Light in the Sea [antikvár]

Siii'vV iiiiili Galapagos sea lions, Galapagoi Islands, Ecuador. ZALOPHUS CALIFORNIANUS WOLLEBAEKI Introduction T I he rocks were upholstered with tiny brown and yellow mussels. Under the surface, foam [ bathed the rocky masses like clouds around mountain peaks. Silver menidia fish swam through the clouds, and blackfish crept around the mountain bases. Emerald bits of seaweed danced in the surge. I swam in Italian flippers, a French mask, and an American snorkel with a ping pong ball valve and a mouthpiece made of syn±etic rubber as pliable as cast iron. The valve was supposed to keep the snorkel dry It never worked. The mouthpiece made me gag. I poked my head above water It was like breaking a spell. I was beyond a T-jetty in Elberon, New Jersey; the August sky was impossibly bright, and I sloshed back and forth in an easy swell. A west wind carried sound from land: beach club conversation, lifeguards' whistles, and children's shouts. I even heard, or maybe just imagine I heard, the mah-jongg ladies, a wonderful species of 1950s human with huge red lips and teeth and voices like tank transmissions, smoking cigarettes with ashes that defied gravity. Earlier I had flapped past their tables in my yellow flippers, and the mah-jongg ladies called to me. "David, you look like a space man." I was. "David, be careful.There's shawks out there." There were. It was years before I realized that there was no w in "sharks." I put my head back underwater and swam toward the beach. Across the shallows, people's feet advanced, huge white Moldavian tree slugs attached to ankles and legs that rose like baobab trees toward the surface. I saw a wonderful secret thing. Tan crabs with maroon claws fled before the feet. Sometimes they would fold their claws shyly in front of their faces and bury themselves backward in the sand. Sometimes they wotild raise their claws above their carapaces, preparing to die with an ultimate act of defiance.