by Merle Kröger
The radio chirps. The captain has to answer.
Nike knows what to do. Where is the Frenchman? Ah, over there, in the ejection seat. “Officer Moret!” He cannot order him around, since his rank is higher. On the other hand… is this a threatening situation? Unclear. “Could you please?”
He comes over, and Nike pulls him aside, toward Masarangi. His orders are brief. “The three of us are heading out to the raft now.” He and Masarangi will be armed, just in case. Moret speaks French, so he will communicate with the people if they cannot speak English. On board their lifeboat will be five water canisters, a first aid kit, blankets, and an injured person who urgently needs to get to a hospital. He slams the Syrian passport down on the table.
Nike ignores Masarangi; she won’t complain. He turns to Moret and leans forward until their faces are separated by just a few centimeters. “Officer, we have illegals on board.” For three months now. “And we both know why we have illegals on board. My people caught them at the breakfast buffet on the sea day between Malta and Barcelona. They were hungry.” Gotcha, you rookie! Nike is not that easily deceived. “They remembered your unforgettable green eyes, officer.”
He leans back and enjoys watching the man fold. It is the same feeling when you train, when your body obeys you like a machine and the guy on the bench next to you gives up, gasping for breath. Nike has complete control over his facial muscles. He listens to his inner rejoicing.
This arrogant young whelp, this coq au vin, he was long overdue.
CARTAGENA HARBOR | SPAIN
Diego Martínez
The light has that cutting clarity it always has when a storm approaches. Like large, dark birds, the old men are crouched in the midst of their massive pile of nets, as they patiently let the colorful webbing glide through their hands. No one looks up. No one says a word. The gulls circle overhead, warily eyeing their human competition, their cries filling the air, which smells of diesel and the stale fat from the kitchen at Club Nautico.
Diego inhales deeply the familiar scent from his childhood, as if striving to arm himself against the unpleasant things that are waiting for him. Remembers: on Sundays, if it had been a good week, the entire Martínez family went to the club. The women with shining hair, in their best dresses; the men in suits that fit increasingly poorly the older they grew. Somebody would always bring a guitar along. They ate fried seafood, they sang, and the children played, and when one of them fell into the harbor basin, one of the young men would pull his shirt off, flash his muscles, and jump in after him. Today, the club is frequented almost exclusively by yacht owners. They praise the simple, good food and the authentic atmosphere, according to Diego’s brother. The fishermen wrinkle their noses. It hasn’t been that good in a long time, and it is much too expensive for the likes of us.
He hesitantly sets off. His father insisted on sorting through the nets on his own, refusing to be driven home yet. Every week, he postpones the moment when they get into the car. His life is here. At home in his apartment, he is just an old man in everyone’s way. He is so thin. Nobody would guess that they were father and son. Sometimes Diego is overcome with the desire to pick his father up, to show him how strong he has become. Instead, he lifts his hand in farewell. His father looks up, as if he has heard something, and nods.
Finally picking up his pace, Diego exits the fishing harbor through the wooden gate. Off to the right, the harbor road ends at a tall iron fence. He rings the bell and catches the eye of the security camera on the fence as it turns toward him. The gate swings open slowly, though not without a subdued rattling. He walks through, greeting the second camera mounted on a pole. In contrast to the fishing harbor, this harbor basin, the so-called Darsena de Talleres—the repair and assembly harbor—has nothing picturesque about it. The atmosphere is—how should he put it?—more functional. Official would be the wrong word, since there isn’t enough activity for that. The sea rescue service and Guardia Civil share the offices on the second floor of the brick building that runs along the long side of the basin. Their workshops are on the ground floor, and in the back, at the end of the jetty, a semicircular window facade offers a view across the harbor. This is the command bridge of Cartagena’s Salvamento Marítimo. Monitors, radar, radio. All news converges up there in the data center. Pale data crunchers, addicted to details, literally know everything about every ship in the harbor: how many thousand passengers are on the cruise ship that will arrive tomorrow; how many tons of corn headed for Ukraine are being loaded on to the German freighter sitting at the Santa Lucía wharf; which oligarchs own the superyacht that docked yesterday.
Contrary to his normal routine, he does not go straight to the staging room where he’ll wait for the next deployment, the Salvamar Rosa berthed at her pier just outside. As always, it seems like she’s telling him hello, a little shudder running through her garishly orange hull. Surely it is just his imagination, but you get used to such things. Diego would hardly be surprised if one day she whinnied like a horse, but today she will have to wait a bit longer until he can pay her some attention. Instead, he heads down the jetty toward the speedboats for the Guardia Civil. One has just returned, teenagers on board taking selfies. There is no mistaking the new agency director, out on a joyride with his kids. He’s the one standing at the wheel, in uniform, with combed mustache and sunglasses, straddle-legged, chest puffed out.
Diego keeps walking. Talk about a showboat. It would never occur to the guy that he was misappropriating government funds whenever he took a police speedboat out for a private tour. Spain has people like him to thank for its crisis, though it is always others who end up taking the rap for it. Diego prefers to wear T-shirts with motifs from old sci-fi movies over tightly fitted shirts, prefers a full beard over a mustache. In his free time, he plays PlayStation, FIFA and GTA, why not? They all do it. He has respectable muscles from his work, but they conceal themselves behind the pleasure he takes from good food.
