I
He was a very young man fresh out of college, newly married; with some money they had inherited; he and his wife bought a little cottage by the sea, on the outskirts of a small village. His wife found work as a librarian in a nearby town, getting there every morning in their little car, and he � he was a diver. He had always dreamed about searching for treasures at the bottom of the sea; he had visions of ancient golden vessels and heaps of jewels lying there, waiting for him to discover them.
While still at college, he had been working for some years during the holidays for a treasure-trove company, perfecting his technique as a diver; now, he had started on his own. Every day, at dawn, he would go out to sea in his little boat, returning
late in the evening. At first, his wife felt complaisant enough, thinking he would soon tire of it; but, as time went by, and every night his return would delay more and more until he did not come home before midnight, she began pleading with him.
"Please, Frank," she would say, gently, after he had had his dinner and she had put a hot cup of coffee before him, "can't you come back a little earlier. I am all alone, and your supper is always getting cold, and I am bored and lonely after work because there is nobody to talk to round here."
But Frank would say, nonchalantly: "Can't you talk to the neighbors, or to your friends from work? You can see that I am busy." He felt she did not understand him, his deep needs to go down to the bottom of the sea. It never occurred to him that she
was too young and inexperienced to understand; that she needed him to understand her own needs.
In their second year of marriage she started with what seemed to him very much like a nag. "Don't you love me any more?" she would ask.
"Of course I love you, Jenny," he would say, looking deep into her golden-brown eyes that in his mind reflected the golden treasure at the bottom of the see; he was quite vehement in his love for her and their lovemaking would suddenly flair up, get hot and lusty. Because, when the nights grew too dark to look for treasures in the chasms of the sea, he would search for it in the depth of her body; in the morning, though, her golden-brown eyes had no more promise for him, and he went back to sea leaving her not only exhausted, but also feeling empty of all emotions.
At the end of the second year of their marriage Jenny conceived; but when she first told Frank about the baby, hoping he would be happier to stay home more, he did not believe her, thinking it was a trick she used to try and keep him beside her.
He never had a chance to notice her morning sickness, as he used to leave the house just before dawn, long before she woke up. Still, when it began to show, Frank was delighted, surprising both her and him; he noticed that her golden-brown eyes
shone more brightly than ever, twinkling, beckoning to him in echo to his sought-for treasure.
"When I find my treasure, Jenny," he said, "our baby will have the best life possible." Having promissed her that, he would go to sea full of zeal and motivation. He did not, actually, think of the treasure as a means for making their life materially easier or better; he just had an idea that the mere finding of the treasure would bring them happiness. The thought of the growing child hidden in his wife's swelling body also strengthened his vision of its being comparable to the treasure, sparkling gold and bright colors, lying in the dark abyss under the swelling waves of the sea.
When Jenny reached her seventh month she stopped working, feeling the drive to town was too much for her. Staying home all day she felt that both expectations - for the birth of her child and for her husband to come home from sea - was getting too much of a burden for her to bear. One day she told Frank: "I am afraid, you know. What shall I do if the baby arrives suddenly while you are not here? We are not even on the phone, so that I could call for an ambulance."
"You could always shout for the neighbor," he answered cheerfully, "she is very friendly."
She looked at him in dismay, her brown eyes darkening; for the first time he noticed that their golden sheen had almost completely vanished, and he turned his gaze away from his wife, listening to the sound of the waves outside. In his mind's ear
he was able to discern the tinkling of golden little bells sunk in the deep, while the glow of red rubies gleamed in his own eyes.
One day Frank returned in the evening as usual, to find Jenny lying on her bed in a pool of blood, gasping hard for breath. A very tiny baby, all red and soiled, was lying besides her, howling its head off. Stunned, he stood still in wonder, full of awe at his frightened little wife who has had her baby all by herself. He never knew how long he was standing there, gaping at her, before stirring and running out to call the neighbor for help. The ambulance came and took them to the hospital. The baby
was all right, but his wife had lost so much blood that the doctor shook his head over her in doubt.
Frank did not go back to sea. For three days and nights he sat by Jenny's bed as she was getting weaker and weaker, waiting for her to open her eyes. At last, she did, and he saw there was no shade of brown in them only sparkling gold. "You must look after Little Frank now," she whispered, pouting her pale lips for a kiss; then she closed her eyes forever. The baby in the cot by the bedside started whimering, as if understanding he had just lost his mother.
Frank lifted him in his arms for the first time since he was born. 'Funny Jenny calling him Little Frank,' he thought absently; he did not feel deserving anyone being called after him. Blindly, he left the hospital; thoughtlessly he got a taxi to take them home. The kind neighbor, who had befreinded Jenny in her loneliness, came in, saw his confusion and started helping him unasked-for. She fed the baby, cleaned the house, and tried to talk to Frank. He stirred for a moment to tell her rudely he did not need her help, he had been told what to do at the hospital, and she'd better leave and go home. Reluctantly, she left, worried. He did not give her another thought.
