Blood Cruise

by Mats Strandberg

  He chuckles again and shakes his head. Marianne can only stare at him, feeling suddenly much more sober than she would like to be.

  ‘That’s one of the most tasteless things I’ve ever heard,’ she says.

  ‘He was drunk,’ Göran replies, as if that is explanation enough.

  Disappointment rises inside Marianne like a bitter taste at the back of her throat. The spell has been broken. And she can tell from the way he is standing that he can feel it too.

  She goes back to watching the foam in silence. She’s grateful she doesn’t know exactly where in the sea the Estonia and her passengers were lost and if the Charisma passes directly above them on her way. Once again, she thinks that this enormous metal structure should be unable to float, and has a childish feeling that the ship itself might realise this at any moment and sink like a stone. Marianne notices that she is thinking of the Charisma as a living being, not an inanimate thing manned by ordinary people. It seems impossible they can control all the thousands upon thousands of tonnes, no matter how many instruments the captain has to aid him.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Göran asks.

  ‘I don’t find jokes about the Estonia funny.’

  ‘I know. It was incredibly daft of him. I shouldn’t have told you.’ He sounds like he genuinely regrets it.

  ‘No, you shouldn’t have – or at least you shouldn’t have laughed, because it’s really not funny. It’s disrespectful.’

  Göran flicks his cigarette overboard. Marianne watches the glowing dot disappear.

  ‘It’s easy to become thoughtless when you’re like me,’ he says. ‘Me and the lads, we’re kind of … we’re not always so polished. I don’t usually meet women like you.’ He is quiet for so long she is just about to ask what he means when he clears his throat. ‘You’re classy, Marianne. I like that you put your foot down. I’m sorry.’

  And she forgives him. What he says is touching, and she doesn’t want to be left hanging, alone, in paralysing disappointment that confirms that this whole trip was a mistake. She wants her adventure.

  ‘I’m sorry too. Maybe I overreacted,’ Marianne offers. ‘It’s probably because I had a friend who died on the Estonia.’ The lie slips out before she has even noticed it being formulated in her mind, and she instantly regrets it.

  She avoids meeting his eyes. The upper decks of the Charisma loom behind them. She can see several people by a railing on the top one, above what she assumes is the bridge.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘Were you very close?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I … I think I’ll have that cigarette now.’

  Göran lets go of her and her heart pounds like mad. She can hear the click of the lighter inside his cupped hand.

  ‘I feel awful about this. I properly put my foot in it,’ he says, handing her the cigarette. ‘Me and my big mouth.’

  She inhales, tentatively breathing the smoke in, and is surprised by how good it still tastes. She hasn’t smoked since – yes, when? Some point in the eighties. She didn’t even fall off the wagon during the divorce.

  ‘Forget it,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to think about it tonight. It’s been a long time since I had this much fun.’

  ‘So you’re having fun at least? With me?’

  Marianne nods and finally looks at him.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Because the night has just begun.’

  The Baltic Charisma

  A few hundred feet away, also on deck five, Bosse is sitting in his office. He’s drinking coffee from a white porcelain mug that reads WORLD’S BEST GRANDPA and grinning at the screens in front of him. A young couple are pressed against the wall in one of the short sternward hallways two floors up, unaware of the CCTV camera. The girl’s skirt is hiked up around her hips. Every once in a while, she takes a sip from her bottle. On occasion, the thrusting makes her miss the bottle, which in turn makes her laugh. In the grainy image on the screen, her eyes glisten vacantly.

  Bosse drinks his coffee. So far, he’s the only one who has spotted them, from his godlike, all-seeing vantage point.

  The guy is thrusting harder and harder – the girl drops her bottle – and then it is over. The girl pulls her skirt down. The guy does his trousers up and gives her a peck on the cheek. She stays where she is while he disappears down the hallway. Then she turns around and goes into one of the cabins.