His mother cooks on Sundays; he cooks for himself during the week. He likes to experiment. There is no way he could still live with his parents and brother in that cramped apartment, stuffed full of memories from Escombreras. A combination of museum and day-care center. Every day, his sister drops the grandkids off before going to the Carrefour supermarket, where she works as a checker. Little Diego is hyperactive, pushing his grandparents to their limits.
All the firstborn sons in the family are named Diego. His father, too. If he ever happens to have a son someday, he will also be Diego. That is just the way it is for us, for the fishermen from Escombreras. They stoically call the neighborhood in Cartagena that the company built for them Escombreras. As if it could replace the original village. As if their obstinacy could prevent the village from being forgotten. However, the people from the city call their neighborhood Barrio Repsol. People remember the one who pays the bills.
Diego had been gone for a long time, traveling as a cook on the freighters. All the younger ones leave, moving far away for work, but as soon as they can, they come back and buy the apartments in which the old people have died. Diego took over his grandparents’ apartment, when he started working for the sea rescue service. They do not want to lose their neighborhood to the newcomers. The Africans. The Arabs.
He is still walking along the jetty when his phone vibrates. He picks up immediately: the command bridge. What do they want? His shift runs for fourteen days and starts back up on Monday. For eight hours a day, they do maintenance work on the Rosa and humor her, so she is ready to thunder off like a racehorse at a moment’s notice. For the remaining sixteen hours he is on call, which means sleeping with his phone, keeping his car close at hand, never taking his mother to the supermarket without having a plan B for how she can get her groceries back home by herself.
Today is his day off—they know that up there already. What don’t they know? Can he fill in? His coworker is sitting at the dentist, root infection. The cruise liner is stuck twelve miles off the coast and is giving them hell because
of a patera. They want to keep going, man. Can you go out?
Diego responds deliberately, as is his way. “We found a body while out fishing.”
Yeah, they knew about that some time ago.
He has to go to the Red Cross, since the doctor and the Guardia Civil are waiting on him. He has to sign his statement.
“All right, my friend. But after that? Can you go? Will you come over, man? The patrón is all set to pull out.”
The patron is the jockey of the Rosa, a vain fellow who sports scrunchies that hold fewer and fewer thinning locks with each passing year. The patron always wears a captain’s uniform, which, strangely enough, comes with shorts that make him look like an aging schoolboy. Diego is much happier with his overalls, which match the color of the boat.
“What do you say, Diego?”
How can he say no, when there are people out there who need help? He can’t. His brother will have to drive his father home.
“Good man, just hurry.”
Diego enters the white barracks with its red cross that can be seen for miles around. This is the first stop for anyone they rescue from the water, whether shipwrecked sailors, stricken fishermen, or refugees. He walks up the steep stairs, taking two at a time. In the lobby, boxes of greeting kits are stacked up. One kit contains a pair of black shoes, like laborers wear. Blue overalls. A handkerchief. A bottle of water. The people he brings in are often wearing nothing more than damp rags. But the people the Guardia Civil take away all look alike. They are already wearing prison garb even before they land in the deportation cells.
Not that Diego has any idea what they should otherwise do with them. Time and time again, he has been touched by the euphoria that hangs over the Rosa after a rescue. It is truly contagious, especially when they thank him, hug him in their happiness. And then their exuberance evaporates like a puddle in the midday heat, once they grasp what is actually happening. He really has no idea. Should we let them all into the country? We are in the middle of a crisis, so we need each and every job. Should we send them on to the wealthy countries, the ones who have a say in Europe? Perhaps to Germany, to Frau Merkel. That would serve her right. Good thing Diego isn’t the one deciding. He has a soft heart and doesn’t think he’s a better person just because he is a Spaniard. He is proud that Cartagena has always been a Republican stronghold.
What are they talking about there behind the curtain? He will have to wait until they finish. It won’t do any good to get on their case just because he wants to get out of here quickly.
He stares out the tiny, square barracks window at the fortress perched on the hill where the Gitanos live, on the other side of the road that leads to the hospital. Wherever you look, history is everywhere. It lies around where archaeologists unearthed it, but then they had no idea how to keep going once the crisis brought everything to a standstill. History piles on top of itself in Cartagena, literally. Way up there, diagonally behind him, is the Roman amphitheater, which was later used as a bullfighting arena. Now it, too, is collapsing and has to be shored up with red iron pillars. Phoenician, Roman, Spanish—nobody knows exactly what is going on. At first glance, it is hard to tell which houses are really houses and which are just facades. Half of the city center is nothing more than a stage set, held up by red pillars lined up against fire walls, insulated by ocher-colored foam.
We are trapped between the EU historic preservation regulations and the crisis. Whenever Diego thinks about it, he gets depressed. When he was little, Cartagena had still been alive: not a pretty city, but okay. A little disreputable even, the harbor quarter, lots of sailors, lots of soldiers. Today it sits under glass: halfway spruced up, harmless, lifeless.
