The car stood by the boat for a while yet until Jonsen sat up in his seat and put it into first gear and made a tight turn on the snow-cleared space on the quay and in second gear he picked up speed and even more in third beneath the cranes alongside the huge warehouse until it could no longer be distinguished from the buildings and the ships and what belonged to the ships.
She reported to the steward. He was a tall man, he wasn’t young, on his face there were lines crossing from his nose to his ears unlike most people’s, which ran from their eyes down alongside the mouth, and this made him look like an Indian, a North American Indian of some tribe or other, but she was no expert, it wasn’t she who had read Zane Grey’s novels, it was Berggren, and she thought vaguely it had something to do with being a seaman, seeing the world, seeing many different peoples and pulling your roots up to become one of them. But he was from Hønefoss, and he didn’t look like an Indian there.
He looked down at her brown suitcase. It was not big.
‘Is that all you brought with you,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘This is what’s mine.’
I see, he thought, so this is what’s hers, didn’t she have anything else, in some other place, and if not, how much was it that wasn’t hers, was there a standard for this you could measure it by, the contents of her brown suitcase, maybe, in cubic centimetres, which according to her was all that was hers and nothing more, or proportionate to what she had left behind, but he didn’t have the energy to ask, he thought, she is good-looking, almost too good-looking, and then he thought, she is on the run, of that I am pretty sure. Which, strictly speaking, was none of his business, as long as it wasn’t from the law, and he was certain it was not. He closed his eyes for a second, he was tired, he had slept badly, that was the problem, he had woken in the middle of the night, as more and more often he did, and he couldn’t go back to sleep, and then he lay awake with a book, and what he read was sometimes so upsetting it was five o’clock before he had any peace, and then soon after he had to get out of his bunk. It had been like that for a long time.
‘Come on, and I’ll show you to your cabin.’
It wasn’t his job, but there was something about her, and he showed her the way and let her go down the stairs first, so he wouldn’t have her eyes on his back, that was his idea. It was four decks down, the lowest rung of the ladder, but you can probably work your way up a deck or two, he said with a smile as he opened the door and let her into the tiny room.
‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, ‘this is perfect, it suits me perfectly, I don’t want anything more than this, thank you very much.’
‘Have a lie-down and I’ll see you again in an hour. You got here at the last minute, we’re slipping moorings now.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘This very second,’ he said.
By Rotterdam she could master most of it. Working out of the kitchen she could soon dart through the halls, on her sea legs, up and down the long corridors and a tray in her hands with pitchers and plates to the mess for officers only and higher up to the worn-down splendour of the captain’s lounge, or the other way around, of course, to the captain first, to serve the most delicious meals the chef had concocted in the galley. He was a great guy, a wizard, and they became friends, or at least a team, and she didn’t mind the job at all. She would have done almost anything they might have put her to.
But when they docked in Genova, she began to feel ill. She felt it in her toes first, and then in her fingertips, they went numb, they lost all sensation, and in Port Said she kept dropping things on the floor. On their way through the Suez Canal she kicked table legs and chairs and didn’t even notice, and soon it became hard to manoeuvre her own body across a room, down the stairs, so incredibly difficult to wind her way through the narrow galley with the casseroles in her hands, filled to the brim with steaming hot food, pitching, slopping against the sides like lava, and a warm wind drove them through the canal, past Sharm el-Sheikh with the sharks in the sea along the beaches, and the waves rose high and carried them across the Red Sea and lifted them south down the Yemen coast and out through the Bay of Aden. She had difficulty breathing, and the steward said, for Christ’s sake, get yourself into bed, and she did. She went to bed, and there she lay in her cabin four decks down gasping for breath in the heaving bunk, in the half-dark and heat in the dim light of a bedside lamp. No one had told the first mate what was going on, they covered for her, they lied, but the steward was annoyed, he felt desperate, she had only just come on board, only a fortnight had passed since they’d left Oslo, and now she was ill already. She was convinced she was going to die, and you couldn’t blame her, he felt sorry for her, she was good-looking, but she didn’t know what was happening. Nor did he. He didn’t have a clue. They would have to find a decent doctor in the next port, he would have to inform the first mate, but he stalled for as long as he could. The first mate would be furious, he would give him hell, and then he had to tell him, and the first mate was furious and shouted, why the hell did you sign her on in the first place, but the steward said, strictly speaking, it wasn’t me who did that, rubbish, the first mate shouted, she’s good-looking, what the hell can be wrong with her, she’s young, and the steward said he didn’t know, and nor did anyone else, she just lay in bed trembling and groaning and wheezing, he said, and I guess she doesn’t look that good any more. To tell you the truth.
Outside Djibouti she started crying, and she cried all the way round the Horn of Africa, I don’t want to, she cried, I can’t breathe. There were forty-five men on board and most of them made long detours round the stairs and the corridors to avoid her cabin and the red-hot door that could burst into flames at any moment, and whenever they had to go that way, they covered their ears. She made them nervous, anxious, and it came to them that one day life would just stop, any day it could, and everything they had ever known and knew anything about would fade and be gone, and then, the instant before all hope was lost, they would cry in the way she was crying and maybe it would sound just as it did in there, inside her cabin, and they thought, oh, what the fuck did he let a woman on board for, how could he have been so stupid, we can’t sleep at night.
The steward counted the days and steeled himself and let time slip by until they arrived in Mogadishu, where they were docking anyway to load and unload, and she was worn out but still alive beneath the hammering sun of Africa as they glided quietly inside the long, thin arm of the mole and turned slowly and docked in the new harbour in the west of the city with the white, pink and acid-green ancient buildings and the ancient wall alongside the lido and the rows of palm trees, like the backdrop to a film.