The Rebellious Tide

by Eddy Boudel Tan

  Sebastien was surprised to feel the weight of the gift. He unwrapped the paper gingerly so they could reuse it. Ruby clasped her hands in her lap, tense with anticipation. He only needed to open one corner to know what it was.

  “Mama, what were you thinking? You can’t afford this!”

  It was a camera. The school’s art faculty had loaned one of theirs to Sebastien, but he would have to return it when he graduated. It had been attached to his eye for most of the year. His neck felt naked without the nylon strap against his skin. Ruby had spent days researching cameras to find the right one.

  “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t afford,” she said, giving him a playful slap on the shoulder.

  “I’m serious. I can’t accept this. These things cost hundreds of dollars.”

  “Just pretend I stole it.”

  “Very funny. I’m going to take photography in second year. I might be able to use my scholarship money to get a camera then.”

  “That’s over a year from now!” Ruby shot him that don’t-argue-with-me look she loved, and he knew he wasn’t going to win. “What will you do until then? How will you remember your first year of university? When the time comes, you can buy a better camera. But I want you to have this one now. Because it’s from me, and you deserve it.”

  He couldn’t fight the tears that pooled in his eyes. His fingers picked at the rest of the cellophane tape that clung to the paper. “Thank you.”

  Ruby put her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder. “You can take lots of photos of me in front of all the old buildings in the city. And the water! We’ll take photos by the water.”

  The table vibrated as Ruby’s cell phone buzzed. Her hand snatched it before Sebastien could see the number on the screen. She flashed him a cautious look, then smiled apologetically. “I need to take this. It’ll just be a minute.” Her bedroom door closed behind her.

  Sebastien sat in the silent kitchen, staring at the half-eaten cake in front of him, and listened to the muffled sounds of his mother’s hushed voice. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she had been wearing a cloak of secrecy during the past few months that never used to exist. There were mysterious phone calls and vague answers to questions about her whereabouts. He tried not to let it worry him, but he had begun to realize he didn’t know his mother as well as he once thought.

  It wasn’t difficult finding where the Kourakis family was staying on board the Glacier. Ilya’s tank-like laptop was a portal to the ship’s less heavily guarded systems. It had given them easy access to the audiovisual network of Sirens. It took only a few minutes to infiltrate the entire guest directory. “I wasn’t always Mr. Fitness,” Ilya said the first day they met. “Everyone on board has a past life. For me, computer engineering paid the bills.”

  Now Sebastien stalked along the familiar hallway of seafoam carpet and scallop-shell lamps toward cabin 1450 on Riviera Deck, the same level as the House of the Heel. The late seating in the dining hall was complete. The guests, including the Kourakis family, would be in the Odeon enjoying the evening’s performance — a modern retelling of Jason’s voyage on the Argo, complete with harpies dressed like Japanese manga characters and Contessa as a steampunk Medea. He knew the terrible show had another hour before the curtain fell.

  He had taken Nikos’s skeleton key yesterday with the intention of slipping into the commanders’ wing that night and uncovering what, if anything, was hidden in cabin A66. Finding what Dominic had seen there was pressing, but he changed his mind after meeting the Kourakis family earlier. They called to him like a siren’s song. He couldn’t resist.

  Cabin 1450 was on the opposite end of Riviera Deck from the secret temple he shared with Nikos. He scanned the hall and confirmed it was deserted. Wearing a borrowed grey suit from cabin service that was a size too small, he pulled the little bellboy cap farther down his face. The rectangle of black plastic in his fingers felt so flimsy for something so powerful. He inserted it in the thin slot of the door. A green dot flashed beside the handle.

  The first thing he noticed when he entered the dark room was the perfume. It smelled expensive and overpowering, more floral than a flower and spicier than black pepper. He remembered inhaling whiffs of the scent as Alexis passed him earlier.

