The Lost Sailors (21 page)

He heard a noise in the gangway. He looked at his watch. Five-ten. Shit, he had fallen asleep. He sat up, and almost screamed with the pain. He didn't stand.

Abdul Aziz came in. “What happened to you?” he said when he saw Diamantis's bruised face.

“Someone didn't like the look of me,” Diamantis joked.

Abdul laughed. “Nedim was sure you'd gotten laid.”

“For Nedim, everything comes down to fucking.”

“Yes . . . It would be simpler if it did. Are you O.K.?”

“Could be worse. How about you?”

“Could be worse, too.”

Diamantis managed to stand up. “I need to drink something hot.”

“Tea?”

“Yeah, tea would be good.”

“I'll make some.”

 

Abdul broke the silence. Diamantis was lost in thought again. The tea was doing him good. His stomach felt more settled. He had to go over there now. To see Amina. And Nedim, and Lalla. How long would it take him to get to the bar she'd mentioned? By bus, at least an hour. He could take a taxi. He wasn't sure exactly where the Prophète Beach was. On the Corniche. But the Corniche covered quite an area.

“You and I have to talk.”

Diamantis raised his eyes. Abdul looked sick. His dark eyes were curiously shiny. “Something's wrong with him,” Diamantis thought.

“About what?”

“Diamantis . . .” he began.

“Wait, Abdul. I don't know what you want to talk about. But I don't have too much time. I have an appointment. And it's going to take me more than an hour to get there.”

Abdul's face clouded over. “I thought you and I could talk.”

Diamantis was starting to get irritated with Abdul. He had to see Amina as soon as possible. He wanted to bring everything out in the open. He needed to draw a line under the past, before it took over his life. He wanted to get beyond this, live differently.

“Abdul, what the hell do you want to talk about?”

Abdul was starting to panic. He had clarified his thoughts and prepared a long confession. And now Diamantis didn't want to listen. Why did he need to go running around town? What did he have to do that was so important? Was it more important than listening to him? He was at the end of his tether. Couldn't Diamantis see, didn't he understand, that he was at the end of his tether?

“I . . .” he stammered, staring down at his tea.

He looked up. “Go fuck yourself, Diamantis,” he thought.

But what he said was “There's no rush. When you come back. But . . . I want to ask you a question, Diamantis. Then I'll let you go. Why have you stayed? Why didn't you get out with the others?”

“Why?”

“Yes.”

“If only I knew.”

“You mean you don't know?”

“I'd run out of cigarettes that morning, so I went out to buy some. By the time I got back, I think everything had already been arranged. That's right . . . The weather was nice. I wandered around the streets and . . . that was it. I completely forgot . . .”

“Don't bullshit me.”

“And don't piss me off! You're always looking for reasons. I don't have one. I stayed because I stayed. Period. Is that clear? Or would you rather I told you I didn't give a fuck that day whether I was here or somewhere else?”

“And now?”

“No change. Except that now I'd have more of a preference. Because right now, I'm sick to the back teeth of this fucking old tub full of cockroaches and—”

“Cockroaches?”

“That's right, my friend, cockroaches. They're everywhere. In my cabin, in my head, too. So I think maybe it's time you and I got out of here.”

Abdul stood up. “So that's it, Diamantis. You want to go.”

“When I've sorted out a few things, yes. I want to go.”

Diamantis also stood up. Slowly, so as not to reawaken the pain. The Dolipran he'd just taken seemed to be having an effect. “We'll talk later, if you like.” His tone was softer now.

“We'll see.”

Diamantis shrugged. Abdul put his hand on his arm. Their eyes met.

“I'll tell you this, Abdul. I stayed because you were stupid. A guy like you, getting caught by a crook like Constantin Takis, I can't get my head around that.”

Abdul took his hand away. “That's what I wanted to talk about.”

Diamantis smiled. “Consider it done. I don't need to know the whys and the wherefores. I don't give a damn. We like each other, I think. So forget it, Abdul. The main thing . . .” He perched on the edge of the table. It was too exhausting to stand. “Do you remember the time we entered Guayaquil?”

