The Water-Breather. Ben Faccini
us. I quickly stick my head in the pillow and think of something else. Then I awake with the sound of waves again and stare into the bunks. Pado is grinding his teeth, his jaw twitching. Everyone is asleep, even Ama! I struggle out of bed and check, up close. I stand there looking at her. Her nostrils are moving softly. There is a faint band of light across her cheek from the torch she is still clutching in her hand. I study the fine lines under her eyes which, she says, grow a little deeper every night she can’t sleep. I watch the hem of the sheet flutter slightly with her breath. I can’t believe it. She really is asleep! I delve into Pado’s bag. I get his camera and position myself near the door. The flash goes off and Ama sits bolt upright. She knocks her head on the bunk above and shouts for the light. I scramble for my bed.
Ama is screeching: ‘You idiot, espèce de crétin!’ and I’m crying because she has to be really angry to shout at me in French, even if I was trying to help her by proving that she might have been asleep. Everyone is awake now and telling me I’m stupid. Ama looks weary. Maybe she wasn’t sleeping after all. Maybe she’s never slept. Not ever. Closing your eyes doesn’t mean anything. That’s only resting, but the mind goes on and on, pleading for a second, just a second of sleep, to soothe the swelling of continual waking and thoughts. I lay my head against the sheet and crease its whiteness with my toes.
The night seems interminable now with the clinking of chains and the rush of sea under the boat. People are walking and staggering along the corridors about us. Occasionally there’s a shout as my eyes are shutting or a lazily-held bag knocks against the walls. Between three and four o’clock in the morning, someone tries our door by mistake. The handle jumps up and down, followed by, ‘Shit, it’s the next deck up!’ These are enough words to wake me completely. I shake, following the shuddering movement of the carpet-covered ceiling. I’m sure I heard a thundering wave charge against the ship. I can feel it, rising up above the others, ready to slap us out of the water. I get up and open the door a little. There’s no one in sight. I shut it again quickly. Maybe they’ve already sounded the alarm? In the half-light of the cabin, I look at the evacuation instructions on the back of the door. All the figures are wearing life jackets. Where are ours? I peer under the bunk. I can’t see them anywhere. I finally spot a bundle of material tucked away by the base of the bunk ladder. If I stretch too far though, I’ll wake up Pado and he’ll make me get back into bed and then no one will hear the alarm or have time to get out of the cabin as the waves turn us over. Why did I think that? My heart drums in my throat, pushing at my head. My mind inflates with television and newspaper disaster images, stories of shipwrecks, corpses floating in the sea and boats smashed against rocks with the spray of the water dancing in the air. I watch the light from the corridor under the door. I imagine the water seeping in. A drop at first, then two, then a stream and then a wave that bursts through doors and comes bellowing down the corridors and stairwells. I see the ship filling with water as we struggle to reach our life jackets and Pado yelling and Ama yanking Giulio from the floor with the sea currents curling over us.
‘We can’t sink. The ferry mustn’t sink.’ I start saying it, slowly, continuously.
I’m thinking of Grand Maurice and how the water of the lake must have pushed open his mouth, poured between his teeth and flooded through his body down under the reeds. He lay at the bottom of the lake for a week, with his eyes and ears and nose clogged with water, before they found him. I know that if I’d been fishing with him, it wouldn’t have happened. He wouldn’t have slipped in the water. He couldn’t have.
‘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?’
‘…