Supervised Suicide

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

ONE hears sometimes of Myopia Clubs— Myopia Hunt Clubs, for example. The name pleasantly suggests little troops of nearsighted cronies going about their sports together, secure in the equality of their handicaps. Similarly, I have for years wished to start a club for those who cannot learn to swim. I should like to name it with some word as sonorous as Myopia, and as popularly understood; some good Greek root by which the Athenians described those who could not get about in deep water. But I find that the Greek vocabulary for water sports is entirely positive and successful. Doubtless every Greek could swim. The Anglo-Saxon tongue is equally disappointing. It offers the ancient word swimman, but no term for those wights who could not float in the path of whales. The Latin is no better. Everyone remembers that Galba and the sailor always swam. In one old grammar even the farmer swims. ‘Agricola natat. Natatne agricola? ’

We seem to have no historical background, we non-natty folk. Yet, though our club is hard to name without circumlocution, its fellowship is delightful.

I used to be eligible for high office in this club. I am eligible now, but with a difference. I very nearly disqualified myself last July.

I had not known that my husband and all his relatives were such swimmers when I inadvertently married into their clan and wont to spend the summer at their beach. To be on the safe side, I had carefully left my bathingsuit at home. If I thought of the bathing-hour at all, I saw myself as a graceful social adjunct, with a parasol which would cast a little patch of coolcolored shade for tired swimmers who cared to loaf beside me.

‘Of course, you ’ll have Phineas teach you to swim,’ said his sister Veronica at breakfast.

‘I ’d love to,’said I, ‘but I’m sorry to say I left my suit at home.'

This excuse was poorly chosen. Phineas’s sisters offered me an assortment. Their husbands offered their services as assistants for the lessons. ‘The last girl we taught,’ said one of the brothers-in-law encouragingly, ‘won the fifty-yard back-stroke.'

‘Well,’ said I tersely, ‘I shall win the fifty-yard sink.’

Phineas and Veronica conferred. Then Phineas interviewed me.

‘You say,’ said he, ‘that you ve tried to learn?’

‘Every summer,’ I told him, ‘since I was three.’

‘And you sink?’ queried he, professionally.

‘Like a pair of scissors,’ said I.

‘Let me see how long you can hold your breath,’ demanded Phineas unexpectedly, getting out his watch.

This had been my one accomplishment at college. In gymnasium examinations I broke the record every time for blowing up the little device that registers the capacity of the lungs. So, sitting on a pile of bleaching seaweed, with Phineas’s watch twinkling in the bright sunshine beside me, I held my breath.

‘Very good,’ said Phineas. ‘Now just walk up and down at a fair speed, and see how long you can hold it while exercising.’

I obediently strode up and down the sand at a spanking pace, and held my breath again.

‘All right,’ said Phineas when I returned to him. ‘One minute and seventeen seconds. We ’ll teach you first to swim under water. If you sink well, you ’ll be good at going down to the bottom and picking up pennies.'

I consulted Veronica. ‘If a person is really desperate,’ I began, ‘and knows the strokes intellectually, would n’t it be possible to dash in and swim off, just as an act of Faith?’

‘Oh, do try it!’ begged Veronica, charmed with the idea. ‘Just plunge in, put your arms out like a prow, and there you ’ll be.'

As I swathed up my hair in layers of rubber, I thought of all the aquatic miracles: of Leander, and the Three Wise Men of Gotham, and the axehead that swam. I waited until all my friends were well out beyond their depth, before I staged my coup.

‘Come on in,’ called Phineas, waving a periscopic hand.

‘No,’ I shouted. ‘ You and everybody else come ashore and stay ashore, and then I ’ll go in.’

Obediently they all swam in, and drew themselves up dripping, like trained seals on the sand.

Taking a running start, I dashed in, thrusting my arms ahead, as instructed, like a prow.

Perhaps a little champagne should have been broken over me. Something at least I lacked; certainly not faith. I knew that I was not swimming, but with that company watching, could I not simulate the act? If I made firm strokes with two hands and one foot, might I not urge myself along with the remaining foot on the sand, so as to look sufficiently expert? At least, I would affect the manner.

I made amazing headway. As I took long, luxurious strokes and long, convulsive leaps, I thought of those early pterodactyls that are said to have had a long, oar-shaped extra limb, which they used as a swimming-paddle at will.

