Chapter Fourteen—The Belly of the Fish Part Two

- Finally left El Nido on boat; 20 feet long with stabilising sticks coming out of side like a spider, called a Bamboat.

- Storm has picked up! Stabilisers look anything but stable as boat is being tossed around like lettuce in a salad.

- Plan is to take me ‘island-hopping’ to visit some of the surrounding small islands. Haven’t told the crew the real purpose of the trip. No idea which one Derrida et al are on. Hobbes, Nishida, and Jung maintain they don’t know. Probably do, just not telling me. Bastards.

- Crew getting anxious…storm has got worse…waves pretty crazy…water coming onto the boat…crew arguing with each other…don’t understand what they are saying, but think they want to turn back…getting difficult to write…rain is pissing down now…wind is whipping up the sea and it looks proper angry…waves are size of a couple of sheds stacked on top of each other…I’m scared…Shit…perhaps this wasn’t a great idea…Bloody Kierkegaard. Bloody all of them…God, if your there, please do something…gotta stop writing…

 I woke up and realised I wasn’t alone. There were loads of them. All over the place. Some, including kimono-clad Nishida, Jung, Hobbes, and Jonah were sitting in the middle, around a fire, grilling fish. I noticed Wittgenstein, holding a set of tongs.  Jung strummed chords on an acoustic guitar. They looked like they had just been out for a surf. Einstein and du Chatelet were playing about with a kind of elaborate grilling contraption on the fire. There were some other guys standing on a huge pile of fish to the right. The only one I recognized was Newton. One was dressed like he’d stepped out of a Shakespeare play; another looked and dressed a bit like Hobbes, and then there were two or three others who wore different kinds of suits. One had an enormous beard, a bit like Marx. I knew him from somewhere. They all choosily nosed about the fish pile inspecting specimens and tossing others, buckets in hand like they were collecting lunch, or whatever meal it was.  

On the left-hand side, was a flat-screen TV attached to the insides of the fish. The Greeks and some of the eastern contingent were all gathered around it watching Asia’s Got Talent.  Plato and Aristotle were throwing fish at them, giggling their heads off. At the back were Paul, Luther, Aquinas, and an Arab guy who I didn’t recognise all dressed as agents from the Matrix, apart from the Arab guy who wore a kaftan. I watched for what felt like an age just taking in what they were doing, oblivious to me. Eventually, though, Hobbes looked up from gutting a fish, saw me, and immediately came over.

‘Ah’, he said.

‘Yeah, you could say that. What the f……’.

‘We really must stop meeting like this, dear boy. Glad you could join us though. We’re just about to have some luncheon. Fish, I believe’. He stuck out his hand, realized he had manky fish-bits on it, wiped it on his stockings and then offered it again. I didn’t take it.

‘Ah’, he said again.

‘What’s going on? Am I….dead? I was in a boat….then the storm came and hit the boat……and then…..I don’t remember’.

‘No, no, perfectly alive.  You were rescued. Fortunately, we were in the vicinity’.

‘Where are we?’

‘Somewhere off the coast of Palawan, I believe. In a fish. A large fish’.

‘So, this is a dream, like before?’

‘Fish still sting’, Nishida piped up from by the fire.

I looked at Jung for some kind of reassurance.

‘Remember what I have always told you: let the archetypes of the quest be your signpost’. He nonchalantly poked the fire with a stick.

‘What happened to the boat crew?’

‘In rude health, Graham’, Hobbes said. ‘Washed up on one of the surrounding Islands, I believe. Ship-shape. As it were’.

‘So, I didn’t imagine the storm?’

‘I think it best if I show you something’. He gently took my arm and led me to the television, where the Greeks and some others were still engrossed in Asia’s Got Talent. ‘Gentlemen, I wonder if I could inconvenience you for five minutes’.

‘Of course’, Socrates replied. ‘It is a virtue to see you again, Graham’. Most of the others all harrumphed a bit and nodded in my general direction, except the one covered in dung.

