The Journey to the End of the World (Joel Gustafson Stories) (18 page)

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Authors: Henning Mankell

BOOK: The Journey to the End of the World (Joel Gustafson Stories)
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‘I’ll be signing on tomorrow. I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay any longer.’
Jenny sat down on a chair. She seemed disappointed.
‘So you’re leaving already?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you sailing to?’
‘Africa. Liberia.’
‘As far away as Africa?’
‘Or Oxelösund. Nothing is certain. It depends where the cargoes are. And where they have to be taken to.’
‘You must know if you’re going to Africa or Oxelösund, surely?’
‘I’ll probably be going to both places. And Belgium as well.’
Jenny shook her head. Then she burst out laughing.
‘You’re just like Samuel. He was always going to either Rio de Janeiro or London. And I never knew where he’d come from.’
‘You know how it is, then,’ said Joel.
The two sisters stood and listened but said nothing. They gaped wide-eyed at their big brother.
‘If it is Africa, I’ll bring a present back for you,’ said Joel. ‘A monkey skin or something like that.’
‘Good Lord, no!’ said Jenny. ‘I wouldn’t want that. Not a monkey skin. Anything at all but that.’
That evening Jenny and Joel sat up for ages, talking. Time had turned out to be so short. But when Joel finally went to bed and switched off the light, he could hardly remember anything they’d said.
All he could think about was the next day.
I’ll have time to think about Jenny later, he told himself.
I’ve found her now. That’s the main thing. And I’ve got two little sisters – who kick up a hell of a row in the bathroom.
But what all that means is something I can think about later.
The first thing I have to do is to walk up the gangway onto the ship that at this very moment is on its way to Stockholm to pick me up.
And the next day, shortly before eight o’clock, Joel got off the tram and saw the ship that had berthed during the night.
MS Alta
was bigger than
MS Karmas
. The hatches were just being opened. Joel could feel his heart pounding. Then he went through the dock gates and approached the gangway. The side of the ship towered above him like a mountain. He went on board.
A sailor wearing overalls came towards him. He gave Joel a friendly smile.
‘Are you going to sign on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Deck or mess?’
‘I’m going to be a mess steward.’
‘Our new Kalle, then. He was good, the one we had before you. Apart from the washing up – he wasn’t much good at that.’
The man looked Joel in the eye.
‘Can you wash up?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Joel. ‘That’s about all I can do.’
The man pointed towards the stern of the ship.
‘Pirinen will no doubt be back there, drinking coffee with the cook. I assume he’s the one you have to see.’
Joel walked slowly in the direction the man had indicated. He was so high up above the water.
He took a deep breath. As if to convince himself that what he was doing was true.
Then he went to meet Pirinen. And was duly approved and signed on. That very same day he moved into his cabin.
Jenny wanted to take the girls with her and have a look at the ship. But Joel said no.
If it had been Samuel, that would have been different.
He started work the following day. He was disappointed to discover that the ship would be staying in Stockholm for a whole week. Nobody knew which would be their next port. Somebody said Narvik. Somebody else said England. But nobody knew. It would be some days before they found out.
And Joel worked. He laid tables and washed up, cleaned and made beds. He got to know the ship and the people working on it. And every night he collapsed into bed exhausted.
They eventually discovered where they would be sailing to. Joel was disappointed. Their destination would be Luleå.
The far north of Sweden, he thought. Even further north than the place where Samuel and I have been living all those years.
Nevertheless, he was on his way at last.
He was woken up at four in the morning by the vibrations from the engines. He could hear the mooring ropes being cast off. Then the propeller rumbled into action.
The journey had begun.
12
In Luleå Joel bought a notebook with a black cover.
That same day he started his logbook. His first entry was dated June 17.
Arrived Luleå.
Perhaps it was good that my first voyage brought me here.
You can’t get any further north.
Now I have to sail south.
Luleå. June 17, 1959. 8.35 p.m.
He’d made up his mind to write something every day. It didn’t need to be much. But there would have to be at least one word, a date and a time.
He also posted two letters in Luleå.
The first was to Samuel. He explained how he’d collected his discharge book and the very same day signed on with his first ship. He described the vessel, how it was 20,000 tons, and that he was currently in Luleå.
He hoped that Samuel’s journey home had gone well.
He promised to write from his next port of call, and included the unused half of his train ticket in the envelope.
If Samuel wanted to write back, he knew what he needed to do. The letter should be addressed to the shipping line.
The other letter was to Jenny Rydén.
That was more difficult to write. He tore up several attempts. In the end he didn’t have the strength to write any more, and so his latest effort would just have to do.
He asked her to hang the photograph of Samuel up again. Assuming he was right in thinking she’d taken it down. If she didn’t do that, he would never visit her again.
But he gave her an alternative. If she didn’t want to have Samuel on her wall, instead she could remove the picture of the man with the close-cropped hair. Then there would be two marks on the wallpaper.
He wondered how she would react. She might be angry? Perhaps she wouldn’t want to see him ever again? Well, he’d just have to take that risk.
And so Joel’s life at sea got under way.
The ship sailed from Luleå to Middlesbrough. They docked at first light. Joel was standing on deck, gazing at this foreign country swathed in mist. It was the first time he’d ever been outside Swedish territory. They’d had fine weather all the way. The North Sea had been dead calm.
