Warm Waters, Chapter 7

‘Very well, then, the second story. Yesterday you wanted to know how I got this scar.’ The captain rubbed his left calf, resting now over the gunwhale. One third of the flesh was gone, and a huge, dented, whiteish mark was left instead. ‘I told you it was a long story, but it really isn’t. The fact is, I was a greedy idiot and I got what I deserved.’ The man on board spoke in a matter-of-factly tone. ‘I used to work in a big cargo ship in the Red Sea. I found out soon enough they were smuggling arms into Somalia and Ethiopia. They were right twats, all of them, they acted as if they were transporting oranges. I was an idiot for staying, but the pay was good, so I did. One of them must have been smoking one of these disgusting little brown cigarettes they were so fond of where he shouldn’t have, and the fucking thing went off. The boat and its one hundred and fifty men went down. Guess how many lifeboats were there. Guess how many lifesavers. Guess how many of us were left floating in the water without any of these. The captain was scared he’d be prosecuted, so the bastard jumped on a boat and didn’t tell anyone about us. We were left there for almost three days.’

The captain didn’t seem particularly affected by any of it. He kept shrugging and shaking his head. The man in the water interrogated his inner alarm, but got no reply.

‘You’d say the worst was exhaustion and thirst.’ resumed the captain. ‘But nah, fear and terror keep your mind off these things. The worst were the sharks. Bulls and tigers, I think. I don’t know, I’m no expert. They came in hundreds, or so it felt. We had flares, spikes and debris from the shipwreck to try and scare them off. We formed circles and when one approached we’d scream and kick and try and whack them with sticks or whatever we could get our hands on. Sometimes it worked. Other times it didn’t. One thing about sharks is that when they come to you they don’t seem to have any life in them. They have dead eyes, black eyes, doll’s eyes. Until they bite. And then those dead eyes roll white, and the waters turn red, and you’d hear screaming like you never thought a human throat was capable of.’

The alarm had started to buzz madly. The man in the water didn’t know what it was yet. He kept listening. His heart had started to beat faster.

‘I remember looking into the sunset, just like you did last evening, and pissing my pants, pissing my pants with fear and looking down to the water, where my body disappeared halfway down as if I had been devoured already. I realised if they came from underneath I wouldn’t see them, I wouldn’t see my legs and waist being torn off in pieces, I wouldn’t see the blood. All I would see from my chest down would be inking blackness, and that would be it. My companions in the circle would swim away screaming, gather at a safe distance, if there was any, and look away, and even sing to cover the crying and shrieking. That is exactly what I did, again and again, that night, for a hundred of my mates. I can still remember some of the songs. They were all in their languages, so I only knew a few words or none, but still I sung them. I learned them when we loaded and unloaded that wretched cargo meant for arming children and slaughtering entire villages. Sometimes, in my nightmares, I still sing these songs while I am being devoured by things I cannot see.’

The man on board still appeared to be mysteriously placid. It made the alarm go insane.

‘The next morning, one third of the men had died. We went around checking the wounded, and pushing away the remains of the death, which were surrounded by shoals of little fish like a floating reef. You’d say it would have been a lot easier just to swim away from them, but we didn’t want to be apart from the flotsam, as if the open, desert see was scarier. A few of us tried to help the wounded. Some moaned, some were unconscious. Many others didn’t want us to bring bleeding men close to them, but we didn’t have the guts to do the smart thing and leave them to their own. Although tourniquets were applied liberally, tied with pieces of clothing and belts from the dead, who had also been stripped of their life vests when they wore one, bleeding was very rarely stopped. Soon we’d be pushing the bodies of these away with the others.

>>I remember the seabirds hounding the reefs of bodies. They flew over them and dived between them, for meat and for prey. I heard their crowing. If you closed your eyes you’d think you were in a harbour. I loved that sound, but to this day it still gives me the creeps sometimes.

Nobody in the world could have said at that time that the man on board was lying, making up thoughts and impressions as he went on. The alarm was appeased now, and the man in the water found it disturbing.

‘I went to wake up my friend, Hariq’ resumed the man on board. ‘He had his life vest lose and I though I’d wake him up and tell him to tie it back. He was floating like a buoy, his head hanging to one side. I shook his shoulder. He turned upside down. I saw he had been devoured from the waist down...’

The alarmed was deafening him. What was it? What was it!

‘The second night was worst than the first. Perhaps because there were fewer of us, the sharks seemed to be a lot more. There were only twenty of us left by the morning. There was so much dead meat floating around the sharks pretty much stopped bothering with the living. Although they took some bites now and then, perhaps because the living by that time reeked of blood and death.’

>>At midday, a fishing boat spotted us. I was never more afraid than in the last moments, waiting for my turn. I’ll never put on a life-jacket again...’

The alarm exploded. He got it.

‘Jaws! It’s Jaws!’ gasped the man in the water. ‘It’s from the movie!” he yelled, for once perfectly articulate.

‘Farewell and ado, you sweet Spanish ladies...’ mumbled the man on board with a smile.

‘Liar! Liar!’ he couldn’t tell whether he was mad with joy, because he had spotted the lie, or indignant because he was made to waste his time.

‘You don’t want to hear the rest of the story? You still haven’t found out when I lost my calf. Don’t you want to know how I almost die in St. Mary of the Flees and Ticks Hospital in Yemen because of the infection? How I needed four more operations when I returned to civilisation, only to be able to walk again? How I still wake up in pain because of what those Yemenite quacks did to me?’ The man on board was still smiling, but it was an expression that announced no good to the man in the water.

He didn’t care, he blocked his ears. It was a lie and he had spotted it.

‘Haven’t you thought I could have put this bits in to confuse you and send you off the track?’

The man in the water had considered it, yes, but he had immediately stumbled upon an inspiration that seemed to support his case that it was all baloney:

‘Where the trauma? He clattered.

The man on board kept smiling.

‘The human mind is a complicated thing.’

This is not an answer, babbled and rattled the man in the water. He is dodging the question, he thought. I’m right.

‘Third story!’ he shouted. He felt brave.

The man on board smiled and nodded as if he conceded defeat. That gesture was for the man in the water like a wedge between the solid brick wall of his cherished certainty. It’s been too easy, buzzed the alarm, too easy.

‘You’ll love the third story.’ said the man on board, smiling in a completely different way. The smile of a shark. ‘It’s about you.’