by Sara Alexi
‘How long does Captain Yorgos think it will be before we run out of fuel? Over.’
Captain Yorgos was happily sitting in the shade of the plane tree, sipping a Greek coffee from a tiny cup when the young port police man in a neatly pressed white shirt ran up to him.
‘Captain Yorgos?’ the man, really just a boy, addressed him. ‘You must come quickly. Your yacht has been taken by a pirate.’ After a second’s hesitation, Yorgos’ laugh roared across the square. Everyone in the café turned to see the source of such a noise but Yorgos did not care. He wanted to share it with everyone, it was such a fine joke. Wondering which one of the port police came up with it, he bet himself that it was Demosthenes, the old rogue. As a commander in the port police, he was all but retired and, as a last request, asked to be stationed in Saros to be at home. Demosthenes was born and brought up here, and his sisters still lived in the old town, not far from the large crumbling family home. Yes, he was the sort of man to have such a sense of humour and the authority to call others into action to carry it out.
‘Good one, son. Tell Demosthenes that if he wants me to come over for coffee, all he has to do is ask. But for now, I have a coffee here, so he must come to me.’ And he laughed again but the man stood there, looking worried.
‘No, sir, really. We have checked him out. He is a known English mercenary. Wanted in three countries. He was detained in Athens yesterday but got away. We suspect he is heading to Libya or Morocco.’
After studying the earnest young man’s face, Yorgos stood reluctantly.
‘It is an extravagant joke, my friend,’ he said. ‘But Demosthenes is a good friend, so I will come. Maybe he has a punch line, eh?’ His eyes glinting at the young officer as he threw coins on the table to leave.
The walk hurt. They had to stop several times with the lad urging him on, and he began to believe there really was some emergency. The commotion and noise in the port police office extinguished all thoughts to the contrary.
The petty officer addressed the general hubbub in the room.
‘Is Captain Yorgos here yet?’ he shouted.
‘Here. I’m here.’ Captain Yorgos took off his black felt peaked cap. Beads of sweat lined the creases in his brow; blackheads accentuated the depth.
‘How much fuel did the Artemis have?’
‘She was full. Just filled her up last night,’ he stammered, mopping his forehead with the hem of his t-shirt.
‘Bad news there, I’m afraid. There is a full tank. But we are tailing you, closing in. We are waiting for orders. Over.’
Irini stops rubbing her temples and, with her hand on her hip, looks up and through the narrow window. All there is to see through the window is sky, but the window itself is thick plastic that has been broken down by years of ultra-violet light until it has crazed into a thousand pieces. Sunlight hits the different angles, shimmering into a thousand viewpoints.
‘What do you mean waiting for orders? Over.’
‘Just that. We might need to make this incident an example. Over.’
‘What on earth does that mean?’ Irini forgets to let go of the button so there is no reply. Remembering, she releases it.
‘It means he will not get away with this. Over.’
‘I am more interested in my safety. Over.’
‘It would not look good if any harm came to you, Rini. Your safety is paramount. Over.’
Irini is frowning. She mutters to herself, ‘It would not look good, not look good?’
She presses the button. ‘Who the hell cares how it will look?’ Irini finds she is nearly shouting and quickly looks to the blue square of the hatch.
‘Stay calm, Rini. Everything that can be done will be done to keep you safe. Over.’
Somehow, the conversation has not surprised her. She hangs up the microphone. The corners of her mouth turn down. ‘Not look good!’ she mutters to herself as she goes into the toilet. Not much has changed since she lived on the street. The reaction of the police to incidents back then was all about how it looked both to the public and in their records. People were let go who should have been held in custody; others held who should have been released. None of it made any sense and no one seemed to care about the individuals. That’s what she had loved so much about the village when she moved there. It was all about people. Each person mattered.
She steadies herself as the boat hits a wave and lurches slightly. With the movement of the boat, things have moved about again in the bathroom. More tubes and bottles from the first aid box are rolling on the duckboard floor. Larger items remain behind the rail fronting the shelf. The first aid box itself is on its side. Rolls of bandages have been pitched into the sink. She grabs the various bottles and tubes and packets of gauze from the floor and the shelf and shoves them into the box.
The disarrayed items do not fit in easily and the lid will not close. Half-open, it will not fit back onto the shelf, and there is nowhere else to put it down flat. Irini uses the toilet with the box on her knee, rinses each hand in turn, holding the box in the other, and goes back out to the salon, where she dumps the box on the table and wipes her hands dry on her jeans.
With a glance to the hatch, she opens the rear cabin door and discovers a six pack of large bottles of water stored under the bunk. She pulls one out and drinks deeply. The water is not cold but to her parched mouth, it is the most wonderful sensation and for a moment, she is lost to everything around her. When she is satiated, she mutters again, ‘It will not look good!’ and shakes her head at the thought that she is supposed to trust her safety to these people.
On putting the unopened bottles back, she discovers two cartons of orange juice. Her stomach gives her no choice and, tearing one open with her teeth, she drinks again. This time, the sensations of satisfaction are even deeper, resulting in a sigh when she stops to breathe. She will drink the rest later, if the port police have not taken her off before hunger strikes again. The cartons get stuffed back with the water bottles.