How could he forget? The place was swarming with pirates. They were surrounded by a dozen motor canoes. A hundred men ready to board them.

“You remember what you said when you handed out weapons to the crew? ‘To these guys, this boat is like a chicken. When they're ready, they'll pluck it.'”

“Yes,” Abdul said, not quite sure where Diamantis was going with this.

“You also said that if the army didn't come to our rescue soon, we could well be killed, whether we were armed or not. ‘So what are we doing with these?' Rosario asked, pointing to his rifle. ‘Nothing,' you replied. ‘Absolutely nothing. It's just regulations. In half an hour you can drop your rifle, and we'll all get out of here. We don't deserve to die for six thousand TVs in kit form, do we?'”

“The army came. And we got out. Unharmed.”

“Yes. That's the main thing, Abdul. To get out of here unharmed. I'm not going to ask you to explain anything. Like why you were ready to abandon this freighter yesterday to stay alive, and why today you're prepared to stay on this tub even if it kills you. O.K.?”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning, you sort out your business, and I'll sort out mine. Then we'll have a party. O.K.?”

“I've already sorted out mine.”

Diamantis looked at him, and smiled sadly. “I don't think so, Abdul. I don't think so, or you wouldn't be sulking the way you are. I'm sure that deep down, Abdul, you still haven't admitted that Cephea has dumped you.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I'll tell you what I know about it. Not once have you talked about the kids, not once have you talked about Cephea and the kids, not once have you talked about you, her, and the kids as a family. You've only talked about yourself.”

“Go to hell, Diamantis.”

“You see, Abdul? You said you had to talk to me. But you don't have anything to say. See you later.”

It was after seven by the time he got to the Prophète Beach. Nedim had had a couple of beers, and then had started on the gin. He'd long since given up the idea of stealing Lalla's car and hotfooting it to Turkey. The two of them were laughing like old friends. And Amina had gone.

Y
es, the scar was a whole other story.

Amina looked at Nedim. He was smiling at her, pleased with himself, cruel in the way people sometimes are when they've been humiliated. Lalla and she hadn't spared him the other night. They were still playing with him now. That was life. Amina didn't have any feelings of justice or pity. She didn't feel self-pity either. That was life. She hadn't chosen hers. She'd simply decided not to put up with it, the day that bastard Bruno Schmidt had slashed her with a knife.

She smiled back at Nedim. She didn't feel the slightest resentment. He was an asshole, no different than hundreds she'd seen pass through the Habana. A show-off. Naïve, obviously. Not malicious. Not brave, either. She'd never have imagined he would dare to ask her about her scar. Most people didn't. Most even avoided looking too long at that part of her face. That star-shaped mark, like a broken mirror. If anyone tried it—man or woman, it didn't matter which—the way she looked at them, the words she used, were calculated to confront them with their own defects, their worst weaknesses.

Amina had forgotten the blood trickling down her cheek like hot, thick tears, but not the shock of the blade on the bone, nor the way she screamed when she'd felt it. It was engraved on her memory even more than on her skin. Ever since that night, she'd only had to close her eyes, at any time, to relive the second when the knife had touched her cheek. The sheer humiliation of it.

With a single word, she could hurt, not Nedim's flesh, but his masculine pride, that cock between the thighs they all displayed like an outward sign of domination. She had a large repertory of cruel remarks. They were on the tip of her tongue, bursting to be let out.

Lalla was sipping her peppermint cordial and watching Amina closely, waiting. Waiting for Amina to come out with one of those malicious phrases that would cleanse her, at the same time, of Nedim's obscene glances.

Amina sipped at her Coke. “Yes,” she said simply, “that's a whole other story.”

And Nedim didn't insist. Once he'd asked the question, he knew he was sailing close to the wind. He knew she would come out with some stinging response that would humiliate him. He had seen the words forming on Amina's lips. He could almost have read them. As usual, Nedim hadn't thought before opening his mouth. Deep down, he pitied her. The scar was an insult to her beauty.

He lowered his eyes, took a swig of his beer, glanced for a moment at Lalla's thighs, then turned back to Amina. “That was dumb of me, Gaby. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it.”

