Liner

by James Barlow

  He was that rare man: he had cheated the Mafia and escaped.

  Chapter Two

  The boy came along the empty shabby street in darkness. He was scared, but needed comfort.

  The place he sought was in darkness, which both relieved and frustrated him. He rang the bell and five floors up a window opened and the priest’s head leaned out impatiently.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me,’ the youth informed him absurdly.

  ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Six thirty.’

  ‘So it is. I’ll come down and open up.’

  Lights indicated the priest’s descent. He opened the door, put milk bottles on the step, and greeted the boy. ‘Wait a minute! Dimitrios, isn’t it? Dimitrios Bitsios.’

  ‘Dimitrios Retalis,’ the boy corrected him, not impressed by the way the priest had remembered one name for five months. ‘Bitsios is the chief engineer.’

  They went upstairs. There were hand-painted notices on the stone walls about badminton, dances, the evening service . . .

  He approached the office, which was also a small shop. A faded notice was stuck on its one window: ‘Donations here,’ and, as it happened, the priest was counting dollar notes and silver.

  ‘They are very generous,’ he told the boy.

  ‘Can I speak to you?’ Dimitrios asked.

  The priest identified the tone, the content of misery or guilt.

  ‘Of course,’ the priest agreed. ‘But a little quieter, Dimitrios, if it is confidential.’

  Dimitrios understood the request and was not offended. He explained: ‘It is the noise of the engines. I am slightly deaf for two days when we come ashore, and people tell me that I shout. It is not as bad as my previous ship,’ he told the priest, conversational, talking fast, misery forgotten momentarily. ‘That was a diesel, you see. I used to ask my mother to speak up, and she was offended because she was a little deaf too! They brought a machine to that ship to record the sound level, you know, the number of decibels. And our ship broke the machine!’ He was smiling – he had a good smile. ‘It was too hot, that engine room. And the fumes, you know, cause cancer.’

  The priest suggested, ‘Let’s go into the sitting room if it’s empty.’

  He was delayed by another man, the treasurer, tall, earnest and sour. But the sitting room was empty. Not that either of them was relaxed enough to sit in the soft armchairs.

  There were photographs of ships – sail and steam – in the room, and a model on a crowded mantelpiece. A notice about divine services was going yellow. Out of the window, lights gleamed on water and a mile away the Areopagus glittered, like a photograph in a book about the romance of the sea.

  Dimitrios said, as if proving something, ‘When we got to Piraeus the previous crew all signed off and they didn’t sign on again.’

  ‘An unhappy ship,’ the priest acknowledged.

  ‘So we were all new,’ Dimitrios agreed, ‘except the officers and a few others.’

  There was a long silence after the priest had said, ‘I see.’

  Then the boy looked down at the carpet and said shakily, ‘I’ve got a dose, you see, that’s what it is.’

  The priest was neither shocked nor critical.

  ‘A lot of dirty places round the world,’ he suggested, spreading the guilt. ‘A sad, useless bunch of people out to give pleasure for money.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘A girl you know? You were very fond of?’

  ‘Not a girl.’

  The priest was still not startled, but he sighed with the uselessness of it. A thin boy, tousled brown hair, cheap clothes, cracked down-at-the-heel shoes, a sallow thinned-down face, and eyes rimmed pink with tiredness or shame. But only a boy despite this admission and the ports around the world and the 3,000 degree furnaces and superheated steam which turned the first row or two of the turbine blades a dull red. And a boy who had feeling, guilt, an awareness of God . . .

  ‘A fellow you picked up? Can you trace him? You both ought to go to hospital, at least have treatment.’

  ‘One of the crew.’

  ‘Ah! You’ll both still have to go for treatment. It’s not painful these days. Why not now?’

  ‘We’re sailing tonight.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Sydney, Melbourne, Fremantle, Bali, Singapore . . .’

  ‘And don’t you go to England? Treatment would be free. Or America. San Francisco, isn’t it? Then you and your friend –’

  ‘Not my friend.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s not, that’s all.’

  Here was the crux of it, the priest knew, the misery and loathing.

  ‘Not an enemy, surely?’

  ‘I hate him. He laughs about everything. If only he’d go. . . .He’s worse than any of them.’

  ‘Any of them’ suggested misery indeed to the priest. In the confined and steamy hot atmosphere of long periods at sea it would be virtually impossible to fool anyone. Insincerity, unreliability, fear, laziness, sexual inclinations – these would soon be perceived. They’d all know about the boy and he would be aware with the instant perception of queers that they did. But where had the tolerance of seamen gone?

  ‘And it’s him?’

  ‘There’s been no one else in six months,’ the boy said unhappily.

  ‘How did it happen?’

  Dimitrios found this easier to talk about.

  ‘He’s a barman, a steward. He’s funny, you see, really caustic. You couldn’t help but laugh at him. He was so cynical about the passengers . . . He attended – to – some of their – needs – before me,’ the youth said, at rock bottom. He sighed in weariness and sneered in contempt of his own foolishness: ‘And he’s a pot polisher, a Saturday-afternoon seamen!’

