They took her with them through the town, almost dragging her across the quay, up past the church with its two towers a mere stone’s throw from the minaret where two girls on a scooter almost knocked them over as they supported, or rather carried her between them, but it was too far, they would have to flag down a car, why on earth were they walking her like this. And then a car did stop, and the driver looked at Fru Berggren and nodded and spoke to them in Arabic first, and then in Italian, and the steward had some Italian and explained to the dark, handsome young man where they were going, to Ospedalka wee, that’s what it was called.
And they were in a hurry now, the young man could see that, and he gave it all he had, the only thing missing was the flashing blue light, they couldn’t have asked for more, but on the way there, they were held up at a crossroads, total gridlock, no way out, and they sat there waiting for the policeman at the heart of the crossing to let them pass, and he had his stylish green beret on, and from all quarters came yesterday’s cars, little cars, big cars and scooter taxis, Simcas and Fiats, motorbikes and more scooters, and everything was on the move, and the wind blew through the palms and rustled the leaves and the trunks were swaying, and the policeman stood straight as a pole in his fluttering shorts on his little platform with the white gloves up to his armpits, waving his arms like Toscanini must have waved his, if any of them knew who Toscanini was, and the steward did.
And above the door to the hospital, it really said, Ospedalka wee, arched and in white, and beside it Somalia é la mia patria, painted in large, blue letters on a wall.
The doctor wasn’t a Somali, he was white, he was from Aalborg in Denmark and must have studied at the University of Copenhagen, at the Faculty of Medicine there, a reassuring fact, the steward thought, if indeed it was a fact, but this doctor from Aalborg couldn’t find anything wrong with her. She cried and cried, and he asked her, why are you crying, are you in pain, I don’t know, she said, I don’t know why I’m crying, and there was nothing wrong with her that he could find, not with the expertise and equipment at his disposal, it’s really mysterious, he said, and jabbed a needle into her foot, does that hurt, he said, what, she said, does what hurt, and he shook his head and said, well, I’ll be damned if I know what’s wrong.
And then back the same way. Straight through town to the ship in a car they flagged down, an East European one this time, a Wartburg, and what was a Wartburg doing here, now, and they couldn’t very well leave her behind in this place, not in Mogadishu, no, no, so then it was up and across the deck and one man holding each arm hurrying down the companionway to her cabin. And then they cast off, hauled in the hawsers and coiled them flat, and a bulky tugboat pulled them out of the harbour in one long arc, and would you believe it, only two mornings later, up she came from the depths and into the galley, handling the same casseroles, the same pans and filling the same trays with breakfast and darting into the corridor on her way to the mess for officers only, as though she’d had a shift off and was rested now and ready to resume where she had left off.
‘How are you doing,’ the steward said. He laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently, it was a fatherly hand, a fatherly grip, do you feel better now, he said, can you feel your hands, can you breathe properly, and she sent him a barely visible smile and shrugged.
It was easy for all to see how attractive she was, the shape of her body, how defined it was, it had been easy to see the whole way from Oslo, whatever clothes she was wearing, aprons, skirts, jumpers, trousers, but it was not intentional on her part, she wore what she wore because it seemed practical to her. For a while they had all been concerned, no doubt about it, especially the young ones fell apart when she got ill, but it was already forgotten, and the steward did what he had decided to do out in the North Sea several weeks before. He walked with her along the catwalk just out from Mombasa, where they were not docking on this voyage, and he asked her to stop, and they stood, hovering high above the deck, and he said:
‘You gave us a shock, you should know that, there was no one on board that wasn’t affected, but now you’re well again, and beautiful, yes, you are, every one of us can see that. They’re good boys, most of them, make no mistake, so you’ll be fine for the rest of the trip, it’s not that, but to be be frank with you, it would be best if you chose one and stuck to him. Then none of us would have a problem.’
She looked at him, was he serious.
He was.
‘Then I choose you.’
‘I’m married,’ he said.
She shrugged. It was all the same to her.
She’d made a remarkably quick recovery, and she looked really good now, and it wasn’t something she was trying to hide, she played with her cards on the table, or so he thought, but there was this thing about her he couldn’t grasp, which made him a little nervous. Though it wasn’t easy to say no to her for her linen trousers clung to her hips and her thighs in the wind, and there was something about those lines around her mouth and how her hair was pinned up and the skin beneath it so naked to the sun, and here she stood on the catwalk and it came to him that she probably had no idea how striking she looked. And his first thought, was the one many men would have had, that it was his task to reveal this to her.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘That’s it then.’
He already had some regrets on the first evening, in the darkness, with the tropical night outside, not a light to be seen and Fru Berggren beneath him. His cabin was twice as big as hers or even bigger, and there were men’s things scattered around the room. There were cuttings on the wall of places he had been and football matches in black and white, framed with the ocean on both sides of the ship and football teams on deck with him kneeling in the front row holding the ball in his gloved hands, and there were bashful half-nude models on the bathroom door, a drawing pin in each corner. A Gillette shaver lay in a bowl on the dresser, above the bunk hung a guitar from a nail in the wall, and the strings were frayed and worn and brown and lifeless from too little use over too many years, and a table tennis bat lay on the floor under the desk. Everyone on board had at least one. He had a shelf of books from the farthest-flung places in the world, from Borneo, from Arabia, and Persia from the roof of the world, on board a Fulvio yacht in the spray of a storm around Cape Horn, on horseback across the North American prairie. There were many novels too. Which was not so masculine, maybe.
He lifted himself off her breast with his elbows straight, and the darkness in the cabin was so all-consuming he could hardly see her beneath him, and in the heat of the African night her skin was cool and white, it felt white to him, and he said:
‘You have to make an effort. You really have to. Or else it’s no good. Do you understand what I’m saying. You have to concentrate.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said at once. ‘I know what you mean. I will. Cross my heart.’
The morning after, he had a strange feeling. He felt alone. He used to read in bed, but he didn’t feel like reading. He got up and sat down naked on the chair by the desk, light came pouring from the porthole. She was still under his duvet. He lit a cigarette, he thought, I can just tell her when it’s over. It’s over, I can say, do you understand that, when I know I can’t do it any more. And then he thought, but who else would want her then, on board this ship, and he suddenly realised it was already too late to turn her away.