2a. She writes of Hadaly: "Hadaly, which in Persian means 'Ideal,' drifted down through the currents in her packing case, feet first, for her weighted shoes were the heaviest. 'Sowana,' 'Alicia,' 'Dame de Voyage,' she had many names, none of them coherent under water. When the latch sprung as it jarred on a rock, she floated out--robbed of the heaviness of her metal frame--her arms outstretched, golden phonographic cylinders in her lungs playing dimly, lips moving softly, hair seething in a black cloud about her face. She was worried, for under water things come apart; they suffer a sea change: bones to coral, eyes to pearls. Steel acquires a skin of molluscs after the flesh peels off. Poor Celian. The captain had restrained him from pitching over the edge of the lifeboat. 'It's just things, sir! Things!' Everyone could understand the grief of losing a special packing case, a special psossession in a storm, but nonetheless a disposable. That which is left to sink when human lives are saved. And murmuring her polished endearments, Hadaly descended into the sands of the mid-Atlantic ridge. |