  He was virtuous now, indignant even, but in the silence was honest enough with himself to recall sordid hurried scenes in cabins and confined places, even the empty smoke-filled Forward Bar. Whiskey to deaden the flesh and a mutual sweating in the tropical heat and his own body willing to allow anything . . . He imagined that although the priest understood, generally speaking, what happened, he was far too nice a little man to be fully aware of what occurred.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ the priest asked frankly. ‘Dimitrios, there are two sides to this – the physical and spiritual. You understand this or you wouldn’t be here . . .’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Dimitrios.

  The priest spoke gently but with conviction about the spiritual half of it. He did not reprimand or lecture, but simply pointed out the things they had in common. The boy was or had been Orthodox Greek, but this is almost parallel with Catholicism.

  Then the priest turned to the physical half of degradation.

  ‘How bad is this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You can go blind or mad, if it’s serious. It takes time but – Listen! You must go the surgeon on the ship. He is, I am sure, familiar with these matters.’

  ‘There has been trouble.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘The Areopagus has come from Southampton, Bremerhaven and Rotterdam. More than a thousand migrants. We came the Panama way to Wellington. We ran out of fresh water for washing and had to use salt water for showers. They ran out of baby foods and disposable things. There were eight in a cabin on Attica Deck. There was no choice of food. No flowers on the tables. Women had to wash nappies in the swimming pool. There was dysentery . . .’

  ‘But now?’ questioned the priest. ‘It is all right?’

  Dimitrios laughed outright.

  ‘No. It is worse! There is water, to be sure. But two hundred people boarded in New Zealand, most of them old. They thought they were boarding an empty ship for a
round-the-world cruise! They’ve been having rows with the chief purser,’ he said, amused about it. ‘Captain Vafiadis was dragged into it. Unwittingly, of course. He prefers to be the gentleman! They’ve held protest meetings which he’s refused to attend. There are queues in the surgery . . .’

  ‘I am sorry to hear this,’ the priest said, ‘but not surprised.’

  He had heard about the Areopagus before. Friends had mentioned it in letters from Malta, Vancouver and Melbourne. It was a very old ship, being thrashed to death by its owners.

  ‘And we shan’t be able to keep the schedule of this ridiculous cruise,’ Dimitrios told him. ‘Once we’re in tropical waters we can’t cool the engines so they don’t go as fast. The owners assume we can make nineteen knots all round the world, but here we can scarcely make seventeen. Tubes are cracking, and we have a job replacing the ones that are curved. We can’t carry a mountain of spares.’

  ‘But at least these migrants will disembark at Sydney or Melbourne.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ the boy agreed, but he clearly did not feel the medical officers would be free or inclined to deal with his problem.

  ‘About this other fellow – what’s his name?’

  ‘John.’

  ‘You do not have to see a lot of him?’

  ‘No. We work in different parts of the ship.’

  ‘And sleeping?’

  ‘That, too.’

  ‘Then he should be easy to avoid . . . Does he know that he is ill?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps you should tell him. If he’s promiscuous –’

  ‘I will avoid him,’ affirmed Dimitrios with determination. ‘And the others who mock me –’

  ‘Do not allow yourself to be hurt by words,’ advised the priest, aware of how difficult this would be, and how lonely the boy must be. ‘Pass these things off with a bit of wit. Deflect the arrows.’

  ‘All right,’ Dimitrios agreed, beginning to move. ‘And thank you.’

  ‘I know it won’t be easy,’ acknowledged the priest. ‘But I cannot believe that the whole boiler-room crew dislike you. You are not a person who arouses dislike. I will, of course, pray for you.’

  The boy smiled.

  ‘Okay. I will see the doctor when the ship empties a little. . . . See you in six months,’ he said in farewell, and the priest felt cold with the hopelessness. Ten minutes difficult talk to counteract the influences of the entire world.

  Seamen, the priest felt, were running away from something. Many of them didn’t want to sail at all, and from the first day were, in effect, waiting to get back. Their tough postures often hid personal inadequacies. Many of them from Australian and British merchant ships were not all that bright. At times they became aggressive toward the priest, but he took his jacket off to them and challenged, ‘Come on, then!’ but they didn’t. They wept sometimes, or sat in the room where the boy had stood, sat like children while he roared at them for allowing the Communists to run the unions.

  He liked them. Their attitudes were human and simple, their problems the old ones of drink, unfaithfulness in their wives and friction below decks. Engineers and seamen, like oil and water, never quite mixed. Seamen resented these men who got a certificate in some motor works ashore and came to sea for a while, but never really belonged. The bottle was a problem afloat as well as ashore. Some sailors, particularly on cargo ships, were drunk throughout the voyage. The captain, getting rid of them, would perhaps be kind and give a ‘clean’ reference so that the sailor drifted successfully from ship to ship. Asian sailors did not seem to have any neuroses at all, or else hid them very well.

  Sometimes the priest had to break bad news, tell a sailor that while he’d been at sea his little child had been knocked down by an automobile and killed. He knew currently of a timid little man, a cook, who had gone temperamental and finally run amok with an ax precisely for this kind of reason.

