A Necessary Action (13 page)

Willi Mohr had gathered up sketching-block, pencil box, his box of water-colours and had fastened them all together in a bundle with a strap so that he could sling the lot over his shoulder.

Just as they were about to leave, Siglinde discovered that they were almost out of paraffin. She put the can down just inside the door and said: ‘Don’t forget to remind me about that, if I forget.’

Willi Mohr locked the door and pushed the key into the crack in the wall.

When they were in the truck, Siglinde found they had locked the dog out and she was sniffing round outside the house.

‘We’ll take Perrita with us, shall we?’ she said.

‘Out to sea?’ said Dan.

He sounded slightly disturbed.

‘She can go with Willi while he’s sketching, and then he won’t be lonely.’

Willi Mohr grinned. He seldom felt really lonely nowadays. He jumped down and lifted the dog up into the camioneta. Then he climbed up again and sat down behind Siglinde.

They left the house in Barrio Son Jofre.

The truck rolled down the hill at a moderate and reliable speed. Siglinde pushed her hat back and looked up at the sky with its smooth veil of shining white mist. The light hurt her eyes and although the cloud-veils appeared quite harmless, they frightened her. She had a vision of the sky suddenly opening and unloading on them some devastating, unimagined disaster. Siglinde lowered her gaze to the roadside and saw a small green lizard creeping under a stone in terror as the shadow of the truck fell across it.

She thought: Why is one afraid and why just today? And no one notices, only Dan, and even he doesn’t usually. But he knows I imagine things and think up all kinds of nonsense and anyhow I’m no more afraid today than I’ve been hundreds of times before and nothing happened then.

She put her arm along Dan’s back and tried to find security there, saying quietly to herself: ‘It’s really a great personal tragedy to be so stupid.’

They met the sheep at almost exactly the same place as the last time. But this time it was on a straight stretch of road so Dan saw them in good time and had time to brake.

They sat in silence and watched while the old shepherd ran about trying to shoo the flock off the road. He rushed hither and thither with his rags flying round him like an actor in an old
slapstick comedy, and not once did he dare even glance at the people in the truck.

‘The children of Israel leaving Egypt, directed by Mack Sennet,’ said Dan Pedersen, spitting on to the dusty road.

At last the sheep-dog managed to arrange the sheep along the roadside. The old man stood with his hat in his hand and bowed his head as the truck rolled by. He was trembling all over.

Siglinde felt oppressed. She would have liked to get down and pat him, or give him some money, or anything.

When they came down to the quay, Santiago and Ramon were already in the boat. They had got bait and lines and were filling up the tank with petrol. Both were bare-footed and wearing blue trousers and black jerseys. Ramon raised his head and laughed, showing his white teeth. He was unshaven and his dark hair stood out in a cloud round his head. Santiago said nothing but glanced at his watch before raising a hand in greeting.

Dan Pedersen jumped down into the boat and Siglinde handed down the baskets with clothes, wine-jars and food. Santiago and Dan stowed the luggage in the space in the bows. Then Siglinde jumped down before anyone got around to helping her.

Santiago went astern and cast off. He held on for a moment, to give Willi a chance to go on board.

‘He’s not coming with us,’ said Dan Pedersen.

Willi Mohr had understood and shook his head.

Santiago threw him a complicated look.

‘Oh, aren’t you?’ he said, and pushed off.

Ramon began to turn the balance-wheel and the engine coughed.

‘What about the weather?’ said Siglinde.

‘It’s O.K.,’ said Santiago, without looking at her.

The engine started up. Dan Pedersen gripped the tiller.

Willi Mohr was standing on the quay with his sketching things in a strap over his shoulder. He raised his right forefinger in farewell.

The people in the boat waved to him.

The boat swung out towards the lighthouse in the approaches and tore up a long wide bow of surf. Siglinde was kneeling in the stern watching the houses in the puerto getting smaller and smaller and becoming more and more indistinct and shapeless in
the peculiar light. The misty sunlight seemed to fill out and fall over the valley and farther inland the first dragging clouds were going through the pass in the mountains. It was still hot and oppressive and she hoped there would at least be some breeze out at sea.

