High as the Waters Rise

by Anja Kampmann

  It was March, and London was just a stopover. Waclaw stayed in an airport hotel in the southern part of the city: light gray carpeting, soundproof windows. On the way back he’d recognized the specialists who’d been flown in for the borehole measurements. They determined pore space, resistance, and conductivity before the casings could be inserted, they tested the porosity of the rock. They shared a taxi from Gatwick into the city for the evening.

  Most of the men wanted to get an early start, so they drank less than usual, and the food and conversation was bland, stale, as if they were just imagining talking to one another. Waclaw left early and started walking south alone, maybe he just needed some fresh air before the night. Then he’d stopped. The street was nearly empty, wind blew through the tall trees. Perhaps he wouldn’t even have noticed the melody if he hadn’t fought with Mátyás over that trifle a few days earlier. Unlike usually, the bad feeling had lasted awhile, and Mátyás had taken the connecting flight to Budapest in the night. Now the notes floated through the fir trees in the darkness.

  They were on the Gulf of Mexico, West Capricorn, spring. They’d worked all night, perhaps that had made Waclaw more irritable. In Europe, March was still cold, they could see that on the screen in the television room, and maybe the gray clouds were the reason that the men kept switching back to it. He’d sat wearily on the sofa with Mátyás. Some of the men were watching a bike race, but they changed the channel when ads came on, and those gray clouds returned over and over. A voice spoke very quick Spanish. Mátyás nudged him.

  That’s Rome, he said.

  And then they saw the crowds in St. Peter’s Square, a cloudy sky and the rooftops of Rome, gray smoke, the Swiss Guards in their yellow-and-purple gaiters and knickerbockers, plumes of red feathers on their helmets. There was the smell of sweat, and the narrowness of the recreation room, the stained carpet, and while outside the sea grew gray like cold ashes, and far away the clouds took on a bright sheen, over there where the cities must be, where the streetlights were being turned on overhead, the clouds hung low over St. Peter’s Square, and Waclaw sat there and couldn’t look away. He felt like he recognized them, those pilgrims who had gathered in their thin rain jackets, who stared into the air at some smoke that could only be meant for each of them individually. They all read their own story in that sky. And that story needed a new teller, someone to turn the pages, someone who knew about them, who would accompany them on their journey through the endless cities.

  It was the papal election, the bishops had gathered for the conclave, and the other workers sat for a while, indecisive in front of the image on the screen, until it became clear that nothing else was going to happen, no one was coming out, everyone was just gathering around some gray smoke. A few of the men laughed, a few had fallen asleep, and Asle flipped back to the bike race with the remote. He was the driller, he could change the channel, and it took Waclaw a moment before he started to move forward in his seat. He stood in front of the huge flat screen.

  Switch it back, he said softly.

  At first they were just surprised, but then they started to throw things at him, someone shook a can of Coke and opened it a little bit and sprayed it in his direction.

  The evening was saved.

  They laughed and lay like a horde of sea lions on their cushions, minus the tenderness between the animals. He could still hear them outside. He tried not to look them in the eyes as he stood up and left. Only Mátyás came after him, he knew where to find him.

  What’s up, he asked.

  We can’t lose our sense of respect, Waclaw said.

  The argument was short and fierce. Mátyás called him too sentimental, and Waclaw said: Then you just don’t understand, and he couldn’t explain what it meant that there one hope was being replaced with another one, and all of his father’s last prayers.

  Later they tried to avoid the topic, but they kept bumping up against it, like a painful spot in the mouth that the tongue keeps running over to test whether it’s still there. It was there.

  And on that evening in London, among the cold, swaying fir trees, while under the light of the streetlamps double-decker buses drove into their own redness and some homeless people scrapped by a kiosk, Waclaw stood in the middle of the street and listened to an organ, powerful among the firs. Where the music was, the windows were illuminated yellow.

