The kid shook his head.
“You shot me”
“No I didn’t” the Pole cried.
The kid raised his eyebrows at him.
“Man you just shot that rifle at me, you’re just a terrible shot”
“It didn’t fire”
“Well you tried”
“But I didn’t, it didn’t fire”
His hand was red with blood and it dripped onto the hot ground.
“I should just shoot you again and leave you here for the birds”
“Come on man” the Pole cried, “don’t leave me here to die”
“You’re not gonna die, you got shot in the arm with a pistol, you can get up”
The Pole shook his head.
“I can’t. You have to help me”
“Why the hell did you try to shoot me?”
The Pole shrugged.
“You left me out there. You know I had no way of getting home and I asked you to help and you just left me there in that barn”
“You shooting me in the back with that rifle wouldn’t have helped you much, would it?”
“Don’t leave me here to die”
“You’re not going to die, get up and wrap something around your arm to stop it bleeding”
The kid lowered the pistol but kept hold of it and walked across to where the rifle lay and picked it up and walked towards the water’s edge.
“Where are you going with that?” the Pole shouted. He was still on the ground.
“It’s going in the sea, you can’t be trusted”
“You fucking dare, I need that”
“It doesn’t fire and you’re an awful shot with the thing anyway”
He tossed it into the harbour and it slowly sunk away.
“And you tried to shoot me in the damn back with it”
He walked back to the Pole.
“Get up”
The Pole sat up still clutching his arm.
“Let me see it”
The kid pulled the Pole’s hand away and pulled back his shirt and examined the wound. He lifted the Pole’s arm up and bent it at the elbow and the Pole winced and yelped but the arm bent comfortably and wasn’t broken and the bullet appeared to have only cut through the flesh and was gone entirely.
“Take it to the sea and wash it in the saltwater, and wrap something around it, you’ll be fine”
“It hurts so fucking much”
“I bet it does. That’ll teach you”
The Pole clambered to his feet and stood bent in two, breathing heavily through his teeth, and staggered over to where the water lapped on the boardwalk and went in to his knees.
He washed water over the wound and gasped and winced as he did so.
The kid threw his keffiyeh over the Pole’s shoulder
“When it’s clean, wrap that around it as tight as you can and keep it above your head”
He started to walk away along the seafront.
The Pole was bent in two at the water’s edge, slowly dabbing the wound on his arm, the dark green scarf hanging across his back.
He glanced up.
“Where are you going?” he called.
The kid kept walking without looking back.
“Home”
The Pole stood up.
“So you leave me again?”
“You’ll get by”
The Pole grabbed the keffiyeh and held one corner under his arm and wrapped it around the wound and pulled it and yelped and tied the ends off. Blood trickled down his arm.
“Are you going to wait for me?” he shouted.
“No”
The Pole gathered himself and set out along the road behind him, limping though his legs were uninjured.
“What will I do out here without my gun?” he called.
The kid ignored him and kept walking.
“I know where there is a boat”
The kid walked.
“It’s a fishing boat, it’s south of here, crashed where the water has brought it onto the land”
“Damn you” the kid said to himself.
He stopped and turned.
The Pole stood some distance back from him, partly silhouetted against the bright sun, buckled over and clutching his arm pathetically.
The kid thought.
“Where is it?”
“I saw it when I was coming after you earlier, it’s been dragged onto the land, it’s stuck in the front of a store”
“How do you know it works?”
“I don’t”
The kid thought for some time. He knew that while the Pole was of little practical use to him and his quest and could, and most likely would, pose a liability at various turns, he knew also that two men were better than one and regardless of anything he knew that he needed the boat. He would give the Pole the chance to at least show him to it and a decision could be made then whether the two of them would continue together and he knew he may need him to get the boat working and back on the water.
“Come on then. Walk in front”
The Pole nodded.
“It’s just further back along here” he said, turning around to walk back the way they had come.
The Pole walked ahead with the kid behind him.
“Why are you limping?”
The Pole said nothing but within a moment he had corrected his stride and walked more upright and though the keffiyeh was a deep brown where it had soaked with blood, it wasn’t running and they both knew it would heal.
They walked for ten minutes or more in the heat, the kid marching the Pole along the stone roads of Port Said’s old docklands like a bounty hunter with his catch.
“Where’s your dog?”
“It wasn’t my dog”
“Where is it?”
“He ran away”
“When?”
“When I tried to make him swim”
“You tried to bring him across the floodplain?”
“He didn’t like it and I tried pulling him in and he bit me and I tried to catch him again and he ran away”
“I don’t blame him”
The Pole shrugged.
“He’s not mine anyway”
They walked.
“You got that radio?”
The kid said that he did.
