by Merle Kröger
“Go ashore!” Dmitri’s missionary zeal truly grates the nerves sometimes. “Live a little, Chief!”
Live a little. Olek wishes he had the time. They have to be in Cartagena by early tomorrow morning. Time is money! Collins’s money, of course, not theirs. If Olek wants a distraction, he finds it on Wikipedia and VesselFinder Pro.
Engine noise pierces the fog. Not bad—sounds like it has a little more horsepower than us. Curious, Olek steps onto the gangway, opening the photo app on his cell phone. Always prepared.
Behind the Siobhan, the coast guard comes into view, steaming full speed toward the pier before being secured. The phone disappears into his pocket. The Algerian authorities do not joke around when it comes to taking photos of their harbor area. National security. Olek watches as a damp bundle is tossed ashore.
Shit. Nothing left to do for that one.
He crosses himself.
A body.
Not a good night.
SPIRIT OF EUROPE | BRIDGE
Léon Moret
“Titanic alarm!” His deep voice is a big asset, and he knows it. First officer of the third-largest cruise ship in the world at the age of twenty-six! It helps that he sounds older, no doubt about it. And thanks to a directive from Miami, leadership seminars are offered on board, mandatory for everyone with direct reports. You get classified as an analyzer or harmonizer, showrunner or neophyte—a bunch of types. Léon is an analyzer. Analyzes the facts first and then acts.
On duty, the second in command is already on his way to the searchlights. A silent shadow in front of the panorama window of the bridge, his strides are swallowed into the thick blue carpet. Everything is blue up here. The bridge is Léon’s lieu de prédilection, his playground. If you were to ask him where he wanted to die, he would answer without hesitation: “Up here.”
Such thoughts come to you on the bridge, alone in the dark, eyes burning from staring out at the black sea for hours on end, as five thousand people sleep beneath you. On this trip, precisely 3,778 passengers and 1,259 crew members—the fate of all in a twenty-six-year-old’s hands. It’s like being high, dude. You can feel the power with every fiber of your body. Jedi-like, big time. Night duty between twelve and four. Seven days a week.
The day shift is boring by comparison; they usually just lie in the harbor, except for sea days like tomorrow. Crisscrossing the Mediterranean, so the guests can lie in the sun and we can pass the time until Palma de Mallorca. Ten weeks of duty, then ten weeks off. When Léon has time off, he moves in with Mado on Deck 1.
His wife has a different contract; she has to stay on board longer. She is the guest reception manager and works front of house every day from morning to night. That would really freak him out. So much more responsibility than up here. But that’s Mado, a social genius. In order to be together, they cruise and work in rotation, their life taking place on the Europe. It’s not that bad, really. A small city in which people from more than fifty nations live together peacefully and party every evening. Which home around the world can match that? Exactly—none.
Léon blinks a couple of times. The couple outside dance in the light of their mobile phones near the prow of the ship, and he cannot gaze directly at their flashlight apps for very long, the bright light intensified by the fog. The quartermaster, a Croat, has retreated to the stern with his binoculars. The girl in the glittering miniskirt seems vaguely familiar to Léon. She stretches out her arms, the boy standing very close behind her. Her long hair is teased by the wind as they get ready for the selfie. One, two—
At that moment, Kiyan, his second in command, switches on the searchlight. The couple stumbles backward, shocked, and Léon laughs out loud. Kiyan gently guides them back to the side deck with his spotlight. Léon relaxes. When the darkness is disrupted for too long, his eyes take ages to readjust. That’s the way it is here. Everything’s done by hand. No shortcuts. The captain of the Spirit of Europe is old school; he used to steer boats with a wheel and not with a joystick. Though now he doesn’t show up much on the bridge, since he’s constantly stuck in the office on conference calls with Miami. His motto: If you only rely on your instruments, then go into aviation. That is why it’s pitch black here. A couple of control lamps flicker, their light subdued. Kiyan’s monitors are behind the curtain, logbook and radar. Léon and the quartermaster keep the warning lights on only for emergencies, even in the restrooms.
