The Salmon in the Pool

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He thought it all frivolous—and of course it was, the affectations, the tawdry wine glasses, so taking his coat he slipped out for some air. He walked out the vaulted doorway and the night folded in on him. At the bottom of the staircase he turned hoping someone might try to stop him, but the smokers leaning on the parapet merely watched him as if he was an empty ship put to sea. Once that great sombre building had disappeared behind him—he felt he could breathe again. He stood in the gutter for a moment, still half drunk, and rubbed his eyes. He watched a crow arranging its feathers silently on top of a lamppost. It reminded him of a small black god. He walked absently, not entirely sure what compelled him forward. The white line down the middle of the road was like a tugboat smoothly towing him along. A rabbit’s white tail flashed in a car’s headlights ahead of him. Slowly as if by evanescence, the bitumen under his feet became dirt. Slowly too, suburbia gave way to sweeping black farmland that curled over into the sea. He could hear it there in the distance, steadfast and reliable like a heart. “The ocean” rose out from his mouth and into the cold air like smoke. He stopped a moment to tie his left shoe. The milk thistles dozing in the gutter gently nodded their heavy purple heads in unison. It was starting to get cold, he stood up and drew a hollow breath full of doubts. He noticed the dew beginning to fatten in the fields and wondered what the time was. A battered fox darted out from a bush. He kept walking, the vague halo of alcohol around his head vanishing—the ocean beating its tattooed drum in the distance. When he came to the top of the cliff, a black desert gently dragged before him. Every now and again a light breeze ruffled the collar of his coat. He felt like a very small bird in a domed aviary. He made to smile but checked himself. As he stood there he couldn’t help but think how absurd it all was.        

The wing of savage coast he stood on seldom saw visitors, indeed the path down looked as if it had not been used for months. He began scrambling down with help from an old mariner’s rope and at one point; a white extension cord tied perilously around the base of a collapsed cairn. He swore as he stumbled blindly into a sagging clematis. The wind-carved vegetation jagged and caught his jacket as he clambered on. He did not mind, it could peel and strip him naked for all he cared. He’d been here as a boy with his father, he remembered the rock pools—each one its own lonely aquarium. While his father fished he’d bound over the blue pools like a tiny astronaut.  He’d immerse his hands in the salt and let the anemones inhale his fingertips. He’d watch attentively as the mussels hugged desperately the glistening green walls. He never could quite put his finger on what it was about rock pools that fascinated him, still to this day they enraptured him. Perhaps it was the way the worlds inside them operated in complete silence— or maybe it was the separation from something violent and futile. Here, the pools were particularly deep, deep enough to swim in. He recalled one right beneath the headland (the most profound and abysmal of all the pools) that once held a salmon inside. He must have watched that stupid fish for hours. Its glistening flanks flaring a million silver specks in the sun. He could still picture vividly the captive swimming around and around painting hopeless circles. It was like a condemned prisoner waiting for the tide to set it free. He did not dare tell his father, he knew exactly how that would end. As he made his way onto the beach he could see the moon hanging over the sea like a wolf’s eye. A small swell was running and the silver foam hissed and vanished. It seemed like each lapping wave was slowly dissolving a separate part of him.      

Walking along, he thought of the hundreds of times he’d been to the beach in his life. Never once had it been at night. He peered expectantly into the inky pools but was disappointed to see only blackness and the sky reflecting above. He thought how it was all far less sentimental than one is led to believe. He slowly drifted over to the point, the point that jutted out into the water like a knife in the spine. He could see a container ship’s amber lights on the horizon. He wanted to see the deep pool where the salmon had been. Maybe it was still there, silently painting its immortal circle. He took off his shoes that had filled with sand and placed them side by side on a flat rock. As he made his way closer, careful not to cut his tender feet on the sharp rocks, he was startled to see a porcelain-like object in his periphery. It was long and slender, right there on the outer edge of the intertidal zone. It looked like an ivory tree trunk or a baroque sculpture that had fallen from the sky. Its edges were soft and fluid in the gloom. He thought it must be lost cargo from a container ship that had bobbed its way to shore. Yet, he couldn’t help thinking there was something supernatural about it, something bewitching. Something distinctly biological. The incarcerated salmon completely slipped from his mind as he began rolling up the cuffs of his pants. He went cautiously over the dark pools, careful not to roll his ankles and as he crept closer he found himself unconsciously trembling. It was not until he was within a stone’s throw of the anomaly that he realised what it was. The piteous thing was completely naked, hair sweeping across her face like black cables of kelp. Her skin, soft and delicate in the moonlight, was badly bruised. She was the loneliest thing he had ever seen.           

She floated face up—with eyes that absently contemplated the constellations above her. Her withered palms were presented to the sky like a holy idol. He’d never seen a dead person before, he always thought he’d weep. He did not weep. She was completely desolate there in the inky water and she looked almost peaceful. There was an empty expression that reminded him of something—he did not know what. The bruised patchwork of her skin was like an appalling black and blue map of the coastline. He could see every cove and sea cave he had explored as a boy. Suddenly he felt rather sick and off-balance. He knew if he fell in that pool it would surely swallow them both. He stared at her to anchor himself, he could not stop staring at her, she was like a psychic’s pendulum. He stared at her for eternity, or at least until the sky began to grow steadily flat and grey. After throwing up twice and staggering franticly back up the cliff, he ran as fast as he could to the police station.           

As the morning gulls opened their eyes and unbent their weary wings, his shoes were still sitting side by side where he had left them.