Sunburn (23 page)
A steward accompanied me down the first four levels. The ship was really something. Soft music was piped in. Everyone passing was friendly. This would be just what I needed for a couple of days, three days, whatever. The carpets, I noticed, were especially soft. There had been only throw rugs on the hardwood floors in Tossa.
We passed through a door, then, and the steward left me. Suddenly I was in the belly of the ship. There was no music, no carpets, and the lighting was by bare bulbs. I looked around, and decided to keep descending until I met someone who could direct me to the
dortoir.
Two floors farther down, it was much hotter, and a locker room and vomit smell began making me nauseous. But the second flight of stairs ended in another door, and I walked through it to a tiled, well-lit and friendly, though crowded, lobby. This wouldn’t be so bad, after all. I checked my ticket as I went down the hall, checking the room numbers. Most of the people down here were Africans, I gathered, on their way home from vacationing in France. There were a few Moroccans and Europeans, who nodded at me without much enthusiasm as I passed, but my most vivid memory is of the black women in their bright dresses, sitting for the most part on the floor, weighing three hundred pounds or more. There must have been ten of them blocking the hall, chewing on some kind of sticks, and talking animatedly to one another. I looked again at my ticket, confused because it had no room number. Several of the room doors were open, and this was clearly the dormitory section, since each of the small rooms had six beds in it.
dortoir.
Two floors farther down, it was much hotter, and a locker room and vomit smell began making me nauseous. But the second flight of stairs ended in another door, and I walked through it to a tiled, well-lit and friendly, though crowded, lobby. This wouldn’t be so bad, after all. I checked my ticket as I went down the hall, checking the room numbers. Most of the people down here were Africans, I gathered, on their way home from vacationing in France. There were a few Moroccans and Europeans, who nodded at me without much enthusiasm as I passed, but my most vivid memory is of the black women in their bright dresses, sitting for the most part on the floor, weighing three hundred pounds or more. There must have been ten of them blocking the hall, chewing on some kind of sticks, and talking animatedly to one another. I looked again at my ticket, confused because it had no room number. Several of the room doors were open, and this was clearly the dormitory section, since each of the small rooms had six beds in it.
I had traveled down one length of the hall, and was making my way back on the other side of the ship, not yet having seen a porter, when my path was blocked by two women playing a game with stones in the middle of the hall. Stopping, I looked around, perplexed. My head was beginning to throb again. I swallowed twice to keep down my bile, and wondered if the bar was nearby. A young man appeared at the opposite end of the hall and stopped on the other side of the women. He looked at me and smiled.
“Bonjour,”
he said.
he said.
I nodded.
“Vous êtes français?”
“No. American.”
His face lit up. “Goddamn. No shit? I’m glad to meet you.” He stepped over the women, excusing himself in polite French, and extended his hand to me. “You just get on here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I wonder if you could help me. Do you know your way around here?”
“Sure. I’ve been here a whole day.”
“Well, I haven’t seen any porters and can’t seem to find my room.”
“Let’s see your ticket.”
I handed it to him. He stared at it for a minute and then looked at me.
“You’re in the wrong spot. This is standard.” He laughed out loud. “You’ve got a surprise coming, but it’ll be nice having company.”
He led me back the way I’d come, into another hallway, past the bar and dining area, and opened a door at the top of another stairway.
“How far down does this ship go?”
“All the way to the bilge.”
We walked down the starkly lit metal steps. On the next landing, the smell of sulfur and burned oil nearly bowled me over. The final staircase was a metal ladder not eighteen inches wide.
“Watch your head,” he called.
We were nine levels belowdecks.
Stepping off the ladder and turning around, I saw a room about sixty feet square, lit by eight or ten bare bulbs. The ceiling was under seven feet high, and my first impression was one of noise. It sounded as though a hundred radios were playing at once. And the odor was overpowering.
“Welcome to
dortoir,
” said my companion.
dortoir,
” said my companion.
The room was filled with Africans and double bunk beds, eight to a unit. It was unbelievably crowded. My body started to respond to the high-pitched, thin voice of panic.
He took my suitcase. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the bunks.”
He walked through the men, smiling and clapping a few on the back, and I followed meekly. The bunk was a mattress that had seen better days. Stained and thin, its stuffing seemed to struggle everywhere to escape.
