Somewhere Over the Sea by Halfdan Freihow Read Free Book Online Page B

light as the sky above me. The grill is exactly where it ought to be, so too are, in a manner of speaking, your rock crystals, opals, amethysts, conches, and the silk blanket, even though it’s news to me that our washroom has been turned into a treasure chamber.
    Now let’s go to sea.
    IT IS, EVERY SINGLE TIME, a moment of truth.
    I can think of no better expression to describe the experience of being at sea with you, in our boat. It is a moment of beauty, a moment that asks to be looked in the eye. It is perhaps the most demanding and rewarding moment I know of.
    I sit at the back by the outboard motor. You sit in the front, always turned away from me, toward something else out there, as if you were scouting for land. I see your soles, which you rest on, your back, and I see your head, fair curls in the wind and the sharp light. You sit absolutely still. As long as the boat is moving you sit like this, motionless, your hands in your lap, facing something I don’t know about. If we’re headed for a wave so big that I have to shout “Wave!” you raise your hands from your lap almost like a sleepwalker and fold them around the rubber trim on each side, but you don’t turn your head to see how we take the wave. When we’ve ridden it, you lay your hands back in place, in your lap. You don’t seem interested. There is something thoughtless even about the way you give Balder a pat, when he puts his forepaws up on the thwart and presses his snout in between your hands. Usually I tell myself that you seem secure. It cannot be anxiety, I imagine, that is the source of so much serenity. But sometimes I catch myself thinking that perhaps you’re hiding some unknown fear behind all this composure, and that’s a thought that fills me with a nameless dread I don’t know what to do with.
    I’ve never asked you what you’re thinking when you sit like that, turned away and averted. And you’ve never said anything. This mutual silence is a kind of agreement I am only reluctantly a party to, because at times it feels as though I’m losing you. You sit there, two or three short metres in front of me, but it’s as though you’ve left me a long time ago, as though you’re obeying orders from another and mightier captain, as though your ship has already brought you to a larger sea than I can reach with my little boat.
    Where are you now, Gabriel?
    I know your body so well, I see it clean through the jacket and trousers and vest, your skin and your muscle tissue, and I see that no quivers or tensions run through you. The blood flows effortlessly in your veins, your heart beats rhythmically and monotonously. You don’t seem caught up in any agitation; no nagging want has set your glands pumping. Is it only that you’re tuning in and tuning out? That the swell and the sea breeze soothe you? That you need this moment of leisure, that you’re just resting and enjoying? You always say yes when I ask, but you’re never the one who suggests a boat ride. Why not? I think. If it’s something you need?
    Are you okay, Gabriel?
    You’re so beautiful and dignified sitting there, somehow so very unattainable. Sometimes I can’t stand it and I call your name out loud, above the headwind and the roar of the motor, to get you to look at me a moment. You turn, deliberately, as though you knew. I lay a kiss on the palm of my hand and blow it to you, mouth “I love you” with my lips and drink in your face with my eyes. You mime a sort of response, but your kiss lands in the water, for you don’t have time to follow it all the way; you’ve already turned back to what is yours alone out there ahead.
    Are you alone now?
    No, you can’t be. You are wholly and completely present in the landscape surrounding us, and I shrug off this melancholy that doesn’t belong here where regret and longing have no place, here where there’s so