Underjungle, page 5
You see things, sometimes. Suddenly there’s the outline of a crab in leaf coral, a school of sardines in the swishing of a fan, the arc of whale ribs rising from the floor of our canyon. It doesn’t mean they are there. Still, they are. If I tell you what I’ve seen, you don’t say I am crazy. Maybe you say you can see it too, if you cock your head and look at it just right. I suppose you could even navigate that way, using the spot where we both think it looks like there’s a barracuda to mark your destination, if there weren’t so many better ways to get around the ocean. Crazy is in the eye of the beholder.
There is beauty. And then there is art. We’ve all seen the way horse-eye jacks swirl off a coral wall, or how the salema form shoals so thick they could be walls themselves. It is pretty to watch them swim like that. But we know they’d do it anyway, if we weren’t there—and they’d do it the same way if we found it ugly, and even if they knew we found it ugly. (I hate to belabor the point, but is there anything artful about how a sea cucumber drags itself across the sand, ingesting the world through its anus? Or maybe there is, because it makes our water purer.)
Is making a picture in the sand also art? What about the moans of whales? What about the ways the Banjxa flip through the currents? What about the markings on the Akla’s skin? What about how you once let a school of anchovies swim about your neck as raiment?
Yes, I liked that. I won’t forget.
What about your thoughts—mine, yours, or anyone’s? Ideas that aren’t about anything particular—not about food or mates or tending to our young. Thoughts that are about nothing more than how the electrons in the current taste, or how the light speckles the water at its slushing fringes, and how the way that looks is pretty.
And what about ugliness? Creative ugliness, like how you can gore the side of a spotfin butterflyfish and pin it to a rock as you watch parasites swim inside it? And the way it struggles, wrenching, when you let it paddle away. Would that be art, too?
You can take a shell or a hard-edged stone, hold it in your mouth, and scrape the outer edge against the moving sand to form a shape, and it works better than using just your fin or tail. You don’t have to make a gorgonian or even any kind of coral.
It may be possible to draw a turtle.
Gjila is still the best there is. Maybe it’s a matter of practice, but I don’t think you need to be the first. The Banjxa have many talented swimmers. I believe they’re only getting faster. Maybe the skill to make images is innate. Or maybe it takes skill, plus enthusiasm, effort, practice, and the ingenuity to devise some useful techniques. Or it has to do with the sand. If that’s where the images are, they could have been there all along. Then art is being a detective. It’s seeing them before they’re there, and still seeing them once the currents have flushed them away. Then you could draw those images twice.
I bet you would have been good at this. I know you would have loved it.
It makes me think of you when I try to make my own. Imagine if I could draw your face. I wouldn’t blink.
I’d draw you over and over. Each time you’d be different, but each time you’d be the same.
Maybe I can draw Gola. The problem is everyone always looks the same. They look like shapeless beds of giant clams. And once you used to balance oysters on your chest!
The water washes everything away, except what you keep inside yourself. But the water washes things to you, too. It washed us this creature.
Is art chance? Is water art?
Maybe Gjila is good at making pictures because he uses the creature’s limb, with those separate gnarled ends. You can’t hold that many shells in your mouth. They’d drop like teeth. Those clingers don’t look like they’d grow back.
His gonads didn’t, but he was already dead.
Besides, the idea wasn’t to move them together. A sea fan’s tentacles don’t move as a block, but flex with the current, catching particles in their path. That’s how Gjila moved the creature’s limb in the sand, bending the ends individually at each possible joint, always aware of the right angles.
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So what about pretending? Is pretending art? Pretending that you like an admirer. Or pretending you are dead.
That’s popular here when some predators attack.
Most creatures you meet can’t control their faces—if they’re fortunate to have faces at all—except to open or close their mouths or barely to redirect their eyes. You talk to them, and their looks are glassy. The expression on the pinned butterflyfish’s face, while parasites devour its intestines, is exactly the same as a rock beauty’s while it’s spawning. If you ask, they’ll say they feel pain and ecstasy—yes. But their avowals are unconvincing.
And don’t get me started about dolphins, with their fake, sarcastic smiles. Happy or sad, they always look the same. Smug motherfuckers.
Some species mimic others, in order to attack or as a form of defense. The bluestriped fangblenny is a combtooth blenny that more closely resembles a bluestreak cleaner wrasse. But instead of pecking off parasites, it bites into the fins of its easily duped victims. Only a fool doesn’t sniff around first. The mimic octopus can disguise itself as a lionfish, sea snake, jellyfish, or speckled sole, depending on its needs. The black-marble jawfish can then disguise itself as a mimic octopus, which lets it move around safely, which is what it needs. The scorpionfish and stonefish just sit in place and look like schmutz.
But none of that is really pretending. It’s just doing what’s instinctive.
And then there are those butterflies, with their fake googly eyes on their flanks. That doesn’t keep them from getting pinned to rocks.
But we are different. Our snouts and cheeks and eye sockets move unimpeded, and you’d never mistake us for anything but what we are. We make expressions. We pretend. We display. And we make it clear how we feel, even if that’s not how we feel at all.
