High as the Waters Rise
HIGH AS THE WATERS RISE
A Novel
Anja Kampmann
Translated from the German by
ANNE POSTEN
Catapult
New York
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2018 by Anja Kampmann
English translation copyright © 2019 by Anne Posten
First published in Germany as Wie hoch die Wasser steigen in 2018 by Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-948226-52-3
Jacket design by Nicole Caputo
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019957069
Printed in the United States of America
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The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut.
There’s a new continent at your doorstep, William.
—ARTHUR MILLER
Contents
Cantarell
1. Westerly
2. Tangier
3. Ahmad
4. Whalebones
5. Budapest
6. Chips
7. Bócsa
8. Rotabyl
9. The Station
10. Coral
11. White Egrets
12. An Orange (Sidi Ifni)
13. Brent
14. Malta
15. A Parrot
16. Northward
17. Everything I No Longer Am
18. Hawthorns
19. The Lantern
20. Snakes
21. Snow
22. An Artificial Sun
23. And the Alps Were a Horse Rearing Up
24. White Maps
25. Emblem
26. Gladioli
27. The Slag Heap
28. A Pierrot
29. Rodlo
30. Brights
31. The Garage
32. Lidia
33. Hic sunt dracones
34. Bananas
35. Falcons
36. At the Edge
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
High as the Waters Rise
The storms out there are no place for men. If one were to approach from afar, there would be darkness and more darkness, the waves would swallow the rain, swallow the lightning, it would smell of metal and salt, but no one is there to smell anything. There are no eyes. There would only be sea, piling up and up. There would be no north or south. The water would swallow even the cries of the storm, which no ear would hear. A darkness, planes layering upon each other, waves that break in utter darkness, and somewhat farther, farther on, is a flickering of distant light, swallowed by waves, just a moment, a light.
Cantarell
They followed the long lines in the asphalt. Mátyás walked on, and the wind from the rotor blades pressed their clothes to their bodies as if there were no weariness and no doubt, just the drone of the machine, and far away, beyond the airfield, he saw the white tip of a mole against which the waves beat and, way off in the distance, broke in a great roaring light.
The clouds had thickened that morning, a storm front from the Faeroes had stopped over the Atlantic off the coast of Morocco, where the air had been heating up for days and weeks, and they lay tired on the long benches in the heliport and knew nothing of it. The light of the Coke machine shimmered over the linoleum, and they had a long wait for the helicopter.
It was the first time he’d seen the heliport of Sidi Ifni in anything other than the gray five o’clock light in which they’d departed on the other mornings. Before the sun had even risen the waiting room had been full of men shoving their bags in front of them through security, the smell of coffee hung in the air and no one said much, some had landed in Rabat only that night and then continued on south, and when they arrived, the ocean was still gray and wide and the wind so strong that they happily went back into the little room to smoke, as if they were already on deck in the closed container, where the table and benches were screwed tight to the floor.
Mátyás was kneeling next to Waclaw, looking for something in his bag, when the first helicopter finally landed and men and more men came through the glass door, which silently opened and closed, its edges giving off a bluish gleam, like a precise blade.
The men carried their bags on their shoulders, some wore sunglasses, and their steps were heavy and cold in the glaring light of the waiting room. Waclaw knew only a few of them. They’d been drilling for two months, the Atlantic raging past them toward the North African continental shelf. They’d drilled through sandstone and basalt, eighty miles from the coast, for nothing but mud and rocks. The oil—if there were any—would lie very deep, they’d been told. But until something was found in at least one of these shitholes, the mood remained tense, the work seemed more laborious, it wasn’t like in Mexico, in the Bay of Campeche, where all they’d had to do was stick more straws into the bulging bubble of oil, Cantarell, to drink for a few years, like wasps feeding on the last rotting fruits of autumn.
This wasn’t Mexico, and the men were tired and high-strung when they got to land. A piece of luggage came flying through the air, a bag, big as a porpoise or a stuffed boar, Hey, Budapest. Mátyás had only just raised his arms when the bag crashed on the floor in front of him, his curls bounced. They looked at each other for a moment, Hey, Texas, before the huge mountain of flesh came to him and wrapped him in an embrace.
It’s a bitch out there, Trevor said, not something you want to be sailing in, that’s for sure, they’ll close the harbors if it keeps up.
He chewed a piece of jerky, his English rough, like someone unloading a ton of rocks.
How’s the new guy? Mátyás asked, and Roy joined them. Suddenly a circle was formed of those arriving and those leaving, of weariness and the smell of sweat and the tension that overcame them all before things started up. Waclaw sometimes thought of the starting gates of big races, the nervous trembling of the horses, each led by three trainers while the jockey just crouched on top, or the steel bars crowds hid behind as the bulls ran by, the smell of sweating livestock.
He’s a pussy, Roy cried. Have you ever seen anybody out there in a tie? Not in thirty years. He looks like he needs—he raised his eyebrows and snapped his fingers a few times. The men laughed and a few clapped, shoulders were slapped, but Roy remained serious. I mean, what are we supposed to do with him, he said, when we really need him, what is he going to do for us, some calculations? He’d spoken softly, and his eyes had wandered to Waclaw. They’re young, he said, they don’t know what it means.
