Pescador's Wake (7 page)

‘He'll be all right. They both will. I'll call you if I hear any more.'

Virginia sniffs and Julia realises she is crying. The laughter in the background has stopped.

‘
Hasta luego
,' Julia says, but the phone is already dead.

‘María, sweetheart; I'm having a lie-down for a moment, all right?'

‘All right,' Marña's voice sings back merrily, unaware of the drama unfolding around her. Julia lowers herself onto the double bed, surrendering her body to the mattress. She thinks of Carlos and aches to be close to him. She imagines that they are lying on their sides, her face nestling into the hairs of his chest and his arms wrapped around her. She tries to recall his scent, but can't capture it. Perhaps she will never again be with him and will be left always trying to remember—forever reaching out for him in the dark. The thought sends her whirling into a panic. She thinks, too, of Eduardo, but pushes those feelings away, instead placing her hand on the skin that separates her from the baby inside. She whispers a lullaby, then puts a pillow over her face so María and Sofía can't hear her sobs.

Margie Bates hasn't looked at her painting since the iceberg rose off the page at her. And when she read in the newspaper this morning that the
Australis
had struck a growler in a storm, she vowed not to toy with fate again.

Instead she is busying herself cleaning the house and baking. She has invited two friends for morning tea, and the kitchen is alive with flour, eggs, milk and talk-back radio.

She hasn't been sleeping well, but has discovered that there are other ways of deriving strength and energy. Before breakfast today, she did yoga on the veranda and then enjoyed an Earl Grey tea while she watched yellow-throated honeyeaters bathe themselves in the glazed-pottery bath she made for them. The bird bath sits on a flat rock under an old eucalypt at the bottom of her garden, near where Sam's old rope swing had been. As Margie sipped her tea, the honeyeaters drank from nectar-filled grevilleas, whose floral heads, heavy with blossom and birds, kissed the surface of the shallow pool.

Margie remembers having an inner reservoir of calm that she could tap into at a moment's notice. But that was in her other life. Since Sam's death, she has emptied out that
reservoir countless times and, unable to find even a drop of life-sustaining liquid calm, has been left dehydrated from grief. Only in recent months has she learned the importance of refilling that pool—with yoga and tea, friends and art – to fortify herself against the bad days. Now is not the time to start depleting it with senseless worries about Dave. That's something else she has learned. Worry about what you can change, not what you can't. Easier said than done.

She struggles constantly to refute the thoughts that catapult her into fearing the worst all the time.
Catastrophising,
she has heard it called. She knows people think of her as a worrier, and she hates it. What's closest to the truth always hurts. Worry is an intruder in her life. A robber of valuable time and energy. A thief of happiness. It drives morbid thoughts and spirals her into anxiety. Like the time, shortly after Sam's death, when Dave was late radioing in from a fishing trip and Margie had been left pacing the house. She saw Dave's hairbrush in the bathroom, his wiry red hair spun around the bristles, and thought how much she regretted never having collected a lock of Sam's adult hair. All she has is a fair wisp from his first hair cut, neatly sticky-taped into his baby journal. In an instant, she'd imagined Dave's boat sinking, her husband lost, these few strands all that she had left of his physical, tangible form.

But thoughts like this serve no one, least of all herself, and she pushes her fears away. If Dave's hairbrush was here now,
she would give it a good clean and put the hairs in the rubbish bin. She mustn't let worry get the better of her.

Margie sweeps the floor and rearranges the cookbooks on the shelf, aware that her busyness borders on mania. But so be it. By the time her friends arrive, she will have collected herself. Her house will welcome them with light classical music (she must remember to put a CD on), the smell of freesias picked from her garden, and a tidy kitchen warmed by freshly baked scones doused in her own rich blackberry jam and thick King Island cream.

Bonnie, Sam's golden retriever, is standing at Margie's feet, tail wagging, tongue out, panting hot air against her shins. Bubbles of saliva drop onto the newly mopped Tasmanian-oak floorboards. Margie gives the dog a loving rub on the soft fur at the base of her ears, and gently scolds her for the puddle of drool before encouraging her outside with half a scone. Bonnie takes the offering and moves in the direction of Margie's pointed finger without argument, plonking herself heavily onto the sunny veranda, the scone still bulging under a soggy black lip.