‘It cannot wait five minutes? They are just about to announce the results. I have money on it’.

Socrates looked at him disapprovingly. ‘Alright, alright’. He got out the remote from his toga and gave it to Hobbes, who changed the channel. They left me and Hobbes and sat around the fire with the others. On the screen was the BBC News.

‘How on earth do you get the BBC here?’ I asked.

‘Cable’, the Greeks all said together.

The news showed images of total devastation, shots of massive gales completely up-ending houses, waves the size of said houses crashed against beeches and dragged people out to sea, other people running for their lives. It was like the apocalypse had started.

‘Shit. What is this? A typhoon or something’.

Jung joined us, ‘Dat is a very big typhoon. It hit the east of the Philippines yesterday’.

Hobbes pointed at the screen, ‘That is Tacloban on the Island of Leyte. I believe it was hit the worst, along with Samar, nearby’.

‘What about Palawan? What about Juliet?’

‘Only the very north was hit. Your lady friend, I believe, would have been unaffected’.

I let out a deep sigh of relief. ‘That’s good news’.

The news showed buildings with their roofs blown off, piles and piles of debris strewn everywhere, and people trying to dig under all of it. Then they cut to a shot of several dead bodies being covered in the street. 

‘This is terrible. I can’t watch it’. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the uncomfortably hypnotic scenes of death and destruction.  

‘This is crazy. All the suffering. Where is God in all this? Why is this happening?’

I finally looked at everybody. They stopped what they were doing and stared back at me.

‘You’re all supposed to be so clever. Someone answer me that’.

‘Big question—why. Eat fish first. Then discuss meaning of life’.

 I suddenly felt very hungry.

‘Hmm, maybe I’ll just have a bit’. I took one of the fish, sat down at the fire and started eating.

‘This fish isn’t bad. What is it?’

‘Special fish’, Nishida answered.

‘Actually, I think it is a grouper of some kind. An Epinephelinae, if I am not mistaken. A genus of the sub-family thereof, I would proffer, though unfortunately I cannot confirm this for I do not have my charts with me. Most annoying’.

This was the guy with the big beard ferreting about in the fish pile earlier.

‘I know you from somewhere’, I said in between mouthfuls of fish. ‘You look like Marx. He wears a suit like you too. You’re not Marx, are you? Maybe his brother? I don’t know if he had a brother, but if he did….this fish is really tasty by the way, Nish’.

‘Eat more. Good for you’. I helped myself to extras from Einstein’s grill contraption. The fish seemed to be making me a bit more relaxed.

‘No, I am not Marx, although he was a contemporary of mine’.

‘That’ll explain the threads then. So, who are ya?’

‘My name is Darwin. Charles Darwin’.

I spat out the fish. Nishida gave me some more.

‘Ah’.

‘A genus of the sub-family. Recognition?’ Darwin asked.

‘Hmm. Very good. So, going back to my point, what’s your take on typhoon’s killing all these innocent people. Is that an example of survival of the fittest? Nature’s way of balancing the planet? Or is it God’s fault? Why did he let all this suffering go on? Actually, some people say you killed God. I don’t know about that. Did you? Come to think of it, did you believe in him in the first place? Or the last place? I’m not sure myself. Now there’s a dualism if ever there was one, Nish. What do your mates think about that? Evolution verses Creation. Science verses Religion. Reason verses faith. Actually, there’s three dualisms there. How the fuck do you get over those? Those are pretty mighty dualisms. The mightiest maybe. This fish is....doing something with my mouth. I can’t shut it’. I tried to wedge my mouth shut, but it was having none of it. ‘Nope, can’t seem to close it. Sorry’.

Darwin sat next to me and started eating.

‘You know the problem with the question ‘why’, Graham?’ he said.

‘It just begs more questions. No bloody answers’.

‘Precisely. The question why is like peeling an onion’.