  He switched on the lights to reveal a luxurious sitting room. The hardwood floors were carpeted with rich wool. Lounge chairs were upholstered in muted colours and covered in ornamental cushions. The walls displayed abstract paintings of geometric shapes in overly saturated tones. A statue of a Greek god dominated one corner, covered in the same blue glaze as the others that stood guard throughout the ship. Windows lined the far wall. A pair of glass doors opened onto a balcony. The curtains were drawn back, and the Mediterranean Sea blurred into the sky.

  Sebastien pictured the narrow cabin that he and Ilya shared. It was so dark at night with just three walls and a door. The sitting room in Alexis’s suite was at least eight times the size.

  He stepped through a door to his right. There were two queen-sized beds at opposing ends of the room. The sheets and duvets were expertly arranged, no doubt by the housekeeping staff. It was clear which bed belonged to Kristo and which to Katerina. The reserved girl kept a glossy magazine and several loose pieces of jewellery on her bedside table. A few articles of boys’ clothing had been thrown on Kristo’s bed, including a mariner’s sweater with thick white-and-blue stripes. Part of the bedding was still damp from a pair of green swim trunks.

  Sebastien stood over the boy’s nightstand. Underneath a handful of rocks and a pair of binoculars was a notebook. He picked it up and flipped through the pages. He couldn’t read the Greek words written in the curves of the boy’s handwriting, but it looked like it could be poetry. The lines of text scattered across the centre of the pages in lonely islands and wandering rivers.

  He closed the book and gripped it in his hands. The discovery agitated him. Kristo couldn’t be a poet.

  The air was dense with perfume as he walked across the sitting room and stepped through the door on the far wall. Light washed over the room from lamps suspended from the ceiling like floating orbs. It looked like Alexis had moved into her bedroom indefinitely. The dresser was covered with her things: a hairbrush with an ivory handle, several vials of perfume, a leather box with various compartments, a little bronze tree where she hung necklaces and earrings.

  She had even brought a photograph from home. It stood beside a vase of fresh flowers in a frame made of bevelled glass. The same image hung proudly in Kostas’s office. The four of them stood on the deck of a yacht with the wind in their hair. It was a strange thing to do, to bring this photo on holiday, but nothing this family did could surprise Sebastien. He wasn’t equipped to understand these people.

  The closet doors slid open to reveal an entirely separate little room. Shelves displayed several pairs of shoes arranged as meticulously as a museum exhibit. Sebastien flipped through the dresses and sweaters that hung from wooden hangers along the rods. Each item must have cost more than what his mother had earned in a week. He could tell just by how the fabric felt against his fingertips. He couldn’t comprehend this kind of excess.

  He was about to step out of the closet when something caught his eye. He pushed aside the other clothes with both hands. Hanging there was a slim dress. It was black, edged with red piping. A golden web of flowers and smoke was embroidered across the dress — a Chinese cheongsam. Unlike his mother’s favourite cheap red replica, this cheongsam was made to measure from the finest silk. Alexis Kourakis deserved only the finest. She expected it.

  Sebastien felt it coming, and there was nothing he could have done to stop the surge. His vision blurred and refocused as the blood rushed to his head. His lungs tightened, the rage pushing its way up his throat. Every muscle in his body flexed in protest, but it was no use.

  His hands pulled the dress off the hanger. It tore easily. He shook as he ripped it from collar to hem. Hands lashed out, grabbing gowns and cashm
ere cardigans. A growl rumbled from the back of his mouth as he tore everything apart. Buttons flew into the air. Silk floated to the floor like strips of skin.

  He stumbled out the closet doors and into the bedroom. A sweep of the arms and the floor was covered in cosmetics and jewels. He grabbed the vase of flowers and threw it against the headboard of the bed. It shattered like an egg, spilling water and petals across the walls and duvet.

  The Kourakis family portrait watched him from its bevelled frame. Their smiles hinted suppressed laughter. Sebastien held the frame in his hand, trying to decipher what was behind their eyes.

  It was pity.

  A sound escaped him like the roar of a wounded animal. He hurled the frame at the mirror that spanned the length of the dresser. It exploded into a thousand pieces. He could see his reflection in every jagged shard as it fell to the carpeted floor. The panic in his eyes. His mouth stretched open in an irregular shape.