Margie loves having Sam's dog about the house to share her grief. There's an understanding between them. Bonnie lost her whole world too when Sam died. Crusty tears have since formed in the corners of her dark eyes. Margie often spends a good hour on the veranda burying her bare feet into the comfort of the dog's warm stomach, and Bonnie later
reciprocates by simply laying her heavy head on Margie's lap. And there's something else. Every now and then, for no obvious reason, Bonnie will suddenly run to the gate, wag her tail furiously, and smile in the way dogs do when they greet someone they love. Margie can never see a cause for the welcome, and allows herself to believe that it's Sam's spirit paying them a visit. Something in her heart opens expectantly, and she imagines seeing her handsome dark-haired son, all six feet of him, crossing the grassy lawn and walking up the front steps, arms outstretched for a hug.

She reads the clock and figures she has half an hour before her friends arrive. They're always a few minutes late. Opening her cookbook, she wonders whether she has time to also make some pikelets. She turns the pan on just as the phone rings. It's Dave. He's okay. The line is rough, and she imagines him at sea.

‘Marg, we're still…on track dow…here…Everyth…fine. Just pho…Canberra…if you're…worri…'

‘I can't hear you very well,' Margie replies, tears running down her cheeks. ‘How much longer do you expect to be away?'

‘Not sure…Hon…We didn't ev…get close enou…to…catch…the buggers…fishi…And…we…ha…to break…chase. Canberra want us…to kee…going…though. But…we're…following fr…furth…north. I…hope…all…wor…it.'

‘I hope it's all worth it, too!' Margie says, shaking her head. ‘How's William doing? His mother called. We heard about the iceberg.'

‘News trav…s fast. William's…fine…Tell Tri…in good…'ands.'

‘Just for God's sake pull out if it's too dangerous, Dave. I don't care what the idiots in Canberra say.'

‘We're fine. We're not goin…any…furth…south.'

‘Well that's something. I love you, you silly old coot.'

‘Love you too…sweethear…'

The phone cuts out. Margie sits down heavily and sighs, shedding days of suppressed anxiety. She calls William's mother without delay. Trish answers sunnily.

‘Trish, it's Margie Bates.'

‘Margie, how are you? Beautiful day, isn't it? I've just been out in the garden. So nice to have the warmer weather. Have you heard from Dave?'

‘Yes, that's why I'm calling.' Margie tries to sound calm and reassuring. ‘They're fine. They're still pursuing the illegal boat but from further north.'

‘Oh good. I've called the Canberra office a couple of times, and they've said everything's fine. This'll certainly put some hairs on William's chest!' Trish laughs.

Margie isn't sure if this is bravado, or if Trish just hasn't realised the danger her son has been in. Perhaps she just believes that everything will turn out well because it always
has. Margie wishes she still had the same blind faith that only good things happen to good people. She considers being more honest and telling Trish how fast the situation can change down south. They're in iceberg territory, for heaven's sake. Margie suspects the closest the suits in Canberra will have come to an iceberg are the ice trays in their kitchen freezers. If only someone had warned her about the P-plate driver who was speeding down Goulburn Street on the ninth of October nearly two years ago and ran that red light just when Sam was crossing his path. She would have stopped the car with her bare hands if given the chance.

‘Trish, if you're not comfortable with this, you must phone Canberra again and tell them. Let them know that these are people they've sent into the Southern Ocean. People with families. It's not okay to put them at risk for the sake of some political points and a few dead fish.'

Trish hesitates, and when she resumes, her voice has lost some of its gloss. ‘I'm sure if there was a problem, the government would bring the boat back.'

It occurs to Margie that some people simply prefer to relinquish control, and to trust that life will treat them well. How much easier that would be. ‘Well, Dave won't be kowtowing to Canberra all the way to Uruguay if he doesn't think it's safe, that's for sure,' she says. ‘He asked me to let you know that William is in good hands.'

‘I'm sure he is.' Trish stops. ‘Sorry, Margie, I've got to go. I have to pick up Matt from soccer. Thanks for the call.'

‘Okay. I'll be in touch. Bye for now.'

Margie hangs up the phone and wonders whether she could have handled the conversation better, but her thoughts are interrupted by a pungent smell. She runs towards the frying pan and sees the margarine container melting against its metal edge. Fumes of burning plastic compete with the perfume of freesias for custody of her kitchen.

There's a knock at the door. Her friends have arrived.

She throws the smoking margarine container out of the sash window and onto the back lawn where she can deal with it afterwards. She remembers Bonnie's drool on the floor, takes a tissue from her pocket and wipes it away.

