by Merle Kröger
No problem.
He puts on his helmet and disappears up front again. She snuggles into the blanket and unwinds her wet headscarf, so her hair can dry in the wind as the sun warms her face. The pain has slipped away. From afar, the black figures look like real people, slowly disappearing into the white spray the boat is creating. Zohra waves to them. You keep on waiting. I am going to Karim.
She reaches for her bag to get out her phone.
Call Karim.
But the bag is not there. She must have lost it when she fell in the water.
Car key. Telephone.
All gone.
LIFEBOAT IV | SPIRIT OF EUROPE
Lalita Masarangi
For a brief moment, she imagines it is Jo, there on the stretcher, after the rescue. She has the sheet lifted, and he’s looking at her. Titanic flashback: the two of them at the prow, his body pressed to hers, his breath on her neck.
Hey, come on, pull yourself together, girl.
The man under the sheet is in a lot of pain. He’s groaning. She can only guess his face under the cloth. Instead, she peers at Nike, who is radioing with the bridge. Léon is actually the superior officer here, but in security situations it is different, says Nike. And Léon does not argue, does everything he is told. Fetch the water canisters. Do this, do that.
Something is not right here.
Since their brief conversation on the bridge, Nike has taken complete control. He is vibrating with energy, evidently enjoying the whole thing, like the way he had Deck 4 sealed off around the lifeboat, chop-chop. The way he steered the wheeled stretcher toward the lifeboat with one hand, as if it were empty. Nobody noticed anything. He had even posed for the tourists’ cameras, his guru smile at the ready. Spooky.
Oh well, Lalita got what she wanted. Once the poor guy here is on his way to the hospital, then they will search the entire ship for Jo. Why they aren’t calling a helicopter or handing the injured man over directly to the sea rescue service, she has no idea. She doesn’t want to know even as Nike directs them to take the stretcher onto the lifeboat.
Jo.
Please let him be alive. Maybe a broken leg, lying somewhere, unable to get up by himself. But nothing terrible.
Nike shoots her and Léon a sharp glance and nods. Léon starts the engine, and the lifeboat starts moving. She feels tiny right up against the ship, as if someone had reconfigured them to their correct proportions. Back on deck, the sea looks like a harmless blue surface, a carpet over which they float. Down here, it seems cold and voracious. They move away quickly, as the people applaud.
Just take a look at yourselves.
She had heard it, somewhere on Deck 12. “Why do we have to wait for someone to pick up the garbage over there?”
“It’s their own fault.”
“Let them snuff it.”
“A few more or less.”
Drivel, drivel.
And the others, the know-it-alls: “Shouldn’t we send them straight back?”
Should we? Could we?
“Mama, what are the people in the boat doing there?”—“They’re going for a little dip, sweetie. You can see that.”
An image comes to her mind. Why now, no idea. Aldershot, two old Gurkhas with wizened faces sitting on a bench in the empty shopping mall, quietly engrossed in conversation. They are taking a walk down memory lane. This campaign, that attack. Right next to the bench is a group of Teletubbies waiting for children to set them moving. The colorful figures are covered in a layer of dust in which someone has drawn whorls.
Aldershot is a real double lie. Brits complain all the time about the little grannies, who walk behind their athletic men in traditional dress. Who pee in the parks. Who know nothing about British culture.
Thing is, apart from them, no other fuckers ever come here. Take a look around you! The city has three empty shopping malls. The army is cutting back; it doesn’t give a rip about you.
If it wasn’t for us, who else would send their children to your schools, would fork over your taxes, pay horrendous rents for your dilapidated houses? And who would protect you from the terrorists you fear so much?
The security people at the 2012 Olympics were Gurkhas.
All of them, down to the last man.
The second lie is carried to Europe from Nepal in a suitcase. The little grannies hide their homesickness under their knitted caps. Their men march through the drizzle every day for kilometers on end in order to not grow rusty. They are stubborn old warriors whose eyes beg to be accepted as equals among equals. They convince themselves that things are better in England: better doctors, better medicine. It will be easier here as they grow older. And then it is the yearning that kills them.
