Collision

by Merle Kröger

  “Visual contact?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  But Kiyan has already spotted the speedboat on the radar and is transmitting the position, about three more nautical miles to go.

  The timing is perfect. Léon had anticipated that the captain would have gone back down again by now, but the fact that Mehta, the snake, is also gone—it could not have gone any better. Léon steps up to the panorama window. The ejection seat has the port side in view, so he strolls over to the bow just to take a look. Right at the end of the bridge, the windows wrap around, commanding a good view to the side and the back. Far out, the damaged raft is bobbing up and down. It is already drizzling. The arrival of the storm couldn’t be better timed.

  He stands up very close to the window and whispers: “Bonne chance.”

  The wind picks up, and concern flickers up for a moment: What if they capsize in the storm out there? Rubbish, the guy he talked to was as calm as they come, keeping a straight face as he explained that there was gas in the last canister. It was a good thing that Nike and the security chick don’t speak French.

  Léon turns and walks briskly back to Kiyan, who is still following the Rosa on the radar. The raft is too small for his antennae, which is why they cross the Mediterranean on these air mattresses. Léon glances over Kiyan’s shoulder and then goes to the control desk.

  Suddenly he trips over a barely perceptible edge in the thick blue velour. He just manages to break his fall, catching himself on the desk.

  The foghorn.

  The mighty sound propels the quartermaster from his seat. Kiyan rushes out from behind the curtain.

  “Oops.” Léon straightens up. “That was close.”

  Kiyan casts him a scrutinizing glance. Careful, that one is not so easily deceived.

  “Officer Huang!” Léon bellows a little louder than necessary. Kiyan snaps to attention. “Make a log entry: At”—he makes a point of looking at his watch—“seven minutes past three CET, an unintentional activation of the foghorn by first officer on duty, Léon Moret, in order to avoid a workplace accident. Report that to the captain.”

  Léon blinks slowly and yawns. He doesn’t need to pretend to anyone that he is completely exhausted.

  “Five minutes, max,” Kiyan says with a smile. “I’ll wake you up.”

  He’s already lying on the sofa, eyes closed. If he stays cool, then the others will, too. Then nobody will pace up and down and possibly notice that the raft has disappeared. Kiyan is already talking quietly on the phone in the background.

  It had been a spontaneous decision, because Mehta had annoyed him so much. Then the shock of finding out that he knew everything. The feeling of “What the hell?” had set in immediately afterward, followed by: “There’s no way you’re going to put up with this.”

  Honestly, who does he think he is? Does he think he can call all the shots? I mean, I haven’t made a single mistake on duty or anything like that. I’m an outstanding navigator, finished top of my class, and sailing, as the captain calls it, is in my blood.

  I was able to sail before I could even walk. When I surf, I’m like the cresting wave itself, and when I kitesurf, I can always catch the wind with my chute, because I can see it. Not really, of course, but in my head, with my inner eye. Georges, my father, says it’s as if I had a sixth sense for the sea. It scares him, because he is a scientist. For him there is no God and no magic, just intellect. If you don’t use your intellect, then you only have yourself to blame, he says.

  Georges. I don’t call him Papa, because somehow he is not a typical father. Not bad or anything, just different. Sylvie, my mother, is more of a maman. At least she used to be.

  “You got your pigheadedness from you father, Léon,” Sylvie insists. She sometimes utters this reproachfully, whenever he runs off again. Always down to the harbor, always onto the water. Sometimes she says this proudly: You’re not easily fooled. Sometimes sadly: You don’t even ask me, Léon. You just do it.

  Shit, I have to send them an email again. How long has it been since we saw each other? Almost a year? I just can’t make it work. On board, you forget that there is a world out there that keeps on turning, one in which Georges from the Île d’Aix drives to the factory every day to fiddle around with his rare earths. He occasionally pops in at the University of La Rochelle in the afternoons to hold a seminar at the Laboratory for Environmental Sciences. This is the world in which, with every passing day, he postpones the moment of homecoming to the certified organic cocoon, where now only Sylvie and Fabian live, without Léon, who, let’s be honest, did a runner.