“Does it work?” the Pole asked without turning.
“I don’t know”
“Did you swim with it?”
The kid shook his head though the Pole couldn’t see him do so.
“How else would I still have it here?”
They kept walking.
The Pole glanced over his shoulder.
“Does it work?”
“I don’t know. Shut up”
“I wish you hadn’t thrown my rifle in the sea”
The kid nodded.
“I bet you do”
Where the road turned south and the land opened up beside them, they saw it.
A small fishing boat, white and grey with thin metal handrails and a cabin, sitting in the shallow water bouncing gently against the façade of a low building, seemingly wedged on something. To the east where the harbour funnelled into the Suez, the docklands were dotted with flooded buildings and the boat had drifted some way from the open water. They stood for a moment and watched it across the floodplains.
“Told you”
The kid nodded and watched.
The Pole scratched his head.
“It’s pretty shallow, I think we can just walk out to it”
From the north, behind the stone buildings he heard the singing and whistling of the roamers coming closer.
He took the pistol from the back of his belt and tapped the Pole on the arm with it and the Pole winced at the pain and the kid motioned him forwards into the flood.
They crossed out through the filthy water, kicking through flotsam of all types and the water reeked and glistened with oil and by the time they had reached the boat they were well above their waists in it.
The kid t
ook the Pole by the leg and helped to hoist him up so that he could reach the edge of the boat and pushed his foot upwards to help him aboard as he was trying to pull himself up with only one arm. He flopped over the side and crashed into the boat and yelled in pain and reappeared a moment later over the side.
The kid looked around and could see at the water’s edge the posse of bandits passing and he held a finger up to the Pole to tell him to be quiet and the Pole nodded.
“Get down”
The Pole ducked back into the boat.
The kid went to duck into the water and realised he would soak the pistol and made a snap decision to throw it into the boat, though he knew he could regret leaving it with the Pole.
The men passed along the edge of the water, picking at things they found, stuffing items into their bags and calling to each other. A group of dogs followed though it couldn’t be said whether the dogs were their own or whether they were following for the chance of food and scraps. The dogs nipped at each other and one of the men swung at them with his stick and they jumped back and spun and then resumed.
The kid watched them until they rounded the building and disappeared from view and he called to the Pole.
“Polak”
His head looked over the side.
“Can you drive this?”
The Pole nodded.
“I can drive anything”
The kid paddled through the stinking water to where the bow was lodged into the wall of the building. It had impacted into the stone and the hull was cracked but it seemed intact.
The Pole climbed up the little steps into the driving cabin. It was small with a stool and rudimentary controls and a little wooden storage chest with a broken clasp and some empty beer bottles. The starter key had snapped off in the ignition and the Pole studied it. He opened the chest and fumbled around inside and there were maps and a lifejacket and some cassette tapes and food wrappers and a small first aid kit which he opened.
Inside there were old yellowing bandages and a spray bottle with a label he couldn’t read and scissors and a utility knife. He opened each blade and tried it at the ignition but each was too big and then he saw, threaded down the outside of the utility knife, the tiny pair of tweezers.
He slid them out and knelt down to the ignition and carefully pushed the tweezers inside, with one pin either side of the broken key. He turned them and the tweezers started to bend and he gripped them tightly and as close to the key as he could and they very slowly started to turn the broken ignition key. He took the scissors with his other hand and held the broken edge with the very tips of the blades and, at the point where the motor started to cough, he twisted firmly with both hands and the tweezers snapped and as they did his wounded arm jerked and he screamed in pain and the engine roared to life.
He shouted loudly in Polish and thumped his palm against the side of the cabin.
The kid was in the water, squeezed between the hull and the cracked stone building, trying to push the two apart and when he heard the engine he pushed himself away into the water.
The Pole appeared at the edge of the boat, smiling.
At the water’s edge, a small group of men had been passing and they stopped and watched and one man called out to them but they didn’t advance at all.
“Can you get the boat out of the wall?” the kid called.
The Pole put the boat into reverse and the black water bubbled and churned and the stonework shook and crumbled and he put it into neutral.
“It’ll come out with some power but that wall will come down, get up here”
The Pole reached over the edge with his good arm and the kid reached up and took his hand and the two pulled him onto the deck.
He put the boat back into gear and pushed the throttle and the wall began to fall apart and smoke poured from the engine.
The men on the shore were waving but their calls were silent against the roar and the torrent. After a few moments, a huge piece of cladding snapped free and crashed into the water and the wall opened up and the water rushed in, pulling the boat further into the building.
“Now” the kid shouted and the Pole pushed the boat to full power and it kicked backwards against the current and bounced on the spot and he spun the wheel and it turned sideways and the broken wall began to fall onto the deck and the two men cowered until the water had levelled itself inside the building and the torrent slowed and the boat bobbled forwards into the open water.
