Too Close to the Wind

by Richard Attree

  He nodded.

  “As I said, Nick, I was delighted to have an English speaker to converse with, but it’s a real bonus to be gifted such a knowledgeable and erudite one.”

  I blushed. It was the first time anyone had used either of those adjectives to describe me. Of course, I was flattered but I was also wary that perhaps I was somehow being ‘groomed’.

  Over dinner the Master resumed our discussion, quoting the rest of the ‘gazing into the abyss’ text: ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.’

  “You see Nick, popular opinion of Nietzsche, in our age of individual freedom and liberal democracy, is that he was some kind of philosophical monster.”

  I nodded and said that from the little I knew about him that opinion might have something to do with the Nazis championing his ideas.

  He stared at me. For a moment I thought he was about to expose himself as a proud follower of Adolf Hitler, or worse, an actual Nazi war criminal.

  No, he can’t be—surely he’s not old enough? I thought to myself. Get a grip, mate!

  “You are correct, Nick. The Nazis misappropriated many of his ideas. For example, his theories of ‘Master-Slave Morality’, the ‘Übermensch’, and his conviction that mankind must evolve, through natural selection, to the ultimate goal: the ‘Superman’ who is beyond Good and Evil.”

  With ideas like those it’s hardly surprising the Nazis hero-worshipped him, I thought to myself. He could see I was sceptical and he was determined to put me straight:

  “Friedrich Nietzsche was no monster. He was fighting his own monsters. After his decline into madness, his sister twisted his words and he became the most misunderstood thinker of his century.”

  This didn’t allay my anxiety but now he was in full flow and I didn’t dare interrupt him.

  “The Nazis distorted everything to fit their evil agenda. I named my boat the ‘Abyss’ to remind the world of the consequences. I’m sure you’ve noticed: she has two hulls ...” He gestured expansively around the catamaran. “I considered naming them separately: ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, but I think that would have been confusing for the harbour master.”

  I laughed at this attempt at humour—it seemed to be expected of me, but I was finding the conversation hard work.

  “I can give you some books that will shed more light on this. We have an extensive library onboard the Abyss and you’re welcome to make use of it in your remaining time with us.”

  “Thank you, that would be helpful”—a polite reply to buy time while I tried to work out the rules of this strange game of philosophical chess. My nose for a deal (or was it a threat?) was twitching like a dog’s. I’d understood that I’d be leaving the next morning so how much reading did he expect me to get through in my “remaining time”? Besides, I objected to being groomed—as most dogs do. I decided to make my own move:

  “Perhaps it would also help if you could tell me a little about your background?”

  “—” No reply, just a tense pause while he probed me from behind those damn glasses.

  I swallowed and tried a different strategy:

  “After all, you know all about me now but you’ve told me nothing about yourself: where you’re from, where you were heading with the yacht ...”

  He leaned back in his chair, took a sip of wine and averted those probing lenses, gazing instead into the distance.

  “Very well Nick, let me put the record straight …”

  I looked past his shoulder at the lights of the city, while he spoke softly to me, like a father telling his son a story …

  “I was born in Buenos Aires, in nineteen fifty-three. My father was a German doctor, Dr Ludwig Langer, a psychotherapist who studied with Carl Jung in the thirties. He was the leader of a group of radical thinkers who were experimenting with alternative systems of morality. They were interested in synthesising nonwestern ideas, Chinese Taoism and Indian Tantric thinking for instance, with those of the great European philosophers. You could say they were trying to give evolution a helping hand, to progress the human race towards Nietzsche’s Übermensch.”

  For me, this “experiment” in human evolution had chilling resonances with Fascism and again I wondered about his politics and his past.

  “They were searching for a new way of living together, an alternative to conventional society, an ‘alternative lifestyle’ if you like. Perhaps you could describe them as the original hippies—thirty years ahead of their time.”

  I smiled. Now he had my attention.

  “Their ideas resurfaced and became popular in the nineteen sixties—in Timothy Leary’s work, for instance. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

  “Vaguely” I replied. “Didn’t he have something to do with the campaign to legalise LSD?”

  “That’s correct. Like my father, he saw psychoactive substances as a catalyst for spiritual enlightenment, a way of changing society for the better.”

  “But surely drugs like LSD didn’t exist in the nineteen-thirties?”

  “Correct again, Nick. My father travelled extensively and he came across natural examples of these substances—mushrooms and cactus plants for instance. They’ve been used for hundreds of years by indigenous people as a gateway to a separate reality.”

  I was familiar with that phrase. It was the title of one of the books Robo had introduced me to. The author, Carlos Castaneda, was an anthropologist who travelled into the Mexican desert to study an indigenous tribe who used peyote as he’d just described.

  “My father brought back samples of these substances from his travels and his group were experimenting with them in their commune in Bavaria during the thirties.”

  This was all very interesting, but I still had my doubts …

  “You mentioned that Nietzsche was a guiding light for both your father’s group and the Nazis. Did Ludwig have any sympathy with their ideas or their methods?”

  His lip curled, a flicker of a cynical smile.

