When the Night Comes (25 page)

“What is it?” he asked.

It was a book. An iceberg on the cover, close up with icicles hanging down trying to reach the cold water below.
Antarctic Australia
.

“
Nella
's in there,” Bo said. “And
Thala
. All her sisters.”

Full color pages of ice, of light—of king penguins huddled together on Macquarie Island. And red ships forging through the ice.

“I hope you like it,” he said.

The music stopped. I heard the phone ringing. I had the book in my hands.

Bo walked to the door, to the sunroom.

“They're going to scuttle her,” someone yelled.

“She's on fire!”

Everything was loud then, people shouting, asking questions.

I stood in the corner of the sunroom. I saw Leo in a chair and he had his head in his hands.

“It's not true.”

“It can't be right.”

Someone said, “Those bastards.”

“She's on fire!”

Fire.

My brother came and stood by me.

“What happened?” he asked. I told him I didn't know.

“Maybe the ship sank because of the accident,” he said.

I said, “I guess so.”

“But why is there a fire?”

I didn't know.

Everyone was talking in Danish, and the only words I could understand were “fuck” and “bastards” and “five thousand meters down.”

Five thousand meters down in the dark.

There were more phone calls. New people arrived and some people left. Our front door stayed open.

Everyone was smoking and the room was thick with it. My eyes burned. Mum told my brother to go to bed and he looked at me.

“What about the cakes?” he asked.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said.

“I won't be able to sleep,” he said, but he did. He fell asleep quickly.

Mum didn't notice that I was still up. She was hugging her friend Rose, and they were crying. I went outside on the back deck to get away from the smoke. To get away from the feeling of the room.

I stood out there and looked at the sky. It was still light and the night was clear. The stars were coming out, translucent and golden. Planets far away. Mars and Venus and Mercury. The moon was rising, just a tiny crescent. A sliver. I breathed in the air. It was summer.

Bo came out and closed the glass door behind him. He had a can of beer in his hand, the one with the black swan on it. That was his favorite. He didn't drink any, he just held it there.

His face was still and I could not think of one thing to say. We stayed like that, looking up at the sky, listening to the low hum of voices coming from inside.

“Did she sink?” I asked.

He lit a cigarette, exhaled. “I don't think she was going on her own. They filled her with water. I think it must have taken a long time.”

His voice went strange, then he turned away.

She could hold no longer.

I thought about five thousand meters down. Five whole kilometers down from the surface, how dark it would be down there, how cold.

Bo wiped his nose with his sleeve, took a drag of his cigarette, and something inside me broke.

His voice came like clouds drifting over the night sky.

“She's not there,” he said. “Not there. Don't think of her down there.”

She's not there.

W
e stood in the silence as a small tug the color of used-up grease turned in and moved toward the place where
Nella Dan
should be.

Everyone around me had flowers, carnations—red and white—and in the stillness a Danish flag was draped over the wharf. It rested down and touched the black water.

I didn't have a carnation. I had a rose, thick red like blood. It was from our front garden, a late rose—one that should not have been there but was.

A man stood alone at the very end of the wharf and began to play the bagpipes. It was a song I didn't know, but it hit me all the same, the feeling of it. The sound echoed out and went right through me like I was made up of nothing but air.

People from the crowd stepped toward the water, almost one by one, and threw their flowers down—a sea of color. The pipes stopped playing, but I held on to my rose.

I couldn't let it go.

The tug came closer and the sound of her engines took away the heavy silence. The water pulsed and the flowers bobbed. Some went under, sank down below the surface and were gone. The crowd pushed forward then. There was noise, shouting. Someone right near me yelled out, “Shame!” and the sudden jolt of it shook my frame. Others joined in and a growling “Boo” rose up, met the crew of the tug as they docked.

Bo was standing back from the crowd, his eyes down. Maybe they were closed, I don't know, but the booing stopped and when I looked back to the tug,
Nella Dan
's captain had his arm up in a wave. A firm hand like he was saying,
It's not their fault
.

People were just happy to see him then. People began calling out, “Hello—hey! Welcome home.”

