“You’ll die tonight, guys!”
Max smiled the smile of an experienced sinner who had not only survived Sodom and Gomorra but had long ago surpassed it. As usual, the smile moved via Samo to Alfonz’s awkward attempt and even Raf made the effort but so belatedly that he decided to get up, mumbling something about going to the toilet and walking off down the deck with quick steps.
In the narrow passage between the restaurant and outer rail of the ferry he slowed down, glanced back — no, they could not see him — and did not even look at the door leading to the toilets. There was no sign, just the unmistakable smell. A few metres further along, another door gaped open. By the state of the door hinges he could tell that it had not been closed for a long time. He stopped in front of the dark opening and looked down the metal staircase. A smell of heat and petrol wafted up to him. After a moment’s hesitation he went down towards the part of the ferry he had not yet seen.
They had been going for three hours now and according to the timetable they were due to dock in an hour and thirty-five minutes. So far they had arrived on time at all three islands which were now far behind and it was safe to assume that there would be no delay. Raf looked away from his watch and paid attention to the stairs. On some of them there were large drops of some unknown liquid. It did not smell, just looked disgusting. The drops appeared in regular intervals, as if they had been spilled from a bucket, carried by an uncertain hand.
The belly of the ferry had almost completely emptied on the largest, best known island — the second stop — just over an hour ago. They had leant over the rail at the front, observing the unruly chaos of the vehicles making their way on to dry land. The stop was for half an hour, and at the beginning it looked as if most of that time would be taken up by the drivers hooting impatiently at a confused holidaymaker who could not get his car, caravan and, after a while, even himself turned in the right direction. Because of all the swearing and honking behind him he became more and more agitated and confused and therefore moved further and further away from his goal. Luckily, some of the bystanders started giving him advice, but of course, strongly disagreed with one another, and it all nearly ended in a fight. With the attention turned away from him, the unfortunate caravan owner finally managed to collect himself and drove off. His advisors did not even notice his departure and after a while were unable to notice it, as by this time they had forgotten what the argument was about.
This event was the only entertaining part of that day and it could not overcome Raf’s feeling of unease. He should not have come. He had no valid reason for these thoughts, which gripped him with a renewed strength in the darkness surrounded by the noise of the engines. When he was seven, a schoolfriend had come to ask him to play one afternoon. He rang the bell at the entrance, Raf looked down from the fifth floor and immediately agreed. On the way to the door of their flat, he was suddenly overcome by such tiredness that he could only just drag himself to bed and he fell onto it, falling asleep before his head even hit the pillow. His friend probably rang the bell a few more times, but Raf did not hear it. He was later woken by shouting and crying echoing down the corridor. In a daze, he got up to see what was going on. His friend had gone to the railway lines and climbed onto the roof of a train standing on a side track. The electric wires had sucked him up and fried him. After a few years of never thinking about the incident, two very vivid images came to him while he was alone under that deck. A father with a red-skinned son in his arms. And his friend in an open coffin, with face powder literally caked all over him. Which made him think of what had happened to open coffins, blessings and mourning since then? The whole class had gone to bless that boy, but when a few years later, at grammar school, a mountaineering schoolfriend died, condolences were sent by post and at the funeral there was just an urn with ashes which could have contained anything.
Raf shivered — on the way to a week’s holiday he was thinking such morbid thoughts.
He stepped over to a motorcycle parked nearby and looked at the shiny Japanese miracle. He allowed himself a short burst of envy. Only six months had passed since a girl he had been in love with had rejected him, saying she was only interested in men with motorbikes. Raf was well aware that a motorbike was one of those things that a man sometimes had to do without and that, anyway, it all depended on the season, but at the same time he also knew that that was just pure reasoning, which had nothing to do with the matters of the heart.
He sighed deeply and walked over to the raised bow door. He could see the sea splashing at the side and from time to time a few drops came inside. No dry land could be seen. Somewhere above, seagulls were circling. One of them dived quickly and grabbed something in the air before it fell into the sea.