The half-drunk water bottle she puts behind the cabin door for easy access.
Back in the saloon, the first aid box, sitting open on the table, seems out of place. Time is one thing she has a lot of at the moment, and she could use it to put everything back in neatly and replace it on the shelf on the bathroom. After giving it a second’s thought, the action seems trivial and unimportant. In this present situation, she cares neither for tidiness, or her work, or the port police, or anything belonging to the so-called civilised world.
‘It will not look good,’ Irini mutters one more time and then mounts the stairs to go on deck, shaking her head at the port police’s attitude.
Sam is contorted, trying to see to the wound under his shoulder blade. As he reaches what he can, he winces and sucks air through his teeth. He looks up sharply as she steps out onto the deck and Irini can see his eyes shining, watering. Now ignoring the weeping wound, he looks out at the sea and rests against the chair back as if he has no concerns in the world.
Irini stares at him, finding traces of the man behind the hardened face, but as she looks, his eyes glaze over, the cheek muscle twitches, and he is gone again.
Without premeditative thought, Irini turns around, goes back down into the saloon and comes back up with the bottle of water and the first aid box.
‘Here.’ She offers him the water. His hand is quick but his mind is in control and he waits for Irini to take it back and drink first. She spins off the cap and takes a sip, and this appears to satisfy him, and he grabs it back greedily and the contents are emptied quickly. When it is gone, he becomes still again.
‘Where and why?’ he asks.
‘Where and why what?’ Irini puts the first aid box on the deck and begins to go through the contents.
‘Where did you find the water and why did you share it with me? You could have hidden it for yourself.’
Irini shrugs and pulls out two packets of gauze, a bottle of iodine, and a bandage. He watches her, his lips pursed, a slight frown crossin
g between his eyebrows, his cheek muscle forever twitching.
‘Lift your arm.’ She squats beside him.
‘No. There is no need.’ He faces her, the frown growing more intense, looking her in her eyes, searching for her motivation.
‘There is a need.’ She meets his look, tries again to see the person inside the hard shell. He does not relent and so she sits back opposite him, leaving the gauze and bandages on the teak floor.
‘I lived on the streets once.’ She says it nonchalantly. His head swivels to look at her briefly before returning his gaze back to the sea.
‘My parents died. My yiayia, my grandmother that is, she went a bit mad and just left me. The house and land were taken back and I was on the streets.’ She says all this watching the waves curling out from the side of the boat, spreading off either side into the distance.
Once, when she was with Petta on the taxi boat he captained for a year on Orino Island, he took her for a ride and dolphins came to play, racing alongside. They stayed with the boat for hours, weaving, jumping, shooting off and then returning to surf on the bow wave. When Petta slowed the boat, Irini ventured to the bow in her bare feet and lay down flat on the deck, looking into the water. The beautiful animal that was just beneath the surface turned onto its side and looked at her, its eye swivelling in its socket to take her all in.
The moment has stayed with her, helped put so much of her life in perspective, separated what is really important from the more trivial. It is difficult to say how it did this, but whenever something comes to her mind, if she weighs it against that moment, it puts everything in a truer perspective.
As she watches the waves now and thinks of Sam and his gun and his bid to get to Casablanca, the port police wanting to make an example of him, she recalls the dolphin turning on its side, looking at her and making contact in that moment. Then a wave broke, churning the sea, and the moment was gone. The dolphin still played in the wake, she still watched it swim, but that intense contact was what she hung onto. That connection.
‘It was an unloving, uncaring, environment,’ Irini continues. ‘There were two types of people on the street. Everyone knew it was dog eat dog. You know that saying?’ She does not wait for his acknowledgement. ‘We all knew that the only person who would look out for you was yourself. That aside, some chose to strike out at anybody at any time, which I think was from fear, and the others tried to make the immediate world around them a better place, just by acknowledging the other person’s position, giving them space, or showing them care if it was appropriate.’
The land on their starboard side is getting further away. Looking to the port side, she is brought up short. Sam is staring at her. She swallows and her eyes widen, adrenaline released. But he does not move and her fear subsides. She understands the emotional shift behind his look though, and slides off her seat, picks up the iodine bottle, and tears open a packet of gauze.
‘This will sting,’ she says quietly. The autopilot buzzes.
Wiping around the wound shows how jagged the edge are. It is a tear rather than a cut and it’s impossible to imagine how it could have happened. The yellow tinges she saw inside the wound from a distance prove to be fatty tissue. She cannot recognise anything else in the oozing opening, although there are many textures. At least, she consoles herself, it is not down to the rib bones.
Pouring the iodine onto the gauze, she makes quick eye contact before touching it gently to the area and wiping away all that she can. He gulps in air sharply. The fingers of his right hand, all except the limp tattered little digit, take hold of his own tight muscle in his leg and squeeze.
‘Sorry,’ Irini mutters. His eyes land on her and flash of hatred and the desire to harm. The green irises appear black again and she recoils in fear.
‘Pour it on to wash it,’ he says through clenched teeth.
