The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman
Pabbi wasn’t well dressed. He’d gained weight since she’d last seen him. Several seconds passed during which neither father nor daughter said a word.
“I need your help,” Aby said.
“Okay.”
“I’m going to get her.”
Pabbi needed no further explanation to understand who “her” was. “Ah, Aby,” he said. “That’s … that’s big.”
“I know.”
“Are you still Aquatic?”
“I am.”
“Devoutly?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re planning on Returning her?”
“I am.”
“Oh, Aby,” he said.
Pabbi did not move from the door jamb. He looked at the line where the red carpet from his apartment met the grey carpet in the hallway. A window was open in his living room, and the current pushed through the doorway, causing their bodies to sway in unison. The gills in his neck flapped open and he pushed a stream of water through them. Letting go of the door jamb, Pabbi backed into his apartment. “You’d better come in,” he said.
With a quick pull of her arms, Aby swam inside. Pabbi began making a pot of stryim. Neither spoke until it had finished brewing. The kitchen table was cleared of dishes, and Pabbi and Aby bobbed around it.
“Why don’t you come around more?” Pabbi asked.
“I try.”
“Not very hard.”
“Will you help me?”
“It’s best if you just leave her alone.”
“I can’t.”
“Tell me this—are you going because you want to save her? Or to find out why she left us?”
“Can’t it be both?”
“For you, maybe.”
“So you’ll help me?”
“Have you ever breathed air, Aby?”
“No.”
“Walked on legs?”
“No.”
“Tried to pass?”
“No.”
“It’s too much for you.”
“Not if you help me.”
“Even if I help you.”
“I’ll do it even if you don’t help me,” Aby said. She looked up.
“That’s probably true.”
“Then you’ll help me?”
Pabbi pushed a long stream of water from his gills. “As much as I can,” he said.
Leaving her at the table, Pabbi swam to his bookshelf. He pulled down a volume unlike any Aby had seen before. He set it on the kitchen table. Waiting until she was looking over his shoulder, he opened it. The book looked like an atlas, but it didn’t illustrate the currents of the ocean. Aby realized that it was a map of land. Flipping through the pages, Pabbi came to an illustration of a large country, coloured pink. He put his thumb on Halifax. He dragged it across the shape, stopping at Morris, Manitoba. Even on the page, the distance seemed enormous.
“It will take you days,” Pabbi said.
“Okay.”
“Maybe a week.”
“Okay.”
“And that’s only if you manage to steal a car.”
“What’s a car?” Aby asked.
Pabbi flipped open his gills and pushed a stream of water through them.
It is important to understand that, for devout Aquatics, simply being unwatered is a sin. At the core of the religion is a belief in the Finnyfir, or Great Flood. In this way, Aquaticism is not unlike Judaism or Christianity, but with one central difference: where those religions believe God flooded the world in order to start again, Aquatics believe God simply liked water better.
Aquatic scripture teaches that God found the land imperfect. He thought the mountains were messy, the deserts too dry and the fjords a little showy. He didn’t like the way the creatures He’d put on land did nothing but fight amongst themselves. The only thing God liked about His creation was the water. He loved the lakes, rivers and oceans. He loved the way water moved. He loved the colours it came in and the sounds it made. God liked the sorts of creatures that lived in it, and was very proud that it could exist as a solid, a liquid or a gas.
So, after a time, God decided to make it rain for forty days and forty nights, until the world was covered with water. Of course, this killed the majority of the things that lived on land. But as the water rose, a small number of those creatures discovered an ability they hadn’t known they had. After the water spilled from the banks of rivers and over the shorelines, after it rose above the roofs of houses and above the tallest trees, when the creatures’ fingers could no longer hold the flotsam they’d clung to and the jetsam they’d grasped, they fell beneath the surface and their lungs made the decision for them. Pulling in water as an automatic nervous response, some of them discovered they could breathe it. These creatures, Aquatics believe, were God’s chosen. He had given them the ability to breathe the water, leaving all the others to perish.
And perish they did. Land creatures died by the billions. But the Hliðafgoð took up residence below the surface of the water and thrived. Then, after thousands of years, God allowed the waters to recede, exposing the land. God did this to test the Hliðafgoð. Since He had never taken away their ability to breathe air, He wanted to see which of His creatures were worthy of His amphibious gift—and which were not.
God had judged the land to be unworthy; those who were attracted to it, who would return to it, would be revealed as unworthy as well. This is why the Hliðafgoð had decided—or at least most of them had—to suffer as little contact with humans as possible. Humans were called Siðri, which literally translated means “prone to spit in the eye of God.”
While Aquatics believe that it’s a sin to breathe the air, it is a minor sin. Within Aquaticism, there is only one sin that is considered an act so blasphemous it is beyond forgiveness, and this is to die with air-filled lungs. This, Aquatics believe, curses your soul to wander disembodied and alone, unwatered and unforgiven for eternity.
But even worse, these damned souls retain all of their memories. They remember everyone they’ve ever loved and continue to love them just as strongly, if not more so, than when they were alive. Their desire to be with them, to touch them or talk to them, remains eternally unsatisfied. In Gofdeill, the unwatered dead are called the sála-glorsol-tinn, which loosely translates to “famished souls.” It was from this fate that Aby hoped to save her mother.
