“Or we can’t,” Abdul replied.
Diamantis looked up. Their eyes met. Abdul told himself he had hit the nail on the head. Something was stopping Diamantis from going home. That was the only reason he could find for why he hadn’t left with the others.
“It comes to the same thing. You see, I think what we call truth is simply being sincere about taking responsibility for our own situation. And it’s always a lie when we give capital letters to words like life, love, history. Don’t you think so?”
Abdul bent over the map on which Diamantis had been working. He didn’t want to reply. Not today anyhow. He was struggling too much with his own contradictions to get involved in that kind of discussion. Replying would mean having to talk about himself, and Cephea, and their life, which was coming apart at the seams. Abdul had wanted to force Diamantis to reveal himself, and Diamantis had put the ball back in his court.
They looked at each other again and decided to leave it at that for the moment. In any case, they were going to be here for a long time.
“This map,” Diamantis said, “is the Peutingeriana, a third-century Roman route map, with Rome, here, in the centre.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“My father gave it to me a few months before he died. He’d bought it in an opium den in Shantou from an Italian sailor who was strapped for cash. It was in ’54, I think. I’m not sure. But I remember when he got back. He spread the map on the table, like a treasure, then he took me on his knees and told me a story about mythical times. I was four years old, I didn’t understand his story, but I loved the sound of it.
“Every time he came home, he’d start again. With me on his knees. By the age of twelve I’d realized that mapmaking asks all the important questions about the sea and the land. In other words, about the world, and the way we look at the world. Are you following me?”
“Oh, yes, completely.”
“I think that’s what I’d like to have been. A mapmaker, or a geographer.”
“Instead, you went to sea.”
“It was the only thing I considered. Though, if you think about it, a sailor is the same thing. Every time we sail, we redraw the map of the world. That’s what I think, anyway.”
Diamantis stood up, and Abdul did the same. He was fascinated by what Diamantis had been saying. Listening to him, he had almost immediately felt like a child. Like Diamantis with his father.
“So, your father was in China in ’54?”
“Yes, on board a rusty old freighter. Worse than this one. Antiquated, run-down, didn’t even have radar. I never found out what its name was. My father called it the Cockroach. One of those old tubs that had been sold off for scrap and then picked up cheap by a Greek shipowner in Rotterdam and pressed into service for a few more years. The sailors took their lives in their hands. But they had to earn a crust. The Cockroach was carrying arms. By the time they got to Shantou, the Communists had seized power. The port had been bombed, there was nothing left. Just a few opium dens.”
“What did they do with the arms? Did they hand them over to the Communists?”
“I have no idea. In any case, I don’t think it changed the course of history all that much. Why?”
“Nothing. Just curious.”
“But why?”
“It’s just that I’ve often wondered if it isn’t the unimportant things that changed the course of history.”
“History, maybe. Not its course.”
Night had fallen. The freighter was shrouded in darkness. The two men had started making an inventory of their provisions. Twenty-two pounds of spaghetti, and a similar quantity of rice. Seventeen pounds of red kidney beans. Six eighteen-ounce cans of chickpeas. Eight cans of mackerel, twelve of sardines in oil. Three eighteen-ounce jars of instant coffee, a can of black tea, a can of Breton biscuits. Melba toast, loose, in a big aluminum tub. A can of oil, three-quarters full. Salt, pepper. Half a demijohn of wine. Four small cans of beer and a little whisky. And two and a half gallons of drinking water.
“We’re not living in luxury,” Abdul had joked, “but we’re not poor either.”
They agreed to make spaghetti and use the one remaining can of tomato puree. They ate in silence. The way they did when they were at sea. They sat in the same places they had occupied since they’d left La Spezia, making the same gestures, striking the same poses, staring in the same way into the distance, not thinking, just letting the images follow one another in their heads, however illogically.
Abdul broke the silence. Because he couldn’t reconstruct Cephea’s face in his head. He could see her face, but not in detail. The roundness of the cheeks, the delicacy of the chin, the softness of the forehead. He’d have liked to see her smile, and to touch that smile with his fingertips. He would have liked to kiss her eyelids and see her eyes open, black and sparkling . . .
“Do you think there’s a storm brewing?”
Diamantis looked up, then shrugged.
“By the way,” Abdul said, “the men send their regards. They were hoping to see you one last time, but . . . You left early this morning.”
“Did it go well?”
“Yes. The only problem was with Ousbene. The idiot’s papers weren’t in order. He had to go to the prefecture to get a residence permit.”
“What are they all doing?”
“No idea. Except for Ousbene. He wanted to go back to La Spezia. He has a cousin there. He says he’ll find another boat. And Nedim. He’s found a truck driver to take him back to Istanbul. For five hundred francs, I think.”
“Did you think I was going to leave?”
“I didn’t think anything. You had the right to leave.”
“And you have a duty to stay here, is that it?”
The question was so direct that Abdul didn’t know what to reply. “No,” he stammered. “No.”
“So, forget about rights and duties. We’re here, and we’ll have to just get on with it. Maybe in a few days, we’ll be at each other’s throats.”