He put down his fish and, randomly, pulled an onion from his trouser pocket. Then he started peeling it, one layer at a time.

‘Why leads to another why. And another why. Until….’, he picked up all the onion skins from the floor, ‘just a lot of whys left. No onion. I always felt the ‘how’ was a more worthwhile pursuit for science. How does evolution work is a far better question than why it does. I can give you answers for the former. I generally only found more questions with the latter. And more heartache’.

Whilst he spoke, I was doing everything humanly possible not to interrupt him, because my mouth had developed Tourette’s. But strangely, as he paused to eat more fish, I found myself suddenly very calm and hanging on to his every word.

‘It seemed to me that suffering, for example, was somehow necessary in natural selection, and therefore either nature or God were, or should I say, are, responsible. Perhaps equally so. The death of my beloved daughter Annie at such a tender age certainly led me to consider the question of suffering in a……more personal light. Have you ever lost anyone close, Graham?’

‘I lost four friends in the space of six months once. Four funerals. No wedding’.

I do not think that I was ever an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a god. There was indeed a time when I might have called myself a Christian. However, in the final analysis, an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.

‘What, you’re not sure either way?’

He shrugged and ate some fish.

‘A good batch, Nishida’.

‘Darwin have eye for good batch’.

‘Years of practice’.

‘That was a very honest answer, Mr. Darwin. I must say, you’re really not how I expected’.

‘And what did you expect?’

‘Someone a bit more….up himself, I suppose’.

He looked confused. Einstein, Madame du Chatelet and some of the others who had been collecting fish joined us by the fire and tucked into the fish. Somehow, between them, they had set up a system to keep the supply going. Most of the Greeks and the eastern contingent were back to watching Asia’s Got Talent, heckling the TV constantly.

‘Up himself? This was Hobbes, flicking through some papers in his pocket, looking for something. ‘Yes, I know this one. What the deuce was it now?’  

‘Just you this time, Emilie?’ I asked. ‘No Simone, no Hannah, no Frederick, no newbies? What’s going on?’

‘The fish is not for everyone’, she responded. ‘Some do not care for it’.

‘Why not? It’s amazing’.

‘It is not everyone’s, how do you say, cup of tea’.

‘Fair enough. Each to his own, I suppose’.

 Then Hobbes got out a little book, flipped through it, and read from it.

‘There you are. Yes. ‘Up himself’—see also: ‘full of himself’, ‘full of it’ and ‘up his own arse’. It means arrogant, Charles’.

‘Ah’, they all said together.

‘Wow. I think that’s only the second collective ah you lot have ever done.  It was the French last time, and they were just being smartarses. Still, a collective ah is a collective ah. Impressive. I guess there ain’t any point in getting wound up about all that now—you lot all knowing about the ahs. Like pissing in the wind’.

Again, a few exchanged confused glances.

‘Futile’, Hobbes said as he ably demonstrated the point through an elaborate mime. This was greeted with a general nodding of heads.

‘Indeed’, Einstein said. ‘Your gift for the vernacular of your age is impressive. And most amusing. Pissing in the wind. This I like. I think a lot of people would say I was pissing in ze wind when I was trying to find a unified field theory for quantum mechanics. I think you would agree Heisenberg. No?’

‘I would, yes, Albert’, said one of the suited guys who had been collecting fish earlier.

‘You’re Heisenberg?’

‘Pleased to meet you’, he answered in a refined German accent. We shook hands.

‘Wow. You’re pretty famous these days, man’.

‘More famous than me?’ Einstein retorted. ‘Whatever next’.

‘There was this TV show about a science teacher who got cancer and then turned into a drug lord….long story, but he was called Heisenberg’.

‘Great show’, said one of the Greeks behind us.

Heisenberg seemed completely nonplussed by the conversation.

‘Hmm. I guess you need to see it. Talk to the Greeks, they’ll fill you in. Anyway, so, what were we talking about…..?’

