At daybreak Ben strolled along the Molo Audace, the pier reaching like a stony finger into the Adriatic's slate-colored hug. The docks of Trieste never rested. At this early time: the creak of ship hulls against rubber buffers the metallic cry of a far-, off crane the splash of water the initial bursts of Italian and Slovenian voices as the fishing vessels emptied their shimmering fading haul.
For years following Copenhagen following the battle this clamor had provided comfort. A symbol of vitality lifted against the advancing silence. He had grasped it firmly like a man warming his hands by a flame after succumbing to the cold.
At that moment he experienced a sensation.
Gazing into the profound water between the pilings he sensed the familiar tug. Not from a menace—a Somnum transmission, a psychic void—but as a map within himself. A current flowing through his veins. The quiet abyss of the ocean murmured not of a commodity for sale. Of a reality to be faced: the deep instinctive call of ending. The bodys desire for repose. The mind's craving, for a slate. It was the urge that caused a man to gaze excessively at the rim of a towering cliff, not out of hopelessness but driven by a vertiginous intrigue, about the conclusion of hardship.
It was the Sluggish Calculus, inscribed in his bones. Not blasphemy. Human nature.
He didn't resist it. He allowed the sensation to flood over him, chilly and immense. He permitted himself to envision the ease of drifting into that dark buoyant quiet. The conclusion of the library's ceaseless arrangement the students' realizations, the recollection of Veronica's tear-marked face, in the server room. The cessation of the necessity to be Ben, the guardian of the Unquiet.
The tide. Briefly the sounds of the dock receded into a far-off hum. It was him and the sea's vow, in the world.
Then, from the quay, a fishmonger's voice sliced through the haze, raw and glorious as a撕裂的帆.
"POLPO! FRESCHISSIMO COME IL PECCATO! OCTOPUS! AS FRESH, AS SIN!"
The shout was absurd, specific, alive. It was commerce and poetry and a defiance of the deep's silence all at once.
The internal tide withdrew, not erased, but recognized. It imprinted its mark on his spirit, a coldness, a brine trace.
Ben faced away from the water. He concentrated on the sound of crates rattling the thud of fish being stacked on ice the complex heated haggling starting up. The noise had ceased to be a defense, against silence. It was the side of the same reality. The yelling was the expression of depth. One couldn't exist without the tension of the other.
In that instant he grasped Flavio clearly. Not to justify him. To truly perceive him. The man hadn't created the allure of the deep; he had merely discovered the wavelength to magnify it universally transforming a current into a worldwide wave. He had converted the murmur inside into a public transmission.
The purpose of the Academy wasn't to eliminate the whisper. It aimed to instruct individuals to stand on their pier sense the chilly tug and then decide—repeatedly every day—to face the chaotic flawed vitality of the clamorous world.
He strolled back down the pier the clamor shifting from an explosion into a harmony of distinct details. The rasp of a cord. A chuckle from a cafe. The chime of a bike bell. Every noise was a selection, from the profound. Every single one was delicate. Every single one was all there was.
He passed the Academy's door, but didn't go in. He walked on, up into the city, listening. He was not a general anymore. He was a connoisseur of disturbances. And the greatest disturbance of all, he now knew, was not a scream, but the daily, deliberate, magnificent decision to listen to the fishmonger instead of the sea.