  The priest felt that Dimitrios found the world too much because of his weakness and preferred the smaller, more manageable and tolerant world of a ship. But this was not so. The boy had gone to sea because it was a good job. In Athens the average annual wage was about £200. The peasants in the countryside were lucky if they got £50 each year. Greece was a beautiful country, but it was desperately poor and a job at sea meant meat to eat.

  Dimitrios’ parents lived in a village twice blasted by shellfire in their lifetime. In the summer, people passed through the village, foreigners in big cars which left clouds of dust, and they commented on the fragrance of the herbs and wild flowers, the charm of the steep cobbled village street, or a girl in black with a tall brown jug on her head . . . They sighed with satisfaction and talked of this, the cradle of democracy and civilized discussion. They admired the cubist architecture of the small whitewashed, terraced houses and stared at the distant mountains, and accepted a drink of wine at a table of the taverna, barely risking the chances of disease from glasses not too clean. They strolled back to their automobiles through a small flock of skinny goats and drove off back to Athens to see the horses racing at the Phaleron racecourse, or to dine out in the open on delicious seafood at Tourkolimano, and never mind the smells around the docks just this once.

  They did not stay for the winter or observe the incidence of tuberculosis. . . .

  Dimitrios walked back to the ship. There was nothing else to do, or, more exactly, no one else to do it with. He boarded up the same gangway as Tornetta, but then descended two decks, went through the kitchens to his cabin, where he changed.

  He was back in the environment of semidarkness, where there was no distinction between day and night, of humid atmosphere, and the ingrained smells of oil, soot, steam, particularly foods, urine, dirty towels, sweat, all circulated uselessly by dull air which came out of square-sectioned metal trunking. There was an atmosphere of mild urgency now, for the Areopagus was due to sail in two hours. Men in shorts and stained singlets, slacks saturated in oil and dirt, tattered vests, already sweating, moved about, their feet soundless in split pumps.

  Dimitrios went back to Metaxas Deck and almost at once encountered John, in the kitchens, popping bits of hot food into his mouth. The boy felt embarrassed, almost ashamed, as if he had betrayed this tall angular man of thirty with the quick wit and possessiveness. It had been, perhaps still was, a strange relationship in which John caustically took it for granted that he and Dimitrios were special people, superior to these heavy-headed peasants who filled the ship.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘How did you know I’d been anywhere?’

  ‘I searched for you,’ John said simply. ‘I thought we could look around this little town together.’

  ‘I went to the doctor,’ Dimitrios said evasively.

  He found it hard to lie to John.

  ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘I think I have a dose.’

  John laughed as if this was a terrific joke. ‘And what did the Australian doctor say?’

  ‘That there wasn’t time to do anything.’

  ‘What a fool! He only has to give you some pills. I’ll give you some. You look really frightened!’

  ‘You should be, too.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You are angry with me. You blame me.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Who, indeed? I am touched. Have a bowl of soup. It’s good.’

  ‘I am going on duty.’

  ‘So am I. The blasted captain has guests . . . Shall I give you some tablets?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I know where you’ve been!’ cried John, amused. ‘To that fat, ridiculous priest. You saw him last time.’

  Dimitrios argued, hot and bothered, ‘What of it?’

  ‘How delicious it must be to have a conscience and suffer!’ teased John. ‘It makes love
so much more exciting. And pox! That must be like the flavour of hell fire!’

  ‘I don’t think it’s funny.’

  ‘But what tortures next time as the flesh overcomes the spirit!’

  ‘There’s not going to be a next time,’ asserted Dimitrios firmly.

  ‘Not with me?’ questioned John, but with instant malice, protecting his own feelings. ‘I’m prostrate with distress! But, Dimitrios, you’re only eighteen. Despite the inconveniences of your little illness your flesh will become eager for love every few days . . .’

  Dimitrios already knew this to be true: his body humiliated him, even alone. He had shuffled in the darkness of the bunk, hot, ashamed and frightened.

  ‘Don’t you want the tablets to be rid of it?’ John asked.

  ‘No. I’ll go and see the surgeon.’

  ‘You’ll have to hurry,’ John informed him. ‘He’s leaving the ship at Sydney. All that dysentery was too much for him.’

  ‘I’ll see the other one.’

  ‘Why not the sister? She’d be fascinated!’

  Dimitrios said dully, ‘I must go on duty.’

  John sneered, ‘I must find myself another innocent for my pleasures. What a pity! You were quite good at it.’

  This was intended to hurt, and, unaccountably, it did.

  ‘To hell with you,’ Dimitrios snarled hotly, and turned to walk away.

  ‘Ah, no! Hell is for people like you,’ John corrected him.

  He went out of the galleys forward, through the empty dining room, while Dimitrios, shaking and with a bit of a headache, went aft. Just aft of the kitchens he opened a door, and beyond it, four feet away, was another door which he went through. Beyond this second door was the domain of the engineers. The two doors existed so that the forced draft – sent down by a turbine-driven pump on the Sun Deck – wouldn’t escape. It was needed down here for, among other things, the combustion of oil.

  Dimitrios descended about thirty feet down worn steps, slippery with oil. After a while his legs and then his chest and face came into atmosphere so hot it was like entering fluid. The rails his hands steadied himself on were scorching to his touch.