  Fabian is twenty-eight and works in a workshop for the disabled on the island. Sylvie takes him in the mornings and picks him up again in the afternoons. In between, she sorts out all the other stuff; running an eco household takes a lot of time and patience. She has her vegetable garden behind the house, the old farmhouse that they converted themselves, bit by bit. It is not even five hundred meters from the beach. A wind generator is located in the yard, since there is always wind on the island. The solar collectors are up on the roof. As a family, we’re genuinely off the grid, and not just since the time it’s been possible to buy solar panels in the hardware store.

  Léon remembers how the people called his parents freaks even when he was still at the island school. Georges in particular was not popular—a taciturn, bullheaded guy who only opened up when his favorite subjects were discussed: environmental destruction, protecting nature, and so on. He was not one to while away the time in the bar with the fishermen. An oddball. A know-it-all. An ecological stiff. That doesn’t go down well when you’re eight years old and your brother is the spaz.

  Nobody on the island knows why Georges moved here with his family. People assume that the Île d’Aix attracts folks like this because cars are prohibited here. However, Georges is on the run, if what the boy Léon heard every couple of years was true, whenever Georges indulged in a glass of red wine and was not just mutely brooding over numbers at his desk. At first, he would sit in front of a gridded notepad, later a computer. His back, which the three of them got very used to seeing, remained the same.

  “You’re a paranoid nutcase!” Léon shouted at his back many years later, before he left the house, never to return.

  “If you say so, consumerist-crazy asshole,” Georges replied, without turning around.

  It’s a badass story, though Léon doesn’t care whether it’s actually as shocking as Georges claims. The fact is that Georges was once a perfectly normal young geologist who, after finishing college, went straight to the French multinational Peñarroya, because it happened to be looking for geologists. It sent him and his wife to a mining area in Andalusia. Georges was happy with his work, got on well with the Spanish miners, and moved into a small house right on the coast, in an old fishing village. The giant hotels and holiday resorts didn’t exist on the Costa Blanca back then. Sylvie planted her first garden and grew vegetables like all the other women in the village, then Fabian was born. It was a shock for both Georges and Sylvie, because Fabian was the way he was. Special.

  “Your brother is special, Léon, not a spaz. Remember that once and for all.”

  Léon loves Fabian; no one should get the wrong idea. He would kill anyone who wanted to hurt Fabian, because his brother is like a special stone.

  Léon and Georges used to pore over their quartz collection for hours on end. “Why is this one expensive and this one isn’t?”

  “Because it’s rare.”

  “But the other is much shinier when you hold it against the sun.”

  Fabian is also shiny. At first, they didn’t notice anything, only that he was difficult and always crying. Then they realized that something was not right, and then the rafts arrived.

  Sylvie claims that was the day that Georges became the Georges we know today. Three rafts from the Sirius, the first official action by Greenpeace Spain, in August 1986. They stood in front of the pipes in their protective suits and let the filthy slu
dge cover their bodies, making a visible statement for everyone who hadn’t gotten it yet. The filthy sludge was being washed out to sea from the ore being cleaned in the Lavadero Roberto treatment site. The images traveled around the world.

  After that, Georges began to take soil samples and discovered that the lead content of the soil in the village in which they lived was over twenty times higher than the permitted peak value for men, not to mention pregnant women. He found other substances, right on the beach, where they swam on Sundays.

  Arsenic. Sulfur. A Pandora’s box of horrors.

  Georges left Sylvie and Fabian with the grandparents and sued his own company, ruining himself in the legal proceedings. The mine was eventually closed anyway, because its yields dropped. He was encouraged to resign but refused. The company was sold, broken up, given new names. Georges received a proper notice of dismissal, but the lawsuits continued until he lost control of his car one day on the way back to the village and narrowly missed a deep ravine. He insisted that someone took a shot at his tires, but the police declared it an accident.