I was feeling remarkably chilled given the circumstances. I’d lost all my inhibitions, control of my mouth and now my short-term memory.  

‘Unified Field Theory……’. Hobbes quietly whispered in my ear from behind.

‘Ah that’s right. Unified Field theory. So, you never found it, then? Pissing. Wind. And so on. I know about all the relativity stuff and E=MC squared malarkey, but the rest I’m a little….vague on. Sorry. ‘

‘Do not apologise. You are not alone, I sink. No, I did not’.

‘Did not what?’

‘Find a unified field theory’.

‘Ah yes. Has anyone then?’

‘’That is a good question’, Heisenberg said. ‘Some argue that the multi-verse theory can explain it, and then there is the theory of the black holes. But these are just that: theory’.

‘Yeah, I heard of them. Don’t ask me to explain any of it though’.

‘Me neither’, Einstein quipped, which made them all laugh.

‘I, along with my colleague Bohr here’, Heisenberg gestured to a little fella in his fifties—one of the suitfish brigade who hadn’t said a peep yet—‘believed that quantum mechanics was by its very nature probabilistic only. Hence, the uncertainty principle. You have heard of this?’

‘Err….kind of’, I tried to lie, but my mouth wouldn’t let me. ‘Well, no. No, I haven’t. So, what is it? What?’

Everybody laughed again. Nishida passed some more fish around, which all of us tucked into.

‘At the quantum level of reality, at the tiniest level, very strange things happen. Reality becomes, what is the word….’, Heisenberg inquired.

‘Trippy’, Bohr suddenly interjected, in a very faint foreign accent that I recognized but couldn’t place. He looked at the others. ‘Strange, blurred, unpredictable’.

‘Very impressive, Bohr’, Hobbes exclaimed. Everybody nodded.

‘Welcome to my world’, I said, gesturing around. ‘It’s comforting to know science agrees with me. But hold on, science shouldn’t agree with me. Science is about….things, innit? Objective facts, the real world etc’.

‘Yes, and it still is’, Newton said in a stern tone. He paused for a moment and looked straight ahead. ‘At a certain level of reality’. He looked at the others, watching him with amusement. ‘I am just saying’.

‘This is true, of course’, Bohr continued in his gentle manner. ‘Newton’s classical laws on gravitation and dynamics….’

‘You are surely familiar with my three laws of motion. I believe every child is still taught them’, Newton asked, in his slightly condescending way.

‘Of course. Remind me again……’ I quietly cursed my recent inability to lie unconvincingly. Newton deflated.

‘Oh, come monsieur, methinks you do protest too much’, Madame du Chatelet said in her customary charming way. ‘You are familiar with Isaac’s description of mass, acceleration, momentum, and, of course, force’.

I wracked my brains in panic. That was four, wasn’t it? I really didn’t want to let her down, but I Newton’s eyes bored a hole in me. Finally, I dug something up.

‘What goes up must come down’, I said triumphantly.

Newton shook his head in disbelief. Du Chatelet squeezed my hand sweetly.

‘Somefing like that, Monsieur. Somefing like that.  Well done’.

I let out a huge sigh of relief, which punctured my air of triumphalism and made Newton scowl even more. The words ‘Ignoramus fool’ were practically tattooed on his forehead.

‘These classical laws remain correct at a macro scale, a non-quantum scale, and it goes without saying that physics owes an enormous debt to Isaac for this’, Bohr said.

‘Hear hear’, Einstein and Heisenberg proclaimed together, at which Newton cheered up.

‘But at the quantum scale’, Einstein said, ‘ze classical method of Newton, treating such concepts as externally defined separate quantities, along with space and time, runs into problems. That is what my theory of special relativity addresses’.

He and Newton exchanged respectful nods.

‘To my fellow genius’, Newton said.

