If you are reading this, it means you have uncorked ocean-swept glass and hold now in your hands my final testament, sent up from the depths. It is all so meaningless when I look back on it from afar. You must see that. Realize that. It is all so meaningless. My chasing after the wind. The only way to death’s sweet embrace is with final abandonment. You cannot hold on to self or substance. You simply cannot do it. But for so long I have been too afraid to see even that.
You see, my cousin was there with Counter-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Linois, that son of a bitch from Toulon. They anchored their ships across Gibraltar Bay for weeks. Sitting there, moored at the fortified port city of Algeciras in June of 1801. The damned fools were trying to group up with the Spaniards in Gibraltar, thinking they could free the Mediterranean from the Royal Navy’s blockades. Turn the tides of the war. But the British showed up first.
Before that, the letters still came. Infrequent. But when they did, it was a serialized correspondence I could count on. A thick parcel of letters detailing the mundanity of his life on the ship and the way he yearned to be back with us at home. I never heard from him again after that though. Their delusions of grandeur were brought to an end swiftly. Dead or missing is all the same at sea. Even though their ships outnumbered the French Navy squadron two to one, devastating damage was inflicted upon Linois’ three ships of the line. That was the death knell. Sure, they ran the 74-gun third-rate Royal Navy’s ship of the line, HMS Hannibal, aground. An inhuman feat, blessed by Poseidon himself, battering her on the shore until she surrendered. Despite their on-paper success against overwhelming odds, the British bastards still cemented control of the Mediterranean. Our army was defeated in Egypt later that year. And so began the ritual of humiliation.
Even here at home, my feet sought to flee the futility of it all. Cursed by the fear that I’d be another nameless casualty, I wanted to take to the sea in the opposite direction. Militaristic hubris would not be this Frenchman’s cause of death, I vowed to myself. That, of course, had to wait until the blockades of our shores lifted in ’15. I could not confront the monster of fear head on, but only through the corner of my periphery instead. Until then I was daily gripped by pain in my nerves pushing me to flee, but with nowhere to go. My parents saw the pallor in my face and without the optimism of youth to heal their own embarrassment at our national disgrace they each succumbed to the grave in their own way.
As soon as the blockades lifted, I hopped aboard the first schooner that would take me as far away as possible. The warmth of the Caribbean called to me, that sultry mistress, but it was not to be. The British had long ago seized our colonial assets, pocketing our excess. So I set my sights to the rich cod fishing grounds near Newfoundland, hopping about the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in search of a harvest to feed my people at home in France. It was here in the frigid northern Atlantic I traversed, growing weary and gray. Age infected my bones before my whiskers had even fully grown in yet. Fewer years than most separated me from birth, but my spirit seemed to age at a quickening pace. At first the fear of meeting my cousin’s and my parents’ fate seemed abated. Yet in the murky depths, something seemed to lurk. Waiting. Watching. Hungry for bones not yet plucked clean.
Unwilling to sail home to confront the weight of it all, I took to a hovel on the Saint Pierre shore where I made a home with a Basque wife who moved there in the ensuing resettlement. It was a miserable existence. We lived in the ruins of a civilization on a cold, harsh island. She was afflicted with tic douloureux, making it impossible for many days for her to even get out of bed as the neuralgia attacked her from within. She bore me no children. She could barely tend to her own needs, let alone tending to my needs during the frigid off seasons when I would return home to her. In her fits of pain, she would heap abuse upon me, blaming me for our circumstances, though I was not the one who brought her to the Island, nor the one who refused treatments (albeit crude ones) by the local doctor. I felt a responsibility to her in spite of this, perhaps from my own neurosis, depressing my spirits. The physical warmth I craved and could not find at home came briefly, in a moment of weakness, from the nearby brothel. Though this was a fleeting affair at best, it too weighed on my soul. The shackles of guilt felt in my marital bed. My only true love was the sea. It was there I sensed freedom, albeit momentary in its gentle caress. Somehow, despite her harshness, she was less of a cruel mistress than my bedridden wife, rocking me to sleep in my pursuit of cod and freedom from avarice.
I was happiest in the warmth of summer, my callused hands guiding handlines with freshly sliced bait down toward the depths of the Labrador and Gulf Stream currents that intersected along the glorious Grand Banks. On our boat we, a crew of Frenchmen, were skilled in our la pêche verte. As soon as I hauled the cod onto the schooner, other crewmembers, skilled with blades gutted, cleaned, and heavily salted the fish directly in the hold, packing them in salt to preserve them for months-long ocean voyages back to France (a trip I was reticent to ever make again). The crisp, salty sea spray coating my wool garments and the gentle rocking of the schooner was a constant comfort to me in those days. If I was good with a pen, I might have found time to stare out upon the misty blue horizon and drafted an attempt or two of capturing its beauty. But I was a simple man. The sighting of whales and dolphins, seals and gulls was enough to soften the hardened exterior of my crustaceous exterior. My gnarled claws, pulling at the lines as the stiffness in my shoulders refused to release their tension, worked almost without need for mental input on my part. No closer has man felt to God than in those days of mine upon the grey pall. Don’t let me fool you. It was often dangerous in the early spring, as much as those dreadful winters.
