Iain Banks: Canal Dreams

'Too late, I fear, Mandamus said, dropping his arm. They turned the corner, walked towards the stern. The companionway leading up to the level of the dining room lay straight ahead. The deck was quite dry: 'So many trees have been cut down, so much topsoil washed into the lake, the situation was quite serious even before the war. The canal has been deteriorating for years, Gatún Lake itself- Mr Mandamus gestured around them, - is shallower and smaller than it used to be, as are the dams feeding it. Before too long you and that dashing French officier will be able to go paddling rather than diving!

They ascended the stairs. Hisako took another look back at the lights of Le Cercle , a kilometre or so distant across the lake, before being ushered through the doorway into the cool brilliance of the superstructure.

She had settled into shipboard life very quickly. The Gassam Maru carried her to Honolulu, over the empty blue Pacific. She watched the contrails of jets, eleven kilometres above, with a smile, and no regret. Within a couple of days of leaving Yokohama she felt comfortable and at home. Her place in the hierarchy of the ballasted tanker was that of honoured guest, with the privileges of an officer without the responsibilities; in rank she seemed to be just beneath the captain, equal with the first officer and the chief engineer.

The crew ignored her with extreme politeness, turning back down stairs if she appeared at the top, to let her descend (but averting their eyes), and looking confused if she thanked them. The junior officers were only a little more assertive, while the senior ones treated her as one of their own, apparently according her the respect they felt she was due as an expert in her field, which they regarded as no less complex and worthy than their own. Captain Ishizawa was cold and formal towards her, but then he was cold and formal with his officers too, so she did not feel his lack of warmth as an insult.

After the frenetic bustle of the last month she'd spent in Tokyo — finishing courses, making final arrangements for other people to continue her tutorials and classes, having several send-off parties, visiting various friends, trying to calm Mr Moriya, going to be hypnotised at his begging, being dragged out to Narita to board a plane, and still getting panicky and weak the moment she boarded and almost hysterical (much to her shame) when they were about to close the door — life aboard ship seemed simple and easy; The set structure, the regular watches and rhythms, the adhered-to rules and definite lines of command, all appealed to the orderly side of her nature. There was the ship, and the rest of the world. All nice and definite and unarguable. The ship ploughed the ocean, affected by tides and wind, in touch via radio signals and satellites, but it was basically a unit, separated by its mobility.

The wide sea, the vast skies, the soothing consistency of the view — reliable in its simple outline, but ever various within its elemental parameters — made the voyage an escape, an experience of freedom of a type and duration she'd never encountered before; something sublime, like a raked garden or a perfectly proportioned room, like Fuji on a clear day, rising beyond Tokyo like a great tent being drawn up towards heaven.

And the Stradivari violoncello, circa 1730, rebridged and reend-pointed Beijing 1890, survived. She had taken a device which recorded temperature and humidity in her cabin, and a back-up air-conditioning machine which could work off the ship's electricity supply or use its own batteries for up to forty-eight hours. All this seemed a little excessive to her, but it kept Mr Moriya if not quiet, then at an acceptable volume of terrified hysteria.

She practised in her cabin, sheets taped (folded neatly) over one blank wall to get the acoustics right. Practised for hours, eyes closed, hugging the warm wood of the instrument, lost in it, so that sometimes she would start playing in the afternoon and when she opened her eyes it would be dark outside the cabin portholes, and she would sit there in the darkness, blinking and feeling foolish, back and arms sore with that rewarding ache of something worthwhile bought at the expense of effort. The steward must have mentioned the sheets taped to the wall, because the deck officer told her they had found some cork tiles in a store; could they fix those to the offending bulkhead? Uncertain whether they would be insulted if she said no, she let them. It was done in a day; she asked them not to varnish the cork. The cello sounded better indeed, the last harshness of the cabin gone. She tried to listen to herself in a way she hadn't since her earliest days, with Mr Kawamitsu, and recorded her practice sessions on her old DAT Walkman, and thought — though she would never have admitted it to anybody — that she had never played better.

She was sad to leave the Gassam Maru , but had made no special friends, so would not miss anybody particularly. The voyage had been enjoyable in itself, and its ending was as much a part of it as any other, so the sadness was not deep, and almost satisfying. She boarded the Nakodo , another Yotsubashi Line vessel, though this time a car transporter chartered to carry Nissan limos destined for the North American market. She found the Nakodo busier, more cosmopolitan and more interesting than the Gassam; she settled in there quickly as well. Her cabin was larger and woodlined, and the cello sounded good in its warmth.

She stood at the bows of the ship sometimes, a little self-conscious that they'd be watching her from the bridge, but she stood there all the same, like Garbo in Queen Christina but with her hair blowing in the right direction, and looked out — into the creamy blue emptiness of the western Pacific, heading east-south-east for the isthmus of Panama, and smiled into the tropic wind.

Like Philippe's ship, the Nakodo was under the command of its mate. First Officer Endo sat at the head of the table, Hisako to his right, Mr Mandamus across from her. Broekman would sit beside the Egyptian, Second Officer Hoashi on Hisako's other side. Next to him was Steve Orrick, a student from Cal Tech who'd begged a lift on the Nadia in Panama City; he'd been trying to get out of the city for weeks and the Nadia's American captain had taken pity on him, after radioing for permission from the ship's owners. When it became clear the ships were going to be staying in Gatún lake for some time, Orrick had offered to pay for his keep by helping out with whatever he could; at the moment he was on loan to the Nakodo , helping to paint her. He was tall, fair-haired, awkward, and built like an Olympic swimmer. Hisako found the young American a strain to talk to.

It was a Western cuisine night; knives and forks graced the brilliant white starched tablecloth. The predictable rotation of meals had become one of the most intense of the rituals practised on the three trapped ships; each vessel had its own rhythm, and each played host to the officers and guests of the other two ships on a regular basis, sometimes with the addition of people from Gatún; shipping agents, canal officials, occasionally somebody from the consulates in Rainbow City or Colón. Tomorrow night they would all troop over to the Nadia for a dance and a native feast, eating local for a change. Last night on Le Cercle , with Lekkas's Greek banquet, had been a break in the cycle, which she and Philippe had appreciated, but still the pattern of meals, drinks parties, dances and other social occasions helped to fill the time, while they waited for the war to run its course. Stagnant in the stalemate, only this ritualised consumption seemed to make much sense or offer a tangible link to the outside world. Hisako wondered if she still smelled of garlic.