When the Night Comes (21 page)

T
hey called her the little red ship, but she was big. She was huge.

Buoyed up against the wharf, pushing in against the rubber tires buffering her from the old wood of the dock. Rainbow patterns of oil on the surface of the dark, dank water.

From here, you could see all of Hobart rise up from the river, the city and the houses going up the steep hills, the mountain there, its face behind the clouds.

We were at the bottom of it all, my mother and my brother and me.

Standing and waving.

For the little red ship had come back, and she was here to stay.

For the summer at least.

B
o told me to sit with Leo in the red booth. Big Leo with his blond beard.

I sat down. There was some kind of fishy smell—strong and thick and rotten. On the table, Leo's open sandwich. Black bread and slimy gray fish with silver skin, glistening and wet. Pickled. Leo took a big bite. Some of the sauce got caught in his moustache. He winked at me, held the bread and fish up close to my face.

“Want to try?” he said, grinning.

I shook my head, tried not to breathe. He wiped his moustache with his hand, ate the rest of his sandwich in two bites. One. Two. Gone.

Bo came over and put my sandwich down, bread with havarti cheese, but the fish smell was still in the air and up my nose, and I could taste it in my mouth. Leo watched me eat.

“We have herring every day,” he said. “Every day. It makes us strong,” and he flexed his bicep. His arm was like a golden tree trunk.

He picked up a bottle of beer and popped the lid right off on the corner of the table—
bang!
The lid flew across the galley and landed on the floor.

“SkÃ¥l,” 
he said and he lifted his bottle in the air, took a big swig.

I took a bite of my sandwich.

“I make good bread,” Leo said.

It was true. He made good bread. I had never had bread like it. There
was always the smell of warm bread on the ship. The smell of bread and something roasting in the oven. The smell of melted butter. The smell of diesel. The smell of hot greased-up engines.

“So,” Leo said. “School holidays?”

I nodded.

“I used to love holidays. No school forever, it felt like, but then it would be there again. School!” He took another swig of beer.

I nodded again. I didn't want to tell Leo that sometimes the holidays were a bit boring, and there was nothing to do. I never had any money, and sometimes it was a bit lonely. I just walked around a lot.

I looked over at Bo. He was busy making dinner for the crew, preparing a small roast beef. It looked good.

“I spent the whole of school drawing cartoons,” Leo said. “I got into so much trouble!”

He got something out of his pocket. A small notebook. He pushed it over to me, opened it up and turned it the right way so I could look at it properly.

“Our next T-shirt,” he said.

A cartoon of
Nella Dan
with a trawl net behind, and inside the net was a moose wearing sunglasses, a moose with big antlers. Its face was looking out through a hole in the net, looking very surprised, and underneath it said
MOOSE HUNT 1987
.

I smiled when I saw the drawing. I smiled at Leo, but he looked at me very seriously, his face perfectly still now.

“It's no joke,” he said. “It is in protection of the rare sea moose. You never know when you might see one.”

He finished off his beer and stood up, a giant man suddenly, his head almost touching the ceiling.

“Well, I'll be seeing you, little moose hunter,” he said, and he winked at me. He took the notebook and put it back in his pocket. He said something
to Bo in Danish, then he made a “Moooooooooose, mooooooooose” sound, and he walked out of the galley.

Bo put the meat in the oven, wiped his hands on a tea towel.

“They can serve themselves when it's done.”

The ship was mostly empty. Everyone was out seeing friends, eating Chinese food, walking, driving, lying in the sun somewhere.

“Let's walk,” Bo said.

We walked. Up through St. David's Park and across the outskirts of the city to where the hills began. The quick way, which was the steep, almost vertical route up Molle Street, where the houses clung to the sides and looked unnatural and strange, one side taller than the other, the pavement at a forty-five-degree angle to the front door. Old stone houses, leaning out.

“Hills!” Bo said, winded and breathing hard.

“I hate them,” I said. They burned my legs, made me tired. The wind whipped up and down the streets, wind off the water and cold wind from the mountain.

“But you are lucky,” Bo said, when we were almost at the top. “Hills are good.”

We stopped walking, caught our breath. Bo looked back at the city.

“From the top you can see everything.”

I looked down. It was a stone city. Old stone, carved out of the earth long ago, and now it felt like a fortress.

Looking at the town from a distance, looking down from the top of West Hobart on the steep narrow streets that I would walk every day, it was like there was no time here. Like the town was frozen—still—the scene almost exactly the same as it would have been a hundred years before.

