Carlos Sánchez half wakes to the sound of whale song through the steel hull. The humpbacks are close, and numerous. There’s no engine sound, not in itself a cause for alarm. The calm conditions have no doubt allowed a rare opportunity for maintenance. If there was a problem, Eduardo would have woken him.
He checks the time and sees that he has been asleep for the six hours since he handed over the helm to Eduardo late last night. He is grateful to his friend for the chance of a proper rest. Their last conversation and Eduardo’s idea of offloading at Walvis Bay play on his mind, but the songs of the whales reclaim his attention. He lets them, allowing himself a few more moments to listen to their guttural murmurings, which seem to resonate through his chest. It’s a miraculous sound, primal and moving beyond any imagining. The calls are filtered through the sound of the ocean, so constant he almost doesn’t hear it any more.
The Pescador is still tracing the edge of the pack. Broken ice performs its percussion against the metal skin of the boat. Carlos imagines the broken pieces tapping away less than a metre from his head, and shivers involuntarily.
He can hear the crew speaking in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese, sometimes both in the same sentence. They sound happy enough. Someone is playing panpipes. He hopes, in time, they will forgive him for bringing them so far south.
Carlos thinks back to a radio call from the Australian patrol last night. The master had said that he was concerned the Pescador had ventured into the ice, and asked if they were safe. He had added that it was not too late to turn around and head back to Australia. Carlos hadn’t responded, but focused instead on the chart and the distances travelled. Already they were 1700 nautical miles southwest of Heard Island. How could the Australian possibly imagine he would turn back now? He makes his way to the engine room where Dmitri is checking gauges and recording their readings on a chart. The engineer has his back to him and stops to speak in Russian to Eduardo through the ship’s intercom. Carlos listens to Eduardo’s familiar voice respond in the unfamiliar language and is surprised to hear he’s so fluent. Eduardo’s time working in the Bering Sea fishery had totalled a year—a year away from Virginia and their daughters. A year in which Eduardo had hoped, in vain, to fill the coffers more than he could by fishing from home. Carlos marvels that he managed to master another language in that time. The varied talents and deep intellect of his friend are a constant source of wonder.
‘What’s the problem?’ Carlos asks Dmitri.
‘It not too bad,’ Dmitri replies, switching to a jerky Spanish. Carlos rarely has occasion to visit the engine room, and the Russian appears surprised, as if his territory has been invaded. ‘I just notice the engine getting hot. The gauges read high. I want to make sure oil purifier working properly. Good time to check while weather okay. I replace some seals, connected again the oil lines and tighten the bolts.’
Dmitri works his spanner on a fitting, giving it one final turn, which Carlos suspects is mostly for effect. ‘I think I fix the problem. But maybe it is time we head north. Yes?’
‘Not just yet,’ Carlos says, sensing the Russian’s anxiety. ‘But soon,’ Carlos gives him a quick pat on the back, but feels the bony scapula recoil under his hand.
Dmitri speaks again, this time in beginner’s Spanish, to Eduardo in the wheelhouse, asking him to re-start the engines. He again reads the gauges and listens intently to the pulse of the motors. It occurs to Carlos that it’s the first time he has seen the Russian smile. The expression transforms his long, pale face, but appears unnatural. ‘That better engine music.’
Leaving Dmitri to his task Carlos winds his way up through the bowels of the ship. The panpipes are louder now and he can hear the Peruvians singing. One of them is playing the charango. The music resonates within the tiny guitar’s armadillo shell. Through the portholes and the light drizzle, Carlos can see the vast sea of pack ice to the south. He imagines the distant Antarctic continent, with its palette of white and steely blue, glistening in the dawn’s light. Somewhere beyond the ice, large stony peaks solidify the horizon.
From the wheelhouse door, Carlos sees Eduardo drinking mate at the helm. The first mate seems distracted as he sips the herbal infusion through the purpose-built straw, its sour smell—something between green tea and coffee—hanging in the air. Carlos recognises, too, the smell of Dmitri’s cigarettes and realises the Russian must have thought the engine problems significant enough earlier to pay Eduardo a visit while he himself was asleep below.
