High as the Waters Rise

by Anja Kampmann

  Far below him lay the smiling corpse in the sand.

  The sea had grown softer. The sun had sunk below the horizon. The last light was only an inference, an afterimage of something long gone.

  There was a knock at the door. Rasil, in his eternal plaid shirt. He peeked through the door into the dark room and asked if he should make breakfast.

  Tomorrow? Two?

  Darya had clearly sent him, and clearly the question was not just meant for him. No. No breakfast.

  He looked out absently.

  You need anything?

  Waclaw didn’t answer.

  A short time later, Rasil returned.

  For your hand.

  He passed a bandage and a little bottle of antiseptic through the door.

  Help? he asked.

  No.

  Rasil must have seen him on the street, a line with scraped hands under the orange trees. Only now did he notice the red welts; the old cloth pants were completely torn over his knee. The stone had been rough.

  He awoke in their room. Mátyás stood there in linen shoes and shorts, but with that silly hat on his head. He must have known how beautiful he was.

  3

  Ahmad

  Ahmad greeted him with surprise when he entered, grinned from ear to ear, then looked past him toward the door as if expecting someone else. When no one came, he continued spooning ground beans into the metal hopper. Behind him stood an ensemble of five Bunsen burners on a board blackened from coffee and heat. In the corner hung photos of him with people from the movies, men and women with puffed-up hairdos who wandered here for a few days, for whom the harbor and the body of water that divided the continents had retained something of the old exoticism that had once attracted Western intellectuals and filmmakers to its hotels like flies. They were still happy to overlook the fact that this stretch of land had changed. The café had five high arched windows, through which one could look far out to the bay. On one side gleamed hotel behemoths, the sand before them dirty by contrast. A few young people smoked. Waclaw sat by the window. Next to him a young couple drank mint tea from tall glasses while in the back, in the darkest part of the café, three young guys threw dice. One of them sang along to the melody that came through the speakers. Wisps of smoke hung in the air, and Waclaw ordered a coffee without looking Ahmad in the eyes.

  Still tired?

  Ahmad smiled widely as he set the tall glass with its nearly black liquid on the table before him.

  This will help.

  I’m fine. It just takes a while, you know how it is.

  Waclaw could see from the way Ahmad was looking at him that he must look more exhausted than usual. They’d often sat here, gazing at the green roof gardens that fell toward the bay in an endless progression of smaller and smaller boxes, until the white of the high-rises beyond the stretch of sand began to shimmer, and they had slowly come back to the normal rhythm of days, as the voices mingled with the music and the afternoon light settled on the folding chairs and dinged tables.

  For some time there had been large screens in the corners that played BBC Wildlife films; these had always bothered them, but now Waclaw was grateful for the scenes of feeding and stalking, boa constrictors in waterholes and herds on the move, oblivious to the flat backs of the predatory cats crouching in the flat grass of the savanna.

  Waclaw sat there, watching predators shaking their prey to death, and then orcas playing paddleball with half-dead seals. The films were silent, but Waclaw felt he could hear the precise sound of the bones breaking.

  He avoided looking at Ahmad and kept his bandaged hand on his leg under the table. Then he stared into the smoke and drank his sweet, dark coffee.

  When he stood up, an unfamiliar pressure shot through the inside of his temporal lobe. For a moment he saw the brown of the waves before him, braced himself on the table. He laid a bill on the counter for Ahmad and held fast to the handle as he opened the door. Ahmad called something after him, his voice cracking like a disappointed child’s.

  He walked, and he noticed how thirsty he was.

  In the moment when he felt a hand on his shoulder and saw the face with its high cheekbones thrust in front of him, two impulses pierced his thudding headache: one was called flight, and urged him to run down the narrow steps into one of the alleys where the weavers spun their threads; the other, at least as strong, had no name but resembled the sleep that travelers plunge into after great exhaustion, a cold wind going through him. Together, they simply slowed him down until he stopped, as if he had vertigo and needed something to hold on to.

  Immediately all the energy seemed to drain from his body, and he heard Ahmad’s voice.

  You guys will come tomorrow, right?

  There were Ahmad’s high cheekbones and the noiselessness of the steps they stood on. Flowers twined on the opposite wall, their blossoms confusingly bright.

  Wenzel, what is it?

  He’s not coming anymore, he said.

  What’s wrong? Ahmad didn’t let up. Will you come tomorrow?

  He felt his pulse and a soft roaring in his ears.

  Work, Ahmad. Don’t you know. Mátyás—

  He shrugged his shoulders, as if any further words would be useless.

  He wasn’t even sure whether he actually spoke the word accident, which surely belonged to the sentence, or just thought it.

  He saw Ahmad’s helpless eyes, felt himself pulled toward him and his whole torso briefly compressed, and heard a soft voice in his ear saying: Come back tomorrow, Wenzel.

