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New Short Stories - 2
Arthur Allan
Dear Ellie:
I want to tell you something that happened out here today. I hope you don’t mind.
One moment it was bright as ever; the next, a massive slate cloud in front of the sun. Migrating birds, flying low. Thousands of them.
The wings pumped in synch, the uniforms of grey plumage passed in their great repeating pattern. The noise terrified me. A clamour of bullying squawks: keep going, don’t pause, this is the way, this is what we do, this is the only direction.
When they had passed, one bird was left behind. It had taken refuge on the deck, exhausted. It wore a stunned, lopsided look as the din of the others faded.
For a while it shuffled gimpishly about. Then it stopped. Only its eyes twitched, aware that it was being watched. And people did glance at it as they passed, with disgust and embarrassment, hoping it would go away so they wouldn’t have to deal with it.
It was gone when I went back above after supper. I suppose someone kicked it overboard.
My love (if I may),
Murray.
**** **** ****
Hello again Ellie,
More visitors today. A helicopter.
The clatter brought me out of my galley. Faces were twisted, hair blasted – except for the master, Desai, whose head preserved its neat matt outline. You could see people inside the chopper, one of them training a camera on us.
I edged onto an exposed patch of deck.
Desai flicked his arm, as if troubled by a mosquito. “Enough,” he called. “What they expect, skull and crossbones?”
With a shrug, the helicopter turned away. I scurried back to my kitchen, my steaming pit.
It’s the seventeenth day. As I work, moisture clogs my hair and beard. Run me through with a knife, Ellie – my juices would run clear. There are twenty-three men on board, and no place to eat: our cargo, unseen, claims the space. We squat on deck with our plates.
Twenty-four: I forgot myself.
“Something happened,” Wolfe said in his grim sing-song.
He crouched by me on deck. The action squashed out the spare flesh of his legs below the shorts, bloating them.
“That news crew,” he said. “They’d never chase us – ”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head.
“ – otherwise. It’s way too late for them to be covering – ”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed.
“ – the Turkey thing. I mean, what we’re carrying, they coulda been eco-freaks. Terrorists. But what do we hear from Desai? Zip.”
“Uh-huh.” Wolfe is our navigator. To my surprise, he has started to seek me out like this, sharing his outrage.
“But hey. You drown fifty-eight people, I guess this is small beer.” Wolfe shook his walnut head. “Later, buddy.”
I felt bolder after this exchange. Like I have the same right as anyone else to walk this deck. Does that seem strange to you?
Till tomorrow,
Murray.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Ellie,
I’m sitting by the rail, squinting out at the sliver of land that shines on the horizon. Currently, the Western Sahara. It’s the time when the sun is just about bearable, before it takes over the world and refuses to let us look it in the eye. Another day. The helicopter already a dream.
Desai himself has just wandered behind me, the side of his mouth sucked into a crevasse. I need to speak to him, but when I turned, he looked sideways. I am fairly comfortable about this: I’ve learned that it’s not my presence that causes him to grimace and mutter, or at least not me alone.
There’s a story about most of the men, and even I have absorbed them all. This is the story about Desai: he was master of a passenger ferry that went down off Mangalore, leaving many drowned. Despite an investigation that more or less absolved him, whispers persist about his culpability and the circumstances of his own survival amid the carnage.
I have no story. You know that, only too well. I’ve watched them mimic me – even the Indians and the Koreans – nodding their heads at each other with pneumatic vigour, in fervent assent, before breaking up in laughter. I haven’t experienced such open contempt since school. Not that I blame them, Ellie. There’s not much else to do out here.
Late last night, even in sleep, I detected some variation in the undernoise of our journey. The engines grinding in an unaccustomed way.
Disturbed, I switched on the lamp, conjuring up my coffin bunk. I picked up my book. But on this trip the words block up in front of my eyes. I’m trapped on the first page.
I started to wonder again if you would see the film taken by that camera. There would be no warmth in your thoughts, I know that. Still, I like the idea of you double-taking on a figure in a news bulletin, your nose furrowing as you recognise the slant of the shoulders, realise where I am. A connection of a kind.
