On the Java Ridge

by Jock Serong

  His head was starting up again. He slid open the desk drawer, grabbed the pills and swallowed them dry.

  If he was jammed between a pessimist and a blind optimist, then he was probably about right. If they were going to be re-elected on Saturday then the odds were he’d have harsh words with the PM again in the future. And he knew from Pollwise that his own position was secure—he was seen as firm and decisive; the No Duty to Rescue policy already an electoral winner, aided by the online advertising with a boat full of actors playing brown people looking dirty, poor and sinister.

  Even if the Opposition tipped them out they’d have to adopt the policy—any change of government represented an escalation where boats were concerned.

  He scrabbled around in the kitchenette and found coffee capsules, shoved one in the machine, stood there contemplating his knuckles on the sink. He reminded himself this election held no fears for him personally. His seat was safe. A win paved the way for steady advancement through Cabinet; a loss just changed the scene to the shadow ministry. Which might make for better timing where his personal goals were concerned.

  The coffee trickled dismally.

  It had almost surprised him, to be honest: a cleanskin like him having a knack for politics. But elite sports could burnish a career in a way that hacking your way through law firms and unions never could. All those years in the boats, stroke of this crew, bow of that one. Hard fucking work. Done for the love and the companionship. Dodging the boozers and the journeymen, pulling ergoes till you collapsed. Such a long road, so much of it torture, all of it done in obscurity—King’s Cup, even the World Champs and still it was for the love.

  The crema was forming—it looked fake.

  Standing on the Olympic podium, though, head and shoulders over the British and the Americans. That’s when the offers started to come, seemingly from everywhere: consultancies with finance houses, TV slots, motivational speaking (the hypocrisy of that—actually, you can’t have a life like mine, no matter how hard you believe in yourself). Sports media, which seemed kind of cheap; charities, a book offer…

  Then the discreet approaches at social events. Cass, you need to meet this guy…Both major parties and a couple of moist-handed operatives suggesting something independent. At first he baulked at politics. Just a crude popularity contest—sycophancy and begging. But the party assured him they could engineer a by-election to drop him into a safe seat, and he could see how that would look more dignified. Statesmanlike. Or at least not desperate.

  What they wanted, of course, was a celebrity face: a nodder for other people’s press conferences. A long career in backbench glad-handing, yelling Hear, hear! and collecting the super at the end. But he’d learnt fast that there wasn’t such a gulf in talent between him and the men—they were mostly men—in Cabinet.

  And one day he thought, why not? Why not me? The competitive drive in him waking, stirring.

  Shit. The coffee was too full.

  He held it level as he returned to the desk, like a child carrying a Mother’s Day breakfast, and landed it safely. Only a couple of drops on the carpet: the infamous wattle carpet that had done for his predecessor. A great idea that might have played well to the rural-sector whingers, until it was pointed out that the wool came from New Zealand and the weaving was done in China. One of many stumbles for poor Victor. They brought him into the party room’s embrace and sank the blade between his shoulders. And once they’d mopped the tiles they welcomed Cass in, a result that suited his opponents and supporters alike.

  Border Integrity. Even back in the days when it was called Immigration, it was a political graveyard, a place to bury rivals in a septic pit of controversy and complication. Like no other portfolio, this one was a lightning rod for hatred.

  But for Cassius Calvert, the cascading name changes that had preceded his tenure—Immigration to Immigration and Border Control to Border Control to Border Integrity—spoke of an evolution that led inexorably to him: a man of integrity with no interest whatsoever in immigration. This ministry was no burial but a rare political opportunity to remake the portfolio in his own image: rigorous, disciplined, deliberate.

  He asked himself the foundational questions for a few days and then he saw it clearly. You have a border. Desperate people on one side of it who do not consider themselves amenable to the rule of law. On the other side, the rule of law.

  So enforce the law. And if the law is inadequate to cope with the situation? Change it.

  How this portfolio had brought about political ruin for so many of his forebears was beyond him.

  By late afternoon he’d covered everything with the electorate office in a teleconference. They wouldn’t need him until election day, when they would want him to come over and meet the film crews at one of the booths. Casting his vote, smiling for the cameras—his borrowed son would have been an asset there; shame he was going home on Friday—while the onions sizzled and he stuffed the paper in the slot. The local volunteers would get the job done under their own momentum. Passionate people, happy to serve someone they believed in.

  He’d pick up the boy tomorrow, do the father thing somehow, despite the demands of the week. Fatherhood was about setting an example, really. Being a template. He hadn’t seen Rory since June but he imagined the kid got a lot out of it. Christ, his father was a federal minister and an Olympian. How many kids got to say that in the schoolyard?

  He checked in with Media to ensure they’d covered the morning cycle: unauthorised arrivals numbers well down compared to the same period under the previous government. Follow-ups from the policy announcement; the photo from yesterday of him on the bridge of the naval destroyer. And his time for the Lake Run, leaked to the fitness mags. Their deadlines would be after Saturday, of course; that one was pure vanity.

  SUNDAY NIGHT

  Offshore, Pulau Dana

  The Takalar had circled the island all day. Now night had come again.