Someone on the deck must be feeding the gulls. Raf smiled. He turned and walked the length of the ferry. There was only one vehicle left, a delivery van, which got off at every stop, unloaded and drove back on. The driver was asleep in his cabin and the noise of his hoarse snoring was escaping through the window in irregular intervals.
The same thing every day, thought Raf. What a job! He just managed to get round all the islands in his eight hours and that was it. In his old age he would be able to say that he had spent his life on the sea but his grandchildren would wonder why he was so pale.
Raf turned his head towards the high ceiling and slowly looked around the large room. When they had first set off, it looked as if it was suffocating with all the vehicles. And then, after each stop, there was less metal and technology and more room and peace and quiet. As if they were not just journeying away, but backwards in time too.
Raf went back up using the staircase opposite the one he had come down. Soon after the first turn in the stairs he tripped, nearly touching the metal with his nose but still managing somehow to steady himself. He sighed slowly:
“Jesus!” just like every other time he tripped.
He was getting fed up of his friends ridiculing his clumsiness and he was relieved that there were no witnesses this time.
Once back on deck, he was blinded by the sun and when he finally opened his eyes the first thing he saw was the motorbike owner. He was not wearing a helmet or a leather suit — he noticed those two identifiers only later, rolled and fastened to the rucksack and squashed under the bench — but had long blonde hair, a thick moustache and a tattoo of an eagle on his upper arm. He was sunbathing with his eyes closed but Raf was not fooled into believing he was asleep. Or was it that these muscular men, like Samo, slept in a special way, without relaxing their muscles?
He turned towards the bow and his (former) schoolfriends, who were still hidden by the middle part of the ferry and touched something soft with his left hand. Grease! Green grease on the ends of his fingers. They must have freshly greased the winch and judging by the large quantity of the stuff it was meant to last forever. Raf rubbed his fingers against the fence until they stopped sticking to one another. He looked at the traces of the stuff on the metal rail and realised he had set a trap which would sooner or later be sprung by someone. He did not have a tissue or a handkerchief. He made himself small and turned towards the stern. He was not in a hurry to return to his mates.
Maybe nobody would come upon the mess on the rail? The strangers on the ferry meant nothing and could do nothing to him.
A piece of bread flew in a large arc above his head. As it fell towards the waves a seagull caught it and swallowed it with what sounded like a very contented shriek. Raf looked up but could not see the bread-thrower. He did not even know that there was another deck. All he could see was the captain’s cabin, the aerials and the radar masts (or whatever those gadgets were called) on top of it, and two vibrating chimneys at the back.
He waited for another piece of bread, checked that the seagull’s response was as expected and then carried on towards the back of the ferry. It was less windy there, in fact it felt quite pleasantly sheltered behind the captain’s cabin. All the other passengers — a few families with small children — were gathered there, running after their brats and entertaining themselves by worrying about their little treasures falling into the sea.
There was no point in going to his friends to tell them about the sheltered spot. Max always had to sit at the very top like all people with an x or a y in their name, and Samo and Alfonz were just his hangers-on.
And so am I, even though I’m sulking at the opposite end of the ship, he said to himself. It was rarely so annoying to be right.
It was all very simple: school had finished and with it their four years together. Max had organised a farewell party, which he said was going to be super mega. He and Samo were always together anyway, so it was not hard to choose his first guest. Alfonz had money and home-made schnapps. Raf was included because of Max’s bad conscience. He had been copying from Raf in nearly every written test in the past few years and even though they were not friends — neither of them would call their relationship a friendship — Max succumbed to guilt and invited the boy who was almost solely responsible for his education. Raf could not quite remember exactly when it had all started. But he did remember that from the second year on he always had to first quickly answer his own questions and then go onto Max’s.
Maybe I do have just a little bit of a character left, thought Raf. If I were a complete slave I would have finished Max’s assignment first and then gone onto my own.
He smiled. He was getting used to these sarcastic little thoughts which had started coming to him sometime around the onset of puberty, at the end of junior school. The unpleasant feelings were gone now and he started to take in the clear blue sky in all its beauty again. Yes, the dark thoughts had started in that black hole in the middle of the ferry — a flash of a feeling, too fleeting to be registered, of being caught in a dark, narrow place — and the freshness of the early afternoon had blown them away.
