The Collector of Names

by Miha Mazzini

  She could picture herself all puffed up with decay, floating towards her home, into the warmer seas and their stronger currents and she let go.

  For ever.

  Basic

  1

  "You'll die tonight, guys!"

  Max smiled the smile of an experienced sinner who had not only survived Sodom and Gomorra but had long ago surpassed it. As usual, the smile moved via Samo to Alfonz's awkward attempt and even Raf made the effort but so belatedly that he decided to get up, mumbling something about going to the toilet and walking off down the deck with quick steps.

  In the narrow passage between the restaurant and outer rail of the ferry he slowed down, glanced back - no, they could not see him - and did not even look at the door leading to the toilets. There was no sign, just the unmistakable smell. A few metres further along, another door gaped open. By the state of the door hinges he could tell that it had not been closed for a long time. He stopped in front of the dark opening and looked down the metal staircase. A smell of heat and petrol wafted up to him. After a moment’s hesitation he went down towards the part of the ferry he had not yet seen.

  They had been going for three hours now and according to the timetable they were due to dock in an hour and thirty-five minutes. So far they had arrived on time at all three islands which were now far behind and it was safe to assume that there would be no delay. Raf looked away from his watch and paid attention to the stairs. On some of them there were large drops of some unknown liquid. It did not smell, just looked disgusting. The drops appeared in regular intervals, as if they had been spilled from a bucket, carried by an uncertain hand.

  The belly of the ferry had almost completely emptied on the largest, best known island - the second stop - just over an hour ago. They had leant over the rail at the front, observing the unruly chaos of the vehicles making their way on to dry land. The stop was for half an hour, and at the beginning it looked as if most of that time would be taken up by the drivers hooting impatiently at a confused holiday-maker who could not get his car, caravan and, after a while, even himself turned in the right direction. Because of all the swearing and honking behind him he became more and more agitated and confused and therefore moved further and further away from his goal. Luckily, some of the bystanders started giving him advice, but of course, strongly disagreed with one another, and it all nearly ended in a fight. With the attention turned away from him, the unfortunate caravan owner finally managed to collect himself and drove off. His advisors did not even notice his departure and after a while were unable to notice it, as by this time they had forgotten what the argument was about.

  This event was the only entertaining part of that day and it could not overcome Raf's feeling of unease. He should not have come. He had no valid reason for these thoughts, which gripped him with a renewed strength in the darkness surrounded by the noise of the engines. When he was seven, a schoolfriend had come to ask him to play one afternoon. He rang the bell at the entrance, Raf looked down from the fifth floor and immediately agreed. On the way to the door of their flat, he was suddenly overcome by such tiredness that he could only just drag himself to bed and he fell onto it, falling asleep before his head even hit the pillow. His friend probably rang the bell a few more times, but Raf did not hear it. He was later woken by shouting and crying echoing down the corridor. In a daze, he got up to see what was going on. His friend had gone to the railway lines and climbed onto the roof of a train standing on a side track. The electric wires had sucked him up and fried him. After a few years of never thinking about the incident, two very vivid images came to him while he was alone under that deck. A father with a red-skinned son in his arms. And his friend in an open coffin, with face powder literally caked all over him. Which made him think of what had happened to open coffins, blessings and mourning since then? The whole class had gone to bless that boy, but when a few years later, at grammar school, a mountaineering schoolfriend died, condolences were sent by post and at the funeral there was just an urn with ashes which could have contained anything.

  Raf shivered - on the way to a week's holiday he was thinking such morbid thoughts.

  He stepped over to a motorcycle parked nearby and looked at the shiny Japanese miracle. He allowed himself a short burst of envy. Only six months had passed since a girl he had been in love with had rejected him, saying she was only interested in men with motorbikes. Raf was well aware that a motorbike was one of those things that a man sometimes had to do without and that, anyway, it all depended on the season, but at the same time he also knew that that was just pure reasoning, which had nothing to do with the matters of the heart.

  He sighed deeply and walked over to the raised bow door. He could see the sea splashing at the side and from time to time a few drops came inside. No dry land could be seen. Somewhere above, seagulls were circling. One of them dived quickly and grabbed something in the air before it fell into the sea.

  Someone on the deck must be feeding the gulls. Raf smiled. He turned and walked the length of the ferry. There was only one vehicle left, a delivery van, which got off at every stop, unloaded and drove back on. The driver was asleep in his cabin and the noise of his hoarse snoring was escaping through the window in irregular intervals.

  The same thing every day, thought Raf. What a job! He just managed to get round all the islands in his eight hours and that was it. In his old age he would be able to say that he had spent his life on the sea but his grandchildren would wonder why he was so pale.

  Raf turned his head towards the high ceiling and slowly looked around the large room. When they had first set off, it looked as if it was suffocating with all the vehicles. And then, after each stop, there was less metal and technology and more room and peace and quiet. As if they were not just journeying away, but backwards in time too.