“They’re gone now,” Kiyan mumbles in his quiet voice.
“Go fuck your brains out,” Leon adds.
The Croat laughs, a tad too loudly for Léon’s taste. Suddenly he snatches up the binoculars. “Damn, something up ahead!”
Léon feels the adrenaline rush and jumps up. They are still stuck in the fog bank, damn it. It’s been soup since Gibraltar. Yellow condition. Visibility less than a hundred meters. “Kiyan, call the old man.”
Kiyan is already dialing. Léon jogs over to the stern, mostly because he needs the exercise. The Croat—what is his name again?—points toward the water. “It was there a minute ago.” Now the wall has closed again, tutto completto.
Léon sprints back and switches on the Elephant’s Ear, which they use to listen to the soundscape. The roar of the wind and sea slams into his eardrum. There is something out there, no doubt. Machines.
“Kiyan?”
Kiyan comes toward him, thumbs-up. The captain has given his authorization, and Léon pushes the button.
The foghorn sounds.
The noise spreads like a mushroom cloud, powerful and all-encompassing. Léon throttles the speed and stares back into the night. If only the five thousand passengers below him knew how damned full this ocean is, how many near accidents there are. It’s a fucking interstate out here.
A dark shadow interrupts his line of sight, off the stern. The freighter is cutting across their path. They must have seen them; at night, the Europe is lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Siobhan, Ireland,” he hears Kiyan’s voice. “Freighter. Should we radio them?”
What’s the use? Léon stands up against the panorama window. They are in a damned hurry, fifteen men, at most, on a rusty old barge filled to the brim with containers. He should feel sorry for them, the poor buggers.
Léon changes course, and the mighty ship bows to his will, though not without bucking slightly.
What do you want from me, little man?
Yet Léon knows: the force is with him.
SPIRIT OF EUROPE | DECK B3
Marwan Fakhouri
A load of dirty sheets comes tumbling out of the chute and lands on the floor because he forgot to push the trolley underneath it again. Marwan feels the panic rise up in him. Always from bottom to top, up from his stomach, then a tightness in his neck and hyperventilation. He knows the symptoms. No mirror necessary to watch himself turn pale as his hands begin to shake. This noise is terrible down here. And the heat! Sweat runs down his forehead; he wipes his sleeve across his eyes. An all too familiar gesture. Nothing used to affect him. Double shift in the operating theater, short nap, then back on. No shaking, never.
The girl from China wordlessly pulls up the laundry container and starts collecting the wash. Her face is expressionless, her body narrow and sinewy. She could be seventeen or thirty.
Working side by side with him every night for almost a month, she has never spoken to him—not a single word. The Chinese laundry crew changes every few weeks. Most are men, with a few occasional women. In the beginning, Marwan tried his best to start a conversation—tried in English—but the reaction was always the same: a smile, a shake of the head. Anyhow, it is so loud down here. There is always a machine spinning somewhere, you can barely understand yourself.
The Chinese come and go. Marwan and Oke stay.
Obviously, we have only ourselves to blame. We are the damned on this death boat, the long dead. We don’t need anything: No daylight in the laundry or daylight in the cabin. No daylight in the crew canteen. A clandestine cigarette outside, in front of the c
rew-only gym, and a quick glance at the sky—ideal holiday weather. But not for us. The dead don’t need holidays.
The boat rolls beneath him, and Marwan’s stomach protests. The seasickness hadn’t developed until he’d been on the ship a few weeks. He’d felt good at first, relieved to have escaped the rubber raft, to be in a safe place for once. Practically euphoric. Then the dizziness set in, and he began to walk as if on eggshells, with this feeling of never being quite right. And the constant nausea. He eats but can’t keep it down. He eats. He forces himself to eat.