It would be a typical sort of party. First they would drink too much and then they would throw up. Parties were just an unpleasant duty to him, one you have to carry out so that you can brag about it later. Another strange and morbid thought?
He decided to return to the front of the ferry. Their remarks about his long absence were bound to be bad enough as it was.
The seagull was quite far off now. The feeding had finished. Raf slowed down and looked up. Nothing. He remembered the stains on the rail and tried to find them. He could not. If he could not find them without looking really closely then it was not worth mentioning and he had worried needlessly earlier.
He returned to the other three, who were still laughing at their plans for the party that night when the whole villa would be at their disposal.
“…and we’ll smash everything!” Max was just finishing another brag. “Tomorrow, everybody will be able to see what fun we had just by looking at the place!”
Ana broke the last piece of bread into two pieces that were almost too small, in order to delay the time when the seagull would start to screech. And indeed, when the bread was finished, the bird gave her a good telling off before slipping back, where it looked around ever so casually as if it would never again even think of casting a glance towards the ship or her — me interested in bread? Never!
Holidays, said Ana to herself. Oh, what a holiday this was going to be! Her mum and dad did want the best for her and she really had been looking rather anaemic all spring. But they had sent her to this god-forsaken island with only one ferry a day, to stay for two whole months with an uncle she had never seen before!
She called him uncle, even though in fact he was not her mother’s brother, but her mother’s uncle. Ana tried to remember what she should be calling him but could not really think of a suitable expression. Great uncle? They never said much about him at home and during all this reflection, for which she had plenty of time on her journey, she suddenly started feeling that her parents avoided mentioning him. No, she could not prove it, but still… She thought it was interesting how parents always think they can hide certain things from their children.
She waved to the seagull and it looked at her for a moment before deciding not to pay any more attention to her. She felt cold. The sun was beginning to set and it was still only early summer. To top it all she was sitting on the most open part of the ferry, where the breeze was at its strongest.
The euphoria which had warmed her in the first half of the day, was cooling too. Her first holiday alone! She had felt good in spite of the isolated island and the relative whom she imagined to be an old weirdo — and had then felt guilty for her thoughts. The great feeling of freedom more than made up for all the worries she had had, waking up every morning for the last seven days wondering whether she could manage on her own.
She had been travelling for most of the day and everything was going according to plan, restoring her confidence and suppressing the dark feeling which tried to creep into her every time she looked around the deck. How empty the ferry was! On the way to the first port of call, the passengers were literally treading on each other’s toes and now she was nearly alone. As if the whole of the civilisation was just a great crowd of people, tightly packed against each other like grapes and all around them nothing. A beautiful nothing: the sea, the sun and the vibrating metal under her feet.
She went down to the main deck and checked that her case was still in the hiding place she had managed to squeeze it into earlier. It was peeping from behind the air vent out of which gushed the stench of the cars below. The lock had not been tampered with. She shook the case and was again astonished at how heavy it was. It was a good thing that her father had offered her his big Samsonite otherwise she would have never been able to squeeze in all the clothes her mother had got out for her.
She reached into her canvas bag — screech went the seagull (she had completely forgotten about him) — and took out the earphones for her walkman. Before she could put them on she had to let her long hair down. She left the walkman itself in the bag, felt for the switch and managed to press the right button. She started wandering aimlessly in the same direction as the ferry. Because of the noise of the engines she had to reach into her bag once more to turn the volume up.
A weak, feeble voice came gently from everywhere. A strange feeling: the sea, ferry and a voice belonging to nobody around there. Well, it did belong to somebody somewhere but that did not matter. This was the only tape her mother never had any objections to.
On the cover there was a praying angel.
She had secretly bought another tape, with two angels making love and put it in a blank cover.
Why on earth did she remember that? The picture of the two intertwined bodies, rather muscular for supposedly such ethereal beings. Almost like the man sleeping on the bench in front of her, who was dressed in Bermuda shorts with a brightly coloured pattern and an equally colourful T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves. She looked at the eagle — it too was probably flexing its muscles and stretching its wings, yuck! — and then at the rest of its owner, which was a bit rude and certainly a sin, as her mother was always reminding her. She even had to lean on the rail for a moment in order to get a better view of the whole. The sin had only one redeeming feature: he was asleep. What harm could one single look do?
