The storm broke over the sea first. Then over the city. A violent storm, the kind that only comes two or three times a year. Every time the horizon was set ablaze with blue and green lightning flashes, the Château d’If and the islands of the Frioul emerged from the darkness. The thunder would follow a few minutes later. Not the usual roll, but a sharp, cold, metallic crash that split the air.
The Aldebaran started pitching. Its hull seemed about to buckle. The rain came down. Huge, hard drops, almost like hail. It was as if the boat had come under machine-gun fire. At the first clap of thunder, Diamantis had jerked awake on his bunk. It had been hard for him to get to sleep. Because of the heat. His cabin—if you could call his cubbyhole a cabin—was like a sauna. He had stripped naked, but, even so, he was streaming with sweat. And when he couldn’t sleep, he started thinking. Or, rather, he was assailed by all kinds of thoughts that went around and around in his head, becoming increasingly gloomy. Since they’d been stuck here, he’d been waking up more and more often during the night. Today the storm had seen to that.
Now he was watching the spectacle through his porthole. His cabin was on the port side, facing out to sea. He imagined himself out there. Not on board the Aldebaran, but on another ship. A big coaster called the Maris Stella, plying the classic navigation route around the Mediterranean, loading and unloading at every port. Diamantis had been a last-minute replacement for an old friend of his named Michaelis, whose wife was about to give birth. “I can’t stop you being a sailor,” she had said before they married. “But if you want me to give you a child, stop being away for so long.” Michaelis hadn’t hesitated. He’d just turned fifty. Angela was twenty years younger than he, and very pretty. Sailing on the Maris Stella, Michaelis could get home every two weeks.
That night, in late January, the Maris Stella had just left Limassol in Cyprus, heading for Beirut. They were expecting a big squall. What they got was something worse. The kind of storm the Mediterranean sometimes has in store for sailors. Contrary to popular belief, the Mediterranean isn’t a calm sea, but a very squally one.
The Maris Stella was thirty-five years old at stem and stern, six less than that in the middle. It had been widened in order to take larger cargoes. By about eleven o’clock, the winds were gusting at nearly seventy miles an hour and the waves were twenty-six feet high. The ship was plowing the waves as best it could. But the water started coming in at the forward hatches as if through a sieve. An hour later, the sea began to submerge the heavily-laden stern, and the ship listed.
The captain, Koumi—Michaelis and Angela had already asked him to be their child’s godfather—asked Diamantis, “Do you know any good prayers?”
He shook his head. “Well, I’m not really one for prayers . . .”
“Then tell the radio operator to call the coast guards. We’re abandoning ship.”
It was an order, and it wasn’t up for discussion. Koumi knew his ship, he knew all about the Mediterranean and about storms, and he loved life. They didn’t even have time to lower the lifeboat. The ship capsized, and they were pitched into the icy water. By daybreak, the Maris Stella was lying eighty feet down. Swept away by what the coast guards call “the dynamic effects of a raging sea.” The search continued until nightfall, but Diamantis was the only survivor.
That was why Diamantis was the godfather of a cute little five-year-old girl called Anastasia—and was terrified of storms.
He put on a pair of shorts, lit a cigarette, and went to the mess to pour himself a beer.
Abdul joined him. “Can’t sleep,” he grunted.
“Beer?” Diamantis asked, holding out a can.
And he told him the story of the Maris Stella.
“There was this guy I knew,” Abdul said when he’d finished. “An Irishman named Colm Toibin. I met him when I was doing the Atlantic route via the Azores. He always liked to be on the bridge when the weather was bad. He used to say, ‘You can’t imagine how impressive it is! What a spectacle! What huge waves! There always comes a moment when you’re not just afraid, you’re terrified.’ He loved it. And he got what he wanted. We went through some pretty rough times together. Every time, once the storm had died down, he’d laugh and say, ‘Well, it wasn’t the big one, I’m still waiting for that!’ We’d reply, ‘Maybe you’d change your mind if it happened.’ ‘Maybe,’ he’d reply, ‘but I still haven’t seen it, so . . .’”
“And did he see it?”
“He was there when the Sea Land Performance went down. It was a freighter doing the northern European route, via the Arctic Circle. And the storm was the worst ever recorded in the last two hundred years.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Colm told me himself. And I don’t think he exaggerated. We met up again by chance, at the Spray in Gibraltar. Over a dozen beers, he told me all about his storm.”
