Translating the Word of God

“Rather interesting,” said Seal, savouring the first sip of the coffee I had made him. He had an Oxford accent.
My heart was drinking the world the furry creature had brought in with him, and it was filling up from all sides like a sponge.
The moment he suddenly showed his round, black eyes at the window, he made me open what had been closed for a long time, and now my bedsit was breathing heavily, air wafting through the room in waves of pressure lifting the insides of my stomach like a swiftly rising elevator, and my heart was drinking desperately, lapping at the substance oozing out of Seal’s presence.

There he was, giving me that opening look through the glass, warranting immediate access, already inching in, fins pulling furry fat across the window sill, sliding onto the floor, moving across the carpet in his awkward, zig-zagging seal walk, stopping in front of the sofa. He turned his neck to look at me. And again to look up at the sofa. I walked across and, sinking into the white folds of his neck, lifted him up and put him on it. He sat there, fins on his belly, breathing. In and out came his furry belly. In and out. His eyes were zonked, staring straight ahead at some indeterminate point. In space? Time? Or was there another dimension he knew and was seeking to stare into my flat little world with his big round eyes?
“I wouldn’t mind a drink,” he finally said snapping out of his zonk.
“Coffee?”
“That would be fabulous.”
I made coffee and served. He savoured.
“I have come to talk,” he said.
“Have you?” The situation’s components registered. Conversation with Seal. Immersed in and pervaded by unknown substance. No escape.

“Yesterday,” said Seal, “when you left the library, you bumped into my car.”
“Your car?”
“Yes. A black Subaru Imprezza. Which happens to be quite dear to me.”
I imagined Seal with his streamlined, finned body trying to drive a Subaru Imprezza but finally decided to take my response from a different angle.
“But I don’t drive.”
“That bears no relevance.”
He took another sip of coffee and smacked his tongue on his palate.
I stalled. “But how could I have bumped into your car? I was on foot!”
“You bumped into my car. And it is dear to me.”
You’re out of your mind, Seal, I wanted to say. But then I remembered I was talking to a seal and didn’t say it, and said instead:
“I’m awfully sorry. But I don’t remember.”
“That is a common occurrence.”
A common occurrence.
“Would you mind me searching your memory?” asked Seal.
I looked into his big, black eyes, and they forced me away from the content of our talk into different territory. When my mind got back, I had already spoken.
“You are free to search every nook and cranny of my memory.”
“Wonderful,” said Seal and slid down the sofa. “Where shall we do it?”
“Where?”
“You need to lie down comfortably and take off your clothes,” said Seal.
Seal certainly had the odd baffling trump up his fin.
“That is the only way you can search my memory?”
“I’m sure there are other methods,” said Seal wriggling towards the mattress that was my bed, “But this is the one I know.” He gave my bed a quick once-over and said: “This seems to be a good place to do it.”
I took off my clothes, jeans, socks, polo shirt, pants, and folded them into a neat pile on the chair next to my bed. Seal waited next to the bed, unimpressed by my progressing state of nudity and its stark completion. I lay down on my stomach and closed my eyes.
“Are you comfortable?” said Seal.
I was as comfortable as I could be.
At first, his fur was light on me, with no weight whatsoever. Was this his fur? There was something hovering along the edges of my entire body simultaneously. Gradually, it closed in on me and made circles starting from impulse points in the middle and spreading pressure evenly in concentric circles around these points, overlapping, and moving away from the initial pressure points at the same time as closing in on them. One pressure point was the next one’s outermost circle. As circles and points began spreading through my body, I stopped thinking in a linear fashion, and what had been a tool for thinking cause and consequence broke into ceaseless circling and pointing, constantly starting from nothing and everything, returning to everything and nothing.
When my mind re-surfaced, Seal was in the same position as before, facing the bed, looking me in the eyes.
“I found it.” He said.
“Found it?”
“Yesterday, in the library, you told Carol to come back, because you could fix it. Then you took out a book. ‘Translating the Word of God’.”
Seal was telling the truth, wherever he had found it.
“But I did not bump into your car.”
“You did. You bumped into my Imprezza, and it is dear to me. I would much appreciate your cooperation in correcting your mistake. Take back 'Translating the Word of God'. Tell Carol the truth. You can’t fix it. That will fix my Imprezza, and I shall not bother you again.”
You didn’t bother me, I wanted to say. But as Seal wriggled towards the window and somehow managed to clamber up and out, my voice dissolved into fits of crying, and I couldn’t stop till I fell into a bottomless sleep.

I found the book next to my bed. Now I had to take it back I wanted to read it more than ever. My heart heavy like a sponge full of truth, I faced the dark winter morning to meet Carol at the library.