Jon Bilbao - Still the Same Man

“What explosion?” interjected Joanes. “You told me it was a diving accident.”

“It was both,” hastened the professor. “A diving accident and an explosion. I don’t know the details. You see why I have to speak to my son, or with someone who knows something?”

Very slowly, a smile was spreading across Joanes’s face.

“What is it?” asked the professor, clearly offended.

“You’re lying to me.”

“Excuse me?”

“None of this is true. This story about your son in Egypt, with the explosions and all the rest, it’s not true.”

The professor turned red.

“You’re doing it again,” Joanes continued. “You’re lying to me. I don’t know why, but you are. Who knows why you want my phone. You’re a liar, a manipulator. You always have been. For as long as I’ve known you. A manipulator,” he repeated.

“How dare you!”

Joanes shook his head, still smiling.

“I should never have given you the time of day. Not now, not then.”

And with that, he walked off.

“Come back here! Don’t be a fool!”

“Do not call me a fool!” answered Joanes, who turned, grabbed the professor by his shirtfront, and began to shake him.

The Mexican guests in the hallway started shouting, and two of them ran over to pull the men apart. The hotel owner followed as fast as his lame leg would carry him.

“Enough already! I want you out of my house, now! Both of you!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” replied the professor. “My wife isn’t well.”

Three of the hotel owner’s relatives stepped forward. One of them was well over six feet tall. He wore a sleeveless shirt, and you could see his muscly, heavily tattooed arms and shoulders plainly. He was holding a beer can in his hand, flexing his arm to show off his biceps.

“What’s the problem, man? Didn’t you hear my uncle?”

The hotel owner held up his arm, calling for calm.

“You have to go,” he insisted.

“But, my wife. .” began the professor, clearly worried.

“What’s wrong, old man?” Joanes cut in. “You scared? It’s just a little storm.”

The professor’s cheeks went red again.

“If you’re considering staying,” continued Joanes, “remember you don’t have any money to pay for the room. You spent it all trying to get ahold of your son. The one who had an accident.”

The hotel owner accompanied Joanes to the storeroom, where he handed him a kerosene lamp, a box of matches, three blankets that had been darned and re-darned innumerable times and gave off a thick stench of damp, three bottles of water, and something to eat.

“That’ll keep you going till tomorrow morning.”

Joanes felt the weight of the lamp.

“It’s half empty.”

The hotel owner scratched his lame leg and shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s all there is.”

“Right, that’s all there is,” said Joanes, who gave the owner a few pesos in exchange for the bundle of things.

“And the money for the room.”

“Don’t even think about it.”

The hotel owner held his gaze but in the end let it go.

The lobby was heaving. Most of the guests had congregated there to witness their departure. The professor turned up, pushing his wife in her wheelchair. Far from seeming shocked or worried, she was smiling a kind of resigned smile. When she reached Joanes’s side, she told him, “I knew it would come to this.”

One of the Mexican women offered her a waterproof poncho. The professor’s wife looked at her suspiciously but then took it, muttering a few words of thanks.

“You’re going to need this,” the hotel owner told Joanes, handing him a flashlight. “You should head out first. Bring the car around so it’ll be easier for them to. . you know.”

He pointed to the wheelchair.

Joanes nodded and put his rain jacket over his head and shoulders. The hotel owner went and stood by the door. When Joanes gave him the sign, the hotel owner unbolted the door and opened it. The wind and slashing rain flew straight into the lobby, driving back the crowd. Within seconds, the floor was plastered with water, leaves, and branches.

“Go!” bellowed the hotel owner.

Joanes hesitated, taken aback by the howling of the storm. Then, clutching his backpack to his body, he dipped his head and launched himself into the darkness.

The hotel owner needed the help of one of his relatives to close the door. Then all eyes turned on the professor, who stared back at them without the slightest hint of emotion.

He made for the car as fast as he could. The front lawn had turned into a quagmire. The beam of the flashlight barely penetrated the darkness.

Once inside the car, he sat motionless behind the wheel, catching his breath. It was as if invisible hands were hurling buckets of water at the windshield. He said to himself that this wasn’t exactly a hurricane. Just a storm. And it would weaken in strength as it traveled north.

He also told himself that it would be pretty easy to bolt right then and there, without the professor. He only had to start the engine and go. They’d look after the man and his wife at the hotel.

He started the car. As he turned on the headlights, he saw, just beyond the lawn, the thick undergrowth thrashing about like a choppy ocean.

The current wasn’t as strong at the guide had led them to believe, but even so, the professor’s son didn’t let go of the cable during his descent. He followed the wake of bubbles left by his partner, a few yards ahead of him. Visibility was good. They soon caught sight of the boat wreck. The cable guide was fixed to one of the deck rails. More bubbles, this time emerging out of the hulk’s various orifices, told them there were more divers inside.

The SS Thistlegorm sank on October 6, 1941, in the northern part of the Red Sea, while en route to Alexandria, where it was taking supplies to the allied forces in Egypt. It was spotted by a pair of German bombers who were returning to their base in Crete after completing a mission. The planes were almost out of fuel, so they wasted no time. They launched straight at the boat. The bombs went through the deck and all the way down to the hold, where they exploded, splitting the freighter in two. Nine of the forty-one crew members died in the shipwreck.

The boat was covered with a bulbous layer of rust, corals, and sponges. The professor’s son saw a moray eel emerge from the open mouth of a deck canon, which was now the animal’s fixed abode. On the sandy sea bed, not far from the boat, lay one of the two locomotives that the SS Thistlegorm had been transporting for Egyptian National Railways. It was tempting, but there’d be time for that later.

His partner caught his attention and pointed toward a hatch. The professor’s son nodded. They switched on their flashlights and swam down into the hold.

Everything was brown inside the boat. The beams from the flashlights lit a narrow passageway. What looked like particles suspended in the water proved on closer inspection to be a shoal of tiny fish the same color as the rust on the bulkhead.

The SS Thistlegorm had been carrying a wide array of cargo — rain boots, trucks, armored vehicles, radio equipment, rifles. . In the hold, the floor was covered by a jumbled mess of debris that looked like trash piled up by floodwaters. The two divers moved carefully, so as not to disturb the sediment. They spotted a row of Norton motorcycles leaning one against the other, like books on a shelf. The professor’s son fiddled with his underwater camera to photograph a scorpionfish posing on one of the seats. His partner signaled for them to move on. They swam around the hold for a while and then left again through one of the bomb holes in the hulk. They continued exploring the freighter and taking photos until their air gauges told them it was time to go back.