Tibetan Cross by Mike Bond

Author:Mike Bond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mandevilla Press
Published: 2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

14

HE TOOK THREE STEPS down into the hold. Cold water sloshed obscenely round his ankles; he backed up the stairs. A woman's laugh. “No illusions here, mon brave,” she called. “It's not First Class.”

The water in the hold rocked gently with the to-and-fro motion of the hull. Mounds of straw floated in it amid bulging, dark globes. Out of sight from the far side came a braying followed by shrill laughter. Cohen sat on the stairs.

“One must not station oneself there,” the woman said. “It's an exit, in case of fire. Or need to abandon ship.”

“Where can I sit?”

“Demand of the master. Perhaps he'll favor you with a chair such as mine, for only ten francs.”

From the obscurity came a tall, bowed Arab in an undershirt, pajamas rolled to his knees. His bony feet unleashed wavelets under the straw. He grinned, spittle sliding down the corner of his mouth.

“You are fortunate,” he said, distending his jaw to twist a tooth deeper into the gum, and led Cohen down an aisle between rows of chairs. In each chair was an Arab, some old, some young, some with children clinging to the chair arms. As they moved further from the light the room closed around them with Arabic gutturals, the whine of a child, the lap, lap of water on chair legs. The laugh burst out again.

“He's caught it, too,” Cohen said. “From Isom.”

“Far enough,” the master answered. “How lucky: the last chair. Your ten francs?”

Cohen fished the pieces left-handed from his pocket. One coin splashed at his feet. He knelt fumbling in cold ooze for the coin. A scream spiraled up a staircase of frenzy and burst around them. He jumped and dropped the coin again. The scream cascaded from laughter into silence. Once more he found the coin. “Who's that?”

The master's fingernails scratched his palm. “A passenger, taken from his native land to work out his days in France.”

“Why do you laugh?”

“Why not? It's so serious, life? Here you'll have a good seat for the circus. To hear the elephants when they shit.” The master guided him by the elbow to a canvas deck chair and sloshed away through the gloom.

HE WOKE SHIVERING. His clothes felt chilled and outgrown. The crash of his skull against the bulkhead door echoed in his temples. The shoulder pain was awesome but alien, beyond personal concern. Faces danced before him like horses on a carousel: the colonel, Hassim, Isom, his mother wiping troubled hands on a flowered apron. “All the good ones die,” he said to them. “Who doesn't?” they grinned in response. Weird laughter rolled toward him, a monstrous wave erupted inside him, burst out to meet itself, tears watering his cheeks. Pain cut it short.

“It's just Isom.” He rubbed his face, astonished at its asperity. A rumbling spatter filled the darkness with a foul, sweet odor. It subsided in random droplets on the straw. He held his breath until his forehead pounded but the smell remained. Eleven days, Paul. Easy now. Last quarter.

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