by T. C. Farren
‘Ah, no,’ Tamba groans. ‘I hate that game.’
‘Okay then, Remote-Mo knitting,’ Olivia teases.
Tamba’s look of despair makes Janeé giggle. ‘Table tennis,’ he bargains. ‘The real thing.’
Meirong glances up at the orange glow shining through the portholes. She shakes her head. ‘Blackout again tonight. The rec room has windows. You can’t switch on that light.’
‘There are blinds on those windows,’ Tamba argues.
‘We’ll shut them,’ Olivia pleads.
‘No. No games tonight.’
Tamba holds up a finger, ‘One game.’ He forgets his fury about Romano’s daughter. ‘Come and play, Meirong. I need you on my team.’
Meirong laughs. ‘Okay. One game. I’ll come up to make sure those windows are sealed.’
‘Do you want to come, Malachi?’ Janeé asks me kindly.
I shake my head ruefully. Not me. I would love to watch Meirong playing table tennis in her white minidress, but I have some slightly more important things to do this evening.
I would love to give them all a big hug, stretch my arms around Janeé, send love to their loved ones and say, Thank you, thank you for this nightmare week.
I turn at the door, my imaginary tongue itching to speak. But they are scraping their chicken bones into a shallow grave, all of them helping so they can go and play ping-pong.
Next time, I tell them silently before I leave. We will play ping-pong in heaven. The real thing.
* * *
When I reach the bedroom, the sight of my soft pillow slaughters the tiny hero in me. Thousands of tons of sea smash me into a foetal position. I desperately want to sleep and let this last chance drift past. Instead I force my eyes open. Listen.
Four-way ping-pong taps at my cranium.
* * *
I roll off the bed, land on my feet like a panther. I flick off my shoes, peel off my socks. Barefoot, I pad silently down the corridor. The sudden three steps, I glide down them. The LED globes shine their dim, deathly light, sealed from the sea by the brutal design of the rig. I flit past the two fingers of moonlight poking near the canteen roof, past Olivia’s laboratory. I hurry past the women’s room with its smell of chemical perfume. Did Janeé spray her underarms before the ping-pong foursome? Is someone still in there?
The perfume tickles my nostrils. I want to sneeze. Here it comes. I pinch my nose, use fifteen years of practice to stifle my sound. A muted explosion detonates in my sinuses. I break into a run in case another sneeze attacks me. I shove on the door to the central stairwell. It howls like an unneutered cat fed on chicken intestines. It shrieks louder as I shut it.
I drop down the spine of the rig on the pads of my feet, which seem to have developed extra cushioning. The growing darkness finally presses me to stillness. I fumble for my cell phone, find the torch switch. Ah. A ray of clear, white light. I shine it down the stairs as I climb down, down, follow the echo of the eternal war between water and metal.
My torch finally finds the steel door to the shark pit.
Yes! The green light is still glowing on the door lock. I kill the torch on my Samsung, bury it in my pocket. I dare not use it out-side in case Romano is patrolling up there and spots the pinprick of light. I seize the steel handle. The heavy door opens like a dream.
* * *
I step onto the platform above the shark pit. White foam flies up from the black morass, but the moon is out of sight, perhaps seducing some rusted machinery higher up on the rig. Are the sharks sleeping?
I sidle onto the narrow ledge that runs past the sewage pump. Dark water rushes up to try and smash me off my perch but I grasp the flimsy railing, creep like a fugitive along a high city roof. I shuffle all the way to the massive column Romano pointed to. I grab at the edge of the shadowy opening, swing myself away from the sadistic sea.
I grip my phone, shine my white beam inside the huge, hollow cylinder. A chain thicker than my body plunges through the middle of a chasm, about ten metres across. I shine my torch upwards. The chain is wound around a massive winch. My light catches a thin ladder running up the wall of the cylinder. I aim my light down. The ladder plunges into eternal darkness. I put one foot on a rung. The metal is slimy from decades of darkness and salty sea mist. I need my sneakers. I cling like I have suction pads on my fingers and my feet.
I have got to save Vicki from dying like a lab rat.
The breath in my hollow body matches the rush and the roar of the insomniac sea. I climb down, down fifty-seven rungs that I pray someone has welded with obsessive care.