  Then Ahmad slowly released him and watched his long, uncertain steps descending the stairs, the bandaged hand that hung loose at his hip. Waclaw still felt the strength of his arms on his sides; he continued on in a daze. Alleys with leather goods and engraved brass plates, all the tea that no one would drink. Markets with their prodigal colors, scents so intense that he might once have thought they could make up for everything. Now they stood there like uniform gray boxes. Strands of glass beads in the restaurants, rattling as they were pushed aside, one after another. He moved through the woven fabrics and the rubber soles of the tourists, and all the smells of cumin, anise, and urine in the shadowed corners of the walls soon became merely the smell of a new strangeness that was spreading through him, as if he were nothing but a plain full of dry grass.

  When he woke, it was already dark. He lay on the mattress, covered only with the unbuttoned shirt that he’d thrown across his back.

  The lights in the street were colorful, groups of people hustled past the small shops, the light on their shoulders, fat and steam, the smell of spices in the air. Voices. Tables were set up, tiny cups of tea between the plates. Waclaw walked. A man bumped into him. He thrust past Waclaw with a heavy sack; Waclaw could see feathers under the canvas, a bit of light fell on a tan wing.

  They had tried to get rid of it, to get all that filth out of their bodies—steam baths, sauna. Mátyás’s urine test had already been positive for amphetamines once before their shift. Usually they had little bottles in their pockets or got someone else to give them urine, but sometimes the tests came unannounced. They’d sent Mátyás to land for four weeks: forced rest that left him surly, like an animal in a cage.

  They were in Madrid, Hotel Gran Meliá, an oval lobby with low upholstered furniture and illuminated lampshades. It was like stepping into a picture that claimed to be nothing less than one’s own life. Everything attained. They rented a jeep. They had four-wheel drive beneath them as they chased through the Jerte Valley: cherry blossoms, a beauty like the white face of a porcelain mask. The fields were laid out in terraces; to Waclaw it all seemed artificial. They raced along as if something were after them. As if it were a rally. They drove down from the street and up a bank, until they couldn’t go any farther. Then they could lie exhausted on the washed-out stones of the river, slopes with trees and shrubbery to either side, ocher sand. They could swim where the water was still ice cold, they could laugh. Waclaw remembered how Mátyás ordered for the
m with his few scraps of Spanish. As if a world lay open before him. Somewhere he was going alone.

  In Tangier they’d always gone to the same business hotel, the bar looked like a spy film from the nineties. Avenue du Front de Mer. That evening he walked in the same direction, this time to another of the hulking white buildings on the beach. There was a roof deck with glass railings, keyboard music that reminded him of Barbra Streisand.

  Everything was too sweet.

  He drank a whiskey sour and gazed at the cherry in his glass, the same the world over. The waiter hesitated for a long time before clearing his plate. Waclaw hadn’t touched the food. Usually it was different, the body recovered everything that had been done to it—too little sleep, too much sea, the cabins where it could never relax, the harsh noon light between the curtains. But now the body, too, wanted nothing, as if something were different now, more final, as if nothing more were coming. He lined up plastic-colored cherries on a toothpick. Then he drove back.

  The key scratched in the lock. Again, he had the feeling that Darya had been waiting for Mátyás’s arrival and not his. For days he’d been buying the clothes he wore, cheap shrink-wrapped shirts from stands on the street. All just so he wouldn’t have to ask her to do his washing, all because he couldn’t bear the silence that surrounded her jangling bracelets.

  He had decided to take a different room, and for a while the idea electrified him. In the current of the streets he once more had the feeling of going toward something. He’d scrutinized the signs advertising Aircondition or B&B, watching the guests who came unassumingly out of their doors. And he’d kept on, looking for a place where he could stop in with his heavy shoes, until the feeling he’d left with melted away.

  In the harbor, the long rows of fishermen on the jetty. Finally he’d reached the freighters. Workers slept on the heavy ropes after unloading the cargo, on the decks of the tankers or on the docks. They lay in the filth of their overalls, in the pileup of days, they lay where at night the tomcats patrolled their territory, where the seagulls turned their dirty-white circles, where the ships with their unvarying loops and knots had to be moored, slack and exhausted in a fleeting shadow, and what woke them was not daylight or the distant yapping of the customs dogs, but a disquiet that lay deep beneath the smell of the clammy fishing nets. Or it came from the fishermen themselves, as they once again sanded their wood, revarnished it, and gave their boats names that would fade as quickly as they were painted. It was enough to wake you up, this disquiet.

  On the way back, Waclaw walked uphill through a narrow alley: prowling cats, tall, closed doors, and two boys who ran after him and kept trying to give him their left hands. They laughed. He was one of many. He was too tired to react, and continued on, until an older man came and chased them off. No room in the world would change things. He couldn’t stay.

  4

  Whalebones

  In the square where children played during the day it was now dark, and people were sleeping in the lee of the low walls. He heard voices. Beyond, the wall that surrounded the west side of the city towered precipitously. High up, a silent orange light shimmered peacefully, for itself alone.

  Birds blustered in the rubber trees of the Jewish Cemetery. The fountain lay in darkness, no one sat there any longer. It was already light over the Grand Socco as he took his telephone from his pocket and turned it on. Sharam, the Persian—they’d laughed at him when he talked of the Gulf War as if that’s where the story had begun, That’s where you’re from, he’d say, or That’s where we are from, and no one wanted to hear it. But back then, when it began, he’d kept an eye out for them, and the mere fact that everyone knew it had protected them from all kinds of trouble. Waclaw didn’t even know what country this number belonged to, how late it was there, morning or night—night, like here.

