When the Night Comes Read online

  I see Soren start to go down the stairs to the coolroom. Nella slows, her little frame is humming, pushing against the thick ice. Then she lurches forward, rides right over to the port side heavy. I brace against the counter. The pile of pans I washed falls to the floor. The thermos tips; coffee grounds spill all over the stainless steel. I hear crashing from the mess, broken plates, smashing glass, God knows what breaking.

  I feel Nella right herself, pull back—her engine revving. I move to the stairwell.

  “Soren?” I say.

  A foot.

  A leg.

  A man on his stomach in the small space between the bottom of the metal stairs and the coolroom doors. Arms out in front of him, head twisted to one side.

  I open my mouth, call his name. I scream for help and the sound echoes down the stairs. I look at my hands, shaking and coffee-stained. Nella just keeps on slicing and shuddering through the ice. She just keeps on moving.

  I run down the stairs, take Soren’s wrist in my hand. It’s warm, his skin still warm, but I can find no pulse. His eyes are open. They stare at the wall.

  I hear shouting, footsteps on the metal stairs. I see faces, serious faces. I am pulled up and out of the way. I lean against the coolroom doors. There is blood on my shoe, blood on my trousers. I must have been kneeling in it.

  There on the floor, a pool of blood.

  The captain is opposite me. We are sitting in the red booth. I don’t remember getting here. I don’t know how long I have been sitting here.

  “There is nothing we can do,” he says. “He has passed.”

  I nod. I look at nothing.

  “Why don’t you go, get cleaned up?” he says, but I tell him I want to stay.

  We sit there.

  “Just a terrible accident,” he says. “Terrible.”

  There’s a body bag brought down from somewhere. Crew keep coming into the galley, hearing the news. No one can believe it. It’s not real. It can’t be right.

  Klaus comes over.

  “Dinner is off,” he says. “I’ll put out soup, some sandwiches.”

  “Yes,” I say, “the soup’s ready,” thinking about the cauliflower soup I made after breakfast.

  He pats me on the shoulder then, something he has never done. Like a father would. Like a brother.

  We wrap Soren up and take him into the freezer. No one says a word. I keep thinking he will just wake up, say, “Got you! That was a good one.” But when the captain closes Soren’s eyes with the weight of his fingers, something inside me goes very cold.

  Someone hands me a glass of whiskey and I drink it down. Then another. Another. That night we sat in the passage—riding out the storm—he said to me, “I know I’m meant to be here, on this ship.”

  We drank to that. To all his plans. Antarctica and all that we would see. To the bar he would open, to all of the adventures that would be his.

  “Here’s to us,” he said, and we drank down our whiskey, which tasted bitter to me, but I was going along for the ride. Being part of it. That feeling. He made you feel like freedom.

  “Lucky,” he said. “You and me. Christ!”

  I sit in my cabin in clean clothes. I don’t know where the ones I was wearing are. Outside the ice is getting tough—sticking together in sheets, in rounds.

  If I’d just let him win rock, paper, scissors, then I would be drinking my coffee, reading the news from home, and Soren would be bugging me—talking nonstop the way he always did, asking me about this and about that. Talking about his camera, about the photos he took yesterday, about the ones he’s going to take tomorrow. Talking about the Rolling Stones. About Pink Floyd. About the stars and the gods and about everything that’s in that head of his. And I know that from now on the silence of Soren not talking will be terrifying. That it will be the loneliest sound of all.

  MS Nella Dan

  VOYAGE 2, 1986/1987 SEASON

  11th November 1986

  POSITION: 63° 26.000’ S, 120° 5.000’ E

  CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Pack ice in all directions. Icebergs in the distance. We continue at slow speed.

  * * *

  The captain puts down a cup of coffee for me, black, and I take it.

  “I know you were close,” he says.

  I tell him what happened. I tell him everything—the frozen beef and the coffee break and the ship pitching up over the ice.