Machine fourteen at the far back, one of the big drums for sheets, stops. And then the next sound, unbearable, penetrating: this digital whistle. Marwan drags himself over and opens the drum and the whistling stops. He backs away as hot steam billows out. Reaching for an empty trolley with his right hand, his left begins to yank the clammy, tangled sheets out of the machine.
If only they could at least work together, he and Oke, the boy from Lagos, but their cabin is tiny, and they have only one bunk bed. The stale air is just about enough for one. One works, while the other one sleeps.
The sheets cling to one another. Marwan’s sore hands are simply too weak.
Surgeon’s hands. Mother had stared at his hands for countless minutes, the day he was accepted to medical school. My son, a surgeon. Pride of the nation. Ha! Nothing left of that now. He cannot suppress the shaking even when he concentrates. Marwan operates only while lying sleepless on his bunk, regardless of whether it is day or night outside. The narrow cabin is always stale with perspiration, cheap air-conditioning, and chemical cleaning fluids, as he fights against forgetting, stitches a wound, amputates a leg. But the images are increasingly blurred.
Exhausted, he lets go of the tangled mass of damp cotton.
Another attempt.
“Leave it!” Did she just speak to him?
Did she?
She pushes him aside and detangles the sheet with three quick shakes. “Do this! It’s easier.” She points toward the rotary iron. Marwan looks around.
All the others quietly slave away. One or the other wipes off the sweat. He feels like he is hallucinating. She again indicates the rotary iron. Marwan smiles. When did he last smile? He can no longer remember. It feels strange as the corners of his mouth lift. She does not smile, just turns away and goes back to the chute to fetch more fodder for the insatiable, monstrous washing drums. Marwan slumps against the wall, just for a moment.
There are slips of paper hanging across from him, like everywhere else down here in the labyrinthine entrails of the ship. Next Monday is payday. Ten till six, every two weeks. Last time he fell asleep in the line. He did not even wake up when they finally called his name. Jordan Baker. Security had kept his passport, and somehow along the way Marwan had turned into Jordan Baker in the personnel department’s computer. American citizen with a valid Social Security number. Oke is also called Jordan Baker. They share the name, so to speak. Nobody cares what your name is here anyway. Night shift laundry duty. A no-name.
Next to the week’s payroll announcement, a leaflet for the onboard money transfer service to all countries in the world. The exchange rate is worse than Western Union’s, but he and Oke have no choice. They cannot go on land in the next harbor, so they send money home every two weeks. Now and then, very rarely, an email.
“Sorry, dear Mother, that I haven’t written for so long. I finally found work on a ship. I haven’t had any time yet to find myself a place to live in Spain. I am a junior doctor for night shifts, Mother, I have to start right from the bottom again, but what can I do?”
His mother’s answers are long, always revolving around the same topic. She complains of tiredness. Otherwise, there is nothing to report of life on the Syrian Mediterranean coast. Waiting for Father to come home from work. Waiting for the war to end. Waiting for her son to come home. Waiting for grandchildren. Waiting.
Oke has started lying. He claims this is what his family wants. Nobody back home in Nigeria is interested in stories about failure. Failure is a private thing, Oke reasons, and laughs. Each week, he writes elaborate stories about his life on the luxury ship where he started out as a temporary waiter before becoming a barkeeper, and now, just three months later, he is already dining room manager.
Enough musing. You can never be sure—the Indian has installed his cameras everywhere. A creepy guy, never sleeps, always stalking through the corridors with that quiet, bouncing stride, nothing but empty promises in his pockets: Maybe next week. We are negotiating. Miami is negotiating. Nobody wants you. Who knows what he would do if I stopped doing my job properly.
Marwan gently pushes off the wall and takes three steps. He removes a sheet from the basket and slowly feeds it into the roller. If he makes a mistake, the rotary iron will stop working. Slowly, centimeter by centimeter, the cotton disappears between the rollers. The smell reminds him of his childhood. The laundry in the yard right behind the house. A pipe coming out of the wall, white steam, day and night. Sun on the red stone. His cat.
