The Lost Sailors by Jean-Claude Izzo, Howard Curtis Read Free Book Online Page B

pressure on the hull. A really good guy.”
    â€œSo, what happened?”
    â€œColm was on watch that night, on the bridge. That was where he wanted to be, he’d insisted on it, and no one had tried to take his place.”
    â€œHell, I can believe that.”
    â€œRight. But that was when he started shitting himself. Because the bridge was submerged, even though it was about a hundred feet above sea level. The waves had torn down the mast, and a forty-five-ton crane was lying on the deck and ramming against the wheelhouse of the second deck, which had been completely destroyed.”
    â€œHe panicked.”
    â€œI guess so. What’s for sure is that he suddenly found himself with his ass on the floor. He’d slipped on his back in the gangway and gone flying against the ship’s rail. He grabbed hold of it for dear life. By now, the waves were huge. The sea was going up and down. His mouth was full of water. ‘I was praying,’ he told me. It was the captain who saved him.”
    â€œThat must have calmed him down!”
    â€œCan you imagine? He was always headstrong, whatever the weather.”
    â€œA real madman.”
    â€œNot mad, no. I think the sea terrified him. I think it had scared the pants off him the first time he ever set foot on a ship. So he charged right into it, to overcome the fear.” Abdul paused for thought, and took a swig of beer. Then he resumed, “We’re like that in life, aren’t we? Something scares us and we put our heads down and charge right into it. Into the fear, I mean. Don’t you think so?”
    Diamantis didn’t answer the question, but asked, “Did you ever see him again?”
    â€œYes. Five or six years later. I ran into him in Dakar. Talking about ‘his’ storm in a greasy spoon down by the harbor. Just before setting sail for El Callao in Peru. He was playing down what he’d been through. You know the kind of thing. ‘Yes, guys, it was just like I’m telling you. I was forty feet above the water. The wave broke over the deck. At my feet. It swept away the radar mast. But believe me, it wasn’t the big one, I’m still waiting for that.’”
    â€œAnd is he still at sea?”
    â€œNo, he’s retired now. Apparently he lives near Galway. He has his little patch of land. And don’t laugh, but he’s never again set foot on a boat. Not even a fishing boat!”
    For a while, they drank in silence. The rain was still pounding the deck. From time to time, there was a crash of thunder, as loud as ever. They were united by the storm. In the same way that a storm at sea brings a crew closer together. No sailor ever tells his family about times like that. Never writes about it, never mentions it when he comes home. Because he doesn’t want to worry them. And, anyway, it’s not something you can talk about. Storms don’t exist. Any more than sailors do, when they’re at sea. Men are only real when they’re on land. No one knows anything about sailors until they come ashore. No one who hasn’t been to sea himself, that is.
    Diamantis remembered watching the TV news a few months after the
Maris Stella
went down, and being struck by some words spoken by a reporter. They were showing pictures of the damage caused by bad weather in England. Six people had died. “The danger is now past,” the reporter had reassured viewers. “The storm has moved away from the coast and is now out at sea.”
    Out at sea, away from the coasts, there were thousands of men who didn’t exist. Even for their wives. They had no reality until they were home and in their beds.
    Diamantis looked up. “How about you? Have you ever been scared like that?”
    Yes, of course. Abdul Aziz had known storms. He could talk about them, too. But the memory that came into his mind had nothing to do with being scared. It was to do with being ashamed. It was to do with a