by James Barlow
He had an honest, forthright, slightly humorous face. When they stood under the faulty showers together Dimitrios saw that he, who looked slight and even frail, had a well-made body, with chestnut gleaming skin, taut stomach and muscles across his shoulders that rippled in movement. He was beautiful, but Dimitrios felt no physical yearning. It was sufficient that this boy was his friend. Nothing further was claimed.
And yet he waited now nearly two hours, doing nothing but seething in fear and jealousy and genuine anxiety for his friend.
Keith came back, red-eyed again from alcohol, ready to laugh, but Dimitrios couldn’t bear it. He knew he’d suffer, that suffering was what John intended, and that silence and care would be the way to defeat it.
‘Where did you go?’
‘We played chess.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Ah, you should have been there, Dimitrios. John had brought some jumbo shrimps and meat balls.’
‘You must be careful, Keith.’
‘Careful?’
‘John is an evil man.’
‘He is cynical, to be sure, but amusing. He meets strange people.’
‘No. He is evil. I know.’
‘But a game of chess?’
‘Listen. You are my friend?’
‘Yes, I am your friend, Dimitrios.’
‘I tell you in sincerity that this man is vile.’
‘I do not understand that.’
‘Can you not believe without understanding?’
‘I am a religious person, so I have beliefs without mathematical proof.’
‘This is the same thing in reverse.’
‘You feel he will harm me?’
‘Yes.’
‘In what way?’
‘He will, for instance, teach you to despise me.’
‘He said kind things about you.’
‘You do not believe me?’
‘It would be wrong to despise someone for no reason.’
‘I should not have spoken about it.’
‘I will repeat nothing, assuredly. You have been too long at sea, Dimitrios.’
‘Perhaps,’ admitted Dimitrios.
The Areopagus reached Singapore only fourteen hours behind schedule. She was kept waiting by pilots and for a berth, and passengers were informed the night before arrival that the ship would only be in the great port from dawn until nine at night. This meant about eleven hours ashore instead of the twenty-five promised in the brochures.
Mr. Pybus, in pyjamas open at a sweating hairy chest, not quite sober from last night, looking very ill now, stood up in the dining room and began to bellow protest. But there was no response; the passengers had weighed him up now and considered him a vulgar loudmouth and grumbler. Further, they thought the Areopagus had done well. And experience at Bali had conditioned them to an affection for the old ship.
Eleven hours walking about and they knew perfectly well they’d be glad to be back on board.
For Dimitrios the brief stay at Singapore meant no shore leave at all. He would be lucky to even come out of the gloomy bowels of the vessel and look at the city. Keith, however, was allowed ashore for two hours because he was a supernumerary and in his home city. The chief engineer, Bitsios, was a tough man, but by no means thoughtless in such manners.
It was disappointing, for Dimitrios had regarded the call at Singapore as a sort of bond, an impletion of his new comradeship.
Keith returned into the port engine room full of joy, refreshed.
‘How did you get on?!
‘Oh, splendid, Dimitrios. It was good to see my family. My mother has a new baby, ten months old, a bouncer. John thought –’
Dimitrios was so shocked he couldn’t hide alarm.
‘John?’
His heart thumped in jealousy, his mind was full of the crawling worms of fear.
‘John came along. It was such a pity you could not also Dimitrios.’
‘But why did John come?’
‘Why? There he was, standing about; he seemed lonely . . . ’
‘You asked him?’ Dimitrios inquired in dismay. It had the hurt of a betrayal.
‘But why not? I wanted my mother to meet at least one of my friends.’
Dimitrios could scarcely breathe for unhappiness. His friend. John, the insolent, ruthless, tainted Saturday afternoon sailor, had achieved a position of friendship with Keith! He ranked equal to Dimitrios before Keith’s mother. This frightened Dimitrios as well as hurt him. If there was to be a competition – who could amuse Keith the more, play chess as an equal, admire and advise him, inform him – he knew in despair and jealousy that John would win it.
‘Where did you go to?’
‘Not far, assuredly!’
‘What did you do?’
‘Oh, talk. By the time we’d had an hour with my family it was necessary for me to hurry back.’
‘I wish you had not taken him.’
‘Why do you say that? Is he not your friend, too?’
‘He despises me.’
‘I feel sure he does not.’
‘If he could hurt me –’
‘Have you had a difference with him?’
‘We had a quarrel. He cannot bear that I should have a friend.’
‘But he speaks kindly of you, Dimitrios.’
‘He is not a fool. He is thirty-two, subtle, has great experience of people.’
‘You are upset. I wish you could have come. My mother has this new baby and you should have seen it! John was very funny. You would have laughed. Is he married? He seems fond of kids.’
‘Of course he’s not married.’
‘What’s the matter, Dimitrios?’
‘He’s vile.’