  Bosse chuckles and shakes his head, scans the other screens and spots a blonde girl who has fallen asleep next to the lifts right here on deck five. A dark-haired woman is squatting next to her with her back to the camera, lightly shaking the girl’s shoulder. Bosse looks closer to see what happens. The girl wakes up, seems to struggle to focus on the woman talking to her. The girl nods, fumbles around in her purse for something. Pulls out a key card. The dark-haired woman grabs her firmly by the arms and helps her up. Bosse catches a glimpse of her face. She is wearing a lot of makeup. Something about her makes him uneasy. He hesitates, checks the phone on his desk, then glances back at the figures on the screen. They are walking down the long portside hallway. He switches camera, continuing to watch them. He shrugs off the feeling, figuring there are more serious things for the security staff to focus on.

  *

  The young woman is called Elvira. She is drunker than she has ever been and the woman holding her upright smells weird, like mint and something sweet and musty. Elvira thinks to herself that at least the woman is nice. She is talking soothingly and softly and archaically. Elvira wishes she could manage to articulate a thank-you. She wants to explain how she ended up like this, tell her that I knew I was drinking too much, but I was so tired of always being the boring one, the one who doesn’t know how to let loose. I wanted to be like them, just once. We went to Club Charisma and that’s all I remember. It’s so unfair. How many times have I helped them when they were trashed? I guess that’s why they let me hang out with them. But when I need help, they just abandon me.

  She wants to tell the strange woman all that, but her mouth won’t obey her. Only grunts come out. They stop at a door and the woman inserts the key card. There are fingers missing from her hand. Elvira stares at her with one eye shut, trying to focus, but her eye won’t obey either. She switches to the other one. Like at the optician. Which is better? Left or right? No difference. But she can see well enough to realise the woman is not well. There is something wrong with her face. And her smell …

  Elvira feels sick again. She lets the woman lead her into the cabin. Looks around when the door closes behind them. We had twin beds … why is there a double in here now? Elvira tries to protest, but she is afraid she might throw up again. She hates throwing up. The woman sits her down gently on the bed. It is not made. There’s a big stain on the carpet by the foot of the bed, and a glittering shard of glass. Elvira figures someone might have thrown a party in here; maybe that is why the woman suddenly looks angry. And then Elvira can’t bring herself to think any more. She lets her head fall onto her chest. It feels so heavy, as if she will never be able to lift it back up. The woman slowly lays her down on her side, strokes her hair with her three fingers. When Elvira tries to say something, the woman hushes her gently. And Elvira closes her eyes. She is glad she is not alone. I’m just going to have a rest. Then I’m going to ask what we’re doing here.

  *

  The dark-haired woman is afraid. The smell of blood is still wafting from the stain on the carpet. She is baffled her son would take such an enormous risk. He must have been desperate. It took her much too long to find this girl. The woman thinks about the older lady she spotted at the start of the evening, from her table in McCharisma. She radiated such loneliness, but she had friends who came to meet her. The woman is not usually mistaken about these things, and the sudden, flaring hope left a hunger in its wake that was even stronger than before. She looks down at the bloodstain on the carpet again, wondering where the body is now. Where her son is. Did he do this to punish her? She knows how angry he is with her. They had a comforta
ble situation in Stockholm, back in the city where it all started so long ago; it’s the only real home they have ever had. But they couldn’t stay. They can never stay. She thinks about the caravan parked on the car deck. Everything they own fits in it. Such a long life together, and yet so pathetically few possessions. She turns to Elvira, puts a hand around her neck. Her fingers count the vertebrae from the top down. Elvira mumbles something, but doesn’t open her eyes.

  *

  One of the lorries on the car deck was driven by a man named Olli. He sleeps a deep, dreamless sleep in his cabin under the surface. A half-empty bottle of Russian vodka from the tax-free shop is sitting on the floor next to his bed. When there is a knock on the door, it takes him a while to wake up. He fumbles for the bedside lamp, squinting against the light. Olli is drunk. He thinks that one day he will get caught driving under the influence, and that might prove to be a relief. He needs the alcohol to sleep off the stress and the chronic pain in his neck and shoulders. He thinks about the many hours he will have to do on the road tomorrow. Far too many. The hauliers break the law. Nothing is above board. Oftentimes, they won’t even tell him what his cargo is, and he reckons there are good reasons for that.