By observing her schoolfriends she had learned how very rarely punishment for sins actually came and even when it did it could be attributed to other causes. But she knew all the time that it was different for her. There was a line separating her from them.
She noticed a helmet and a leather sleeve under the bench. A motorcyclist. She remembered some of her neighbours roaring down the street on heavy motorbikes and she pursed her lips. That was enough.
She went on.
“Hey, a chick!”
Max was the first to notice her. He had always had a good eye for such things and claimed that his looks never fell on stony ground. Even more, each look from him was like an irresistible bait to fish. Raf had heard unconfirmed rumours about Max and Samo’s disastrous visit to a brothel. Not because of lack of money, they had enough of that. Samo must have been put off by there not being any weights in the room, Raf thought and could hardly contain a giggle. What had been happening to him all day? He was not used to quite so many nasty thoughts. Simply relief at the end of the school year?
They observed her in silence. She came round the corner, noticed them, looked the other way and walked past them towards the other side of the ferry and the passage leading to the back of the ship.
Raf thought:
“If Max whistles, I’ll thump him!”
Max did not whistle which seemed strange to Raf. He looked at him and saw his lips, ready for action but too cracked from the wind to be able to produce a sound audible at a distance. Max could not afford a weak huff, decided to give up and instead put on a smile appropriate to such occasions.
The girl was close to the passage and turned her back to them.
“Somebody missed.” said Max. Raf did not quite get it. Samo was already grinning but that did not mean anything. Alfonz looked just as baffled. Max noticed their incomprehension and helped them:
“Well, what do you two look at on a woman? Look at her arse!”
Alfonz put on a sour smile while Raf nearly groaned. On the right side of her behind there was a stain which he immediately recognised. She must have leant on the rail! She must have walked past and just where he had wiped his hand she must have stumbled (for a moment he forgot that they were not on a bus but a gently vibrating ship), leant on the rail and…
“Somebody must have come on her, for sure!”
Raf grimaced and put his hand to his forehead. Luckily all the others were too busy looking at the figure nearing the corner to notice. The feeling of regret for joining this trip returned. But on the other hand, what would he have done till the end of June? He had already arranged for a job at the photocopier’s for the next month and in August he was coming back to the seaside, but this time hitchhiking with two really good friends.
He came up with a way to survive the week.
“Alfonz, can I have a drop of schnapps?”
Alfonz gave him a surprised look. To be honest he had been expecting the question all along, but somehow not from Raf.
He reached into his rucksack and pulled out a bottle. He gave it to Raf, who after taking a sip from it passed it on to Max, who passed it back to its owner. After this little circle they all kept coughing and clearing their throats whilst praising the strength and power of the drink. Alfonz beamed. Even Samo could not resist it after such praise and he started looking towards the clear liquid with desire in his eyes. Max offered it to him immediately. Samo made a few attempts at refusal, mentioning sportsmen and the sporting spirit but in the end they all concluded that, fuck it, this was a holiday and they all ended up having another sip.
The conversation returned to women and Max gave the bottle to Alfonz and asked him to put it away. Only little boys get drunk as soon as they leave home, he said. He did not mention the experience that had taught him this lesson. They had been driving to the theatre and after only ten kilometres he was deadly drunk, five kilometres later he was in a coma out of which he awakened only once, in the middle of the performance, when he had a strong attack of vomiting. His father wrapped a belt round his hand – he would never forget how slowly and with what pleasure he did it — and beat him senseless. During the beating he taught him the meaning of appearances and public behaviour, which was basically the same thing. He said he had had to learn everything himself, build himself into a successful man, whereas Max was lucky enough to have somebody who would cram all this wisdom into his head quite early on in his life and for free. At the end he added that he did not mind his son drinking as long as he looked sober. Max remembered that and always stuck to it.
