It would be a typical sort of party. First they would drink too much and then they would throw up. Parties were just an unpleasant duty to him, one you have to carry out so that you can brag about it later. Another strange and morbid thought?
He decided to return to the front of the ferry. Their remarks about his long absence were bound to be bad enough as it was.
The seagull was quite far off now. The feeding had finished. Raf slowed down and looked up. Nothing. He remembered the stains on the rail and tried to find them. He could not. If he could not find them without looking really closely then it was not worth mentioning and he had worried needlessly earlier.
He returned to the other three, who were still laughing at their plans for the party that night when the whole villa would be at their disposal.
“…and we’ll smash everything!” Max was just finishing another brag. “Tomorrow, everybody will be able to see what fun we had just by looking at the place!”
Ana broke the last piece of bread into two pieces that were almost too small, in order to delay the time when the seagull would start to screech. And indeed, when the bread was finished, the bird gave her a good telling off before slipping back, where it looked around ever so casually as if it would never again even think of casting a glance towards the ship or her — me interested in bread? Never!
Holidays, said Ana to herself. Oh, what a holiday this was going to be! Her mum and dad did want the best for her and she really had been looking rather anaemic all spring. But they had sent her to this god-forsaken island with only one ferry a day, to stay for two whole months with an uncle she had never seen before!
She called him uncle, even though in fact he was not her mother’s brother, but her mother’s uncle. Ana tried to remember what she should be calling him but could not really think of a suitable expression. Great uncle? They never said much about him at home and during all this reflection, for which she had plenty of time on her journey, she suddenly started feeling that her parents avoided mentioning him. No, she could not prove it, but still… She thought it was interesting how parents always think they can hide certain things from their children.
She waved to the seagull and it looked at her for a moment before deciding not to pay any more attention to her. She felt cold. The sun was beginning to set and it was still only early summer. To top it all she was sitting on the most open part of the ferry, where the breeze was at its strongest.
The euphoria which had warmed her in the first half of the day, was cooling too. Her first holiday alone! She had felt good in spite of the isolated island and the relative whom she imagined to be an old weirdo — and had then felt guilty for her thoughts. The great feeling of freedom more than made up for all the worries she had had, waking up every morning for the last seven days wondering whether she could manage on her own.
She had been travelling for most of the day and everything was going according to plan, restoring her confidence and suppressing the dark feeling which tried to creep into her every time she looked around the deck. How empty the ferry was! On the way to the first port of call, the passengers were literally treading on each other’s toes and now she was nearly alone. As if the whole of the civilisation was just a great crowd of people, tightly packed against each other like grapes and all around them nothing. A beautiful nothing: the sea, the sun and the vibrating metal under her feet.
She went down to the main deck and checked that her case was still in the hiding place she had managed to squeeze it into earlier. It was peeping from behind the air vent out of which gushed the stench of the cars below. The lock had not been tampered with. She shook the case and was again astonished at how heavy it was. It was a good thing that her father had offered her his big Samsonite otherwise she would have never been able to squeeze in all the clothes her mother had got out for her.
She reached into her canvas bag — screech went the seagull (she had completely forgotten about him) — and took out the earphones for her walkman. Before she could put them on she had to let her long hair down. She left the walkman itself in the bag, felt for the switch and managed to press the right button. She started wandering aimlessly in the same direction as the ferry. Because of the noise of the engines she had to reach into her bag once more to turn the volume up.
A weak, feeble voice came gently from everywhere. A strange feeling: the sea, ferry and a voice belonging to nobody around there. Well, it did belong to somebody somewhere but that did not matter. This was the only tape her mother never had any objections to.
On the cover there was a praying angel.
She had secretly bought another tape, with two angels making love and put it in a blank cover.
Why on earth did she remember that? The picture of the two intertwined bodies, rather muscular for supposedly such ethereal beings. Almost like the man sleeping on the bench in front of her, who was dressed in Bermuda shorts with a brightly coloured pattern and an equally colourful T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves. She looked at the eagle — it too was probably flexing its muscles and stretching its wings, yuck! — and then at the rest of its owner, which was a bit rude and certainly a sin, as her mother was always reminding her. She even had to lean on the rail for a moment in order to get a better view of the whole. The sin had only one redeeming feature: he was asleep. What harm could one single look do?
By observing her schoolfriends she had learned how very rarely punishment for sins actually came and even when it did it could be attributed to other causes. But she knew all the time that it was different for her. There was a line separating her from them.
She noticed a helmet and a leather sleeve under the bench. A motorcyclist. She remembered some of her neighbours roaring down the street on heavy motorbikes and she pursed her lips. That was enough.
She went on.
“Hey, a chick!”
Max was the first to notice her. He had always had a good eye for such things and claimed that his looks never fell on stony ground. Even more, each look from him was like an irresistible bait to fish. Raf had heard unconfirmed rumours about Max and Samo’s disastrous visit to a brothel. Not because of lack of money, they had enough of that. Samo must have been put off by there not being any weights in the room, Raf thought and could hardly contain a giggle. What had been happening to him all day? He was not used to quite so many nasty thoughts. Simply relief at the end of the school year?
They observed her in silence. She came round the corner, noticed them, looked the other way and walked past them towards the other side of the ferry and the passage leading to the back of the ship.
Raf thought:
“If Max whistles, I’ll thump him!”
Max did not whistle which seemed strange to Raf. He looked at him and saw his lips, ready for action but too cracked from the wind to be able to produce a sound audible at a distance. Max could not afford a weak huff, decided to give up and instead put on a smile appropriate to such occasions.
The girl was close to the passage and turned her back to them.
“Somebody missed.” said Max. Raf did not quite get it. Samo was already grinning but that did not mean anything. Alfonz looked just as baffled. Max noticed their incomprehension and helped them:
“Well, what do you two look at on a woman? Look at her arse!”
Alfonz put on a sour smile while Raf nearly groaned. On the right side of her behind there was a stain which he immediately recognised. She must have leant on the rail! She must have walked past and just where he had wiped his hand she must have stumbled (for a moment he forgot that they were not on a bus but a gently vibrating ship), leant on the rail and…