Like sharks, we are able to close our eyes. We do it for self-protection. But it’s less to shield them from contact when we strike and more to block out what we don’t want to see. Other fish, with their lidless eyes, don’t have a choice. That must make it hard for them to dream.
We grimace, smirk, give lecherous stares. Yes, I know the Weddell seals twitch their whiskers, but we still haven’t figured out what that means.
We cajole. Words play only a part in that.
This creature’s face is loose and spongy. You can twist the parts around. You can tweak the protuberance, flare the nostrils, yank on the tongue and see it once was a meaty organ—capable of swelling, probing, and curling. The creature’s cheeks could puff; the growths above its eyes could rise. If you tugged on them, you could then make them rise some more, until they arched like the legs of a subordinate lobster cowering before a dominant male. There are coralline sponges on the sides of its head, with more cilia inside, that might have been lures or rudimentary places for their mothers to grab them. The jaw moves independently, in an unhinged circle, while the mouth shuttles from side to side, dragging the protuberance along with it, as bait.
In short, I think this creature could also pretend. It can also close its eyes. But I doubt it had the intelligence to leer.
15
The creature comes from land. A shriveled creature, from the shriveled world. No matter how many oils their skins secrete, they must always be dirty.
They must stink.
We see birds sometimes when we approach the surface. We see them dive down to catch the fish in our realm. Being able to fly is an act of grace, a miracle, the stuff of religion. Being able to walk on land like a sea robin or frogfish isn’t as impressive. There are birds that will fly nearly as far as the whales will swim. That is how much they love the water.
The creatures who live on land must crave this place where we live. They must come here to refresh, replenish. They must ache for it. They must dream it.
So far from the ocean’s depths, these land-dwellers must be heavy drinkers. There must be an absence inside them they need to fill. How else could they survive?
These bodies from other realms aren’t like ours, with filaments on their heads and algal scraps wrapped around them, holding their bodies together because they were made so weak. Why would you live someplace where you’d have to wrap your body just to stay safe or warm?
Without water, their land must be inhospitable. Wouldn’t they suffocate in the open air? Or can they hold their breath for hours? If they venture from the coast, do they need to find pools of water where they can submerge their heads?
In the water, we know that sleekness isn’t affected by your size. Can you imagine the spectacular sight of one of their whales charging across the terrain, undulating through the air with each silent, rumbling step? Would there be shoals of them across their plains? Whales are full of themselves, but that is one thing I’d like to see.
Otherwise, it could only be a sorry, infected place. So far from the ocean’s depths, their world must be hot. We’ve felt the land’s heat infect the sea. Do these creatures live in cities there, and do their cities disintegrate like the corals?
We know how hot it is around the volcanic fissures in the abyssal plains. Can you imagine what they’re like without ocean water to cool them?
We know the more challenging life is where you live, the more intelligence you need to flourish there. The water is always changing. It has a billion variations, but the land stays where it is—unless it crumbles into the ocean (it must not be able to stand another moment there). So how intelligent can these creatures be if they keep living on land? When they pound the ground with their forelimbs, as Brola showed us, do they want to pound themselves? Don’t they realize they’ll break, with all those delicate and crunchable joints?
This one has already started to dissolve. Even in the water, it is filthy.
Without the free movement of the sea—without the grace of having it take you and sweep you away—these creatures must feel constrained. By their world, by the stillness, and by their own bodies.
If it needs to break, maybe that starts with needing to break free.
But maybe it also made pictures in the sand. If it could find some shells.
And maybe it also wanted to fly.
16
The ocean isn’t empty space. It’s entirety, and we’re a part of that. The water is the origin, our present, and the future, and yet we know some of it keeps drifting up, atomizing into the infinite sky, before returning someplace else. It knows where it came from, like the salmon. It comes back.
Is there such a thing as emptiness above us, where the ocean’s skin turns white before leaving on its journey? If the sky transports the molecules of our ocean, then it can’t be empty. But it’s for the birds.
The pounding continued. If the land creatures don’t live in the ocean or the sky, what’s left for them? Maybe land is nothingness, just sprawling plains. I hope there really are herds roaming across them, full of the quiet, incessant patter of their whales.
Waves don’t stop as they pound at the shore and splash against the sky. So why would this other pounding stop now?
What really stops in the ocean? Except for an individual life.
I’d like to think I got better at drawing in the sand. As I said, I came up with my own technique. I’d shift my weight onto my tail, letting it settle against the ground and relying on it as a pivot. Then I’d use my pelvic fins to lower my body, adjusting and stabilizing with my pectoral fins if I got too close or the current pushed me to either side. Like that, I could bring my snout toward the sand. I grasped a broken staghorn coral branch between my teeth and used its hard edge to rake the grains. I’d have to shuffle backward as I drew, which wasn’t ideal, but if I moved in the opposite direction, it would wipe away most of what I’d made. I can see now how having four limbs would be useful for propping yourself up on three and then still having the fourth one for drawing, or anything else. Of course, having six or eight limbs would be even better, but any more might get in the way.