“That,” said Max, “that we’ve just seen, is a Russian nightclub-dancer type. I can remember…”
Raf’s thoughts went back to the stain which was beginning to really bother him. He started thinking about coincidence and fate, but at the end he decided that all these high-flying words were just an excuse to recall the image of the girl.
Long, thick, oh how thick! black hair, a navy blue polo shirt, white trousers. To be more exact, stained white trousers. Who dresses in white for a journey these days, except someone — a navy blue and white combination? — who has never seen the sea before and is trying to dress in the way they think one should dress for the sea. In an experienced and appropriate manner? What’s the matter with me, he said to himself. I’m getting really fed up with myself.
Max was pontificating about nightclubs and dancers and about his erotic experiences of both and Raf was relieved. The girl was forgotten. And he was again surprised at his feeling of unease about gossiping about a girl he had never seen before and probably would never see again.
But then again, an island… Deserted and isolated. If she stays for a whole week then maybe…
“How big was the island did you say?” he interrupted Max, who did not seem to mind in spite of being in the middle of bringing two Russian dancers to their second consecutive orgasm.
“It’s not that small. An hour’s walk from one side to the other. The village is on one side and our villa on the other.”
Raf nodded.
“Is that all? Is there nothing else on the island?”
“My old man told me they opened a new campsite halfway between the village and the villa earlier this year.”
A campsite? Was she a holidaymaker? Hm…
Max went on:
“But it’s a bit early in the season. There shouldn’t be too many people about, which suits us perfectly. At least nobody will interfere and…”
That special laugh.
“…they won’t hear our screams!”
Laughter.
“And how big is the village?” asked Raf.
“Hell, what do I know,” answered Max. “I’ve never been there before. My old man says it’s very shabby, twenty or thirty houses, a shop and a monument. Wilderness, I tell you.”
“What, no bar?” said Alfonz with real surprise. Each day he had commuted to the school from the hills, from a village which probably was not much bigger than the one on the island but which still had a bar, whose owner was his dad. On paper and in name anyway. He was always moving from table to table and back to the bar with a tea-towel over his arm, chatting to the customers, while Alfonz’s mother did all the work.
“My old man said that the shop is both a shop and a bar.”
It was surprising how many times in these last four years Max had mentioned his father. Contemptuously, but nevertheless. Raf had seen him only once, in passing, in a black BMW waiting for Max in front of the school. And that was also the only time when Max did not make any comment about every girl who happened to be passing. He just quickly, with his head slightly bowed, hurried to the car, opened the door and climbed in.
“OK, the main thing is that there is somewhere we can buy booze. I’ve only got five litres with me.”
Alfonz waved towards his rucksack.
“It’s my birthday tomorrow,” he added sheepishly.
“Oh, congratulations,” said Max, “we’ll drink to your health.” And finished the conversation.
Raf looked at Alfonz, thinking how little he knew him after four years. He was equipped with endless supplies of money, on which even Max himself had to rely, being completely dependent on his father’s good will which was very changeable; it seemed very generous, with periods of stinginess or, as Max would explain: “The old man remembered how poor he was at my age again.”
Alfonz’s parents had obviously never been poor. But still, why would somebody with all that money always wear the same set of clothes. Even here, on the boat: trousers in a hunter’s sort of brown made from wide-ribbed corduroy and a checked shirt, as opposed to everybody else’s jeans and T-shirt. In the winter, he wore a flannel checked shirt and over it — when it was very cold — a thick Aran cardigan. Raf imagined him in the snow: hidden in his cardigan, wading through deep fresh snow in the woods. Even though his village was often snowed in, Alfonz never missed school, which showed amazing determination. Why then did he have to be Max’s hanger-on? He had more brains, determination and money. The only thing in which Max was superior was simple chit-chat. Alfonz was very quiet and he made rather desperate attempts to be liked, badly timed and awkward. He even laughed at jokes too loudly and with a delay of just a second. And to top it all, when drunk or under an attack of friendliness, Max always quite haphazardly called him either “sad Alfonz” or “serious Alfonz". Raf never found Alfonz really sad, just down in the dumps.
Samo got up and stretched.
“I’m going to the toilet,” he said and went.