Irini wants to ask him if he is sure. If what she has done stung, she cannot imagine how pouring the iodine is going to feel. But to ask him would maybe be to suggest that he does not know his own mind so instead, she picks up the iodine bottle, pours some onto a new piece of gauze and without warning, splashes from the bottle into the wound. He spasms as if he has been shot. A piercing wheezing of air comes from a deep place in his gut, up and out through a tightened muscle in his throat. His face contorts as he explodes with the word ‘bugger’ which distils across the calm sea around them. He breathes heavily for a few minutes until he takes control, releases his clenched hands, put his chin against his chest, and nods. Irini takes this as her cue to place on the gauze.
He is quite limp as she passes the bandage around his body, across his acid- or fire-burned stomach, over the old scars, around under his other arm and over the defined muscles of his back to pass over the wound again and again, one bandage being attached to the next until the job is done as best she knows how.
She says nothing as she clears away what is left of the gauze and bandage packets. Taking the rubbish below, she puts it in the plastic bag that holds the wet crinkled toilet roll that she put there in what seems to belong to another lifetime. The radio crackles but she ignores it, instead taking on deck the chess set Captain Yorgos keeps in the saloon to challenge his clients in quieter moments.
‘Do you play?’ she asks as she comes on deck. But Sam’s eyes are shut. Lines where tears have washed through dirt trace down his cheeks, and he suddenly looks so young.
Far off behind them, the two dots that must be the port police boats have grown bigger. They really are hanging back! And what did making this ‘an example’ mean? Usually to use someone as an example means to be overly harsh with them. In Sam’s case, what does that mean?
She watches his face. He is younger than Petta, who will be thirty seven this year. But he is older than her, just turned twenty-seven last month. Or maybe he isn’t older than her, just more worn. His forehead is smooth and wide, he has no grey hairs. His day’s growth of stubble ages him but there are no permanent lines around his eyes, no bagging under them. His lips are smooth.
However old he is, what on earth would drive him to become a mercenary and how on earth is he going to get out of this situation? Being on a yacht in the middle of the sea with port police in speedboats tailing, who only need to push the throttle forward to catch up, he is a sitting duck.
His eyelids flutter.
Chapter 6
As his eyes open, he bucks to his feet. The box of chess pieces is kicked. The pieces spill. A gun appears. His stance is rock solid. He fixes her in his sights, both hands on his weapon.
Open palms towards him, hands either side of her face, eyes wide, she stops breathing. He does not blink.
Slowly he lowers his arms.
Her heart slips from her throat back to its normal place, but it is still beating fast. She wraps her arms around herself, holds everything together, and tries to breathe deeply.
‘Did I sleep?’ he asks, looking over their wake first at one of the dots that is now close enough to be boat shaped, and then at the other. He does not seemed concerned or surprised to see them.
‘Just for a second.’ With the beating of her heart returning to normal, Irini bends forward to pick up the chess pieces.
‘Do you play?’ he asks.
Irini does not answer him. Instead, she pulls out the table that is folded against the helm and sets up the board. He watches.
When she has finished laying them out, the white pieces are on his side but as she takes her hands away, he turns the board so they are nearest her. Frowning, she decides to say nothing and opens. He plays aggressively from the start and within ten moves, she knows she has lost but she plays on anyway. The boat rocks as it moves, the land drifts by on either side, and the sun relentlessly beats down on them as they each take their turns, him taking more time to consider than her.
The first match is over fairly quickly.
‘Well, that was a good warm up,’ Irini declares and resets the pieces. It is becoming easier to be with Sam even if he is si
lent. His silence is not tense. Rather, it is tranquil, non-critical.
In the next game, she will think more carefully, take her time, not play so defensively, do something he is not expecting.
She makes the same opening. He makes a different response. She considers.
‘I made friends with two boys.’ Irini says it casually, testing him to see how he will react to her talking. Sam is leaning his chin into the plan of his hand, elbow on knee. He swaps hands. It gives her the feeling that he is listening.
‘Brothers, they were.’ She puts her finger on the rook but takes it off again. For years, she has wanted to talk about the things she witnessed on the streets, the things that are outside most peoples’ experience. ‘We lived in a disused carriage down by the railway lines. The older brother was a few years younger than me, the younger one, so young.’ Her finger is back on the rook but she does not play it, just thinks. She takes her finger off again. A few times, she has tried to tell Petta, but Petta could not hear. It distressed him to think she had lived in such a world and those attempts had ended with her comforting him, so she gave up. The images and memories have become locked away deep inside her so although she has continued through her ‘normal’ life looking like everyone else, she has felt different, not the same as other people, or that she truly belongs. It has always made her feel just a little bit dirty.
‘The elder brother went off each day to find food and I did the same. Food and work. The little one stayed and played with the stray dogs. He was too small to walk any great distance.’ To Sam, the mercenary, these things she has witnessed may be child’s play, daily events for him, no big deal, but it feels so liberating, refreshing even, to be talking about them. If Sam doesn’t understand why she is taking the opportunity to talk to someone who has been there too, let it out, exorcise it, he will at least not be shocked. That alone will be a relief. After all these years, she may at least no longer be alone in her horrendous remembered world.