  Raf went back up using the staircase opposite the one he had come down. Soon after the first turn in the stairs he tripped, nearly touching the metal with his nose but still managing somehow to steady himself. He sighed slowly:

  "Jesus!" just like every other time he tripped.

  He was getting fed up of his friends ridiculing his clumsiness and he was relieved that there were no witnesses this time.

  Once back on deck, he was blinded by the sun and when he finally opened his eyes the first thing he saw was the motorbike owner. He was not wearing a helmet or a leather suit - he noticed those two identifiers only later, rolled and fastened to the rucksack and squashed under the bench - but had long blonde hair, a thick moustache and a tattoo of an eagle on his upper arm. He was sunbathing with his eyes closed but Raf was not fooled into believing he was asleep. Or was it that these muscular men, like Samo, slept in a special way, without relaxing their muscles?

  He turned towards the bow and his (former) schoolfriends, who were still hidden by the middle part of the ferry and touched something soft with his left hand. Grease! Green grease on the ends of his fingers. They must have freshly greased the winch and judging by the large quantity of the stuff it was meant to last forever. Raf rubbed his fingers against the fence until they stopped sticking to one another. He looked at the traces of the stuff on the metal rail and realised he had set a trap which would sooner or later be sprung by someone. He did not have a tissue or a handkerchief. He made himself small and turned towards the stern. He was not in a hurry to return to his mates.

  Maybe nobody would come upon the mess on the rail? The strangers on the ferry meant nothing and could do nothing to him.

  A piece of bread flew in a large arc above his head. As it fell towards the waves a seagull caught it and swallowed it with what sounded like a very contented shriek. Raf looked up but could not see the bread-thrower. He did not even know that there was another deck. All he could see was the captain's cabin, the aerials and the radar masts (or whatever those gadgets were called) on top of it, and two vibrating chimneys at the back.

  He waited for another piece of bread, checked that the seagull's response was as expected and t
hen carried on towards the back of the ferry. It was less windy there, in fact it felt quite pleasantly sheltered behind the captain’s cabin. All the other passengers - a few families with small children - were gathered there, running after their brats and entertaining themselves by worrying about their little treasures falling into the sea.

  There was no point in going to his friends to tell them about the sheltered spot. Max always had to sit at the very top like all people with an x or a y in their name, and Samo and Alfonz were just his hangers-on.

  And so am I, even though I'm sulking at the opposite end of the ship, he said to himself. It was rarely so annoying to be right.

  It was all very simple: school had finished and with it their four years together. Max had organised a farewell party, which he said was going to be super mega. He and Samo were always together anyway, so it was not hard to choose his first guest. Alfonz had money and home-made schnapps. Raf was included because of Max's bad conscience. He had been copying from Raf in nearly every written test in the past few years and even though they were not friends - neither of them would call their relationship a friendship - Max succumbed to guilt and invited the boy who was almost solely responsible for his education. Raf could not quite remember exactly when it had all started. But he did remember that from the second year on he always had to first quickly answer his own questions and then go onto Max's.

  Maybe I do have just a little bit of a character left, thought Raf. If I were a complete slave I would have finished Max's assignment first and then gone onto my own.

  He smiled. He was getting used to these sarcastic little thoughts which had started coming to him sometime around the onset of puberty, at the end of junior school. The unpleasant feelings were gone now and he started to take in the clear blue sky in all its beauty again. Yes, the dark thoughts had started in that black hole in the middle of the ferry - a flash of a feeling, too fleeting to be registered, of being caught in a dark, narrow place - and the freshness of the early afternoon had blown them away.

  It would be a typical sort of party. First they would drink too much and then they would throw up. Parties were just an unpleasant duty to him, one you have to carry out so that you can brag about it later. Another strange and morbid thought?

  He decided to return to the front of the ferry. Their remarks about his long absence were bound to be bad enough as it was.

  The seagull was quite far off now. The feeding had finished. Raf slowed down and looked up. Nothing. He remembered the stains on the rail and tried to find them. He could not. If he could not find them without looking really closely then it was not worth mentioning and he had worried needlessly earlier.

  He returned to the other three, who were still laughing at their plans for the party that night when the whole villa would be at their disposal.

  "... and we'll smash everything!" Max was just finishing another brag. "Tomorrow, everybody will be able to see what fun we had just by looking at the place!"

  *

  Ana broke the last piece of bread into two pieces that were almost too small, in order to delay the time when the seagull would start to screech. And indeed, when the bread was finished, the bird gave her a good telling off before slipping back, where it looked around ever so casually as if it would never again even think of casting a glance towards the ship or her - me interested in bread? Never!

  Holidays, said Ana to herself. Oh, what a holiday this was going to be! Her mum and dad did want the best for her and she really had been looking rather anaemic all spring. But they had sent her to this god-forsaken island with only one ferry a day, to stay for two whole months with an uncle she had never seen before!

  She called him uncle, even though in fact he was not her mother's brother, but her mother’s uncle. Ana tried to remember what she should be calling him but could not really think of a suitable expression. Great uncle? They never said much about him at home and during all this reflection, for which she had plenty of time on her journey, she suddenly started feeling that her parents avoided mentioning him. No, she could not prove it, but still... She thought it was interesting how parents always think they can hide certain things from their children.