‘I am sorry that you quarrelled. He can be so funny and cheerful. And it doesn’t matter. No one will influence me in regard to you, my friend.’
‘He might hurt you.’
‘Hurt me?’
‘And thus alienate you.’
‘But how could he hurt me? And why should he wish to do so?’
‘He’s peculiar. He gets satisfaction from doing things like that.’
‘You have been hurt in the quarrel.’
‘You are my friend?’
‘I am indeed.’
‘Promise me that you will avoid him.’
‘But, Dimitrios, this is absurd.’
How could he warn Keith without admitting his own base behaviour?
‘Don’t you have a girl friend?’
‘Ah, girls!’ Keith said, with surprising vigour. ‘One day I find a girl and get married. But here in the engine room of the Areopagus? I think not!’
Dimitrios had to let the matter drop or become too persistent and thus arouse suspicion or embarrassment.
But he couldn’t let it rest. He had to be active, settled the matter, probe the wound. The unsettled condition of what had been calm and beautiful couldn’t be tolerated. At the very lest he had to discuss it, and since he couldn’t talk about it with Keith, it had to be with John. It was foolish, he admitted, to approach John. If what he feared was true, John would exacerbate his misery, crucify him, mock him with affected ignorance: ‘What are you talking about? Who do you mean? Oh, that boy who played chess with me. Leave him alone? But if the poor fool wants to follow me about?’
But there was the other half of John, and no one aboard the Areopagus knew it better than Dimitrios – the sincere, thoughtful, affectionate man who should be doing something better than serving beer to tourists. Had he really aroused an intense loathing in that half of John? Was a visit to a priest and a fear of disease so unforgivable? Could they not have a sensible, kindly but calm relationship?
He
was very nervous about the encounter. Whatever he did or said, he would be the one who abased himself and had to plead.
They had always met in Dimitrios’ cabin when other men were on duty, or in the bar late at night, or in secret corners of Metaxas and B Decks. Never in John’s cabin because there were five other stewards there.
Dimitrios approached the Forward Bar after midnight. Only a few lights were on and the place was emptying.
‘Where’s John?’ He asked the girl cashier.
‘On the Parade Deck.’
Dimitrios was not supposed to be in any bar, nor to mix with passengers. But he couldn’t bear to withdraw now that he had nerved himself up.
The ship was very quiet, but on the Parade Deck there was confusion, a surprising number of people asleep in the deck chairs. And at the stern, by the big pool, a dance for kids. It meant nothing to Dimitrios except that this was where John would be, serving beer, swindling these drunken fools out of small change in the dark.
He was very young, trembling with agitation, and tired. He was due back on duty in four hours.
There was John, inevitably successful, acquiring equality and friendship with these muscular Australians he said he despised. He was drunk, too, and very hot in the steamy night, his face wet and shining with sweat, the armpits of his white linen jacket stained by the mere exertion of fetching traysful of booze. Dimitrios was startled by the violence and energy of the passengers. Eleven hours ashore and these big youths and long-legged girls were still like people in a frenzy. They shrieked and laughed and ran about, almost bare, and wrestled, male and female, shouting obscenities, in a coarse equality. A few seemed to be coupling, indifferent to witnesses, scarcely ten yards away.
Dimitrios touched John on the arm as he approached the storeroom in use as a bar.
‘My God, you!’ said John in surprise.
‘How long does this go on?’
‘Until the fools drop dead or they’ve screwed each other or the booze runs out.’
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘The conditions are hardly propitious!’
This was obviously true.
The voices called him, indifferent to his tiredness, his working hours, ‘John! John! Come on, you idle bastard! Bring the bloody stuff!’ – ‘Leave him alone he’s gone for a pee.’
‘Wait a minute while I satisfy this menagerie,’ John said. ‘All right, you lovely colonial bastards! Have your money at the ready!’
He came back to stand in shadow with an empty tray. ‘They’re crazy, these people,’ he told Dimitrios with feeling.
‘I wouldn’t mind a beer.’
‘Help yourself.’
Dimitrios did so.
‘Something on your mind?’ John asked. He shook his head and beads of sweat rained onto the deck.
Dimitrios said it with a confused paroxysm of words: ‘Leave him alone! He’s my friend.’
‘Who the hell are you talking about?’
‘You know very well.’
‘I don’t know what you’re raving about.’
‘I hate you when you pretend not to know.’
‘Dimitrios, I am so busy serving this scum I’m stupefied.’
‘You stood about today so he would notice you –’
‘Ah, you mean that little fellow!’
‘You have plenty of friends up here in the bars.’
‘What, these?’ John laughed caustically. ‘These lovely people and their mums and dads! Transitory friendships, Dimitrios. They leave after twenty or fifty days, full of love and bonhomie, but never write. They even forget to tip. Just a barman. I have to steal it from them. How degrading.’
‘There are other stewards.’