He sat for a while in the quiet house after the baby had fallen asleep, then he searched and found a bottle of whisky and started drinking. He had never been a drinking man; they kept the bottle for the rare occasion of having a guest in the house.
Frank took a thimbleful, then another; soon he was drinking by the cup, losing count. What was left of his awareness was completely gone, until many years later.
II
Far away from the sea, an old lady owned an estate, which was run by a young man called John. He was talented and industrious, successful in everything he did and Mrs. Smith trusted him completely. He was not an exceptionally handsome man, but
pleasant looking with soft fair hair and steady grey eyes, known as kind and friendly to anyone who met him.
A road passed through the estate, connecting towns on each direction from it, and on this road John had put up a shop and a cafe, so that people passing by in their cars could stop for refreshment and buy fresh products from the estate.
Tramps on foot were no common sight there, the place being rather far from closely inhabited areas; it was therefore some wonder when one day, around noon, a tramp came passing by, clad in tattered rags, his hair grown long and unkempt covering his face, and he was carrying a large bundle under his arm.
The tramp stopped at the cafe and looked around, while being looked at curiously by its custommers, for he was an odd sight at the place. He seemed slightly drunk, but his manner was quiet enough and he was let in and served with a cup of coffee. It was a little strange to see him putting his bundle on the table beside his coffee, instead of on the floor. The attendant, thinking the man was taking out his own sandwiches to eat, which was not allowed inside the cafe, approached with a ready reprimand; but, as she came up to him, she became speechless with astonishment.
Instead of the higgledy-piggledy she expected to see in the sack, a pair of golden-brown eyes in the face of a baby peeked seriously at her from the bundle. It looked a few months old, rather dirty but not starved, and as the man was talking to it in a low voice, it smiled up at him. From behind the man's shoulder, where she stopped in her approach, the attendant could hear him murmur: "So deep is the golden treasure at the bottom of the sea. The gold in his eyes... the gold in her eyes... never to sea (but she thought of it as 'see')... deep, deep; dark... blue... and the red in the middle..." She was certain now that the tramp was drunk, and went back to speak to the manageress of the cafe; but, by the time she returned with her, the man had gone.
He did not go far, though, but stayed beside the road all that day, looking at the people coming and going, all that time talking all sorts of nonsense to his bundle. "They are good people here, Little Frank," some heard him say, "I am sure they like babies. There is no treasure in your eyes... all the gold is false." And his own deep blue eyes peeping from behind the unkept hair would grow sad and remorseful. Throughout the day the tramp had been drinking from a bottle he carried with him � he certainly did not buy it at the cafe, where they did not sell alcohol.
Towards evening he must have become hopelessly drunk, for he
cuddled the flask together with the baby, dropping some of the juice of life on the baby's lips, all the time searching for some golden treasure which he could never find. At last, he and the baby fell asleep together.
The bundle, recognized by the cafe attendant, was found abandoned in the morning, the baby still asleep inside it; the tramp was nowhere to be seen. She brought it up to the cafe and showed it to the manageress, who told her to take the baby to John; he would know better what to do with it. Puzzled for once as to the right thing to do, John took the attendant with the baby to see the owner of the estate; with Mrs Smith was also her granddaughter Jill - a goung girl of sixteen or seventeen, and sole family and heir to the Old Lady.
It was typical of Jill, who was a tall, fair girl with strong features and lively attitude, to take immediate charge of the child, although, as John pointed out, she had not had much experience with babies. As he watched her dealing with it, though, he noticed how quick she was in changing, cleaning and finding something to feed the little boy on; he had to admit that however skilled he was in doing many other things, Jill seemed much more practical than him in doing this particular job. He had never thought of her as being practical.
"Does anybody know his name?" asked Mrs Smith, joining John in watching her granddaughter in action.
"I heard the man call him Little Frank," said the attendant.
"It's a nice name for a boy," said Jill, and they decided there was no point in trying to find him another.
"But we can't keep him, of course," the Old Lady said; "we'll have to notify the authorities."
The authorities, seeing how well he was cared for on the estate, were willing to leave the baby there until they found his father; that proved hopeless, however, as he did not seem to be registered anywhere. Jill then said she would like to adopt Frank herself - she had simply fallen in love with his golden-brown eyes.
"You are too young," John said, "you are barely old enough to be a mother."
She gave him a funny look, which he did not bother to understand. "I can adopt him myself," he continued, following some hidden drive he was unable to explain to himself. He had joined Jill in looking after Frank, helping her to change and feed and even play with him. It had created a kind of bond between the two young people, who, up till then, had been just casual friends.
"I think," Mrs. smith commented, gazing on while the two of them were busy around Frank, "the authorites would prefer the baby to go to a proper family." Both were evidently upset at the Old Lady's pronouncement. She then smiled at them, and said, seemingly carelessly, "So, why don't you two get married and make yourselves into a proper family?"
