“So what do you do?” repeated the captain.
“Sir?” said Radar.
“You don’t steer where you’re headed.” The captain hooked an eye on him. “We aren’t stopping. You can jump the Kill, but I don’t recommend it. Nasty currents. High traffic.”
“But—”
“Once a man signs up, he’s one of us. There can be no turning back. You sign up for a reason. You’ll get off when you’re ready.”
Radar was about to speak but realized there was nothing left to say. He briefly had the strange and wild urge to strike the captain, a dose of rage he did not know what to do with. But before he could do anything one way or another, the captain spun on his heel and returned to the wheelhouse.
“Looks like we’re stuck with you,” said Otik.
“It’s really for the best,” said Lars.
Radar looked back at the receding bridge, and then down into the opaque green churn of water. He thought of the horse jumping off the boat in Lagos. He lifted one foot onto the railing.
“Don’t,” said Lars, but Radar knew even before his foot had left the deck that he would never be able to do it. Resolve had never been his strong suit.
Soon they had cleared Constable Hook and found themselves out in the harbor. The pilot had negotiated the portside passing of two giant tankers and nimbly maneuvered around a stalled feeder ship in the Kill’s narrows. This balletic performance had done much to revive him; he had discarded his disheveled air, and now went around offering handshakes to the officers with all the gravitas of an ambassador.
“Bon voyage, bon voyage, watch out for the pirates,” he called. “They will rape you if you give them half a chance.”
Captain Daneri clasped the pilot’s shoulder and kissed him on both cheeks.
“An honor,” said the captain. “Un piloto y su puerto.” His opinion had evidently softened.
They slowed and pitched as the pilot climbed down the ladder to meet his boat. He offered a final wave to the Aleph before disappearing into the boat’s cabin.
It was only after the pilot boat had pulled away and was speeding back to shore that Radar realized he could’ve left with them. Why hadn’t he?
You’ll get off when you’re ready.
The sun had already risen over the flats of Brooklyn, but Lady Liberty’s flame had not yet been extinguished. It burned and burned, wary of what the day might bring. She stood, steady and erect as ever, with a clean conscience and an open heart. Behind her gallant robes, the Manhattan skyline paid little heed to their imminent exit. The captain ordered full speed ahead, the engines were fired, and the Aleph turned south, to the gates of the Verrazano and the last buoy before the open sea.
3
Lars had christened their forty-foot container Moby-Dikt. On the second day, he even went so far as to paint on a pair of morose whale eyes at knee height, which always seemed to be watching you no matter where you stood. Moby-Dikt lay by itself on the bottom floor of the number-four cargo hold, just in front of the bridge castle, a full four stories below the quarterdeck. It was always slightly dank down there, and Radar imagined the steel ribs rising up the sides of the hull as if they were the ribs of a great and monstrous whale. A whale inside of a whale inside of a whale and so on, the universe nothing but a series of matryoshka’d leviathans. His vision was enhanced by the constant, ominous creaking of the Aleph’s joints, which would echo and reverberate across the stacks of containers. The ship moaned, complained, howled. But she did not break. Not yet, at least.
Their container had been retrofitted as a hybrid living quarters and workshop, with a firm emphasis on the workshop part of the equation. It was packed to the gills with all manner of tools and mechanical detritus, including two soldering irons, a workbench, a wire draw, a hand loom, Otik’s vircator, two generators, six large speakers, an electric kettle, three computers in varying exploded states of repair, sixteen reams of old telegraph cable, and a full atelier featuring a band saw, a lathe, a power sander, and a spindle molder. There were also four djembe drums and a box of obscure musical instruments, which would occasionally rattle and shake as if of their own volition. In one corner, they had lashed down the gold-and-burgundy theater wagon — the same theater wagon used in Sarajevo. And then, of course, there were also the nearly fourteen hundred mechanical birds they had taken from Kermin’s shack, which now hung and swayed from the ceiling. The birds were still headless, their heads kept on six long racks by Otik’s cot. Radar never got used to this disembodied gallery of unblinking eyes.
The container actually represented an increase in space from the tiny cottage in Xanadu’s parking garage, but it offered precious little maneuvering room when all three men were present. This was not helped by Otik’s ongoing seasickness, exacerbated by the minute nature of his work on the bird heads. His pallor, which prior to their departure had resembled the color of unripe melon, had now taken on the hue of the repurposed ham-and-pea puree they used to serve at the Rutgers dining hall. Otik sat there, sweating and breathing heavily, a little moan escaping his lips every so often to signal his body’s revolt. He would then rip off his magnifying headpiece, raise his great body out of his chair, and proceed to vomit into a five-gallon bucket set up just outside the container’s entrance. The sound of his retching became a kind of metronome for the puppet work in the hull.
Ever since his outburst in port, both Lars and Otik had maintained their distance from Radar, each in his own way. Otik, mired in his nausea, simply chose not to acknowledge his existence. Lars’s evasions were more subtle: when addressing Radar, he would often let the ends of his sentences drift off, as if the most important bits could not be said. Radar watched them from his cot, fiddling absentmindedly with one of his father’s transceivers. It was evident that they were used to working in tandem. Even Kermin must have existed as a distant moon to their mutual dependence. It would have been more amusing to watch them in action if it were not also a reminder of his alienation.
“I hate you,” Otik hissed at Lars, completely unprompted. Yet the line was clearly delivered with such loving familiarity that Radar found himself longing for someone, anyone, to hate him with similar affection.
“Is it possible to have them return and perch ten seconds in?” Lars replied.
“Why to perch?”
“A moment of doubt.”
“Doubt?”
“Of contemplation, reflection. A prelude before the journey.”
“Let me see.”
“Ten seconds in.”
“This is soon.”
“If it’s not possible—”
“‘Nothing is not possible,’ says Kermin Radmanovic, alleged father of him.” Otik thrust his head in Radar’s direction.
“Can I do something?” said Radar.
The two went silent.
“We’re okay for now,” said Lars. “Thank you.”
“We are okay forever,” said Otik. He grunted, removed his magnifier, and then trundled from the room. They soon heard the familiar sound of gagging.
“He takes a while,” said Lars. “But once he accepts you as one of his own, he’ll die for you.”
“Oh, am I one of his own?” said Radar. “I hadn’t realized.”
“It’s a complicated question for a Serb,” said Lars. “But I do know he’s been through a lot in life. You must meet him halfway. He has seen enough not to trust another human being on this planet, and yet. . he does. And he will. Just give him time; he’ll come around. He’s like an elephant. He never forgets.”