I hang on with one hand, shine my light down. My torch finds a splintered curve hanging five metres below me. A shattered hull, it must be. A snapped metal beam swings at ninety degrees. A ragged canvas hangs off it. The boom of a boat, what else could it be? It looks like the mast is entirely missing. The yacht is pointing directly up, its bow lifted clear of the water while the sea chews mercilessly on its back end. The massive chain drifts sideways, tightens, suspends the yacht in the middle of the column.
Help me, I plead to the ghost of the girl sailor. Help me to find your precious communication device.
I climb the ladder past an expanse of broken deck. Past a jagged hole in the hull smashed by a container of corn submerged in the sea, or car engine parts on their way from Africa. I stop at the place where the boom and the amputated mast meet, shine my light on some letters painted in cursive. Sea Sprite RF547. She must be about twelve metres.
BANG. The boom swings towards me.
‘Arggh!’ I duck just in time. It jerks, hangs like a torn limb.
Who is stronger, the malevolent sea or the spirit of Frances?
I take three convulsive breaths, watch the boom as if it is a striking snake. The sea stops gnawing on the tail of the boat for a moment. I stretch my hand to the snapped railing. Where to put my feet? I shine my torch on a silver winch the size of a tortoise. Measure the distance. I secure my phone between my teeth.
I kick for the silver fitting. Find it.
I am part of this yacht.
I grab on to the splintered hatch, swing a leg inside it. Beautiful, beautiful strong body.
I shine my torch inside the waterlogged yacht. My brain makes a frightened inventory. Sea water, lapping five metres below me. Soggy beds, upended. Floating orange life jackets, a tin that says, TEA. The wooden walls of the yacht are bowed and smooth. Beneath the navigation table, Frances said. Where would I find such a thing?
Ah, a board with switches to the right, three metres above the water line. A table top tilted vertical. I hang by my fingers in the dark cavity. One big toe is all that can reach. I hang on with one hand, shine my torch down. If I fall I will plunge into a black, wet chasm deep enough to drown me. The plastic cover of a paper book floats beneath me. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Is that supposed to be funny?
My fingers must be bleeding. I am not, after all, a red-haired orangutan. I use my throbbing arms to pull myself back out.
Oh, God, what’s the time?
Think, Malachi. You have promised thirty-nine prisoners the chance to live with their dead albatrosses slung around their necks.
That’s it.
I drag at a thick wet rope wound around the winch. I haul out five metres, tie a double knot on the fitting. As I tie the free end of the rope around my chest I taste the unmistakeable flavour of blood. My lips are bleeding from their desperate grip on my only communication device. My sun, my moon, my tongue.
I snarl deep in my trachea, slither into the hatch. This time I get a foot to the navigation table, let myself fall. I land across the thin edge of the desk, utter a ghostly scream. Someone has lit a fire in my left lung. I shriek with each breath, keep rhythm with the rocking sea.
Come on, Malachi. You have survived worse than a cracked rib in your uncharmed life.
I slide down the table top. Please. My toes hit something solid. I feel with my bare feet. Is it a treasure chest?
I shine my light. It is grey, not black. And it is certainly not a box. It has a lower edge and a raised face with empty cable inlets. A padded black case is taped to it with silver duct tape. I pull my phone from my mouth, read the lettering along the bottom edge. Garmin 1000945 Voyage Data Recorder plus Very High Frequency Radio.
‘Bayunga na.’ My father’s voice comes to me.
Good boy.
Now how the heck do I get it up? The black box weighs the same as a two-kilogram chicken, I remember the weight from the millions of mistakes I stopped on their way to China. I press it into my broken rib. I have survived self-inflicted mutilation, I can handle a sore rib. I release the noose from beneath my arms, tie the black box up like a parcel for the post. I clamber onto it, stand up.
I kick off the table, swing. The black box hits something glass. A microwave perhaps. On the return swing my toes find a metal object, perhaps a tap. I thrust off it, reach for the faint reprieve in the darkness above me.
‘Agh!’ My ribs spit and crackle like burning kindling as I pull my torso through the opening. ‘Thank you-u-u,’ I groan through my clamped teeth. I mean it.