“Why should we be at each other’s throats?”
“Because we’re both dying to know why we’re here, sitting opposite each other eating spaghetti with a crap sauce and drinking cheap wine . . . and because . . .”
He stood up, lit a cigarette, and puffed feverishly at it.
“And because neither of us wants to talk about it. I think I’m going to bed. Shall we raise the ladder?”
“We’ve never raised it. Why are you asking that?”
“Because you’re the captain, Abdul, dammit!”
They both laughed.
“How about finishing the whisky instead?” Abdul suggested.
“Seeing there’s not much left, that’s a good idea. Grab the bottle. I’ll explain the map to you, if you like.”
“You may not know this,” Diamantis began, “but in ancient times maps were called ‘the periods of the earth.’”
“That’s nice.”
“It’s fantastic, you mean. Because, you see, between this map and the ones we use today for navigation, the earth has really changed a lot. Ports have changed their names, and so have the seas that washed them. Some have disappeared completely. If their story isn’t written now, it never will be.”
And Diamantis pointed at the map and recited the names of ports, names to set a man dreaming. Salona, Aquileia, and Adria on the Adriatic. Sybaris, Lilybaeum, Phokaia. The two Caesareas, on the coasts of Africa and Asia Minor. The two Ptolemais, one in Lybia, the other in Phoenicia. The Good Ports, near Lasia, south of Crete, mentioned by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. Tarsus in Cilicia, known for the gates of Cleopatra. And Tarsis, famous for its ships, although no one knows its exact location. Dor, at the foot of Mount Carmel. Apollonia and Berenice, on either side of the Cyrenaic peninsula. Herakleia and Theodosia, in the Crimea, which can only be reached by land. Gorgippia and Germanoissa,
near the narrows that lead to the Sea of Azov. Old Himera on the coast of Sicily. Cythera, on the southernmost of the Ionian islands. Cythera . . .
Diamantis paused for breath. He downed the last drop of whisky and clicked his tongue.
“A pity there’s so little of it!”
“I agree to us buying another one tomorrow. The evenings are going to be long.”
“True. But all the same, we haven’t taken a vow of fidelity!”
“Carry on, instead of talking crap.”
“But I agree about the whisky. Leave it to me. I can get it wholesale.”
The sea isn’t something you ever discover alone, Diamantis continued. You don’t see it only with your own eyes. His father had taught him that. You see it the way others have seen it, with the images and stories they have handed down to us in your head.
“That’s how I learned about the sea. On my father’s knees. And that’s how I learned about history and geography, too. And how literature started to mean something. I mean, the literature that teaches us there are seas in which we’ll never be able to swim, ports where we’ll never be able to fuck girls. And countries that will survive human stupidity.”
“You’re a real philosopher, Diamantis.”
“I love the sea, that’s all. It makes you see the earth differently, and people too.”
“That’s what I mean. I bet you can quote poetry by heart.”
“You’re right. In fact, that’s how I seduced my wife.” He thought a moment, then began to recite:
Hail to you, captain!
Hail to you, old ladies—what are you doing there?
Are you counting the stars and the passing ships?
Are you talking to the moon, you visionaries?
No, neither the stars nor the ships—they have sunk;
Nor the moon—it is obscured;
We’re only saying farewell to the world, captain.
“Yannis Ritsos. A Greek poet. No one remembers him these days. Or almost no one. The colonels sentenced him to house arrest on the island of Leros. Because he was a Communist, I think. He wasn’t the only one, of course. The bastards had turned most of the islands into camps. For young people in Greece, reciting Ritsos was a way of resisting the dictatorship.”
“Were you politically active?”
“I recited poems to Melina!”
He was evading the question, of course. It was all a long time ago. He had made a deliberate decision to forget. Like all those who had suffered and been humiliated under the dictatorship. For him, those days were like a scar that hadn’t healed properly and occasionally bled.
What had made him recite Ritsos? What had gone through his head at that moment? He didn’t know. We never know why, and how, a particular memory comes back to us. They’re there, that’s all. Ready to pounce. To drag us back to a lost world. Any memory, even the most beautiful or the most insignificant, is a record of a moment in life that we botched. A witness to an act that didn’t lead anywhere. It only comes back to the surface to try to find fulfilment. Or an explanation. Diamantis was becoming an easy prey to memories.
Melina had started crying.
The army had just arrested their literature teacher, Costa Staikos. The previous summer, he had shown them Patmos. The island that houses one of the finest libraries in the East. The Saint John library. The oldest existing manuscript of Plato’s Dialogues was kept there until an English traveller named Daniel Clarke stole it in 1801. It was surely that visit that inspired Melina to study Byzantine manuscripts.
Staikos was a friend of Ritsos. He shared the same ideas, and often quoted him in his classes. Someone informed on him, and five men burst in during the class and beat Staikos up. In front of his pupils. Then they dragged him out of the classroom. As if he were a dangerous criminal. One of the soldiers, an elderly officer, lectured them about the moral order. About the mission the Greeks had to fulfill. Some of the pupils applauded. That was when Melina burst into tears.