  She waved to the seagull and it looked at her for a moment before deciding not to pay any more attention to her. She felt cold. The sun was beginning to set and it was still only early summer. To top it all she was sitting on the most open part of the ferry, where the breeze was at its strongest.

  The euphoria which had warmed her in the first half of the day, was cooling too. Her first holiday alone! She had felt good in spite of the isolated island and the relative whom she imagined to be an old weirdo - and had then felt guilty for her thoughts. The great feeling of freedom more than made up for all the worries she had had, waking up every morning for the last seven days wondering whether she could manage on her own.

  She had been travelling for most of the day and everything was going according to plan, restoring her confidence and suppressing the dark feeling which tried to creep into her every time she looked around the deck. How empty the ferry was! On the way to the first port of call, the passengers were literally treading on each other's toes and now she was nearly alone. As if the whole of the civilisation was just a great crowd of people, tightly packed against each other like grapes and all around them nothing. A beautiful nothing: the sea, the sun and the vibrating metal under her feet.

  She went down to the main deck and checked that her case was still in the hiding place she had managed to squeeze it into earlier. It was peeping from behind the air vent out of which gushed the stench of the cars below. The lock had not been tampered with. She shook the case and was again astonished at how heavy it was. It was a good thing that her father had offered her his big Samsonite otherwise she would have never been able to squeeze in all the clothes her mother had got out for her.

  She reached into her canvas bag - screech went the seagull (she had completely forgotten about him) - and took out the earphones for her walkman. Before she could put them on she had to let her long hair down. She left the walkman itself in the bag, felt for the switch and managed to press the right button. She started wandering aimlessly in the same direction as the ferry. Because of the noise of the engines she had to reach into her bag once more to turn the volume up.

  A weak, feeble voice came gently from everywhere. A strange feeling: the sea, ferry and a voice belonging to nobody around there. Well, it did belong to somebody somewhere but that did not matter. This was the only tape her mother never had any objections to.

  On the cover there was a praying angel.

  She had secretly bought another tape, with two angels making love and put it in a blank cover.

  Why on earth did she remember that? The picture of the two intertwined bodies, rather muscular for supposedly such ethereal beings. Almost like the man sleeping on the bench in front of her, who was dressed in Bermuda shorts with a brightly coloured pattern and an equally colourful T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves. She looked at the eagle - it too was probably flexing its muscles and stretching its wings, yuck! - and then at the rest of its owner, which was a bit rude and certainly a sin, as her mother was always reminding her. She even had to lean on the rail for a moment in order to get a better view of the whole. The sin had only one redeeming feature: he was asleep. What harm could one single look do?

  By observing her schoolfriends she had learned how very rarely punishment for sins actually came and even when it did it could be attributed to other causes. But she knew all the time that it was different for her. There was a line separating her from them.

  She noticed a helmet and a leather sleeve under the bench. A motorcyclist. She remembered some of her neighbours roaring down the street on heavy motorbikes and she pursed her lips. That was enough.

  She went on.

  *

  "Hey, a chick!"

  Max was the first to notice her. He had always had a good eye for such things and claimed that his looks never fell on stony grou
nd. Even more, each look from him was like an irresistible bait to fish. Raf had heard unconfirmed rumours about Max and Samo's disastrous visit to a brothel. Not because of lack of money, they had enough of that. Samo must have been put off by there not being any weights in the room, Raf thought and could hardly contain a giggle. What had been happening to him all day? He was not used to quite so many nasty thoughts. Simply relief at the end of the school year?

  They observed her in silence. She came round the corner, noticed them, looked the other way and walked past them towards the other side of the ferry and the passage leading to the back of the ship.

  Raf thought:

  "If Max whistles, I'll thump him!"

  Max did not whistle which seemed strange to Raf. He looked at him and saw his lips, ready for action but too cracked from the wind to be able to produce a sound audible at a distance. Max could not afford a weak huff, decided to give up and instead put on a smile appropriate to such occasions.

  The girl was close to the passage and turned her back to them.

  "Somebody missed." said Max. Raf did not quite get it. Samo was already grinning but that did not mean anything. Alfonz looked just as baffled. Max noticed their incomprehension and helped them:

  "Well, what do you two look at on a woman? Look at her arse!"

  Alfonz put on a sour smile while Raf nearly groaned. On the right side of her behind there was a stain which he immediately recognised. She must have leant on the rail! She must have walked past and just where he had wiped his hand she must have stumbled (for a moment he forgot that they were not on a bus but a gently vibrating ship), leant on the rail and...

  "Somebody must have come on her, for sure!"

  Raf grimaced and put his hand to his forehead. Luckily all the others were too busy looking at the figure nearing the corner to notice. The feeling of regret for joining this trip returned. But on the other hand, what would he have done till the end of June? He had already arranged for a job at the photocopier’s for the next month and in August he was coming back to the seaside, but this time hitchhiking with two really good friends.