The sperm’s right eye peeks into view fifteen feet down the endless snout. A tiny, irised marble all but lost in the vastness of ebony skin. Jay feels the eye lock with his own. Intelligence, patience, curiosity. Jay’s outside his own body. No heiliger Schauer. This is no bully. The whale is a fellow mammal; its gaze has a simian weight. By acknowledging Jay, it shares that it has a soul.