  Sharam picked up.

  His voice was deep, as it had been back then.

  Have you heard? Waclaw heard his own voice echo in the connection.

  Who’s speaking?

  It’s me, Wenzel. Have you heard?

  He heard his echo again, and then a heavy breath, as if someone were sitting up in bed.

  Wenzel? What is it? What should I have heard?

  Sharam’s English sounded clumsy, as if he hadn’t spoken it in ages.

  Don’t you know that Mátyás—he wanted to take a breath, but instead continued on quickly—that Mátyás is gone?

  Sharam was saying something but Waclaw still heard the echo of what could be said so easily, in one word, gone.

  Wenzel, Wenzel, are you there? Them bastards! Wenzel?

  Where are you?

  Sharam was awake now and Waclaw heard him curse, as he always had. It was no relief, he didn’t know what he had been hoping for.

  Sharam, he said, I’m tired.

  And hung up.

  As he let himself fall on the mattress in the corner of the room, he wondered if he’d ever been so stupid as to give Sharam their address in Tangier.

  The beacon on the far shore of the bay flashed steady and white. Through the curtainless windows he saw three young girls shaking their hair, sparring with one another in pink sweaters, arms whirling in the light, last games before bed. There were voices like a dull roar, a few engines, and beyond it all, the shimmering distance of the bay. He was restless. The weariness was like a lacquer over everything. Even the noises sounded more muffled. He saw the two big bags. He hadn’t touched them again. Nor did he want to open the wardrobes, but there was this rage whenever he thought of Anderson and the calls from the company headquarters, where they would never say anything except that their hands were tied and that one had to wait and see, personal negligence, they’d think up something to keep the financial damage to a minimum, as if that were all that was worth talking about. But in the village, they’d want to have a few of Mátyás’s things. Not the expensive shoes, not the fine shirts, what could he bring with him to this hole in Hungary that Mátyás had so rarely spoken of. He packed a rattan ball, a few clothes, a bullwhip from Mexico, papers, a calendar. Waclaw brought everything that he’d need for himself back on deck, and then last of all, the animal from the windowsill. Then, quickly, he shut the wardrobe.

  Let no one in. I’ll pay for it—no one.

  It was still early, and his voice sounded harsher than he’d meant it to. He was loud, but Rasil just smiled as if he hadn’t quite understood.

  I have to take care of something, Waclaw said. I’ll take the key.

  Rasil nodded. Your hand, good?

  He could have shaken him, just for some reaction other than that smile. Rasil had always denied it, but a few times they’d found the room altered when they came back weeks later. They’d fought about it: It’s only a room, Mátyás had said, and couldn’t understand why Waclaw’s voice cracked with a kind of blazing disappointment. No, actually, it’s not. Perhaps Shane, with his clawlike yellow gloves, had understood far more quickly what the room meant to the two of them.

  Rasil had returned to staring at the little screen, a yellow curtain behind him repeatedly granted a glimpse of the inner courtyard, two white plastic chairs.

  He stopped by Café Baba again, but this time he didn’t submit to an embrace. You tell the girl. He said goodbye to Ahmad and walked out of the half-light and the strong smell of roasted coffee. And yet as he carried the things down the hill, amid the ferocious odor of fish and the yapping of the border mutts, he had a feeling, as if he all he could do was head toward him, nothing more, just hold a course that was already blurry. He had an hour before the ferry left.

  It was a few years ago, when the great bubbles of real estate speculation had just burst; on television people were staring at their now-worthless driveways, and the West Capricorn lay a scant hour south by plane from Houma, in the Gulf of Mexico. Summer had begun. Mátyás was new on deck, and there’d been the incident with the Finn. It was one of the last platforms where spinning chains were still used on the drill pipes, the Finn got an arm caught, it all
happened so fast.

  They met after the shift in the back corner of the gym. It was a matter of carrying on somehow, oil prices were stable, but on land people were being fired all over the place, and none of them could afford to lose a job. The official story was that the Finn had gotten dehydrated and lost his concentration, like a hiker on the descent. He’d simply been spun away: like in an epileptic fit his head had been dashed over and over against the structure, his legs got wedged against the rotary table, and his mouth—after a short break they’d gone back to work, and only followed Sharam to the gym that evening.

  Five young guys, the new ones still shaky after that afternoon. Sharam was the oldest, and Waclaw, too, had been at it awhile.

  The Finn had long since been transported to land, and they sat with a lemon one of them had injected with vodka before departure, squeezing drops of it into their mouths.

  There was something ceremonial about the meeting, the room was different, the smell of sweat still hung in the air, they sat behind the treadmills and barbells, and Sharam laid something silly in the middle—his helmet—and Philippe, who’d shipped on from Madagascar, placed his telephone beside it, glowing, and when it went out they’d push another button, so they had a helmet and a glow and the circulating lemon between them. The telephone played a song, they listened to it at least three times before Sharam began to speak. He pressed his curls down with the flat of his hand, but the ends frizzed up, and his temples were bare with age under the strands.