by Ines Thorn
“Of course,” Zelda replied, as openly as if she were sharing a cake recipe. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
Maren was dying to ask a question. Even she didn’t understand why it was so important for her to know the answer. But her entire being burned with the desire to ask. “Do you love him?”
Zelda’s forehead creased. “No, I don’t. In my profession, it would be the worst misfortune to fall in love. Love is a luxury for girls who don’t have to earn their own money.”
Maren swallowed again. There was another question which needed an immediate answer. “And the captain? Does he love you?”
After stopping to consider for a moment, Zelda shook her head. “No, I don’t believe he does.”
“Does he love someone else?” Maren just couldn’t stop asking the questions, even though she was certain she wouldn’t care about the answers in the slightest.
“I don’t know,” Zelda answered a little hesitantly. “He doesn’t talk about his feelings. But sometimes I get the sense that there’s a girl who means more to him than any other.”
Who was this girl? Maren had thought that when Zelda told her about Boyse, it would satisfy her curiosity. But the opposite was true. Now she desperately wanted to know who the captain was in love with.
“Do you know her?”
“No. No one knows her. He doesn’t talk about it. Just like he doesn’t talk about what happened to him in the past.”
“What happened to him?” Maren asked. She sifted through her thoughts, trying to remember if she’d heard anything about the captain on Sylt, but there was nothing.
“No one knows,” Zelda said. “But one thing is clear. Whatever happened made him prefer being on his own. He may be captain, but he has no friends on board.”
Zelda was silent for a moment, and then she asked a question of her own. “Tell me, you come from the same island. You must know what happened to him.”
But Maren didn’t know. “I’m only half his age. I know nothing about it.”
Zelda nodded thoughtfully and sighed. “He’s a sad and lonely man, and most of the time he’s angry too. I wish I understood him better.” She spoke so pensively that Maren wondered if Zelda actually did feel more for the captain than she admitted. Suddenly she felt sorry for the woman. It must be terrible to love someone and not be loved back, she thought.
With her next breath, she remembered Thies. She hadn’t thought about him all of yesterday. But now she missed him even more. If Thies were only here with her on the ship, she wouldn’t have to be afraid of the snoring, or fighting, men. If only Thies were with her, everything would be fine.
Come evening, Maren was so exhausted again that she had only one thing on her mind. Sleep, and more sleep. She couldn’t care less that she had to sleep among a hundred men; she just wanted to rest. She’d had to cut onions all day, and her eyes burned like fire. She felt as though she didn’t have any tears left inside her. Her throat was sore, and her fingers stung from countless tiny cuts. The day before, Jakob had been kind to her and had sent her away when she was tired.
On this day, though, he seemed to be in a bad mood. He had been cursing like a carter all day, insisting that she hurry. When she was finally finished with the onions, he’d handed her a gigantic skillet that was so heavy she could barely lift it, and he’d ordered her to wash it. Maren tried to clean the skillet, but it kept slipping out of her hands and crashing with a loud clanging to the floor. It happened again just as Captain Boyse was inspecting the galley. If it had fallen even a handsbreadth closer, it would have landed on his toes.
“Forgive me!” Maren cried immediately and bent down to retrieve the pan, groaning as her back threatened to break.
Boyse ignored her and spoke directly to Jakob. “The crew wasn’t satisfied with yesterday’s meal,” he said severely.
Jakob nodded. “The carrots weren’t scraped properly, were they?”
“If you knew that, why did you serve them that way?” Boyse asked, and Maren could hear the aggravation in his voice. Jakob would tell the captain that she had scraped the carrots carelessly. And then, oh, God, he would take his belt to Maren’s backside in front of the crew. She began to tremble thinking about it.
But Jakob just shrugged. “What do you want, Captain? I can only work as hard as I can. Send the men who complained to me. Then we’ll see if they can do any better themselves.”