‘They do not understand me. They do not have the same tastes. My tastes are specialized, as you know, Dimitrios. A barman aspiring to culture! Ridiculous! Naturally they despise me. It’s a traumatic experience, every trip.’
‘You didn’t have to hurt me.’
‘I wouldn’t do that.’
‘What’s he to you?’
‘Who? This little man? Nothing. Dimitrios. Not like you.’
‘Then leave him alone.’
‘I’m a lonely man, Dimitrios. I need friends.’
‘Everybody knows what you are.’
‘And what is that?’
‘A perverted goat.’
John laughed.
‘You are getting quite juicy in your phraseology.’
‘Keith should not be corrupted.’
John considered this for a moment and then said in derision:
‘You love him.’
‘It is friendship.’
‘You love him,’ mocked John. ‘Your stomach is warm with cheap tawdry romance . . . You don’t know what it’s all about. Under the shower you see the lovely golden body, and you are flattered by his smile and earnest talk . . . I’ll show you what trash your romance is. I’ll take him away from you and prove how cheap and temporary it all is. And I won’t denigrate you. I will always declare that you are my dear friend. But in a month or less you will be so boring to him that he will have a job to be polite and conceal it. He’ll shrink at the sight of you and seek out me in preference, and one day he’ll tell me what a dull thing you are. Love!’ sneered John. ‘A bit of fright about the pox, a pat on the arm from the priest and love forever withers, turns to fright and dislike. How second-rate is that? Does he know you have the pox? It will be something to talk about.’
‘I’ll kill you!’ hissed Dimitrios.
‘Cheap opera!’ derided John. ‘As cheap as your emotion when your body needed satisfaction. A month ago you whined that you loved me. It was the biggest thing of your life. I was wise and sensual and compassionate. I understood you. I do!’ he hissed.
‘I’ll smash your face in!’ shouted Dimitrios, losing all control.
John tittered.
‘What vulgarity! What guttersnipe promises! You are running hot bearings!’
Dimitrios swung his arm in an arc and the nearly full beer can caught John across the mouth, smashing a few teeth and splitting the skin around the derisory lips.
John recovered very quickly. He rammed the tray he was holding into Dimitrios’ crotch, kicked and moved about with the speed of a ballet dancer.
Dimitrios was totally out of control and would have killed him. He seized a wine bottle and ran at the steward. It shattered on John’s arm and white wine ran down his clothes. John seized the hand that still held the shattered bottle and turned it towards Dimitrios’ face. It cut into Dimitrios’ hair and left ear before, with a scream of rage and the last vestige of energy, Dimitrios wrenched his arm free and rammed the jagged slender bottle in John’s throat. He man began to bleed heavily down his neck.
Dimitrios hung his head and sobbed.
The Australian passengers, while interested in this violence, now stopped it. An officer appeared and was very angry indeed, but he had no option but to send them to the ship’s hospital.
The Australian doctor attended to both of them. He was cheerfully blasphemous. ‘Why in the name of God you have to start something on the one night I decided to go to bed at a reasonable hour!’
John received twenty-seven stitches and Dimitrios needed eight.
They both lay in hospital bunks ten feet apart, saying nothing. John couldn’t speak much anyway because of his injuries.
Dimitrios was terribly tired and in pain. But most of all he was unhappy. He had very probably done what he set out to do, that is, ended any relationship between John and Keith. For John’s mockery had backfired on him, and he would not care to continue it. But what about the relationship between Dimitrios and Keith? All night Dimitrios lay in the bunk, sadly aware that Keith would hear about this figh
t. He would seek explanation and someone would tell him. An older man or even an officer might advise him for his own good. Then what would his reaction be? Go on playing chess? Talk about the stars? Throw the soap under the shower?
The staff chief engineer came to see him in the morning. He was not as big as the staff captain, whose functions he matched, but was more unpleasant, having no association with passengers to soften his outlook.
‘What were you doing on the Parade Deck?’
‘I was looking for him.’
‘Why?’
‘It was urgent.’
‘What the hell do you mean, urgent? Your business is in the engine room. Do you find stewards there?
‘No, sir.’
‘Do you realize the impression you’ve given the passengers?’
‘I’m sorry about it, sir.’
‘I am tempted to kick you out of the company.’
‘It won’t happen again, sir.’
‘You’re damn right it won’t. I’ll be logging you. You’ll lose a month’s pay for sure. I’ll think about whether this ship and company need you.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Don’t thank me.’
Half an hour later, like the second act of a comedy, Dimitrios had to lie there and listen to the staff captain putting similar questions to John.
‘With a face like that I’m not sure I can have you attending to the needs of passengers. Maybe you should be cleaning lavatories.’
John hissed, ‘It wasn’t my fault, sir.’
‘There was a reason, I suppose?’
‘We’d had a difference of opinion.’