Eye of the Whale (38 page)

“I want to tell you both the good news,” Maddings said.

“Good news?” Elizabeth asked. Frank put his arm around Elizabeth, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

Maddings visibly struggled to contain his excitement as he clasped his hands together in triumph, grinning from ear to ear. “I got a call from the president of our university, who saw you on the telly and then called me. I was telling him about you, and he has some donors who will fund a state-of-the-art cetacean language research vessel for you.”

“A boat?”

“A hundred-foot one, I should think. You could travel all over the world,” Maddings said enthusiastically, clearly not noticing Elizabeth’s downcast eyes. “And study the whales and the dolphins…”

She considered this offer of a lifetime, which would mean never being home, and then put her hand on her belly. “Maybe the donor would buy a fifteen-foot wooden boat for my research assistant in the Caribbean, and you could just give me back my old office at Woods Hole.”

Maddings gazed at her in confusion, then must have noticed her head on her husband’s shoulder. He finally understood Elizabeth’s hesitation. “Maybe I can talk him into giving the money for a research lab for you at Woods Hole.”

“You are forgetting that I don’t yet have a Ph.D.”

“I think I can talk the university into accepting the dissertation
you’ve written. Perhaps we can consider that you’ve been on suspended leave. They do these things for pregnant mothers.”

Elizabeth’s face lit up. “I need to change some of my conclusions and can send it off to you before the baby is born.”

“We’ll accept it if I have to sign as all three members of your committee!”

Elizabeth embraced him. As they separated, her hands came to rest, as they often now did, on her belly, which stuck out like a comfortable armrest. The smile evaporated from her face as she had what she was sure was a Braxton Hicks contraction. There were still four weeks to go.

EIGHTY-EIGHT

Four weeks later
Sacramento

T
HE HOSPITAL
had obviously tried to make the birthing room look less sterile, but had only partly succeeded. There was a cushioned green slide rocker and a maroon sleeping chair. Even the bed was wide and had a headboard, like in a hotel. The problem was that everything
did
need to be sterile. Birth was messy and potentially dangerous, and only so many of the risks could be controlled.

Elizabeth sat up on the white sheets, which were spotted with red drops where the blood of her baby’s birth had seeped through the gauze pads. On the counter was the pink basin where the baby had been washed. Elizabeth was propped up on several pillows, and to her side was a rolling tray table with a plate of cold scrambled eggs and potatoes. She poked the yellow mound unenthusiastically with a fork.

Frank was lying next to her on the bed, and in his arms he cradled their tiny baby girl, Hope. He was gazing down at her rose lips, tiny nose, and red, puffy cheeks that peeked out from under a yellow infant hat.

The newborn looked up at him with blinking blue eyes that were just beginning to adjust to the shocking brightness of life. Frank was enraptured with his daughter as he smiled at her and gently stroked each of her ten wrinkled, inch-long fingers and ten even tinier toes.

Hope let out a thin, reedy cry, and Frank lifted the baby into
Elizabeth’s arms and toward her mother’s swollen pink nipple. Hope latched on with a power so intense that Elizabeth gasped. Her breast felt warm, and a primal feeling of contentment flooded through her body.

Frank fell asleep, his head resting on a pillow. Elizabeth’s familiar longing for her mother to be there began to ache in her chest, but this time she realized that in some irreducible and immeasurable way, her mother
was
there, in a long cellular line of motherhood. It was at that moment, with her child at her breast, that she felt the bond of sacrifice and surrender linking a thousand generations before her. If humans were lucky and wise, it would continue for thousands of generations more. It was not just a cell line from human mother to human mother; it was countless threads of mothers in countless species, a tapestry of intricately woven and shimmering life.

Hope’s eyelids began to close, leaving a tiny slit of sight. Her rhythmic sucking became softer, and her tremulous lower lip twitched. As she dozed off, she startled herself awake and began to suck all the more for fear of losing the nipple.