Carlos sees the pack protruding north ahead of them. To stay at this latitude they’ll have to cut across it. He walks towards Eduardo. ‘What’s on your mind, mi amigo?’
Eduardo starts, as if woken from a deep sleep. ‘Our Fisheries Department called overnight. They’ve ordered us back to Montevideo. They say they’ll sort out the charges against us there.’
‘¡Condenado!’ Carlos swears. ‘What about our twenty tonnes?’
‘We could say we’d made a mistake in our logs.’
‘Not a twenty-tonne mistake! We’ll be caught out, for sure. Guilty on two counts, illegal fishing and an unrecorded catch.’
‘Or we could offload in Namibia, like we talked about before. Get rid of the evidence.’
‘And ignore the order to return home?’
‘If we head northwest, it looks like we’re following orders. Then, at the last minute, we could claim engine trouble. Make a dive for Walvis Bay.’
‘What, and get Dmitri to lie for us?’ Carlos asks.
‘He would. He’s desperate to head north.’
Carlos nods, recalling the conversation he just had with the Russian. ‘We’re up to our necks, aren’t we?’
‘Si.’ The first mate lifts the binoculars from his chest, where they hang from a frayed strap, and studies the sea and the approaching protrusion of ice. ‘You want to cut through it?’ he asks, pointing to the fat extension of ice that is jutting out ahead of them. It’s as though the pack is feeling the temperature of the surrounding water, like a finger testing the heat of water in a bathtub, determining whether it is safe to continue its northern march.
‘Si, then straight to Namibia. With any luck, we’ll be far enough west by then to miss the Australians, if they’re still following us.’ Carlos reads the date on his watch: 22 September. It’s five days since they were spotted by the patrol.
‘Francisco Molteni says the Australians are planning to follow us all the way home, if necessary.’
Carlos raises his eyebrows. He thinks of the distances involved, and how much fuel they have wasted by waging war on the ice. Never did he anticipate they would be forced so far south for so long. He walks back to the chart table. By the time they round the Cape of Good Hope, they’ll have travelled over four thousand nautical miles since leaving Heard Island. Four thousand nautical miles more than he had counted on. And then there’s still another thousand nautical miles, travelling up Africa’s west coast, before they reach Walvis Bay. He hopes the fuel will stretch that far.
‘Do you ever wonder what this place will be like when our kids are old enough to come down here? What we’ll be leaving them?’
Carlos is surprised by his friend’s questions, which seem to come out of nowhere. ‘Well I had hoped we’d be so wealthy by then we could pay for them to come down on a cruise ship.’ Carlos laughs. ‘Can’t you just see our girls sunning themselves in deck chairs at minus ten degrees?’
Eduardo smiles briefly. ‘I could live with that.’ He views the pack through the portside windows. ‘But I think the future won’t be so rosy. We’ll have taken all the damn fish, for starters. But it’s worse than that.’
‘Go on, cheer me up. You’re doing well so far!’
‘The ice shelf is breaking away faster than anyone predicted. Carving off like old loose teeth. The rot of global warming.’
Drizzle gives way to rain as Carlos notices the slurry of ice in front of him. Vast chunks of the continent’s edge bob around in the ice soup like giant, soggy croutons. He reads Eduardo’s uncharacteristically sombre mood as a sign of stress. ‘Sounds like Julia and I might have to move up from the ground floor!’ he says, but his attempt at humour doesn’t register on Eduardo’s face.
Humpback whales cross the ship’s path, the same whales, presumably, that stirred Carlos from sleep less than an hour ago. Their dorsal fins seem too small for the size of the beasts, which emerge now like surfacing submarines. Glossy backs arch monstrously as the mammals feed on fish that have gathered at the edge of the ice. Then, as if performing their grand finale, two of the whales raise their vast sculpted flukes high out of the water and execute deep dives. Carlos imagines them descending beneath the ship, and feels the hairs rise on the back of his neck. ‘Quite the performance,’ he says. ‘They don’t seem too afraid of us.’