The engine chugged evenly and reassuringly, and the dinghy bobbed up and down in the swirling waters of their wash. The dinghy was part of the calamary fishing and there was no real reason why they should take it with them. But they had occasionally amused themselves with it out among the skerries. They rounded the lighthouse and steered close by the place where they had bathed a week or so earlier. Siglinde remembered the luminescence of the sea, the dark silence, and then the moment she had stood wet and naked and utterly defenceless in the pale light. She shivered, but did not know why.

Dan Pedersen pulled on the rudder and the boat set course for the mouth of the bay. The cliffs on each side were high and steep with a few pines and low bushes growing on them.

Ramon was sitting crouched in the bow peering at the sun. She could see his hairy muscular calves and the soles of his feet, which were leathery and grey with dust. Under his right heel he had a large dark brown patch of oil. Sometimes he turned round and laughed towards the others, his tongue playing between his white teeth.

Santiago was sitting cross-legged on the bottom of the boat as he systematically and carefully cut up small square pieces of white half-transparent calamary flesh. Each line had eight hooks on it and it took a long time to bait them. He did not once look up from his work. The knife in his hand was long and sharp and flashed in the sunlight.

They rounded the nearest point and met the breakers rolling in from the east, long and smooth and regular, and each time the bows rose on a wave a thin spray of salty water flew over the boat. Although it was still warm, Siglinde began to feel goose-flesh on her forearms and thighs. She felt like stretching out on the bottom of the boat but for some reason she wanted to be as near to her husband as possible, so she stayed where she was. When she turned round and looked towards the land, she saw a civil guard high up on the cliff farthest out. He had his carbine
across his back and was leaning on his bicycle. She watched him for a long time until he was nothing but a small dark protuberance on the skyline, and she wondered whether he really could have cycled all the way up there.

When they were farther out to sea, the waves grew larger, but they were still kindly and not at all unpleasant. The sea was moving towards them in long soft ridges and now the skerries ahead could be seen quite clearly, an irregular group of small black silhouettes against the shimmering horizon. It was about an hour’s journey there.

Santiago was sitting as before, cross-legged on the bottom of the boat. He was still busy with the hooks and did not look up. Occasionally he hummed to himself quietly, but he said nothing.

Ramon had left his place in the bows and was crouching down beside the engine. He poked at the fuel regulator, then turned his head towards Siglinde and stared at her knees and thighs.

She felt naked under his look and wished she had put on her jeans and sweater. For a moment she considered changing, but then thought it would look silly. Her jeans were tight and she could not very well put them on on top of her shorts. Change clothes in this open boat, she did
not
want to do.

After a while Ramon raised his eyes, looked at her and smiled. He shouted something to Dan who shouted back, but she did not understand what they had said.

A shoal of porpoises went by on both sides of the boat. They tumbled joyfully and playfully in the dark blue-green water, and one of them came so near that she was able to stretch out her hand and pat it on the back, shiny and as grey as lead. She looked out at the islands again. They were much nearer now and she thought they looked ominous in their wet rugged blackness. She had seen them many times before but never like this.

Siglinde leant over the side and let her right hand drag in the bubbling luke-warm water.

Pull yourself together, my girl, she thought. This won’t do.

And then: We’ll be fishing for a couple of hours and in three, or at the most, four hours’ time I’ll be home again. Every minute that goes by is a minute nearer home.

And: If you look round you’ll see that everything is just the same as usual, and it’s quite fine weather, and you’re sitting in
the same old boat together with the same old Dan … and same old Santiago … and same old Ramon …

She straightened up hurriedly. The nearest island was very close now, a high black chunk of rock which rose straight out of the sea, girded by a narrow border of foaming surf. Ramon had sat down in the bows again. He was singing and smiling up at the sun.

Santiago had finished baiting the lines. He had turned his head and was looking at her legs, as he moistened his lips with his tongue.

