OLGA GRUSHIN
401
him in a fluid ring like golden spirits from some far-off, secret abyss.
And this time his heart quivered with a foretaste of knowledge. When
the wave tossed him back up, he coughed out the water and whispered
the line in the ancient language, the line he did not know he remem–
bered-"Daughters of happy Nereus, swimming through the light ... "
All at once, images and memories flooded his mind in a brilliant whirl,
and a revelation blossomed in his soul, a thing of incomparable, daz–
zling beauty. He thought of the young and handsome sailors saved from
drowning by the compassionate goddess of the deep and lulled to eter–
nity in her radiant palace; he heard Ino's sad voice as she told him she
liked him, she liked him very much, and her daughter's olive-dark
eyes-Beppe's eyes-swam up before him with the force of a promise.
Like the nearing ship, it too was a promise of life, but a different life, a
magnificent life, a life without boundaries, a life without end. And as he
soared and fell with the waves, immortality beckoned, certain as the kiss
of his divine bride.
The cruise was now sliding past him, and he watched it indifferently,
silently, despising its commonplace music and the coarse laughter of its
women. But as the gigantic haul moved further out, almost out of reach
of his voice, an anguished scream ripped through his mind. What if it
was all a terrible mistake? What if these underwater lights were nothing
but reflections of the ship's bright garlands of electricity, or some sleepy
flock of phosphorescent jellyfish? What if he was simply drunk and
deluded?
He listened to the last panicking sobs of reason and laughed wildly,
spitting the sea out of his lungs. He knew the truth. As the lights of the
ship died in the night, he took one last deep breath and dove into the
darkness, toward the magical place where the daughter of Kadmos was
leading the Nereids in their eternal watery dance.
