The tide is about to turn. Right now, for a short while, the river is still and flat beneath me, beneath Blue, until once more the pull of the tide returns. It’s like driving on freshly paved asphalt—the engine pounding in my ears, allowing no peace, only a monotonous noise. If I turned it off, I would be at one with nature, able to hear the birds, the light wind I see blowing in the trees onshore, the gurgling of water in motion. But the engine is the only thing I have now.

I have put out tires as fenders along the entire broadside and the mast is bound securely to the deck. Blue is a sad creature, amputated, bandaged, and bound on a brown river.

Water itself is colorless. It’s the world around it that gives it color, reflections from the sky, from the surroundings; water is never just water.

Water absorbs and whirls around everything it meets.

Water is humus, sand, clay, plankton.

Water is given color by the bed it covers.

Water reflects the world.

And now the water is reflecting the blue sky above me and the tree branches reaching across the river, while its color also comes from a sludgy bed I can’t see.

At Castets-en-Dorthe, the first lock rises in front of me, a vertical wall many meters tall, and the river is bordered by a muddy shore.

As I sail closer, I can hear the rushing sound from inside, torrents of water in continuous man-made motion.

A lockkeeper comes out onto the edge, looks down at me. “Are you going in alone?”

He looks at me skeptically, as if he wanted to finish the sentence with “old woman.” Are you going in alone, old woman?

I feel the urge to strike back, tell him about the storm I just weathered, about the fog, about all the voyages on the open sea, the demonstrations, the nights spent in a holding cell. What’s a lock compared to that?

“It’s prohibited,” he continues. “The current gets too strong when the sluices are filled. You won’t have a chance of keeping the boat against the wall on your own, you won’t stand a chance.”

“You have anyone on standby?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“Someone who can come with me—you know someone?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“But it’s prohibited,” he says, a little more meekly.

“I’m going in,” I say.

“Idiot,” he mumbles.

I start to answer but suddenly doubt whether he actually said anything. The water is making too much noise and he has already turned half away, given up. He lets me through.

All the water is drained out of the sluice chamber. Everything is electric here, but I know that farther up the canal the locks are manual; the lockkeepers must open the gates.