The Swimmer

There was a man who lived alone on a small island, no more than a rise of rock and grass and a single cold hearth, set apart in the sea.

Across a wide and turbulent channel lay a larger island, and on it, every seventh day, a community rose and gathered: singing, and the breaking of bread, and the warm press of people who knew one another's names and kept one another's troubles. The man could see the smoke of their fires, and when the wind sat right could hear the thin gold thread of their singing carried out across the water. To be among them, to sit in that warmth and be one of the company, was the thing the man wanted above all things in the world.

But between the two islands there was no bridge. There was no ferry that kept the hour. There was no one whose task it was to come. There was only the channel, wide and cold and deep, and the boats, which belonged to the others. And so, on the first Sunday, the man went down to the shore of his small island, and waded out, and swam.

That first crossing very nearly took him. The current pulled sideways and made him pay for every yard. The cold reached into his chest and closed its fist. He did not swim the way a child swims in summer, for the joy of the cool and the kicking; he swam the way a person climbs out of a burning house, because to stop was to go under, and to go under was the end of everything. Each stroke spent a coin from a purse that did not refill. When at last the tide carried him in and set him against the far island's dock, he caught the lowest board and dragged himself up onto it, and lay there, and shook, and brought up seawater, and could not for a long while raise his head.

The Islanders came down to meet him, clean and dry and glad, and they gathered round, and they applauded.

"How strong you are," they said. "It does our hearts such good to see it."

And that was the whole of what they did. They went back up to the hall, and they sang, and they broke bread, and they went home dry. Not one of them had grown wet. Not one of them had grown cold.

The next Sunday the Swimmer swam again. The sea ran higher that day, and grey, and it beat him about the head and filled his mouth, until the crossing that had nearly killed him the week before seemed almost the gentler memory. He reached the dock with nothing left in him and lay on the boards as before. But this time, when he had found a little breath, he lifted one hand and pointed along the dock to the boats. A whole fleet of them lay there, broad in the beam, dry, their oars shipped and ready, tied fast to the rail. They had lain so the week before, and the week before that, and no hand had ever loosed them.

"I cannot do this much longer," the Swimmer said, and the voice came out of him like something dragged over stones. "My head is above the water today. But my strength is leaving me, and it does not come back. Untie one of these boats. Row out to me next Sunday, and bring me across."

The Islanders smiled the warm and settled smile of people certain they are being kind, and they applauded.

"How strong you are," they said. "It does our hearts such good to see it. We would never dream of taking that from you. Surely someone else means to see to it. We will pray for your strength."

And each of them stepped back a careful pace, so that the water would not reach their shoes. Not one hand moved to the ropes. Then they went back up to the hall, and they sang, and they broke bread, and they went home dry.

So the Swimmer swam again the Sunday after, and the Sunday after that. The weeks ran on into a season, and the season turned the water colder, and each crossing took more than the last and gave nothing back. The Swimmer came to know the channel the way the condemned come to know the walk to the scaffold: every swell of it, every place the current turned traitor, every long stretch where there was nothing to do but keep the arms moving and refuse to sink. His body wore thin. His hands shook upon the land. And each Sunday, when he reached the dock and found the breath, he asked again for a boat.

And each Sunday the Islanders smiled the warm and settled smile of people certain they are being kind, and they applauded.

"How strong you are," they said. "It does our hearts such good to see it. We would never dream of taking that from you. Surely someone else means to see to it. We will pray for your strength."

And each of them stepped back a careful pace, so that the water would not reach their shoes. Not one hand moved to the ropes. Then they went back up to the hall, and they sang, and they broke bread, and they went home dry.

Then two of the Islanders could bear it no longer.

They were not braver than the rest, nor stronger, nor better loved. They had simply found that they could no longer stand on dry boards and call a drowning beautiful. So one Sunday, while the others climbed to the hall, the two of them went instead to the rail and untied two of the boats that had hung idle there so long, and took up the oars, and pushed out onto the same grey water the Swimmer had fought alone. The channel did not spare them for their kindness. It pulled at them sideways and soaked them to the skin and burned their arms in their sockets, and they learned in a single crossing what the Swimmer had carried for a season. But they reached the small island, and took the Swimmer aboard, and brought him back across, dry.

For many weeks after that, it was so. The two rowers took it in turns, one Sunday the one and the next Sunday the other, out across the channel and home again, and the Swimmer did not have to swim. Colour came back into him. The shaking left his hands. He arrived at the hall with breath enough to sing, and sat through the whole of the gathering rather than lying spent at the back of it, and learned the names he had never had the strength to learn before. He held a child for a woman whose arms were full. He carried a dish to a table. He was, for the first time, simply present, the way he had only ever wished to be. He did not have to be remarkable, nor brave, nor an example to anyone. He had only to be there, and he was, and it was enough, and it was everything.

