A Second Encoutner

I cannot see the bottom and this scares me. It is however a ridiculous fear, for this is surely one of the cleanest lakes in an urban setting in all of Europe.

It is a simple challenge I have put before myself: to take a 30 min jog up and down the lakeside quay, and then on return, run down the paved wharf, scramble along the rocky pier and dive into the water. Of course I must dive, it would be far too cowardly to simply lunge in legs first. Besides, everyone else on this rocky stretch throws themselves in head first. Still, I cannot hardly bring my self to go in head first, let alone tread the tepid waters at all.

My socks stuffed into my Adidas jogging shoes, a colorful pair of stripes, laces and cushioning, all covered with my sweat soaked t-shirt and a faded army green pair of shorts. I splash into the water, head first after all, and my vision turns to a cloudy green-black vista. I was sure to leap clear of the ominous green rocks near the surface. This latest venture is against my better judgment. However , I have recently learnt to turn away from my better judgment, for it only ever leads me up narrow alleys without much meaning. This latest exercise is but the latest rebellion against my better judgment.

In the water, my heart is in my mouth as a sense of panic starts to encroach upon me. I cannot not see the bottom of this lake! What is below my feet? How deep is this lake? It appears pitch black below me. What if there are crocodiles in this lake I think to my self. A completely ridiculous thought of course, but who is to say for sure when the lake seems to have no bottom! To think that as a child I did indeed swim in a lake with crocodiles and, worse still really, Hippo’s. And to think that my elder sisters would swim out to islands over half a kilometer out in such a lake.

This lake is cool on my skin, luke warm and soothing. Instantly it washed away the salt that was deposited on my skin from the 30 minutes of pedal torture that I inflicted on myself. Newly splashing in the water, I pull up my boxer shorts, that were half way down my buttocks from the impact with the surface. A reason to be weary of lunging into the lake head first. Then, I begin to swim away from the rocks and out into the lake. Every swim I have ever taken in my life seemed to risk a drowning, and this one is no different, in fact more even more so.

As a child once, before I learnt how to swim, I lost hold of the concrete embankment at the deep end of a swimming pool and sank like a rock to the bottom. Curiously, I did not panic that day, as I seem to be on the verge of doing this day. To live to see another day, I made leaps to the surface (for the pool was not deep at all) to cry for help. Soon enough, my cousin came along and rescued me.

Now in this bottomless lake, I do not have the same option of sinking to the bottom. Besides, who could come to my rescue, I have no benevolent cousins watching over me here. Worse still, there are but a dozen people all together on this rocky pier, over half a kilometer long, all of them too involved in their beverages, conversation and lakeside reading material.

Of course, there is no crisis really, just my acute ability to perceive one. My energy intensive and poorly executed frog stroke is enough, barely, to move me about the water, knowing not to go further than a point of no return, given my already fatigued body. On the other hand, the water is a little choppy and intermittently wonders up my nose, causing an interruption in my breathing and a loss of rhythm that leads to choking. At this point the rocky shore seems far away indeed, for my breath is now lost on the ensuing panic. I am also worried that I have over estimated my strength and so wont have the energy to make it back to shore.

Finally, I return to the rocky sanctuary from where I took my leap of faith. The rocks beneath the surface appear an aquatic green and are covered in a slippery and slimy algae. Struggling for support, as I mount the rocks out the water, it seems possible that I might lose balance and crack my head open. Alas, I triumph and I am on dry rock, on my feet. My boxer shorts curiously retaining air to give a bubble appearance to my genitals. Nevertheless , I have triumphed over fear and fatigue. The sun, as it sets, appears like a dash of ochre orange pastel on a canvas of threaded and beaded clouds. their detail revealed by the searching sun rays.

But once again, I am not alone in these rituals of solitude. Standing higher than me to my left, standing tall on the rocky pier is my doppelganger, appearing in silhouette. Once again he proves to be a more complete human being than me with his thick frame spectacles (so much more robust than my pair of spectacles). Soon he has stripped off his clothes, not to his boxers but, to complete nudity. In his body language there is no hint of the hesitation that accompanied my groggy stop-start denuding. As if in a hurry, he leaps off a rock, meters higher than the one I leaped off, head first with his penis gently bouncing on his ball sack. With a neat gentle splash, he takes to the water with clean strokes. He makes 3 confident laps, into the lake and back, without expressing any fear of drowning or crocodiles.

I am envious in my little corner of rocks. This doppelganger takes solitude in his stride, as if it is his servant and he the master, in difference to me where the case is definitely the opposite. In my little world of self doubt and constant regret, with the UN buildings looking over me from across the lake, I wonder how I can face my immediate challenges of unemployment and unaccomodation when simply jumping into one of the cleanest and safest lakes in the world can cause me such anxiety.

Already dressed and making his ’sortie’, the doppelganger towers above me as he walks past on the rock above.

‘Bon soir’ I call out, barely recognizing my own voice after hours of being kept to myself.

‘Bon soir’ he returns, in a voice whose pitch is a couple of notes higher than what I expected, like a boy almost. This seemed incongruous with my perception of him. I was hoping he would have recognized me from our previous encounter, before a storm on the wharf. In this brief exchange, I searched his face but found no trace of recognition. What a lovely world it is if your own doppelganger does not recognize you.