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Once upon a time, a boy named Hanz lived with his mother in a small hut near the sea. Hanz's father had died long ago and his mother struggled hard selling knick-knacks made from broken shells found on the strand. Hanz was left alone most of the day and he spent his time roving the salt marshes and the bare cliffs overlooking the ocean. During the summers, boys from families visiting the area played with him. But they only stayed for a few weeks so Hanz got used to knowing no one and being by himself.
However, the sea was always with him and Hanz became familiar with its colors and motions and sounds. One day out of despair, he talked to the sea. He told it all the troubles his mother had to face and how hungry he always was and how alone he felt. And the waves answered him in loud, watery crashes that drowned out his thoughts.
Hanz would wade into the ocean and lie down on it, face down, for as long as he could. He heard his heart louder through the water and he thought he heard something else: a warm, other worldly pulse deep in the blue darkness whose explosions ordered the waves and patterned the paths of fish. Hanz wanted to find the source of this pulse. He wanted to drown in it.
In the winter it was very cold and windy. The sand would fly everywhere, freeze and make strange shapes. Hanz's mother usually stocked plenty of salted fish for the cold seasons but one year they had very little to eat and resorted to dig deeper and deeper into the sand ice for dead roots. Hanz was so miserably hungry that he secretly ate pieces of his own clothes. When it wasn't windy, his mother would go out to look for food. One day, she didn't come back. Hanz was too weak to go out to look for her. He just huddled on the ground, hoping his mother was coming back soon with food. For days she did not come back. He had eaten all the cloth in the house, and had begun gnawing on the wooden plates. He also ate great quantities of snow mixed with sand. He felt great pain in his belly, but did not care. In this way, Hanz fell asleep and almost died.
He woke up in the village hospital. He had been found by a foreign painter who wanted to see the shores in the winter light. The painter also discovered Hanz's mother dead in a frozen ditch. He had painted her from afar, thinking she was a dead dog.
Hanz got well again under the care of the nurses and the doctors. They sent him to an orphanage and from there he was adopted by a young couple who couldn't have children of their own. His new father, Harold, had been studying business and soon found work in a city far inland near a mountain. They moved there a year after they found Hanz, where they bought a large house n the fashionable quarter near downtown.
While Harold was always quite busy with his business affairs, Hanz's new mother, Ingrid, spent all her time with the child. She bought him everything he wanted, and taught him to read and write. Then she taught him poetry and painting and piano playing. IIngrid loved him dearly. Harold was worried that Hanz was getting spoiled so he sent him to a boy's day school for what he called "proper" schooling.
In the new environment, Hanz quickly forgot his wretched past near the sea. It came to him sometimes in nightmares, but as the years passed, they faded into faint associations. Whenever he saw seashells displayed in stores, he always stopped to look at them and he would feel sad and secretly cry. They reminded him of someone who loved him once but he couldn't remember who it was or when it was. In the summer,he loved the watery, gurgling sound the breeze made as it rushed through the treetops. After he went to church and read the Bible, he came to think that God was in this beautiful sound, which he confusedly adored and worshiped.
Hanz was every clever at school, particularly in math. This pleased his father, Harold, very much, who bought him expensive books on advanced and theoretical mathematics. Hanz did not understand what was written in those books but he loved looking at their strange symbols and formulations. To him, they were magical incantations that he would be able to master one day so he worked harder than ever to understand numbers.
When he was 17, Hanz had an interview with Harold at his office concerning his future. While Harold encouraged him to enter business, Hanz wanted to attend University so that he could continue his researches on math. After much going back and forth, Harold acquiesced and sent his son to a foreign university with a strong math faculty. His mother, Ingrid, was desolated by his son's departure and fell into a deep depression. For years, all her interest in life had been focused on him and now that he was gone, she felt strange and alone and absurd.
Hanz did well in the foreign university. At first, he sent many letters home, but by his third year, months would pass before he would think of writing something to his father. And then, it was mostly to ask for more money.
One day, a message came to Hanz that Ingrid was very ill. All of a sudden, he remembered all her kindness towards him and he felt very guilty for not having gone back once during the past three years. He boarded the first train home and soon found his father, waiting for him at the platform.
Apparently, Ingrid had been sick for quite a while but did not want to tell Hanz about it. However, a few months ago, she had begun to cough blood, and the doctors feared the worse. Hanz walked up to her bed quietly. Ingrid was awake but her eyes looked out and saw nothing. Hanz embraced his mother gently, but she did not react. Her face was cold and wet. She died soon after.