Samo stepped into the corridor, smelt the stench and changed his mind. He would last until they docked. With every kilometre further from home the toilets got dirtier and dirtier. Instead, he turned towards the deserted restaurant from which came the sounds of local songs. The waiter could not be seen anywhere — he was probably dozing under the bar. Samo turned towards the opposite side of the boat and caught a glimpse of a man’s foot.
On a muscular leg.
Samo stepped outside and leant on the rail. A quick look from under the eyelids. Hm, the guy was posing. He confirmed it by putting his hand under his head to show off his biceps.
The sleeping man then twitched as if in a nightmare and flexed his body. His muscles bulged.
Samo spat into the sea.
Raf waited for Samo to return and then went to the toilet. He muttered something about the drink which always made him go and made the effort to slowly move behind the corner.
The girl had to be there somewhere. On the top deck again?
He climbed the stairs but could not find her and came down again.
He saw her at the back, leaning against the rail. She was staring at the wake stretching behind the boat, widening into a slightly wrinkled surface of perfect blue.
Raf stopped a few metres behind her, not knowing what to do. Behind his back he could hear the roaring engines making an almighty noise, which seemed to spray out of some sort of an air vent between him and the cabin.
“Hi,” he said finally and thought she had not heard him. But before he could repeat the word she nodded without turning around.
Raf stood there, embarrassed. He looked back quickly to make sure none of his comrades were in sight.
“Are you staying on the island for long?”
She nodded again. He started feeling like a fool.
“The whole week?”
The anger which took hold of him only lasted a moment, but was therefore all the stronger.
“Well, if you decide to look at me, you know where to find me!” he hissed, turned round and walked off.
He noticed a nod with the corner of his eye.
The cassette player switched itself off with a click. Ana untangled the earphones from her hair and put them back into her bag. She turned and had a good look around. The parents on the stern were still trying to catch their children, but there was nobody near her. She just managed to catch a glimpse of one of those boys who had earlier sat on the bow before he disappeared round the corner. She could not be sure but she thought it was probably the bony one who looked different from the others. A pity that he had not walked past her.
During the last piece of music, the one with the faster rhythm, she thought she could sense somebody watching her. A passing feeling, which proved to be wrong.
Another half hour till landing. She tried to imagine her uncle from the photos her mother had shown her. They were all pretty old so her uncle must be well over sixty. Two months with an old man! She was bound to have to listen to him talking about the past day after day.
Max was the next to go to the toilet. He took a long time and suddenly the cynical voice inside Raf’s had recognised the truth. Max was lying. Raf got up and did not care what his friends thought. Without looking at them, he went off. He slowly approached the corridor leading towards the toilet. No sound, apart from the roar of the engines, to which he had grown completely accustomed, and the music which reached him in intervals.
He stepped forward and peeped through the stairs leading to the upper deck.
Max and the girl were talking.
What else could he have expected from him? From that bastard. He just had to chat up every woman who crossed his path. From whichever direction she came. However old she was or how she looked, he did not care. This was someone who would work his way round the whole crowd, not choose just one or two women. Someone who could not even order a drink in a bar or buy cigarettes at a newsagents without trying to interfere with the waitress or the shop assistant. Someone who lied to every woman’s face and told her how beautiful and clever she was — in short she was the most unique fusion of the two qualities in one body. How could women enjoy listening to such blatant lies?
He gripped the rail, wanting to break it. What did he do that was wrong? And what was Max doing that was right? He had never believed his stories about all the adventures and successes, but now… What were those magic words which you have to use to start a conversation? How could you just come, say something and immediately start chatting? Why did he always fail?
He put his forehead on the cool metal and felt like crying. He could not look at them any longer.
He crossed the corridor and walked back on the other side.
“Hi,” said Max.
“Hi,” she answered.
“Are you staying on the island for long?” asked Max.
She nodded.
“The whole week?”
“More, two months.”
“Two months? What will you do for that long, alone?
“I’m visiting my relatives.”
“Well, if you get bored, come to the other side of the island, to the old villa, it’s the only one there. Ask your relatives, they’ll tell you where.”