  Without the fight, it might not have had any meaning for him, but as it was, he felt a certain emotion, just because of a familiar sound. He could see the miners’ estate, the small yellow windows like markings on a much deeper black, the incense, the Polish prayers. At the same time, the whole fight struck him as ridiculous, and he missed Mátyás, who’d grown uncertain in the airplane and had parted from him with a long embrace.

  His clothing was still a bit damp, he could hear the vendors outside. In the corner of St. Paul’s he’d simply stood there, his ear against the cool stone. Something about the melody was familiar. Now he looked around. On the only plastic hanger in Irene’s room hung his jacket with the ivory nut button. He closed his eyes when he heard her steps. She came alone. He didn’t know what Patrice had given her. Aphrodite. In the bar below he heard something clinking.

  15

  A Parrot

  At the market he bought a glittering watch, the stones were bright on the black armband. He’d withdrawn some money, enough for the next while.

  Irene was sitting on the bed smoothing lotion on her legs when he knocked. Her calves were solid and heavy. He looked at her. She rubbed the leftover lotion into her forearms.

  She stretched out her legs in front of her.

  I can’t even touch my toes anymore, she said.

  As if to prove it, she bent forward, reached her hands to her knees. The sleeves of her bathrobe were frayed.

  What is that? she said.

  He gave her the box. She sat on the edge of the bed. The stones gleamed brightly when she lifted the cover. He saw that her brown, scarred knee almost touched the wall. She laid the box down carelessly and looked out the window. The thin curtain waved slightly, it had water stains that had grown brown at the edges.

  Do you know what I’ve been thinking about recently? she said.

  I was in my early twenties when I packed my things, it was the mid-nineties. I went to see my grandmother in Berlin, to say goodbye. She’d survived the war and she saw me standing there with my backpack. The wooden floor creaked, it was an old apartment on Warschauer Straße. I probably looked terrible, still some teenage pudginess, my head full of crazy ideas. She put her arms around me because she knew I was leaving. And do you know what she said?

  She looked out the corner of the window, over the terra-cotta roofs. Laundry that no one had brought in hung on the fire escape, the building opposite looked lifeless under its rusty antennas.

  Irene looked briefly at Waclaw, then looked out again.

  She said: It’s a big world no matter what.

  And then she kissed my forehead and let me go.

  That’s what you’ve been thinking about?

  That’s what I’ve been thinking about.

  She turned her back to him.

  I think I’m only just starting to understand what she meant.

  She lay on her side and pulled her legs in toward her.

  He was careful not to hit his head on the spiral staircase. He saw himself in his first work shoes, in the harbor. And all of a sudden he could smell the faux leather, the little bag in which he’d stowed the sandwiches and a thermos. The street in front of the building lay in shadow, he walked to the same white stones, with the water sloshing against them. He felt in his pocket for the key to the locker. An old tin from his father, papers, letters. The golden initials of a Bremen tea merchant. He would have to wait before he could get his things.

  A boat full of tourists had docked: the afternoon ferry. He waited until the last of them had left the shop, he watched almost impatiently while they couldn’t decide between all the identical postcards, how th
eir fingers went with greedy determination over the displays of tobacco pipes, linens, and games. Though they couldn’t possibly know one another, they seemed to travel the same routes almost daily. From the harbor through the old city to her shop, then across the market square to a café, then to the weaving mill, where their guides awaited them. Beige was their color, and over the years, only their cameras got smaller.

  Irene stood smoking under the washed-out awning. Her eyeshadow was thick, and when she saw him she stretched out the two fingers that held her cigarette, like in a film. She did not smile.

  He set down the bag to embrace her, but she took a step away. She looked tired, like the village women whose cigarettes smolder down to their filters while the beer foam dries on the glasses and in the distance heavy clouds roll over the fields. Her skin had the brown color of shriveled fruit. She was like him. And then she smiled after all.

  Saw his duffel, the suit.

  Brushed something from his shoulder with her free hand.

  Guapo—handsome, she said, and her eyes didn’t laugh along.