Without asking Lalla, he grabbed her pack of cigarettes and lit himself one.

Shit, he felt bad about it. He really did.

 

It was her father who'd sold her to Bruno Schmidt. For how much, she didn't know. But he really had sold her. She'd just come home from school, that day. Eager to get down to work. She had some reading to do. Her exams were coming up, and it felt as if the closer they got, the less she knew. She wanted to get her high-school diploma, go to college, and become a teacher. That was the future she'd mapped out for herself.

The apartment was empty, and that surprised her. Her mother was always there when she got home. She cleaned houses in the morning, and took in ironing in the afternoon. But that didn't worry her too much. Her mother may have been out delivering or collecting clothes. Paying the monthly bills was a constant worry.

It was the end of May and the weather was already very hot. She had a large glass of water in the kitchen and then decided to take a shower and get changed before she tackled Balzac again. Balzac bored her. He was a show-off. She preferred Dumas.
Queen Margot
,
The San Felice
,
The Count of Monte Cristo
. But Dumas wasn't on the curriculum . . .

Schmidt was there when she came out of the shower. He was standing there, holding out a towel and smiling. She screamed, and he slapped her twice, hard. The blows left her speechless.

“Shut your mouth, bitch!”

He grabbed her arm and dragged her across the apartment.

“We're going to have a good time, you and me,” he said. “Got any objection to that?”

“Let go of me,” she said, trembling. “Let go of me, please.”

He squeezed her arm harder, and pulled her around so that she faced him. “Let go of you? You're mine, sweetheart. Mine. For life. I bought you. Paid cash, too, without even sampling the merchandise first.” He laughed. “But I'm sure you're worth it. You're a virgin too, so I hear.”

He opened the door to her parents' bedroom and pushed her toward the bed.

“No!” she cried.

Schmidt slapped her a few more times. “You scream again, and I'll really knock some sense into you.”

Amina started sobbing.

“That's it, bawl your eyes out,” he said, taking off his pants.

He walked up to her, his cock standing taut in front of him. She'd never seen one before.

“No . . .” she sobbed, curling up in a ball on the bed.

He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to him, so that her head was close to his cock.

“Suck me,” he said.

She was still sobbing. She heard a click, and saw that he was holding a knife. He placed the blade on her forehead. The steel felt cold. Slowly, he slid the blade down from her forehead to her cheek, from her cheek to her neck, and there he held it still. Against her neck. The edge of the blade pricked her skin.

“I've killed lots of you people with this knife. Gooks, too. They're just as shifty as you Arabs. But I'll tell you, none of their women could resist this. None of them . . .”

The blade pressed against her skin. She could feel the vein in her neck throbbing fit to burst.

“I'll tell you this. Those bitches weren't as lucky as you. You see, you, sweetheart . . .”

He pressed slightly on the handle of the knife, and instinctively, Amina moved her neck forward, bringing it closer to Schmidt's cock. She could see a network of small purple veins under the transparent skin. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth.

“Suck,” he said.

The thing was in her mouth. A hideous lump of blood-engorged flesh.

“You see, you can do it. You can all do it.”

Afterwards, he fucked her. When she had no more tears, when she felt as if she'd cried herself out—forever—he left her lying on the bed, put away his knife and got dressed. She didn't move, didn't even pull the sheet up over her body. She had nothing more to hide. She didn't exist anymore. She wasn't dead, no, it was worse than that, she wasn't anything. Just a body empty of all feelings.

Schmidt bent over her. “So long,” he said, and smiled.

She didn't have the strength to spit back in his face the slime he'd discharged in her mouth. She wished he was dead, and she begged all the gods for her wish to be granted. And Schmidt did die. Several months later.

 

By the time her mother came home, Amina had almost finished packing a traveling bag. She was convinced her mother couldn't do anything more for her. She hadn't been able to protect her from her father's whoremongering. She couldn't stop Schmidt from coming back. Her life had been overturned. If she wanted to live, she had to get away. Start a new life. She wouldn't forget the insult. She wouldn't forget the shame. But she believed that a life was possible in between the insult and the shame. Because now she had anger in her belly.