They passed the first island by a few yards and steered into the archipelago. The swell was hardly noticeable now and Ramon adjusted the regulator so that the engine chugged more slowly. The pale blue exhaust gas floated astern in light clouds which dissolved over the water. The islands were volcanic and severely eroded.

Many of them were small and hardly rose above the surface of the water, but others were large and high, with steep towering cliffs. Once in amongst them, they resembled ruins of a long since devastated desert city. Here and there were lagoons and sheltered bays with small beaches of fine gravel and pulverized sea-shells.

‘The usual place, I suppose?’ said Dan Pedersen.

Santiago looked round and nodded.

‘The wind’ll probably get up this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we’d better not stay too long.’

Not stay too long … Siglinde became aware of an instant sense of relief, but she at once felt frightened again. Perhaps of the storm that was coming.

She found it difficult to sit still and twisted her fingers round and round each other. Once she noticed that Santiago was looking at her hands, she straightened her fingers and pressed the palms of her hands down on the thwart of the boat. She could feel the grain of the dry sun-warmed wood, but it gave her no comfort.

Dan had been here many times and knew the archipelago as well as the Alemany brothers did. He steered skilfully and purposefully through narrow passages and set course for the largest of the islands, a high narrow ridge of cliff lying almost farthest
out towards the sea. A few minutes later he rounded the northern point and the boat glided forward along the outer side, close under the cliff wall. Ramon switched off the regulator and Dan Pedersen fastened the tiller. When the sound of the engine died away Siglinde could hear the cries of the sea-birds and the sound of the waves breaking and washing over the shoals farther out at sea.

The boat had stopped moving forward. It rocked slowly in the water only five yards from the cliff. The others started moving and handling the fishing gear. Siglinde sat still.

The island was a quarter of a kilometre long and perhaps a hundred-and-twenty feet high. On the outer side it plunged almost perpendicularly down into the sea, offering no foothold. Up on its highest point was a ruined stone lighthouse, built there with great labour a long time ago. It had later been discovered that the lighthouse was useless in bad weather, as the clouds sank so low, it became swallowed up in them. A number of lighthouse-keepers had been slowly driven mad in the place. Then the stone tower had been replaced by two automatic metal lights, one on each point. Nowadays the island was only visited by fishermen and police-boats hunting for enemies of the state.

When Siglinde turned her eyes upwards, she saw that the cliff wall was leaning in the wrong direction and the upper edge of the cliff was almost directly above her head. A long way up, large white birds were shooting over the edge as if they were being slung from a catapult. They flew in wide circles and disappeared again where the cliff cut off her field of vision. All the time, she heard them screaming. Even farther up the sky was covered with a silvery shimmering mist.

Dan slapped her good-naturedly on the shoulder and held out the line with the lead weights and eight baited hooks on it. She took it mechanically with her left hand. Dan lifted up the boxlike wooden frame with the line on it and gave it to her.

‘You seem to be in a hell of a daze,’ he said, slightly irritably. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

Siglinde forced herself to smile slightly.

‘I’m fine, darling, thank you.’

He left her and went forward to the bows. The boat rocked slowly as he moved.

Siglinde sat quite still and looked at the others. Ramon and Santiago had placed themselves roughly midships, one on each side. They had already got their hooks in the water. Ramon was squatting with his elbows on the side and the line over his coarse forefinger. He was staring at her with large glistening eyes, his mouth half-open, and she could see the tip of his tongue between his red lips. Santiago was half-lying against the side. He seemed to be looking straight into the cliff wall. Siglinde shook herself and let go the weights and hooks. They fell into the water with a small plop.

When she began to let out the line, Santiago turned his head and looked at her for the first time since they had left the puerto.

‘Let out all the line,’ he said.

His light brown eyes were cold and factual. He looked into her face and smiled a little.

The line was very long and she held it over her forefinger, feeling the vibrations as the water took it away. She looked at the cliff wall, wet and black and shiny, and at the small industrious waves which were slowly hollowing it out. She remembered that on all the occasions she had been here before she had enjoyed herself. But today everything was different and she could not stop thinking: In three hours’ time I’ll be home again.