The whales are plentiful. Humpbacks particularly. I have read that baleen whales (blue, fin, sei, humpback, minke and southern right) spend four to six months in Antarctic waters, depending on the species. They'll then travel to warmer waters to breed, migrating distances of over ten thousand kilometres. We might also see toothed whales, both sperm and killer, as well as bottlenose whales, whale dolphins and pilot whales.

I envy the whales, being able to dive to great depths to escape life on the surface. How I would love to leave this boat and Dmitri far above and descend into another realm—to travel the vast distances home across more forgiving seas, leaving all this behind. But I cannot do that. Not to Carlos. Not after everything else.

Carlos Sánchez half wakes to the sound of whale song through the steel hull. The humpbacks are close, and numerous. There's no engine sound, not in itself a cause for alarm. The calm conditions have no doubt allowed a rare opportunity for maintenance. If there was a problem, Eduardo would have woken him.

He checks the time and sees that he has been asleep for the six hours since he handed over the helm to Eduardo late last night. He is grateful to his friend for the chance of a proper rest. Their last conversation and Eduardo's idea of offloading at Walvis Bay play on his mind, but the songs of the whales reclaim his attention. He lets them, allowing himself a few more moments to listen to their guttural murmurings, which seem to resonate through his chest. It's a miraculous sound, primal and moving beyond any imagining. The calls are filtered through the sound of the ocean, so constant he almost doesn't hear it any more.

The
Pescador
is still tracing the edge of the pack. Broken ice performs its percussion against the metal skin of the boat. Carlos imagines the broken pieces tapping away less than a metre from his head, and shivers involuntarily.

He can hear the crew speaking in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese, sometimes both in the same sentence. They sound happy enough. Someone is playing panpipes. He hopes, in time, they will forgive him for bringing them so far south.

Carlos thinks back to a radio call from the Australian patrol last night. The master had said that he was concerned the
Pescador
had ventured into the ice, and asked if they were safe. He had added that it was not too late to turn around and head back to Australia. Carlos hadn't responded, but focused instead on the chart and the distances travelled. Already they were 1700 nautical miles southwest of Heard Island. How could the Australian possibly imagine he would turn back now? He makes his way to the engine room where Dmitri is checking gauges and recording their readings on a chart. The engineer has his back to him and stops to speak in Russian to Eduardo through the ship's intercom. Carlos listens to Eduardo's familiar voice respond in the unfamiliar language and is surprised to hear he's so fluent. Eduardo's time working in the Bering Sea fishery had totalled a year—a year away from Virginia and their daughters. A year in which Eduardo had hoped, in vain, to fill the coffers more than he could by fishing from home. Carlos marvels that he managed to master another language in that time. The varied talents and deep intellect of his friend are a constant source of wonder.

‘What's the problem?' Carlos asks Dmitri.

‘It not too bad,' Dmitri replies, switching to a jerky Spanish. Carlos rarely has occasion to visit the engine room, and the Russian appears surprised, as if his territory has been invaded. ‘I just notice the engine getting hot. The gauges read high. I want to make sure oil purifier working properly. Good time to check while weather okay. I replace some seals, connected again the oil lines and tighten the bolts.'

Dmitri works his spanner on a fitting, giving it one final turn, which Carlos suspects is mostly for effect. ‘I think I fix the problem. But maybe it is time we head north. Yes?'

‘Not just yet,' Carlos says, sensing the Russian's anxiety. ‘But soon,' Carlos gives him a quick pat on the back, but feels the bony scapula recoil under his hand.

Dmitri speaks again, this time in beginner's Spanish, to Eduardo in the wheelhouse, asking him to re-start the engines. He again reads the gauges and listens intently to the pulse of the motors. It occurs to Carlos that it's the first time he has seen the Russian smile. The expression transforms his long, pale face, but appears unnatural. ‘That better engine music.'

Leaving Dmitri to his task Carlos winds his way up through the bowels of the ship. The panpipes are louder now and he can hear the Peruvians singing. One of them is playing the
charango.
The music resonates within the tiny guitar's armadillo shell. Through the portholes and the light drizzle, Carlos can see the vast sea of pack ice to the south. He
imagines the distant Antarctic continent, with its palette of white and steely blue, glistening in the dawn's light. Somewhere beyond the ice, large stony peaks solidify the horizon.