  The three thousand families in the vicinity of the mine who lost their jobs blamed either Greenpeace or the crazy geologist.

  Georges vanished in the middle of the night, collected Sylvie and Fabian and moved to the Île d’Aix with them, near where the University of La Rochelle was introducing the master’s program in sciences pour l’environment. Sylvie wanted a second child, so Léon was born. Léon, the beach child with eyes as green as the Atlantic.

  Léon’s first lesson was: “Look around, what do you see, boy?”

  “I see the beach and the sea, Georges.”

  “Yes, Léon? And what else do you see?”

  “Nothing, Georges.”

  “Look closely. It looks like the beach and the sea, but death may be lurking in there, Léon. Don’t trust anyone who tells you that it’s only a beach by the sea. And now we’re going home to Sylvie and Fabian.”

  Léon opens his eyes and grins. No wonder he has a sixth sense for the sea. Cover all the bases. Don’t trust anyone.

  Good old Georges. Rebel.

  He never wanted to be like his father, so obstinate and unhappy. Not a coot. Not a crank. But of course, something had stuck: this extreme sense of justice. That is why he filled the canister with gas. That is why he whispered to the guy on the boat: “Wait for my signal, then scram. And take him to a hospital.” The Syrian.

  All because Mehta treats people like pawns. First the stowaway with the head injury, then the people in the boat. In the end, they will all be put on the next flight home, and it will all be for nothing, while Mehta rubs his hands with glee and slips off the hook again.

  Léon should have let the captain in on it, back then when he realized that the two party crashers had disappeared and Mehta had mistakenly sent too few people off the ship. At the latest, he should have said something today, just now, before the Indian completed his report.

  But he hadn’t, because he wants to keep his life here. So he found another way to set things right.

  “There they are!” Kiyan has caught sight of the Salvamar Rosa, which will be within range in ten seconds. “Nine, eight, seven. Up you go, Moret!”

  Léon is immediately awake. Another occupational hazard.

  He reaches the window in three strides. The sky is dark gray now, and a flash of lightning lights up the helipad on the bow.

  There is the Salvamar Rosa, all in orange, as it drops into a wave trough.

  Léon wishes the men in the zodiac luck.

  I hope you make it.

  There is thunder outside.

  Why is this song going through his head now?

  Despite all my rage

  I am still just a rat in a cage…

  SPIRIT OF EUROPE | DECK 4

  Seamus Clarke

  “Sláinte na bhfear!” he bellows over to the men in the raft. Take care! A half-turn on one leg. Uh-oh, don’t lose your balance. Seamus raises his Guinness: “Agus go maire na mná go deo!”

  Yes, may the women live forever. Now down the hatch.

  That’s good stuff. It’s a pity that Kelly is playing bingo, because, first and foremost, that wish goes for you, my luv. To our daughters and their daughters, and all the women of Ireland.

  Ha! Not a soul out here on deck, all because it’s blowing a little. Where are all you twats? Did the rain drive the fine gents indoors?

  It was cozy in the pub, yes, it was. He’d retreated to his regular table, up there in the dark corner, from where he could keep them all in view, all those people strolling along the promenade deck and shopping like there was no tomorrow. Kelly had gone to bingo, which is sooner a woman’s thing. The pub is not really her thing either, all the crush and the sweat, although there’s never much going on around midafternoon. The British gents don’t drink until five, and the ones from the Continent only after eight. So you can always tell the Irishman right away. Seamus was standing at the table with a pint in hand. And then this guy walked by, a tall blond fellow. He caught sight of him only out of the corner of his eye, and again he thought: Kevin.

  That’s how you’d look, Kevin. That’s how you’d look today, if you were fifty like me. We’d be standing here together, drinking our pints, and our wives would be together upstairs at bingo, Kevin. My Kelly and your… Mary? Admit it, you were crazy about her. Three years older than us, Mary was the queen of the soapboxes and not afraid of anything, not of the street corner below or of the bloody Brits.

  Kevin.