I saw Benny on the trawl deck, his face tired, his face still, and
Nella
was gone and no amount of yelling would ever bring her back.

I walked up the wharf, away from the crowd.

I let go of the rose and watched it float away on an invisible current.

Red Rose, Red Heart, Red Ship.

I
got up early and everyone was still asleep. Everyone except Bo. He was sitting at the table looking out of the big glass windows. The sky was dark purple, just light. A thin slice of time between night and day, and nothing was real yet. Nothing had begun.

Bo was smoking a cigarette. He put it out in the full glass ashtray and smiled at me when I sat down at the table, but his eyes were heavy and gray and I could feel the weight of him there in the room.

I am afraid of the darkness, knowing it will come.

There was room for me there at the table but still I held myself so tightly on the edge of the chair that my legs went numb from the strain and from the cold.

I was always cold, even in the summer. He was leaving in a few hours.

Bo lit another cigarette and for a second it felt like the flame and the glow and the taste of the smoke in my mouth made the room warmer. I felt sleepy, heavy.

“I like your name,” he said. “Isla is like
island
. My home is all islands. We are islands in the water and ships are like home. There isn't a kid who hasn't spent time on ships or ferries or boats, even in the big cities. Being on the water is part of our life.”

I nodded. I wanted to ask him what he was going to do now, if he would go and work on another ship. I wanted to ask if he would ever come back here.

“Things don't always work out like we hope,” he said.

I knew that he was talking about Mum, that there were things in her life that I would never know, never understand. She was her own person—light and dark.

“We will watch the sun rise, you and I,” he said, and as the sky began to turn violet, I nodded and felt brighter. I swung my legs free under the table and there was space. I made a pact there in the silence between us. A pact to stay awake—to be awake and not sleeping when he left so that he wouldn't be alone.

The sun came and lit up the face of West Hobart and Bo spoke so quietly that I could barely hear the words and yet they were there in the room with us.

“I wish that I could stay.”

His words went in. They went in somewhere deep and settled down inside of me, but I did not know then that he meant forever. That he would like to stay and live with us forever.

I did not know that then.

I started to shiver, just slightly, and he told me to go and rest in bed for a while.

“I will see you before I go,” he said.

I got up and walked through the door to the living room. I stood still and watched him as I had done so many times through the glass. His white T-shirt, his rounded shoulders, the way he leant down slightly to one side.

He did not turn around. He did not look back at me, but I knew he could feel me there.

The distance between our worlds so much smaller in that moment.

M
um sent me into a chemist in the city to pick up a prescription.

The pharmacist behind the counter was short and he was going bald but only right at the top of his head. He took the prescription slip out of my hands. I told him it was for my mum.

“It's Joseph,” he said. “Joseph Balinski,” and he looked at me. “Your brother was good friends with my son.”

I remembered then. I remembered that Tom Balinski's dad was a pharmacist.

“How is your brother?” he asked.

I told him that my brother was out in the car and I could go and get him if he liked, but that I had to be quick because Mum was double-parked. Joseph clapped his hands together and told me he would love to see him.

“I would love that,” he said.

Outside, Mum had found a proper parking spot just a few meters up the street. I opened the door and told my brother that Tom's dad was inside and that he wanted to say hello. He didn't move.

“Go on, love,” Mum said.

My brother stared at me. Eventually he got out of the car and walked behind me slowly. I could hear his school shoes dragging on the pavement.

Inside, he blinked his eyes against the bright lights. He was polite. He
said hello and Joseph was shaking his hand and saying, “Wow! Look how tall you are. I can't believe your hair is still so curly.” Joseph was smiling. He was really smiling.

He told us that his family was fine and that his wife was pregnant. Twins.

“It has been so wonderful to see you,” he said to my brother. He told us to come back again soon.

“We would love to see you, my wife and I,” he said. “We would really love it.”

My brother nodded. He said good-bye.

But out on the street in the gray light I saw his face, hard like stone. He sat in the back of the car and stared out the window, as if no time had passed since I had run to the shop with my pocket money to get my brother some sweets because I didn't know what else to do.