Castle of Water: A Novel(59)
Who among them—honestly, who—could have ever guessed that the “dearly departed” from that crash, at least two of them, anyway, were not returning to dust at all, but resting instead on a bamboo cot two feet above it, curled up together at the world’s blue end, not subtracting from the great sum of humanity but quietly adding to it? Love, hope, renewal—such things all spring eternal, and although it was still far too small for Sophie to feel, the diminutive heartbeat in her belly bore testament to that fact.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump …
And so on and so on goes the cardiac beat in this polka called life.
39
The first few months of the pregnancy were among the very best Barry and Sophie spent on the island together. True, the fact that a perilous and forever life-changing event loomed half a year down the line did hang over their heads, with the steady swell in Sophie’s middle a fail-proof reminder. But they had each other when solace was needed, and they wanted for little in the little life they had made.
Perhaps “little” is a bit of an understatement, but their condition had improved by leaps and bounds over the course of their third castaway year. Thanks to Sophie’s tireless work and impeccable architectural design, they not only had a house, but something that one could actually call a home. Inside her postmodern bungalow of ‘ohe and palm thatch there was a sturdy table to sit at, a comfortable cot to lie on, and even a covered kitchen area complete with a functioning stone oven. Hanging from the wall were shelves made of palm wood, upon which sat flare canisters and clamshells carefully arranged, holding various combinations of sea salt, coconut vinegar, dried fish flakes, and squid ink—the seasonings she used when preparing their meals. Coconut-oil lamps with fiber wicks provided illumination at night, and while it had long since ceased to cough out any maritime transmissions, the rechargeable Grundig did issue forth a steady stream of music and bulletins, in languages both familiar and shockingly arcane. And without fail, by mutual decree, set as both snack food and centerpiece in the middle of their table, always a single bunch of green bananas—the only thing on the island, excluding sand and sunlight, that was always in an abundant supply.
All of this, when partnered with Barry’s newfound success on the sea, made for a life that was at the very least bearable and at times one might even daresay pleasant. If the island had one thing going for it, it was some spectacular sunsets, rendered with a palette that boggled the mind. And for the first time since they’d set feet on its sand, Barry and Sophie started to enjoy them. Far from ending there, new details and fresh observations began to add richness and beauty to their days. The graceful glide of the terns, the ordered march of forest aphids, the patter of rain upon palm fronds, and the fleeting spark of shooting stars—discernible or not, there was a meaning to these things, and both appreciation and assurance could be gleaned from that fact.
If there was a highlight from that period of calm on the island, a time when all came closest to feeling right with the world—or as right as it could be considering the circumstances—it was unquestionably their third Christmas Eve there, December 24, 2003. They feasted on a banana-stuffed sooty tern roasted in their very own stone oven, familiar carols came cresting and falling from across the globe, and gifts were exchanged beside a makeshift Christmas tree, fashioned from ‘ohe bamboo and tapered layers of fronds. Barry presented Sophie with a mother-of-pearl comb, and she gave him a cape of dried grasses to keep off the rains. Then, full bellied and content in the flickering light of oil lamps, “The Little Drummer Boy” purring quietly from the Grundig, they lay side by side on their narrow cot. They didn’t speak for some time—words were superfluous—but they held each other tightly, as tightly as they dared, and a novel idea occurred to Barry, although Sophie had known it for quite some time.
Three. That magical number. For two and a half years, their world had been a binary system, a yin and a yang, a single masculine and a single feminine. But as they were gathered about their little Christmas tree that night, it dawned on Barry that they were actually three. Their party was growing; a human being, the most endangered species in their insular world, was soon to be born. As an only child, Barry had never put his ear to his mother’s stomach to detect the first shudders of a heartbeat, and he had never held a newborn creature whose countenance resembled his own. He trembled at the prospect, for the first time with anticipation and joy rather than anticipation and dread.
“We’re going to have a baby, Sophie.”
“Je sais, mon amour. I know, my love.”
And one day, we’re going to go home.
He didn’t say that last part, but in the bobbing lamplight of their tiny house—that feeble ember encircled by an ocean of dark—he thought it. He would care for them, and he would fight for them, and if need be, he would die for them. Somehow or other, no matter the cost or how insurmountable the odds, he would keep that flame burning, and he would not let the darkness win. And if they stayed the course and weathered the storm, it seemed only logical that there would be daybreak yet. A touch melodramatic, perhaps, but parenthood can bring that out in people, and Barry Bleecker was hardly exempt.
For her part, Sophie experienced very much the same rich, complex, and at times conflicting emotions as Barry. She in turn fantasized about the baby—smelling its powdery fresh skin, listening to it mew, watching it grow—and dreaded, like an imminent guest too important to offend, the colossal responsibilities of its impending arrival. The idea of holding a child to her breast that they together had conceived was a source of indescribable joy; the possibility of listening to it wail in the black island night filled her with unnerving dread. Unlike Barry, however, she did not feel that on the day of the baby’s birth, she would be anxiously greeting a total stranger. She knew her child; had known it since that first morning when a queasy, almost electric warmth first emanated from what could only have been her womb. Longer than that, even. In one of those great maternal mysteries that Barry and his ilk would never understand, the connection, if one may call it that, between her and the life within felt not like a spontaneous combination of chromosomes, but like a revelation of that which had been part of her all along. It seemed she had known her child for as long as she had known herself, a single-celled witness that had been her companion—the same way she surely had been her mother’s companion and her grandmother’s before that—since the very beginning of time. The totality of womanhood nested within her like an infinite conglomeration of Russian dolls. She carried not just a life, but the very story of the whole human race.