Blue Rings

The boat is not large, but there are four people in it. One of them is me; the other three are making a movie. No, a documentary. Something about bleached coral and how we deserve what is coming. Their cameras are expensive and cannot be jostled. On the first day, one of them tried to communicate this to me with pantomimes and monosyllables; I raised my palms and shrugged as if to say, it’s all beyond me.

The boat is mine, partly. I run a charter service with a little fellow I’ve known for years. He sticks to shore. Rith hasn’t been more than knee-deep since he crossed from Cambodia — that’s some thirty years gone.

The sea is a gem today, green and faceted. These people — my three passengers — they believe I do not speak English. And I don’t. Not to them anyway. They mutter and moan and curse and joke. All the while my face remains impassive. A Khmer Times completes the look. The print, though bleached, is clearly not English. It’s here at the helm should I want to seem busy — and I do at times, such as when we wait for the diver to surface. We are in such a wait now.

How long since I last spoke? Let us just say the Barrier Reef was bigger back then. I remember the charter quite clearly. Yes, I took to sea a gentleman — a red-headed banker — a long time ago, who had me sit for eternity and listen to his politics, his Manchester United, his Hemingway, his nothings, while an impotent line dangled the day away in bait of a blue marlin. If he’d caught one, I would have cut the line and shrugged whoops.

What’s it been? A decade now?

To these three people, I do not speak. These people, science-people, are perhaps not the brightest in their field (ichthyology? teuthology?). Because who in Australia does not speak English? Their accents are a grab bag: a banjo twang, a city-slicker, and one shaky-voiced chirp. Americans, the three of them. Their diver down below is silent and sleek, but no one is silent as me. He at least gruffs and grunts and says his favorite beer. The older woman finds it quite dashing. Funny how some types of silence make a man mysterious and other types make a man invisible, like me.

Now listen. Something strange has just happened which I regarded in stillness: the young woman at the bow is a joy. All morning she has been sitting, delighting in the blue of the sky, the green of the ocean. She is, I understand, their intern. A moment ago I watched her scoop her hand into the water. When she lifted it out, a small and precious octopus was sitting serenely in her palm. She loved it instantly. Her expression surrendered to its tiny design, and her disarmed eyes fed on it as if on a puppy dog. I thought she would cry — the way I have seen young ladies cry at something miniature.

Then blue circles flashed from the animal’s head down the length of all eight arms, brightly, abruptly, as if turned on by something electric. Circles so perfect, blue so royal, you wouldn’t think them natural.

“Oh,” the girl said.

She threw the animal back to the ocean. Then she folded her hands in her lap and smiled at the other two, a man and a woman.

The man and the woman have now stood up, without a word, and have presently relocated to the back of the boat where I sit in my captain’s chair. Like I said, the boat is not large, but it is sizeable enough that a soft word at the stern cannot be heard by the bow. They begin to whisper:

“Did you see that?” says the man.

“Delightful specimen,” says the woman.

“Do you think it bit her?”

“I’m not sure it matters,”

“I’m serious,” the man says.

“I am too,” says the woman, looking out over the ocean.

We are eleven miles from shore. The closest hospital is two miles inland from the harbor. The venom can start working within minutes. Or it can take an hour, depending. Venom traveling from the extremities will take longer than venom from, say, the neck. The bites are painless; even the girl does not know if she is in danger yet.

From the bow, the girl shows me a terrific smile. One hand is holding the other.

“You really made a brainiac move,” says the woman, “hiring that little nincompoop. She doesn’t even know what’s deadly and what’s not.”

“She threw it back,” the man says.

“Her head’s empty as a conch. If you put your ear to her mouth you would hear the sea. You’ve probably already done that, haven’t you?”

“Don’t start.”

“You had to have something to ogle on this trip. Never mind if she’s a dunce. She sees something in the water shaped like a scrotum, she reaches for it. Never mind if it will kill her. You like that. That scrotum instinct.”

“There’s no way she could have known.”