  Another knock.

  ‘Minä tulen, minä tulen, ota helvetissä iisisti,’ Olli grunts in Finnish, scratching the thick rug of hair on his chest. Glancing at his phone, he realises he has only slept a couple of hours. It is only when he is already pushing the door handle down that he remembers he is in his underpants. He opens the door a crack. A blond boy of about five is in the hallway, looking at him with big eyes glistening with tears. A heart-shaped face. Straight little nose. He pulls nervously on the strings of his red hoodie.

  ‘I can’t find my mummy,’ he says.

  Olli notices a couple of scars zigzagging up from the neck of his T-shirt. They are shiny and pink, very recently healed. He wonders who might have given the boy those scars. A shiver runs down his back. He opens the door fully.

  Marianne

  There is no carpet on the narrow stairs leading down to her deck. They pass the doors leading out to the car deck and continue to descend until they reach a steel door. When Marianne pulls it open the stench from a septic tank hits them and the rumble of the engine grows louder.

  ‘I would never have booked a cabin down here if I had known what it actually looked like,’ she says, and starts walking down the last set of stairs.

  The light in the second deck corridor is cold and revealing, the carpet rougher, more worn. Everything screams lower class, Marianne thinks. Quite literally the lowest caste. It even smells like shit.

  She fervently wishes they could have gone back to Göran’s cabin instead, but he shares it with three friends and she has no desire to have them come bumbling in mid-act.

  Marianne can feel herself blushing from head to toe. No matter how much she tries to pretend that she has no idea what is coming, that she doesn’t know what she wants, she betrays herself with thoughts like that one.

  She becomes increasingly confused as they look for her cabin in the claustrophobic corridors. They came down a different set of stairs to the one she used at the start of the evening and she can’t figure out how the numbers work down here. Her nerves do nothing to improve her sense of direction, but in the end they locate door 2015, at the far end of a hallway. She walks in first, sits down on the single bed and turns on the reading light. Kicking her shoes off feels divine. She pulls her legs up under her. The almost imperceptible rolling of the ship is making her feel slightly dizzy. The alcohol plays a part too, of course; she is under no illusion about that, but she is feeling surprisingly sober. Completely present. All her senses are wide awake.

  Göran shuts the door behind them and when she sees him standing tall and broad-shouldered in the middle of the cabin, she realises how small it really is.

  ‘Were you supposed to share this cabin with your friend?’ he says.

  Marianne shakes her head. ‘No, of course not. She had the one next door,’ she says, and instantly regrets it, because how is she going to explain it if they hear someone in there? ‘Or a few doors down; I can’t remember what she said.’

  The wall at the head of the bed creaks. On the other side, the freezing water of the Baltic is pressing with unfathomable weight against the ship’s hull.

  Göran sits down next to her. His hair is in a ponytail. She likes it. His head is nicely shaped.

  ‘Are you sure your friends won’t mind you ditching them?’ she asks.

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ Göran replies. Peers at her. ‘They would have done the same, given the chance.’

  Marianne smiles, wondering if he means that his friends would have left with anyone, or that they would have left with her specifically, because they find her attractive too. She catches herself hoping for the latter. It is pathetic how starving she is for validation.

  ‘I meant what I said before … That it’s been a long time since I had this much fun,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d forgotten how to do it.’

  He chuckles. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  Her skirt has slipped up above her knees; she pulls gently at the fabric, shifting until they are covered again.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ she says.

  Seconds tick by.

  ‘Notice how quiet it is?’ Göran says, and Marianne nods.

  Then she realises he is referring to the ship. The vibrations have stopped; there’s only a low humming.

  ‘We’ve reached Åland,’ he says.

