R
ain patters on the floor above me. The engine’s ear-splitting noise in the deckhouse doesn’t bother me. My body is in great pain after the night’s storm and I can’t get myself up from my bunk.
My gaze locks on the Bible on the shelf beside me. I slowly stretch for it, open a page at random and read the first sentence of a paragraph.
“There were forty days and nights of tribulations before salvation came.”
My mind searches among memories and dates. I forget the pain in my ribcage as I hastily sit up. If we go ashore the day after tomorrow, as calculated, it will be exactly forty days and forty nights since the accident with the Vespa in India.
My mind attempts to organise thoughts that feel illogical. Someone tries to find an explanation, a meaning with it all. Meaningless brooding, as only life knows the answers to these questions.
Only a tiny portion of an immensely larger context. Something our small human minds cannot comprehend, no matter how we try.
The boat’s engine suddenly irritates me. All of a sudden it is unbearable to my ears. My full mind overshadows the emptiness within.
I get up. Missiles are launched.
“Are you on your way out?” Janek asks, eyebrows raised.
I nod and answer in the affirmative.
“I removed the rope in case you want to sit in the bow again… you may continue to be our holy figurehead and protect us this last bit, so we don’t run into any more inexplicable storms.”
He laughs, and tries to stop me where he’s sitting beside my bunk.
I pass by anyway. I do not like how he treats Bo and I am currently not capable of meeting him beyond his marked ego which he seems stuck in.
Bo lies sleeping on his bunk.
I pick up his water bottle which is rolling round on the floor beside him, place it by his bed and check whether the latch is properly closed on the toilet door.
The wind blows cold on deck and the rain hits hard on my skin. Nora is sitting behind the wheel and tries to shut down the windmill behind her as she asks me to go below again to put on her jacket.
I follow her instructions and then sit next to her.
The water looks black and the sky is unusually dark for midday.
I look around for twisters or black, compact clouds.
“Don’t worry, Val, most likely there won’t be any more storms, now.”
Her broad smile is glimpsed from under her tightened hood.
For quite a while we sit quietly beside each other in the rain. No idea how long. Finally, though, my body says to quit and that it is time to provide some energy.
“Should I go make pasta for supper?” My voice disappears in the noise of the wind and the waves.
“Yeah, that’d be nice,” she replies and looks at her watch.
She doesn’t let go of my hand when I get up to leave but gently pulls me down again. She wipes the rain from my face and says she may have something to share this evening at supper.
I nod and kiss her rosy, weather-beaten cheek.
The pasta simmers while Janek and Bo are in yet another hot-blooded discussion at the table. Something about gluten’s effect on the body. Janek disputes as he always does, in a provocative way and Bo is defensive and allows himself to be provoked.
The wood of the cool deck creaks beneath my feet.
I place the big bowl of pasta on the table.
Janek grabs Bo’s plate that glides away when the boat swerves to starboard.
He raises his eyebrows, shakes his head and shoves it back to Bo who no longer seems to react.
The lantern on the table illuminates hardened faces.
Nora clears her throat and breaks the silence.
“I thought I could tell you all something this evening as we’ll soon be ashore and I’m the only one who hasn’t shared anything yet.”
She fills her water glass and pushes her bangs from her face.
A bruise from the storm is revealed on her brow.
“Share what?”
Surprised, Bo looks up from his huddled pose in the couch corner.
“You don’t need to share anything, I’m tired and thought I’d try to sleep a bit before my shift.”
Janek nods toward his cabin.
“But I want to and of course it’s voluntary to stay and listen.”
Nora wipes her mouth with the paper by her plate.
“I don’t know if this is what anyone could call inspiring, but anyway, I think it’s a story worth telling.”
She pauses a moment, drinks a sip of water and continues, “I think I was six years old when I went with my mother and grandmother to a funeral. Granny was very sad and I recall trying to comfort her afterwards. She sat as always in her pink armchair with crocheted doilies on the armrests, and cried, with a picture in her hand. A worn-out old photo whose life was also soon up. But a few sailors in striped jumpers could still be distinguished lined up on a quay in front of a big wooden vessel. I pointed at one of the men and said it was a woman. I remember Granny abruptly quit crying and told me it was a woman who had dressed as a man to be allowed to do what she most loved – to be at sea. She also told me this woman was the one we’d been to the funeral for and that the woman was her mother.”
Nora pauses and drinks again.
Janek wipes his mouth with his hand, leaves his used plate and slams the door shut behind him.
“When I was older, I started to feel my own attraction to the sea and became interested in sailing. My curiosity grew for my great-grandmother and her disguised life. Granny told me that in the end, she was discovered and forbidden by law to sail anymore. She then went on alone and spent the greater part of her life somewhere out at sea. My grandmother was still just a child when she was left and it was a huge sorrow to lose her mother so young. A sorrow that has followed the generations in the form of various projections. Our human inheritance, or karma…”
Nora secures the pitcher on the table when the wind seems to increase outside on this thin shell that is trying to protect us from it and from the sea outdoors.
"One day it happened that I, as a woman, was asked the question, ‘Who’s the real captain of this vessel?’
“Some sort of masculine energy began taking over my existence. A thing I believed was necessary. Not much difference from women needing to dress as men to be able to sail or be educated.”
She laughs and stretches her back.
“The sea and my great-grandmother’s inspirational life has given me the strength and courage to continue doing what I want and what I enjoy despite the outdated oppression that may survive to this day.”
She grows quiet and casts a worried look at the lantern on the table.
“Wow, Nora, that was really inspirational to me, anyway!”
Bo places his hand on her shoulder.
No-one says anything for a moment. The boat’s rocking increases and waves hit the little porthole on the port side.
My gaze rests on Nora for I know she has not yet reached the point she actually wants to convey.
Bo mutters that he is sometimes embarrassed about being a man, when Nora finally continues, “Bo, instead, set a good example for coming generations and dare to release the feminine energy within you. My experience has been that once I finally dared to let it out in me, very much both within and without were harmonised. What I’d thought of as a weakness turned out to be my greatest inner strength and power.”
She raises her eyes from the lantern and meets mine.
"I believe we all need to dare to unleash and confirm the feminine energy within us. For it is that energy which will bring us closer to our essence. And that is a necessity if we are going to save ourselves and our planet.