From the wheelhouse door, Carlos sees Eduardo drinking
mate
at the helm. The first mate seems distracted as he sips the herbal infusion through the purpose-built straw, its sour smell—something between green tea and coffee—hanging in the air. Carlos recognises, too, the smell of Dmitri's cigarettes and realises the Russian must have thought the engine problems significant enough earlier to pay Eduardo a visit while he himself was asleep below.

Carlos sees the pack protruding north ahead of them. To stay at this latitude they'll have to cut across it. He walks towards Eduardo. ‘What's on your mind,
mi amigo
?'

Eduardo starts, as if woken from a deep sleep. ‘Our Fisheries Department called overnight. They've ordered us back to Montevideo. They say they'll sort out the charges against us there.'

‘
¡Condenado
!' Carlos swears. ‘What about our twenty tonnes?'

‘We could say we'd made a mistake in our logs.'

‘Not a twenty-tonne mistake! We'll be caught out, for sure. Guilty on two counts, illegal fishing and an unrecorded catch.'

‘Or we could offload in Namibia, like we talked about before. Get rid of the evidence.'

‘And ignore the order to return home?'

‘If we head northwest, it looks like we're following orders. Then, at the last minute, we could claim engine trouble. Make a dive for Walvis Bay.'

‘What, and get Dmitri to lie for us?' Carlos asks.

‘He would. He's desperate to head north.'

Carlos nods, recalling the conversation he just had with the Russian. ‘We're up to our necks, aren't we?'

‘
Si
.' The first mate lifts the binoculars from his chest, where they hang from a frayed strap, and studies the sea and the approaching protrusion of ice. ‘You want to cut through it?' he asks, pointing to the fat extension of ice that is jutting out ahead of them. It's as though the pack is feeling the temperature of the surrounding water, like a finger testing the heat of water in a bathtub, determining whether it is safe to continue its northern march.

‘
Si,
then straight to Namibia. With any luck, we'll be far enough west by then to miss the Australians, if they're still following us.' Carlos reads the date on his watch: 22 September. It's five days since they were spotted by the patrol.

‘Francisco Molteni says the Australians are planning to follow us all the way home, if necessary.'

Carlos raises his eyebrows. He thinks of the distances involved, and how much fuel they have wasted by waging war on the ice. Never did he anticipate they would be forced so far south for so long. He walks back to the chart table. By the
time they round the Cape of Good Hope, they'll have travelled over four thousand nautical miles since leaving Heard Island. Four thousand nautical miles more than he had counted on. And then there's still another thousand nautical miles, travelling up Africa's west coast, before they reach Walvis Bay. He hopes the fuel will stretch that far.

‘Do you ever wonder what this place will be like when our kids are old enough to come down here? What we'll be leaving them?'

Carlos is surprised by his friend's questions, which seem to come out of nowhere. ‘Well I
had
hoped we'd be so wealthy by then we could pay for them to come down on a cruise ship.' Carlos laughs. ‘Can't you just see our girls sunning themselves in deck chairs at minus ten degrees?'

Eduardo smiles briefly. ‘I could live with that.' He views the pack through the portside windows. ‘But I think the future won't be so rosy. We'll have taken all the damn fish, for starters. But it's worse than that.'

‘Go on, cheer me up. You're doing well so far!'

‘The ice shelf is breaking away faster than anyone predicted. Carving off like old loose teeth. The rot of global warming.'

Drizzle gives way to rain as Carlos notices the slurry of ice in front of him. Vast chunks of the continent's edge bob around in the ice soup like giant, soggy croutons. He reads Eduardo's uncharacteristically sombre mood as a sign of
stress. ‘Sounds like Julia and I might have to move up from the ground floor!' he says, but his attempt at humour doesn't register on Eduardo's face.

Humpback whales cross the ship's path, the same whales, presumably, that stirred Carlos from sleep less than an hour ago. Their dorsal fins seem too small for the size of the beasts, which emerge now like surfacing submarines. Glossy backs arch monstrously as the mammals feed on fish that have gathered at the edge of the ice. Then, as if performing their grand finale, two of the whales raise their vast sculpted flukes high out of the water and execute deep dives. Carlos imagines them descending beneath the ship, and feels the hairs rise on the back of his neck. ‘Quite the performance,' he says. ‘They don't seem too afraid of us.'