Strange as it may seem, this was quite a new idea to both Jill and John; they certainly had to think it over. Still, no body was surprised when, the more they considered it the better they liked the idea. The surprise was all their own when they found out that they cared for each other no less than they did for Little Frank. The baby, then, found at last the home he needed, with new, healthy mother and father who loved him and were able to look after him and with more brothers and sisters later on. He grew up to be a fine young man, who knew nothing about his earliest life except that he had been adopted as a very small baby. In due course Mrs. Smith died, Jill and John became the new masters of the estate, with Frank as the official heir.
III
One day the idyllic life on the estate was disrupted. A drunken tramp appeared from nowhere, with rumors accompanying him about romping neigboring farms, destroying everything; trees and crops, fences and flowerbeds and whole households could not stand in his way. He never, it was said, had harmed a living creature, human or animal; but sheepdogs and guard-dogs chased him, barking fiercely and tearing at his clothes, and people raised heavy sticks at the sight of him. Leaving a trail of damage and annoyance behind him, the tramp had arrived at the estate's cafe, where young Frank was sitting in the back office with his addopted father, being introduced into some of the mysteries of management.
They heard a commotion, people shouting, chairs and dishes thrown about, and they rushed out to see. The drunk, dissheveled more than the young man had ever seen anyone before, was lifting a chair above his head, ready to throw it in any direction. At the appearance of the two men he stopped, and with a sudden intent look in his deep-set blue eyes he murmured: "Golden treasure... your eyes..." as the chair dropped from his weakened arms.
The young man had stepped forward to take hold of the tramp and throw him out when John cried out to him: "No, Frank, stop! He might be..."
The man, crouching on the floor almost lifeless, was muttering in an indistinct voice: "Little Frank... golden treasure... dark blue sea..."
Kind hands raised him and sat him at a table with a cup of coffee in front of him. John, collecting his memory of what he had heard from the cafe attendant in previous days, asked the tramp gently, "How did you happen to leave your son behind?"
The blue eyes looked at him, deep and troubled.
"I don't know," he whispered, "I must have been too drunk. I never meant to leave him behind, but when I came back, he was gone. I looked everywhere, did not remembered where I had left him..."
He had been searching for his son for years, he said, everywhere; he kept on drinking, and with mind too upset he became very destructive. Heaving spent many weeks in prison; every thime he got out he would resume his search.
"You have your mother's golden eyes," he told his son, looking intently at the confused young man who did not know how to react to his suddenly found father; "but there is no more treasure for me in the golden eyes... You know nothing of the dark blue sea." Then he added, as if in an after thought, "Probably, you are happier for it."
They wanted him to stop at the estate so that they could look after him, but he was unable to stay in one place. He promised, however, more to himself than to them, to stop drinking. But, he said, he still must go in search for the treasure at the bottom
of the sea...
"Are you going to live by the sea, then?" his son asked him, still unable to call him 'Father'.
Big Frank gave Little Frank an enigmatic look from his dark blue eyes. "Your mother died by the sea," he said; "I could never live there again." He thought he could earn his living by working on farms, doing seasonal work on the way of his search.
"I am on a mission," he said seriously, nodding mysteriously to himself, "the treasure at the bottom of the sea is still waiting for me."
He reached the shore some years later, having walked a whole day on the dusty road. Many days had passed since he ate or drank anything but the occasional sip from his newly bought flask. When he caught a glimps of the blue stretch, the last drops had been drained and the bottle dropped from his listless hands.
For an unaccountable time he stood there, gazing with unseeing eyes. The yellow haze of the westerly sun deepened into orange as it hovered in the horizon reflected blinding gold from the water. 'Here it is,' the thought passed through his hazy mind, 'there is the golden treasure, right there, in the middle of the sea. I must go now and fetch it. We'll have the treasure for ourselves, Jenny, and our lives will be happier
ever after...'
He walked toward the waves licking the sandy shore. The coast was empty, no one about to see or call him back. He stepped into the water in his shoes; then he bent and removed them and the socks, sensing the cool, smooth stuff caressing his bare feet.
He walked on in.
The water reached his ankles, then his knees, climbed to his thighs. It stroked his body lovingly, reminding him the soft hand of his dead wife. How smooth and cool was her hand! The touch awakened some long lost sense of life in his body, and he
kept walking deeper and deeper into the water, until he was unable to walk anymore.
Swept by the waves, he floated up and down, eye shut, the golden glow of the sinking sun penetrating through his lids. Up and down he was rocked by the waves, feeling like a child in a rocking cradle, the waves singing to him a lullaby his mother
used to sing, of the treasure buried at the bottom of the sea...
Frank took a deep breath, his head sinking into the water. His face was filled with it, his eyes, his nose, and his mouth. He did not cough it out, his whole body paralized as if in shock.
Slowly he sank; his eyes open, gazing, before he lost consciousness, at the golden treasure, which twinkled at him from the bottom of the sea...