  You know, Kevin, my throat’s parched. I’ll get us another pint. I’ve got this, man.

  Seamus had gone to the bar, where the barkeeper was already filling the next Guinness.

  I’m back again. Sláinte, Kevin. Cheers. Those boys out there, those boys in the boat, they remind me of us. We imagined we’d run away together to New York and join the Irish Mafia. We’d become rich gangsters or something like that. It’s so bloody gray in Belfast when you’re thirteen, Kevin. Remember that? We were already in the midst of the war back then, marching in the lines of the Fianna Éireann at ten. Remember they called us the IRA’s youth organization? But actually we were just the kids from Turf Lodge, from Falls, from all over West Belfast, who’d had enough of having to get out of the way of British tanks when walking home from school. Who’d had enough of constantly missing someone at supper because he’d been arrested. Who’d had enough of waking up every morning to the deflated feeling that there’d be bad news on the radio today. You know what, Kevin? I still listen to the news every morning. And each time my heart jumps a little when I pour my coffee and switch on the Grundig radio. Yep, it still works, the old box. German quality, made in Belfast. The manager back then was abducted by the IRA, and they shut the factory down. My father, Chris Clarke, had worked there, but you know that anyway.

  Kevin.

  Do you still recall how my dad used to run around with that tape recorder? I don’t know if he started doing that when the Troubles started or before then. Maybe he bought that portable recorder cheap from Grundig. I got my collecting bug from him, you could say. Nothing could keep him at home after work or on the weekends: he was always out on the streets. He’d walk around the area for hours, making recordings. Short chats with the neighbors about this or that. Explosions. The screams from the barricades. People running. Breathless accounts from eyewitnesses. I’ve got piles of tapes in my cellar. My brothers think the family archive should stay together, and I’m the keeper of this historical collection.

  Do you think I’ve listened to them even once? Honestly, Kevin, I don’t have the guts. Dad and Mum are both dead; he went first, then she a few years later. He was a strange man, my dad. It bothered him: the killing, the dying, the rage around us. I also got that from him.

  But I wanted to tell you something else. On that day—you already know, the one you—Well, my dad had gone back out again. I was about to leave, and then he came back.

  “No way,” my dad said. “You’re not going
out. Too dangerous.”

  “But I have to—”

  Nothing doing. I briefly considered simply slipping out anyway, but then he looked at me that way, as if he could read my thoughts. “Go upstairs.”

  So I went up, then looked out the attic window.

  And I saw you waiting for me on the corner, Kevin.

  And I wonder today: What would have happened if my dad had come home two minutes later? Would I have run across to you? Would we both be here today? Would I have died, and would you be here instead of me?

  I’ve always felt guilty. At first, I was furious, so much so I wanted to join up right away, but they wouldn’t take me. I was too young, they said. Then almost to the day, two years after your death, I was arrested. They came to our house.

  Bam! Bam! Hammering on the door. My dad was out again, so my sister opened the door. Deirdre, she later married and moved to Toronto. The cops asked for Seamus. Actually, I’m pretty sure that they were after Rob, but either someone had given them the wrong name by mistake or they simply mixed us up. Anyway, before I could bolt, they were hauling me out. I was only fifteen, but they still took me up to Castlereagh, into the lion’s den.

  Three days of interrogations. I didn’t say anything, only that I wanted to join the IRA, but they wouldn’t take me. The verdict: two years of house arrest. Had to be sitting at home every day by six P.M. “Don’t you dare show your face outside, boy.”

  All I could do was watch everything from the attic window. Do you understand, Kevin? That opening wasn’t even a square meter. My life forced into that square meter. I was fed up, Kevin. I was young; I wanted to dance, listen to music, ride a motorcycle. I was nineteen, Kevin, when I got married. Now I’m fifty and a grandpa twice over. That’s how it is.

  I need some fresh air. Will you come out with me?

  That’s how he landed all by himself out there on the deck. Yup, a fresh breeze always does wonders. The foghorn blows. Holy Mother of God, that’s enough to burst your eardrums.