  His head jerked toward a sound at the door. The breath caught in his throat as he looked into a pair of deep green eyes. The boy stared back at him. They stood there, frozen and silent, seeing something both familiar and incomprehensible.

  He could see Kristo was going to scream before the sound burst out his mouth. The boy turned to run away, but it was too late. Sebastien leapt across the room and tackled him to the ground. Kristo wriggled free and ran to the table in the middle of the sitting room. A barrage of books and magazines pelted Sebastien, knocking the cap off his head, but he couldn’t feel a thing. Within seconds, Kristo was locked in his arms.

  “Sssh,” Sebastien hissed, his hand clamped over the boy’s mouth. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Kristo could barely move despite how hard he struggled. His screams were completely muted.

  “Listen to me. I’m going to let you go. You’re going to stay quiet. You’ll forget you ever saw me. You returned to your cabin and nobody was here. You didn’t see anything. Do you understand?”

  Kristo’s eyes were wild as he fought harder. Sebastien was impressed. He tightened his grip and looked down at the frightened face. He knew this face so well. He had watched it take shape over the years, studied it from the other side of a screen. Now it was right in front of him. Flesh and bone. He wouldn’t hurt this boy, would he?

  “If you tell anyone you saw me here, I will kill your mother.”

  He looked into the boy’s eyes and knew their secret was safe. They were brothers, after all.

  THIRTEEN

  The Weakest of Men

  The sky was a soothing shade of blue as the Glacier pulled into port that morning. The city of Limassol on the island of Cyprus kissed the water with its tree-lined shore and seaside boulevard. Buildings old and new the colour of sun-bleached bone sprawled across the rolling hills in the distance.

  Kostas’s ban on off-duty appearances in guest areas proved easy to manoeuvre around. Staff could simply wear their uniforms and act like they were working to gain access to the upper decks. Every corner of the ship was linked by a network of crew corridors and stairways hidden behind the decorative walls of the guest areas. Unseen, Diya and Contessa were making their way through these passageways.

  An incident had occurred the previous night on Riviera Deck. They’d been told the entire floor was teeming with security like hounds on a fox hunt. Some sort of investigation was underway. Kostas was seen early in the morning, looking disturbed.

  The two women stepped through the heavy metal door that led to the seafoam-carpeted hallway. The door on this side was painted the same pale rose colour as the wall. The hounds were mostly clustered on the starboard side of the deck. The hall where the two women stood was clear. They wore matching grey uniforms, complete with pale pink aprons, borrowed from the housekeeping staff. Diya had never seen Contessa’s face void of makeup. Her beauty was natural, but she looked like a different woman — more vulnerable, perhaps, but less hidden.

  They knew deck commander Giorgos was on duty on Olympus, the name everyone used for the navigation bridge, covering for the captain who liked to sleep in. They would have plenty of time to do what they needed to do, uninterrupted.

  Contessa hesitated as they stood in front of the door to cabin 1423. She took a deep, silent breath. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, turning to her newfound ally.

  “I know you can,” Diya said. “This is how you get your power back.”

  Contessa nodded, convincing herself she agreed. Her fist shot up and knocked firmly against the door. The two of them stopped breathing in the silence that followed.

  The door opened to reveal a classic Greek woman, statuesque in the way she held herself. Elena was proud long before she married a commanding officer, but the fire within her had diminished over the years. Yet even as she stood there in a simple cotton robe with her dark hair tied back and no embellishment on her bare skin, there was something fierce behind her clear, cool eyes.

  “Elena.” Contessa’s voice was soft and sincere. There was no hint of the theatrical flair she often imbued her speech with. “May we come in?”

  Elena’s eyes scanned them from their flat-heeled shoes to the ruffled headpieces pinned into their hair. She knew they weren’t ordinary housekeepers. Her face was difficult to read as she nodded, stepping aside.

  The sitting room was almost identical to the suite around the corner belonging to Alexis Kourakis, although it was smaller. The paintings on the walls were different, more oblong than sharp-edged. The dry hills of Cyprus simmered beneath the sun outside the windows. A breeze drifted from the open balcony doors, permeating the air with the subtle scent of jasmine.