They stood together a moment, then the glass door closed behind those who were still there, waiting.
1
Westerly
The sea at night is the darkest thing there is. Behind heavy storm clouds the moon was invisible, and the horizon hard to distinguish from the blackness where the waves piled up, drawing breath again and again as the wind whipped all it could muster of froth and spray over the crests. Far below, the platform swayed on its long steel mooring cables, tugged at the meter-thick piles sunk deep in the ocean floor, and threw its bright light in a compact radius on the churning brown.
It was the eighth hour of the shift. On the narrow monkey board, he braced himself against the harness, holding on to the bars of the derrick with both arms. The salty wetness surrounded him like an all-embracing undertow, and for a while he’d been expecting the signal that meant work was over. Pippo would have called them in long ago, but the new rig manager did
n’t seem to care, he’d sooner let them drown than interrupt the drilling. Waclaw felt the blows against the jacket legs—back then they would have evacuated the platform, he thought, but not now, now they’ll just wait—while the rain drove near-horizontally across the floodlights, and the sea tugged at the welded joints, dashed against the platform like some crazy herd, the waves fled the storm, everything coming toward them.
Far below on the rotary table he saw the men, they were calling something, he saw how their mouths moved, but the only call was the call of the storm, the spray, the futile flapping of a seagull, the light undersides of its wings flashing a few times.
It was almost half an hour before the signal sounded and work ended. He had simply held out, braced himself on his narrow platform and waited. The other roughnecks went in, someone opened the heavy door to the cabins, he saw the strip of light, the first men entered. There was only this coldness in his limbs and he moved his feet in single movements, stiffly, his legs knew the space between steps, every single wet rung. The water had long since crept under his oilskin, and Waclaw was chilled to the bone and kept on gripping the bars once he finally came to stand on the floor of the platform.
Inside, the light was glaring, the warmth friendly, even in the little room where they put their boots on the rack and hung their coveralls to dry. He felt almost cheerful now, coming into the warmth with the others. It was a new team and there were only a few, like Albert, who was in charge down on the rotary table, whom he’d known for a long time. The storm had made his mood even worse. Silently Waclaw stuck his feet into his flip-flops and walked down the hallway to their cabin. The light was on, but Mátyás’s bed was empty. Their blankets lay on the lower bunk and for a moment he thought perhaps Mátyás was under them, but there was no one there. The headphones dangled toward the floor, the Walkman was next to the pillow. He wound the cord around his hand. Mátyás? he said. Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door to the bathroom. It was four in the morning. He turned on the hot water.
Barefoot and still wet through, he stood in front of their bunks. He pulled both blankets over himself, over his still-damp skin, and suddenly the storm seemed very far way. He waited. The warmth made him sleepy, and he’d not eaten anything since evening. This was new, too, for the drilling foreman to put them on different shifts.
As always, his skin looked strangely pale under the parallel lines of the neon tubes. As he entered the mess hall, the men who sat at the table in front of the counter fell silent. He felt their gaze behind the sticky plastic sauce bottles, shadowing his movements as he looked around. Next to them, off to the side, sat Francis, pallid and somewhat absent. A sick seabird, fluffing his feathers for a few last days. He sat erect, ignoring the jibes that the crane operator was bellowing from the next table like a fat pig. Shane showed off for the new guys, barking at the floorhands to put more chemicals in the drilling fluid, to bring him water, or to hose down the deck again and again. Only when they sat weak and exhausted next to him, enduring his crude jokes, did his face take on the air of absence that for him signaled satisfaction. Then he could sit there as if his eyes were made of glass. But when the door swung open his face had brightened, and Waclaw heard a scornful, beckoning whistle. Hey hey, Shane mocked, who might we be looking for. His voice sounded dull and deep, like that of a very fat man, but he was scraggy, with a hawk nose that had followed their every step since they’d met him for the first time two years ago. His arms, all of him, were still coated with a greasy film. Outside on deck he wore yellow work gloves that made his hands look like claws. It was the usual talk. Waclaw never paid any mind when people stared after them.
Francis sat next to them, silently drinking two glasses amid their noise. Waclaw was annoyed that Mátyás wasn’t there. He took two ladlesful from the warming pot, dunked in some nearly transparent toast, and ate. Here, too, the light was too glaring. The soup too brown, skin too pale. Gradually, the mess hall began to fill. After work ended, they either came here to eat or lay down in their cabins to sleep.
In the hallway the storm seemed nearly silent, the swaying, everything felt as if it were some ways away. He heard voices from the movie room, and his own steps, growing quicker, as he passed the plastic-covered doors with aluminum knobs. He went down the long hall to the last door, the room was dark save a small electric candle in the corner that flickered no matter the weather. They’d met here sometimes: just a few rugs turned toward Mecca, hardly anyone came to pray. Mátyás? Would he have been surprised to see him leaning against the wall, laughing his soft laugh? A stream of light fell into the darkness as the door opened. The room was silent. Only an unreal silence and the rugs. He went back to their cabin. Through a cracked door he saw Andrej lying on his bunk, phone on his shoulder like a little bird—his paunch peeking out and his pale, threadbare pants. The song he was listening to sounded like reshushshickshurroo, and he would be listening to it all night long.