“We don’t have as many beers as that. But we can open the last two.”
It didn’t matter if it was true or not. Both of them knew that sea stories only exist when they’re told. Not that they’re invented, but in telling them, the person who lived through them tries to block out his own inner fears. In telling them, he gives a logic to the events. A meaning to his daily reality as a sailor.
Abdul Aziz and Diamantis were no different than any other sailor. Any story of life at sea, especially when it was about a storm, had to be taken very seriously. Even if it wasn’t necessarily true. Most likely, Colm Toibin’s storm hadn’t been as terrible as all that. But at that moment they were convinced it was.
“He told me the captain stayed on the bridge for fifty-two hours, trying to save the ship. He would put on speed in the troughs, and slow down when the waves were high in order not to put too much pressure on the hull. A really good guy.”
“So, what happened?”
“Colm was on watch that night, on the bridge. That was where he wanted to be, he’d insisted on it, and no one had tried to take his place.”
“Hell, I can believe that.”
“Right. But that was when he started shitting himself. Because the bridge was submerged, even though it was about a hundred feet above sea level. The waves had torn down the mast, and a forty-five-ton crane was lying on the deck and ramming against the wheelhouse of the second deck, which had been completely destroyed.”
“He panicked.”
“I guess so. What’s for sure is that he suddenly found himself with his ass on the floor. He’d slipped on his back in the gangway and gone flying against the ship’s rail. He grabbed hold of it for dear life. By now, the waves were huge. The sea was going up and down. His mouth was full of water. ‘I was praying,’ he told me. It was the captain who saved him.”
“That must have calmed him down!”
“Can you imagine? He was always headstrong, whatever the weather.”
“A real madman.”
“Not mad, no. I think the sea terrified him. I think it had scared the pants off him the first time he ever set foot on a ship. So he charged right into it, to overcome the fear.” Abdul paused for thought, and took a swig of beer. Then he resumed, “We’re like that in life, aren’t we? Something scares us and we put our heads down and charge right into it. Into the fear, I mean. Don’t you think so?”
Diamantis didn’t answer the question, but asked, “Did you ever see him again?”
“Yes. Five or six years later. I ran into him in Dakar. Talking about ‘his’ storm in a greasy spoon down by the harbor. Just before setting sail for El Callao in Peru. He was playing down what he’d been through. You know the kind of thing. ‘Yes, guys, it was just like I’m telling you. I was forty feet above the water. The wave broke over the deck. At my feet. It swept away the radar mast. But believe me, it wasn’t the big one, I’m still waiting for that.’”
“And is he still at sea?”
“No, he’s retired now. Apparently he lives near Galway. He has his little patch of land. And don’t laugh, but he’s never again set foot on a boat. Not even a fishing boat!”
For a while, they drank in silence. The rain was still pounding the deck. From time to time, there was a crash of thunder, as loud as ever. They were united by the storm. In the same way that a storm at sea brings a crew closer together. No sailor ever tells his family about times like that. Never writes about it, never mentions it when he comes home. Because he doesn’t want to worry them. And, anyway, it’s not something you can talk about. Storms don’t exist. Any more than sailors do, when they’re at sea. Men are only real when they’re on land. No one knows anything about sailors until they come ashore. No one who hasn’t been to sea himself, that is.
Diamantis remembered watching the TV news a few months after the Maris Stella went down, and being struck by some words spoken by a reporter. They were showing pictures of the damage caused by bad weather in England. Six people had died. “The danger is now past,” the reporter had reassured viewers. “The storm has moved away from the coast and is now out at sea.”
Out at sea, away from the coasts, there were thousands of men who didn’t exist. Even for their wives. They had no reality until they were home and in their beds.
Diamantis looked up. “How about you? Have you ever been scared like that?”
Yes, of course. Abdul Aziz had known storms. He could talk about them, too. But the memory that came into his mind had nothing to do with being scared. It was to do with being ashamed. It was to do with a shipwreck that hadn’t been the work of nature but human greed. It had happened twenty years ago.