Lalita remembers a story that her grandmother once told her, when the summer lightning behind Annapuma had been so bright that she couldn’t sleep.
“What’s behind the mountain?” she wanted to know. And behind that? And behind that?
Grandmother had heard the story from her father when he’d come back from the Great War.
One day, when they had stopped counting the days in the Half Moon Camp, Great-Grandfather was brought into a barracks where men were gathered around a funnel, German men in fine suits. They dragged him over to the funnel. One of them, who spoke English, demanded he say something in his language, anything, into the funnel. Behind the funnel was a machine, on which a disc turned.
Great-Grandfather was frightened. A Gurkha is made to fight, he thought. If only he had his dagger, then he would send them all packing, the machine as well.
But he had no a dagger, so he told them how it was:
Hear ye, hear ye. Now hear:
We came on British orders.
Three streams of water in a village in Nepal.
Water running, endlessly.
We are not dying, but even alive we are not living.
The soul screams.
Hear ye, hear ye. Now hear what I have to say to you.
Like bubbling water
My emotions bubble inside me.
Is it possible to appease these emotions?
Hear ye, hear ye. Now hear what I have to say to you…
Lalita balks. What came next? Forgotten. Shit. But she remembers the end.
My body is hot, cool it with a fan.
I don’t want to stay in Europe,
Please bring me back to Nepal.
Gurkhas eat goats, but not swans.
Survival is not progress,
Death does not bring knowledge,
I understand nothing.
I tell God that my journey is long.
That is why I want to go back to my village.
I want to leave this country.
He later said that he had hoped they would kill him for these words, but they had just nodded, clapping him on the shoulder and switching the machine on to play. Great-Grand father heard his own voice. They were delighted, took the disc made of wax and went away. They had stolen Great-Grandfather’s voice. Many years later, one of the few things that he left behind was the piece of paper carrying his speech from the camp in Germany.
“So don’t ask what lies behind the mountain, little Lalita. For in the end, you might lose your pretty, cheeky voice. And now go to sleep.” Grandmother switched off the light, and the summer lightning was over.
The man under the sheet is tossing and turning back and forth, mumbling words in a language Lalita cannot understand. She gently strokes the place on the sheet where she thinks his head is.
Who are you? Where is your home? Who are your parents? Feel, I am here. Everything will be all right.
Listen closely.
I will tell you a story.
RAFT (NO NAME)
Marwan Fakhouri
Where am I?
Where is she? The voice. Goats, but not swans.
Concentrate, Marwan. Brain hemorrhage. You should be operating now. Marwan should operate on himself. His hysteria rises. Not possible. A fit of laughter shakes him,
and he feels tears shoot into his eyes.
“Calm down, man. Calm down.”
Arabic. Someone is speaking Arabic.
Marwan grins. Am I back in Aleppo? Did I not run away? Can I take back the decision? It was the wrong one, do you understand?
Stop.
Back.
Back to the last night, to the break between two operations, a cigarette among friends, their faces gray with exhaustion. Can you hear me, friends? We have to hang on, regardless of how desperate the situation is. Maybe there is no more hope for Syria, but we have to carry on, do you understand?
“We have to carry on!”
Blue. Water. Sun. Tartus. Harbor town on the Mediterranean. Marwan’s home. Russian warships bob by the pier. His father is a petrochemical engineer. The gas deposits in the Levant Basin are unimaginably large, boy.
For hours on end.
Yes, Father.
Don’t you understand, son? They want to prevent us from becoming the new hub for gas deliveries to Europe.
Who are “they,” Father?
The Emir of Qatar, the Turks, the Iraqis, the Sunnites.
And who are “we,” Father?
We back Assad, son. We are Syria. We have powerful allies: Iran, Russia. We will defeat them.