I had survived that notorious winter of ’18 with a grit in my teeth and a romp in my step, but the ice flows in the springs presented a constant treachery in spite of the promise they held for the warm season. Ships were lost; men were vanished below. Death was a regular visitor, especially upon the sealers, but upon us fishers as well. One could not be too cautious of the slight changes of a breeze in the early spring. As you well know, roundabout ’26 a terrible squall came flushing up from Dominica late in the season when we were already resting upon our laurels. Curving about Jamaica it rushed us head on upon the Grand Banks. A shocking irony to me that these storms originated in the Caribbean where I had first wished to set my sights. This was the second major storm of the season. The first had not made it past Cuba (unbeknownst to us up here). Autumn would be upon us soon and I wanted to savor every last day of warm sunshine upon the ocean before heading home to my dreadful mistress. In this daze we found ourselves beset on all sides by calamity.
The great ocean waves besieged us. Hurling its attacks with impunity. An enemy of utmost cruelty. Tossing our schooner about before we could get back to safe harbor to wait it out on solid ground. I knew this would be our end. My ruthless lover, my escape, was to be my doom at last. To the depths we sank. Every last one of us. Sucked in by the vacuous pull of the schooner itself. Freezing on the way down we descended to Hades. And yet on the legs of a dead man, I found myself skulking into the decadent vault of a submarine sanctuary. A grand ballroom of sorts, decorated with the bones of whales and the tusks of walruses, sending up daggers of shadow in the torchlight. This dreadful place, the court of a tentacled Shebeast most dreadful. Her patrons chanting day and night Her name, Nerri Verrick. Fingerless She reigns, demanding dactyl offerings for safe passage through to the underworld. Day and night I have been subjected to torture and pain in this footlocker of Phorcys, refusing to give up my phalanges.
After what seemed to be long years trapped in Her dungeon, I was brought to appear before Her to state my case for retaining my appendages. Nerri Verrick called me to account. With my esophagus long ago ripped free, all I could do was sign and gesture that I still was reluctant to let go of what semblance of life I still clung to in futility. Reluctant to make a final offering of dissolution and embrace death. Nerri Verrick scoffed at my foolishness, wagging tentacles in frustration at my obstinance. In declaring She had not taken me to care for She sighed and, as Her court attendants hummed and bubbled, shaking and stirring the waters around us, She shared this poem, an Origin of sorts regarding the Deep:
The Great Octopus descended
From the skies whence
She floated dejected and light blue
Beseeching The Great Monkey
For a dominion to call her own,
Fearing The Great Eagle of The Skies
The Great Monkey sneered,
Feeling His domain had met impropriety
“Begone, vile pustule!”
He tossed a brown banana peel
At the ancient She-Kraken
Seizing upon Her with mighty tentacles
The Octopus coiled about The Monkey
Thunder clapped
Lightning flashed
And the torrent unleashed
For the first time
But not the last
As The Great Beasts thrashed about
Vermin of the air swarmed
Flocking, they cawed and cooed
Entertained by the great calamity
Down below, The Earth split in two,
Her tears filling the void of Her anguished despair
Seeing the swarms of earth-bound Brethren
Closing in, The Great Octopus sought
Mutually assured destruction
Thrusting them both down into The Waters
Down into the unknown
Knowing surely death awaited them both
The Monkey, in punishment for disdain
Found no breath there, clawing and choking
The Octopus, though, finding Her breath
Sought to drown The Great Monkey
Who chomped upon Her fingers
Breaking free
Swimming and fleeing
Whales
Seals
Walruses
They swarmed
In Her own folly returned
Found Herself banished below
To Darkness and vicious predators
For all of Eternity
Never to see Land or Sky without
Fear of death; penance for retribution
Beyond measure or match
Having finished, the chanting of Nerri Verrick’s court ceased. The silence was overwhelming and darkness threatened to overtake the grand throne room as the torches flickered and wavered. Then She spoke.
“You and I, ghostly visitor, are not so disalike in this regard. You are no friend of mine. Be sure of that, despite my acknowledgements,” She said.
“But I understand your reserve. I once was like you, seeking a home of my own and cast aside at every turn. It has cost me, too, terribly. Though I take my responsibility and rule quite seriously bound to this realm in chains of my own. Take this. And with it make one last gesture earthward or heavenward or in whatever direction you like. For today your fingers are mine. And death, your final mistress of sovereignty, is yours.”
After She finished speaking, a servant of Hers, cephalopod-esque in appearance as well, handed me parchment, a pen, a stoppered glass bottle, and an ivory knife with jagged teeth. I knew what to do.
In this bottle, I enclose my final testament, which you have now read. In it I deposit my final breath to send it floating photicward in delivery. Read it on the shores of whatever foreign land you find yourself and know I am at peace. I run in fear no longer. I walk into the dark in confidence and boldness, no longer restrained or reluctant. I made the ocean my home and now I lay my head finally at rest here till eternity’s end. Having finished reading this correspondence, please take my words to my family in France, though I swore no part of me would ever return, not even my disputations. I see now the folly of my trembling flight from civilization. Fear is the enemy of truth and happiness. I know that now and rest.
Yours With All Earnestness In The Counsel Of Wisdom,
RENAUD
-- Ron Arbuckle lives in Oklahoma. He is the author of the novel, A Matter of Design, and many other shorter works.
