Then the bell had to be raised, with Father Caspar fastened inside it, testing the device to guarantee that he was able to move comfortably.
For a few minutes Roberto observed the spectacle of a huge snail—no, a puffball, an ambulant agaric—advancing with slow and awkward steps, often stopping and half-turning when the Jesuit wanted to look to the left or right. More than a progress, that walking hood appeared to perform a gavotte, a bourrée, which the absence of music made even clumsier.
Finally Father Caspar seemed satisfied with his rehearsal and, in a voice that sounded as if it came from his boots, he said he was ready to set out.
He moved to the windlass; Roberto hooked him up and began turning it, making sure, when the bell was raised, that the feet swayed freely and the old man could not slip down or up. Father Caspar clanked and re-echoed that all was well, but they should hurry: “These buskins are pulling my legs and are about to tear them from my belly. Hurry! Put me in the wasser!”
Roberto shouted a few words of encouragement and slowly lowered the vehicle with its human engine. No easy matter, because he had to perform by himself the task of many sailors. That descent thus seemed eternal to him, as if the sea sank gradually as he multiplied his efforts. But finally he heard a noise from the water, realized the strain was diminishing, and after a few moments (which to him seemed years) he felt the windlass now spinning idly. The bell had touched bottom. He severed the rope, then rushed to the bulwark to look down. And saw nothing.
Of Father Caspar and the bell there was not a sign.
What a brain, that Jesuit, Roberto said to himself with wonder. He has done it! Imagine, down in that water there is a Jesuit walking, and no one would guess. The valleys of all the oceans could be populated with Jesuits, and no one would know!
Then he shifted to more practical thoughts. That Father Caspar was down below was invisibly evident. But that he would come up again was not yet sure.
It seemed to Roberto that the water was stirring. The day had been chosen precisely because it was calm; but, as they were carrying out the final preparations, a wind sprang up which out here merely ruffled the surface a little, but at the shore it created a play of waves that at the submerged reefs could jeopardize Father Caspar’s arrival.
Towards the northern point, where an almost perpendicular wall rose, Roberto could glimpse gusts of spume that slapped the rock, scattered in the air like so many little white nuns. It was surely the effect of waves hitting a series of invisible rock formations, but from the ship it seemed as if a serpent from the abyss were exhaling flames of crystal.
The beach, however, was calmer, the swell was only at the halfway point, and for Roberto that was a good sign: it indicated the place where the reef protruded from the water and marked the border beyond which Father Caspar would no longer be in peril.
Where was the old man now? If he had started walking the moment he touched bottom, by now he should be … But how much time had elapsed? Roberto had lost all sense of the passing moments, which he had been counting for an eternity, and thus he tended to underestimate the result, and was convinced that the old man had barely descended, was still below the keel, trying to orient himself. But then a sudden fear seized him: that the rope, twisting as it descended, had made the bell execute a half-turn, and that now, unwitting, Father Caspar found himself with the vizor facing west and was heading for the open sea.
Then Roberto told himself that anyone heading for the open sea would realize he was descending rather than climbing, and would change course. But what if at that point there was a little rise westwards, and climbing it, he believed he was going east? Still the sun’s reflections would indicate the direction in which the planet was moving…. But could the sun be seen in the deep? Did its rays penetrate, as through a stained-glass window, in compact strips, or were they dispersed in a refraction of drops, so that the inhabitants of the abyss saw the light as a directionless gleam?
No, he told himself then: The old man understands clearly where he must go, perhaps he is already halfway between the ship and the reef, or, rather, he is already at the reef, perhaps he is about to climb it with his thick iron shoes, and at any moment I will see him….
Another thought: In reality, before today no one has ever been on the bottom of the sea. How do I know that down there, beyond a few ells’ depth, you do not enter an absolute blackness inhabited only by creatures whose eyes emanate a vague glow…. And who says that on the bottom of the sea one can still have any sense of direction? Perhaps he is moving in circles and will retrace always the same path, until the air in his chest has been transformed into moisture, which invites its friend, water, into the bell….
Roberto reproached himself for not having brought at least an hourglass up on deck: how much time had gone by? Perhaps already more than a halfhour, too long, alas, and it was he who felt he was suffocating. Then he took a deep breath, was reborn, and he believed this proved that only a very few instants had passed and Father Caspar was still enjoying the purest air.
But if the old man had set off obliquely, it was useless for Roberto to look straight ahead, as if the Jesuit were to emerge along the trajectory of an arquebus ball. He could have made many deviations, seeking the best access to the reef. Had he not said, while they were assembling the Bell, that it was a stroke of luck that the windlass stood precisely where it did? Ten paces to the north the false curtain abruptly formed a steep flank, against which the boat had once struck, while directly in front of the windlass there was a passage through which the boat had passed, running aground a bit farther on, where the rocks of the natural breakwater rose gradually.
Or, erring in direction, perhaps he had found himself facing a wall and was following it southwards, looking for the passage. Or perhaps he was following it to the north. Roberto had to keep his eye on the whole shore, from one extremity to the other; perhaps Caspar would emerge down there, crowned with sea-ivy…. Roberto turned his head to the farther end of the bay, then back, fearing that while he was looking to the left, he might miss the Jesuit already emerging on the right. And yet at that distance it was easy to identify a man quickly, let alone a leather bell dripping water in the sun like a copper ladle just washed….
Fish! Perhaps in those waters there was a cannibal fish, not at all frightened by the bell, and it had already devoured the old man whole. No, if there was such a fish, it would live between the ship and the beginning of the coral reef, not beyond, and Roberto would have glimpsed its dark shadow. But perhaps the explorer had already arrived at the reef, and animal or mineral spikes had pierced the bell, releasing what little air it still contained….
Another thought: How do I know that the air in the bell has really sufficed for all this time? Caspar had said it would, but he had already been led astray by his confidence that his basin would work. In the final analysis, dear old Caspar had proved to be a raving eccentric, and perhaps that whole story of the waters of the Flood, and the meridian, and the Island of Solomon was a pack of tall tales. And besides, even if he was right as far as the Island was concerned, he could have been wrong in his calculation of the quantity of air a man needs. And how do I know that all those oils, those essences, really did seal every crevice? Perhaps at this moment the interior of the bell looks like one of those grottoes where water spurts from every corner; perhaps the whole bell sweats like a sponge; is it not true that our own skin is a sieve of pores imperceptible and yet there, since our sweat filters through them? And if this happens with a man’s skin, can it not happen also with the hide of an ox? Or do oxen not sweat? And when it rains, does an ox feel wet inside as well?
Roberto wrung his hands and cursed his haste. It was self-evident: here he was, believing hours had passed, and instead only a few pulse-beats had gone by. He told himself he had no reason to fear; the brave old man had many more reasons to do so. Perhaps Roberto should support Caspar’s progress with prayer, or at least with fond hope and good cheer.
Besides, he said to himself, I have imagined too many possibilities for tragedy, and it is only proper to melancholics to generate specters that reality is unable to imitate. Father Caspar knows the hydrostatic laws, has already sounded this sea, has studied the Flood also through the fossils found in all seas. I must be
