The Aquarist

It seemed to Cyril, who was born second, that Giovanni had sprung fully fledged from the ether, as an older brother must.

For Giovanni had always been there, from the younger boy's earliest recollections-- the scrunched up, inscrutable toddler face peering through muted maroon drapes, over the rim of his wicker swinging craddle. And what a face it was, for Cyril knew few others! A pale, almost opalescent tone, offset by straight, bronze colored hair that sat flatly on top of his head. Dull blue eyes that peered curiously from under thin, fair eyebrows.

Cyril's first sensation was that of being observed by his elder brother, like an animal in a cage, an alien thing, and of observing back.

His second sensation was one of sudden abandonment, for Giovanni grew bored easily, and found the new child, for all its novelty, rather tedious over long stretches. One moment, that well-loved face would surface, staring intently into Cyril's very soul, and the next it would slip away, inaccessible. It did not matter that Cyril would cry, for the nursery door could be closed easily enough.

It was a strange, lonely babyhood.

The boys' mother was very pretty-- everyone said so-- if a little vacacant. A socialite from Milan, with tumbling curls and dark, flashing eyes. How she ended up in Sweden, head over heels for a foriegn gentleman, was something of a mystery, written off by subsequent generations as another of queer whims or flights of fancy. What was for certain was that Cyril's father, was originally from Stockholm, as his surname, Borgstrom, attested. He was self-made, a towering, ruthlessly blonde furniture manufacturer with hollow cheeks and a long chin.

After the pair married, they returned together to Italy, where first Giovanni, and then Cyril were born.

Their father opened a small, pleasing little store in the heart of Milan, which grew into two shops, and then three. By the time Cyril was four, his parents had enough in the way of money and prospects to establish themselves somewhere permanently. They decided that the future of their little family lay in England, that floating island-jewel surrounded by the Atlantic.

Their father had books about England, which Giovanni read out loud to him in the evenings in the months before their migration, and so Cyril knew a little of the place before they arrived. One such book contained a portrait of the King of that esteemed isle, George IV. Cyril supposed the man, with his dashing tumble of grey curls and pink, perpetually blushing cheeks, was rather handsome, and thought to himself that he was glad in his heart to have such a monarch.

"That volume is out of date," their father interrupted, his eyes hard and disinterested.

Giovanni froze, his mouth hanging open curiously.

"England has a queen now," he expounded with his usual terseness, "The old king died nearly a decade ago."

***

They ended up by the seaside, in Brighton.

There is something a little dismal about the English seaside, which no amount of halcyon weather or diligent landscaping can obscure. There was of course, the native chill of the Atlantic to consider-- the frigid, inhospitable murky darkness of the waves that stormed against the stoney beaches at high tide-- or the expanses of mud flats which sunned themselves at low tide-- the overcast sky which concealed the sun-- the pale beachgoers in their modest swimming costumes, in all sorts of unattractive shades and stripes-- the tangles of seaweed which strangled the oil-coated rocks-- the strange pastel hotels and resturaunts on the water's edge.

All of Brighton had a ghostly, mist-laced quality, and Cyril who had always been rather sensitive, found himself mightily affected by the temperament of the place.

"I do not like the sea, mama," he hummed one evening, pressing himself fondly into her knees as she sat beside the fire, "It is cold and dark and unpleasant and I fear the way it sucks you in, out towards the very center of itself. When will we go back to Milan?"

She chuckled softly, only half-listening, disentangling her legs from his clutches.

"Brighton is our home now, Cyril, and you must learn to like it."

"But I do not feel at home here," he whined.

"Perhaps if you made more of an effort, you would. Giovanni spends hours out with his little friends, but you seem glued to the sitting room carpet. It's distracting to everyone," she quipped, raising her eyebrows.

Cyril felt a white-hot dart of shame sear across his cheeks, for it was true that Giovanni was always on some foray or another, the prerequisite of any such outing being Cyril's own exclusion.

"Anyways, your father has a business trip planned in the coming months-- he wants to procure a storefront at Torquay. Perhaps if you are a perfectly charming, good little boy he might allow you to accompany him."

"Tor-quay?" Cyril pronounced carefully, as though the syllables were very sharp upon his tongue.

His mother offered a little grunt of assent, her eyes flickering shut.

"Mama is going to bed now, darling," she sighed.

Cyril, stumbled backwards, dismissed.

***

To Cyril's dismay, Torqauy was by the sea. The little town was charming enough, and just a handful of miles from Exeter in Devon, but Cyril was disconsolate.

His father departed early in the mornings, at dawn before Cyril had a chance to wake, and so the boy was left mostly to his own devices.

After a rather depressing breakfast of stale bread and cheese, he determined to go off on his own adventure, one that would make even the great Giovanni jealous.

Steadying his nerves, he crept down one of the cliffside trails which lead to the slate grey surf below. The sea here was slightly clearer, just a fraction more inviting than in Brighton, and so he attempted to still the frantic, feverish beating of his heart.

