M
y tongue pokes against the jagged edge of my front teeth where a few slivers are missing after yesterday’s storm. My upper lip is thick and cracked.
Bo flings himself over the railing and throws up again. Half the vomit doesn’t make it over the railing and lands on deck.
The toilet door slams. Reggae music comes from the crackling speakers in the cabin.
The sun burns my brown, dry skin. I fill the bucket at the wash station on deck and rinse away the rest of the vomit. A sudden gust of wind causes me to lose my balance and fall down in the cockpit. I crawl up and go below to shut the toilet door after Bo and fetch the sunscreen. It is nearly gone.
With his foot, Janek slams his door shut from his bed when he sees me. He has mostly lay in bed since Nora suggested we ought to change shift partners.
Initially, he protested with the argument that two females oughtn’t be on the same shift. Nora had laughed and reminded him she had sailed around the world thrice with only women as crew.
My face reflects in the mirror inside my toiletry bag’s lid. White stripes surround my eyes after all the squinting at the sun. My fingers graze my swollen upper lip. A bruise on my right cheek starts to turn a yellowish colour.
Bo whimpers from his bunk on the left of the cockpit below deck. His water bottle rolls on the floor beside him.
“Are you OK, Bo, can I help you in any way?”
I only reach his feet where he lies on a patchwork of clothing he hasn’t managed to put in order.
“I can’t do this anymore, Val… please, you have to talk with Janek, I have to get ashore now. I’ve tried to talk with him during our shifts but he doesn’t seem to be accessible, he seems to not listen to what I say. He just sits quietly and says nothing, it’s really quite unpleasant.” he whispers, sobbing.
I fetch paper for him to wipe his face and place his water bottle in the holder next to his bunk.
“Please turn around. I don’t want to sit talking with your feet, Bo. I would gladly go ashore, too, but the closest dry land from here is Sri Lanka, where we’ll land in about a week’s sailing if the wind is good. And we won’t pass especially close, it’s at least a day off course according to Nora.”
He turns difficultly around and lays his head in my lap.
I stroke his forehead and continue: “Nora says Janek won’t want to detour to Sri Lanka but continue as planned to the Maldives where he can pick up new passengers for his upcoming voyage.”
“But I can pay what it would cost to detour to Sri Lanka, if it’s about money.” Bo pleads and stifles his cry in his hands.
“Janek just shook his head when I suggested that same thing. You will make it, Bo, this was your challenge to get through, you said it yourself. You’ve nowhere to run, here, remember!”
My enthusiasm lacks credence.
“No, I’m weak, what I’ve chosen demands a lion heart… something I don’t seem to have… unfortunately.”
He sniffs between words.
“I flouted life with this voyage… nagged my way to a place, despite Janek dissuading me several times. But I pleaded, begged and prayed until he agreed to give me a chance, ahead of an experienced sailor who’d also applied for the place.”
He buries his head in my lap and sobs like a child who regrets some mistake they’ve made.
“I can’t see it like that, Bo. I can’t or don’t want to believe that’s how it is… if you are here on the boat now, this is exactly how life wants it to be, with or without your nagging and your pleas… this is simply how it is written. And you’ve heard the old saying, that life is a book and you can’t change what is written but you can always start a new chapter.”
Some wisdom and honesty permeates what I say when I speak from the heart.
He looks up at me.
"Val, have you seen your face? Your mouth is cracked and swollen, you have bruises everywhere, you’ve knocked out half your teeth and broken every bone in your body… but yet I see no fear behind your amber eyes. Why?
“I simply don’t have what you have, I’m not meant to travel this path. It requires more courage than I possess, I understand now.”
He sobs again.
“In your weakest moments is when the dark attempts to force out the light. Ego doesn’t want to give up easily; like everything else, it has a sense of self-preservation. Ego is obviously extremely threatened by the path you’ve chosen, and it is now when you are at your weakest that it strikes again. The martyr is ego’s best friend, don’t listen to its false words, don’t allow it to diminish who you are.”
“I don’t have the strength…”
“Quiet, Bo, and look at me!”
I lift his head and squat down so our faces are opposite each other’s.
“In our most challenging times we have the chance to find our strengths and even ourselves beyond weakness and strength, the essence within us, what we are beyond our human shapes. We are not intended to live only as people forever. The person is merely a passage, a phase in higher consciousness. You have the same possibilities as everyone else to reach beyond this phase but you don’t seem to want it enough since you allow yourself to be distracted by insignificant details.”
We sit quietly a minute and ponder what I’ve just said.
I try to get up. He hinders me and asks me to stay with him a moment.
He holds my hand hard. I stroke his forehead with gentle fingers. The boat rocks and my body feels refreshingly painless and weightless where I sit on the floor.
My eyes close and soon I’m swimming with the whale deep down there. Far, far down where no-one else dares to go. I sink further. It seems to get darker. Now I see the whale as a dot somewhere above me towards the surface. I try to swim up again, but can’t, something holds my legs. A giant, red octopus has latched onto my right leg. I try to free myself in slow motion. It laughs and indicates with its determined grip there is now no returning to the surface.
I am then surrounded by a blue-black smoke cloud. It is compact, poisonous. I try in vain to brush it away with slow arms. I detect a light behind it but my swimming gets me nowhere. The octopus keeps me in its firm grip. It shakes and rocks me so slivers of bone sprinkle inside.
It shows no mercy.
It stands between me and the light.
“Why are you sitting here sleeping? You’re the one to make supper!” Janek shakes and wakes me.
“Oh, excuse me, I must have fallen asleep! Bo felt bad again and I sat with him a while and…”
“Yeah, whatever, that’s enough. You can bake bread for supper as a change. There’s flour and you just mix it with water.”
He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and sets out flour and a bowl.
Nora comes down as though she’s heard our conversation from up on deck.
“I don’t know, Janek, we’ve eaten white pasta for fourteen days and you think we ought to bake bread from white flour and water for supper… you must have some frozen goods aboard.”
She points to the bench where I suppose the freezer usually is.
“Nothing we’re going to use on this voyage, but you’re welcome to try and catch a fish if you’re tired of what’s offered.”
Janek climbs up on deck and immediately extends a fishing pole down to Nora.
She takes it determinedly from his hand and mumbles about him going too far.
I try to form the sticky dough into a few flat cakes that I put on two baking sheets and slide them into the little oven.
A wave splashes saltwater through the hatch. It wets a book lying on the counter in the galley. I close the hatch and try to dry the book as much as possible. It is the little Bible that had fallen from the bookshelf some time ago.
I open it again and read the first sentence of a new chapter. My attention goes to Bo where he still is sleeping on his bunk. I remember our conversation prior to us falling asleep and my dream with the octopus in deep water… too deep to return to the surface again.
I search through the empty cupboard and an empty fridge for something to have on the bread. Mix a little salt and oil to dip the bread in and set the table in the cockpit.
I burn my wrist as the boat lurches when I remove the baking sheets with bread.
I move in a pitching cabin and try to get help from the various rails and handles set out.
I wake Bo who does not want to be woken up nor wants to eat with us. He whispers that his stomach will burst if he eats more wheat gluten.
Up on deck it is already dark. Heavy rain filled clouds will release great quantities of water during the night. Every evening and night there is a bigger or smaller storm; when the wind increases the clouds will have collected the evaporated water from the ocean. The waves are always very high and the safety harnesses are now needed on every night shift when we’re so far out on the open sea.
A wave already splashes over us, wetting the bread and the bowl with oil I’ve set out.
I break the silence at the table with a sentence read from the Bible a moment ago: “Do not be discouraged, for behind the darkest clouds is always the light.”