Per Petterson - I Refuse

‘Come on, and I’ll show you to your cabin.’

It wasn’t his job, but there was something about her, and he showed her the way and let her go down the stairs first, so he wouldn’t have her eyes on his back, that was his idea. It was four decks down, the lowest rung of the ladder, but you can probably work your way up a deck or two, he said with a smile as he opened the door and let her into the tiny room.

‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, ‘this is perfect, it suits me perfectly, I don’t want anything more than this, thank you very much.’

‘Have a lie-down and I’ll see you again in an hour. You got here at the last minute, we’re slipping moorings now.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘This very second,’ he said.

By Rotterdam she could master most of it. Working out of the kitchen she could soon dart through the halls, on her sea legs, up and down the long corridors and a tray in her hands with pitchers and plates to the mess for officers only and higher up to the worn-down splendour of the captain’s lounge, or the other way around, of course, to the captain first, to serve the most delicious meals the chef had concocted in the galley. He was a great guy, a wizard, and they became friends, or at least a team, and she didn’t mind the job at all. She would have done almost anything they might have put her to.

But when they docked in Genova, she began to feel ill. She felt it in her toes first, and then in her fingertips, they went numb, they lost all sensation, and in Port Said she kept dropping things on the floor. On their way through the Suez Canal she kicked table legs and chairs and didn’t even notice, and soon it became hard to manoeuvre her own body across a room, down the stairs, so incredibly difficult to wind her way through the narrow galley with the casseroles in her hands, filled to the brim with steaming hot food, pitching, slopping against the sides like lava, and a warm wind drove them through the canal, past Sharm el-Sheikh with the sharks in the sea along the beaches, and the waves rose high and carried them across the Red Sea and lifted them south down the Yemen coast and out through the Bay of Aden. She had difficulty breathing, and the steward said, for Christ’s sake, get yourself into bed, and she did. She went to bed, and there she lay in her cabin four decks down gasping for breath in the heaving bunk, in the half-dark and heat in the dim light of a bedside lamp. No one had told the first mate what was going on, they covered for her, they lied, but the steward was annoyed, he felt desperate, she had only just come on board, only a fortnight had passed since they’d left Oslo, and now she was ill already. She was convinced she was going to die, and you couldn’t blame her, he felt sorry for her, she was good-looking, but she didn’t know what was happening. Nor did he. He didn’t have a clue. They would have to find a decent doctor in the next port, he would have to inform the first mate, but he stalled for as long as he could. The first mate would be furious, he would give him hell, and then he had to tell him, and the first mate was furious and shouted, why the hell did you sign her on in the first place, but the steward said, strictly speaking, it wasn’t me who did that, rubbish, the first mate shouted, she’s good-looking, what the hell can be wrong with her, she’s young, and the steward said he didn’t know, and nor did anyone else, she just lay in bed trembling and groaning and wheezing, he said, and I guess she doesn’t look that good any more. To tell you the truth.

Outside Djibouti she started crying, and she cried all the way round the Horn of Africa, I don’t want to, she cried, I can’t breathe. There were forty-five men on board and most of them made long detours round the stairs and the corridors to avoid her cabin and the red-hot door that could burst into flames at any moment, and whenever they had to go that way, they covered their ears. She made them nervous, anxious, and it came to them that one day life would just stop, any day it could, and everything they had ever known and knew anything about would fade and be gone, and then, the instant before all hope was lost, they would cry in the way she was crying and maybe it would sound just as it did in there, inside her cabin, and they thought, oh, what the fuck did he let a woman on board for, how could he have been so stupid, we can’t sleep at night.

The steward counted the days and steeled himself and let time slip by until they arrived in Mogadishu, where they were docking anyway to load and unload, and she was worn out but still alive beneath the hammering sun of Africa as they glided quietly inside the long, thin arm of the mole and turned slowly and docked in the new harbour in the west of the city with the white, pink and acid-green ancient buildings and the ancient wall alongside the lido and the rows of palm trees, like the backdrop to a film.

They took her with them through the town, almost dragging her across the quay, up past the church with its two towers a mere stone’s throw from the minaret where two girls on a scooter almost knocked them over as they supported, or rather carried her between them, but it was too far, they would have to flag down a car, why on earth were they walking her like this. And then a car did stop, and the driver looked at Fru Berggren and nodded and spoke to them in Arabic first, and then in Italian, and the steward had some Italian and explained to the dark, handsome young man where they were going, to Ospedalka wee , that’s what it was called.

And they were in a hurry now, the young man could see that, and he gave it all he had, the only thing missing was the flashing blue light, they couldn’t have asked for more, but on the way there, they were held up at a crossroads, total gridlock, no way out, and they sat there waiting for the policeman at the heart of the crossing to let them pass, and he had his stylish green beret on, and from all quarters came yesterday’s cars, little cars, big cars and scooter taxis, Simcas and Fiats, motorbikes and more scooters, and everything was on the move, and the wind blew through the palms and rustled the leaves and the trunks were swaying, and the policeman stood straight as a pole in his fluttering shorts on his little platform with the white gloves up to his armpits, waving his arms like Toscanini must have waved his, if any of them knew who Toscanini was, and the steward did.

And above the door to the hospital, it really said, Ospedalka wee , arched and in white, and beside it Somalia é la mia patria , painted in large, blue letters on a wall.

The doctor wasn’t a Somali, he was white, he was from Aalborg in Denmark and must have studied at the University of Copenhagen, at the Faculty of Medicine there, a reassuring fact, the steward thought, if indeed it was a fact, but this doctor from Aalborg couldn’t find anything wrong with her. She cried and cried, and he asked her, why are you crying, are you in pain, I don’t know, she said, I don’t know why I’m crying, and there was nothing wrong with her that he could find, not with the expertise and equipment at his disposal, it’s really mysterious, he said, and jabbed a needle into her foot, does that hurt, he said, what, she said, does what hurt, and he shook his head and said, well, I’ll be damned if I know what’s wrong.

And then back the same way. Straight through town to the ship in a car they flagged down, an East European one this time, a Wartburg, and what was a Wartburg doing here, now, and they couldn’t very well leave her behind in this place, not in Mogadishu, no, no, so then it was up and across the deck and one man holding each arm hurrying down the companionway to her cabin. And then they cast off, hauled in the hawsers and coiled them flat, and a bulky tugboat pulled them out of the harbour in one long arc, and would you believe it, only two mornings later, up she came from the depths and into the galley, handling the same casseroles, the same pans and filling the same trays with breakfast and darting into the corridor on her way to the mess for officers only, as though she’d had a shift off and was rested now and ready to resume where she had left off.