Boyse’s forehead creased with annoyance. “That’s not a solution that satisfies me. I need the crew to be in good spirits. Excuses like that won’t work on this boat.” He considered for a moment and then pointed a finger at Jakob. “You’ll give up your ration of Branntwein this evening. The men have to see that I take their complaint seriously. And if it happens again, you’ll have to bleed for it.”
Jakob nodded as though he didn’t care, but Maren was terribly glad and extremely grateful that he’d covered for her.
“Thank you, Jakob,” Maren whispered earnestly after Boyse left.
“Well enough,” the cook grumbled. “But that’s the only time that I take the blame for you. In the future, when you make your bed, you can lie in it.”
Maren swayed dangerously as she climbed down the narrow ladder below deck and threw herself into her berth, dog-tired.
“So, what did you do all day?” asked Raik, who’d spent the day scrubbing the upper deck.
“Onions,” Maren whispered with her last bit of energy. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to smell anything else, so long as I live.” She closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep as quickly as she could in order to forget the trials of the day.
As he did every Sunday, the captain had given the crew their weekly ration of Branntwein. And there wasn’t one among them who hadn’t seized the moment and gotten thoroughly inebriated. The brig was in calm waters, and Maren had heard an officer say that Boyse could afford to make do without part of the crew the next day. Moreover, only those who had completed their tasks and had a free shift due to them had been given a ration.
Maren wasn’t interested in all that. She, too, had received her ration of Branntwein but had immediately given it to Jakob. Partly because he had lost his ration for her, and partly because she’d never drunk anything strongly alcoholic in her entire life, and she couldn’t imagine starting to do so here aboard the Rán.
But now a deckhand came toward her. He was already swaying a little and had to lean against her berth for support.
“Ho, sailor girl,” he slurred. “Don’t you want to try some?” A bottle swung back and forth slowly over Maren’s head.
“No, thank you,” she replied politely. “I don’t think I’d like it.”
A few men laughed, and that seemed to encourage the drunken deckhand. “Don’t be so contrary! What’s wrong with trying? Then at least you could find out if it tickles your fancy.”
“No, thank you,” Maren repeated, and turned onto her other side so her back was toward him.
Things quickly began to get out of hand. He shook her by the shoulder. “You shouldn’t even try to sleep! Tonight, no one will sleep. Come, have a swig by your own free will, or I’ll pour the swill down your throat.”
“Leave her alone,” Raik said, butting in. “She said she didn’t want any.”
“Bah! Why should I care what a woman wants? She has to obey. And now I want her to drink Branntwein.”
Raik had gotten up and tried to pull the flask out of the drunk’s hand, but the man held it tightly and hit Raik in the center of his face, so the cabin boy fell to the ground and lay there, unmoving.
“What are you doing?” Maren screamed at the man. “You’ve hurt him!” She wanted to get up to take care of Raik, but the heavy hand of the sailor pushed her back down onto her berth.
Then he forced himself on top of her, holding her down with the weight of his body. He pulled her arms over her head, grabbed her roughly by the wrists, and held the flask to her lips with his free hand.
“Drink!” he demanded.
Maren pressed her lips together and hoped someone would come to help her. But no one did. In fact, just the opposite. Gradually, other men gathered round and encouraged the deckhand with claps and shouts.
“Go on, sluice her gob, Sven! She’s working with men now, so she can drink like one.”
She heard coarse laughter, and another man bent over her and pried her jaw apart with strong hands. “Pour it down her gullet now!” he shouted, and the deckhand didn’t have to be told twice.
At the first swallow, Maren felt as though her throat were on fire. She had to cough, but the deckhand kept pouring alcohol into her mouth. She couldn’t breathe, and the Branntwein ran out of her lips, down her neck, and pooled between her breasts. She didn’t want to swallow; she wanted to spit it into the man’s face. But she couldn’t. She had to drink, otherwise she would drown.
