The first time I saw her – an event in a bookstore. The kind of thing where the event is happening but even so the store is open for people to browse the shelves. She was the event. A man asking questions. I’d stopped in after work to look for a book.
It was the trailing off that caught my attention. I thought perhaps something was wrong with the microphone. I became aware of these – silences, in the conversation.
When I met the translator, I’d not thought much about the procedure in years. I’d thought of it a lot, at the start. It was hard not to. Then time passed. The scars were no longer livid. Those running legs faded and faded and then they were gone. Perhaps it was now a small thing, a smaller thing. A big thing, but not as big a thing as it had been before.
There was no pain now. I felt nothing.
The way she spoke. The way even … if I could describe it. The way even she sat on her chair. Who would have thought that could be so …
I sat at the back of the store to wait for the end. I spent half the time pretending to read but I was really in a panic staring at my hands.
Adjustments, refinements, rearrangements. She clutched them in her fists like a wild array of balloons. Pauses in between as she took time to think. Nothing taken for granted. Nothing allowed – not for long – to be fixed.
And I saw it. I saw this thing running through me. Running me through. Its grip.
Sometimes she’ll look at me, and I’ll think … I think she looks at me with pity? And I think perhaps that I should tell her, about what happened to me. Though I’m not sure I’d be clear, that I’d know what to say, that it would make sense. Where would I start?
She’s seen the scars on my back – but that’s not it, that’s not, that’s … that’s not what I’m talking about.
DIANA POWELLWHALE WATCHING
She was standing on the headland when the whale came into view. Dishrag white, a floating giant barnacle. The man was spread cross-like on its flank, caught in a cat’s cradle of harpoon hemp. There was no-one else to see it, only her. She had started running as soon as it left the harbour; she knew the way. The creature turned towards her, watching her from its one pig-eye; the man looked, too. And then it turned again, facing the open sea.
The man waved to her, as they disappeared into the mist, towards Ireland.
‘Goodbye,’ she said, waving back.
When she told, toothless gums nah-nahed at her, hands came together and trapped her in a corner of the school-yard. Names boxed her ears.
‘Thicko!’
‘Fibber!’
‘Twpsin!’
‘Liar, liar …’
And yes, next day, at the harbour, the whale was there again, and the waving man was walking about, talking to the crowd.
‘There!’ her teacher told her. ‘You mustn’t make things up! That’s what films are for!’
‘Miss’ spent her Saturdays at the Palace in the big town. ‘We must visit the set as often as we can,’ she told the school. ‘It will be an educational experience.’ She brought movie magazines into class, and showed them pictures of the stars. One day, she brought the book, which had the same name as the film. ‘It’s too old for all of you, but I shall read you some.’
‘Call me Ishmael,’ she began. It was enough.
She told them how brave the whale-hunters were, how many useful things came from whales.
They lived in Wales, didn’t they? The children scratched their heads.
‘Margarine. So much better than butter, so much easier for cooking! Oil. Potions for your mothers’ lotions and make-up. Where would we be without them?’
They made models out of newspaper, water and flour. The boys put them in puddles and watched them sink.
Whenever they visited Lower Town, where the filming took place, teacher’s legs grew longer and shinier. Her lips were red against pale, pillowed cheeks, beneath coils of hair, stacked like lobster-pots. She edged the children towards the stars, careless of the water, the lens of the camera. The director motioned them away, the teacher’s cheeks reddened, even through their whale-oil glaze. Yet they still went back the next day.
Weeks later, after the film crew had gone, and the coast was quiet once more, she climbed to the headland again. Far below, pieces of rotting carcass were washed along the shore, caught amongst the jagged outcrops, floating in the rock pools, along with a pink hair-slide. Later still, she saw a group of seals playing with scraps of white flesh, passing them from nose to nose, smiling.
And there was blood, she was certain there was blood … spreading strands like dulse seaweed – on the seals, on the rocks. How could there be blood if it wasn’t real?
She knew what she had seen, and if she had seen it, it must be true.
Soon, the people of the town forgot, going back to their fishing and farming, waiting for holiday-makers who never came. In time, another film came along, with new actors. Brighter stars in even bigger cars, who stayed longer; who were Welsh, like them, and drank in the pub, rather than the big hotel; drank in the pub again and again. Other things were different, too. Cameras taking photos of cameras, televisions in every house, some of them in colour. (Marriage.) Phones in every house, to make gossiping easier; cars in every drive, making the world smaller. (Children.) Soon the old film was forgotten. Only she remembered. Remembering, as she dredged nappies through bleach-water, her hands as wizened as the whale. As her husband snored beside
