When the Night Comes (12 page)

“Best of three?” he says. It is what he
always
says. I nod. I give him a chance.

One, two, three.

This time
he
goes paper. I go scissors. It just popped into my head at the very last second. Scissors. Two fingers. He shakes his head, always so defeated, starts walking toward the metal stairs. Then he stops, turns to me.

“I let you win,” he says.

“Sure,” I say. “Sure.”

I take a scoop of ground coffee. The smell of it fills my head, my stomach, and I am looking forward to it—fresh coffee. Maybe I will sit in the red booth and read the printed news from home. Maybe I will just stare out at the ice, at the world there moving right by us.

I see Soren start to go down the stairs to the coolroom.
Nella
slows, her little frame is humming, pushing against the thick ice. Then she lurches forward, rides right over to the port side heavy. I brace against the counter. The pile of pans I washed falls to the floor. The thermos tips; coffee grounds spill all over the stainless steel. I hear crashing from the mess, broken plates, smashing glass, God knows what breaking.

I feel
Nella
right herself, pull back—her engine revving. I move to the stairwell.

“Soren?” I say.

A foot.

A leg.

A man on his stomach in the small space between the bottom of the metal stairs and the coolroom doors. Arms out in front of him, head twisted to one side.

I open my mouth, call his name. I scream for help and the sound echoes down the stairs. I look at my hands, shaking and coffee-stained.
Nella
just keeps on slicing and shuddering through the ice. She just keeps on moving.

I run down the stairs, take Soren's wrist in my hand. It's warm, his skin still warm, but I can find no pulse. His eyes are open. They stare at the wall.

I hear shouting, footsteps on the metal stairs. I see faces, serious faces. I am pulled up and out of the way. I lean against the coolroom doors. There is blood on my shoe, blood on my trousers. I must have been kneeling in it.

There on the floor, a pool of blood.

The captain is opposite me. We are sitting in the red booth. I don't remember getting here. I don't know how long I have been sitting here.

“There is nothing we can do,” he says. “He has passed.”

I nod. I look at nothing.

“Why don't you go, get cleaned up?” he says, but I tell him I want to stay.

We sit there.

“Just a terrible accident,” he says. “Terrible.”

There's a body bag brought down from somewhere. Crew keep coming into the galley, hearing the news. No one can believe it. It's not real. It can't be right.

Klaus comes over.

“Dinner is off,” he says. “I'll put out soup, some sandwiches.”

“Yes,” I say, “the soup's ready,” thinking about the cauliflower soup I made after breakfast.

He pats me on the shoulder then, something he has never done. Like a father would. Like a brother.

We wrap Soren up and take him into the freezer. No one says a word.
I keep thinking he will just wake up, say, “Got you! That was a good one.” But when the captain closes Soren's eyes with the weight of his fingers, something inside me goes very cold.

Someone hands me a glass of whiskey and I drink it down. Then another. Another. That night we sat in the passage—riding out the storm—he said to me, “I know I'm meant to be here, on this ship.”

We drank to that. To all his plans. Antarctica and all that we would see. To the bar he would open, to all of the adventures that would be his.

“Here's to us,” he said, and we drank down our whiskey, which tasted bitter to me, but I was going along for the ride. Being part of it. That feeling. He made you feel like freedom.

“Lucky,” he said. “You and me. Christ!”

I sit in my cabin in clean clothes. I don't know where the ones I was wearing are. Outside the ice is getting tough—sticking together in sheets, in rounds.

If I'd just let him win rock, paper, scissors, then I would be drinking my coffee, reading the news from home, and Soren would be bugging me—talking nonstop the way he always did, asking me about this and about that. Talking about his camera, about the photos he took yesterday, about the ones he's going to take tomorrow. Talking about the Rolling Stones. About Pink Floyd. About the stars and the gods and about everything that's in that head of his. And I know that from now on the silence of Soren not talking will be terrifying. That it will be the loneliest sound of all.