“You’re welcome to be my mate,” he said.
Still out of my depth, I nodded. “Sounds fine.”
He put my suitcase on the floor under the bunk next to his.
“You have some rope in there?”
“No. Why?”
“You really ought to tie it under the bunk.” He lowered his voice. “These guys’ll rob you blind. They’re nice enough, I mean, but you gotta be careful. Wouldn’t hurt a fly, you understand. Very peaceful people. But stealing’s another thing.”
“Well, I don’t have any rope.”
“That’s OK. Maybe I’ve got some extra. By the way,” he said, straightening up, “my name’s Jay Dorney.”
Again we shook hands.
“Doug Koenig.”
“Good. Nice to meet you,” he said. “Now, you have a bag?”
“What?”
“Sleeping bag? Something to cover the mattress. You don’t want to get the scabes.”
“Scabies?”
“Yeah. They’re a bitch.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“Well, I might have another blanket, or maybe we can get one from one of these guys. They sure don’t need it for the heat.”
“Is it this hot at night, too?”
“Oh, yeah. Pretty bad, isn’t it?”
I looked at Jay. In his midtwenties and very hairy, with a full beard, he didn’t seem the tour-guide type.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Hanging out. Going down to Dakar.”
“Well, thanks for your help. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Maybe later.” He lay down on his bunk. “I think I’ll rack it for a while right now.”
“How do you sleep with this noise?”
He looked around. “Oh, the cassettes? It does seem like every African that goes to France comes back with twenty cassettes. Must be some kind of a quota thing.” He shrugged. “You live with it, like anything else. Learn a lot of James Brown tunes.” He smiled. “See you later. Take a look around.”
Coming back up to the main deck, I was again amazed at the change. This was a luxury ship, with a pool, shuffleboard, nightclub, library, movie theater—the works. And below I felt I was in Africa, or what I assumed I would feel like in Africa. I wondered why the men down there stayed below, and resolved, with a guilty feeling, that I would descend only for meals and sleeping. The place had scared me.
The men down there were not American blacks. They were African blacks, and not a minority here. They’d seemed childlike, listening to their cassettes. I’d seen some of them dancing with one another. Maybe two steps removed from what I’d call sophisticated, they were unpredictable. It was another culture, and I didn’t have any idea how to act, and it terrified me.
I sat at the bar and ordered a Heineken, still feeling too rocky to make small talk with the other patrons. The tugs were slowly pulling the ship out from the pier along the channel buoys. I wondered if there was an angle from which Barcelona didn’t look impressive. Now, heading out past Montjuich, I ordered a second beer and looked at the receding skyline, trying to let the events of the past months also begin to recede, but without any luck.
Where was Lea now? In Marseilles, I supposed, with Mike. I sipped at my beer.
The bartender asked me if he could see my ticket, and I produced it. He then motioned to a steward, who came over and explained to me that after we cleared the channel markers, I would have to return below until we reached Casablanca. He was only marginally polite, saying he would escort me. His meaning was clear.
“Do you mean we’re not allowed on the deck?”
“There is a separate deck for standard and
dortoir,
sir.”
dortoir,
sir.”
The tugs’ horns blared their good-byes. The steward hovered condescendingly at my elbow. I wanted to strike him.
“Please hurry with your beer,” he said.
After, from God only knows what reserve, I’d found the strength to walk again, away from the window of our room at Sean’s. I knew I’d have to get away for a while, if only to give Lea the impression that I’d been gone. Still, for quite a few minutes I had been in a daze, and had gone back to sit on the bed, looking out the window at the black clouds. Then I’d gone out to the hall, quietly, not daring to break the awful silence of that day, and down the stairs, turning back to Sean’s office. It had been empty, the door standing open. I’d crossed the courtyard and turned the corner, to be out of sight from the windows in Sean’s room in case Lea opened them, when I’d seen him, hanging.
Then I hadn’t been able to move. My legs gave out and I sat down on the ground, staring. I realized I had to get him down, and sprang up, going to the toolshed for something sharp, returning with a rusted pair of pruning scissors. As I mounted the steps, a tremendous clap of thunder rent the air and rain started falling in huge drops. I had to shimmy out along the beam to get to where the rope was tied. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s, nearly empty, lay a foot beyond the rope, and I angrily knocked it to the ground. The rain had really been coming down as I reached around the beam and started cutting with the shears.