We, Father, we are no longer Syria. Not me. Assad bombs his own people with rockets, Father. I stitch students back together, Father. Students who were attending peaceful demonstrations, Father. Barrel bombs on the hospital. It’s not just propaganda, Father.
The pain pulses in his brain like liquid lava. Don’t get agitated. I mustn’t get agitated. The patient must remain calm. We don’t have enough medication.
Blue sea. Sun. Silent images. Family trip to Arwad. White boat. Fortress on the island. Resting in the shade. Blue T-shirt, white trousers. Big agave. Restaurant in the harbor. Blue-and-white plastic tablecloths. Sunday. Super 8.
I am not in Arwad.
The smell of rubber baking in the sun.
I am in a rubber raft, on the way from Alexandria to Italy. Always goes on Thursdays. First the money, then off we go. The big fishing boat stops in the middle of the ocean for the transfer to the raft.
Far too many people. “Here’s a cell phone. Call the coast guard in Malta. They’ll fetch you.”
Dial tone. No reply. Dial tone.
Far too many people in the raft. Hunger. Thirst. Dial tone.
“Over there! Look, guys, a cruise ship!”
Marwan makes the effort to lift his head. There we go, now he can see.
Up, up high. Right up to the sky.
Stop.
Why is the sun shining? It is nighttime on the raft off the coast of Malta. The Spirit of Europe is taking us on board. Euphoria. Sandwiches. Marwan and Oke.
No, no, it is all wrong. The sun should not be here.
Switch off the sun!
Super 8. Wrong film.
SPIRIT OF EUROPE | DECK 12
Sybille Malinowski
“No!”
It is dark. Sybille is standing on the wharf. They are now hauling up the gangway. The ship gleams in all its splendor, as huge as a castle, its lights sparkling. It is frosty, and her hands tingle. Hands, feet. She spends hours every day telling herself that her hands and feet are still there. “If they fall off, you’ll notice it!” Wiltrud giggles. She has red cheeks, much too red. It is the frost.
She is standing on the wharf, stamping her feet against the cold and in anger. She wants to get on. Wants. Must. The anger is warming her up through and through. She is ten.
“I’m cold!” her little sister whines. “You said that we’d go on that ship and that it’d be cozy and warm there.”
“Shut up!” She sees the tears flow and regrets her words instantly. “We’ll take the next ship.” She already sounds like their mother.
“No no no!” Wiltrud shakes her head, her tears flying.
Father had promised. He had promised that he would come. We have to wait.
There are people up there at the railing, black silhouettes against the bright glare. They wave, and laughter floats down to them. She has never wanted anything as much as this ship. Dear God, fix it so we can travel on the Gustloff.
A couple of years ago: every few months, Tante Hilda came from Leipzig, bringing books and presents with her. She was stunningly attractive, sporting the latest fashions from the city. We could never get enough of her, our eyes devouring every detail. She always brought clothes for Mother and sweets for us. She read magazines, and one of them showed a photo full of women clad in swimsuits, sun worshippers on the upper deck of the Gustloff, traveling to Scandinavia. The magazine stayed behind, but Tante Hilde left and never came back. Instead, the war came.
For once, do what I ask, most beloved, finest Father in Heaven. Please! She stamps her foot one more time. The ship’s horn sounds.
And the boat departs.
The next morning, all three of them are standing in the harbor. Wiltrud clutches Mother’s hand and hurls deadly glares at her from behind the woman’s back.
They both caught a slap this morning. Mother had swept into the room and yanked them out of bed. Then they all screamed at one another simultaneously. As far as they could understand, Mother had waited up half the night, before nodding off in the armchair. This was why she had not heard them when they slipped in.
She does not comprehend the excitement. It’s all right, Mother! They didn’t take us along. They didn’t let let us on board, Mother!
