White Rabbit Chapter 13

13.

            The ceramic floor of the Naturhistoriske Museum was green and gold four-inch squares. And on the first level in the middle of the oceanography wing past a phony shark, two perpetually happy arching dolphins and the skeleton of an unlucky marlin, there was a large sperm whale that was in the flesh. It is very difficult to miss a sixty foot sperm whale on rocks and suspended by cables. It hung there lifeless but it was as though had the room been filled with salt water it would be invigorated enough to come back to life. People stood about it waiting for its blowhole to erupt. There was a black ladder up its side where people would climb up and look into the blowhole and people, being the rotten creatures that they are, put pennies and gum and love letters in there. Love letters at some point became a curious tradition when some woman claimed it worked for her. Delores would have loved to hear that story but she didn’t know it and she never would.

The room slowly cleared as the museum approached close and there was a group of schoolchildren and a mother hen teacher over dressed in blue on one side as Delores sat on a bench on the other, nonchalantly as possible. She didn’t know how but she knew that she was once inside of it and birthed to this very floor. The whale’s mouth was open and the children were marveling over its fabulous teeth which the teacher explained separated the sperm whale from many other whales. But of course, she spoke in Danish so Delores didn’t understand a bit of it. She waited for the children to leave and for the room to clear then she brazenly stepped inside of the red felt rope like a boxer about to get murdered stepping into a ring. She went directly to the head of the whale and stood there for a long moment without saying a word and it looked as though she was meditating or speaking telepathically to the beast.

            “Hello, lovely.” The whale said. Delores stumbled back for not only was she startled but the whale’s breath was appalling, a miscellany of burning rubber, dead squid and fish. The whale’s voice was thunderous even though it was apparent that it made every effort to whisper. Sperm whales are factually the loudest creatures on the planet so to respectfully whisper in a museum at an acceptable tone is extraordinarily difficult.

            “Hello.” Delores replied meekly for lack of anything better. It isn’t every day that you meet a talking sperm whale or are expected to converse with one. She didn’t come because she expected it to speak or because she thought that this was the very whale that ate her up and spit her out. She came because she thought the sight of a whale might wiggle her memory like a piggy bank and another memory might fall out and eventually she could piece together some sense of the matter. But seeing the floor and smelling its breath she knew that this was the whale that ate her and spit her out on this very green and gold tiled floor. “This is a curious thing to ask and, perhaps, a bit presumptuous; but did you eat me, whale?”

            “Eat is a very broad term. But yes, girl, I swallowed you for your own well-being. But eat?” He groaned in his theoretical quandary. “No.” Apart from being the loudest creature on the planet Earth, the sperm whale also has the largest brain. So it was quite the philosopher and to speak to Delores or anyone else for that matter it had to dumb itself down a bit, or else risk not being understood.  

            “Why then did you swallow me, whale?” She asked in a loud whisper.

            “I was asked to swallow you, girl.” A couple walked past and saw the scene but pretended they didn’t and carried on to the apes figuring they were being duped into some kind of practical joke with television cameras and a TV audience. Then the sperm whale began speaking erratically, seemingly unable to control his racing mind. “I am amazed at player pianos.” he mentioned casually. “I’m quite a people watcher and I listen to conversations. Yesterday, a fellow walks through here telling his child about pianos that play themselves rendering the pianist utterly useless. Do they ever error? Miss a note, here or there? I wonder. I have always said that a classic love affair is like a pianist playing a piano. What would a coin-operated player piano be then? A modern love affair!” he chuckled. “Is it true there is a fantastic story about a whale called Moby Dick?” He didn’t give Delores time to answer. “I knew two whales that capsized boats. They did it for fun, the bloody devils!” He spoke in a thick British English. A little known fact in the universe that no one in the world knows is that whales speak in British accents. He continued on about meeting Charlie Chaplin in this very museum and said he was thirsty at least seven times until Delores cut him off.

            “Who was it then, whale, who asked you to swallow me?”

            “Him.” He replied simply. “I only know him as him.”

            “As do I.” Delores replied. The name Hugo Finch was completely foreign to her—meant absolutely nothing.  

            “Was he handsome?” She paused and then interrupted herself. “Oh, wait. That doesn’t matter. But was he?”

            “Yes. I suppose. Not to me but to you. A matter of perception, girl.” Delores was getting the feeling she gets when reading love stories only it was greater amplified for she was living this doozy.

            “How is it that you ended up here?”

            “That is a question of logic and I do not answer such questions. Simply let it be said that this is where I exist in one world and the Torgan Sea is where I exist in another. I am a multidimensional being, fancy?”

            “Fancy? No. I do not fancy any of this.” Delores complained. “I am a lunatic. And though I’ve never been one to be obsessed with reason and logic, a teaspoon would be nice.” she pouted. “How can anything ever be practical, or livable, if there is no sense to be made of it?”

            “You should never ask for a teaspoon of anything.” The whale sternly objected. It is getting drab calling him whale so let’s call him Chuck. The default name for everything unknown in the universe is always Chuck. “All or nothing at all is the way to go. Halves are the remainders of indecision and indecision gets you nothing.” said Chuck.

            “I want to go back.” Delores said resolutely. “That is a decision.”

            Chuck laughed. “To go back you have come to the wrong place. I’m an exit not an entrance. Had you gone to a whale named Moe on display in Nantucket, well, he could have taken you back. He is an entrance.”

            “Well, I can’t go to Nantucket!” Delores cried loudly. “I have to go back! You have to take me back!” Delores finished that line just as a father and son walked in the room wearing matching red-plaid shirts. The father tugged his boy along and they, too, eagerly went to see the apes. “What can I do?”

            Chuck didn’t answer immediately. He let the thought linger in his mind. “You must fall again. Fall up.”

            “Fall up?” Delores cried. “What does that mean?”

            “Find a particular bird and ask for a ride. Be assured, though it may seem absurd, you must ask for a ride from a particular bird.”

            “A particular bird? I have no time for riddles, whale!” Delores griped. “Please tell me where I can go.” Chuck closed his mouth again and his eyes seemed dull and lifeless like two cue balls. Security guards were closing in and Delores fled leaping over the red felt rope beautifully like a steeplechase thoroughbred. She ran to the door past more security guards and burst through and the same stupid teenagers were smoking and talking on cell phones outside in the snow and the same stupid boy whistled at her. This time he called her name. “It’s Eric!” he plead.

            “Eric?” Delores thought as she looked back from the cab at the bottom of the steps that waited as promised. The boy was dopey looking, a bit foreboding, with a doleful expression, tall, slender and dark. The engine idled and a thick tail of gray smoke flourished from the tailpipe dirtying the outlying snow. She still didn’t remember Eric. He walked toward her but she got in the cab and the driver pulled away as she looked back out the window at him. She didn’t hear him say that he was sorry. No one heard him. The wind took his voice and he disappeared in the blur of snowflakes and exhaust.