Eventually the engines steadied, their sound slipping back below consciousness. My wee fantasy helped me sink under my seamy blanket and sleep.
Day eighteen. A precise rap on my door.
“Murray?” Wolfe’s big domed cranium appeared. “Hey guy, you awake? Thought you’d wanna know. We’ve changed direction?”
It was phrased as an incredulous question. I folded my bare arms away as he stooped to advance into the room.
“I mean ninety degrees. Seems like we’re headed for Brazil, if you can believe it.”
Fingernails clipped the ceiling as his big hands scooped disbelief from the air. There’s a story about Wolfe too: it involves young girls.
“I wasn’t on shift, I’m just off to find out what gives. Then again I’m only the fuckin’ navigator, y’know?”
The practical implications came to me later, while I dumped breakfast onto plates. If we’re not to land at Monrovia, we’ll be forced onto dehydrated supplies within a couple of days. I will have to talk to Desai. If I marshal my words in my head, do my rehearsal first, it will be okay.
Wish me luck,
M.
**** **** ****
Hello Ellie.
Well, the master was in his mess with his back to the door. Praying, I thought. I hesitated, but he had caught my shadow, and he jerked his head to beckon me in.
He kept his hands cupped in front of him. Before I’d forced out a sentence he was nodding impatiently, eyes on the far wall. “I understand,” he said. But I was locked into my dreary report and obliged to stutter through to its end. My face flamed, my torso was suddenly slick and reeking. You know the drill.
When he was sure I was done, Desai said, “Thank you, Murray.” He opened his spidery hands, releasing two dice onto the tabletop. “I waiting instructions,” he told the table. “Will be address the men this morning.”
I slunk out. Desai dislikes formalities: I’ve seen him wince when addressed as sir or captain. It’s not like the Royal Navy here, Ellie.
If I’m honest, the laxness isn’t the main difference. Back then, I had the prospect of you to lace my days on board. I know you wouldn’t want me to get sentimental, but if I do have a story – or at least a digression – it’s you, Ellie. You know that.
I think of you in that Portsmouth office. Your couthiness, your bias for frilly collars. You didn’t stand out for me at first. It was only gradually that I noticed how gravely and openly you looked at me in our exchanges – almost as though I was contributing something, other than instant confirmation. Not many people have your perseverance, faced with this unattractive, nodding, sweating little Scot. But when they do, eventually I relax enough in their presence to talk back, as I did with you. A remark about the wind, I think.
Sorry.
Desai assembled us on deck before lunch. He stood in the mouth of a horseshoe of men, smaller than any of us, like a kid run to ground by a posse. When he began to speak about a problem with the Liberian government, a tribal moan broke out.
“How long’ve you known this?” Wolfe whined, though quietly enough for Desai to ignore.
“Is difficult time.” Desai paced a little, eyes darting out to the horizon. “I waiting instructions from the company.”
Wolfe hissed in my ear, “Isn’t English the international language of the sea?”
Helplessly, I nodded.
“I waiting instructions. You all hear news when I am hearing. Thank you for your patience. Meantime,” Desai made a weak smile, “work to do.” He ducked abruptly towards the bridge.
“Getting the finger from Turkey is one thing. But some banana republic?” Wolfe stabbed a thumb at the cargo hold, shouting now. “Is there something about this stuff we don’t know? Is it unsafe or what?”
People murmured in similar tones, even as they drifted aside. I’ve noticed how men wriggle out of Wolfe’s radius. I always used to think that was unfair. But in my bunk this morning, feeling the heat of his frustration, his spittle on my cheek – I got a glimpse of how those little girls might have felt. If they ever existed.
Goodnight now,
M.
**** **** ****
Ellie,
I could do with your opinion about something that happened last night.