What Aby had going for her was language. When she was still in public school, her mother had made her learn English. Looking back, Aby realized that her mother must have always suspected that she’d one day live unwatered, and had planned on taking her daughter with her. Although Aby’s accent remained thick, her vowels were pretty clear and the bulk of the language came back to her easily when she studied it.
Much harder for Aby to acquire were the skills needed to drive. It was easy to understand that the right pedal made the car go, the left made it stop, and it would travel in the direction she turned the steering wheel. More difficult to grasp was the idea that all motion would occur on the lateral plane, whether she was driving, walking or running. It was only after Pabbi suggested she imagine that every space she swam through, indoors or out, had a ceiling exactly as tall as she was that Aby began to understand. But it horrified her.
Aby was also skeptical of Pabbi’s advice that she would be able to steal a car by looking for its keys in the wheel well. She did not doubt the existence of cars, or of wheel wells, but the idea that anyone would be so cavalier with their keys seemed ludicrous. Devoted Aquatics, which Aby certainly was, believe that losing your keys not only predicts, but elicits mental illness. To lose one’s keys is the equivalent of losing one’s mind.
Even as she sat behind the wheel of the white Honda Civic, Aby’s keys were close to her, hanging from a string around her neck. As the car straddled Barrington Street, Aby touched her chest, feeling the shape of her keys through the fabric of her T-shirt. She felt comforted. Keeping the left pedal firmly depressed, Aby began searching through her only piece of luggage, a large shar
She rummaged until she found her copy of the Aquatic Bible. Aby flipped through the pages until she found the piece of paper she’d carefully placed between the Book of Doubt and the Book of Endings. Unfolding this paper, Aby scanned it from top to bottom. She turned it over and did the same. Almost every space, front and back, was filled with handwriting. The letters were very small. The words were very close together. These were Aby’s directions. Numbering three hundred and thirteen, they charted a course from the Ultramart Parking Garage in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the Prairie Embassy Hotel in Morris, Manitoba, a distance of 3,487 kilometres.
Aby pushed a large breath through her gills. She took her foot off the brake. She turned right onto Granville Street; three hundred and twelve directions remained.
The controls of the vehicle were simple, but Aby remained nervous about getting the pedals confused. She came to a complete stop at every corner, the cars behind her honking their displeasure. She had much difficulty matching the symbols on the paper to the symbols on the road signs. She found it impossible to judge the speed of oncoming traffic and whether she was getting too close to the car in front of her.
It took her two hours to find Highway 102, although things got easier once she did. Driving on the expressway was just like swimming with a school: Aberystwyth understood the need to maintain a consistent amount of space between her car and the other cars. After two hours of highway driving, her confidence increased. She leaned back in her seat. She drove with one hand. She was practically relaxed. Then the highway turned from four lanes to two, and suddenly a car began driving straight towards her.
The car did not slow down, nor did it veer from its path. Her first instinct was to make her car go up, but this was something it did not do. She did not go left or right since Pabbi had stressed the importance of keeping the car on her part of the pavement. Aby looked over her shoulder and saw that there were no cars behind her. Pausing briefly to make sure her foot was over the left pedal, she pushed it to the floor mat. Her shoulders hunched. Her legs felt weak. Her skin turned a dark forest green, and she gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands.
Closing her eyes, she waited. Several seconds passed, but no impact occurred. Surprised, she opened her eyes just in time to see the oncoming vehicle miss hers by inches. Aby breathed out. Her fingers loosened. She turned her head to see the other car receding into the distance. She did not want to continue, but she reminded herself of what was at stake, and then pushed down on the right pedal.
Aby drove without incident for nine minutes, until another car began driving straight towards her. Again, Aby applied pressure to the left pedal. Her shoulders hunched. She covered her face with her hands and watched through webbed fingers as this car, too, missed hers by inches.
Once again, Aby was forced to find new courage. She continued driving. She drove all night. Her fear that every car travelling towards her in the oncoming lane was going to kill her diminished each time it happened. Nine hours later, just past Edmudston New Brunswick, she no longer had to brake when headlights approached. By the time she reached Rivière-du-Loup, Aberystwyth no longer had to stop at the top of hills to check that the road continued on the other side.
8
The unintended consequences of the bi-monthly
meeting of the Morris Town Council
Room C-27 lacked air conditioning. The men had removed their jackets and the women fanned themselves with the photocopied agenda. The sweat dotting the mayor’s brow, however, was not entirely from the heat. With only one item remaining, the mayor began speaking with greater speed. “Okay, this one should be quick,” he said. “It concerns the drought.”
The majority of the council members had stopped paying attention some time ago. Mentioning the drought, which was now in its fifty-fourth day, did not bring them back. His next suggestion did.
“I’ve been looking into … rainmakers,” the mayor said.
Those who hadn’t already turned to look at the mayor now did so. A dog, barking some distance away, could be heard. The mayor looked around the table, feeling a sharp need to defend himself. He slapped the table with his open palm. “What do we have to lose?” he asked.