  Roya could hear the disputes between the captain and the other men, sometimes in words she understood, and sometimes exchanges she had to figure out from gestures and reactions. He had been searching for a way into the lagoon, limping along on the disabled engine and trying to stay clear of the breaking waves that she felt were deliberately keeping them out. They’d see a break in the relentless white lines and think they’d found deep water, edge in a little closer to the spot and then turn tail when it exploded into spray the same as everywhere else. The frustration was tearing at all of them.

  It was a very small island. Their full journey around it each time took only a couple of hours, even at the poor speed they were making. But the air had become impossibly heavy, so thick that the Takalar seemed to be pushing through the atmosphere as much as the sea. There was no way of distinguishing the edge of the sea from the beginning of the sky: they had merged in the darkness. The damp was settling over everything: the timbers of the boat, people’s clothes, their itching skin.

  Halfway around their second lap, the rain started falling, gently at first but enough to obscure the details of the landmass.

  Eventually, a hubbub of voices indicated the men had found the opening in the reef that they were searching for, a place where patient inspection had revealed no breaking waves but a darker spill of deep water. When they stopped the boat directly off the opening, Roya could see straight in. There was the boat inside the lagoon. She could see a tiny light burning on board, could make out the gleaming wet links of the anchor chain.

  Hamid lay in his usual spot on the tip of the bow, looking out into the darkness towards the other boat. She had apologised to him for kicking the binoculars away and he had accepted it, but he seemed wary of her now. She’d sat down with him, his hair wet from the rain: he pretended to flinch and she laughed at that, but he had no more tall stories to share.

  Others had seen the boat and were now calling to it, waving their arms over their heads. But if there was anyone on board they didn’t stir, and soon the captain ordered them to be silent until
they were safely inside the lagoon, in case the boat belonged to officials who might prevent them entering. He wanted to wait until well after dark before making a run through the reef pass. Roya could tell that the dark was a cover for sneaking around, and she didn’t understand that. They weren’t doing anything wrong. She sat on the deck beside her mother, unconcerned about the rain but increasingly worried about the ocean.

  Near the mouth of the narrow channel she had a clear view to each side. The waves curling along the sides of the reef were frightening, much taller than the boat and gouging hungrily at the sea before them, like they wanted to tear the reef off the end of the island. She could see them churning great boulders of foam in their bellies, reaching out towards the boat, trying to grab hold of it. The sea was alive; pocked with heavy raindrops, angry and cunning—it wanted to dash their hopes.

  A boy of about her age was watching the same waves, held tightly by his father. They were Hazaras too: he was the kind of boy she might have seen in the street. He looked briefly back at Roya, his big green eyes pleading. Amid the clamour of voices, shouting, arguing and crying, he suddenly wailed in fear.

  Even where they were, in deep water, the boat rode clumsily over the swells, wallowing like a sick animal. Roya stood up and steadied herself against the wall of the cabin. Her mother watched her with concern.

  ‘Darling, be careful. The waves are coming over now.’

  They were. The waves were coming over, and the voices were growing louder and more panicked. The rain was drumming harder on the roof of the boat and trickles of water were running off its edges onto the people standing below. They had nowhere to move to: they looked up in frustration at the water coming down on them but could do nothing.

  Someone in the engine bay demanded a lighter. Someone else roared back You’ll blow us up you fool. A young man produced a glowing mobile phone and passed it through the hatch.

  ‘The engine mounts!’ came the dismayed cry from below. ‘They’ve been filed off!’

  Roya turned the words over in her mind. She wasn’t sure what engine mounts were, but she knew about metalwork from her father, knew what filing entailed. So this was why the engine had worked its way loose, but she didn’t understand the logic of it. Filed off. Deliberately? Why would anyone do that to these engine mounts if they had to go to sea?

  An angry knot of men confronted the captain at the wheelhouse door. Roya could see that he had drawn his knife and was holding it low at his hip. The group were shouting at him, threats and curses over the noise of the rain. They were approaching the point she had seen before, when a mob can no longer help the headlong rush into violence.

  ‘Why would I harm the boat?’ he yelled back. ‘I’m depending on it, same as you are!’

  Blub. Blub. Blub. The engine’s heartbeat was feeble and irregular. Her mother pulled her closer against her hip, either to shelter her from the rain or to protect her from the angry men. The captain pushed the nearest man hard in the chest and he staggered against the others. ‘This is not the time. Why don’t you concentrate on fixing it, and let me work out how to get in here.’

  He pointed over his shoulder. The island was getting closer, and so were the breaking waves. Everything was racing towards something, but Roya didn’t know what. The captain fought the wheel again. His movements were forceful but the boat responded only to the sea: its high, sweeping nose was rising and falling, but it was pointed towards the reef. The deafening clatter of rain on the roof of the boat made conversation impossible.

  And then, at the worst possible moment, the engine stopped. There was a grinding sound then a muffled bang, followed by a cloud of bitter black smoke escaping through the hatch.

  Sudden silence. The darkness closed in.

