In Great Waters Read Free Page A

trained itself underwater, where distance gave way to haze within ten yards and the distortions of the currents and plankton and salt concealed everything in the blue-green blur. Above the water when he surfaced to breathe he had seen further, but focusing on anything more than ten yards away was an effort that made his head ache and his eyes waver, sometimes distorting his vision for minutes at a time.
    Whistle was to stay in this room for a long time. He saw no one but the red man who had brought him from the beach. The confinement was maddening; after ranging over wide miles of sea, free to swim off in every direction, the rigid walls and weighty, earth-bound gravity drove the child to rages of impatience. Left on his own he bit at his hands, struck the walls, pulled and tore at the covers that had been left for him on a straw pallet. Sleep was all but impossible: after the yielding embrace of the water, the hard stone floor bruised him into endless wakefulness. It did not occur to him to use the pallet: its smell and colour were strange, and its four-sided angularity was of a piece with the rest of this room, this tense-cornered world. Instead he worried at it, pricking his hands on the straw, feeling nothing but the same enmity he felt for the walls. Once the covers were in rags, he could heap them up into little nests that gave him some relief from the rigid, cold floors, and into these he would crawl, rocking to and fro, amazed at the speed with which his body could move through this new, forceless substance that surrounded him.
    The swiftness of the rocking was the only thing that contained him. Unattended, Whistle launched counter-attacks on the room that seemed so hostile to him, hauling himself from place to place across the floor, but when the sound of footsteps came to the door, he froze, sitting where he was, only rocking a little to keep his attention fixed away from the red man who stood tall over him, shaking his head at the devastation.
    With him the man brought objects. Whistle had expected to begfor food, and indeed, the first time the red man appeared, there was something in his hands that he held out to Whistle and, getting no response, lifted to Whistle’s mouth, tapping it against his lips. Whistle recoiled, for the substance was hot like urine, and its brown, seaweed colour seemed utterly inedible. The boy held his breath, refusing to smell, already too threatened by the appearance of this stuff he was expected to eat, and carried on rocking, turning his face aside every time the meat was proffered. He was afraid of offending the man, whose posture was so permanently upright that he seemed to be emphasising every sound he made, but he was more afraid of this corrupt-smelling substance.
    After that, the man tried a fish. Whistle recognised the shape of it, but the flaking, loose-skinned texture convinced him that the fish was rotten, unsafe to eat, especially in this new environment where excrement stayed where it lay instead of washing away on the tides. The man showed it to him again and again, and Whistle rocked, hunger clamping his stomach, paralysed with indecision. It was many minutes before he came to the conclusion: eat or die. A sore stomach was better than an empty one; better to eat and be ill than starve and be dead. The fish was still in the man’s hand, and Whistle had no desire to be close to him, but there was no sign that the man would give it up. He leaned over, took two quick bites, swallowed. His empty stomach immediately convulsed, spewing the food onto the floor. Whistle took another bite, then another. Almost none of the food stayed in his stomach, but he kept on biting until the fish was gone and there was no more hope of nourishment in it.
    After a while, the red man took to bringing raw fish. Whistle liked this little better, seeing the limp tails and dull eyes and tasting the beginnings of corruption in their flesh, but he bolted them down. His stomach always ached. The red