  “Please, take a seat.” Elena’s voice was deep and assured. She gestured to the cushioned sofa as she placed herself within an armchair. “Shall I order some tea?”

  Contessa could have used a cup of brandy, but she declined with an uncertain smile.

  Ever since the first kiss she shared with Giorgos two long years ago, his mysterious wife had haunted her. She would imagine Elena being a sad, helpless woman who had given up on life. As the affair progressed and her guilt intensified, her vision of Elena evolved as well to become spiteful and possessive. I’m liberating Giorgos from an unhappy marriage, she would tell herself.

  She had always known that none of this was true. Giorgos loved his wife. He would often remind her of that. Still, she let herself be comforted by her vision of the woman.

  Whenever Elena visited for a sailing, the married couple would pass freely through the Agora or sit in the audience during a performance. They didn’t have to hide behind locked doors. There was always more tension when the wife was on board. Contessa would see Giorgos less frequently during these weeks, but their lovemaking would be far more intense than usual.

  This was her first time meeting Elena face to face. Now that she could see the woman apart from the man, she saw they weren’t so different.

  Diya sat silently by Contessa’s side on the pale blue sofa. She was there for support. This wasn’t her conversation to have.

  “I need to tell you something.” There was no waver in Contessa’s voice. Diya was proud of her.

  “Go on.”

  “It’s about your husband.”

  Elena’s face was solid as stone. She waited patiently to hear what Contessa had to say, legs crossed and palms placed in her lap.

  “We’ve been having an affair for the past two years.”

  Elena blinked but kept her eyes fixed on the woman in front of her.

  “I’m not here to confront you,” Contessa went on, the features on her face softening. “I know what I did was wrong, and I take responsibility. I want it to end. I’m going to walk away from Giorgos, and you’ll never have to see me again. But I thought you should know.” She swallowed hard and tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ear. “If I were you, I would want to know.”

  A strange silence settled across the room. Something unseen and unspoken bound the three women together. It was neither hostile nor c
omforting. They simply shared the things that had been taken from them.

  “I know who you are,” Elena said, breaking the silence. “You have a beautiful voice.” She sighed, glancing down at her hands. “Giorgos is away at sea for months at a time. I’m no longer naive enough to think he stays faithful. He’s always been a weak man.” She laughed gently as if to herself. Her eyes wandered back up to Contessa. “I used to worry. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining the things he would do on this ship, the people he would do them with. It consumed me. But then one day I stopped worrying. It was out of my control. What was I to do? I couldn’t cage him like a bird.”

  “I’m sorry,” Contessa said, surprised, “but you’re going to let him get away with cheating?”

  “Sometimes I miss the days when I worried. At least then I knew I loved him. I could feel it. That’s what love is — doubt and dependence. It’s not that I don’t care anymore. I suppose I’ve just accepted the way things are.” Elena was calm. There was sadness in the creases of her face, but even it was worn proudly. “You’re still young. You have much more life to live. You’ll find someone new and forget about Giorgos, but you will remember me and avoid the mistakes I made. Then, when you’re my age, you won’t have this conversation with someone younger and more hopeful than yourself.”

  “You can do it, too.” Contessa’s tone sharpened as she leaned forward. “You’ve given him so much of your life; don’t let him take any more.”

  Elena offered a soft smile. “I turn fifty soon. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. My husband keeps his secrets while I fade away, but is it better to be alone?”

  “Yes.” The word came out of Contessa’s mouth instantly. With a quick glance at Diya, she went on. “It’s better to be alone than to wake up being afraid.”

  Uncertainty flashed across Elena’s face. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Contessa took a deep breath. “Does he ever hit you?”

  “Never.” Elena was surprised by the question. They could see she was telling the truth. Her eyes spotted the faint purple marks, and she understood. Getting up from her chair, she kneeled in front of Contessa and touched her gently on the arms. Her lips trembled. “Who did this to you?”