Elizabeth closed her own eyes and imagined the branching mammary glands like tributaries to a stream, gathering sustenance from her body. She felt like she was pouring love into her child. Every drop of this life-sustaining serum was distilled from her cells and everything that had made its way into her body through the air she breathed, the water she drank, and the food she ate. A new terror and protectiveness filled her, squeezing out the contentment. How could she protect her child? Why did she have to wonder what toxins would accompany her love and nourishment?

Hope wormed her arm out of the swaddling blanket and rested her palm on her mother’s chest. Elizabeth thought about how much had been lost to her daughter and how much more there still was to lose. It was all so terribly fragile, like the infant in her arms, and she realized for the first time that what might be lost was not just a spe
cies, or hundreds of species, or even human life, but the very possibility of motherhood.

And fatherhood.

And family.

Her mother and father, despite death, despite distance, despite everything, had given her the greatest gift possible—life—in its endless cycle of destruction and restoration, and with all its embracing kindnesses and inevitable cruelties. And she wanted it for her daughter and her daughter’s daughter and for every child and every creature that longs for a chance to live. Elizabeth felt like the door of a cage that had surrounded her heart was being pried open by Hope’s delicate, nursing lips.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her desire to protect her daughter and the world that would feed her, hold her, and sustain her came not from guilt or fear but from love. She now understood that life did not need saving—it needed loving—and this, to her amazement, she knew how to do.

Elizabeth looked down through her tear-kissed eyes at the precious world of life and longing she held in her arms: Hope.

T
HERE WAS A KNOCK
at the door. It was Connie, dressed in black boots, miniskirt, and red sweater. She smiled at Elizabeth but seemed nervous, since she knew nothing about hospitals, or birthing wards, or motherhood. When she saw Hope in Elizabeth’s arms, she smiled and bit her lip. Embarrassed, she held out a gift that she hadn’t had a chance to wrap. It was a sing-along children’s cassette player with a built-in microphone.

“She can start making sound recordings as soon as she’s able to press the buttons,” Connie said. Elizabeth laughed gently, not wanting to wake Hope. Frank was still sleeping soundly, exhausted from the all-night birth.

“Dr. Lombardi.” Dorothy, in her purple scrubs, was at the door. Frank quickly blinked himself awake. How many times, Elizabeth thought, had Frank been wrenched from sleep to help someone’s child? “I’m sorry to interrupt the holy family, but there’s a preemie on a vent in the NICU who’s in distress.”

“Can’t the man have a little time with his own baby?” Connie demanded. “Is he the only doctor in the entire hospital?”

Dorothy glared back at Connie as she said to Frank, “I paged Dr. Lavorsky and Dr. Ramanujan, but no one’s answering.”

Frank looked at Elizabeth, not wanting to abandon her or their baby, but he knew what he needed to do. Elizabeth sensed his hesitation and said, “It could have been ours.”

“You’re right,” Frank said as he got up from the bed. Elizabeth thought of the whales’ song and wondered if Frank was thinking about it, too. At the door, Frank said, “I won’t be long.”

Elizabeth smiled, at peace.

Connie put a lullaby tape into the children’s cassette player. The sounds that filled the room were of violins and cellos accompanied by the ancient and mysterious calls of whale song.

O
UTSIDE THE
G
OLDEN
G
ATE
B
RIDGE,
Apollo began slapping his tail rhythmically against the surface—

He was heading south again—back to the breeding grounds—

The tide spilled out of the bay as he rode its current—

Then he dove down deep and turned upward in a graceful arc—

His mighty flukes thrust back and forth—

At last he burst through the surface in an enormous breach—

Apollo hung in the sky—his back arched in abandon—white foam falling—his tail stalk an axis on which he rotated—

And then his head fell back into the water—waves rippling for miles—

A giant cloud of white bubbles stirred by his bulk started to scatter—

Moments later, his thrusting tail launched him again skyward—

Leaving the life-giving waters—a silvery spray falling from his outstretched and eloquent body—

EPILOGUE:

REALITIES

O
N
S
UNDAY
, J
UNE
18, 2006, the International Whaling Commission overturned a twenty-year-old ban on commercial whaling. Many believe that it is just a matter of time before commercial whaling will begin again.