  “The Nazis plagiarised the group’s ideas, distorting them and eventually putting them to horrific use in their concentration camps. They forced my father to oversee some of their appalling experiments. At the end of the war, he managed to escape from the nightmare his country had become. The rest of the group either perished or were imprisoned by the allies’ war-crimes tribunal.”

  I nodded. So his father had collaborated with the Nazis under duress. That didn’t necessarily make him a war criminal but he’d escaped the consequences nonetheless.

  “My father made a new life in Argentina. He started a business which became very successful and met my mother, who was much younger than him. I am their only child and I had a privileged education at a private British school. In the seventies, a brutal dictatorship was in power. Anyone who opposed the Junta simply ‘disappeared’. I left the country to study and eventually teach, in Dublin.”

  So that explains his accent, I thought to myself—a mix of the Queen’s English with some Spanish inflexions, soft Irish vowels and hard German consonants.

  “Ireland is a special place for me, Nick ...”

  “And for me as well!” I interrupted. “Although I’ve never been there.”

  He looked at me, surprised. I explained that my mother’s family were from Ireland and I’d adopted her surname, partly because of the connection with Ned Kelly.

  “You must go there one day, Nick. It’s a magical place but like your outlaw namesake, it’s seen its fair share of troubles.”

  He paused and stared into the distance.

  “While I was living in Dublin my parents divorced and then my father died. The circumstances were somewhat tragic but that needn’t concern us now ...”

  He gazed out to sea and I sensed that grief had overtaken nostalgia.

  “When we examined his will we found he’d left everything to me: his wealth, some valuable art treasures and his journal. But there was one condition: to claim my inheritance I had to promise to continue his work. In ex
change for this undertaking, I would never need to earn my living again. I didn’t know what to do …”

  He paused again, perhaps reliving this dilemma. It was a beautiful evening. A full moon suffused the marina with ghostly light and a warm breeze tugged at the rigging, teasing playful rhythms from the ropes. Neither of us disturbed the gentle symphony of marine sounds and the Master’s story remained paused for several minutes. Eventually, he pressed the ‘play’ button and resumed his narrative:

  “I’d never been close to my father. He was always a distant figure who rarely spoke about his work, or his past. Of course, I respected him and I was grateful for my privileged education, but we didn’t have much contact after I left Argentina. I was quite happy living a modest life as an academic in Dublin and I wasn’t tempted by his wealth, to be honest. But then I read his journal and it changed everything …”

  He’d built the tension to this cliffhanger moment. Now he had me on the edge of my seat:

  “Everything? Really? So what was in it?”

  He stared at me, weighing up whether I should be trusted with his father’s secrets. Then he nodded to himself, as if he’d just made an important decision, and began to reveal the contents of Ludwig Langer’s journal. It was quite a story … his studies with Jung, his travel adventures, his spiritual journey, his experiments with psychoactive substances, ‘alternative living’ with his Group, his struggle for survival as the waves of hatred gathered and darkness descended over Europe ...

  His father had set it all down in this journal, describing everything with meticulous care and it had remained hidden until his death. When the Master read it he knew what he had to do …

  “I realised I could do nothing better with my life than to continue my father’s work and try to achieve his goal—the goal that had been stolen by the Nazis—the evolution of humanity to the next level.”

  I frowned. It was all as disturbing as it was confusing and my expression betrayed my doubts.

  “I can see you’re not convinced, Nick. Some of my father’s ideas are unconventional, I admit. Possibly even dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands. Perhaps one day you may get the chance to read his journal and judge for yourself.”

  I shrugged. Perhaps … but the next morning I expected to be back on terra firma, dealing with the next chapter of my own life. Right then I needed sleep. I was exhausted and a little drunk.

  I mumbled my apologies, stumbled downstairs to my cabin and fell into bed. I was unconscious within seconds—no dreams, no voices in my head.

  5

  Terra Firma

  Santa Cruz marina, Tenerife. Wednesday, October 28, 08:15. Carlos woke me with a discreet knock, a cup of his superb coffee and yet another bathrobe. As I opened my eyes I was disoriented for a moment—the hangover was familiar but why wasn’t I in my apartment in El Médano?

  Carlos opened the shutters and light flooded in. I sat up in bed and took in the view through the porthole. The marina was bustling with activity, a reminder that it was time to revisit terra firma and confront the problems that were waiting for me there.

  How long had I been cocooned in the closed world of the Abyss? I was losing track of time like a prisoner in solitary confinement. Perhaps I could work it out by the bathrobes—they were like scratches on the wall of my cell. A wry smile—of course I wasn’t a prisoner, I was the Master’s guest and I could leave whenever I wanted. But I had no clothes and no money. My only possessions were my trusty wave-board, wetsuit and harness.

  Carlos announced that breakfast was served. I arrived on deck to find another lavish banquet waiting for me. How on earth could he prepare meals that would be the envy of a top restaurant in a tiny galley at sea? “No worries” I thought to myself, “just make sure you do it justice, Nick Kelly.”

  I sat down and greeted the Master. He wasted no time in pleasantries:

  “So Nick, I’ve been thinking about your situation and I have a proposal to put to you ...”

  He left a pause while he let this sink in.