That evening, Joel went ashore with a deck hand by the name of Frans, who was from Gotland. Frans had been a sailor for two years already, and had been to Middlesbrough before. He knew the dock land district. Joel drank two pints of beer in a pub, and got a splitting headache. By the time they had to go back to their ship, Joel had fallen asleep over the table. The following day, when he was woken up at six o’clock, he was sick.
He’d got used to the work by now. The days were humdrum. First of all he had his own breakfast. Then he set the tables and served 24 covers in the mess where the ordinary sailors used to eat. There were two other messes. But the one where the captain, the mate and the chief engineer ate was called the wardroom, and the steward there was called a wardroom steward. After breakfast, Joel’s work was to wash up and then clean out the cabins. He had a few hours’ free time in the afternoons, and then worked again until eight in the evening.
He had a cabin of his own. That had surprised him. In the days when he’d dreamt about becoming a sailor, he thought everybody slept together in a big dormitory. He realised that a lot of what Samuel used to talk about no longer applied in modern times.
His cabin wasn’t very big. It had a bunk fixed to the wall, a washbasin, a wardrobe and a chair. And a porthole.
It seemed to him that he’d never had better living quarters in the whole of his life. The engines throbbing away deep down inside the ship rocked him to sleep.
They stayed in Middlesbrough for a whole week. On Saturday Joel accompanied several of the other crew members to a nearby city called Sunderland, where they watched a football match.
Every day was different.
Something new was happening all the time.
*
They left Middlesbrough and headed for Narvik. Northwards again. But Joel had decided to be patient. This was his first ship after all. An iron ore trader. He would begin by getting used to life at sea. Then he would apply for work on other types of boat. He had plenty of time.
The second night on the North Sea, Joel was woken up by being tossed around in his bunk. A wind had blown up. He could feel his stomach reacting already. But he forced himself to go back to sleep. It would have blown over by morning.
But in fact it was gale force winds when he woke up. When he staggered out of bed, he had to cling on to the wardrobe door so as not to fall over.
The rest of the day was a nightmare. Joel alternated work with throwing up, had to watch plates of food falling onto the floor and sliding around, and he began to wonder why on earth he’d ever wanted to go to sea. Samuel had talked about being seasick. But this was something far worse than he’d ever imagined. He spoke to the cook, whose name was Axelsson and who was holding on to the stove to remain upright while he was frying the potatoes, and asked how long it was going to go on like this.
‘Oh, it’ll last all the way to Narvik. But it’ll blow over eventually.’
Joel stared at the potatoes sizzling away in the fat – and only just managed to get to the nearest toilet before throwing up again.
That evening he was so tired that he collapsed into bed without even bothering to get undressed. He was dreading the next morning.
Joel was seasick until they were well into the fjord at Narvik. Then, at long last, he could feel it ebbing away.
He was never seasick again.
He was one of the lucky ones who had the ability to get used to it. But Frans had stories about a bosun he knew who’d suffered from seasickness for over forty years.
The weeks passed by.
Joel found himself in Narvik four times. And then Bristol, Middlesbrough again, Ghent, and eventually Holland. A port close to Amsterdam.
Frans had been to Amsterdam before. One evening he told Joel a series of stories that Joel suspected were made up. About women sitting in windows and offering themselves for sale. A whole district full of women sitting in windows. Joel refused to believe that it was true.
‘You go there and see for yourself,’ Frans said.
Joel made up his mind to do just that. When they came to Holland, Pirinen gave Joel a day off. So he went to the telegraphist’s office and cashed in 200 kronor of his wages. This was the first time he’d taken out money. He’d never had so much money in his hand before.
The intention had been that Frans would go with him to Amsterdam. But Frans wasn’t allowed shore leave as there was some essential work to be done that needed his presence. So Joel had to travel alone.
He’d decided that now was when it was going to happen.
He’d written in his logbook:
We’re sailing through the Kiel Canal. It’s high time I took the step from Sonja Mattsson to something more. August 22, 1959. 7.44 p.m.
Joel took the train.
Frans had told him that the women who sat in the windows were in a district close to the Amsterdam central railway station.
When he got there, he consulted a timetable in order to establish when the last train left for the harbour where his ship was berthed.
Then he stepped out into Amsterdam. He was nervous. He didn’t know what was in store. Frans had tried to explain it to him. He ought to walk around, have a good look at all the windows, and choose a woman he fancied. Then they’d let him into a room at the back of the house. He’d have to pay first. Frans had kept stressing how important that was, over and over again. First the money. Otherwise he might find himself confronted by some frightening character who’d been sitting in another back room, listening to the radio.
First the money, Joel thought. He had it in his pocket. The telegraphist had paid him in Dutch guilders.
Joel hadn’t a clue about what would happen next. He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to cope. And he wasn’t at all sure what it was that he’d be expected to cope with. She might throw him out if he did it wrong.
But obviously, he hadn’t mentioned to Frans that this would be his first time. Or that he was worried.
He had a suspicion that it would be easier if he’d had something to drink. Not too much. Just enough to banish his nerves. So he went to a bar next to the station. He had a beer. Only one. His body felt warmer already. When he left the bar, he found his way to the red light district. There were a lot of people in the streets. Lots of sailors, just like him.

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