The smell of socks and sweaty tank tops, the thin walls. Five thirty, maybe, at night, normally he’d still have nearly three hours out on the iron bars of the derrick, and it should have been Mátyás’s last hours of sleep before his shift. Perhaps he’d felt sick. The night was still as dark as it was possible to be, not a streak of light. Once, the door to the deck hadn’t closed properly and the water had flowed nearly to their cabins. That was long before he’d known Mátyás, before the weeks out here had taken on a certain temperature, almost like a color, which he recognized in the way their things formed a disorder that was familiar to him.
He climbed over their bags into his bed and stretched out on his back. He left the light on for Mátyás and tried to close his eyes. The platform was dependable, you could trust that it would float, that it was high enough, twelve meters above sea level, that the water couldn’t simply wash over it, but what could you really trust, it was floating steel. The Ocean Monarch had spent years in the North Sea before it had been towed down south, a semisubmersible, a colossus that was getting on in years, the wall above Waclaw’s bed shone with the greasy headprints of other workers. Countless nights, way out. Mátyás analyzed the drill cuttings, he knew about the rock chips and traces of sediment, he could tell what kinds of forests grew on the seafloor in prehistoric times. Waclaw had never heard someone laugh so much, an almost childlike way of dealing with the weeks at sea. From the first day, his expression had reminded Waclaw of old playing cards, a joker in yellow garb. While the instructor in the big halls where they were trained laid his American r under every sentence like the base of a platform, waxing lyrical about the unbounded freedom of the oceans and the company’s oilfields, Mátyás just stared off through his curls and held his tongue. His father was Hungarian, some uprising or other had led the family out of the heart of Budapest and into the countryside, where he had been supposed to become a blacksmith on a large farm: hooves, steam, young mares and whites of eyes, endless drives through the countryside and the smell in his uncle’s car that made him sick.
For six years they’d shared a cabin, and it had been one since they’d left the Gulf of Mexico. What raged outside now, this booming spectacle of a night, was none other than the Atlantic itself, and here, near the continental shelf, off the coast of Morocco, it felt furious and open. He reached into his bag and pulled out a sweater, suddenly cold. He thought of Pippo, their old drilling foreman, confined to bed for weeks on end by vicious bouts of malaria. Some said it wouldn’t be long before it got to him, made him not quite normal. It was the platforms near the coast, the Niger Delta and the mosquitos that flew out from the swampy banks, the lack of wind and the heat, the fact that no one could long stand taking the tablets that prevented infection. How long had Pippo been out? He knew Mátyás liked him. But when they had gotten back to the platform there was only Anderson, who didn’t even bother to introduce himself, and the glow of the few days they’d spent on the coast was blown out.
He must have dreamed, but when the alarm shrilled he remembered only shreds, trees in a
landscape, some hills. It was Mátyás’s alarm, only a few minutes left before his shift. The light was still on, the air stuffy and damp, he’d forgotten to close the bathroom door.
Mátyás wasn’t there. Wind pressed against the cabin wall, it was quiet in the hallway. They’d keep work suspended for a few more hours. He turned on his side and stared at their things. All was unchanged, even his pack with the soapstone that he always carried—it lay where it always lay.
Waclaw pulled the blanket tighter and thought he had just closed his eyes when something startled him awake, dull and distant, not the clatter of steps on the walkway, something other than the piercing signal for work to continue. The unease was unexpected and strong, it seemed to emanate from the bright wall, where the sudden daylight traced a clear line. Mátyás’s warm fleece still hung in the closet.
So he brought him the sweater. The morning was clear, heavy clouds moved across the early blue as if in a hurry, in the distance a silvery shimmer still lingered. He carried the fleece for Mátyás and he carried it like a plea, while the running of the machines suddenly struck him as unreal. Here we are, Petrov said as he came around the light blue tank behind which they extracted the drill cuttings.
He saw the familiar pans with the sludge, the stones and muddy earth, saw all the things that were familiar to him, the shaker screens, the monitors and hoses, saw Petrov with his good-natured smile, but he did not see Mátyás. Where’s your friend this morning? Petrov took off his safety goggles and looked at Waclaw in the same way Waclaw was looking at him.
Petrov had wanted to wait until Mátyás came by himself, work had gotten off to a slow start after that night. Waclaw didn’t have to remind him of the darkness of the sea. They looked. It only occurred to him later, after they had searched every room, the whole deck, every corner and step all the way down to the boat landings, the gym, the mess hall several times and several times their own cabins, after announcements were made, after the drilling foreman subjected the workers to a standardized round of questioning, the sky broke into a radiant noon, while nothing of the day and none of the seabirds that flew over the water could possibly be real, radio messages went out, someone brought him a hot drink and he scanned every jacket leg with his eyes, the water’s surface with its crazy shimmer, after they tried to drag him in and finally left him to sit between the tanks and an even, round sun sank into the water, only then did he notice that his fist was closed around something, which only then, in the evening and before the flat horizon, turned into something that had once been Mátyás’s fleece.
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