At seven Neville found himself an infinite stormy ocean: he was the ocean, and yet he was Neville, and the ocean seemed wholly unconcerned about what it did to Neville, tossing him like a wave while Neville was scared almost to death. It happened once a month from his seventh to his twelfth year, and he could tell from a strange sense of expectancy during the day when it was coming; he dreaded going to sleep, because as he fell asleep he became one with the immensity and then a separation took place between the ocean and its wave - though he was still the ocean. In his twelfth year it vanished. He reads it afterwards as the separation of Jacob from Esau being performed on him: the ocean did not care, but it was doing it for a purpose, and it could not cease to be. Luckily there were no psychoanalysts in Barbados, and his father could not have afforded them.