I pull the black box up, untie it.
BANG. I duck the evil boom. I haul myself back on to the ladder. My tears do nothing to put the fire out in my ribs. I climb the slippery rungs in searing agony. I bite on my Samsung, hang onto my black box, the only two things that make my life worth living.
Thank you, thank you for the book about the albatross. I might have been swimming in circles until Romano blasted the yacht to smithereens with Trobancubane. Is that the name of it?
Climb, Malachi. Stop with your loquaciousness.
I clamber from the steel column with my torch switched off. The sea is no longer my enemy. The smashing waves in the shark pit are white signs of welcome erupting for me. I smile at the stars swimming in the purple water. The pain in my rib separates from my body and suspends next to me as I walk along the narrow ledge.
I shut the heavy door behind me. I wipe my cell phone on my trousers, try the menu button. The screen responds beautifully. Thank you.
* * *
I climb up, up the spine with the solo sailor’s treasure chest. What will I say if someone catches me? Can you believe, I stumbled on this black box while strolling around on a sky-facing yacht?
The stairs lighten gradually. I switch off my torch, pass the maintenance door. I climb twelve more stairs, searching. At the foot of the next flight I drop to my haunches, fit the black box into a shadow that seems specially made for it.
I let out a long sigh. Now my rib hurts.
I wind slowly back down.
I open the maintenance door. The rogue cat screams a call to war. I have no choice but to let it scream twice, shut the damn door. Listen.
My heart starts again at the soft, soft sound of tired ping-pong.
I creep along the corridor, let my feet take my dead weight on their pillowy flesh. There is a long pause in the collisions of plastic bat and plastic ball.
The tapping starts again, desultory. The fire in my ribs takes me down the passage to my bedroom. I enter in darkness.
‘Aaaagh.’ I lay myself down on my feather duvet.
I set my alarm in the dark. Double-check. Yes. Beethoven will play at fifteen minutes to midnight. I need to rest my broken bones for what might be the last sleeping hour of my life. I sink into the middle of the smouldering flames. Sleep immediately.
* * *
Who comes to me? Not Cecilia, not Hamri. Not even Vicki to bring me a blessed wet dream. It is Romano’s daughter who visits me. She looks like she did in the photo. Her eyes are torch lights, but they are laughing, not pleading for oxygen. Milja is sprinkling salt onto a woman’s head, creating a streak of white from her forehead to her crown. The moon strokes the path with a golden beam, lights it like Midas. The woman smiles at me.
‘Tell Eulalie to marry him.’
The salt forms a moon path across the sea.
‘Who?’ I ask the moonbeam sleepily.
‘The man with the wife in ashes,’ the moon answers me. I try to follow it with my dreamy eyes, but a loud bang cuts off my pathway to heaven.
‘Shit!’ someone says.
The first feeling comes from my burning rib. I am not in heaven yet.
Tamba switches on his lamp, rubs his head. ‘Fuck it.’
Well, if that is his bedtime prayer, I wish him good luck.
Tamba wrestles out of his clothes, kicks them to the floor. He lies down on his bed, ill tempered. I check the time. 11.26.
I lie stiff like a corpse, pray that Tamba stops cursing and goes to sleep. He pulls the covers up, tosses towards the wall. He flips to the other side.
‘Malachi?’ he whispers.
Sleep, I urge him fiercely.
He says louder, ‘Malachi.’
I fake deep, slow breathing. Tamba breathes deeper, slower in sympathy. After eleven minutes he makes a funny little rattle in the pit of his throat. I watch his body ease. His dreadlocks fall away from his face, show a finer, more breakable jaw than the one I stare up at from the factory floor. His ear is almost without an earlobe. Delicate.
* * *
I hang my feet off the bed. The pain attacks me viciously. Get thee hence.
Help me, Hamri.
It separates again, floats next to me as I sit up slowly. My mattress creaks. One knee makes a tiny crack as I stand up. It is the same knee Hamri flung himself onto to try and silence me. I switch off the alarm before Beethoven sabotages me. Slide my hand into my pillow, steal the plastic sacs of medicine one by one. I pull my stomach in and pack them beneath my belt. The rig is cool at almost midnight, but I begin to sweat under the plastic.
