Pescador's Wake (26 page)

Carlos Sánchez is on the Fremantle docks, watching as the Australian they call Cactus carves part of the
Pescador
's confiscated catch into thick fillets for the launch of his new diving and charter-boat business, ‘Pirate Dives Down Under'. God knows what it'll taste like, Carlos thinks, after being frozen for so long. It's nearly one year since he arrived, under escort, in Fremantle. Tomorrow he will fly home, just in time to see his son turn one.

He watches as the ruddy-faced Australian arranges the white-fleshed fillets on a portable barbecue on the dock, with the impounded boat as a backdrop, for the occasion. The fish is seared quickly on both sides, and a woman called Connie is being kept busy dousing the cooked fish in lemon juice. Wafts of scorched seafood sail in the warm Fremantle air, whetting the appetites of the waiting media scrum.

Television cameras are filming a whole toothfish, the one they had kept for Migiliaro's wall trophy. It seems the Australian liked the boat-owner's idea and has had the two-metre specimen preserved and mounted onto a piece of polished jarrah. Carlos reads the words painted in gold lettering on the timber above the fish:

OCTOBER 6, 2002

AFTER A TWENTY-DAY HOT PURSUIT ON THE SOUTHERN OCEAN.—THE LONGEST SEA CHASE IN MARITIME HISTORY—

[S
ENIOR APPREHENDING CREW
: C
APTAIN
D
AVE
B
ATES
, M
R
H
ARRY
P
ERDMAN AND
M
R
J
ACK
‘C
ACTUS
' E
VERETT
]

Carlos has already answered a few questions for the media, at Cactus's request. The Australian paid him three hundred dollars just to turn up. Now it's Cactus's turn in front of the cameras.

‘Accordin' to our young fisheries compliance officer,' Cactus says to one of the reporters within Carlos's hearing, ‘she's probably thirty-five or forty years old and never swam more than twenty nautical miles from her subantarctic home. And now, she's clocked over eight thousand nautical miles, most of it in that boat's freezer,' Cactus points at the
Pescador
behind him, ‘just so we could mount 'er on a piece of wood for you fellas to film!'

‘So, have I got this right?' the female journalist asks. ‘They were caught in Australian waters without authority, so the Australian government are within their rights to forfeit the catch and sink the boat. But because no one could prove that the crew were actually fishing at the time, they got off?'

‘That's about the size of it, lovey,' Cactus says, his eyes on her tight skirt as she makes notes.

‘What time is the boat being sunk?' another journalist asks, taking his mobile phone from his jacket pocket.

‘Ten minutes or so,' Cactus replies. ‘Get those cameras rollin'.'

When the news goes to air that night, Carlos Sánchez is back in the detention house. Just yesterday his passport had been returned, and he was offered a hotel room, but it seemed ridiculous to change his accommodation for just one night.

He sees a close-up of the
Pescador
on the screen and calls out to Manuel, who had opted not to join him at the docks, to come and see. Cactus is being interviewed and Carlos shakes his head when the Australian talks up his plans to use the
Pescador
as a dive site, the star attraction of his new business.

‘It's such a waste!' Carlos says, as images of the
Pescador,
still afloat, fill the TV screen. Only a few hours ago, he had been there to watch her go down.

‘It's not our problem any more,' Manuel says. ‘You should just be pleased we got off. Eduardo must be looking out for us.'

Carlos tilts his head to the side as if briefly entertaining the possibility, but he doesn't take his eyes off the television.
‘You were right not to admit anything.' Out of the corner of his eye he sees Manuel slowly nodding, and knows he'll be thanking his lucky stars that he also escaped charge over Dmitri's death. If the Uruguayan government hadn't believed the crew's claims that Manuel had shot the Russian in self-defence, the Spaniard could have been jailed for murder. ‘I suspect young José's going to get what he deserves, though,' Carlos adds recalling how the Peruvian teenager had wept like a baby when he admitted to police that he had shot Roberto Cruz without provocation.

He runs his hand over Eduardo's logbook, which is resting on his lap. The Australian Federal Police gave it to him, just yesterday, after the trial, saying that it contained nothing of interest to them. Both men fix their eyes on the image of the
Pescador
on television as the countdown starts.

‘Ten, nine, eight…'

Carlos saw the boat go down before his eyes, heard her last sigh, yet it still doesn't seem real. He remembers the dank smell of the wheelhouse and can picture what it would be like to be looking out from the helm. How could they destroy the boat that served them so well, carrying them safely through the world's most treacherous seas? She even survived the ice, something she was not built for. The
Pescador
was just the sort of boat that he and Eduardo had hoped to own themselves one day.

‘Three, two, one…'

The explosion goes off midship, and tips the boat bow up,
Titanic
-style, before sinking her.