“What does it cost?” Margaret asked as she adjusted the scarf around her neck.
“That’s the best part! We only have to pay them if it works. No rain? No pay!”
With this, the room’s tone changed completely. A vote was taken and the motion was passed.
“There are two rainmakers who’ve been recommended. I’ll contact both of them. They’re a father and son, but I guess there’s some bad blood. Maybe we’ll be able to play them against each other, increase our odds of success,” the mayor said. He and seven of the eight members of the Morris Town Council nodded. Only Margaret abstained, as something inside her, tiny and quiet, began telling her to prepare for the worst.
The towel Anderson was wearing slipped off as he raced to answer the telephone. Naked, he stood dripping onto the phone. He waited for the third ring before he picked up the receiver.
“Yeah?” he said. His feet were getting the carpet wet, which annoyed him.
“Mr. Anderson Richardson?”
“Yes?”
“I’m calling as a representative—”
“Listen, I’m sorry to be curt, but I’m in the middle of something. Is this about rainmaking?”
“Yes.”
“Where and when?”
“Ah. Yes. Well. Morris, Manitoba. It’s urgent.”
“It always is.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Anderson hung up the phone, eager to return to his bath. It was only after he’d submerged himself entirely beneath the bathwater and released all the air from his lungs with a long string of bubbles that he realized he had no idea where Manitoba was.
Ignoring the secretary’s protest, with his rubber boots squeaking and his raincoat dripping on the floor, Kenneth Richardson burst into the office of the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. The sound of rain against the room’s west-facing window was persistently loud. The mayor remained seated and calm behind her desk; Kenneth had not trusted this one from the get-go.
“It’s raining,” he said.
He did not point to the window with either his finger or his head. He remained staring, firmly, at the thin, grey-haired woman who’d served as the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, for five consecutive terms. She was a wise, politically savvy woman whose emphasis had always been fiscal responsibility.
“Yes,” she said, folding her hands on her lap and returning Kenneth’s look with equal intensity. “But how do we know your methods had anything to do with it?”
Kenneth’s eye contact intensified. Quickly and without warning, he turned. Water sprayed from his raincoat, landing on the front of her desk. He walked three steps to the window. He saw rain pouring out of eaves-troughs, collecting in puddles, splashing from under the tires of cars. He opened the window two inches, which was enough to let the rain in. It quickly collected on the sill and dripped onto the floor.
Kenneth turned and looked at the mayor but stayed near the window. Reaching behind him, he knocked on the glass three times. Instantly, a small black bird with a bluish head landed on the outside sill. It looked up with yellow eyes and then, with small, desperate movements, struggled to push through the two inches of open window. The bird’s sharp, tiny beak darted in and out like a sewing machine needle.
“Are you sure about that?” Kenneth asked.
“We are.”
“We did agree on a fee.”
“But we have no proof.”
“The fee was not excessive.”
“We need proof. Do you have any?”
“I understand completely,” Kenneth said. He rapped three more times on the window.
Four birds, each identical to the first, landed on the sill. All five struggled to push through the two inc
Very quickly there were more birds than the window-sill could hold. The birds fought each other for their positions. They thrust their blue heads through the crack, desperate to enter the room. More birds arrived. More yellow eyes stared through the glass. More tiny beaks pushed through the open window. When there was no more room on the sill, the birds began striking the glass. Each impact was loud. After each strike, another bird took its place. More and more birds began hitting the glass. The number of beaks pushing above the sill seemed innumerable. The window became black, as if night had grown wings.
“Alright! Alright! I’ll pay you,” the mayor said, her eyes wide and staring at the window. “You’ll be paid.”
Kenneth, looking at the birds, debated. His needed the money, yet the mayor’s fear was giving him considerable joy. For sixty seconds he debated, but then he rapped five times on the window. The birds, all at once, flew away. The room became quiet, with only three sounds remaining: the rain striking the window, the mayor’s pen as she signed her name to a cheque and Kenneth’s ringing cellphone.
9
The Hliðafgoð
Apart from the fact that they are physically as able to live underwater as they are on land, that their skin is green and changes shade depending on their emotional state, that their fingers and toes are webbed and that they breathe through gills on the sides of their necks, the Hliðafgoð are remarkably similar to humans. They tend to marry for life, although divorce is becoming more and more common, and most straight couples have two or three children.
The Hliðafgoð (the “ð” is pronounced quietly, like the “th” in “rather”) have lived in the deepest parts of the ocean for thousands of years. Aby lived in Alisvín-bær (the “æ” is pronounced like “eye”), a city of 2.5 million in the eastern foothills of the Mid-Atlantic Range in the Northern Atlantic Ocean. She’d lived there since she was a teenager, and she liked it fine enough. She found the pace of city life a little too hectic, and the Gulf Stream made the downtown too hot in the summer. The real estate market had recently gone through the roof, leaving her a renter even though she had a good job as a claims adjuster for a large insurance company. Her apartment was small, but not cozy, and was too dark in the mornings. Nonetheless, after twenty hours behind the wheel of the white Honda Civic, there was nowhere Aby would rather have been. Even the scene of the most grisly accident her job had exposed her to had not scared her as much as driving on the 401.