“Mine too.”
[Long silence]
Pi Patel: “So, you didn’t like my story?”
Mr. Okamoto: “No, we liked it very much. Didn’t we, Atsuro? We will remember it for a long, long time.”
Mr. Chiba: “We will.”
[Silence]
Mr. Okamoto: “But for the purposes of our investigation, we would like to know what really happened.”
“What really happened?”
“Yes.”
“So you want another story?”
“Uhh … no. We would like to know what really happened.”
“Doesn’t the telling of something always become a story?”
“Uhh … perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of
invention
in it. We don’t want any invention. We want the ‘straight facts’, as you say in English.”
“Isn’t telling about something—using words, English or Japanese—already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?”
“Uhh …”
“The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?”
“Ha! Ha! Ha! You are very intelligent, Mr. Patel.”
Mr. Chiba:
“What is he talking about?”
“I have no idea.”
Pi Patel: “You want words that reflect reality?”
“Yes.”
“Words that do not contradict reality?”
“Exactly.”
“But tigers don’t contradict reality.”
“Oh please, no more tigers.”
“I know what you want. You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.”
“Uhh …”
“You want a story without animals.”
“Yes!”
“Without tigers or orang-utans.”
“That’s right.”
“Without hyenas or zebras.”
“Without them.”
“Without meerkats or mongooses.”
“We don’t want them.”
“Without giraffes or hippopotamuses.”
“We will plug our ears with our fingers!”
“So I’m right. You want a story without animals.”
“We want a story without animals that will explain the sinking of the
Tsimtsum
.”
“Give me a minute, please.”
“Of course.
I think we’re finally getting somewhere. Let’s hope he
speaks some sense.”
[Long silence]
“Here’s another story.”
“Good.”
“The ship sank. It made a sound like a monstrous metallic burp. Things bubbled at the surface and then vanished. I found myself kicking water in the Pacific Ocean. I swam for the lifeboat. It was the hardest swim of my life. I didn’t seem to be moving. I kept swallowing water. I was very cold. I was rapidly losing strength. I wouldn’t have made it if the cook hadn’t thrown me a lifebuoy and pulled me in. I climbed aboard and collapsed.
“Four of us survived. Mother held on to some bananas and made it to the lifeboat. The cook was already aboard, as was the sailor.
“He ate the flies. The cook, that is. We hadn’t been in the lifeboat
a full day; we had food and water to last us for weeks; we had fishing gear and solar stills; we had no reason to believe that we wouldn’t be rescued soon. Yet there he was, swinging his arms and catching flies and eating them greedily. Right away he was in a holy terror of hunger. He was calling us idiots and fools for not joining him in the feast. We were offended and disgusted, but we didn’t show it. We were very polite about it. He was a stranger and a foreigner. Mother smiled and shook her head and raised her hand in refusal. He was a disgusting man. His mouth had the discrimination of a garbage heap. He also ate the rat. He cut it up and dried it in the sun. I—I’ll be honest—I had a small piece, very small, behind Mother’s back. I was so hungry. He was such a brute, that cook, ill-tempered and hypocritical.
“The sailor was young. Actually, he was older than me, probably in his early twenties, but he broke his leg jumping from the ship and his suffering made him a child. He was beautiful. He had no facial hair at all and a clear, shining complexion. His features—the broad face, the flattened nose, the narrow, pleated eyes—looked so elegant. I thought he looked like a Chinese emperor. His suffering was terrible. He spoke no English, not a single word, not
yes
or
no, hello
or
thank you
. He spoke only Chinese. We couldn’t understand a word he said. He must have felt very lonely. When he wept, Mother held his head in her lap and I held his hand. It was very, very sad. He suffered and we couldn’t do anything about it.
“His right leg was badly broken at the thigh. The bone stuck out of his flesh. He screamed with pain. We set his leg as best we could and we made sure he was eating and drinking. But his leg became infected. Though we drained it of pus every day, it got worse. His foot became black and bloated.