“When she dies, they’re going to dedicate the film to her. Which is a marvelous shame.”

“We don’t know if she’s been bitten yet.”

“We’ll know soon,” says the woman.

“We need to get back to shore,” he says.

“We can’t,” and she looks at the water again.

She has her points. Gus, the diver is not due back for thirty minutes. He is collecting the cameras which they placed on the reef last week. Time-lapse stuff, a favorite on the BBC. Gus is a bit of a free soul. Dolphin-esque, he deviates from the dive plan as often as not. Sometimes he comes up early, sometimes he takes an extra quarter hour to meditate.

“Gus was in a good mood today,” says the woman. And what that bodes, I for once can’t decipher.

The octopus’ neurotoxin kills by paralyzing the diaphragm. There is no antivenom. But if a victim can be intubated, respirators can keep the victim alive until the toxin is excreted naturally. It’s only a matter of…

“We should try for the shore,” he says.

“And what, leave a note for Gus?” says the woman. “A note floating in the water: Sorry we missed you! Be back tonight!.”

“Well,” says the man.

“Well hypothermia. Or a cramp in his leg.”

The girl remains at the bow, smiling at us. Smiling at the day. I keep my impassive face. Maybe Gus will surface soon. So far the girl’s diaphragm is still doing its own work. Beside me, the woman mutters something so ill it takes all my guts not to giggle. I could use such a neurotoxin now, to paralyze my sides. I think perhaps they have noticed my mirth. Let me think of something to distract myself: let me think of the day, years ago, when I brought two honeymooners to the reef — how the young lady vomited from the gunwale while her new husband, at the stern, looked for box jellyfish. He called them like one calling dogs — with clicks and smooches. When finally he saw one, he plunged his hand toward it and groped a full fist of its smooth bell. Before I could stand and pull him back, he beamed me a tall smile.

“Chirodropidae,” he said. “Genus Chironex. Species C. fleckeri. I know exactly what it is.”

I was silent that trip, too. Now that I think about it, quite a long time has passed since I spoke to any of the passengers I have taken out to sea. What good does it do? You don’t need speech to show someone how the life vest fits. I feel a conversation is only meaningful if you can resume it someday, like that perpetual stew I was ladled as a boy. Passengers, they come and they go.

A bit of a breakdown now, as the woman whispers filthier and filthier words to her husband. The husband, for his part, is trying to do what he believes he ought to do in such an emergency: be deliberate, be analytical. But really, he is not thinking straight. If either of them were thinking straight they would turn to me. They would plead for help with hands and charades, breaking down the false language barrier any way they can.

And if I were thinking straight, I would break out of my silence. I would clear my throat and astonish them with English. I would explain how there is a liferaft, here, you see, here — stowed just under the deck. It is the inflatable sort, I would explain. It seats six and even has a canopy to protect you from the sun. If I were thinking straight, I would deploy it overboard and watch it hiss triumphantly to tumescence; I would point to the man and the woman and say, “Get in the lifeboat, now. Wait for your diver while I race your intern to shore. Once we get to shore, we’ll send the Maritime Command to come get you.” What a simple plan, and if I were thinking straight, I would set it in motion.

I have not thought straight for years. Do I even hear my own voice between my ears anymore?

The girl breaks my heart. It shatters me to see her, silent as me: an old fart. You speak up first, poor girl. I am weak, but something tells me if you would just yelp, Help, it would break my spell. Quick as a minnow I would leap to save you. We can make the hospital after all; they have bags that can breath for you on the way there. Speak! I will do the talking on shore. Please. Don’t just sit there. Sitting there, you remind me that we are all too much inclined to silence of some sort.

The girl sits. Her smile praises the day. The man and woman watch her carefully for any sign of the venom’s action, and I see, off the starboard side, a common dolphin breach the surface in a quick and quiet arc. The dolphin’s friends follow his lead, breaching in a line behind, so that their playful backs make a cycloid trail, like the suggestion of a sea monster in an old woodcut.