‘It’s what has made them such easy prey. No wonder they were almost fished out. We saved them just in time.’ Eduardo tries to locate the humpbacks again but they’ve gone. ‘We’ll wipe out the toothfish next. We’re just as bad. Soon there’ll be nothing left.’
‘Dmitri was a good find,’ Carlos says, trying to change the subject. ‘He listens to that engine like a mother listens to her baby’s breathing.’ He studies Eduardo, waiting for a response but the first mate is silent. ‘It looks like you were right to recommend him to Migiliaro.’
‘I hope so,’ Eduardo finally replies, fixing his binoculars on the ocean.
Carlos senses that his friend has done enough talking and watches him walk towards the door that leads to the deck. The worn knees of his plastic wet-weather gear have been reinforced with rubber, and his gloves look like they could steer the boat themselves if he strapped them to the wheel. A short beard keeps the ice from his skin.
If Carlos had to describe his first mate, he would say that he was a decent man, working hard to provide for his wife and two young daughters in a profession that has forced him to move with the times: to fish on bigger boats, with bigger gear, and fill deeper holds. He knows that if Eduardo had a choice, if he owned the Pescador, he’d have made different choices. It has been Eduardo’s motivation for selling some of the catch behind Migiliaro’s back. ‘We could use the profits to pay for a deposit on our own boat,’ he had said to Carlos. ‘And a permit to fish. One good season down here and we’d pay it off. After that, it’d be money in our pockets.’
Carlos remembers Eduardo’s face when he had had the next idea. The mixture of cunning and satisfaction. ‘If we’re really smart, we’d use what we learn on this trip to report illegal boats like the Pescador. Sink the Migiliaro’s of the world who don’t give a shit for the stocks. You never know, if enough legal operators get on board, if we formed a coalition, the toothfish might have a hope in hell of surviving. And, God willing, if we have sons, they’d have a fishery to inherit.’
It had seemed a good idea. A way of insuring themselves, as well as the stocks. After all, fishing is all they know. They would curl up and die without their regular coating of salt, seawater and fish grime.
Julia had shaken her head at the proposition. She said they were taking enough of a risk in the first place fishing illegally. ‘Why go behind Señor Migiliaro’s back as well?’ she’d argued. But Eduardo had persisted, trying to convince them that this was the easiest money they would ever make. Carlos remembers how Eduardo had stared at Julia’s pregnant belly and the anxious tears in her eyes, before taking her hands and promising that he alone would make the arrangements. Carlos wouldn’t need to know anything of the deal—nothing of who was buying the unrecorded catch, or whom that buyer was on-selling to. All he would have to do, Eduardo insisted, was steer the boat. If the sale went awry, his first mate made it clear that he would wear the consequences himself. Carlos remembers feeling torn between loyalty to his best friend and concern that Julia’s pregnancy not be further burdened with worries about this voyage, not after the miscarriages she has already been through. Eduardo reminded them of all the times when Carlos had saved his skin. ‘I owe you,’ Eduardo had said.
The memory of returning the bike Eduardo stole as a boy in La Paloma floods back to Carlos. There were other times, too, when he had had to rescue his friend from his seemingly insatiable appetite for risk. Once, as a teenager, he hauled Eduardo from an ocean rip during a storm, despite having warned him that it was too dangerous to swim there that day. The seaward current had almost pulled them both under. Carlos wonders now if his friend had been as sure of success in this most recent venture as he had sounded when they were back on dry land.
The Uruguayan master contemplates, too, Eduardo’s deep love for the sea and how the first mate feels the contradiction between this adoration and his occupation more than most. Carlos curses, to himself, the wealthy Americans, claiming to be conservationists, who will feast on the toothfish in the Pescador’s hold: the catch that he and Eduardo have risked everything to claim. A whale resurfaces in front of the boat, and Eduardo delays his departure from the wheelhouse to study the majestic creature through the binoculars.
