For most of us, the real is the life of the surface, the visible meniscus. But for some, far below, it must be something quite different, lived under a pressure many would find intolerable.

The story of Nadia and Christine is like that, but only in some respects. Depth is relative; surface varies with angle of vision. What may, to many, seem almost impossible – like the great swallowers, the lantern-fish that, dragged too quickly to the surface, collapse in the sudden thinness of the atmosphere – may seem to others only too familiar. We live by surfaces – interpret, read by them – yet reality itself can lie beyond at unexpected distances. It seems, in any case, as if only the simple words will do: the submarine dark, the long teeth, the grotesque yet delicate jaws of photostomias qiiemei must be left, instead, to the oceanographer, or to those who can see a tale as something other than a casting and recasting of signs.