The Lost Sailors Read Online Free PDF Page A

world. Are you following me?”
    â€œOh, yes, completely.”
    â€œI think that’s what I’d like to have been. A mapmaker, or a geographer.”
    â€œInstead, you went to sea.”
    â€œIt was the only thing I considered. Though, if you think about it, a sailor is the same thing. Every time we sail, we redraw the map of the world. That’s what I think, anyway.”
    Diamantis stood up, and Abdul did the same. He was fascinated by what Diamantis had been saying. Listening to him, he had almost immediately felt like a child. Like Diamantis with his father.
    â€œSo, your father was in China in ’54?”
    â€œYes, on board a rusty old freighter. Worse than this one. Antiquated, run-down, didn’t even have radar. I never found out what its name was. My father called it the
Cockroach
. One of those old tubs that had been sold off for scrap and then picked up cheap by a Greek shipowner in Rotterdam and pressed into service for a few more years. The sailors took their lives in their hands. But they had to earn a crust. The
Cockroach
was carrying arms. By the time they got to Shantou, the Communists had seized power. The port had been bombed, there was nothing left. Just a few opium dens.”
    â€œWhat did they do with the arms? Did they hand them over to the Communists?”
    â€œI have no idea. In any case, I don’t think it changed the course of history all that much. Why?”
    â€œNothing. Just curious.”
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œIt’s just that I’ve often wondered if it isn’t the unimportant things that changed the course of history.”
    â€œHistory, maybe. Not its course.”
    Â 
    Night had fallen. The freighter was shrouded in darkness. The two men had started making an inventory of their provisions. Twenty-two pounds of spaghetti, and a similar quantity of rice. Seventeen pounds of red kidney beans. Six eighteen-ounce cans of chickpeas. Eight cans of mackerel, twelve of sardines in oil. Three eighteen-ounce jars of instant coffee, a can of black tea, a can of Breton biscuits. Melba toast, loose, in a big aluminum tub. A can of oil, three-quarters full. Salt, pepper. Half a demijohn of wine. Four small cans of beer and a little whisky. And two and a half gallons of drinking water.
    â€œWe’re not living in luxury,” Abdul had joked, “but we’re not poor either.”
    They agreed to make spaghetti and use the one remaining can of tomato puree. They ate in silence. The way they did when they were at sea. They sat in the same places they had occupied since they’d left La Spezia, making the same gestures, striking the same poses, staring in the same way into the distance, not thinking, just letting the images follow one another in their heads, however illogically.
    Abdul broke the silence. Because he couldn’t reconstruct Cephea’s face in his head. He could see her face, but not in detail. The roundness of the cheeks, the delicacy of the chin, the softness of the forehead. He’d have liked to see her smile, and to touch that smile with his fingertips. He would have liked to kiss her eyelids and see her eyes open, black and sparkling . . .
    â€œDo you think there’s a storm brewing?”
    Diamantis looked up, then shrugged.
    â€œBy the way,” Abdul said, “the men send their regards. They were hoping to see you one last time, but . . . You left early this morning.”
    â€œDid it go well?”
    â€œYes. The only problem was with Ousbene. The idiot’s papers weren’t in order. He had to go to the prefecture to get a residence permit.”
    â€œWhat are they all doing?”
    â€œNo idea. Except for Ousbene. He wanted to go back to La Spezia. He has a cousin there. He says he’ll find another boat. And Nedim. He’s found a truck driver to take him back to Istanbul. For five hundred francs, I think.”
    â€œDid you think I was going to leave?”
    â€œI