‘The whales are coming back; so will the toothfish.’ Carlos tries to sound optimistic. ‘Pretty soon it won’t be worth it for illegal boats like this one to come down here. Did you see how many of the larger fish already had hooks in their mouths? The fishery will be commercially extinct before the last fish is caught. The stocks will rebuild.’
Eduardo shakes his head. ‘Not if prices keep going up. If toothfish don’t interbreed between the islands, it’s only a matter of time before we wipe out local stocks. From what I’ve read, they produce large numbers of eggs only once they reach a good size.’ He allows himself a smile. ‘Unlike us, they reach their sexual peak in old age.’
‘Something for them to look forward to.’ Carlos, grateful to see his friend’s humour back, extends the joke. ‘What’s their secret?’
‘What I’m saying is that if we take all the large fish now, then we’ve taken the best breeders. There goes the fishery. ¡Basta! It’s not as though it’d be the first time. Think of the cod. And the Bering Sea fishery wasn’t faring too well when I was there. According to the scientists, ninety per cent of the populations of the large fishes have been wiped out.’
Carlos says nothing, allowing Eduardo to vent his spleen and rid himself of a poacher’s guilt.
‘Toothfish were fished out off Patagonia after only a decade,’ Eduardo maintains. ‘Now we’re ripping the guts out of this magnificent place.’
Carlos switches the ship’s lights on and watches through the now heavy rain as the whale descends deep below them, its gut full of krill.
‘And then there are boats coming down here for krill. ‘¡Pendejos!’ Eduardo swears. ‘The krill drive the entire system. It’d be like us removing all the grass from a paddock and then wondering why the cattle died. It’s madness.’
Dazzled by the lights, a south polar skua flies above the deck, narrowly missing the communication tower.
‘The ocean needs real fishermen, people who’ve spent their lives pressed up against the sea, living its weather and feeling its pulse. If we owned the boats, we’d look after the fish. Instead, we’re stuck working for rogues like Migiliaro, and, in the eyes of the world, we’re the vandals.’
After a long silence, Carlos again addresses his friend. ‘What would you do if you weren’t fishing?’ he asks gently.
Eduardo seems to be peering deep into the soul of the sea. ‘Write a book.’
The answer comes as a surprise. Having known this man all his life, Carlos had assumed he knew his best friend’s dreams. He remembers the book Eduardo wrote for María, but that was just a children’s story and he always assumed it was a one-off present—the kind an uncle might give. He thinks too of a comment Julia once made that, given other opportunities, Eduardo could have been a fine writer. Perhaps he had confided his ambitions to her; perhaps because she is a teacher and he thought she would understand. ‘A book? What about?’
‘Fishing. What else?’ Eduardo lets loose a small laugh. ‘The way my father fished, and his father before him. How different it was from the way we fish now.’
‘Ah. The notes in your logbook. I’ve been wondering what you’ve been up to with that. I was starting to think they were love poems to Virginia.’ Carlos grins.
Eduardo studies Carlos, as if trying to determine whether he is joking, or fishing for personal musings that he’d rather keep private.
‘So, would it be a true story?’
‘No. A novel. I’d want it to come alive.’
‘Why haven’t you told me before? Were you afraid of what I’d say?’
‘No. It’s just too early. I haven’t even discussed it much with Virginia. It’s just a few notes so far, but I’ll weave them together one day.’ Eduardo laughs. ‘Probably when I’m too old to stand on a fishing deck.’ He stoops over as if holding a walking cane and wrinkles up his face into a mock toothless grin.
There is a cough at the doorway and Carlos turns to see Dmitri, who is clearing his throat as if trying to get their attention. Carlos notices how quickly Eduardo reverts to his sober mood, visibly stiffening in the Russian’s presence.