They head over to the parsonage, where the naval chaplain has been able to scrounge up three tickets for the Hansa. “Go, madam. Go in the name of the Lord and take your daughters to safety.” Sybille hears the fear in his voice, its shrillness. “You will not make it any farther on foot. Foot travel has been banned, as the soldiers are flooding back in. Twenty kilometers, madam, the Russians are only twenty kilometers away!”
The icy northeast wind blows straight out of Russia. The Baltic is leaden gray. They are standing on the wharf, which is rapidly filling up as the people reassemble. The chaplain promised to bring their things with a wagon.
They are waiting. They are always waiting. Where is Father?
The Hansa is moored over to the left. An entirely normal ship, dull.
She feels like she does after a night of fever, as her teeth chatter and her knees threaten to buckle. But her body wishes to heal, wishes to see springtime, the buds, the wild geese in the sky. Wishes to feel summer, the warm sand under her toes; wishes to stretch out in the grass and listen as the lark rises on its song into the sky.
She gazes up.
Is that a wild goose crying? A single, much too early wild goose? Has it flown off course?
The city is behind her, and she can feel in her spine the eerie tension that has settled over it.
Excited voices around her. “What—what are they saying? Mother?” Mother just shakes her head. “But I heard, Mother!”
The Gustloff was sunk last night.
Corpses are drifting in the gray Baltic. Hundreds. Thousands.
It is cold.
Sybille awakes after the sun has disappeared. She keeps nodding off; it must have something to do with the medications. The doctor says they just need to make the fine adjustments, figure out the right dosages for the Parkinson’s, which could take a long time. In his roundabout way, he means it could draw out for years. Sybille knows all about this, having been a specialized orthopedics sales representative. She had worked a lot with Parkinson’s patients.
These will be years in which nothing will get better, years in which her world will become increasingly small, increasingly limited.
Store the horizon, Sybille. Draw this boundless sky into yourself. Save it. You’ll need it.
A fierce wind drives heavy clouds toward them, and suddenly, the sun breaks back through again, way out there, transforming the sea into a dramatic play of colors, of black, white, and silver. Ah, how lovely.
Her thoughts soar, across the sea, then acros
s a different, Nordic sea. She is a lark, singing and rejoicing. She feels the beginning of her swooping arc, the power of each individual beat of her wings. She sees, far down below, herself and her two children playing in the sand. She sees herself as a young girl in a sailboat. She flies on, across the sea. Sees herself standing that morning on the wharf, next to her mother with Wiltrud by the hand. Somewhere behind them is the house of her childhood. Somewhere behind them, their father is leading the horses into the barn. They never saw him again, their father. His trail lost itself in Russia, and she cannot follow him.
Nor can she follow Tante Hilde, or her husband, the newspaper publisher. Leipzig once had a large Jewish community. The children were taken to safety with the help of German friends, but the parents were lost. Somewhere along the way to Auschwitz?
Sybille’s father refused to believe this. Something like this could not happen in Germany. Her mother said nothing.
Lines from a poem suddenly spring to Sybille’s mind, something that’s only recently started happening to her. Memories ascend like bubbles, torn completely out of their context.
Did you close the door softly
For the last time
As you left
Fearful
Tearful
Frightened
Lonely without us
Gone long ago…
Max had sent this to her from England, many years later, after they had found each other again. These were the parting words from a Jewish poet to her mother. The guilt of having survived, which the boy, her cousin Max, never got over.
The correspondence between Sybille and Max began like a tentative caress and has lasted forty years. She can no longer write, so she has to be grateful whenever someone types a few lines out for her on the computer, ones she has freely formulated from her mind. That, too, will not last much longer.
Her thoughts tremble, like her hands.
What is that? Applause?
Sybille emerges fully from the world of her thoughts, though her mind balks. What could it possibly want in the here and now of pain and helplessness? In astonishment, she realizes that she is surrounded by empty loungers.
Whatever it is must be going on on the other side. What are they clapping about? Have they finally rescued the poor people from that awful raft? Always this unhealthy fixation on the spectacle. A new sensation has to be cooked up every five minutes.