I was pacing the deck, swaddled in layers. The nights are cold enough to strip your face. I stopped at the barrier to the hold. No one goes beyond this, except the men kitted out with boxy suits and masks. I’ve sometimes wondered what it looks like, the material we’re carrying. I imagine it as a pale, cheese-like substance. I see it in casks the size of swimming-pools, gently fluorescent in the shadows, steaming slightly. I’d like to scramble onto that yielding surface and lie there on my back, adjusting to the heat. Sinking, gradually, into its humid mass. Merging with the unwanted gunk of the world.
Somebody sniffed behind me. I knew who it was before I turned. I confess: I’ve been relishing Wolfe’s pursuit of me and what it seems to mean. His singling out my door to rap on. “Guy.” “Buddy.”
He used it now: “Restless, buddy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re not the only one. Things’re set to blow around here.” He leaned on the barrier alongside me, thrusting out a slender bottle. “Beat the chill.”
I tipped it and whisky beetled deep into my gullet, hot and electric.
“Alcohol gets a bad rap, man. Sometimes it’s the only way out. When you got no control over where you’re heading.”
Take my agreement as read.
“I mean, I’m not ashamed to say I been bruised. I’d guess you have too. I guess we all have, otherwise why’d we be out on this floatin’ junkyard? Yeah, I hit a real low a couple years ago.”
Struck by the sight of our elbows paired on the rail, I took a while to realise what he was telling me. His story.
There were three girls. Wolfe said he didn’t touch them. He had no interest in doing so. He never told me their ages (I didn’t ask). When one girl learned about the other two, Wolfe said, she got jealous and told her mother. Wolfe spent three months in jail.
“You wanna know the fuckin’ irony? My PC was shot. I never even uploaded them pictures. Never enjoyed the fruits of my evil crime. Hell, Jody? – the one who told her mom? – she actually begged me to take more. Wanted to take them to an agency.” His meaty hand thumped down on my arm. “It’s a bitch, fella. Go through something like that, it marks you every hour of the day and night.”
I said – well, you know what I said. But for once I wasn’t agreeing purely out of compulsion. There was a sweet sharpness in my throat. My vision was bubbling up. What he said was nearly irrelevant. It was the sight of his words spilled for me, the gracefully-tumbling clouds they formed between us on the night air.
It was only afterwards, scrubbing in the shower, that I started to wonder.
I don’t expect a reply from you. I just thought setting it down might shed a new light, show me what your take on this would be.
But I suppose you’re too far away for that now.
M.
**** **** ****
Ellie.
The twentieth day was like all the others, but more so. The sun pressed down more heavily, glared more insistently in my eyes. As we followed our tight, rat-like circuits – above, below, above again – the air held a sourer tang of sweat, a greater density of cursing than normal. A few little flares of pointless shout and shove. The food I nervously served up was greyer, visibly reconstituted rather than cooked.
“We could take over the radio,” Wolfe said when I approached him. “Let the company know Desai’s brain is fried.”
I said, quite smoothly I think, “Actually, it’s the company I blame. They’re well-known to be cowboys. I think probably they’re in over their heads, don’t know what to do next.”
When I managed to raise my eyes from the deck Wolfe was gaping at me, his face twisted with incomprehension. It was as if he’d been addressed by a seagull.
Eventually he said, “You’re – what? Irish?”
I grinned shyly. “I’m a S-scot.” The word leaked out in a slow puncture.
“No kidding. I always thought you were American.” He shook his head briskly. “I mean, guys are freaking here and he’s just not around. What does he do all day, anyhow?”
“Games.”
“Huh?” His incredulity grew.
“He throws – he throws dice sometimes. I saw him in his mess. But W-wolfe, I really think he’s as screwed as we are in this.”
Wolfe flinched at the sound of his name. He looked at me hard. “You…think. You think, huh? Dice,” he muttered to himself. “We’re in crisis, and Desai’s playing fuckin’ Monopoly.” And he barrelled past me.
Now it’s the twentieth night, and my body’s too cold for sleep, and my mind is too tattered to read.
M.
**** **** **** ****
Well, Ellie,
It’s over.
As we awaited the master’s arrival, I sought out Wolfe. By now, his likely location was constantly fixed on my personal radar, but I’d not seen him since yesterday. I found him at the rail, in conversation with Lee, a stocky Korean.