‘Sorry to disturb your joke,’ Dmitri says coldly. ‘The engine, it runs good again, but we need to go north now in case we have more trouble. If engine temperature starts rising, I have to take oil purifier apart and rebuild on board. We do not want to stop engines down here.’
‘The Uruguayan Department of Fisheries has ordered us back to Montevideo,’ Carlos says. He sees Dmitri shoot a hostile glare at Eduardo. ‘But if you think there’s a problem with the engine, of course we’ll stop earlier. One or two more days down here and then we’ll head north. Sooner if we have to. Namibia is probably the best option to avoid the Australians. Are you happy to do any repairs in Walvis Bay?’
‘I would prefer Mauritius, but if that is not possible, then Namibia is okay.’ Dmitri gives Eduardo a firm nod as he departs. As always, it seems that the engineer prefers to communicate with Eduardo, and Carlos assumes it is because his friend speaks Russian.
‘Seems like Plan B is falling into place, mi amigo,’ Carlos says to Eduardo. ‘And we don’t even need to ask him to lie for us. Are you sure you don’t want to be capitán?’
‘No. That honour is all yours.’
Carlos laughs quietly and whispers behind his searoughened hand, ‘He’s a serious fellow isn’t he? Those Russians must have only been allocated a set number of smiles at birth. A good character for your novel, maybe?’
‘Probably,’ Eduardo says, but a sudden slowdown in the boat’s speed interrupts the conversation. The Pescador has entered the pack again, and the ice is thicker than both men had anticipated.
The steady irregular rapping against the hull has become a steady groan. ‘Seems we might have to head north now anyway,’ Carlos observes. ‘If we stay here much longer, we’ll be staying here for good. A well-preserved feature of the Antarctic landscape.’
‘There has to be an easier way to look young forever!’ Eduardo teases, as if relieved to finally be changing course.
In under half an hour, they’re free of the pack once again but are exposed to the waves a new gale has whipped up.
‘Watch out,’ Carlos shouts too late as a sudden shift in wind direction pushes the starboard side of the Pescador into an iceberg. The boat shudders with the impact, but Eduardo manages to move it away from the berg and into open seas.
Minutes later, with the iceberg behind them, Dmitri is back in the wheelhouse, waving a damaged hand, which he has wrapped in a greasy rag and bound with duct tape.
‘I demand you head this boat north. Immediately! No more delays,’ the Russian shouts. He faces Eduardo directly, continuing in Spanish. ‘I play no more games. You tell Carlos, or I will!’
Carlos looks to Eduardo for an explanation but the first mate directs his attention only to the Russian.
‘Enough,’ Eduardo commands.
Carlos is struck by the hardness in Eduardo’s voice. He watches as the first mate holds up his hand in front of Dmitri’s face, silencing him.
‘We’ve already changed course. Look!’ Eduardo points to the compass.
Dmitri reads the direction, but says nothing.
‘What happened to your hand?’ Carlos asks the Russian.
The veins have risen in Dmitri’s neck. ‘The spanner slipped. Cut me,’ he replies in Spanish before turning to face Eduardo and switching to Russian. Carlos doesn’t understand the sudden barrage of words, but cannot miss seeing Dmitri slice a finger across his throat in Eduardo’s direction. Dismayed, he looks to the first mate who seems to know how to manage the truculent engineer. They need Dmitri back on side.
‘Go and clean it before it gets infected,’ Eduardo says, his monotonal words delivered as if a threat. Carlos feels the heat of the anger in his friend’s eyes.
When Dmitri has left the wheelhouse, Carlos faces Eduardo, incredulous, his unspoken earlier misgivings about the Russian vindicated. But there is something else—an unwelcome concern that he has been insulated, by language, from discussions with Dmitri, perhaps even shielded by Eduardo from the worst of their engineer. Carlos wonders whether, because Eduardo had been the one to recommend the Russian, the first mate feels he must wear the consequences of that decision too. ‘What was he going to tell me? Why is he so angry?’
‘I have no idea.’