  “But first I should explain why I’ve chosen you for this opportunity. I believe it is more than good fortune that our paths coincided out there in the Atlantic ocean.”

  He stared out to sea and spoke quietly, as if to himself:

  “There are greater forces at work here. Some people call them: ‘God’ but as you stated: he has been dead for some time. Others use the word: ‘destiny’ but I prefer to think of a gravitational field—a force that attracts certain people to each other.”

  I understood what he meant—Robo and I were an example of ‘gravitational attraction’ and perhaps he and I were another. After all, he was the only other person, apart from Robo, who’d persuaded me to reveal something of the individual behind my wall.

  There was a long silence, broken only by the seagulls’ plaintiff cries. I waited, eager to hear his “proposal”, but he seemed lost in his own world. I wondered whether his mind was quite as sharp as I’d thought, or whether there might be a few kangaroos loose in his upper paddock. Eventually, I had to cough to remind him of my existence. He turned back to me, apologised, and resumed where he’d left off:

  “You have great inner strength and enormous potential, Nick.”

  I blushed—this was news to me.

  “Our friend Nietzsche might have been describing you when he wrote: ‘to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.’”

  I nodded. This was just a fancy way of saying: ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.

  “I recognise this strength in you—it’s something we share, but you have only just discovered it. I can help you realise your potential.”

  He looked straight at me. I frowned and waited to see where this was going.

  “So Nick, let’s cut to the chase. Yesterday you asked me how you could repay me for saving your life. I’ve considered this and as it happens there is a way you can help me. If you’re interested in my proposal then I can help you to move on.”

  Of course I was interested, but I was still wary of his motives.

  “There is a task, a mission, and I need someone I can trust to carry it out.”

  I leaned forward and tried to look him in the eye. Again I found only my own reflection in those impenetrable sunglasses.

  “I had planned for Carlos to undertake this mission, but he’s rather useful here, onboard the Abyss.”

  I smiled, thinking of the exquisite food we were enjoying.

  “The task is straightforward but, as I say, it requires someone who is trustworthy, self-reliant and an experienced traveller. Does that sound like yourself, Nick?”

  I gave a noncommittal half-nod.

  “Very well. This is your mission, ‘should you choose to accept it’ as they say in the movies. I need a courier to deliver a package to someone on the other side of this ocean ...” He pointed out to sea. “... in the Caribbean Islands. Have you heard of the Dominican Republic?”

  I nodded. “The country that shares an island with Haiti?”

  “Yes, that’s correct. The island of Hispaniola, which lies eighty kilometres to the southeast of Cuba across the Windward Passage and ...”

  I interrupted: “But why do you need me to deliver this package in person?”

  I was beginning to smell a rat and I smiled at the thought—surely not on this luxury yacht!

  “Well Nick, I can’t simply post this package because one: I don’t know the recipient’s address and two: the contents are too important to entrust to the vagaries of the international postal system. I need a courier to deliver the package in person.”

  Now my nostrils were twitching with the whiff of rodent.

  “Can I ask what’s in this package?”

  “Well, I’m not at liberty to reveal the exact contents but I can tell you that it doesn’t contain anything illegal or dangerous—no drugs or weapons.”

  “OK. I understand you can’t tell me the exact contents but perhaps you can give me a clue.
For instance: is it animal, vegetable or mineral? That kind of thing might persuade me ...”

  He smiled.

  “Very well, Nick. The package contains important documents—a letter, a contract and money—some of which is to provide for your expenses while you are there. I’m sorry, but I can’t be more specific than that.”

  I reverted to my default gesture—a shrug. He still had to persuade the fish to bite …

  “As it happens, you may already be familiar with the town where the recipient lives, since I believe it’s well known for your sport of boardsailing. Have you, by any chance, heard of Cabarete?”

  I nodded. I had indeed heard of the spot—a starboard tack, right-hand reef break on the north shore of the Dominican Republic.

  “Yes, I’ve heard good things about the place and I don’t have much to keep me here in Tenerife …”

  I’d never been to the Caribbean—it was a long haul from Oz, but it had always been on my wish list. I scratched my chin, now sporting several days of stubble, and tried to come up with a reason not to accept his ‘mission’.

  “So, after I’ve delivered this package, what then? Perhaps you could explain what’s in it for me.”

  His lips curled into an ironic smile. The fish had taken the bait, now all he had to do was reel me in.

  “Well, forgetting for one moment that you owe me your life ...” I swallowed, but it seemed this was his attempt at humour “... that is indeed a fair question, Nick. You will, of course, receive a fee. Let’s say: five thousand US dollars? Plus all expenses. How does that sound?”

  It sounded fine to me.

  “Furthermore, as I’ve mentioned, this is your chance to sail some new waters, surf some new waves ...”

  I tried to keep a poker face but he was reeling me in fast.

  “And it would be a new start for you, with a new identity. Your chance to reinvent yourself, somewhere nobody knows about your past; somewhere it will be hard to trace you.”

  Damn, he was persuasive, and he was right—it was just a matter of time before one of my pursuers caught up with me here. I had to keep moving. The further the better, and the Caribbean was about as far as I could get from home.