“It was the cook’s idea. He was a brute. He dominated us. He whispered that the blackness would spread and that he would survive only if his leg were amputated. Since the bone was broken at the thigh,
it would involve no more than cutting through flesh and setting a tourniquet. I can still hear his evil whisper. He would do the job to save the sailor’s life, he said, but we would have to hold him. Surprise would be the only anaesthetic. We fell upon him. Mother and I held his arms while the cook sat on his good leg. The sailor writhed and screamed. His chest rose and fell. The cook worked the knife quickly. The leg fell off. Immediately Mother and I let go and moved away. We thought that if the restraint was ended, so would his struggling. We thought he would lie calmly. He didn’t. He sat up instantly. His screams were all the worse for being unintelligible. He screamed and we stared, transfixed. There was blood everywhere. Worse, there was the contrast between the frantic activity of the poor sailor and the gentle repose of his leg at the bottom of the boat. He kept looking at the limb, as if imploring it to return. At last he fell back. We hurried into action. The cook folded some skin over the bone. We wrapped the stump in a piece of cloth and we tied a rope above the wound to stop the bleeding. We laid him as comfortably as we could on a mattress of life jackets and kept him warm. I thought it was all for nothing. I couldn’t believe a human being could survive so much pain, so much butchery. Throughout the evening and night he moaned, and his breathing was harsh and uneven. He had fits of agitated delirium. I expected him to die during the night.
“He clung to life. At dawn he was still alive. He went in and out of consciousness. Mother gave him water. I caught sight of the amputated leg. It cut my breath short. In the commotion it had been shoved aside and forgotten in the dark. It had seeped a liquid and looked thinner. I took a life jacket and used it as a glove. I picked the leg up.
“‘What are you doing?’ asked the cook.
“‘I’m going to throw it overboard,’ I replied.
“‘Don’t be an idiot. We’ll use it as bait. That was the whole point.’
“He seemed to regret his last words even as they were coming out, for his voice faded quickly. He turned away.
“‘The
whole point
?’ Mother asked. ‘What do you mean by that?’
“He pretended to be busy.
“Mother’s voice rose. ‘Are you telling us that we cut this poor boy’s leg off not to save his life but to get
fishing bait?
’
“Silence from the brute.
“‘Answer me!’ shouted Mother.
“Like a cornered beast he lifted his eyes and glared at her. ‘Our supplies are running out,’ he snarled. ‘We need more food or we’ll die.’
“Mother returned his glare. ‘Our supplies are
not
running out! We have plenty of food and water. We have package upon package of biscuits to tide us over till our rescue.’ She took hold of the plastic container in which we put the open rations of biscuits. It was unexpectedly light in her hands. The few crumbs in it rattled. ‘What!’ She opened it. ‘Where are the biscuits? The container was full last night!’
“The cook looked away. As did I.
“‘You selfish monster!’ screamed Mother. ‘The only reason we’re running out of food is because you’re gorging yourself on it!’
“‘He had some too,’ he said, nodding my way.
“Mother’s eyes turned to me. My heart sank.
“‘Piscine, is that true?’
“‘It was night, Mother. I was half asleep and I was so hungry. He gave me a biscuit. I ate it without thinking …’
“‘Only one, was it?’ sneered the cook.
“It was Mother’s turn to look away. The anger seemed to go out of her. Without saying another word she went back to nursing the sailor.
“I wished for her anger. I wished for her to punish me. Only not this silence. I made to arrange some life jackets for the sailor’s comfort so that I could be next to her. I whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Mother, I’m sorry.’ My eyes were brimming with tears. When I brought them up,
I saw that hers were too. But she didn’t look at me. Her eyes were gazing upon some memory in mid-air.
“‘We’re all alone, Piscine, all alone,’ she said, in a tone that broke every hope in my body. I never felt so lonely in all my life as I did at that moment. We had been in the lifeboat two weeks already and it was taking its toll on us. It was getting harder to believe that Father and Ravi had survived.
“When we turned around, the cook was holding the leg by the ankle over the water to drain it. Mother brought her hand over the sailor’s eyes.
“He died quietly, the life drained out of him like the liquid from his leg. The cook promptly butchered him. The leg had made for poor bait. The dead flesh was too decayed to hold on to the fishing hook; it simply dissolved in the water. Nothing went to waste with this monster. He cut up everything, including the sailor’s skin and every inch of his intestines. He even prepared his genitals. When he had finished with his torso, he moved on to his arms and shoulders and to his legs. Mother and I rocked with pain and horror. Mother shrieked at the cook, ‘How can you do this, you monster? Where is your humanity? Have you no decency? What did the poor boy do to you? You monster! You monster!’ The cook replied with unbelievable vulgarity.