Who is the woman with the silver streak? I begin to feel feverish. Why did my ancestors not come to guide me?
11.41.
If I can open the door because of a stupid sachet of salt, I will take this as a sign that heaven is on our side.
I unravel the lanyard in slow motion. Tamba rubs his nose with the back of his hand. I practise my deep, peaceful breathing. Tamba breathes slower, falls back to sleep. I want to kiss his forehead. He is sweet, this man, especially when his wicked green streak is covered by his eyelids.
I pick up my sneakers with my fingertips. This time I will take them for better grip. My thighs are more prepared than me. They know the word ‘escape’, they have been waiting. The door creaks like it has a horrible sense of humour.
‘Malachi?’
My heart bangs like a bird flying into glass.
Tamba sits up, stares blindly at me. ‘Oh.’ He lies back heavily. ‘Midnight shift.’
I am a mere black shadow someone painted in the doorway. Tamba farts. He chuckles and rolls towards the wall.
11.50.
The fart seems to put Tamba swiftly to sleep. I shut the door to a crack, listen. A soft snore rasps from his voicebox. Like a baby that has been burped, he sleeps blissfully. I squeeze the door shut behind me.
* * *
I tiptoe down the corridor to the cultivation hall. I sit on the first spiral stair, panting for no reason other than I am about to commit mass suicide. I pull on my sneakers, gaze at the door in the white nightmare light. A big obstruction has appeared in my throat, soft but intractable, like a lump of Janeé’s batter. Air sneaks through my nostrils, keeps me living. I walk to the door.
‘Na me sahn,’ Cecilia called me. Light of my life.
* * *
The door swings open as if on a spring. Salt sprays on my black trousers, scatters on the floor. It can’t be true.
I stare at the torn paper hanging from the latch. It worked!
* * *
The prisoners are jerking from their wombs, teetering on their buttocks, their eyelids torn open. I leave the door ajar, set my cell phone to Whisper. Josiah is staring, the scars in his eyes as thick as keloid tissue. He committed mass murder, my mind howls at me. How can you free him?
No. The sachet of salt is all
I must think of.
I must not judge.
Samuel is crouching as if at a starter block. Vicki is on her hands and knees, gazing at me. Eulalie’s hands are flat against the door of her cage, ready to shove. Sweat trickles from the plastic sacs against my belly-button. I must do what the dream woman said, in case this is the last time we ever speak. I go close to the witch, type in the open.
My African translator whispers, ‘I dreamed of a woman with a white streak in her hair.’
Eulalie’s breath rasps in.
‘She said you must marry the man with the wife in ashes.’
Eulalie groans. She nods, her grey eyes smouldering in the eerie dimness. ‘The man who loves me.’ She touches her crown. ‘His wife was struck by lightning when she was three.’
Of course! The man with the wife in ashes.
Vicki brings us back to terrifying reality. ‘Malachi?’
I check my timepiece. ‘Eleven fifty-eight. At midnight I will cut the power off. You only have three seconds to open up.’
The whisper flies down the aisles as if on a bird’s wings. The wings shut to stillness. We wait, all of us, barely breathing.
I check my wrist. ‘One minute,’ I type.
I watch the numbers switch to 11.59. Hold up one finger. Vicki whispers for me:
‘One.’
The prisoners take up the count. ‘Two. Three. Four . . .’ Eulalie counts too, her eyes curiously happy. I turn my back on Vicki’s frightened, counting mouth.
‘Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen . . .’
I run from the hall.
I fly up the spiral stairs, crouch on the second-highest step. My fingers find the metal flap easily. I shine my cell phone light onto it. It is striated, covered with greasy paint. I can’t get the damn thing up.
Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine . . . Thirty seconds to get it open.
I dig my sore fingers into the seam, pull hard on it. My fingers slip. I do a crooked backward somersault down three stairs. My head hits the metal. Something trickles down my temple. Blood.
I shudder, check the time. Nineteen seconds. I launch at the metal plate again, croak softly, ‘Please!’
My scrabbling fingertips sink into a slit along the top edge. It flicks down easily.