When he reached the beach, he wandered for a time, tentative and skittish, like a sand crab, eyes peeled for any waves that might sweep in and ferry him away.

When he at last came upon the tide pools, he was nearly ready to return home for the day. The mist had penetrated his coat and stockings, and the cold air seemed to send needle punctures into his lungs.

But his eyes caught upon glimmers between the tide-drenched stones. He moved closer, skeptical and entranced all at once.

The sight, of so many miniature worlds--ensconced in crystal sea water, hard, winding corals and glistening crabs in movement-- made him freeze.

For Cyril had never seen anything quite so beautiful.

***

The next day, at low tide, the boy returned with a large glass jar. In a manner of hours, they would leave Torquay for Brighton, and the pools would be lost to memory.

All Cyril could think about was how he had never seen corals like this along the beaches in Brighton, and how he could not stand the thought of giving them up.

Carefully, he filled the bottom of the jar with a layer of sand, and then another layer of hard, polished stones. Cautious, so as not to break the budding kelp leaves, he harvested a strand of seaweed from the along the rocks, and then filled the entire contraption with sea water.

The last step concerned the stoney corals.

Barely breathing, he transferred a few of the hard-shelled, pastel colored corals into the base of his jar, before sealing the top. They seemed to him to be clues to the whole experiment of life, of his very soul. For surely, the rigid colorful creations at his fingertips spoke to more than just themselves.

By the time he returned to the hotel that evening, his clothes were drenched, and he smelled strongly of salt, and his mind was alight with many marvelous and alien thoughts.

***

After that first exploration, Cyril read everything he could about the ocean.

Of all of the books on the subject, none fascinated him more than a thick, leather bound tome by Phillip Henry Gosse. Gosse suggested that aquatic organisms could be studied from the comfort of one's own home, if the appropriate means were applied.

It was at Gosse's instruction that Cyril divided the corals into three great glass bowls, which he christened Aquariums, a shortened version of the once more popular Aqua-Vivarium.

Other volumes contained intricate illustrations or marine flora and fauna at varying stages of their development, carefully traced in black and white ink.

The pictures and scientific names were enough to make Cyril delirious.

But there was something the matter with his collection.

The coral for all their previous vibrancy, withered along the simulated sea floor, and the water became congested and turbid all in a manner of weeks. The smell that arose from the bowls in Cyril's room was so unpleasant that Giovanni would scrunch up his nose each time he passed in the hallway, his face a disgusted mask of scorn and annoyance.

Desperate, Cyril dragged his specimens down to the beach beside his home, determined to dump them hapazardly back into the water from whence they came.

He froze upon the beach, breathing hard. Out to sea, a storm was brewing, as the tangled grey clouds which strangled the sun testified to.

Perhaps, he reasoned there might be another way, recalling a passage he had skimmed about the necessity of water aeration in mobile tanks.

With the utmost care, he began replacing the stagnant old sea water with fresh handfulls directly from the ocean.

***

At twenty-three, Cyril was a rather unimpressive, lanky figure. His hair, once golden, had become flaxen and pale. His cheeks were sallow, and his ribs were visible beneath the milky skin of his chest.

Giovanni, by controast, was handsome and muscular, lithe like some kind of forest leopard. He had inherited the height of his father and the darker, attractive features of his mother, adding to them his own brand of ruthless cruelty which others seemed to find inordinately attractive.

And since Giovanni was the eldest, it had been he that their father had taken up as protege, the decided inheritor of the family furniture empire. Not that Giovanni minded. He much preferred the quiet solitude of his glass tanks, filled with all manner of shrimp and brine.

While Giovanni romanced pretty English girls in every seaside county, Cyril studied the curves and musculature of sponges and lithophytes.

***

"Did you hear about the engagement?" Cyril's mother asked in a slightly-bored voice. She was staring blankly into one of his prized hexagonal aquariums, her expression ever so slightly befuddled.

Cyril had invited her with the intention of prommenading to the newly opened museum by the seaside: the fruit of decades of his tireless passion and study. The Brighton Aquarium was a sight to behold, at least to Cyril, who had watched carefully over each stage of its construction and execution.

The long rooms, filled with freshly tempered glass tanks, alive with all manner of crustaceans and anenomes would be open to the public in the coming days, but he hoped to give his family a private tour first.

"What, mama?" he returned, extending her a saucer and cup of tea. The china rattled in his trembling hand.

"Giovanni is engaged. Which is why he couldn't come here with me, I expect. Nice girl, terribly pretty, but a little young for my taste. They'll be married by the end of the summer. Planning on Brighton for a honeymoon. She's never been to the seaside before."

"Oh, how wonderful," he intoned, slightly shocked.

"Yes, I suppose. It's good to have at least one son ready to start a family," she returned, "When are you going to settle down, Cyril, and put this silly fish nonsense to rest?"

Cyril licked his lips, a layer of sweat appearing as if by magic upon his forehead.