My spectators rose up and waded in to observe me. ‘What is that stroke?’ I heard one ask. ‘It looks a little like the dog-paddle to me.’

‘Hum,’ said Phineas. ‘It looks a little like the fox-trot to me.’

To be taught to swim under water, day after day, by a family in whose eyes one would wish to appear always at one’s best, gives one feelings that Mr. Pecksniff would call ‘Mingled.’ Politely each morning I begged my companions not to stop their sports for me. But when Phineas and I appeared for our dip, the entire diving, raft-racing, pole-climbing tribe gathered to attend my obsequies.

‘Now fill your lungs about half full,’directed Phineas, ‘and put your head under. Let your feet float up, hold your breath, and do the Dead Man’s Float.’

‘Show me,’ gasped I, to gain time.

Instantly the whole family dropped beneath the waves. Toward me floated their submerged corpses, face down. Then I drew my long breath and went under, and sat completely down among the pebbles at the bottom of the bay. Death, I reflected, would have its little compensations: there would be no more sea. Vindictively I resolved to stay under forever, like a planted mine.

Much may be done for pride, but the love of life dies hard. I eventually came up. The cheering crowd approved me. ‘Now,’ said one of them, ‘at least she is wet.’

Why they did not tire of me at this point, I do not know. They regretted only that they had not taken me in hand earlier.

As for myself the only course open seemed to be suicide. By this time I was happy to submerge. It is comparatively easy to say farewell to a kindly world, and to go and be a brother to the insensible clam. It is quite another thing to lift up the feet and swim.

‘You don’t have to lift ’em,’ protested Phineas. Must let your feet come up, and you ’ll swim in spite of yourself.’

I cannot say that I ever yet swam in spite of myself. But one afternoon I had an experience that taught me many things. I know now the sense in which an older generation spoke of ‘experiencing religion.’ I experienced the sea.

It happened in the windless calm of one of those late summer afternoons, when time and tide stand still. The seaweed underwater hardly stirred. We waded out far beyond the tethered dories, to a place where there was a clear area of deep water over white sand and feathery weeds.

‘I’m going off a good distance,’ said Phineas to his sister, ‘and let her try to swim under water to me. You stay near and save her if she drowns.’

‘Howshall I know when she drowns?’ asked Veronica, advancing to position.

‘Watch her expression,’ said Phineas. ‘When she begins to look happy, she’s drowning.’

As to drowning, I did not care. I wanted to swim far more than I wanted to live. I took a last look at the fair sky and the friendly boats at anchor, and then I dipped my head deep down into Buzzards Bay. The still soft water received me, and I felt for the first time the light lift of the sea. I let my feet drift lazily while I made my first true swimming-stroke. And then I opened my eyes under water, face down.

There is an advantage in deferring certain elemental experiences for mature years. Opening the eyes under water is one of these. One sees more if one waits. Suffused unearthly lighting, wavering fronded things floating far down, the sense of wide, unfocused eyesight — one’s vision takes on a larger, more suspended gaze. It is not so much what one sees: it is the novel sense of absolute sight that is astonishing.

Nine good strokes I made, and then Phineas scooped me up.

In the weeks that remained, I swam under water consistently. Guests at the beach considered me an expert performer, showing off. They looked on my submerged habit as a proof of my proficiency.

I considered it honorable to explain; whereupon the guests arrayed themselves with my already considerable consulting staff, and preached the gospel of fresh air. Another week, they said, and I would be swimming with my nose out.

Perhaps. When I think about it now, on cozy winter evenings safe ashore, it seems as if I might. If we were only all together again, on a summer morning, with a land breeze to flatten out the surface and a full tide ready to turn, could I not come up from my submarine practice and swim as I should ? Mentally, I thrust my head up through the leisurely waves, and glance about. In imagination I take calm proficient breaths and go slipping along the water, like an eel.

In imagination only. That is all. I need not yet resign from that exclusive little club of those who cannot swim. But my standing is irregular, and I may be asked at any time to give up my member’s badge, with its neat design of full-blown water-wings. For I have one memory that a non-swimming mortal cannot share — the memory of moving swiftly forward, face downward, wide-eyed, submerged, and horizontal, through the sea.