‘To my Kapitan’, Einstein replied. ‘Now with the classical way of dealing with the concepts of waves and particles, certain things happen at the quantum level which makes things….complicated. For example, the fact that matter itself can have both wave and particle properties, that is, light, say, can behave like a wave or a particle’.

Heisenberg now carried on, ‘The classical Newtonian method of describing objects with the separate concepts of waves and particles do not supply a comprehensive picture of objects at the quantum level. When you measure, say, an electron, the very act of measuring means you alter the experiment because you cannot measure the wave and particle elements of the electron at the same time. Because of this wave-particle duality’.

‘Hello. Duality’, I said to no one in particular.

‘The measurement of the electron therefore becomes probabilistic, uncertain if you will’.

‘Accurate, but incomplete’, Bohr added.

‘It seemed, then, as though we had to use sometimes classical theory and sometimes quantum theory, while at times we could use either’, Einstein said.

‘Either-or’, I blurted out.

Bohr smiled at me, ‘Mr. Kierkegaard was indeed ahead of his time’. I noticed he pronounced the last part of his name the way Soren always did—making a ‘gaw’ sound instead of a ‘guard’ one.

‘Ah’.

‘Yes. I am Danish. Of course I am familiar with Soren. He is famous in our country’.

‘Is he? Hmm. We’ll come back to that, Mr. Bohr’.

‘You will’, he came back with. 

‘We were faced with a new kind of difficulty’, Einstein said. ‘We had two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explained the phenomena of light, but together they did’.

‘So, what did you do?’

‘We had a big argument’.

‘Several, as I recall’, Bohr said.

‘Fish?’, Nishida offered everyone.

‘Gentlemen please’, Hobbes deplored.

‘Agh’, said Einstein. ‘Let us have some fun with the boy, Thomas’, as he took Nishida up on his offer.

Du Chatelet smiled at him affectionately, ‘You are incorrigible, Albear’.

‘What?’ I said.

Einstein looked at Bohr and Heisenberg for some kind of affirmation. Bohr looked at Heisenberg and then nodded at Einstein.

‘Have you ever heard of the principle of complementarity?’ Bohr asked me.

‘Complementarity?  Now I have heard that before, but me memory is a bit shot at the moment….wait, I know it. Nishida, you weasel, you know about that, don’t ya? We talked about it for ages in Tesco, as you do. What was it, again?’

Nishida smiled and repeated the gesture with his hands he had done before.

‘Of course, the Yin and Yang thing. Two opposites complementing each other. Identical….’

‘….difference’, he finished.

‘That’s it!’

Bohr produced a pendant from around his neck, ‘You mean this’. It was the Yin and Yang symbol with an inscription on it.

‘Nice. What do the words say?’

‘That is Latin: Contraria sunt Complementa. It means ‘opposites complement each other’.

‘Wow, check you out. That’s crazy. Nishida’s always on about that stuff—dualism an illusion’, I said doing my best Nishida impression. ‘Carl digs it too, don’t ya?’

‘When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty, there arises the recognition of ugliness’, Jung stated.

‘See. That’s some Lao Tzu shiz. Oh man, you’d love Lao Tzu and Alan, Bohr, they’re proper into it as well’.

‘When they all know the good as good, there arises the recognition of evil’, Bohr said.

‘Er....yeah, very good, you’re getting the hang of it’.

‘That is the next line of the quote’.

I laughed and shook my head, ‘Right, right. I got to say Bohr, no offence, but you’re the last person I expected to be into Eastern philosophy. Scientists are usually right geeks’. I suddenly realized who I was sitting with. ‘Present company excepted of course’. I quietly cursed my mouth again. The damn thing still had a mind of its own.

‘Geeks? What is this ‘geeks’, Hobbes?’ Newton asked.

Einstein laughed, ‘This I know. A geek is an ‘unfashionable or socially inept person’.

‘Ah’, Newton responded. ‘Fair description’.

‘So, what’s a scientist doing wearing that, Bohr?’