  We sit like that—I sip my coffee and he sips his. Up here it is much quieter than below, the engine sounds muted. Up here, high in the sky, there is no smell of diesel fuel or roasting meats. No smell of cabbage. The porthole is slightly open and it’s nice to have air—cold and clean and alive.

  “I’m very sorry,” he says.

  I nod. The moments pass. I finish my coffee.

  “I knew your father, you know,” he says. “I was young, just a deck boy then.”

  I look at him. His long hair is slicked back, his face calm. I think of my father sitting out in the sunlight at home, smoking his pipe. His eyes closed, his face at peace—classical music playing on the radio, his mind far away, somewhere that I could never reach. His mind always at sea.

  “Sometimes I feel like I hardly knew him,” I say. I stare at the bulkhead, then at the floor. “He took me on this ship when she was launched. I was only two, I think. We sailed down from Aalborg to Copenhagen. I don’t really remember, but it happened. I have the photograph. My grandmother came. She got very sick, even in the harbor.”

  I smile then. I start to smile. “She was not made of the sea.” I meant to say “for the sea” but then “of” seems right so I leave the word there. I leave it.

  “Do you need to call anyone?” he asks. “Call home?”

  I sit for a second. I try to think.

  “I don’t need to call,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says, and he finishes his coffee. He puts his cup down on the desk. I stand up. “Thank you,” I say. He shakes my hand, puts his other hand over it tightly.

  “I want the galley crew to take tonight off, and just a light breakfast in the morning. Tomorrow is a day of rest, must-do duties only. Come and see me anytime.”

  I nod, my head light, my eyes blinking. I walk out of the office and down the passage. I walk down the stairs and down another passage on the deck where the expeditioners sleep, one hand on the bulkhead, the other hand clutching my stomach. I open the heavy door to outside and the cold air rushes at my face. I step out into the blinding light.

  There are islands of white going on and on for as far as I can see, the water almost black in between, but over the side where Nella slowly cuts her way through the ice, the water is churned up turquoise blue.

  Steady, steady, we move at half-speed, and when I look up, a cape petrel is just above me, flying with us. Little turns, little wings. I reach my arm up, my fingers stretch. I reach and for a second the bird comes so close I can almost touch him. I can see his eyes, his tiny face. He looks at me, then rises up with the thermals. Up and up at full speed until I lose him in the light.

  My eyes are full.

  Where does the land end and the sea begin?

  He asked me this question once at our little beach.

  I was very small, I don’t know how old, but I remember I ran down to the water, drew a line in the sand with my finger and said, “Here, Papa! Here.”

  My father smiled and nodded and we kept on walking together in silence. He liked to walk when he was home from the sea. To walk in a straight line and to keep on going and not be stopped by anything. We would often walk for hours, it seemed, along tracks and through fields and down small lanes, me just a step behind. Me trying to keep up with his big legs.

  I follow you.

  When we got back to our beach, my line was gone—swallowed up by the tide. Everything was different, the landscape changed.

  My father turned to me and said, “The sea is alive and there is no beginning and there is no end. It moves with the moon and with the spinning of this earth and it calls us when it w
ants us to come.”

  That night I lay in my bed, I pulled the covers over me tight, and in the darkness I said over and over in my head, Don’t call me. Don’t call me, because I don’t want to go.

  MS Nella Dan

  VOYAGE 2, 1986/1987 SEASON

  12th November 1986

  POSITION: 63° 26.000’ S, 120° 5.000’ E

  CAPTAIN’S NOTE: We have spent the past six hours in heavy ice covered in a deep layer of snow. There is no open water in sight of the vessel, just frozen leads. First officer is at the helm, but we have been unable to move more than a few meters in any direction.

  * * *

  I wake to see Erik’s face, blurred, above me. A pain in the side of my head.

  “Bo?” he says. “Bo, it’s eight AM.”

  I jump up. I can feel the emptiness of my stomach.

  “We’re stuck,” he says and he points to the porthole.