He waits for a moment, then picks up the sheet again at the bottom. It is smooth and fresh, like new. He wishes he could restart his life like that, too. A new beginning.
Suddenly, the ship lurches, the dizziness starts up, and Marwan drops the sheet, staggering sideways and reaching into nothing as he smashes his head against the frame of the clothes rail that is bolted down, like everything else on this boat.
The Chinese woman turns around immediately, alarmed, on watch—as if she had anticipated that something like this would happen. Everyone else carries on with their work.
Darkness.
SPIRIT OF EUROPE | DECK 1
Lalita Masarangi and Joseph Quezón
Entertainers’ cabins have portholes. Even if it’s totally foggy out there, the claustrophobia isn’t as fierce. And no bunk beds. So this is what it feels like to lose your virginity in an entertainer’s cabin.
“Gurkha Girl!” His voice is raw and demanding. Lalita, motionless, likes this name, which he whispers as his mouth travels over her body, closely followed by shudders that brush across her skin like a light breeze.
Gurkha Girl. Her male ancestors were twelve generations of Gurkhas, proud elite soldiers in service to the English Crown. Proud idiots who strutted about like peacocks in front of the Queen, who let themselves be slaughtered under the symbol of the crossed daggers. And when they didn’t die, which didn’t happen very often, they obediently went back to where they came from after finishing their work. How fucking stupid.
Not that Lalita thinks her ancestors were ridiculous.
On the contrary. Only four years ago, she had desperately wanted to be one of them. If only this beautiful boy from the islands knew how right he was. Gurkha Girl, that’s me. Lalita Masarangi from Gurkha Town, Aldershot, UK.
Ah, so this is what it feels like. Carry on, Island Boy.
Wherever his mouth goes, Jo feels the slight shuddering of her body beneath his. Suddenly it hits him, the realization that this body is young. Younger than his, full of pulsing blood, with muscles whose strength he can feel and skin soft as foam, which turns to nothing when you cup it in your hand. Jo wants to have this body, wants to own it. He grasps her leg, pushing it outward, violently. He wants to—he has to be inside her. “Come on, bitch!” Deeper. Take me in.
But it’s too late. The wave comes from behind this time. It is high, higher than in the nightmares from his childhood.
His mother, far away in Kuala Lumpur, is taking care of a stranger’s children when it starts. Grandmother Bella is old already, but her anger burns fierce. And she gets very angry when he calls for his mother in his sleep. She invents stories about a wave, higher than her house, which will swallow him if he doesn’t stop crying.
Much later, when he sees the images of the tsunami, he knows that Bella did not lie. And that she can summon a tsunami—or put another way, it’s probably best to ask what old Bella Quezón cannot do. She even went to court and now gets a pension from
the government, because she fought for the liberation. By the way, Jo’s mother never came back. She married her employer. A practical solution, since from then on he didn’t even have to pay her to watch his kids. She still sends money to Bella and Jo, each year at Christmas.
The wave comes and smashes him against Gurkha Girl’s body, whose muscles immediately turn to steel. He hears her pant, gasping for breath. He already feels the water, salty on his face.
“Jo?” Lalita doesn’t understand. What’s going on? Did she do something wrong? “Did I—?” He shakes his head and buries his face between her breasts.
Gasping rapidly, she feels dizzy. Something is burning inside, deep inside. Am I not a virgin anymore, or what? Oh man, twenty-three and so bloody stupid!
While the white trash chicks in Aldershot were having endless sex, Lalita had just one goal: In ten years, I’ll be dead!
Dead, because she would be killed in action for the British Crown. Or suicide, because she’d messed up the entrance examination. So Kathmandu. Wake up at five every morning. Train, train, train. Like a mantra, she longed for death, tortured herself for death. Death seemed so much brighter, so much more intense, so much more dramatic than life. Was that really a surprise? She lost the first love of her life when he fell in love with her brother and they ran off together to London. All of Aldershot shot its mouth off then, because the son of a former elite soldier was, well, basically gay.