‘Because the principle of complementarity works very well with quantum physics. I believe it is impossible to understand the subject without it’.

‘Poppycock’, Einstein interrupted. Then he munched on some fish and mumbled. ‘Do not mind me’.

‘You see, when you look at the apparent dualisms involved in quantum physics—the fact that light can behave as both a wave and a particle, the fact that, as Heisenberg discovered, the observer seems to affect the observed, and the fact that as Albert explained, two sets of laws seem to be at work when examining the world at the quantum scale—if you see these as complementing each other instead of conflicting with each other…’.

‘As two sides of the same coin’, I said in between mouthfuls.

‘Identical difference’, Nishida said nonchalantly.

‘A totality and unity in which the opposites are united’, Jung said. 

‘….as an expression of our connection with the world’, Bohr persisted, ‘then the need to find some deeper explanation’, he said, looking straight at Einstein, ‘becomes redundant. Merely a….pissing in the wind, to use your delightful expression’.

‘The wind will not return the piss’, Einstein retorted, ‘if you do not piss when it is windy’.

I did everything I could to suppress a chuckle.

‘You are familiar, Graham, with the expression ‘God does not play dice?’

‘Ah, yeah. You said that. I always wondered what it meant though. God doesn’t play Yahtzee?’

Nishida nearly choked on his food. No one else got the reference. Or they weren’t laughing. Either way, my comment met resounding silence. My bloody mouth.

‘Yahtzee. It’s a Japanese game….with dice….look: I’ve got five of a kind. Yahtzee! No, ok’.

‘It means, Grar-ham, that ze indeterminate, random nature of the quantum world which Bohr and Heisenberg both accept in there so-called Copenhagen interpretation is not the last word on the subject’, Einstein explained.

‘It is the best explanation’, Heisenberg said.

‘In your opinion, George. Not in mine’, Einstein commented.

Bohr let out a deep sigh, ‘You were and remain a true giant in the subject, Albert, but you are wrong now as you were wrong at the conference in 1927’.

At this, he got up, went to the fish pile, and started collecting more. Heisenberg followed him at a distance.

Einstein leaned conspiratorially towards me, ‘Do not mind us, Grar-ham. We like to play the same games. But yes, I could not accept that God played dice with the universe. There had to be a deeper explanation, a unified field theory, that explained the apparent randomness; that determined the indeterminacy. This is what I searched for the rest of my living days’.

‘But you didn’t find it’.

‘That does not mean it cannot be found. Scientists to this day are still looking. Some believe they have found it with the black holes or multi-verses, as Heisenberg says. But in truth, I think these are merely interpretations of how the universe works, like ze Copenhagen one. Not perhaps the real deal, as you might say. I blame this little one for it all’.

He pointed at Aristotle, who had stopped tormenting the others watching TV and was sitting on Einstein’s knee.

‘I want to play a game, Albert. I’m bored’.

‘That is because, how do you English say this, you have a worm up your bottom. Or is it you have ants in your pants?’

He looked at me for confirmation.

‘The last one’s better’.

‘This one has a conference of ants in his pants. Why, why, why eh Aristotle’. He started tickling him.

‘So, he’s to blame, is he? I should punch him. I hate that question’.

‘If I hadn’t asked why none of you would’, the kid said in a smarty-pants kind of way.

‘He’s a precocious young fella, isn’t he?’

‘Don’t listen to him. He wouldn’t have asked it, if I hadn’t asked it first’. This was Plato, who was now slapping Aristotle over the head with a fish. ‘Me first’.

‘No, me first’, Aristotle countered, returning the fish-smack.

‘No, me’.

They began fish fighting.

‘Perhaps we should carry on our conversation later. The little ones need attention. They always need attention’.

‘Yes of course….Albert’.

He smiled, his eyes almost twinkling at me. He had a warmth that melted away my anxieties.                               

‘Now then you too, what shall we play?’

‘Let’s play spin the wheel, Uncle Albert’, they both said together.