  Where will you go now?

  Then suddenly she looked around her. All the postcards. All the sunsets. She seemed uncertain.

  I have the shop, you know.

  I know.

  He touched her shoulders.

  It’s a good shop.

  You wouldn’t want me to give it up, would you?

  For a fraction of a moment he saw something in her eyes that he had seen once before, a long time ago, in the eyes of a deer that he’d found near the railroad embankment, the grass warm from its blood, it hadn’t had the strength to get up. He felt her long, slightly matted hair on his arm as she leaned against him. He saw that it had grown dull, and he smelled the light bar smell rising from her clothes. He knew that she’d be alone for a long time.

  But it’s your shop, he said softly. And I have to take care of a few things.

  Yes, she said, then more softly, things. Be well.

  She seemed tired, too tired for a goodbye; she turned around and walked into the shadow of the postcards. He couldn’t have said whether she watched him walk away.

  The neon sign was partially out of order, so that from the top down it read H TEL. The O flickered only occasionally. It was a run-down, tall building near the harbor, he paid for a room for one night. The halls smelled of old mops and dust. He thought of Patrícia as he folded a few things on the bed. He heard their last conversation like an echo in his head. No one’s here anymore.

  He walked up the hill. In the light blue of the evening the clouds were glowing orange streaks, the lines of airplanes drew a fine ember-orange light after them; the houses below them already lay in shadow. Chimneys and antennas took on sharp contours. The light of the streetlamps that hung on long cables over the street mingled with the yellow and red of a few neon signs. The seam of his right shoe had split, and he felt little stones. Finally came the last apartment buildings. The cracked asphalt continued on for a while, plots of land with tall wooden fences and heavy padlocks. He walked through the darkening evening until he reached the workshop’s big parking lot with its sudden floodlights, the neon light, and the scrapped car bodies at the edges, with the little container, a light within it still burning.

  Before it stood a high metal fence. Waclaw pushed the gate open, the metal bar whined over the concrete, somewhere a stray dog yapped. He waited a moment and then walked toward the container. Before he could knock, he heard a parrot squawk inside. The bird, small and gray with a dark beak, moved excitedly back and forth on its perch as the door was opened. Everything was enveloped in blue smoke, the bird clamored excitedly over a sea of papers, work gloves, half-empty oilcans.

  In the midst of it all sat Eugenio with his shiny, sweaty skin and even fewer hairs on his flat skull than last time. Eugenio looked up.

  Then he laughed.

  I thought I’d never see you again.

  They walked through the big, low building with the hydraulic lifts, car jacks, and tools, a few boat motors were lying around and Waclaw saw a sweat mark on Eugenio’s light-gray shirt where the back of the chair must have been. It was still warm. It smelled of brake fluid and gasoline and solvents, a welding helmet hung on the wall next to a small door that Eugenio opened. The workshop with its meter-high iron shelves full of boxes seemed chaotic and deserted, so that he sometimes asked himself how they actually made the money.

  Eugenio looked around.

  You’re lucky, I’m late today.

  Then he reached his hand through the crack in the door, and they went into a low room with a few lockers. A single construction light hung on a black cord from the ceiling. It slowly warmed into a glow.

  Vuoi che ti lascio solo?

  Waclaw shook his head.

  It was cool in the room, it smelled of concrete and dust.

  He took the key from his pocket and opened the steel door. The locker looked like it came from a gym or an old swimming pool, only wider. A few names were scratched into the paint.

  He stuffed the cardboard boxes into his duffel, then he took out the tin, a green suitcase, and the boots. The leather was lighter than he’d remembered. Good leather. He’d looked forward to the boots.