‘It's what has made them such easy prey. No wonder they were almost fished out. We saved them just in time.' Eduardo tries to locate the humpbacks again but they've gone. ‘We'll wipe out the toothfish next. We're just as bad. Soon there'll be nothing left.'

‘Dmitri was a good find,' Carlos says, trying to change the subject. ‘He listens to that engine like a mother listens to her baby's breathing.' He studies Eduardo, waiting for a response but the first mate is silent. ‘It looks like you were right to recommend him to Migiliaro.'

‘I hope so,' Eduardo finally replies, fixing his binoculars on the ocean.

Carlos senses that his friend has done enough talking and watches him walk towards the door that leads to the deck. The worn knees of his plastic wet-weather gear have been reinforced with rubber, and his gloves look like they could steer the boat themselves if he strapped them to the wheel. A short beard keeps the ice from his skin.

If Carlos had to describe his first mate, he would say that he was a decent man, working hard to provide for his wife and two young daughters in a profession that has forced him to move with the times: to fish on bigger boats, with bigger gear, and fill deeper holds. He knows that if Eduardo had a choice, if he owned the
Pescador,
he'd have made different choices. It has been Eduardo's motivation for selling some of the catch behind Migiliaro's back. ‘We could use the profits to pay for a deposit on our own boat,' he had said to Carlos. ‘And a permit to fish. One good season down here and we'd pay it off. After that, it'd be money in our pockets.'

Carlos remembers Eduardo's face when he had had the next idea. The mixture of cunning and satisfaction. ‘If we're
really
smart, we'd use what we learn on this trip to report illegal boats like the
Pescador.
Sink the Migiliaro's of the world who don't give a shit for the stocks. You never know, if enough legal operators get on board, if we formed a coalition, the toothfish might have a hope in hell of surviving. And, God willing, if we have sons, they'd have a fishery to inherit.'

It had seemed a good idea. A way of insuring themselves, as well as the stocks. After all, fishing is all they know. They would curl up and die without their regular coating of salt, seawater and fish grime.

Julia had shaken her head at the proposition. She said they were taking enough of a risk in the first place fishing illegally. ‘Why go behind
Señor
Migiliaro's back as well?' she'd argued. But Eduardo had persisted, trying to convince them that this was the easiest money they would ever make. Carlos remembers how Eduardo had stared at Julia's pregnant belly and the anxious tears in her eyes, before taking her hands and promising that he alone would make the arrangements. Carlos wouldn't need to know anything of the deal—nothing of who was buying the unrecorded catch, or whom that buyer was on-selling to. All he would have to do, Eduardo insisted, was steer the boat. If the sale went awry, his first mate made it clear that he would wear the consequences himself. Carlos remembers feeling torn between loyalty to his best friend and concern that Julia's pregnancy not be further burdened with worries about this voyage, not after the miscarriages she has already been through. Eduardo reminded them of all the times when Carlos had saved his skin. ‘I owe you,' Eduardo had said.

The memory of returning the bike Eduardo stole as a boy in La Paloma floods back to Carlos. There were other times, too, when he had had to rescue his friend from his seemingly
insatiable appetite for risk. Once, as a teenager, he hauled Eduardo from an ocean rip during a storm, despite having warned him that it was too dangerous to swim there that day. The seaward current had almost pulled them both under. Carlos wonders now if his friend had been as sure of success in this most recent venture as he had sounded when they were back on dry land.

The Uruguayan master contemplates, too, Eduardo's deep love for the sea and how the first mate feels the contradiction between this adoration and his occupation more than most. Carlos curses, to himself, the wealthy Americans, claiming to be conservationists, who will feast on the toothfish in the
Pescador
's hold: the catch that he and Eduardo have risked everything to claim. A whale resurfaces in front of the boat, and Eduardo delays his departure from the wheelhouse to study the majestic creature through the binoculars.

‘The whales are coming back; so will the toothfish.' Carlos tries to sound optimistic. ‘Pretty soon it won't be worth it for illegal boats like this one to come down here. Did you see how many of the larger fish already had hooks in their mouths? The fishery will be commercially extinct before the last fish is caught. The stocks will rebuild.'

Eduardo shakes his head. ‘Not if prices keep going up. If toothfish don't interbreed between the islands, it's only a matter of time before we wipe out local stocks. From what I've read, they produce large numbers of eggs only once they
reach a good size.' He allows himself a smile. ‘Unlike us, they reach their sexual peak in old age.'