  I can’t register what he is saying. I squint, focus. Outside, a landscape of white—only white. We are not moving.

  “I have to get back,” he says. “The expeditioners are hungry.”

  I stand there, afraid. How did I not wake? I always wake when the engine sound changes. All of us do. Always.

  The engine sounds are the best sleeping pill. The constant sound of them cuts out all other sounds. The sound of the engine makes you feel that everything is okay, that everything is fine. You are safe. You can sleep. But even if we just slow down, or speed up a tiny bit, if the engine noise changes, I wake.

  Last night I slept like the dead.

  I had been dead.

  And we are stuck.

  MS Nella Dan

  VOYAGE 2, 1986/1987 SEASON

  18th December 1986

  POSITION: 63° 26.000’ S, 120° 5.000’ E

  CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Vessel surrounded by ice. Dense pack ice in all directions. Icebergs in the distance.

  * * *

  Four weeks. Five weeks.

  We are still stuck.

  The work goes on.

  There is food—plenty of food. It would take many months to run out, but the fresh vegetables are going. Now we are making salad with grated carrot and lemon juice. Just carrot. No one wants to eat it.

  Twelve weeks since we left Hobart. A lifetime.

  The winterers have already been so long without fresh fruit, fresh vegetables. They ask me if there are any bananas. They ask with such hope.

  “No,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  I ask them if there is something I can make them, anything special, but they shake their heads.

  “I just can’t stop thinking about bananas.”

  In the storeroom, cabbage, grapefruit, cauliflower, carrots, potatoes. In the coolroom, enough meat and supplies to last.

  In the freezer, a body bag that we must pass every day.

  Somehow we have run out of onions.

  I sit on my bunk, blink against the light flooding in through my small, round porthole. The sun is relentless. It won’t leave me alone—won’t let me rest. The night, it never comes.

  Work goes on—breakfast, lunch, dinner—only we are one man down, one man gone. Today, at lunch, I put the palm of my hand against the hot plate.

  Klaus grabbed me, shook me hard.

  “Are you mad?” he yelled, but then he softened. He sent me to the doctor and then to my cabin, my hand bandaged. He told me to rest.

  I don’t know why I did it. Maybe to see if I could feel something. I don’t know. I wasn’t really there.

  The sun shines down outside. The sun is God.

  I see movement, shadows. I stand closer to the glass and out the porthole small figures move on the ice. Men dressed in snow gear, blue, yellow, arms waving, legs running. A black-and-white ball in the air, flying.

  A game of football.

  I pick up the camera off my desk—Soren’s camera. I wonder what’s on the roll of film inside. What photos did he take? I aim the lens at the porthole, look through the viewfinder. A perfect circle of light against the black inside my cabin. I take the shot.

  Such a strange thing to see. A game of football on the ice. A game of football by the side of a red ship in the middle of the frozen ocean.

  I put the camera back down on my desk. I look at my bandaged hand. I have this urge to run. I put on my snow boots, my warm jacket and gloves. I get out of my cabin and walk down the passage, go up and outside to the ladder on the cargo hold. I step down backward—down, down the rungs, down to the thick ice that holds us. Meters and meters of hard frozen water.

  I move toward the game, toward the grunting and screaming. Toward the laughing. My breath is puffs of white vapor, the air cold on my face. A few of the crew are playing. I see the second mate, Carsten, and he waves me over.

  I start to run.

  My feet move and I keep on running. I chase the ball until there is sweat down my back—sweat on my face. I miss a shot and slip over, slide on the ice. The ball skids out away from me, but I get to my feet fast and make it to the ball before anyone else. I kick hard toward the goal—a solid shot. A lucky strike.

  Someone grabs me from behind, yells out, “GOAL!” He tries to lift me up but we both fall over hard, crunching into the wet ice.

  “Christ!” he says, and for a second I think it’s Soren. Soren saying, “Christ!” the way he did. Soren laughing like a madman with that spark in his blue eyes. But the light lessens and the face in front of me becomes clear. Gray eyes, round face. It’s Carsten.