It was the children who took to the Swimmer first, and took to him wholly. All through those weeks they were at his side in the hall, climbing onto the bench beside him, asking after the small island and the cold hearth and what it was like out in the middle of the channel where the grown folk never went. He told them, and they listened, and they made him their own. And from the edge of the dock these same children had watched the two rowers go out and come back, soaked and shaking, Sunday after Sunday, while their mothers and fathers stood dry upon the boards and clapped. They had begun to frown at a thing they did not yet have the words for.

But the channel was wide, and the current never tired, though the two who fought it did. Their hands blistered, and the blisters broke and hardened into a horn that split again with every crossing; their backs bowed; they began to dread the Saturday dusk and the grey Sunday water waiting beyond it. The crossings that had cost the Swimmer a season now began, week upon week, to cost the rowers the same. The Sundays stacked one upon another with no end set to them, no other shoulder offered, no relief anywhere in sight. And at last the two came up the dock to where the others stood, as dry and glad and unbothered as ever, and they asked, plainly, for help. They pointed back along the rail at the fleet of boats still tied there, still dry.

"We are glad to bring him across, gladder than we can say," the rowers said. "But we are only two, and we are growing tired, and we cannot do this every Sunday forever. We do not ask everyone. We ask only that a few more of you untie a boat and take a turn. Share the crossing out among us, and no one need ever drown, and no one need ever break."

And the Islanders smiled the warm and settled smile of people certain they are being kind, and they applauded.

"How strong you are," they said. "It does our hearts such good to see it. We would never dream of taking that from you. Surely someone else means to see to it. We will pray for your strength."

And each of them stepped back a careful pace, so that the water would not reach their shoes. Not one hand moved to the ropes.

But the children had heard the two ask, and they did not understand the answer the grown folk gave. They pulled at sleeves and at skirts. "Why will no one else go?" they said. "There are boats enough for everyone. We would go ourselves, only our arms are too small for the oars, and no one will show us how. Then teach us. Let us learn. We could each take a turn when we are grown, and the two would not have to carry it alone."

The grown folk smiled down at them, and smoothed their hair. "What good hearts you have," they said. "Hush now. These are matters for the grown. When you are older, you will understand how these things must be." And they sent the children off to play, and went up to the hall, and sang, and broke bread, and went home dry.

A month wore on in this way, the two rowing and the many watching, and then the thing that always had to happen, happened. One of the two fell ill, worn down past the point a body can be asked to go, and could not so much as lift an oar. The other went out once into the teeth of the current alone, and was beaten back before the halfway mark, and crawled home understanding that two had been barely enough, and one was not enough at all.

So the Swimmer went into the water again.

He was long out of the dying practice of it, and what the weeks of rest had given back was not enough, and was never going to be enough. Halfway across, the sea found the bottom of him; there was simply no more to spend. He turned, and with the very last of it fought his way back to his own small island, and lay upon the cold stones of his own shore, having reached nothing, and no one, and changed nothing.

And the next Sunday, because there is nothing else to be done with a heart that still wants to be among its people, the Swimmer went into the water once more. This time he did not turn back. Somewhere out in the wide grey middle of the channel, within sight of the smoke of the fires and the thin gold thread of the singing, the water closed over him and did not give him up again. No one saw the moment. There was no one placed to see it.

The following Sunday the bells rang as they had always rung. The Islanders set out the bread, and sang the songs, and came down to the dock in their dry shoes to wait, as had become their custom, for the brave figure who would haul himself up out of the sea. The water lay flat and empty. Behind them the fleet of boats sat along the rail, every knot as tight and as tidy as the day it was tied.

One of them shook his head, at last, and laid a hand upon his heart.

"What a shame," he said softly to his neighbour. "Those two did such wonderful work. Such a beautiful thing, while it lasted. It is a sorrow they could not keep it up. If only they had honoured their commitment, none of this need have happened."

And the others murmured that it was so. A pity. A waste. The two had taken it on, in a manner of speaking, and then they had let it fall, and see now what had come of it.

But the children did not murmur. The children turned on them.

"It was not the two who let him drown," said one, and her voice shook as she said it. "The two begged you. They stood on this dock and begged you to take a turn, and you clapped your hands, and prayed for their strength, and went home dry. Two of you went out to him. Only two. And when those two could go no further, not one of the rest of you would untie a single rope to take their place. The boats were here the whole time. They are here now."

"You watched him swim," said another, "and you watched him drown by inches, and you called it brave. And now you blame the only two who ever got wet."

For a moment the grown folk looked down at the children. Then one of them sighed, and laid a gentle hand upon a small shoulder. "You are upset, little ones," he said kindly. "You are too young to understand how these things must be. Come away from the water now." And they turned, and went up to the hall, and they sang, and they broke bread, and they went home dry.

But the children did not follow them up. They stayed on the dock as the light went out of the day, a small row of them at the very edge of the boards, looking out across the flat grey water to the place where their friend had gone under and had not come up again. They did not sing. They did not speak. They only watched the empty sea. And behind them the boats sat along the rail, dry, and whole, and idle, every last rope still tied.