MS
Nella Dan

VOYAGE 2, 1986/1987 SEASON

11th November 1986

POSITION:
63° 26.000' S, 120° 5.000' E

CAPTAIN'S NOTE:
Pack ice in all directions. Icebergs in the distance. We continue at slow speed.

The captain puts down a cup of coffee for me, black, and I take it.

“I know you were close,” he says.

I tell him what happened. I tell him everything—the frozen beef and the coffee break and the ship pitching up over the ice.

We sit like that—I sip my coffee and he sips his. Up here it is much quieter than below, the engine sounds muted. Up here, high in the sky, there is no smell of diesel fuel or roasting meats. No smell of cabbage. The porthole is slightly open and it's nice to have air—cold and clean and alive.

“I'm very sorry,” he says.

I nod. The moments pass. I finish my coffee.

“I knew your father, you know,” he says. “I was young, just a deck boy then.”

I look at him. His long hair is slicked back, his face calm. I think of my father sitting out in the sunlight at home, smoking his pipe. His eyes closed, his face at peace—classical music playing on the radio, his mind far away, somewhere that I could never reach. His mind always at sea.

“Sometimes I feel like I hardly knew him,” I say. I stare at the bulkhead, then at the floor. “He took me on this ship when she was launched. I was only two, I think. We sailed down from Aalborg to Copenhagen. I don't really remember, but it happened. I have the photograph. My grandmother came. She got very sick, even in the harbor.”

I smile then. I start to smile. “She was not made of the sea.” I meant to say “for the sea” but then “of” seems right so I leave the word there. I leave it.

“Do you need to call anyone?” he asks. “Call home?”

I sit for a second. I try to think.

“I don't need to call,” I say.

“Okay,” he says, and he finishes his coffee. He puts his cup down on the desk. I stand up. “Thank you,” I say. He shakes my hand, puts his other hand over it tightly.

“I want the galley crew to take tonight off, and just a light breakfast in the morning. Tomorrow is a day of rest, must-do duties only. Come and see me anytime.”

I nod, my head light, my eyes blinking. I walk out of the office and down the passage. I walk down the stairs and down another passage on the deck where the expeditioners sleep, one hand on the bulkhead, the other hand clutching my stomach. I open the heavy door to outside and the cold air rushes at my face. I step out into the blinding light.

There are islands of white going on and on for as far as I can see, the water almost black in between, but over the side where
Nella
slowly cuts her way through the ice, the water is churned up turquoise blue.

Steady, steady, we move at half-speed, and when I look up, a cape petrel is just above me, flying with us. Little turns, little wings. I reach my arm up, my fingers stretch. I reach and for a second the bird comes so close I can almost touch him. I can see his eyes, his tiny face. He looks
at me, then rises up with the thermals. Up and up at full speed until I lose him in the light.

My eyes are full.

Where does the land end and the sea begin?

He asked me this question once at our little beach.

I was very small, I don't know how old, but I remember I ran down to the water, drew a line in the sand with my finger and said, “Here, Papa! Here.”

My father smiled and nodded and we kept on walking together in silence. He liked to walk when he was home from the sea. To walk in a straight line and to keep on going and not be stopped by anything. We would often walk for hours, it seemed, along tracks and through fields and down small lanes, me just a step behind. Me trying to keep up with his big legs.

I follow you.

When we got back to our beach, my line was gone—swallowed up by the tide. Everything was different, the landscape changed.

My father turned to me and said, “The sea is alive and there is no beginning and there is no end. It moves with the moon and with the spinning of this earth and it calls us when it wants us to come.”

That night I lay in my bed, I pulled the covers over me tight, and in the darkness I said over and over in my head,
Don't call me. Don't call me, because I don't want to go.

MS
Nella Dan

VOYAGE 2, 1986/1987 SEASON

12th November 1986

POSITION:
63° 26.000' S, 120° 5.000' E