taken the day off from work) was bending over her.
A cool morning stream fanned her face, and she looked up. She could hear the cackling of goose-barnacles and the cheerful bleating of a lamprey.
‘You are quite safe here in my little house in the country’ replied the seahorse to her look of enquiry, and gazing deep into her eyes. ‘Please rest a little more, dear lady, it will do you good.’
But she could not, for all she tried. An indescribable feeling of nausea overwhelmed her.
‘What a storm that was last night — my head is still swimming from all the commotion,’ went on the seahorse chattily. ‘By the way, can I tempt you to a spot of blubber — a really nice fat piece of juicy sailor-blubber?’
At the mere mention of the word the lily felt so ill that she was obliged to clamp her lips tight shut. But it was no use. She began to retch (the seahorse turned his head discreetly to one side), and in a moment had brought up the Blamol pill which, quite undigested, floated and vanished upwards in a cloud of bubbles.
Thank God the seahorse hadn’t seen it.
The invalid suddenly felt as right as rain again. She curled herself up with contentment.
Wonder of wonders! She could curl up again, could move her limbs about, as before.
Ecstasy upon ecstasy!
The seahorse could feel bubbles of joy pricking his eyes. ‘Christmas, it’s really Christmas today!’ he rejoiced. ‘I must tell the cuttlefish at once: in the meanwhile you must have a really good long sleep.’
‘What do you find so remarkable about the lily’s sudden recovery, my dear Seahorse?’ asked the cuttlefish, with a condescending smile. ‘You are an enthusiast, my young friend. As a matter of principle I don’t usually discuss medical matters with non-professionals (bring up a chair, Perch, for the gentleman), but I’ll make an exception this time, and endeavour to match my mode of expression to your level of understanding as far as I can. So, you consider Blamol to be a poison, and you attribute the paralysis to its effects. What a mistake! I might add, by the way, that Blamol is now altogether passé, it is yesterday’s panacea; today we usually recommend Idiotine Chloride: medical science strides eternally onwards. That the illness should have coincided with swallowing the pill was pure coincidence — it’s well known that everything that happens in the world is coincidence — for in the first place Lateral Chord Sclerosis has a quite different set of causes (though discretion forbids me to name them), and secondly, Blamol works, like all such agents, not when you take it, but only when you spit it out — and then of course it’s bound to be beneficial in its effects.
‘And finally, as far as the cure is concerned, well, here we have a clear case of autosuggestion. In reality, — and by ‘reality’ I mean what Kant called the ‘thing in itself’ — in reality the lady is just as ill as she was yesterday: she just doesn’t notice it. It is precisely in the case of those with inferior mental powers that autosuggestion works so effectively. Of course I’m not implying anything by saying this — you know how highly I esteem the little woman at home:
‘Give all honour to the ladies,
They plait and weave …’
as Schiller puts it.
But now, my young friend, enough of this, it will simply upset you unnecessarily. A propos — you will of course do me the honour? It is Christmas and — I’m getting married.’
‘Who is he marrying, then?’ he asked the Perch on the way out. ‘You don’t say — the blue mussel? But why not, though — just another one in it for the money.’
When, that evening, the lily arrived, somewhat late but with a glowing complexion, and leaning on the seahorse’s fin, the congratulations were without end. Everyone gave her a hug, and even the veiled snails and the cockles who were acting as bridesmaids put their maidenly timidity aside in the warmth of their hearts.
It was a magnificent occasion, as only the rich can provide — the blue mussel’s parents had millions after all, and they had even organised some phosphorescent sea-fire.
Four long oyster-banks had been laid out and the feast had lasted well over an hour, yet still more dainty dishes appeared. The perch went on steadily circulating with a glittering decanter (upside down, of course) of hundred year-old air, recovered from the cabin of a sunken wreck.
Everyone had become a little tipsy, and the toasts being drunk to the blue mussel and her bridegroom were being drowned out by the popping and clicking of dead men’s fingers and the clatter of razorshells.
The seahorse and the lily were sitting at the far end of the table, quite in the shadows, hardly noticing their surroundings. From time to time he would squeeze one or other of her tentacles, and in return she rewarded him with a glance full of ardour.
Towards the end of the meal the band struck up with a song:
A joke, a kiss
For a married Miss
Is utter bliss;
It’s quite what’s done
When you’re having fun
But he’s got to be young …
And their table-companions exchanged a sly wink. It would have been impossible not to suppose that everyone had their own ideas about what sort of liaisons were being quietly arranged here.