Ben Faccini - The Water-Breather

‘We mustn’t sink. We can’t sink.’ Over and over again, I trip out the words.

I feel the door quiver a little with the long heavy corridor silence. Is there anyone on the ship? Maybe we are the only ones left as the boat drifts out of control towards the convulsing open sea. Maybe everyone is already jumping onto the lifeboats, scrambling and screaming for help? My head is pumping. I push against the door with my feet. If I hold the door back, we’ll be all right. We’ll be saved.

I’m shivering and I don’t know if it’s the cold or the rush off the top of the waves that are about to come and drown us. I pull a blanket over me. I shove my back hard against the door, my eyes peering down at the gap underneath it, waiting for the trickle of water to begin. My head hurts so much.

Suddenly Ama is stroking my hair. ‘What are you doing there my love?’ she says with bleary eyes.

‘I don’t like my bed,’ I stutter, but then tears well up inside me and I have to say I have a headache. A searing, aching one.

When day breaks, the corridor becomes alive with slamming cabin doors and running children and groggy morning voices. The loudspeaker makes a few announcements about the car deck, the opening times of the shops and immigration requirements. Pado has a shave in the oval basin. He splashes a lotion on his face and the cabin fills with his familiar smell. He carries us off to the restaurant. He guides us across the newly-cleaned, slippery floor.

As we’re grabbing our trays, Giulio tells me: ‘Ama says they’re going to take you to a doctor!’

‘What doctor?’ I gasp.

Giulio steers me behind the breakfast stand where the cornflakes have toppled out of their bowls. ‘Ama told Pado you don’t sleep enough and that’s why you’re always staring into space and getting headaches. I heard her saying it this morning.’

‘What are you two whispering about?’ Pado shouts. ‘We have to hurry. You can talk in the car.’

I’m not hungry. Not now. There’s nothing wrong with me. I saved the ferry from sinking.

The drive back down the ramp is slow. It’s like that coming into England. You have to wait for hours as they check every car and passport. It makes Pado furious. He joins the ‘Nothing to declare’ queue. Ama asks whether that’s wise, but there’s no way he’s budging. Our mother is the only one allowed to talk at customs. Pado is too dark to speak. Ama inherited our grandmother Machance’s Slovenian and Dutch white skin, but she still doesn’t answer the way she should. As we approach the customs checkpoint, Pado rehearses a few lines for Ama to repeat: ‘We’re on a private visit’, ‘No, we only have the allowed limit of alcohol’, ‘I’m a British citizen’. Ama checks her face in the car mirror. She sweeps her hair to one side. She whips on a quick layer of lipstick.

‘Clear answers. Clear and direct,’ Pado stresses. ‘And remember for the French customs, we’re resident in England and for the English customs we’re resident in France. Okay? Did you hear what I said? Hai capito ?

Ama lowers her window.

‘Passports please!’

Ama thrusts out five passports. The officer reads through each one. He comes to Ama’s and opens it to find a long string of floss stuck inside its pages. The floss clings to his fingers and winds itself around the passport cover. ‘Sorry,’ Ama stammers, embarrassed. ‘I don’t know how that got there.’

‘Mrs Maseenou? Messounah? Mishina?’ the officer starts, flicking his hand to free it of floss.

‘Messina!’ Ama corrects him, politely.

‘Italian is it?’

‘The man’s a genius!’ Pado mutters to himself.

‘Where is your place of residence?’ The customs official hands back the passports and waits for an answer.

‘Well, um. It’s … um.’ Ama looks at Pado, unsure, panic crossing her face. Pado glares back at her, eyes wide-open, dumbfounded. ‘Ah! Um, here, England! I mean France, sorry France, yes France,’ Ama strives on.

‘France? You have an Italian car!’

‘No.’

‘No, what?’

‘Yes.’

‘So when were you last in England?’

‘Oh, um … two weeks ago, I think.’

‘Business or pleasure was it?’

‘… um, that’s …’

‘Where are you going now?’ the officer fires quickly.

‘Around,’ Ama makes a wide gesture with her hand.

‘Around where?’

‘How’s the weather been recently? Lovely day for this time of year!’ Ama suddenly tries.

The customs officer looks at her astonished. Giulio asks what’s up. Then the officer starts circling the car with renewed zeal. ‘Great, absolutely fucking great. Thanks for that, Ava!’ Pado huffs. He’s so irritated he flicks through the ferry brochure to keep calm and mumbles, ‘ Stronzo ,’ ‘bastard’ at the customs official, loudly. He hates the way they look at him. He loathes their facetious smiles, the simple voice that explains, in basic English, that this is England and nowhere else.

‘Did you see the way he looked at me?’

Ama tries to ignore Pado’s mounting rage as the customs officer gets more and more curious.

‘Keep quiet, darling. This is not the time to get paranoid.’

She’s struggling to maintain a composed face, but Pado is off: ‘He probably thinks I’m some jumped-up “dago” just off the boat, some peasant looking for work! Well I can tell him and all these bastards that I used to teach in their bloody country, at their bloody universities!’

‘For goodness’ sake, control yourself, Gaspare. Shut up! Please!’ Ama begs.

‘I mean, look at this idiot,’ Pado rages.

We can feel Pado’s raven hair twitch with indignation. He’s no foreigner to this place. He has our mother and she has pale untouched beauty chalked all over her face. We smile to soothe him. His jaw is set in fury. His hands are dancing across his lap, boiling with a desire to wipe this moment away. Ama is edgy. The customs officer looks into the car. Pado can’t smile, not at him. Ama smiles too much, much too much.

‘Could you open up the car please, Madam!’

‘ Figlio di … Fucking …’ Pado growls.

Ama hoists herself out of the car to try and resolve this on her own. The customs officer leans into the boot. He begins lifting wine bottles out. So far he has counted twice the limit. Then he discovers the jars of lungs. Ama blushes, coughs and sniffs. Pado can’t bear it any longer. He’s out of the car too, waving his certificates. He has had enough. On the back seat we shrink into nothing. Giulio curls into a closed, tight ball. Duccio rearranges his maps into separate country piles, making sure the corners meet. I feel myself sliding down, further under the seat. I clench my teeth and wait, trying to help Pado in my thoughts. Ama goes to stop Pado, but his eyeballs are fixed. She stands in front of him, supportive and pleading. It’s going to be all right. She knows he can do it. He’s got to do it.

He’s doing fine, explaining calmly enough, then he says it – the word he can never pronounce – ‘innocent’. It is innocent like ‘inno+scent’ not ‘inno+chent’, we’ve told him a hundred thousand times.

The officer says, ‘Sorry, what?’

Pado raises his voice, ‘Why bother innochent people?’

The officer takes it badly and they’re off.

‘Please follow me, Sir.’

‘Listen …’

‘Kindly do as I say!’

Another officer comes and joins the first. They lead Pado into a room. Ama gets back into the car, crying. She bangs the door shut so hard that we all freeze. She sits holding her head in her hands, then she gently switches on the tape machine for some music, something to take her away from here, from this. Instead of music, the tape is still stuck on Giulio’s joke. His distant voice coughs and laughs. Ama punches the eject button furiously. The tape flies out onto the floor. She picks it up and hurls it onto the top of the dashboard. Giulio fiddles with the biscuit packet beside me, pushing his face up against the glass so no one can see his eyes. Then I hand Ama a biscuit to calm her. She absently takes a bite and throws it out of the window. A seagull snatches it up and deposits a large white dropping on the car in exchange. Pado returns a while later with a heap of clipped receipts.