The officer walked up to her and slapped her.
Diamantis walked Melina home. They didn’t talk the whole way.
“Where does your father keep his ammunition?”
Melina and her mother looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“On top of the wardrobe,” Melina replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m going to kill that guy! I’m going to kill him!”
“Oh, God, that’s enough!” her mother cried. “Go home.”
The next day Melina and he joined the Socialist Youth Movement. They threw themselves passionately into political action. Even violently, where Diamantis was concerned. But he had never been able to wipe out the memory of that slap Melina had received. He knew what he should have done. He should have killed the man. That was what he thought, even now.
“And what about you, Abdul?” he said, to break the silence. “Who are you?”
Abdul jumped. “Me?” He had been lost in thought. It was happening to him more and more frequently. He wanted to answer Diamantis with a joke, but couldn’t find the words. He was exhausted. He wanted to sleep. He didn’t want to think about Cephea anymore. Women, he had read recently in a cheap novel, always leave their husbands. The only problem is that they don’t take their bodies with them. That was the question he asked himself: how long ago had Cephea left him?
“You’re not obliged to answer.”
Abdul stood up. He always seemed taller when he stood up. Thinner too, Diamantis realized.
“You know, I . . .” He looked Diamantis in the eyes. “I’m just a guy who’s foundering. That’s all. Consumed by guilt.”
Diamantis laughed. “I’ve never known a sailor who didn’t feel guilty.”
“This is different, Diamantis. This is different . . . I’m sure I’ll tell you about it eventually. Right now, I’m going to bed. Don’t be angry at me for asking all these questions. I’m curious, of course. But it’s not just that. Your answers save me the trouble of answering my own questions.”
Diamantis whistled through his teeth. “Well, well! I’m not the only philosopher on this shitty tub.”
4.
THE GIRLS IN THE PERROQUET BLEU
Apart from the two Burmese, who vanished into Marseilles as soon as they got their bonuses, the other crew members decided to have a slap-up meal. They hadn’t had fifteen hundred francs in their pockets for a long time. They hadn’t had a real meal, either.
They ate in the harbor area. Near Rive Neuve. A real tourist meal. Fish soup with spicy sauce and croutons, sea bream with boiled potatoes, cheese, and a choice of custard tart or two scoops of ice cream for dessert. It wouldn’t have gotten any stars in a restaurant guide, but it only cost them seventy-five francs each. Wine not included.
Ousbene and Nedim found themselves alone after the coffee. The three others had left to catch the night train for Paris. From Paris, the Hungarian was going home. The Comorian was off to Antwerp, where he’d heard—through an uncle of his who lived there—that they were taking on people for Chile, and the Moroccan had decided to go with him. If one person had a chance, another might, too.
Ousbene’s train for Italy wasn’t leaving until around midnight. As for Nedim, he was in no hurry. The truck driver had arranged to meet him at five in the morning, in the J4 parking lot, behind the Fort Saint-Jean, on the waterfront. J4 was a disused warehouse in the Grande Joliette dock. A symbol of the decline of Marseilles as a port. It was due to be razed to the ground, but in the meantime it was occasionally used for concerts.
Nedim knew the place well. In the early days, when he still had a little money, he had gone there, on the advice of a longshoreman, to buy some grass. Whole families of North Africans slept in their cars, waiting to take a ferry. It was a place where all kinds of illegal dealing went on. You could buy and sell anything there. A few girls turned tricks for peanuts. Usually with trucke
rs who loaded their vehicles in the harbor. The cops sometimes came down and raided the place. More for the principle of the thing, or to piss everyone off, than in the hope of making a big seizure.
To kill time, Ousbene suggested to Nedim they go to the Perroquet Bleu on Rue des Dames for a drink. It was an African club he’d discovered one night.
“Is it full of hookers?” Nedim had asked.
“No, it’s a real club. With good music. Salsa, beguine, merengue. A really hot place, we haven’t seen anything like it for a while! Plus, it’s halfway between the harbor and the railroad station . . .”
“Salsa! Fuck, I love salsa! I can dance it better than anyone. I learned in Panama. From a Cuban girl. You should have seen the ass on her! One whole night rubbing up against her, with a hard-on like you wouldn’t believe. She was crazy about me!”
In any case, Nedim would have followed Ousbene anywhere. What else could he do until five in the morning? Fuck a hooker? But he would have needed more than fifteen hundred for that. To get something good, a nice blond Yugoslav or Russian, the kind he’d eyed up on Place de l’Opera, you needed a lot more. Just for a quick fuck. He knew that, he’d already made inquiries.
The Perroquet Bleu was full to bursting. Lots of girls shaking their cute little asses to Para los Rumberos. By Tito Puente, the master. “Wow!” Nedim exclaimed, clinking glasses with Ousbene. The first round of gin and tonics. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dance floor. He was looking for a girl to huddle up against. That was what he’d been dreaming about, getting up close to a woman. Feeling her tits, her belly, her thighs against him.
“Salsa is the best starter for a fuck, my friend! Remember that. Take it from Nedim!”
The Lost Sailors Page 3