Alfonz nearly suffocated in the toilet. He did not really need to go but as all the others had been he had to. He found it strange that he did not meet Max and thought he must have gone back on the other side of the boat. He remembered the toilet in their own restaurant at home and felt almost homesick. He had had to scrub it out so many times that he could only hate it in a fed up sort of way. And therefore it seemed strange that here on a holiday in the middle of the sea, he did not recall his family but the toilet instead.
Back in the corridor, he slowly let his breath out and glanced into the restaurant. He was thirsty so he went in. He was just about to say hello, when he stopped himself — there was no one there. He leant on the bar and looked at the row of bottles on the ply-wood shelf under the mirror, covered with fly shit and other dirt and oddly stained at the edges as if it had been attacked by some strange fungi or mould. He nearly changed his mind and left before stopping himself. He had been shy all his life and this was his holiday away from the familiar. If he started shyly that was how he would carry on. He had come here for something different.
He cleared his throat.
He had to do it a few times before the waiter came in a crumpled black waistcoat and white shirt with rolled up sleeves, his arms so hairy that it looked as if he was wearing a tight fitting jumper.
The man did not say anything, just leant on the bar and looked through Alfonz with sleepy eyes.
“An orangeade, please.” said Alfonz.
The waiter carried out his routine without looking at his customer: he reached under the bar, opened the bottle, put it firmly onto the lino on top of the bar and added a glass, covered with white spots.
Alfonz paid and took the bottle.
“Sorry, but this is warm, could I have a cold one?” he said.
The waiter looked him in the eyes for the first time.
“If there’s something you don’t like, go to another bar!”
Alfonz was just about to turn round and ask where it was when he realised he had probably just been the victim of the waiter’s sense of humour. There was nowhere else on the boat and for kilometres around it. They were where they were and they would just have to survive for a week.
He left his drink untouched and walked out. A strange thought came into his head, as if it was not his but as if somebody had whispered it to him. What if he went in the opposite direction and looked for that girl who had walked past earlier? No, he would not have the courage to talk to her, he just wanted to look at her again. He did not take the idea seriously, it seemed so strange and impossible.
He returned to the bow. Max still was not there. Where was he?
The siren went and Max returned. Raf refused to turn away from the outline of the island.
“Another ten minutes,” said Samo.
“I’ve already got a date with the skirt,” said Max.
Raf felt he could kill him. Squeeze his neck and keep squeezing until the words stopped coming.
“Really?” said Samo, provoking a new monologue. Alfonz just nodded sadly.
Raf started pulling their rucksacks from under the benches and handing them out in a deliberately rough manner. Alfonz, whilst explaining how he had wrapped each bottle in several layers of newspaper, still asked for care to be taken.
Raf did not listen. He was still thinking about the magic words. How could women be so stupid? How can they fall for such bullshit and ignore an honest and well meaning guy, who did not see them only as an easy lay? But maybe that was the reason? a sharp voice whispered inside, more than surpassing its normal daily quota.
“Hey, what’s that?” Samo exclaimed with surprise and pointed with his finger.
They could now make out the village, the tree covered ridge surrounding it on all sides and even the little figures in the harbour, on the right hand-side of which there stood a tank.
“A tank!” breathed Max. “These peasants have got a tank!”
Then he added:
“The monument. That’s the monument my old man was talking about! Bloody hell, this lot really are behind the times!”
Then he spoke with real enthusiasm:
“They’ve even got monuments! Just think, ha!”
The ramp clanked against the large paving stones in the harbour.
The motorcyclist was revving up his engine and Raf promised himself that at the first opportunity he would check whether this long procedure really was necessary for those heavy bikes to take off, and why the ever so clever Japanese had yet not come up with a revolutionary patent which would enable a bike to drive off after just one turn of the engine.
The village was a real Mediterranean one. Stone houses — there could not be more than thirty — red tiles, decorated chimneys. The villagers gathered by the harbour, waiting for the event of the day. First, with a turn of their heads, they accompanied the motorcyclist, who drove for twenty metres, stopped, found a sign pointing in the direction of the campsite and then spent another few minutes turning the handle before he could take off again, leaving a big cloud of dust behind him.