  Then another chorus of shouting, another stampede up the deck as a wedge of men rushed forward to renew their grievances with the captain, and others began clambering into the hatchway that led to the engine, coughing, their shirts around their mouths as they went. Enough of them had moved that the boat began to ride alarmingly down at the front, and the captain again emerged from the wheelhouse to yell at them, get back. He scared Roya with his furious voice, his hard face, but she had a feeling the failure of the engine had surprised him as much as the others.

  She understood, though she had never been through this before, that the boat was paralysed now. It could only await the will of the sea. There were people praying, loudly beseeching Allah to deliver them. The white foam of the biggest waves was only a few boat-lengths from them. It made devouring sounds: this giant faceless malice was something new to her.

  The men had resorted to tearing timbers from the decking and using them as paddles. But their thrashing at the sea was futile—it had them in its grip. Roya bent to her mother and reached around her back. Her hair was wet through. The straps of the lifejacket hung limp because tying them had been too uncomfortable for her. Roya made the knots fast and her mother hugged her. The lurches of the boat pressed her into her mother’s chest and then pulled her away. She held onto the straps a moment longer so they wouldn’t separate.

  Then, simultaneously, a loud noise and a violent shudder.

  The sound and the feeling were both unfamiliar and unmistakable to Roya—the front of the boat had slammed into something hard. People who were standing fell over. People sitting slewed across the slippery deck and tumbled onto their backs. Immediately the boat swung around the axis of its bow. Timbers cracked and popped as the weight of the hull in the current twisted them free.

  Roya’s eyes, straining in the dark, could make out the line of the next wave coming towards them. The wall of whiteness was a horizontal avalanche, growing larger as it approached.

  She grabbed for a hold. So did her mother, but their hands were weightless, like the futile screams of a nightmare.

  The nose of the boat, almost perpendicular to the swell, sliced deeply through the whitewater and the wave was unable to force its will upon the sides of the hull. The boat rose up and floated free again, but now it was caught in the spill of water returning to sea off the back of the reef. Without power, and because the torrent of water was pushing them from behind, the boat fishtailed from side to side and raced helplessly out to sea.

  Roya imagined that the island might be home to some rescuer, waiting out there in the darkness for them. But this far from Herat, she felt sure they wouldn’t understand Dari. She knew the English word from her book, and she hurled it into the night with all the force in her slight body.

  Help.

  Her mother clutched her harder in response. She had held Roya through bombardments and house searches, through the screams from unknown horrors in other homes. The strength of her embrace was the core of Roya’s world.

  The next line of foam was rushing forward, bigger than the last. Roya could see it because she was standing, though her mother could not have known it was coming. She could feel the tight grip of her mother’s fingers on her thigh, hear her chanting something quietly under her breath. She nuzzled into her warm belly once more, searching for her sister.

  Some of the passengers had gone below, though it felt like the wrong instinct to Roya. Amid the furious ocean there was no human sound on deck: some people standing, watching the wave, but no one capable of words. The boat swung faintly left then straightened as the distance closed. For a second Roya felt relief, thinking the nose would again spear through most of the impact. But something took hold of the dying boat and this time threw it to its right, so that the whole starboard side of the vessel faced the impending blow.

  Roya could feel it, that this was the worst possible way for the wave to meet the boat. She counted down the final breaths before the impact, looked at her mother and dropped to the deck. The last move she made was to wrap her arms around her mother’s ankles.

  They were up high for an instant, the rain in the air around them. Then the furious water descended and the night disappeared.

  The force of it was the combined anger of the
whole sea and sky. The great roaring of the fist coming down, the timbers in agony, shrieking and splintering. Crashes, voices calling, rushing water and the ringing of struck metal and the deck was tilting up and up and up and people were sliding past them, some falling weightless through the air, and Roya and her mother were wedged against the small timber support that had been their resting place. The boy, the little one who’d been so sick, came racing past with his limbs flailing, his mother still reaching for him. He tumbled and slid across the deck until his head met one of the heavy timber buttresses with a dreadful thud. He remained there limp beside the fatal timber, palms upward beside his small hips.

  As she slipped and grabbed, Roya looked down at the water surging beneath her, people already clambering to regain a hold on the boat while the sea pulled them away. There was another massive impact as the next wave hit the underside of the boat. Again it rode high and vertical for an instant, a ladder to the dark sky. Roya and her mother clung on, as others fell and cursed. The air filled with the smell of diesel, and the people in the water coughed and retched as it filled their lungs.

  She saw the captain hit the water on his back.

  A baby floating face down.

  Empty lifejackets swirling.

  She turned her face into the dark wooden corner they were hiding in, but fear drew her to look down again, to see the rushes of white from the exploded wave. Silent fingers curling up towards them, reaching for them.

  In that moment, the boat stood tall on its end. Then it shifted straight down onto its stern, crunching hard onto the reef. Now the land is attacking us as well, she thought. There were bombing sounds again; crumpled air, giant forces. The stern had broken off and the boat was teetering over. The sea rushed forward to take them, and Roya felt only sadness. Her sister, the one she had never met but felt that she knew. Her mother, herself.

  Their resistance had ended.