The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate

Author:José Luis Zárate [Zárate, José Luis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Innsmouth Free Press
Published: 2020-10-08T19:12:53+00:00

“Captain.”

The voice of Arghezi, somehow in the midst of my dream, although in this one, only the Demeter and I remain, sharing the vague pleasure of ramming the waves.

I open my eyes and see the Cook’s face above me, while he shakes me lightly. A movement would suffice and I could sip his breath, touch his lips with my tongue.

“Captain.”

A whispering, intimate voice. He wants no one to hear. I want him closer. I can feel the heat of Arghezi’s skin.

Fever.

I remember then and awaken immediately, scrabbling away from that feverish face, from the disease that has reached my bed.

Arghezi has to grab me, keep me from falling to the floor.

“Wake up, sir.”

When he touches me, I know he is real. The temperature of our skins is identical. Both safe from the plague, or already dying.

“What is it?”

Before he answers, the possibilities are already all-but certain. Who has fallen? What shall I do then?

“You must accompany me,” he says.

I dress in silence, while the Cook turns his eyes toward the dark corridor. Shoulders raised, head slightly tilted forward, hands touching his forearms, he hides his chest in an innervated hug.

He seems a man in the midst of an ice storm, with no more protection than his own flesh. The only certainty is that skin, the unbroken flow of blood.

But it is not the cold that makes his lips tremble.

He has seen something; something has happened that makes him retreat into a corner, ready to groan like a rat.

Something he wants to show me.

We cross the deck without saying a word, without calling out to any of the men who work the last watch of the day. I look at the canvas, dry skin hanging on a wooden skeleton. Arghezi points to the hold. Where else? I do not want to go, not to the place where the Cook refuses to return. Whatever scared him is there ….

But I am the Captain and someone must do it.

The hold is full of fog, coiled tight against the floor, flowing fast and easy, tides of mist in a white sea.

It is clear outside, sky and ocean free of haze. I do not imagine a fire, the hold filling with smoke. No. This fog is screaming.

I descend without knowing why. Mayhap I wish to verify that what I see is real, that I am not in another dream from which I shall be awakened by a man who swears my ship has been condemned by the plague.

Arghezi stays above, holding the lamp that casts my shadow on whatever it is that shudders in the darkness.

A sharp, continuous scream, without volume. Secret. Like Arghezi’s whisper. Like Mikhail muttering, “Very well.” A multiple shout, composed of a hundred different sounds.

I understand it, when I go down into the fog, when something small stirs beneath my foot and sinks its little teeth into my shoe.

A white rat.

Thousands of them on the floor, blurred by their rapid movements. Screaming with an unknown voice, as if their color and hunchbacked bodies distorted their sounds as well.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.