So we, the people, should not kill them but learn from this friendly creatures how to be so nice and kind, how to feel their natural joy of life and harmony of co-existence. Though they are wild animals, they never try to take more from the nature than they need for living, they never try to conquer anyone or anything. They peacefully co-exist with a big variety of species dwelling in the World ocean and taking into consideration their joy of life I have no doubts that they not only exist but also enjoy every moment of their life.
I think that chasing our ‘civilized’ progress which requires more and more of natural victims we lose our humanity, we lose first of all ourselves, our Spiritual nature. With our insatiable endless needs we glorify our Ego, turn to ugly heartless beasts who destroy not only the Earth but all living beings on it, including similar to us. And we consider it normal, don’t we? But is it the reason we came to life? Our life is an instant. And everybody wants to be happy in this instant. Everybody wants but can’t. Why? The nature gives us its silent answers to these questions in harmony of its everyday life. But we do it vice versa: instead of observing we kill, instead of wisely creating we destroy. It’s awful indeed, to live with a beast nature and to possess a mind with the dominating Ego. Eternal sufferings… However, the happiness is so close. We need only to turn to the Good and just to become Human.
The guys stood silently over the body of the dolphin. Even Stas, though he was a reserved person, turned off hardly checking himself.
“If I met now that ‘fisherman’, he would lose for long a desire to take something heavy to his hands…”
“…and bad thoughts to his head,” Victor replied in the same manner.
“Hatred is a bad adviser,” Sensei remarked thoughtfully.
“Who talks about hatred?” Eugen shrugged his shoulders. “We would beat him…’with love’. So that he would forget how to touch not only a dolphin, he would avoid water at all and forget the way to the washbowl.”
“Well, our ‘tolerant’ friend,” Sensei uttered with a light smile and added in a while, “And if to speak seriously, maybe you are right. If you ignore the evil, you won’t notice how you will become indifferent to the good. But when you punish the evil, you should know when to stop. Only this way you will avoid the danger inside of you. The winner doesn’t pride himself, doesn’t rape nor triumphs. He wins… and first of all himself. So punishing the evil you should remember about the good.”
The guys listened to Sensei and hung their heads again over the body of the dolphin.
“Let’s burry him or what?” Eugene proposed after a small pause obviously trying to vindicate himself in front of Sensei.
“Right,” Andrew backed him. “I will bring a shovel…”
“Why do we need a shovel?” Eugene opposed. “There are a lot of us, it will take us less time to dig a tomb in the sand. It’s easy.”
And in order to prove his words Eugene made with his hands a few wide rakes of the sand like a drag-line excavator demonstrating us how quickly it can be done. During this Eugene’s ‘sand work’ Sensei scooped some water with a hand and poured it on the dolphin. Then he started to stroke gently his head saying, “Why do you want to burry him on land? He is a sailor. His home is the sea…”
“Should we leave him like that, in the sea?” Eugene wondered. “Let’s better dig him in the sand, at least he won’t be eaten by fishes. He will sleep peacefully here…” Sensei squatted down, looked at him and smiled, that’s why Eugene felt that he blurted out again something wrong and added with confusion, “Our dear friend.”
His phrase provoked smiles of the guys who tried to hide them as it was quite an inappropriate moment for it. Sensei didn’t reply anything to Eugene. He started to raise a little the head of the dolphin holding him with two hands.
“Nikolai Andreevich, help me…”
Apart from Nikolai Andreevich the other guys, including Eugene, rushed at once to help. But it was quite enough of Sensei, Nikolai Andreevich and Volodya for body transportation. The ‘mournful escort’ moved to the sea. Part of our group was left on the coast, the others, including my person, accompanied them. Hardly the water reached the waist and the body of the dolphin was half-sunk to the water, Sensei said to his assistants, “Let me go further alone. His weight is less in the water …”
When men handed over the body of the dolphin to Sensei, I noticed that Sensei didn’t only embrace it. To my surprise, he put the palm of his left hand right on the wound as if hiding it from curious eyes and embraced the back of the animal from top with his right hand. Having half-sunk the body of the dolphin to the water, Sensei went with him deeper. We stood on the same place.
Sensei was moving slowly and carefully as if it were not the dead dolphin in his hands but a little child whom he gently supported and patiently taught to swim. Little by little they moved away from the shore. Only when the water reached the chest of Sensei, he stood still. I thought that now he would push away the body to the depth and it will sink down. I felt so sorry for this dolphin. Despite these sad circumstances due to which we got a chance to meet this beautiful creature of nature and the short time of our ‘acquaintance’, this dolphin seemed to me so dear and close. I felt something unusual towards this animal and this feeling was hard to be described in words as if his grief, when he was alive, was my grief, his pain was my pain. This strange feeling of some invisible unity started to overfill me from inside. I half-closed my eyes fearing to see the moment of his going down to water and I thought that it would be better if my memory saves the picture of his ‘voyage’ with Sensei. However, having closed my eyes for a moment I suddenly heard the voice of surprised Tatyana, “Is he alive or what?”
I opened my eyes and saw with astonishment that my friends were observing with curiousity Sensei and the dolphin which was still in his hands. The water was rippling in the regions of the dolphin’s tail. First I thought that it only seemed to me. But in a few instants the tail waved again, even much strongly. We couldn’t be wrong. The guys noticed it, too. We exclaimed with joy, “Look, look, he is alive!”
Our noise attracted attention of the guys who were left on the shore and they made an attempt to come closer to us. While we wanted to near Sensei. But Nikolai Andreevich stopped all of us, “Keep quiet, don’t make noise. Stay still. Don’t scare him…”
Our group stood frozen, looking at it with admiration. The movements of the dolphin were weak first as if he recovered after a long slumber. But a bit later they became much more brave and intensive. The most amazing was the fact that this wild wounded dolphin obviously experienced the pain from a man who almost killed him but he didn’t even try to loose from the hands of Sensei though the last one only supported him afloat. On the contrary, judging by vivid movements he looked as if he was filled by life energy. It seemed that the dolphin somehow understood it and didn’t hurry up to slip out from careful and kind hands.
In some time the dolphin threw up from the water his flat tail which was similar to a whale’s one, but in a miniature, and dove after slapping with it funnily on the water. Coming to the surface not far from Sensei, he showed his side and balanced some time on the surface without assistance ‘observing’ Sensei who has been recently holding him in the hands. Sensei also froze looking at the dolphin. In a few instants obviously after this silent ‘dialogue’ finished, the dolphin turned around and slowly swam to the depth of the sea. Contrary to our expectations he didn’t dive anymore but tried to be on the surface. Sensei cast a glance at him, then dipped into the water, sleeked his hair and started to come back to the shore.
When we all crowded on the shore, Victor remarked, “He is still swimming weakly. As far as I know, dolphins are high-speed creatures.”
Eugene