F
ROM
1973
TO
1999, childhood cancers increased by 26 percent, making cancer the greatest health threat to children. Acute childhood lymphocytic leukemia is up 61 percent; brain cancer, 50 percent; and bone cancer, 39 percent.

T
HE BELUGA WHALES
in Hudson Bay are so full of chemical pollutants that when their dead bodies wash up onshore, they must be handled like toxic waste.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

E
ACH OF MY NOVELS
arises from a question to which I desperately want to know the answer. My first novel,
The Lost Diary of Don Juan,
resulted from exploring the question of whether it is possible to marry desire and love—passion and compassion—together for a lifetime.
Eye of the Whale
came from a very different question, one that is global as well as deeply personal. It is a question that many of us are increasingly asking: Can we survive as a species? And if we can, what might be stronger than ignorance, greed, and despair? Through writing this story, I found an answer to this question and a measure of hope. But as I learned from my research, there is shockingly little time to make changes that will preserve the health of our children, our grandchildren, and all intelligent life on our planet. I hope that for you this will not be the end of the story, but the beginning.

You can learn more about the research and the discoveries on which this novel is based at
www.DouglasCarltonAbrams.com
. You will also find a list of some of the organizations that are working effectively to protect us, marine mammals, and the world we share. Together, our actions will determine the ending of the unfolding story of life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
O WRITE
a fact-based novel is to be constantly reminded of one’s own limitations, the vastness of what there is to know, and the importance of relying on the kindness of experts. Any accuracy is due to their generosity; any inaccuracy is wholly my own fault.

The writing of this book has been an incredible journey, taking me to Tonga, where I was able to swim with and record the humpback whales; to Bequia, where I met local whalers; and to the Farallon Islands, where I went cage diving with white sharks. All along the way, I had extraordinary guides, whom I would like to acknowledge in the order in which I met them.

First, I must thank Libby Eyre, of the Biological Sciences Museum of Macquarie University in Australia, a marine biologist who took me into the wondrous underwater world of humpback whales and allowed me to videotape them and record their song. Libby was the first to believe in this project and to give me early guidance when I was literally just getting wet. Libby’s colleague Bryant Austin not only arranged my trip through his nonprofit organization, Marine Mammal Conservation through the Arts, but also documented the whales we saw together for his extraordinary project of mounting life-sized whale photos in public places, especially in whaling countries. His work inspired the scene I set in Japan, and he also was an invaluable adviser on the technicalities of BASE-jumping.

Another early adviser for the whale science in the book was Roger Payne, Ph.D., the legendary co-discoverer of whale song and one of the leading whale scientists in the world. He is also the founder and president of Ocean Alliance, which, along with doing other important work, has been testing the health of the oceans around the world. Roger is in my mind the ideal model of a scientist-humanist. His love of the wild and the potential for humans to return to their rightful place within the natural world inspired my writing of the novel throughout. I highly recommend his book
Among Whales
, which through its poetic evocation and scientific exploration brings us as close as we can get to experiencing the grandeur of whales while on dry land. Roger is also a ruthlessly talented copyeditor.

Thanks also go to Iain Kerr, CEO of Ocean Alliance, for an eye-opening late-night meal and heartbreaking tales of our oceans from his five-year voyage aboard the
Odyssey
, gathering the first-ever baseline data on synthetic contaminants throughout the world’s oceans. The fact about chromium in the Gilbert Islands comes from his and Roger’s expedition. Roger introduced me to Bernie Krause, who explained the acoustics of hydrophones and shared his extraordinary humpback whale and killer whale sound files with me.