She drove past the police station. The shops had closed for the evening. It was too cold, too early in the year, for tourists, and the pavements were empty, the building sites of the new holiday hotels silent. She parked at the railway station, from which the S-Bahn trains ran to Rostock, in shadow, the furthest place she could find from the lights. The wind came harsh off the sea channel and across the quayside and tore at them. He had told her where she should park and for once there was no trace of scorn at her lips. He had found again his strength, because she had thanked him, and she was beside him, walking from the car, elf small and tired, and he thought she now depended on him.
She slipped her hand onto his elbow, and they walked together towards the bridge over the smaller channel.
On the plank bridge, flanked on the far side by the old houses of Warnemunde that were now painted, chic and the homes of new money, and on the near side by the fish harbour where the boats were, they stopped.
The fleet, tied up with heavy ropes, was of small boats all painted in a uniform red from bow to stern with a white flash running their length above the water-line and with white wheel- houses. Men in dark heavy coats and boots worked on the decks by the light of small arc lamps high on posts above the quay. They coiled ropes, scrubbed decks and stowed nets.
Beside the moored boats, above them, was the drab concrete of the quayside. From small stalls on the quay, gross large women, swaddled in stained aprons, sold raw herring-fillet strips and bread, or shredded crab and bread, or smoked fish and bread, or pickled onions and raw fish and smoked fish and bread, and pits beer. They did poor trade because the men were still at the boats and the tourists had not yet come.
Along the quay and the stalls was a concrete shed, bright- lit, and in it were men and women, old and young, gutting the fish catch, which the kids brought them from the boats, on wide bench tables. Cats howled by their booted feet, screamed for carcasses. Beyond the brightness and movement in the shed was the dull greyness of the quay, and beyond the quay was the blackness of the water.
Josh took her hand, where it rested on his elbow. He squeezed it, held it tight.
They walked down the ramp towards the quayside, the boats and the gutting shed. A man lumbered towards them, a rolled wool cap on his head, a beard darkening his face and a loose dark coat on his body, carrying a box of gutted fish and powder ice.
‘Excuse me, mein Freund, where do I find the boat on which Willi Muller works?’
The man did not look up, paused bent under the weight of the box, and jerked his head backwards, directed them towards the long line of boats moored to the quayside and riding on the blackness of the water. The pastor had said that Willi Muller would now be twenty-four. They went by the end of the gutting shed and he could see no young man, dressed in the dark clothes and boots of a fisherman, with a box of fish or a bucket of powder ice, among the white-coated and white-aproned men and women at the work benches.
He came to a stall. Moths bounced in the wind around a naked bulb hanging above the raw fish fillets and the smoked fish fillets and the bread.
‘Excuse me, meine Frau, where do I find the boat of Willi Muller?’
The woman buttered bread and she did not look up from her work. She made the gesture with the knife, away down the quay, away towards the darkness at its end. They walked past stalls, past small unused tables, past men working on their boats, past the kids who carried the fish catch from the boats to the gutting shed.
A man worked at the repair of his net, fast gnarled hands made good a rip. He leaned against his wheelhouse and the net was gathered up across his knees. Josh asked, again, for Willi Muller. The man flashed his face, away, towards the far end of the quayside, towards two boats, empty, in the last fall of the light. He held her hand, crushed it… Step quickening, stride lengthening, holding her hand and dragging her behind him… Past the boats that were empty, towards the boat that was a rocking shadow shape beyond the point where the light failed. It was the last chance.
Nothing moved on the boat but the slow tossing of the mast and the waving of rigging in the wind. He stood on the quay, his body thrown against the wheelhouse, giant-sized, by the high arc lights far behind him, grey black on grey white. He looked the length of the boat, over stowed netting, coiled rope and stacked boxes. She jerked his arm, she pointed. He looked down into the blackness of the water.
He saw the darkened figure floating there. The figure moved so slowly, so gently, half submerged against the angled bow of the trawler. It wore the dark coat of the fishermen on their boats behind him.
Josh screamed out loud.
The figure rose and fell on the swell of the channel.
He screamed because it had been the last chance, because it had all been for nothing…
Chapter Sixteen
The trawlermen on their boats, at their nets and ropes and buckets and brushes, would have heard his agony cry, and the women at the stalls, and the fish gutters in the shed.
Josh pushed her away from him.
He pulled off his coat, and his blazer jacket. They would have seen him stand for a moment on the quay above the darkened boat and the black water. They would have left their boats, their stalls, the gutting shed, left their boxes of fish and powder ice, and have come to the end of the quay where the light did not reach. A narrow, rusted ladder was fastened to the quayside wall. It went down, twice a man’s height, into the darkness, to the black water. It disappeared in the water, close to the bow of the boat, to the figure, half submerged and half floating.
He was a driven man. He did not look back, not at her, not at the men and women and the kids coming from the lit end of the quay. He went over the side, down the ochre rusted rungs of the ladder. It sagged. A bolt into the wall was torn clear by his weight.
The water came chill into his shoes, gripped the legs of his trousers. He shuddered at the cold.
He could see the figure, the back of the torso. It was an outline against the oiled black water that slopped against the bow angle of the boat. The water was against his chest and lapped into his armpits. He held the rung that was level with his head, left hand, and he reached out, right hand, towards the figure that rose and fell in the motion of the water. He stretched, but could not reach it, could not hook his fingers, frozen wet, into the coat.
His hand thrashed in the water and the eddies took the figure a few more inches, so tantalizing, away from him. He reached out and there was only the water for his fingers to snatch at.
The rung, rusted, that he held, gave and broke. He was pitched into the water. The foulness of the oil, the sharpness of salt, was in his eyes and mouth and nose. He kicked, gasped, and came up. It was years since he had last swum, and then in a heated pool. He spluttered, choked. He had to reach it. It was his obligation. His shoes were against the wall of the quay, sliding on underwater weed. He pushed away from the quay wall. Three strokes, four, and he would be within reach, if he stretched. He coughed the oil water clear from his throat, his eyes were closed. He lunged. He could not see ahead.
His hand caught it.
He smelt the stench of it.
It came so easily to him, it had no weight.
He pulled it to him. He trod the water. He lifted above his head a black coal sack from the blackness of the water and rotting herring heads spilled from its neck. Around her, above him, were the trawlermen and the stall women and the fish gutters and the kids who carried the boxes. He saw the glistening light of the eyes that gazed down on him. His screams that had brought them had been of agony and pain. At that moment, Josh screamed with hysterical, lunatic laughter. He threw the sack and its debris away and out beyond the bow angle of the boat. He swam back to the ladder. Hands reached down for him. Men knelt to help him. Hard rough hands caught his wrists, caught at the shoulder of his shirt. He was heaved up. All the time they lifted him he laughed. They pulled him over the broken rung of the ladder. He had no control over his arms, his legs. He shook with the cold and the laughter burst through him.