David Vann: A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea

The phones lined up near the base of this castle rarely work. I went down the line of them inserting my card and found a working one on the fifth try. I called Amber first. She was running the business from our new, cheap office space in Menlo Park, California, and would have messages and bills and problems for me. Because of the travel, it had been two days since I had checked in.

As it turned out, though, Amber did not have the list of bills together. She promised she would put it together in an e-mail and I’d have it the next morning. She didn’t have any new clients, no trips sold. She hadn’t been doing any call-backs, either. She was somewhat busy with her own life, it seemed, and not at all apologetic about it. She also hadn’t updated the website with any of the new course information or itineraries for our winter offerings in Mexico.

“So any news from any potential lenders?” I asked.

“I talked with John. He’s still going to give us the loan.”

I only had to make it until October, four months away, when John, who was one of my lenders and Amber’s former fiancé, would inherit half of his seven million from his father on his twenty-fifth birthday and give me a loan for $150,000, which would bail me out.

I called Nancy next, a much more pleasant call. Though I had been gone for only two days, I already missed her. We had been together for a year, and I was used to seeing her every day. It was possible we might marry, so I couldn’t help but wonder if it was her future now, too, that might be collapsing.

BEING A FOREIGNER reshapes you. You feel born again into the world. I was no longer a teacher at Stanford, a California resident, a local. I was the captain and owner of a ninety-foot yacht being built by the Turks on the shores of the Aegean. This, combined with the fact that I was on the edge of ruin and under extreme time pressure, was an interesting feeling.

When I walked into the Borda office, Seref at his desk in the back was freshly showered and his hair neatly combed. He wore a polo shirt, shorts, boat mocs, an expensive watch, and sunglasses tucked into the front of his shirt. He was always like this, no matter how busy things were. I always felt like an American slob, and I also felt genuine affection for him. I liked this man. I think he liked me, too, despite the difficulties. I was hoping today would be better than yesterday.

“Good morning, my friend,” he said.

“ Gun ayden ,” I said. Turkish is a completely foreign language, with no cognates. Gun means day , not good .

“Have you had breakfast?” He pointed to an opened white paper package of my favorite Turkish breakfast treat, pastry dough in many layers filled with potatoes cooked in some delicious sauce similar to curry.

“I love these,” I said.

“You are welcome, my friend. Have what you like, and then we will talk.”

Turks and Europeans and maybe all other people in the world are better than Americans about not polluting every moment with business. They take pauses, no matter what’s going on. In the States, I would have been chewing and talking at the same time, being efficient, but I appreciated that here I could take a few minutes to enjoy my breakfast.

The other people in Seref’s office were friendly. The travel arrangements for my guests would be arranged by Ugur, who introduced himself. His name was difficult for me to pronounce, like ooh-er but with something else going on with the g . He was in his mid-thirties, balding, and cheery.

“How’s business this summer?” I asked him while I ate my breakfast, breaking the rule without even thinking.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “Really terrible. This Ocalan problem is a big problem for Turkey.”

“It’s been going on since 1984 or 1985, right?”

“Yes, many years, but now they catch him. Your government and Israel government help. I am Kurdish, but I would like to kill this man. He end all business. This summer finished.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was a sensitive subject, and I didn’t know much about it. I had done some research online, since the capture of Ocalan was screwing up sales for my charters and people were asking me about him, and from everything I could find, it seemed he was a butcher and a criminal, not a political leader deserving any sympathy. It was true the Turks had been barbaric to the Kurds, but Ocalan wasn’t just leading his people out of this oppression. He was trafficking in arms and drugs, and he was slaughtering a lot of innocent people, including Kurds. He had murdered Kurdish teachers in eastern Turkey, for instance, because they were teaching Turkish to Kurdish children. A desire to preserve his language and culture was laudable, but murdering teachers made me think he should swing. The best option, of course, was what the Turkish government was doing, which was to keep him behind bars and never kill him, so they had a hostage to help prevent further terrorism by Ocalan’s organization. I wasn’t going to say any of this out loud in Turkey, however, because it was possible I was wrong, and it might not matter whether I was wrong or right. Someone might take offense regardless. “Huh,” I finally said. That seemed noncommittal enough. Just another American who didn’t read the news.

“Really I would like to kill him,” Ugur said.

I wiped my hands on a napkin and nodded to Seref. “Well, it’s nice meeting you,” I said to Ugur.

“Nice to meet you,” he said.

I sat down opposite Seref, and he opened a folder that had printouts of e-mails from me, faxed plans for the electrical system, receipts, etc.

“Now, we need another transfer,” Seref said. “I make these men wait, because I can. I know them many years. But they need to have their money now. Also, we need much equipment. We need tiles for the bathrooms, sinks, some marble for the galley, all the cushions need to be made now. The cushions we make with a good friend of mine, he say he begins right away, but still is necessary two or three weeks. This boat take a lot of cushions. Seventeen beds, one sitting area inside, five big sitting areas outside.” Seref puffed his cheeks a bit. “This is many things. And many other things, too. Everything for the galley, we need to buy this. I know a place here in Bodrum. And the floors. We have to decide wood or carpet.”

“I want wood,” I said. “Carpet gets wet and mildews.”

“But what type of wood? Wood is expensive, it takes time.”

“I know,” I said. “But I really don’t want carpet, as I said before, when we talked last summer.”

“Okay.” He nodded his head.

We went through many other items, from pots and pans to blankets and anchors. A boat is made up of literally thousands of items, most of them special-purpose or oddly shaped. We still had pumps to get, plumbing and electrical decisions to make, the layout of the main salon to design. It was truly overwhelming. If I’d had more money and hadn’t had any charters scheduled for that summer, it wouldn’t have been difficult. But on a tight budget and time schedule, it was.

“We go,” Seref finally said, and we drove out to Icmeler, to the boat. This would become our daily routine. I’d meet Seref in his office for breakfast and talk about finances and construction plans, then we’d drive out to the boat to discuss issues and oversee the work, then we’d run errands around town, trying to buy the various things we needed, then back to the boat to deal with more problems. In the evening, I’d go to the phones and Internet cafés to get loans and sell trips and try to hold my business together.

At the boat that day, I met the crew. Ercan (pronounced Air-John ) I had met before. He was strong, about my height, same age (thirty-two), his head nearly shaved. He had a reputation for being a hard worker and a competent captain. The cook, Muhsin, was in his forties. He was a big guy who wore overalls and a baseball cap and smoked even more than the others, if that was possible. He spoke English fairly well and would be my interpreter for the other two crew. The sailor was Baresh, only seventeen years old. He was a kid. Small and wiry, handsome. He was friendly but didn’t speak any English. Seref said he was taking the kid on as a favor to his mother, a family friend, but he thought Baresh would be good crew.