Somewhere Over the Sea by Halfdan Freihow

Author:Halfdan Freihow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc.
Published: 2012-05-07T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

I sit here and look at my hand, Gabriel, at all that is written down there. Most of it is illegible. It is scribbled in haste, in languages I don’t understand, a line here, a scar there, a mark and a hollow. Some people would have us believe that hands are ready-written books we are born with, two volumes in which our lives are chronicled in creases and wrinkles even before we have lived, reference books that we can consult to learn who we are and that can tell us what will become of us. But it isn’t so. Our hand-books are written by ourselves, or life writes them for us day by day, so that nothing shall be forgotten, so that each blow and each caress shall be retained and remembered. Just as the sole of your foot carries on it the impress of every grain of sand and soft carpet it has walked on, every door it has kicked in, so is carved into your hands the stem of every flower, every coin, and every bar you have grasped.

That is why it’s so good to hold someone else by the hand, for then two stories talk to each other. Like when we’re driving the car, me in front and you in the back, and one of us suddenly just has to hold out his hand and take the other’s for a moment, and a transmission takes place of something we never speak of, but which is good and great and strong. In the library of the body only the eyes process more information on our lived lives than the hands, but they cannot be read, as the hands can. If God exists when we die, I imagine that it is our hands he will ask to see. Then he will smile or grieve, for the hand-writing cannot be rubbed out, it is the journal we keep throughout our life, and we shall be judged upon it.

I sit here and look at my hand, and it is like a treasure map. Had I been able to decipher all the signs and read them in the right order, I might have uncovered my whole history. But that I cannot do, that would be like living life over again. We never quite manage to find ourselves, Gabriel; it is a futile and fruitless search.

We can, however, be found, and we can ourselves find others. That is the real miracle of the hands — that they let us receive and that they let us give. All the rest is finally just reading matter to pass the time.

Now I offer you my hand in support. With the other I hold on to the rusting chain that stops the boat from drifting so far away from land that it would make your clambering jump up onto the pier too long and too difficult. And then it’s your turn to hold, hold on tightly to the rope as I lift the chest from the

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