So she swallowed the fire, which seemed to burn a hole in her stomach. It set her throat aflame and numbed her tongue. When the deckhand briefly took the bottle away, Maren coughed so hard she feared her soul would fly out of her body. The men whooped and jeered, and all at once, the entire situation seemed very funny to her. She looked into the man’s face and had to laugh when she saw his nose, because there were suddenly two of them. Everything seemed comical. She glanced over at Raik, who was slowly getting up from the floor with a bloody nose, and she began to laugh hysterically. All her tiredness and exhaustion disappeared in an instant, and Maren sat up and shoved the deckhand lightly away. “If . . . if . . . you—hic!—thought that I . . . was going to let you tell me what to do, then—hic . . .” Then she’d already forgotten what she wanted to say.
Another sailor stood close to her, holding his flask out in front of him. She took the bottle from his hand and drank deeply. Then she spread her arms and spun in a circle. “Now we shall be joyful and celebrate!” she cried. “Let’s sing!” And she began to sing an old song, linked arms with the sailors, and swayed to the music as the men raised their rough voices with hers.
“Can you dance too?” one of them asked, and Maren threw her head back and laughed loudly.
“Of course I can dance. Do you want to see how my skirts fly?” She had forgotten that she was wearing pants. She spun in a circle, twirling down the long aisle between the hammocks, and stumbled. She pulled herself up and continued, singing all the while at the top of her lungs. Every now and then, she stopped, accepted Branntwein from one of the men, and took great swallows of it. But then she became dizzy. She swayed and could barely keep to her feet. All the men stood around clapping and encouraging her, but Maren could barely stand.
“I suddenly feel ill,” she exclaimed in amazement, and had barely gotten the words out when she bent forward and ejected everything that had been in her stomach. Then she tried to stagger to her berth, but her legs collapsed under her like stalks of wheat. She was sick again, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone. They were out of control now, stomping so the entire ship vibrated. Two of them had linked arms and were dancing in a wild spin, two others were bickering, and another reached into a barrel of drinking water and was spraying those who were trying to sleep, to loud yowls of protest.
Everything spun around Maren. She tried to hold on, but every time she tried to hold something, it spun away. The entire room seemed to blur, and she just couldn’t get her feet under her. She grinned, but then she was so nauseated again that she threw up on the floor. No, that wasn’t the floor. Everything was whirling, and Maren had misjudged and thrown up on her pants. She wanted to laugh about it, but then someone held Branntwein under her nose again, and she wanted nothing more than to wash away the terrible sour taste in her mouth, so she drank and kept on drinking until everything around her went black. She fell backward and hit her head on the hard planks, but she didn’t feel a thing.
CHAPTER 16
When Maren awoke, she didn’t know where she was. A blacksmith had opened up shop in her head and was pounding away, her throat was as dry as dust, and a terrible storm was raging in her stomach. She groaned and wanted to close her eyes again immediately, but then she was grabbed by the arm and pulled into a sitting position.
“Leave me be,” she murmured, batting weakly at the hand that held her.
She immediately received two powerful slaps, which droned in her skull like church bells. Her eyes went wide. “What in the . . . ?” But then she saw the captain’s angry face.
“Get up!” Boyse roared at her. “Move!” Then he tugged at her again as though she were a rag doll. Once he’d pulled Maren up from her berth, he let go briefly, but she swayed and fell back onto the straw pallet.
“Get up, I say!” he shouted louder. He pulled her out of her bed and dragged her forcefully by the arm up to the forward deck.
“What . . . what . . . ,” Maren stammered. “Oh, God, I feel sooo sick.”
“That serves you right, you little drunkard. No one drinks himself insensible on my ship!” Then he let her go and poured a bucket of ice-cold seawater on her.
“No!” Maren cried, holding her arms protectively over her head. But the captain seemed to think that one bucket of water wasn’t enough to cure a hangover, and he proceeded to empty a second and then a third bucketful over her.
