I'm With the Bears by Mark Martin

Author:Mark Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: I’m with the Bears
ISBN: 9781844678303
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2011-08-11T04:00:00+00:00

HERMIE

by Nathaniel Rich

Vermin, heights, thunderstorms, airplanes, wide-open spaces, commitment—they don’t get to me, not at all, but public speaking is another thing altogether. The Introduction to Marine Biology lecture I give to my freshmen every year is enough to rattle me, so you can imagine how I felt in the moments before my speech at the Eighteenth International Conference of Limnology and Oceanology in Salzburg this year. Fortunately I have developed a practice that has served me well in these moments. Fifteen minutes before I have to go on, I make a trip to the restroom, where I wash my hands and recite several passages from the paper I’m to deliver. Then I close my eyes and repeat to myself, like a mantra, three words: Calm Blue Ocean. Calm Blue Ocean. Calm Blue Ocean. When I open my eyes—well, I may still have the flutters but I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be.

So as Arnie Lundtfelt was coming to the end of his discussion of organochlorine contamination of the Bering Sea’s Steller sea lion pup population, I quietly exited the conference room and made my way to the head. I’ve always found the restrooms at Sheraton Hotels to be consistently clean, well-attended, and capacious; I have observed this to be true in Lyon, San Diego, Toronto, and even Hanoi, at the Third Annual Polycheate Conference, a few years back. The Salzburg bathroom was no exception: the mirror was unsmudged, there were no puddles around the urinals, and the bank of three sinks was a pure white porcelain. I say this only to emphasize how quickly, and with what a sense of shock, I noticed, perched next to the rim of the middle sink, a giant Coenobita clypeatus. That is to say, a hermit crab.

I didn’t recognize him at first. Perhaps it was because he had changed his shell. Gone was the buyscon spiratum I remembered so well: a perfect pear whelk, with alternating bands of burnt orange and nacre, polished by the tide to a delicate glow; its long tapering stem; its tight spiral apex; and the open fold revealing a darker orange interior—an elegant, if compact, home. In its place was a filthy, unwieldy, carbuncled husk, to which there clung small bits of wet garbage and sea gunk. On closer examination it was clear that two common shells—one dark brown, the other a dreary shade of green—had been roughly fused together. There is no scientific term for such a monstrosity.

From the shell’s opening there emerged two cautious antennae, testing the air. Then several furry claws, bronzed by age, tapped the white counter with their hardened pincers. With a sudden display of agility, the animal pivoted, scraping his shell against the porcelain. His black beady eyes fixed directly on mine. I gasped.

“Hello, old friend.” The voice was hoarse, scratchy. I glanced around the bathroom—I even ducked down and looked for feet in the stalls—but I knew it was pointless. I was the only person there.

“Ah. So you don’t recognize me.

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