“Does he even keep a log? If he does, nobody’s seen it,” Wolfe was ranting. “You gotta keep some kind of record. That’s maritime law.”
I hovered, sipping water.
“A master needs communication skills. He comes to me this morning, he says, ‘North’. I say, what, you wanna change course, is there a reason, where are we headed? Just that. ‘North.’ And he’s already walking away!”
Wolfe barked his incredulous laugh. I saw Lee, who has virtually no English, smile obligingly.
“What I’m gonna do is contact the TV news. They can get that helicopter back here and chart where we’ve been the last few days. That’d be one helluva story.”
I pushed myself off the rail, making for the gap between the men. But Wolfe raised his hand abruptly to clap Lee’s shoulder, closing up the angle of their bodies.
“I dunno about you, buddy,” he said, “but I’m going crazy here. One thing I can’t take, it’s losing control over my life. Did I tell you what happened to me a couple years ago?”
It was a smooth movement, my swerve, as though it had been my intention all along to walk towards the bridge. And it will be an equally seamless shift back to my old existence. A friendship, especially one this unripe, is easily killed, Ellie. It’s not like a marriage. There’s been no long build-up of suppressed contempt and revulsion. I didn’t oblige him to spend years prising me off.
I went to warn Desai. Probably Wolfe was all talk, but if he were to compromise us in the way he’d said, that would be a disciplinary issue. The old navy training resurfacing in me. Anyway, I no longer had to consider any loyalty to Wolfe.
But the master’s mess was empty. When I got back, he was already on deck, starting his speech. And the murmurs were rising. The gist – actually, the full message – was that negotiations were ongoing. Meantime, we wait.
“The company, they working on it,” Desai was saying.
“The fuck they are!” Wolfe burst forward, loomed above Desai, cords standing out on his slick forehead. “How long you gonna keep us going round in circles out here? How long you gonna keep feeding us this shit, huh?”
The men watched thirstily. For a moment the pair were frozen there: Wolfe with his great fists bunched; Desai, short and fine, his eyes lost under the bigger man’s shadow.
Then the master calmly moved his hands behind his back. A gesture that said: Do it. Hit me. “The company working on it,” he repeated, in the same flat tone.
It was his utter disinterest that restored his authority, and I sensed every man on deck realise that Wolfe’s anger is wasted effort. There won’t be a coup against Desai. Where would Wolfe take us, given command? Going nowhere is our duty. What we’re carrying is leprous. No one knows what to do with it. Nobody cares where it ends up, so long as it’s not on their territory.
Held air was released, Wolfe sank back in frustration. Desai’s eyes flicked lightly round the semi-circle, settling on a point in mid-ocean. And me, I felt my spirits begin to lift, float free.
I’ve been wrong about Desai. What I took for timidity – it was pure detachment. The man we see here is just a hollow device, tethered and bobbing on the surface; the real Desai is sunk at some dark, fathomless point, miles away.
If you did by some chance spot me in that news film, Ellie, forget it. And you’ll be pleased to hear, I won’t be writing to you any more – not even like this, forming the letters with my tongue, on the roof of my mouth. Take this as goodbye.
I’ve spent so long straining, following instincts that were always redundant for me anyway – tormenting myself, exhausting myself. When all I needed to do was emulate Desai. Embrace the routine of drift.
Day twenty-one, and this is where I stop counting.
His mess had been empty, when I went to warn him. I entered anyway, reluctant to waste my rehearsed words, and stood in the sparsely furnished room, tidy to the point of blankness. On the scarred pine table, in diagonally opposite corners, lay the solitary mark of personalisation – those two dice. I noticed felt-tip scrawling alongside the spots, and bent to look closer. On one side, I made out the letter S; another bore a W. And on the upward face of each cube, the neat slant of an N.
Arthur Allan is an Edinburgh-based freelance journalist. Atlantic Drift is his third published story. Inevitably (he says) he’s working on a novel, provisionally titled Nine Monsters.