Behind them, the rest of the wall began to fall and then the roof and the men on the shore continued to shout and the kid waved to them and smiled.
The floodland was wide where it led to the mouth of the canal but there were more buildings to the east so they knew they were not yet in open water and the bottom of the boat scraped and crashed against everything that lay beneath it.
They coasted slowly between the steel buildings of the docks and across the wrecked clainlink fence which had once stood as the final boundary to the canal and he nodded to the Pole who put the boat slowly through the gap.
They looked to the north. Open water.
The sun was shining off the water and it was blinding silver and all else ahead of them was silhouetted against it.
The kid stood at the front of the boat with the Pole and the two of them watched the water through the old plastic windscreen and smiled to each other.
“You’re going to Austria?”
The kid nodded.
“Do you know the way?”
They both laughed. The kid pointed forward.
“That way”
There were some old maps in the chest that showed the rough outline of the coast and the Pole said he had crossed that water many times and that he knew the way and that true north would land them in Cyprus and so they would head to the north west and aim for Greece.
The kid said that he believed him and that he had no choice but to anyway and they pushed the boat forward into the Mediterranean sea.
The sun dropped low and fast to the west and passed from being overhead to behind the horizon in only a couple of hours. The Pole was standing behind the controls with his shirt off and the brown and crusty scarf still wrapped around his wounded arm.
The kid sat on the chest studying the maps and though they were written in Arabic his grasp of geography was excellent enough for it to not matter.
He had laid the radio in the sun for it to dry and the Pole had put his things there too, a can opener, two crushed packets of tobacco and a box of wet matches and both the men’s boots. The kid kept the pistol tucked in his belt.
“There’s a bottle of whiskey in the cabin back there” the Pole said.
The kid looked at him.
“Really?”
The Pole nodded.
The kid walked along the decking and down the steps into the cabin, a small and filthy room no bigger than the single mattress it housed, with a shelf running from side to side lined with old books and trinkets and nothing of any use and two hooks on the back of the door and nothing more.
On the floor by the side of the bed stood the square bottle, glass with a torn paper label and a cracked china cup. He took them both back to the front and poured a measure into the cup and handed it to the Pole. The Pole motioned it back towards him with a flick of his chin and the kid nodded and drank the whiskey in one and took a breath in through his teeth and winced and smiled. He poured another and handed it to the Pole.
“Na zdrowie”
He threw it back and handed the cup back to the kid and they both drank again.
At some time in the night, when the moon was full overhead and lit the boat in a veil of silver and each star reflected from the calm sea as though they were sailing through space itself, the kid took the radio from the shelf and plugged it into the dashboard.
The Pole was sleeping in the cabin and the kid sat alone in the dark.
He flicked the switch and the cabin filled with the scraping sound of static.
He smiled.
> He turned the volume down slightly and rolled the dial to the very bottom of its setting and went about very gradually tuning up through the frequencies.
There was nothing to hear but occasional flickers of sound so brief and indeterminable that it wasn’t possible to know whether they were anything at all or whether his mind was simply playing tricks on him. He shut it off but he smiled again for he was happy that it worked.
The glimmering stars faded and black clouds rolled in and rain fell as though it had never done before and the sea rocked and the kid could see nothing at all through the window. Hours passed while he sat motionless at the controls, pushing the little boat steadily onwards through the rain and when he could stay awake no longer, he called back for the Pole and he had to call many times before the man woke.
The swapped roles again and the Pole took the controls.
“Watch the fuel, don’t push it too hard or we’ll be stuck out here”
There were other boats in the water with them that appeared and disappeared in the distance and some were tiny vessels like theirs and some were huge, gunboats and liners and cruisers of all origin.
When the sun rose the following morning in the pink sky, the kid tried the radio again, and once again there were flickers of sound and little else until, when he was sitting back with his shirt off in the sun he heard the very distant sound of a voice.
He sat upright and took the radio in his hand and held it to his ear.
The voice sounded again.
“You hear something?” the Pole called from the wheel.
The kid nodded.
A gunboat appeared on the horizon to the west flying a flag they could not make out.
The voice flittered back in.
The kid pushed his finger into his other ear and listened intently.
It was mostly static and then something very brief and then static.
It wasn’t English but he couldn’t say more than that.
“What can you hear?”
The kid raised his hand to the Pole and kept listening.
The voice faded again, replaced by static and a moment later it returned.
“En cas d'urgence s'il vous plaît consulter”
It disappeared again.
“It’s French”
The Pole nodded.
“It’s probably coming from one of those gunboats”
Where Men Once Walked Page 33