Manuel turns off the television and goes to bed without another word. Carlos opens Eduardo's logbook at the first page and starts to read. What seem like obscure, unrelated facts—about fish, the ocean, birds and whales—Eduardo has captured in his own voice, weaving them into his personal observations about the sea. He reads four pages of the neat, small print before closing his eyes.

‘Let her sink.' Eduardo's voice invades the dream. ‘She's cursed. She can take her bad luck with her. Spare the fish.' The logbook begins to slide off Carlos's lap, and he dreams that it is Eduardo falling overboard. Half awake, he reaches quickly for the book as if he is once more reaching for his friend. He holds it tight, as he wished he had held Eduardo, before letting the dream return and take hold. He thinks of the other lives lost: of Roberto Cruz on his way back to Spain for a home burial, and of Dmitri, who he could, so easily, have fed without regret to the sea. He sees a toothfish, old and pierced by hooks, picking up the Russian's bones – scavenged bare by bizarre life forms at the base of the ocean – and scattering them across the abyssal plains aided by deep-ocean currents. Very occasionally a toothfish will leave its subantarctic birthplace and travel between hemispheres. Carlos imagines such a fish carrying one of Dmitri's bones for thousands of nautical miles before dropping it
somewhere north of the Equator. Eduardo re-enters the dream. This time he appears in the wheelhouse of the sunken
Pescador,
his new home. The first mate is happy in these waters off the west coast of Australia. They are warmer and more hospitable than those of the subantarctic, and he spends his time tending colourful reefs. When divers visit, they meet his ghost as it moves around the ship. He warns them against taking too many fish.

The logbook falls off Carlos's lap and onto the floor, waking him. It opens at a page he hasn't yet read. He picks it up and notices that the entries have been written in a different, more cursive, hand, but it is still recognisably Eduardo's writing. He reads words of love and longing. So, I was right, Carlos thinks, remembering the soulful expression on Eduardo's face when he interrupted him writing in his log. No wonder Eduardo had slammed the book shut. In addition to recording facts about the sea, the first mate had used the logbook to open his heart. Carlos finds himself smiling. When he had suggested that Eduardo had been composing love letters to Virginia, his friend had denied it.

Carlos feels guilty for invading his friend's privacy, but cannot prevent himself from reading on. This is a side of Eduardo that he rarely saw. It is as though his best friend is whispering in his ear.

He turns the page, the last page Eduardo had written on, and reads the entry:

She was so beautiful that day, more beautiful even than when we first met. Her skin, softer than I remember it when we were teenagers, her hair still like silk. I'll never forget the way her dress, dotted with red flowers, fell from her shoulders.

Carlos stops breathing.

He walks across to the photograph, now in a eucalypt frame, of Julia in that dress. How many times did he look at this picture taped to the wheelhouse wall with Eduardo by his side? How could he not have realised what had been going on? His mind flies back in time to the beach at La Paloma. To the holidays they all spent there together. It had started then. In the photograph he sees the warmth—the love—in his wife's eyes. He takes the picture out of its frame and turns it over. ‘
For Julia.'
It is the same handwriting that Eduardo reserved for his most personal logbook entries. Carlos takes hold of the printout, also framed, of little Eduardo with his bent ear. Perhaps part of him has known all along.

The feeling that rises inside him he can't define. If it is betrayal, it hurts less than he imagined. If it is anger, he is not sure who to punish. His best friend is dead and Julia has suffered enough. Whatever has happened between them is over. And, Carlos knows, it can't be undone.

He decides, at that moment, never to think of this again. He will not mention it to another living soul. Not even to
Julia. Eduardo had always hoped for a son to carry on the fishing tradition when he was gone. That boy needs a father.

Carlos takes a long breath as vast as the ocean.

When he is back home in Montevideo next week, he will let Migiliaro know that he has kept all his original correspondences telling him where to fish, including the owner's explicit order to input false data into the vessel monitoring system when fishing in the waters off Heard Island. He will tell him that unless he agrees to certain conditions he will send the information to the authorities in both Australia and Uruguay. Uruguayan Fisheries would then be obliged, under international law, to cancel all of Migiliaro's fishing permits. The conditions, Carlos will insist, are that he be given a good boat, a licence to fish and money in the bank, US$250,000, half of which he will give to Virginia.

Carlos's eyes fall again on Eduardo's logbook as if he is seeing into the soul of the first mate himself. He promises to fish legally, within the limits, just as Eduardo had dreamed of fishing. And, if there is still a toothfish fishery in two decades' time, he promises to give the little boy at home in Julia's arms the option of continuing in his father's footsteps. Perhaps then Eduardo will stop haunting his dreams.