“‘At least cover his face, for God’s sake!’ cried my mother. It was unbearable to have that beautiful face, so noble and serene, connected to such a sight below. The cook threw himself upon the sailor’s head and before our very eyes scalped him and pulled off his face. Mother and I vomited.
“When he had finished, he threw the butchered carcass overboard. Shortly after, strips of flesh and pieces of organs were lying to dry in the sun all over the boat. We recoiled in horror. We tried not to look at them. The smell would not go away.
“The next time the cook was close by, Mother slapped him in the
face, a full hard slap that punctuated the air with a sharp crack. It was something shocking coming from my mother. And it was heroic. It was an act of outrage and pity and grief and bravery. It was done in memory of that poor sailor. It was to salvage his dignity.
“I was stunned. So was the cook. He stood without moving or saying a word as Mother looked him straight in the face. I noticed how he did not meet her eyes.
“We retreated to our private spaces. I stayed close to her. I was filled with a mix of rapt admiration and abject fear.
“Mother kept an eye on him. Two days later she saw him do it. He tried to be discreet, but she saw him bring his hand to his mouth. She shouted, ‘I saw you! You just ate a piece! You said it was for bait! I knew it. You monster! You animal! How could you? He’s
human
! He’s your own kind!’ If she had expected him to be mortified, to spit it out and break down and apologize, she was wrong. He kept chewing. In fact, he lifted his head up and quite openly put the rest of the strip in his mouth. ‘Tastes like pork,’ he muttered. Mother expressed her indignation and disgust by violently turning away. He ate another strip. ‘I feel stronger already,’ he muttered. He concentrated on his fishing.
“We each had our end of the lifeboat. It’s amazing how willpower can build walls. Whole days went by as if he weren’t there.
“But we couldn’t ignore him entirely. He was a brute, but a practical brute. He was good with his hands and he knew the sea. He was full of good ideas. He was the one who thought of building a raft to help with the fishing. If we survived any time at all, it was thanks to him. I helped him as best I could. He was very short-tempered, always shouting at me and insulting me.
“Mother and I didn’t eat any of the sailor’s body, not the smallest morsel, despite the cost in weakness to us, but we did start to eat
what the cook caught from the sea. My mother, a lifelong vegetarian, brought herself to eat raw fish and raw turtle. She had a very hard time of it. She never got over her revulsion. It came easier to me. I found hunger improved the taste of everything.
“When your life has been given a reprieve, it’s impossible not to feel some warmth for the one to whom you owe that reprieve. It was very exciting when the cook hauled aboard a turtle or caught a great big dorado. It made us smile broadly and there was a glow in our chests that lasted for hours. Mother and the cook talked in a civil way, even joked. During some spectacular sunsets, life on the boat was nearly good. At such times I looked at him with—yes—with tenderness. With love. I imagined that we were fast friends. He was a coarse man even when he was in a good mood, but we pretended not to notice it, even to ourselves. He said that we would come upon an island. That was our main hope. We exhausted our eyes scanning the horizon for an island that never came. That’s when he stole food and water.
“The flat and endless Pacific rose like a great wall around us. I never thought we would get around it.
“He killed her. The cook killed my mother. We were starving. I was weak. I couldn’t hold on to a turtle. Because of me we lost it. He hit me. Mother hit him. He hit her back. She turned to me and said, ‘Go!’ pushing me towards the raft. I jumped for it. I thought she was coming with me. I landed in the water. I scrambled aboard the raft. They were fighting. I did nothing but watch. My mother was fighting an adult man. He was mean and muscular. He caught her by the wrist and twisted it. She shrieked and fell. He moved over her. The knife appeared. He raised it in the air. It came down. Next it was up—it was red. It went up and down repeatedly. I couldn’t see her. She was at the bottom of the boat. I saw only him. He stopped. He raised his head and looked at me. He hurled something my way. A
line of blood struck me across the face. No whip could have inflicted a more painful lash. I held my mother’s head in my hands. I let it go. It sank in a cloud of blood, her tress trailing like a tail. Fish spiralled down towards it until a shark’s long grey shadow cut across its path and it vanished. I looked up. I couldn’t see him. He was hiding at the bottom of the boat. He appeared when he threw my mother’s body overboard. His mouth was red. The water boiled with fish.