  They’d begun pumping nitrogen into the big oil field of Cantarell to increase the pressure, he’d gone on land with the others to Ciudad del Carmen, and he’d taken the boots from a young charro. It was Mexico, they sat playing poker, their eyes watered. The boy had stringy hair that he brushed away from his face in embarrassment, he drank the last swig of mezcal with the worm, he had three kings and two queens, full house, but not enough. He put his boots on the table, he said they were good, from his father, when he lost again the tears rose to his face, it was hot. It was the night before the start of the shift, the young charro looked back and forth between them, looked at Pasqual, who’d been a boxer before he started as a roughneck, his neck as thick as two, a tattoo of the Madonna on his arm, an oval that warped when he bent over. The cartilage of Pasqual’s ears was ragged, the boy looked pale next to him, he sat there as if he had to think it over, then he stood up, said he would come back the next day and trade the boots for money, but Waclaw never saw him again.

  They were faded cowhide with a leather sole and a wooden heel. They looked so much like another, real life that he was sometimes ashamed to wear them.

  He felt again over the top compartment of the locker, picked up the tin, and wiped it off with his sleeve. He saw the embossed initials, the packet of letters weighed next to nothing, he set them carefully on top of the other things. Then he took a few bills and the keys and gave both to Eugenio.

  Eugenio counted the money, then he looked at the keys in his hand.

  There are two. This one isn’t mine.

  Keep it.

  Eugenio shrugged.

  Aren’t you coming back?

  Didn’t go so well? Problems?

  When Waclaw shook his head, Eugenio clapped him on the shoulder.

  Women! he said then.

  Waclaw accepted a warm beer in Eugenio’s container, he looked at the parrot and its dark red tail feathers and didn’t speak of the sea. He said he had a goal: Italy. He took out the tin and talked of a friend of his father, Alois, who’d gone back there, leaving the Ruhr, where they’d been almost neighbors for years, like a kind of uncle, Waclaw said. Eugenio didn’t understand everything, but he answered in slow Italian of which Waclaw understood only bits. Eugenio said he’d always known that Waclaw wouldn’t stray too far.

  What did he want up there.

  Colombe, he said, really?

  Yes, Waclaw said. Colombe. Pigeons.

  Then he opened both hands. He’d been ten years old back then.

  He closed the door to his balcony before dawn. The streetlights were going out, H TEL, it was growing light. He left the suitcase and most of the things on the bed. He carried the duffel, the straps dug into his shoulder pads. The streets smelled damp, street sweepers sprinkled the stones, cat
s ran timidly between the garbage cans in the early gray. Three cranes towered out of the fog. He heard the clattering song of the beggars as he waited in the harbor of Valetta. He heard that they were looking for bottles, food, and clothing. He thought that it would be easy to look for things. He thought that he’d looked for things in the distance, but that there’d been nothing there. Nothing for humans. It was a high-pitched sound, and those that heard it started to drink and acted out just to get it out of their ears. Few could bear it. It was like hearing the cosmos, interrupted by the brief, futile throbbing of one’s own heart. It was easier to look for things. It was easier to sell lemonade on the beach and not to step any farther than that edge.

  He looked down at himself. The light-colored boots. As if nothing else were left, as if they were all that remained from Mexico, them and the fear, and the violet-blue blossoms of the jacarandas.

  The trees blooming in the streets, and they were there, they were nowhere, they ate pollo pibil and corn, strolled through markets, went to a fisherman who rented his boat out for money, though he didn’t like the oil people. None of them. It was as if those days and weeks were inaccessible, like massive villas behind high fences, with blinds that lowered automatically. Sometimes he’d thought of that fisherman, his green shirt and the arm chaps, matted strands hung down his back, the hair over his forehead was already gray. He’d watched them go off with disdain, as if they knew nothing of the sea. He stood on the shore with his short legs, a little sun shelter he’d built himself out of driftwood. Protected by a few sheets, he sat in these shadows surrounded by coolers, he watched them push the boat into the water, his foot was missing the big toe, and they rowed clumsily, Mátyás and he, hardly making any progress against the small waves that rolled toward the beach.

  When they pulled the boat back ashore, the fisherman was already standing there in the blazing sun. He didn’t even look at them as he took the money.