Into the Dark, part 15 (after battle)
Oi, your headband...!
It's all mucked up with blood. Now that's a right terrifyin' look, innit...?
Nothing a quick wash in the water can't fix.
Your headband. Familiar.
Familiar knot. Desperate's Knot.
Queequeg... I survived by hanging onto the ropes you tied to your coffin.
The ropes that you could have held... Instead, I held onto it with my dear life...
That rope...
... also for you.
You want me to... bucket out oil from in there?
Yep. It's not as hard as it looks, though.
The cadaver of a Whale hung from a hook and swayed from side to side. Its stench was awful.
The smaller and more nimble you are, the easier it will be.
I'm not that small, though...
It's a job for greenhorns anyway! Less talk, more oil-bucketing. Get on with it, will ya?
A Whaler's toil does not end with killing the Whale.
Whalers also had to bucket and carry the inordinate amount of oil from the dead Whale.
I mean... How the hell do I know what's in there...?
Well, whaddaya think? Whale oil! It feeds us, it keeps us warm...
Aboard the Pequod was a man named Stubb, the second mate. He was a man of irritable disposition.
I...
I can't. Into that abyss, on nothing but a rope that looks like it'll snap from a slight breeze? I can't...
... Those words nearly escaped my mouth, when...
…….
What... are you doing?
Your rope. Tie it to my waist.
B-but why?
Tethered like so. Now if you fall, I fall.
You. Me. Together.
Her sentences were stuttering and incomplete. But there was something there that oddly soothed me.
Together...
Someone to catch me if I fell.
Someone to watch over me if I fell.
So I tied one end of the rope to Queequeg's waist, and the other on mine.
Ah... Huh...?
Funny I should mention that.
The rope was too short, too flimsy. It immediately snapped...
And I was sent hurtling down into the lard-filled belly of the Whale.
Kah! Gaah...
What was harder to bear than the entrails, the viscera, the oil, and various other things I didn't want to think about... was the pitch-black darkness.
Mmph! Mmrph!
Whale oil makes a sound as it quivers and reverberates.
The reverberating oil tries to become one with everything it touches.
Some City folk talk about this phenomenon using big words like ultravibro-fusion, oscillation frequency... How such elements are used to produce the resonance tuning forks, their wavelengths and fuel...
But the point is, a Whale's oil covers and devours anyone it comes in contact with.
And when you're devoured by a living Whale's oil, you become a mermaid.
And when you're devoured by a dead Whale's oil, your sense of self slowly scatters, until there is nothing of you left.
... Ha, ha... Haah...
That's when I...
... realized how tiny and fragile I was. How insignificant of a thing I was.
Maybe the Whales were just lonely.
And that's why they carried within them the oil that had the power to turn others just like them.
Maybe, people are the same...
Out of loneliness, we want to make something, someone ours. To paint them just like us, to fill them with things that make us.
I don't even know what makes me. How could I possibly paint others like me... if even I don't know what I am?
Maybe I'm shallower than a Whale.
I, who boarded the Pequod just because I wanted to live a life unlike those of others. Just because living a humdrum life was too boring for me...
I...
What do I even want?
In the dark, where the distinction of all things begin to blur...
I saw light.
A ray of light scattered through an opening. I saw a rope drop from there. A rope lowered from the heavens into this dark, lonely abyss.
This rope. I wanted to hold onto this rope and live.
Because it was there, right before me.
Ishmael!
Rope, hold tight!
Ah...
Man... Dying in that oil... Now that would've left nothin' for nobody to remember.
Yeah. Guess I almost died one of the most meaningless deaths in the City...
I was born again that day, maybe.
The rope I held onto that day... was a rope that could never be severed.
That rope. It snapped.
No, no. It can... We can make it whole again. We'll tie another knot. As long as we can make it to the heart...
... you'll be free.
Once we, trapped here...
We had to think one thing. One thing only. To not become Mermaids.
Doubting. Hesitating. And pale begin to grow on skin.
You know. Like Whale oil.
I thought one thing. To meet you again, to go on a new adventure with you, I have to escape. Have to kill the Whale.
But to do that, I had to cut... the rope.
To not become a Mermaid, I think that one thought. I think that one thought again and again. And suddenly...
I, buried you.
The Whale-heart. To kill it...
I put my heart to sleep.