  “Goal!” he says again. “Victory!” He pumps his arm in the air and helps me to my feet.

  “The Danes will not be beaten,” he says.

  There are only three of us, and anyway, no one is keeping score, but it feels good to kick a goal, feel my heart beat hard, my blood pump, have my lungs pull cold air in with ease. To play this game.

  We run until we are hollow, slip and skid over until our pants are sodden. We run until we are nearly sick and can no longer breathe.

  The wonder of this place hits me with full force. The ice—the sun high in a blue sky—night and day. I’m here on the ice, here in this wonderland.

  Lucky. And I want to be alive.

  We climb up the ladder, one by one, unified by a small black-and-white ball. A team. We have beaten the frustration of being stuck for one day. One good day.

  I tell the others I will go and organize brandy and some hot chocolate. I find Klaus in the galley and tell him I am fine, that I can come and work, but he shakes his head. He tells me dinner is prepared and I should go and have a drink, take the day, the evening, the night.

  “Take the day,” he says. He winks at me but his voice is stern. It is an order.

  I go up and sit in the passenger lounge, a place I have never been before. We pass a bottle of brandy around, drink out of coffee cups. A bottle of whiskey, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of cognac. I don’t know where all the bottles came from. Someone has a bottle of port but I don’t have any of that. Too sweet. Too sickly. I stay well clear.

  I go down to the toilet and on the way back decide to get some beers. A small gift on my part. No one is down in our bar, the Frozen Inn, still too early. I write it up in the book—Bo, 24 Carlsberg.

  We are almost out of beer. We will run out tomorrow or the next day. I will enjoy these last beers. I will make the most of them.

  When I carry the green bottles up the stairs in a crate, everyone is grateful. The cold beer goes down so well. One of the scientists says, “Thank God it isn’t the akvavit, we would be dead from that!”

  It is true. I have seen passengers unable to walk after a few glasses. They seem fine, but then they can’t get up off their chairs. Their legs have stopped working.

  The sun is still up high with us—up high in the air in the passenger lounge.

  A man called John pulls out a guitar, and he’s good—knows how to play. His long, thin fingers strum strongly and he has a nice voice. I only know some of the songs, but people start to sing along with the choruses, lou
dly, out of tune, and it’s impossible not to join in. “We Are the Champions,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Hey Jude,” “Go Your Own Way.”

  “Father and Son.”

  The first notes of that song make everyone stand up. We hold on to each other’s shoulders in a round, sing together. We sing with all our hearts, a family—Cat Stevens. “Father and Son.”

  I feel like a boy again, my first years at sea. The wonder and hope and the boredom of long days. Laughing at the hard work. Laughing at the big seas. Being out in the world and saying, Come on, I will take it all and more. Missing home but thinking ahead and not behind. Keeping my eyes on the horizon.

  The song ends, and we are winded. John puts down his guitar and some of us climb out onto the monkey deck. Someone hands out cigars and I take one. It feels like as good a time as any to try my first cigar. It is rough and warm and I smoke it with gusto—my arm around John’s neck, like we are the oldest friends in the world. He yells out, “Goddamn you, ice!” and we all start chanting, “Let us free! Let us free! Let us free!” our feet stomping on the deck.

  The bald head of Jens, the chief engineer, appears at the top of the ladder. He tells us that it is all good and well that we are asking the gods to let us free, but he thinks for now everyone needs to come inside and eat some dinner.

  “And, by the way, your captain is trying to sleep below your feet, if you don’t mind!”

  He turns to leave, but catches my eye.

  “Bo. God. I didn’t see you there. Okay for some.”

  It’s late, 10 PM. The sun deceptively high. Sunburn on the expeditioners’ cheeks and probably on mine too. Our stomachs full of whiskey and brandy and beer and not crying out yet for food.

  John turns to me, his eyes strained and red.

  “My wife is having a baby any day, and I’m stuck here, bloody useless.”