Tom McCarthy: C

In the middle of the second night away from port, Dr. Martinov, an Island and Far East Line company doctor of some six years’ standing (previously of the Chakdina and, before that, the Aurora), is summoned from his cabin to attend to a sick passenger. He finds the young man delirious, bathed in sweat and subject to a temperature so high as to be (in his opinion) unsurvivable. Quinine would be of little help: it’s not malaria that’s causing the fever, but rather a cyst on the patient’s ankle that’s become so infected that it’s clearly poisoned his whole bloodstream.

“Tourist?” he asks the steward.

“Civil servant,” the other replies. “He was muttering something about rooms being moved around.”

The sick man, roused by these words, tries to speak.

“What’s that?” asks Martinov.

The man, his eyes half-vacant, makes a great effort that results in no more than the word “dumb” issuing from his lips.

“Who’s dumb?” asks Martinov.

The young man concentrates his face again and manages to say, beneath his breath:

“Dummy chamber.”

“Where?” Martinov asks.

“Everywhere,” replies the man. “What’s not?”

“What’s not what? Do you have a next of kin?”

The young man’s eyes roll upwards and his face wrinkles into what looks like a smile. A kind of growl rises from his throat; he concentrates his facial muscles again, and manages to say:

“It came through.”

“Through what?”

“Through me.”

“What did?”

“The call: I’m being called.”

Dr. Martinov turns to the steward and instructs him:

“Go to the wireless room and ask them if anything’s come in for him.”

The steward leaves the cabin. While he waits for his return, Martinov pulls a chair up by the berth, and sits watching the young man’s face. He’s watched a lot of people die, but it’s a little different each time. This man is struggling with something. Although his eyes are growing more and more empty and listless with every passing minute, the jaw seems rigidly determined, held in firm position; the lips, too, are taut and sculpted, as though trying to shape more words. With each outward breath, they form a small, thin parting, which makes the exhalation sound as a long, drawn-out sssssss; then, at each breath’s end, after the failing lungs have emptied themselves but before they’ve thrown their engines into reverse and started the slow process of replenishing themselves again-in the short hiatus between exhaling and inhaling, the man’s throat contracts three or four times in quick succession, making a repeated clicking sound, a set of quick-fire c-c-c-c’s. It does this every time, with a strange regularity: “sssssss, c-c-c-c; sssssss, c-c-c-c; sssssss, c-c-c-c…”

The wireless room is one deck down. It has two clocks on the wall: one showing Cairo time, one London. Beneath these, thin electric cables trail across the room’s wooden panels, one leading to a lamp, another to a bell. A man sits below the wires with headphones on, facing the wall. To his right is a stack of paper and a stamp; to the right of these, nailed to the wall, a basket; above the basket, widening as it runs up to the ceiling, hangs a speaking tube. The room has no windows. The operator doesn’t turn around as, in response to the steward’s enquiry as to whether any telegrams have arrived for an S. Carrefax, he flicks through the basket and answers in the negative.

The steward leaves. As he passes the kitchen door on his way back to the stairs a Sudanese cook comes out and tips scraps from a bucket over the Borromeo’s stern. The steward pauses and watches the scraps bobbing in the churned-up water for a while. The moon’s gone: only the ship’s electric glow illuminates the wake, two white lines running backwards into darkness. When the stretch in which the scraps are bobbing fades from view, the steward turns away towards the staircase. The wake itself remains, etched out across the water’s surface; then it fades as well, although no one is there to see it go.

Many thanks to:

Louise Stern, for her animated lectures on deaf education; Jane Lewty, for her insights into radio and modernism; Penny McCarthy, for Spenserian guidance; Cathie Shipton, for chemical advice; Sam Crosfield, for his horticultural expertise; Aleksander Kolkowski, who knows everything there is to know about early recording equipment; Markéta Baéková, for finding me a perfect spa town; Edward Bottoms, for helping to disinter the Architectural Association’s history; Steven Connor, for his reading list on séances; Marko Daniel, for images of Arsenura armida and Marconi operators’ cabins; Charles Burney, for Egyptological wisdom; Alex Bowler, for his sharp line-editing; Dan Franklin, for his confidence; Marty Asher and Sonny Mehta, for their commitment; and Melanie Jackson and Jonny Pegg, for their untiring support.