Life aboard a ship is immersion not in salt water, not in the rains over the northern seas, nor even in sunshine, but rather in adrenaline. There is no time to think, no meditation over spilt milk. The country Eryk came from was far away and not particularly seafaring, having only sparing access to the ocean. Its ports were an embarrassment. It favoured towns situated on safe rivers bound by bridges. Eryk didn’t miss it at all, greatly preferring it here in the north. He’d thought he would sail for a few years, save up some money, then build himself a wooden home, marry a flaxen-haired Emma or Ingrid with whom he would have children, for whom he’d make floats for float fishing, with whom he’d clean sea trout. Someday he would write his memoirs, when his adventures had arranged themselves into a suitably attractive package. He couldn’t say how it had happened that the years had raced by as they had, taking some shortcut through his life – lightweight, fleeting, leaving no traces. At most they left a record on his body, his liver in particular. But that was later. In the beginning, after his first voyage, it so happened that he ended up in jail – for more than three years – when the evil captain framed his whole crew for smuggling cigarettes and a large packet of cocaine. But even in prison in a distant land Eryk stayed in the dominion of the ocean and whales. In the prison library there was only one book in English, left no doubt by some other prisoner years earlier. It was an old edition, from the turn of the century, with brittle pages, yellowed, bearing the traces of daily life.
And so for over three years (which in any case was not so severe a sentence, given that the laws in effect at a remove of just a hundred nautical miles for the same offence was death by hanging) Eryk secured himself free language lessons in advanced English, a course in literature and whaling and psychology and travel all in a single textbook. A good method, not inviting of distractions. In just five months he was able to recite the adventures of Ishmael in passages he knew by heart, and to speak in the voice of Ahab, which brought him special pleasure, for this was the manner of expression most organic to Eryk, fitting him like comfortable clothing; who cared if it was strange and old-fashioned. And what a stroke of luck that such a book had fallen into the hands of such a person in such a place. A phenomenon known to travel psychologists by the name of synchronicity, evidence of the world making sense. Evidence that throughout this beautiful chaos threads of meaning spread in every direction, networks of strange logic, all bearing, if one were to believe in God, the contorted imprints of His fingers. Which is how Eryk saw it.
Soon, then, in that distant, exotic prison, where in the evenings it was hard to breathe because of the tropical humidity, where anxiety and longing rankled the mind, Eryk would immerse himself in reading, becoming a bookmark, being happy. In fact, he would not have made it through his time in prison without that novel. His cellmates – smugglers, too – often heard him reading aloud and quickly succumbed to the charm of the whalers’ adventures. It would not have been at all surprising if they had tried, after being released, to educate themselves further in the history of whaling, writing dissertations on harpoons and nautical equipment. The most gifted among them might have attained a higher degree of initiation: a specialization in clinical psychology in the field of perseverance in the face of any obstacle. And so the Sailor from the Azores, the Portuguese Sailor and Eryk began to speak to one another in a prison slang all their own. They even managed to discuss in this manner the little Asian guards:
‘By Jove! For isn’t he a jolly fellow!’ would cry the Sailor from the Azores when, for example, one of the guards would smuggle a pack of damp cigarettes into their cell.
‘Upon my word, I am of more or less the same sentiment. Let us give him our blessing.’
This was good for them, since each newly imprisoned cellmate understood little at the start, becoming their foreigner, necessary for them to be able to conduct any semblance of a social life.
Each of them had his favourite lines, which he’d read aloud each evening, the others finishing his sentences in a chorus.
But the main topics of their conversations in their increasingly refined language were the sea, their travels, and getting offshore, entrusting themselves to the water, which – as they determined after several days’ worth of discussion worthy of the Pre-Socratics – was the most important element on earth. They were already planning the routes they’d take to sail home, readying themselves for the views they’d see en route, composing in their minds the telegrams they’d send their families. How would they earn a living? They argued about the best ideas, but they always ended up circling back around to the same theme, having caught (though they didn’t know it yet) the fever, been infected with it; deeply unsettled by the mere possibility of the existence of something like a white whale. They knew there were still countries that fished for whales, and although that work was less romantic than how Ishmael described it, it was hard to come up with anything better given their current circumstances. They’d heard Japan needed men for whaling, and switching from cod and herring to whales was like moving from crafts to fine art…
Thirty-eight months was long enough to work out the details of their future lives; to minutely, point by point, discuss them with their colleagues. There were no serious disputes.
‘Merchant service be damned. I’ll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the merchant service to me again. Flukes! Man, what makes thee want to go a-whaling, eh?’ roared Eryk.
‘What have you seen of the world?’ the Portuguese sailor would cry.
‘The Baltic is no stranger to me, and I have travelled the length and breadth of the North Sea. I know the currents of the Atlantic like my own veins…’
‘You are very certain of yourself, my dear fellow.’
They had to say something to each other.
Ten years – that’s how long it took Eryk to get home again – and no doubt he had it better in this sense than his comrades. He took a circuitous route back, through peripheral seas, the narrowest straights and widest bays. Just when estuaries started to blend into the open waters of the seas, just when he’d enlist for a ship heading home, suddenly some new opportunity would arise, more often than not in the exact opposite direction, and if he did hesitate for a moment, he would usually come to the conclusion that the truest argument was an old one – the Earth is round, let us not be too attached, then, to directions. And this was understandable – to someone from nowhere, every movement turns into a return, since nothing exerts such a draw as emptiness.
During those years he worked under the flags of Panama, Australia and Indonesia. On a Chilean freighter he transported Japanese cars to the United States. On a South African tanker he survived a wreck off the coast of Liberia. He transported workers from Java to Singapore. He got hepatitis and was hospitalized in Cairo. After having his arm broken in a drunken brawl in Marseille, he quit drinking for a few months, only to then drink himself into a stupor in Malaga and break the other arm.