Then it had struck me that I couldn’t let him fall to the ground from there, though of course it could make no difference, so I took the rope below where I was cutting through it into my hand to try to hoist him back up to me. But he was far too heavy. As soon as I’d gotten halfway through the rope, the weight of his body began ripping the strands, and in a moment he’d fallen and lay in a hump on the wet dirt.
Still, I had no time for thinking what I should do. I backed carefully off the beam and descended. He lay on his side, with one leg curled out of joint under him. I turned him onto his back and, as gently as I could, took the noose from around his neck. His body had still been warm. He must have gone out just after Lea and Mike . . .
I pulled the lids down over his eyes and sat holding them until they stayed closed, letting the rain soak us both, and beginning to understand the irony that had driven him to it. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to take him inside. Somehow, it had seemed better to let him stay where he was.
The aftermath had been a nightmare. First Lea, and then Berta, after she’d come home, had gotten hysterical. Surprisingly, Mike had been a help. The new boundaries had been drawn, and I found myself without the energy to dispute them. Kyra had gotten back later, buoyant from drinking to Franco’s death. The authorities had already come and gone, taking the body with them. She’d taken it well, considering. But what did that mean? Where the other women had cried and needed comforting, she was beyond that. Her face had gone white for a moment; then she’d lost control of her bladder and, with a pathetic little giggle, had excused herself to change. Coming back to where we’d gathered in the living room, she’d been externally composed.
Throughout the preparations for the funeral, I’d stayed on at the house, but slept down in Sean’s office. Naturally, Lea and I had talked, but I hadn’t the honesty or cruelty to clear up the mystery of why he had done it. It was tacitly understood that we were splitting up. She’d come in and told me on the day after Sean’s death that she felt she had to get away from all this, and was going to Marseilles. The only time I’d come near to losing my temper with her was when she’d asked if I wanted to go with her.
“At least we’ve always been honest, Lea. Don’t take me for a fool. I don’t want this to drag on until I can’t help but hate you.”
Also, I hadn’t wanted to make it any easier for her. I admit it.
The funeral had been held at the house. Sean had stipulated in his will that he wanted to be buried on his own land, and to my amazement there had been no bureaucratic problem with that. When he was buried, Tony took the bottle of champagne, which was supposed to have been for Franco, and poured the contents over the newly packed earth. Then he took Kyra back to her old
pensión
in Tossa, and me to my airless room in Barcelona. Lea had asked Berta if she could stay for one or two more days to straighten up some things, and of course the distraught housekeeper had been happy to comply.
pensión
in Tossa, and me to my airless room in Barcelona. Lea had asked Berta if she could stay for one or two more days to straighten up some things, and of course the distraught housekeeper had been happy to comply.
Neither Berta nor Kyra had seemed to care for their inheritances, though Berta had been stunned to find herself so handsomely remembered.
Sometime before I left, I took Sean’s unfinished novel and sent it along to his lawyer in Blanes. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to read any of it.
I’d been tempted to tell Kyra what had happened that day, and let her draw her own conclusions, but after some thought decided that it would have accomplished nothing. Let her think what she would. She hadn’t understood at all, but Lea had told her that maybe Sean had decided he was at the peak of his happiness, and it would be a good time to die. Maybe she would find some comfort believing that. I don’t know.
The deck for standard and
dortoir
passengers was about forty feet square, wedged between the bridge, which rose menacingly in a wall behind it, and the lifeboat stations on the bow. There were three ten-foot wooden benches to accommodate the two hundred or so people who had access to the deck.
dortoir
passengers was about forty feet square, wedged between the bridge, which rose menacingly in a wall behind it, and the lifeboat stations on the bow. There were three ten-foot wooden benches to accommodate the two hundred or so people who had access to the deck.
Other books
State of the Union by Brad Thor
El laberinto del mal by James Luceno
The Intruder by Peter Blauner
Objetos frágiles by Neil Gaiman
Denver Overrun (Denver Burning Book 4) by Algor X. Dennison
Destroyer of Light by Rachel Alexander
Heller's Girlfriend by JD Nixon
Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel by Hortense Calisher
Maiden Lane [6] Duke of Midnight by Elizabeth Hoyt
His Every Touch (For His Pleasure, Book 8) by Favor, Kelly