Better to think about the Republicans. They fought here, made history here. During the First Spanish Republic, Cartagena was the most active canton among the federal states in the south. It even had its own currency: the duro cantonal. Antonio Galvéz Arce unfurled Spain’s first red flag here, and the wild General Juan Contreras—yes, the same one whom Diego, as a child, had sent out to help the Spanish troops against Lord Nelson—led raids along the Spanish coast in Cartagena’s name. In early 1874, Arce and Contreras escaped the landward siege on a frigate, breaking through the sea blockade. The wind was blowing strong, and they sailed off, straight across to Oran.
The Second Spanish Republic. History repeated itself in 1939, during the civil war, right in front of this window, on top of those brown hills. Again the final battle was fought here. Again the Republicans had to flee across the sea, as Franco’s Fascist troops approached from the land side. Again they escaped to Algeria. Or was it Tunisia? It is not quite proven but that is all right. At this moment in time, Diego’s abuelo, his father’s father, made his great entrance into world history. He was named Diego, of course, Diego Martínez.
“Diego Martínez?” The doctor steps out from behind the curtain, followed by a young policeman, who hands Diego the statement for signing. He writes out his name, the policeman vanishes again, all routine.
“I’d like to speak to you for a moment.” A very young doctor, he introduces himself. His name sounds Arabic. He is wondering why the corpse has so many broken bones from just falling out of a raft.
Diego reiterates that all he did was find him caught in the net, as he had already explained in his statement. He had simply assumed he was an African from one of the pateras.
“Really?” the doctor asks, raising his eyebrows. “Assumed?”
Diego shakes his head. That is not how he meant it. They had not broken any of the boy’s bones. The doctor keeps talking, growing excited. A body without a name, without a history, with serious injuries. He does not want to simply file him away like this.
Diego does not really listen. A memory keeps jangling in his consciousness. It takes a few seconds before he lets it in.
“A cruise ship,” he hears himself say. “We’ve seen such injuries when someone has fallen from a cruceiro.”
The doctor breaks off midsentence.
Diego exhales. He has to leave now, really. They have had an emergency call up there at the data center. Another raft. The people on it are still alive and need his help. Urgently.
The doctor is already turning on his heel and heading back behind the curtain. Diego hears him snap at the policeman for flirting with the nurse. Then Diego closes the door quietly behind him and hurries down the path to his next deployment.
AIRWAVES
Salvamento Marítimo:
Spirit of Europe? Sea Rescue Cartagena.
Spirit of Europe:
Yes, sir, this is Spirit of Europe. I read you loud and clear.
Salvamento Marítimo:
Yes, sir, this is to inform you that a speedboat is now proceeding to your position, and we estimate thirty minutes.
[Interference.]
Spirit of Europe:
….hirty minutes…
Salvamento Marítimo:
….hirty minutes to reach your position.
Spirit of Europe:
Okay, Spirit of Europe copy, thirty minutes.
Salvamento Marítimo:
Okay, that’s correct, sir. Once the speedboat arrives in the area, you may resume your voyage. We will be in contact, sir.
Spirit of Europe:
Okay, thank you very much. Spirit of Europe standing by 27. Standing by for the speedboat.
Salvamento Marítimo:
Stand by. Thank you.
SIOBHAN OF IRELAND | DECK A
Oleksij Lewtschenko
The sky is still blue, but the light is shifting. The horizon is too sharp.
Unreal.
Olek pauses and gazes through the diamond-shaped opening in the ship’s wall, out across the open sea. Like a distorted window without glass. The Siobhan still holds surprises for him, even though he knows her architecture better than his own wife’s body.
Irina. They’ve been married for twenty-one years now.
“What do you know?” she had snapped at him, when he’d
been home the last time. Because he wanted to forbid his daughter from going to one of those demonstrations where the girls take off their clothes in protest. You want to rally against the invasion of Crimea? That’s fine. But naked? Femen: founded in Kiev in 2008, the self-acclaimed feminist grouhas attracted international attention through their controversial demonstrations.
Changed. The Euromaidan protests have changed all of them. Mother and daughter drove to Kiev, and Olek had celebrated the Filipino Christmas with Dmitri and the crew in Oran Harbor.
His son spends the whole day in front of his PC, playing war. Call of Duty. The first-person shooter game puts the player in the role of an infantry soldier fighting in various World War II battles across Europe and Africa, while outside the real war is waging, right on our doorstep. It is time for the boy to go to the Odessa Maritime Academy. Perhaps he could make it as first officer, or even captain.
Olek descends a couple of steps. This is the spot where you can see the water rush under you.
Look away, quick. It draws you in.
Submerging.
Vanishing.
He turns to the left and forces himself into the narrow tunnel between the ship’s side and the first row of containers.
He is safe here.
From whatever.
Why has he recently felt like he is always being watched? He can feel it at his back.
Anyone looking at you can see it.
It is damned tight through here, but he is used to it. Odessa is undercut by more than two thousand kilometers of catacombs—the old limestone mines; they even have secret passages to the open sea. Communist sailors once took refuge in the mines, as did the partisans later when the Germans besieged the city.