the whale

Since I have an apartment which overlooks the Thames at the deepest part I have an obligation to write to you about that whale.

It went by my place in the dark at about five. My partner was dreaming of me drowning off Ghana and I heard cries from behind the moon. As is usual for events like this (the princess dying, the bombings) I had a feeling something was up. I checked the TV and radio, nothing.

Then at noon there it was. A blue bottle whale which is supposed to be 1000 metres under the ocean off Iceland was in the river at Chelsea beyond parliament forty miles up from the river mouth.

The news spread and eddied. What gender was the whale? What had happened to it?
Was something going on with all the whales? Some had been seen fof Cork but not this sort of whale. Two had been seen swimming down from Scotland and one was now off Southend. Was it a partner? A mother?

The whale tried to beach itself. Two men jumped into the river to scare it off. The beaching was explained not as suicide but a way of trying to survive when too weak to swim. The whale didn’t want to drown. It was trying to be a land animal.

And for good reason. It had come past the Thames barrier, the anti-flood gates, the sewer outlets under the ferries and water taxis around barges. In all this it was blind in murky water and its sonar would not work well. Was it crying for other whales?

There had never been such a whale in the Thames.

Thousands gathered. There now arose an order of officials. There was something called ‘official whale sightings’ as opposed to what we could all see. And that was distress. There was a rescue strategy. It couldn’t be discussed yet. We were to stop jumping into the river. There were official experts and spokesmen. They knew not much about whales, their intelligence, their means of communication and their torments. They wouldn’t speculate. But we knew that they are as smart as us, can cry for hundreds of miles. We were that whale.

The people in the bars and on the embankment knew. Some heard the low frequency sounds. But also cynical voices made fun of it. It had come to tell Tony Blair to stop helping Bush avoid
Kyoto. It was fleeing the Japanese. It was Osama Ben Whale come about Iraq (how did it get by the anti-terrorist measures in the river? They had been unbreached since the cold war). The jokes and cynicism were to avoid the feeling of great disaster. We were that whale.

The whale was dying. Its breathing was rapid. It kept trying to swim in the wrong direction. It always faced the tide, the highest, fastest tide of the year.

The commentary was elaborating theses that this whale was showing us something. Could this lead to political events?

I have written that in the next apocalypse the animals would participate on the side of God to undo creation. Probably on the second day. It is what I was thinking.

Others saw whales everywhere. The partner was in the estuary. Another had died in Peckham. Were the ice sheets melting? Someone, a whale expert, spoke of explosions and sonar weapons testing in the Orkneys. The radios played whale related music, the Theme from Baywatch. The record of politicians on the environment was reviewed in a new light. This will show them.

It was too much. A rescue by volunteers, navy divers from an unnamed agency and veterinarians was launched. The whale was hoisted onto a fast barge, wet down with watering cans and the barge ‘raced’, they were saying, down the Thames to the sea.

Information resonated. Someone said that an official embargo had now been lifted so that he could reveal government dolphins were in the river. Then we heard that the whale in Peckham was a dead dolphin not related to our whale.

He could not comment on what was happening in the North Atlantic.

Barges don’t race. We know that. Thousands gathered on all the historic bridges. They ran along the river. We chanted the bridges names as the helicopter broadcast the progress from high above. We knew those bridges. It was so far to the sea. Albert, Waterloo, London. So much to go. Way past the London Eye, past the new Tate. So far to go.

Then it turned the corner to the river in front of my house. There were a thousand gathered below on the railings. Many confused children. They were the reason the whale had been given no name. What if something happened? Everyone was silent. The sky darkened. A thousand seagulls landed on a nearby pier and froze. The air seemed to collapse with their lack of screaming.

The whale was in purple blankets. The boat seemed to crawl. Then it turned past the dome and was gone.

There had been now only one pilot boat ahead and one other behind where there earlier had been dozens of many agencies. It was a small cortège. It was not right.

One hour later, near the open mouth to the sea, near the place of release, near the sighting of the other whale, it died.

I had filmed its passing by. I had shouted ‘Hey Whale’. That’s all.

Many cried.

Next day it was a small item on the news. It had affected more people here than anything since our bombings. We await the autopsy.

What were you doing here whale?