Harold, who was very much in love with his wife, couldn't cope with the loss. After the funeral, he took Hanz to a restaurant and told him how he had met Ingrid at a party of his old business master. At the time, Harold had little interest in business and often did not show up to work for days. The master was very disappointed in him and berated him constantly. During the party, the master, after a few drinks, went so far as to call Harold incompetent before the entire company. Dejected, he wandered into the garden, where he saw a lovely girl reading a book of poetry by a lamp. He talked to her and learned that she was called Ingrid. They fell in love there and Harold became resolved to do well in business so that they could have a happy home. Then Harold told his son that he must find his reason to face life or he would be lost. If that reason is hidden somewhere in the abstract conjectures of numbers, then so be it. The next day, Harold was found hanging in his office by a belt.
Hanz was all alone in the world. He returned to university to finish his studies. For some reason, he had lost his former appetite for numbers so he chose not to pursue advanced studies after he graduated.
Hanz had acquired his father's relatively massive fortune so he did nothing but read and go to the theater for several years. However, he soon bored of his aimless life and found work in a trading company. His main task consisted of trivial calculations of profit. Sometimes, he was asked to optimize trade routes. Most of the trades were done overseas, so Hanz came to research the ocean currents and marine conditions. This gave him an undefinable pleasure.
During his breaks, Hanz would look at pictures of ships that the company owned. He pored over their schematics and sketched them, roughly at first, then precisely as he became more intimate with their forms. His supervisor was amused by this and one day, he asked Hanz if he wanted to join a trade expedition to America. He could stop at Boston and update their branch in the area of the current practices.
Hanz was delighted about this opportunity and quickly made arrangements to follow through. Soon, he was set aboard a trading ship headed for America. It had been some time since he had seen the sea, and seeing it again filled him with strange, painful feelings. At night, he had terrible dreams.
As they left the port, the ship went smoothly. Hanz stared for a long time at the shrinking land he was leaving behind and felt afraid all of a sudden. Why had he risked going to sea, with all its dangers and tedium?
The next day, the wind blew stronger and the waves chopped up and down. Hanz ate nothing and stayed close to the ship's head where he regularly unloaded the turbulent liquid inside him. As the sun slowly set, Hanz was amazed to find the entire ocean turned to liquid gold. The ship was just a tiny speck riding the waves that had just been transformed into something incredibly beautiful. In his nauseated state, Hanz thought he could see a path leading into the sun and he had a strange yearning to throw himself off the ship.
That night, a storm caught up with them, and the waves became like black mountains. Hanz huddled in the corner of his chamber, completely disoriented as to place or time. In his nervousness, he began chewing his own clothes and found it comforting and nostalgic. As he swallowed bits of cloth, he began to remember the old days with his real mother. She had been a beautiful woman, he thought, but he couldn't remember her face. Hanz remembered how she used to hold him to her when it was cold. He remembered the feeling of rough skin on her hands. How could he have forgotten?
Then Hanz recalled his old love for the sea, and the dark, ineffable beating that hid at its core.
The ship tossed violently, and Hans found himself pressed against the wooden wall. He heard a soft gushing and then saw water coming in under his door. Hanz struggled to open the door, but it was shut fast. He looked outside of his window, and saw it was black and watery.
Hanz took a deep breath and then opened the window. He swam out into the sea and tried to move up. However, he felt a strange dragging force from the ship that made him go below. Hanz couldn't see anything. Soon, he wasn't even sure if he was swimming up or down. However, he flailed his arm as hard as he could and he felt the cold water move through him.
Then Hanz heard the loud pulsing in the deep that called for him. He knew his mother and everyone else who loved him were waiting for him there. At the same time, he screwed up his eyes and saw some faint lights above. Hanz continued to swim up but then he paused, and considered going down into the dark beating. His chest felt like it was exploding and he wanted to breathe terribly. The water was already deep in his ears and his nose and his mouth. It would take so little effort to let it all in, but he knew what it would mean. It was an indescribable agony as he drifted, paralyzed, not knowing which way to go. The sea gave him no advice.
(draft version - will need to edit in a few weeks)
 germanicus2 · Tue Mar 17, 2009 @ 10:06pm · 2 Comments |
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