Maren finally managed to get her eyes open. She wiped the water out of her face and looked down at herself. Oh, God! The pants, the shirt, everything was sullied. And now she could even smell herself. She’d never felt so ill in her entire life. She was terribly homesick, and she longed for Thies and Finja. She longed to be with someone who had her welfare at heart; someone who’d make her a strong herbal brew against the pounding headache and nausea. She wanted to lie on a soft straw pallet in her box bed, close her eyes, and only open them when her head and her stomach had calmed down again. She wanted fresh clothes, and mostly, she wanted to forget what she could only dimly remember. Had she really danced in front of all the men? Had she laughed and sung? She wanted to shake her head, shake away the dreadful memory, but, oh, it made her head ache. She was so nauseated that she broke into tears.
Captain Boyse put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Why are you wailing like that?”
Maren buried her face in her hands, because she was strangely embarrassed to be in his presence with filthy clothes and tangled hair and without her boots. “I want to go home,” she said with a sob. She knew she sounded like a small child, but she couldn’t stop crying. Everything was terrible here. The hard work, the horrible quarters, the loneliness, and her homesickness for Thies and the island. “I want to go home,” she whimpered, and sobbed so hard that her entire body quaked. She didn’t care what the captain thought of her anymore. He could think she was weak if he wanted. She just couldn’t stand it any longer.
She sank to the deck with her hands still covering her face and cried like she hadn’t cried since she’d been a child. She felt inconsolable, as desperate as it was possible for anyone to feel. The homesickness almost broke her heart, and just the thought of having to spend months on end here on the ship made her want to die.
“I want to go home,” she whimpered again.
Then she felt a hand gently pushing a strand of hair off of her forehead. The gesture was so tender that for a moment Maren believed Thies had miraculously appeared.
“Get up,” a rough male voice said quietly, and to her amazement, Maren recognized the voice as belonging to the captain. But that was impossible. Ever since she’d left Sylt, Boyse had spoken to her only harshly, or had yelled at her. It must be the alcohol still playing tricks on her senses.
She looked up at the captain in confusion. What she saw in his eyes confused her even more. His eyes were very dark, and the taunting gleam in them had disappeared. Instead, he looked worried. She sniffed again, and when the captain used his handkerchief to gently blot the tears from her cheeks, a warm tingle went through her that almost made her forget her homesickness.
“Is it really so bad here?” Boyse asked softly.
Maren n
odded but then shook her head. “I . . . I don’t know.”
He took her hand. “Come,” he said. “I’ll find you a new place to sleep. It’s my fault. I never should have left you alone with all those men.” His words were gentle, and Maren almost believed that Boyse had finally stopped hating her and might even give up on the horrible plan of revenge that had made him bring her aboard the ship.
But that hope only lasted for the blink of an eye. Zelda appeared on deck, and Boyse released Maren’s hand. His expression became closed again.
“What happened?” Zelda asked.
“She got drunk as a lord,” the captain replied.
“Oh, dear,” Zelda said, smiling sympathetically. “And now your head is pounding, isn’t it?”
Maren wanted to nod, but the motion brought back the smithy in her head.
“Take her with you,” the captain ordered his lover.
“With me? Where?”
“To the cabin.”
“To our cabin?” Zelda looked at him in disbelief.
“It’s my cabin. Do as I say.” Then he turned and walked away.
Zelda sighed as he left. “Fine. Let’s go, then.”
She led Maren halfway across the foredeck and then down wide steps into a small room fitted with several comfortable hammocks. At the end of the walkway between them, she opened a door, and Maren stared in amazement. So this was the captain’s cabin! In the middle of the room was a broad wooden platform that held two feather beds and even a proper pillow. A candelabra with beeswax candles made a soft light, and a brazier spread a pleasant warmth.
Maren realized only then that her entire body was shivering. Zelda noticed too. “You’re cold? No wonder. You’re soaking wet. What did you do?”
Maren’s teeth chattered. “The c-captain . . . He emptied a few buckets of water over my head.”
Zelda laughed. “Typical. He wanted to sober you up.”