He was only a first mate in those days. On the Cygnus, an oil tanker sailing under a Liberian flag. The international embargo was still in force against South Africa, and the country was desperately short of oil. The Cygnus, full to bursting with Iranian crude, had unloaded its cargo at Port Elizabeth during the night. Then they’d filled their tanks with water and had set off again, via the Cape of Good Hope. There, they’d waited for a wind, a swell, the slightest hint of a storm.
On the sixth day, they got what the captain wanted. The ship was rolling six degrees. Not much for a ship like that. The Cygnus was an oceangoing vessel, built to withstand bad weather. The captain ordered them to sail with the hatches open, then, at daybreak, to open the floodgates. The crew members were told to pack their bags. Distress signals were sent off. The lifeboats were lowered, and they all got into them.
The Cygnus sank majestically. Almost reluctantly. “A pity.” That was the only comment the captain allowed himself. They didn’t drift for long. Three ships were heading in their direction. They hadn’t even waited for the SOS. The exact position of the Cygnus had been communicated to them hour by hour. All three were sailing under Liberian flags. On behalf of the Tex Oil fleet, as Abdul had learned later. They were picked up as heroes. Apart from the ship’s boy, a twenty-year-old named Lucio. It was his first voyage. He had panicked and ended up in the water. The winds had pushed the lifeboats in the opposite direction, and no one could save him.
It was the insurance company that had put the ball in Abdul’s court. All he had to do was back up the captain’s testimony about the shipwreck. He would get a big bonus, and promotion. There were also bonuses for the rest of the crew. For some—he discovered later—it was the third ship they’d been on that had sunk.
“If I refused, I’d be outlawed by the merchant-navy community worldwide. Everyone seemed to know that kind of thing went on.”
“But how did you explain that there was no oil slick, nothing?”
“It didn’t matter. The insurance company was in on the scam. No one would have listened to me. And I’ll tell you something, Diamantis, the insurance didn’t just pay for the boat, but also the whole of the cargo of Iranian crude!”
“So you signed?” Diamantis asked, but not in any nasty way.
“I threw up, then I signed, then I threw up again. I threw up every day, for more than a month. Every evening, I’d feel nauseous.”
He looked at Diamantis in despair. He was still sickened by this business, even now.
“The bonus helped Cephea and me to settle in Dakar. Quite comfortably, too. I’d have had to work ten years to get to that point. And you know how hard it is to save money.”
“And you became a captain.”
“Yes, I became a captain. Under the same flag, for the same fleet, Tex Oil. Then, as soon as I could, I quit.”
Diamantis recalled that the first time he had sailed under Abdul’s command, one of the crew—the chief engineer—had said to him, “He’s a good captain. He’s very experienced at maneuvers. He treats the crew well, and he doesn’t wet his pants when he has to deal with the owner.” Since that fake shipwreck, he had learned to stand up for himself. He wasn’t the kind of person who’d agree to sink a boat now. He’d never abandon ship. If necessary, he’d stay on it and rot, the way he was doing now in Marseilles.
“I’ll tell you something else, Diamantis, nothing I’ve done since has wiped out the shame of it. The dirty money I pocketed, my promotion, all that. There comes a time when you have to pay for the bad things you’ve done in your life.”
“You pay only if you want to, Abdul. That’s what I think. The world is full of corrupt people. That’s all you read about in the papers. The higher up you are, the more corrupt you’re likely to be. Look at the owner of this ship, the bastard. And what do you think? That all these people are lining up at the cash desk to pay their debts? Bullshit, Abdul! Bullshit!”
“You don’t understand, Diamantis,” Abdul said, getting to his feet. “You don’t understand a thing!” He was on the verge of tears. “Cephea is leaving me. My life’s collapsing around my ears. Everything’s collapsing, fuck it! That’s how I’m paying! Stuck here on this fucking heap of old metal!”
He left without finishing his beer. Shoulders drooping, as if crushed by a heavy burden. He was no longer the same man who had addressed the crew. By arranging for his men to leave, he had limited the damage for each of them. He had gone as far as he could in what he considered his duty as a captain. Now the Aldebaran could sink. And himself with her. But Diamantis had stayed. And neither of them knew yet if that was a good thing. For either of them.
The rain had stopped. It was five-ten. On Place de l’Opéra, the door of the Habana opened and Nedim was thrown out onto the sidewalk by a huge, muscular black guy. The door closed again. Nedim didn’t have the strength—or the guts—to go back in and ask for his bag.