The Sound of Waves

Contributed by Matthew Hartwell on 15/11/10

It had been popping up all over the city. This and a hundred other variations on it, “Hail the Conquering Sea,” “Long Live the Sea,” “The sea is love,” and even less intelligible bits. Doyle had dismissed it as a meme at first; a graffiti-based version of cats with baby-speak superimposed over them. It would even explain why there were all in English, here in the middle of Chengdu. It wasn’t the sticks, mind you, it was cosmopolitan, in the same way Detroit could pretend it was, and there were enough kids in university trawling the internet and scavenging ideas off of it to bring home.

English was a natural choice, he decided. Dissidence in thought and form. This wasn’t Singapore, but a can of spray-paint could still land you in a shitstorm here when used improperly.

Then he saw the shopkeeper’s wife, filter-mask on, looking for all the world like a house-painter, throwing up a slogan on the window facade of the tiny market her husband ran. “The Sea Sees All.” He would have been impressed by her mastery of homonyms, except for the fact he knew she spoke no English. Doyle approached her, but if she heard him talking, she made no indication. He touched her shoulder, gently, and turned her around.

Her eyes were white, or rather, just the whites were showing. Water trickled, from the edges of her mouth, and her hair had strands of what looked like seaweed in it. She collapsed to the ground, and water began to flow from her mouth in a steady stream. Doyle shouted for help, first in English, then in Mandarin. People came running, and he tried to begin CPR, but couldn’t get a seal on her mouth. The water was coming too forcefully.

And it tasted salty.