20. Hallucinatory Submersion

I had another episode like the one with the tattoo in Setúbal, unable to tell dream from reality. Only this time it was not a matter of memory lapses or sudden leaps through time and space. Reality itself had been altered, as though it had suffered an attack of total synaesthesia.

I had retired to my cabin, unable to follow the conversation among the three crackpots, convinced I had drunk too much grog. In truth, I had only had two small glasses, but I must have been more susceptible than usual, my body worn out after so many days at sea.

I woke in the middle of the night to a strange motion, as though we had altered course and the boom had swung over to the opposite tack. I remember getting up to see what was happening. As I stepped onto the deck, I found myself flooded by the wine-red colour of the sea from the Greek classics, while waves of pop-rock music drifted across its calm surface like yellow sheets hanging in a gentle breeze. I am not speaking metaphorically. I could smell the red wine of the sea around us, and I could see the yellow waves of the music. Nor was I the only one.

‘Can you hear the noise these clouds are making?’ the Russian kept repeating, having meanwhile come up on deck with the rest of the crew, his head tilted back as he inspected the sky.

‘And their smell?’ added Bad Tom, nose raised, flaring his nostrils without pause. ‘They smell of distant plants, faraway dust, remote lands.’

The Captain seemed thoroughly amused, watching us.

Lucky, like me, stood transfixed by the melody woven into those yellow sheets.

‘Where’s this music coming from?’ he asked.

‘From the friends we’re about to meet. They must have surfaced by now and are heading towards us. This music is their sonar,’ the Captain explained.

A yellow submarine appeared ahead of us only a few dozen metres away. On the upper deck, atop the hull, three guitarists and a drummer, dressed in tight grey suits, white shirts and black ties, all sporting identical bowl haircuts, were performing a musical number.

They must be the sailors, I thought. But what’s the point of standing up there playing music?

At the top of the conning tower two figures appeared, one of them Captain Nemo. In an instant the musicians slipped their instruments into their pockets and began preparing the lines so that we could come alongside the submarine.

‘Ahoy!’ Captain Nemo shouted, waving from the top of the tower.

A shiver ran up my spine as the sailors laid a gangplank between the two vessels. I felt uneasy about leaving the familiar safety of the Nomad. We were escorted onto the submarine’s deck and descended through a hatch whose shoulder-wide opening gave the impression of entering a rabbit hole.

Inside, it smelled of spring meadows. The profusion of perfumes from different flowers made my head spin, and from the looks and unsteady movements of my companions I realised their senses had also been overwhelmed. The fingers of my right hand rose involuntarily, lifted by a force I did not immediately understand.

‘My dear lady, how have you been?’ Captain Nemo asked, after kissing the back of my hand.

I drew my arm back defensively, unsettled by the faint dizziness brought on by the excess of sensory stimulation.

‘Don’t worry. That feeling of seasickness will pass in a moment. Relax and follow your senses; don’t try to control them,’ he suggested, in the voice of a stage hypnotist just about to persuade his volunteer that she was a chicken.

‘Where are we? What’s going on here?’ the others asked.

‘Welcome aboard the Nautilus, ladies and gentlemen. Think of it as your refuge, a sanctuary where you may free yourselves from the shackles of contemporary society. Or of any age, should circumstances require it.’

Captain Nemo opened his arms, inviting us to look around. The submarine’s structure, presumably made of metal, was covered in sheets of coloured cellophane cut into different geometric shapes that shifted as our gaze moved across them. The navigational instruments and other nautical objects fixed to the colourful surface seemed to possess the texture of mushrooms.

‘You’re welcome to try them. They’re delicious,’ said a man emerging from a tunnel. ‘John over there can’t resist them. Every week he devours a sextant,’ he added, nodding towards one of the four musical sailors, who answered with a ravenous grin. ‘My name’s Tim, and I’ll be your guide. This way,’ he said, beckoning us towards a hatch.

We left the control room and walked slowly along a tunnel whose supporting ribs were made of marshmallows in pastel shades of cyan, pink and white, intertwined all the way up to a roof fashioned from quince paste studded with tiny glittering diamonds. Every step along the walkway of sugar-whipped egg whites produced the dusty sound of a sigh, accompanied by a crisp ploc-ploc that echoed through the tunnel’s transparent walls. On either side lay rooms with bay windows overlooking the sea, glazed with icing of different essences and flavours, where groups of people—some of them strangely familiar—sat with hungry eyes fixed upon wall-sized screens.

‘They’re groups learning to unlearn, from all four corners of the world,’ the Captain explained.

‘What are they unlearning?’ Lucky asked.

‘The view of reality imposed by consumer society,’ he replied.

‘So it’s a kind of brainwashing?’ I asked accusingly.

‘Not at all. We simply expose them to stimuli that allow them to experience other perspectives of reality. Our vision of the world, and the meanings we attach to it, are constructed through perception. If we expand our perception, we also expand our capacity to experience reality positively. There are many techniques available, from neurolinguistic programming to meditation and hypnosis. We prefer to blend the senses until they reach a state of universal communion that dissolves fear. Once that obstacle has been overcome, people can begin cultivating new values founded upon positive feelings… and thus change the world.’

Our host opened his kaleidoscopic eyes and stopped us with the smile of a Cheshire Cat.

‘There’s nothing that can’t be done.’

He half raised his arms in the pose of a presenter introducing an enigmatic magic show, glanced over his shoulder as though checking his mark, then lifted his face towards the ceiling with the expression of someone savouring the breath of a colourful hallucination while riding through the darkness in an open-top car, feeling the winter sun upon his face.

‘All we need is love!’ he exclaimed, flinging his arms into the air and throwing back his head.

The moment he spoke, every light in every compartment went out. Behind us, four spotlights bathed the sailors in clouds of vanilla and sunflower powder as they began to play. The notes poured from the band in every direction and started to undulate around us like mermaids, leaving trails of rainbows in an overwhelming profusion of colours. Gradually, their softness enveloped me more and more, the arcs brushing against my body like caresses as they occupied ever greater space, until everything became a single multicoloured radiance accompanied by the sound of a river breaking free from immeasurable caverns, rising from a buried sea that had never known the sun. Little by little I felt a deep sleep climbing through my body until it covered my eyes.

When I awoke, I was back in my cabin, where I had fallen asleep the previous night, as though waking from a vivid dream interrupted by someone knocking at the door. I climbed onto the deck and found the sun already high overhead. The Captain was taking sightings with his sextant, confirming our longitude.

‘Where is everyone? Where are Captain Nemo and the sailors from the yellow submarine?’

‘Yellow submarine?’ Captain Jackdaw laughed, without looking at me, his sextant still fixed upon the horizon. ‘I don’t mean to sound condescending, but you’d be wise to stick to water for a while… While you were asleep, our crew left with Captain Nemo, just as arranged, aboard an ordinary dark-grey cargo ship, without the faintest trace of yellow. The two of us carried on towards Nova Scotia.’

He jotted down a few figures on a sheet of paper and returned the sextant to its case. Then he sat down, looked at me, and handed me a bottle of water with a smile.

‘The best cure for a hangover,’ he said.

My senses still clouded, I drank the entire bottle. Then I pulled myself up on the cockpit seat and tried to focus on the horizon. I could see nothing but the sea.

And yet I could have sworn I heard distant voices singing,

‘Turn off your mind…’