Milena had one method for dealing with gropers — knocking the molester to the ground and stomping repeatedly on his crotch as if trying to kill a cockroach. The man’s mates came running and a melee broke out until Landau appeared and restored order. By then, Antoinette and Jeta were hysterical and Chick was sliding rapidly into an illtimed seizure.
As the crew began to rig an iron conveyance beam off the starboard side of the ship, Captain Gunter arrived on the scene. The presence of Gunter brought a gravity to the situation that silenced even the pinhead.
The Captain was a dramatic man, given to ritual and the big gesture. So he couldn’t resist turning a childish, if murderous, stunt into high theatrics. While the crew finished securing the beam, he had Landau arrange the freaks into a semicircle on the main deck, with Bruno, the reluctant patriarch, centered among them all. The crew stood in small groups, ripe with anticipation. Several men carried wrenches or hammers. Gunter glared them into silence, then began his speech.
“I’ve spent my life at sea,” he said, “like most of the Gunter men before me. So I know how wondrous the sailor’s life can be.”
Now he began to pace, as if inspecting new recruits. He did not hide his disgust as he studied Nadja’s claws and the bones of Jeta’s face.
“But for all the beauty and the marvels, a mariner knows that the ocean can be a place of monsters. A refuge for abominations, which God, in his wisdom, banished to the cold fathoms, far from the decent company of man.”
Gunter stopped before Kitty, looked down, and shook his head as if overcome with a disappointment that rivaled his revulsion.
“The world is an imperfect place,” he continued. “And on occasion, some monsters free themselves from their briny crypt and find their way to the surface. And when this happens, it is man’s turn to do God’s work and to send the beasts back to the blackest depths.”
He turned to his men now, lifted his face to the sun and closed his eyes.
“That, gentlemen, is what we’re going to do this morning.”
The sailors began to cheer, but after a moment, Gunter raised a hand to quiet them.
“Being men of God is not an easy thing. We want to do His work and we want to do it well. So we will leave the final judgments to the One above.”
He opened the eyes, turned back to address the freaks.
“If you can swim to shore, then God be with you, and welcome to the land of Gehenna.”
A dramatic pause here, as understanding spread among most of the freaks and they began to look to one another for direction.
“And if you can’t swim,” Gunter added, as if an afterthought, “then a hell of another sort awaits you today.”
At these words, Bruno moved to grab his betrayer. But Karl Gunter was no drunken knife thrower and Mr. Landau had a pistol to the strongman’s temple before Seboldt could lay a hand on the Captain.
Gunter seemed thrilled by the attempt on his life.
“Why don’t you show your grotesque friends how this is done?” he said to Bruno.
Landau repositioned the pistol, pressing the barrel into the small of Bruno’s back and shoving him forward to the crates that were stacked into steps before the ship’s rail. Extending off the rail was the iron girder used to lower freight to the docks.
The freaks’ semicircle broke open and Bruno moved between Kitty and Chick as he approached the railing. He tried not to look at either one, but the chicken boy suddenly reached out and touched him and it felt like ice against the strongman’s skin. He glanced quickly at the feathered face and saw the beak move, and the boy, who was drooling a white bile, tried to whisper something before a crewman clubbed him to the deck. Seconds later, while falling through the skin of the water, Bruno realized that what Chick had said was, “Forgive me.”
Bruno leapt off the girder without waiting for a command or a shove. The water was frigid, but he was not worried about himself. Often, he had swum miles at a time in the River Kalda when training for a new touring season. But he didn’t imagine that any of the freaks could manage the kilometer to shore. And he was certain that some of them would sink like stones as soon as they hit the drink.
They picked Aziz first, grabbed him by his arms and placed the human torso up on the iron bar. He didn’t make a sound, but immediately began to swing himself forward, down to the end of the beam. Then he took three rocking swings, each bringing his trunk higher into the air until, on the last, he let himself fly and arced up and out and into the sky, forming his arms into a perfect V as his trajectory reversed and he began to plunge downward. He knifed into the ocean, disappeared for a few seconds, and then emerged near Bruno, who was treading water in a controlled panic.
Aziz spoke quickly to the strongman, blinking the sea out of his eyes. “I can make it,” he said. “So can Fatos, Milena, Durga, and the twins. But you have to help the rest. I’ll wait for you on the beach.”
With this he began an impressive breaststroke away from the ship, toward the rock-strewn shores of Gehenna.
Up on the deck, one of Gunter’s men was poking a hysterical Jeta down the length of the girder with a massive gaff. Bruno squinted through the sun, trying to see what was happening. The gaffer toyed with the skeleton, feigning a poke at the head and then drumming on the girder with the steel of his hook. Jeta screamed and danced as if the beam were ablaze and the crew laughed as if in the grip of a wonderful mania until, finally tiring of the routine, the crewman swung his pole up and spanked the boniest ass in all of Eastern Europe. Jeta went sailing off the girder and fell, those ridiculous arms and legs spastic all the way down. She went under the water and bobbed up once.
Bruno swam to her, dove down, and just managed to grab a twig of a wrist. He pulled her up into the air, supported her around the waist, and yelled, “Can you swim?”
The skeleton couldn’t speak. Her head was snapping back and forth on her bird’s neck. She made deep sucking noises and her eyes blinked open and closed and open again.
Bruno got up into her face and tried to speak clearly and slowly.
“I’m going to bring you into shore,” he said, “but you have to calm down or we won’t make it.”
He could see her making the effort to detach from her panic. The blinks came more slowly and her breathing became more deliberate.
“That’s right,” Bruno said, encouraging her. “That’s good. You’re going to be fine. I’m going to bring you to land.”
He kicked his legs, moved around to her backside without letting go of her, then repositioned his arm around her waist. She allowed herself some whimpering and he didn’t call her on it. He brought his mouth to her ear and asked, “Do you know how to float, Jeta?”
She could only shake her head no, and he was quick to say, “That’s all right. That’s not a problem.”
He could see her tiny ears turning blue and understood that she had no body fat to insulate her and that this meant it was possible she could go into shock before they reached the shore.
“Now, listen to me, Jeta,” Bruno said. “I’m going to put my hand on the small of your back and push you up to the surface. All right? I want you to try and lay back and let the water float you up.”
He eased her supine, positioned himself, and got a new grip on her — higher up on her chest and under her armpits. He began to swim sidestroke, pulling her along. They glided, quickly gaining some distance from the boat. Bruno’s arms and legs were enormous and Jeta weighed less than thirty kilograms. But when Gunter whistled at him from the deck, the strongman couldn’t resist turning his head to look.
And what he saw was Durga, the fat lady, being lifted over the rail by five straining crewmen. The Captain wasn’t risking the girder to this kind of girth. The crew heaved once, then twice and managed to toss the corpulent ball of flesh overboard. Durga fell like a refrigerator and hit the water in a cannonball splash that rained for long yards.