Others had the same idea. By now, the creature’s limb had come detached, which made it so much easier to use. Packs of adolescents watched Gjila scoop and scrape the sand with the clingers on the limb, and then they devised their own techniques. These days everybody wants to be different—as long as they can express their nonconformity while part of a group. They’d gather in uncluttered stretches and make fleeting shapes in the sand, before hurrying away to make more of them someplace else. Some switched back and forth between coral fragments while they worked on their designs, keeping branches of different circumferences and differently angled tips bundled together in blades of kelp, as kinds of drawing kits.
Yes, I admit, their designs were better. The young are always more adept at the new technology.
Occasionally, they’d work together, teaming up on projects, with two or three of them finning slowly along an image’s outer edges, while they bounced one more of their friends between them, allowing that friend to focus on his drawing without worrying about finning himself into place or his tail getting in the way.
Sometimes, once the projects were done, they’d even push stones and shells around their designs to keep the currents from erasing them quite so fast.
I’ve seen some of them last for minutes.
The other thing you couldn’t deny is that you could grasp a coral fragment in one of the creature’s limbs better than you could in your mouth. Those little clingers at the ends didn’t look very strong, but they were dexterous! The four main ones you could curl or push together or pull apart. You could even entwine them around each other like strands of sea rods or pull them backward until they looked ready to snap.
But the fifth one was different. It was as mobile as any antenna—and yet so much thicker. The base was more like the belly of a good-sized shrimp. Likely, it was as delectable. Sometimes we’ll observe snow crabs grabbing small shells with their pincers—lobsters are able to do this, too—but they’re limited to just a single movement and are happy if they’re able to grip something, more or less (I’ve never known a crab who was a perfectionist, or a lobster who ever admitted anything was wrong). But you could imagine how these creature’s clingers could work together to move a coral fragment exactly how you liked—spinning, twisting, or flipping it, while always staying in control. Or how the fifth clinger, with its smooth skin and more muscular base, would have been ideal for introducing into an anus.
So much better than relying on a cleaner wrasse to attend to your nether parts—especially one who could turn out to be a bluestriped fangblenny, if you weren’t careful.
Because then you’d really need eyes on the back of your head. Like a flounder.
17
The ocean enters our bodies, through our eyes, our mouths, our nares, our skin, and our gills. To have slits along your neck is an open invitation, but I like to think we are more private, more guarded. More in control. We are our own deciders, and yet there is no way to close yourself to the world. The ocean circulates within us. It is our blood and muscles and organs and bones. It is our reanimation. When its minerals and oxygen and protozoa have been exhausted, the ocean flows out from us again. New ocean rushes in. There is restitution, an exchange, although we have other names for it, depending on which hole we use.
So how does this creature from land exist? It doesn’t have gills for air. Or a blowhole. Maybe there’s some special place it goes where the air is cleaner. It plans ahead. Until then, it holds its breath.
Galla* and Govili† nudged stones and shells with their snouts to the edges of their composition. The two adolescents tried to push them with their tails, but that didn’t work. The smaller ones kept slipping past their fins. The process was fatiguing, but essential if there was going to be any permanence to their work. They also used their teeth to move the shells. That method was more precise, but it took even longer.
Once there was a base, they added a second layer. The more stones and shells they used, the more protection the barrier would give to whatever they made inside. So they added another layer after that. The more fragments you used to build it, the farther you had to be willing to travel to get them. Better that you collected them before you started to sketch, because your drawing wouldn’t last until your return.
Govili swam two body lengths back to get a better look. On one side, the barrier resembled a colony of star corals. But it also looked like a conger eel—it just needed a few adjustments around the jaw and fins. So Govili started fiddling. It’s true he dismantled part of it, allowing the current to wash in. But no matter. Did it make any difference what had been inside? He kept making changes, embellishments. The currents didn’t affect the frame, as they had his unprotected sketch, so he kept at it for days, adding pebbles, crunching on shells until the sizes were right, and then spitting them out and moving them to different spots.
Sometimes he was in a better mood than in others. He didn’t eat.
He lost weight.
* * *
*Gallā’holla.
†Govī’lī’niru.
18
We’re not good at counting. There are seven tribes. That number is easy, even if we’re not sure the Fantaskla exist. After that … we estimate. It’s hard to keep the larger numbers in your head, since they aren’t something you can smell. Maybe you feel them flit, or you catch a collective whiff. But that’s only if they’re living organisms, and when you talk about the entire ocean it only adds up to one. No one would expect you to count grains of sand, alterations in the current, or undulations of the sea floor. No one would want to. Occasionally, the Caavaju will offer precise numbers for something, like how many bridled triggerfish watched them snack on a sward of spiky sea urchins, but soon you realize they’ve just made it up. When a shoal appears, there’s no way to count the fish—so it’s not like there’s an actual number. It’s either a shoal or it isn’t. Although it can be a very large shoal. Which is true whether they’re mackerel or anchovies, even if the distinction isn’t immediately obvious.