On the bench in the middle of the square sat the pensioners, with their characteristic caps and deeply tanned faces, who turned back towards the ferry again even before the dust had subsided.
Raf saw the girl. She was standing next to an old man who had to use all his strength to unload her heavy suitcase. Raf felt a sudden desire to help but he resisted it.
The lorry drove to an entrance next to the pensioners and some villagers unloaded the last few boxes from under the tarpaulin. The driver started up the engine and drove back onto the boat, which then blasted its horn and pulled away. The schoolfriends stood alone in the middle of the square with the departing villagers giving them curious looks. The families were walking towards the campsite through the falling dust.
The pensioners were still watching the newcomers with indifference.
“Well,” said Max, “let’s buy the booze. There’s the shop!”
They walked over to the entrance through which the shop owner was still carrying the boxes and on the way politely greeted the pensioners who murmured something in reply.
“We’ve got to keep in with the natives,” whispered Max.
They bought a crate of beer and ten litres of brandy. The owner acted as if he had just signed the deal of the century. Maybe he had, judging by the badly equipped and stocked shop.
“We’ve robbed him of all his stock,” whispered Max in the doorway.
Outside they noticed that the sun was still quite hot in spite of it being nearly six o’clock and realised just how heavy the drink was.
Max went over to the pensioners’ bench, said hello in the sweetest possible voice and asked if there happened to be a taxi on the island. For a moment it seemed that he would have to explain the word but then one of the men shook his head and said that there was only one vehicle on the island and that even that was very rarely used.
“Could we hire it?” asked Max.
The old men shook their heads and started gazing through him at the open sea, towards the progressively reddening sun and a seagull, floating in the air and then deciding to catch the departing boat before it disappeared.
Max gabbled something and returned to the rest of the expedition.
“We’ll carry it,” he shrugged his shoulders.
From the slope, they looked back at the village in the middle of the bay. The tank on its stand looked as if it was aiming right at them and it seemed bigger than the stone houses. There were only two that had been painted in white with bright red roofs and they stood out from the rest of the crowd which seemed to be squeezed into the bottom of the bay.
“This lot really are backward,” sighed Max. “That monument! Stupid peasants! Where have we come! Ciao civilisation!”
Raf did not dare look in Alfonz’s direction but it seemed to him that Alfonz, too, had twitched with embarrassment. Max did not sense the unease.
“That’s strength!” sighed Samo. “They must have copied us, humans, when they designed it. The turret is like a head and the tracks like shoulder muscles!”
The tank did not produce the same feelings in Raf, to him it seemed clumsy and ridiculous rather than dangerous and strong. Surprisingly tall, with a barrel that was too long, it reminded him of a vehicle he had seen in an old comedy where Laurel and Hardy drove their car into a tunnel, encountered a train and emerged with the car somewhat longer and narrower. Still, he wanted to have a closer look, he had only seen heavy armoured vehicles on television and in films. He was curious as to how the tank worked — the wheels at the side, all the lids and covers, visible even from that distance.
“I’d like to see it from close up. Shame we didn’t have a good look at it,” he said.
“We’ll go to the village again,” Alfonz tried to comfort him.
“At least we know where we are now! Fifty years back!” Max concluded the conversation.
Her uncle was dragging the suitcase whilst Ana made sure from the back that it did not turn over or get stuck in the paving stones.
She had already had a good look at her relative and earlier, when he arrived to meet her at the bottom of the stairs leading off the boat, she found it very hard to hide her astonishment.
He was not an albino as she had concluded from the old, yellow photographs in the family album. None of them were taken from nearby, and her uncle was still quite young, but he was instantly recognisable next to the other relatives whose names, or at least the deeds and professions which were supposed to give them their place in the family history, even her mother sometimes could not remember.
She looked at the complete whiteness of the hair in front of her and she just could not hide a smile over a funny detail, which she had never noticed before. The hair stood up, even though it was not of the bristly kind but feathery soft.
“Maybe he combs it that way?” she thought and stopped her smile from widening with a realisation that in the next two months she would have enough time to find out her uncle’s every little secret.
And by the look of things, there would be no spectacular revelations.