  Marianne nods again, because there isn’t much a person can say to that. On the way here, Göran told her about all the shipwrecks scattered around the island. Champagne was salvaged from a French ship headed for Russia that sank in the early nineteenth century. The bottles were sold a couple of years ago for hundreds of thousands of kronor each. ‘No champagne can be that good, no matter how rich you are,’ she had said. ‘People who feel a need to buy things like that must have very paltry inner lives.’ That had made Göran laugh.

  He likes her. He does. She can see it in his eyes.

  ‘It’s been a long time since I did something like this too,’ she says.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Göran says, but luckily, this time, she realises he is teasing her before she has a chance to humiliate herself by launching into an explanation.

  ‘It’s just so strange,’ she says. ‘We barely know each other, and now … now we’re here. But I don’t know anything about you.’

  ‘You know I live alone in a flat in Huddinge. And that the lads and I all used to work for the telecommunications authority once upon a time.’

  ‘That’s not exactly a lot.’

  ‘There’s not a lot to tell,’ he says, and leans back against the wall. ‘But if there’s something you want to know, just ask.’

  He looks so comfortable, with his hands folded across his stomach, his feet firmly planted on the floor and his legs wide apart. So untroubled. There are a lot of things Marianne would like to know, but none of the questions popping into her head seems all that reasonable to ask in this situation.

  What do you do when you’re alone? Have you ever been truly alone? What were your parents like? Do you believe in God? Have you ever been seriously ill? Do you think this could be the start of something? Could you like me for real? Would you put up with me in the long term?

  ‘I don’t even know if you’ve been married,’ she says. ‘Or if you have children.’

  ‘Married, yes,’ he says. ‘Children, no.’

  What was your wife like? Did she want children and you didn’t? Was that why you got divorced? What happened between you? If this leads to something, if we end up together, what will I have to do not to ruin it?

  ‘Is there nothing you want to know about me?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ he says, and puts a hand on her thigh, letting his fingertips play over the fabric of the skirt. ‘I like that you’re a mystery.’

  Marianne surprises herself by laughing. ‘
I’ve never felt particularly mysterious.’

  She takes a deep breath and decides to give up any attempt at coming up with the one question that would somehow make her feel comfortable with the fact that she is about to go to bed with a stranger.

  The moment is too fragile for words. If she wants to make sure not to ruin this, she needs to stop talking now.

  Göran lies down on his side, resting his head in one hand. The fingers of the other disappear under her skirt. Wander up along the tights hiding the inside of her thigh. His touch gives her arms goose bumps and sends jolts running up and down her spine.

  He doesn’t feel like a stranger. She knows everything she needs to about him right now. There will be time for questions later.

  ‘Lie down,’ he says.

  Marianne obeys. Lies down next to him, reaches for the lamp.

  ‘Leave it on,’ he says.

  But this time, she doesn’t obey. The switch clicks and all the light vanishes as if devoured by the darkness. She imagines seeing shadows and formations moving right in front of her face, black against the black, but it is all in her head. Göran fumbles with her skirt; she lifts her hips up so he can pull both it and her tights off. Her panties. He caresses her, and her skin is so hypersensitive she imagines she can feel the fingerprints he leaves behind when he touches her.

  She begins to cry and is grateful for the darkness that lets her disguise her sobs as little excited pants. Göran’s belt jingles when he unbuckles it. He kicks off his jeans and lies down on top of her. Presses his lips against her chin, finding his way to her mouth.

  They kiss each other in the dark, deep in the belly of the cruiseferry, and the sea outside no longer scares her.

  Madde

  Lasse Pig Face is on stage with Stefan, belting Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton loudly. The bridal veil is on the floor between them, grimy with beer and cigarette ash. The audience is howling along with them, loving it.

  But Madde can’t watch. When she tries to keep her eyes on the stage, it seems like all the lights are moving up, up, as if the whole world is about to topple. Or as if she herself is about to, and if she did start falling, she would keep tumbling over and over in a never-ending somersault. She has to hold on tight to the edge of her seat cushion. She can’t close her eyes either, because that makes it even worse. And it is so hot in here. And yet her face is cold.