The houses the same.

The streets marked out the same.

Only the smoke from chimneys moved, rose up.

A dog barked, a car passed by. Small movements—small things almost invisible and silent in the big picture of time. They didn't make a dent.

All else was static—stuck.

It had never been cleared away, what sadness people left behind.

Not by fire or flood.

By earthquake or by demolition.

It was all still here, waiting and heavy.

The old stone city was stuck, and we were all here, trapped inside.

“I like to walk,” Bo said.

MS
Nella Dan

VOYAGE 2, 1987/1988 SEASON

8th October 1987

POSITION:
56° 52.100' S, 125° 24.100' E

CAPTAIN'S NOTE:
Heading to Davis for personnel changeover and resupply.

Sun streams through the porthole and the light touches my face, my skin. I stay there, still for a moment. I close my eyes.

I know it's cold outside, the air like ice. But here in the galley with this light pouring in, I can imagine that we are somewhere warm.

I am home on my island, and it is summer.

I've had time to make a cake after lunch. A sponge and it's cooling on the rack. I will add the jam and whip up the cream and then maybe go sit out on the trawl deck for a while.

Erik is watching a video in the expeditioners' mess, some American comedy, and I can hear him laugh every now and then, really loud. It makes me smile, hearing him like that. He always watches a video after lunch when everyone is gone. He says he can't sleep on his break.

“It just makes me more tired to lie there in my bunk listening to Jonas sleep for an hour,” he says. “And I like films. They make me feel like I'm still part of the world.”

We have a pile of videos and the expeditioners usually put one on after dinner. All sorts, horror, action, James Bond.

Sometimes I watch for a few minutes in the evening, but I can never concentrate. I don't have a mind for TV.

Erik appears in the galley.

“Movie over?” I ask. He shakes his head, nods toward the service counter for the mess. I poke my head through. An expeditioner is standing in there.

“Hi,” I say. “Did you miss lunch?”

He turns, looks a bit green.

“Seasick?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I'm fine.”

He walks forward, comes over to the counter.

“You're just in time for some cake,” I say.

I pour some cream in a metal bowl and start to whisk. I look over at Erik sitting in the booth, feet up on the table. I tell him to put on some fresh coffee.

“Coffee?” I say. “Tea?”

“Tea would be great,” the man says. “My name is Robert. Rob.”

I stop whisking and shake his hand.

“Bo,” I say.

He sits down on one of the stools. He has black hair and brown eyes, looks about thirty.

Erik brings over a cup with the tea bag still in it and a jug of milk.

“Erik was watching a video,” I say. “Do you mind if he keeps watching?”

“Oh yes—please. Sorry to interrupt.”

Erik grins. “There's only ten minutes to go.”

I keep whisking. I've always loved to thicken cream like this, with the power of my wrist, with skill and a light hand.

“You're good at that,” Rob says.

I nod and it's done. It's ready.

I spread out some red currant jam and then spoon out the cream on one of the sponge layers. Rob takes out his tea bag and puts it on the saucer.

“Sugar?” I ask but he shakes his head.

I cut into the cake—two slices, two plates. Rob sips his tea. He looks at the slice of cake.

“It's my wife's birthday,” he tells me.

“Oh,” I say.

Rob smiles but it's strained and his eyes are small. He takes a forkful of cake, swallows.

“Do you get to call home much?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “On the ship it's very expensive and it eats all the wages. The satellite phone.”

He nods, has another sip of tea.

“Sometimes it's worse to call,” he says, and he looks at me. “I mean with the delay and the short time and everything.”

“Sometimes a letter is a good idea,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. He eats some more cake.

I can hear Erik laugh at the movie. I shake my head and roll my eyes. Rob smiles.

“I thought I'd call for her birthday but she got upset, and it was hard to hear.”

I taste my cake. The jam is not too sweet, just like summer at home. Not too sweet—just right. I wipe my mouth.

“I heard some good advice once, from this old-timer. I think he'd done three winters at Casey. He told me that when you call home, ask them how they are right away. Say, ‘Tell me about your day. What have you been doing?' Then just listen. You only have a minute or two to call on the satellite and you are somewhere exciting and have lots to tell them—about penguins and blizzards and icebergs—but they are at home and
doing all the daily tasks to keep things going. They are sacrificing so that you can be here. So, ask them first.”