***

Giovanni's bride was undoubtedly lovely, just as Cyril's mother had said, with cheeks the modest color of roses, and penetrating blue eyes. Bronze hair trailed down from the elegant chignon she wore at the back of her neck. Hypnotic really, thought Cyril as he appraised her.

"India," she smiled offering just three syllables in introduction.

Cyril offered a bow.

"You must be the Aquarist," she smiled, stretching out a long, graceful hand for him to kiss. He obliged, nodding somewhat awkwardly.

"Please, call me Cyril. Is Giovanni--" he broke off, as the girl shook her head.

"Indisposed, unfortunately," she supplied, a flicker of sadness appearing momentarily behind her eyes before dissolving once more.

Drunk then, or hungover, Cyril knew.

"Not to worry," he attempted breezily, forcing a strained smile.

She returned one of her own, before letting out a little, frustrated huff.

"Really, let's not mince words with each other. You know your brother, perhaps better than I do, and Giovanni has told me everything there is to know about you, I imagine," she intoned with a slightly imperious air, "Really, we're already friends."

She's nervous, Cyril realized belatedly. Alone in a new city, married to a man she is only now beginning to know, friendless.

He shrugged, regarding her gently.

"In truth, my brother and I have not been on the best of terms for some years now. I only learned of your engagement from my mother on her latest visit to Brighton," he explained slowly.

Her eyes flashed for a moment with annoyance, or something else, before becoming amicable once more.

"Show me your collections, won't you?" she asked plainly as though she had not heard a thing he had said, a single delicate eyebrow raised in challenge.

***

"There's something dreadfully masculine about aquariums," India hummed to herself a few afternoons later, her whole body limp, her face glued to Cyril's carefully curated glass containers of sea water and madrepores.

Cyril raised his eyebrows, nonplussed.

"I'm not sure what you mean," he offered back.

She turned to look at him, and Cyril caught another glimpse of her eye, which was blackened, like blooming violets. A wave of emotion rose in him at the thought of Giovanni touching her, and he stifled it.

"The need to take something from it's natural habitat and install it closer to oneself--to possess that which by all right's belongs to nature-- to strip it of its native wildness like some kind of ill-gotten trophy--" she broke off, her expression heated.

Cyril had the impression that they were no longer discussing aqauriums in the slightest.

"Oh?" he prodded gently, hoping she might say more if she were so inclined.

She seemed to realize with a rush to whom she was speaking and her face went mauve.

"I'm sorry, Cyril, I don't mean you-- you're not-- that was terribly rude of me-- when you've been so kind to let me observe your hobby--" she began, but Cyril shook his head.

"You're aboslutely correct, my dear. There is something nasty and possessive in it. Wrapped up in a fear of abandonment, of being alone in the universe, alone with the mystery of it all. I can't quite articulate why any man goes to the kind of efforts I've gone to, to study marine life, but I have, and I'm sure not all of my motives have been pure or true or simple. I am a man, sure enough, and I have pillaged nature's bounty, in a manner of speaking." A part of his heart broke to speak of his collection in this way, but he had to acknowledge the rightness of the woman's sentiment.

"No, no, that's not what I meant though. I don't think of you as a man," India expelled in a rush, her face going an even darker shade of red when she was finished.

A dart of shame pierced Cyril's breast, and he licked his lips.

"Oh Cyril, I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm even saying." She tried again, her expression slightly alarmed.

"No, no." Cyril supplied, all bluster, "Now I forgot that I'm needed at the Pier, to take measurements of the waves. Dreadfully silly of me. Can you see yourself out?" It was a foolish, ridiculous lie, but he could not bear another moment under the woman's penetrating gaze.

***

It was not so much that Cyril was lonely. No, he could not be lonely with the sea roaring inside of him. When he stared into one of his aquariums, the water seemed to stare back, more mysterious than the depths of space, or intense than the human intellect.

And yet, aside from the stoney corals, he was alone.

India had come close to the heart of the matter. And Giovanni, on some level, must have always known, for why else would he have spurned his only brother if not for fear of Cyril's own weakness being somehow contagious. His parents, for their part, hardly cared to find out any of the secrets of his interiority.

He tapped dully upon the glass in the shadowed semi-darkness of the Aquarium. Inside, the water was slightly murky, despite the fountain which sprouted from the center-- an architectural attempt at aeration-- and the strands of seaweed and kelp which fixed themselves to rocks, to clarify the seawater. A hermit crab scurried across one of the stones, straying dangerously close to an anenome.

Cyril held his breath.

From somewhere came the sound of fluid dripping.

Outside, the waves clashed along the shore.

What was the point? He could not be sure anymore.

No, it was not so much that Cyril was lonely, but rather that he had always been alone.

From the first moment.

He surrounded himself with creatures, wonderous and alien, in the hopes that they might make him feel human, perhaps. But India was right; he was not really a man. He was not really anything.

He was too terribly contained. A vessel. An empty hexagonal aquarium, all glass, ready to break apart at any time from disuse. Wonder, evaporated.

Yes, he was always alone.