Just when it appeared as if the world could not possibly tip any more, lest the floor become the ceiling and visa versa, they reached a kind of equilibrium point. There was a moment of rest, and then the container began to pitch steadily back in the other direction. The loose tools, the teakettle, and the conference of chairs dutifully complied with this new incline by sliding away to the opposite wall. Radar saw one of his boots tumble by. Again, just when it seemed the container would flip entirely, the angle of repose was reached, and the chairs came sliding back to him. Radar gripped the edge of the cot, transfixed by this display of inanimate migration.
“Help me with. . would you?” he heard someone shout.
He looked up and saw Lars pressed against a rack of tools. Lars’s legs were dancing about as if he were a drunkard, flailing against the extreme rolls of the boat. His furious effort to contain the remaining tools was proving futile.
“What’s going on?” Radar shouted. A stupid question.
“It’s. . storm,” yelled Lars. This word did not come close to capturing what was taking place inside the container. To be sure, the ship had been engaged in a slight roll and pitch ever since their departure, a vectoring that Radar had steadily grown accustomed to, unlike poor Otik. But this was such a grotesque display of the sea’s violence that the situation would have been laughable if it weren’t so utterly, utterly terrifying.
“When did it get so bad?” Radar shouted. The container had reached its angular apogee and was now lurching in the other direction, causing the chairs to march away again. More clattering and a crash as the lathe toppled over onto a computer.
“The. . half an hour. . so. . can’t.” Lars moved to the lathe, trying to extricate it from the IBM.
“What?” Radar yelled. He realized he couldn’t hear what Lars was saying because of the incredible racket that was reverberating throughout the container. It was one of the more horrible sounds he had ever heard — a groan sustained and amplified into a curdling wail that came and went, came and went, like the wail of a mother who has just lost her son. Except that this wail came not from any living creature but from the ship itself. The bones of the ship were crying.
“Where’s Otik?” yelled Radar over the noise. Otik’s cot was empty save for fifty or so errant bird heads, which rolled and tumbled across the sheets.
Lars pointed.
Beneath the terrible yowl of the wind, Radar heard a noise. It was a human wheeze. An escaping of air from parted lips.
“Otik?”
Radar stumbled over to the cot, dodging the minefield of detritus on the move, and found him on the floor, half wrapped in a top sheet, facedown, bird heads all around, a thin puddle of merguez-colored vomit spilling from his mouth like a speech bubble.
Otik murmured something inaudible.
“What?” Radar leaned in. The man’s giant back was hot to the touch. The ship reached the peak of its roll, hung, and came hurtling down again, bird heads tumbling everywhere. A chair hit them and Radar winced, trying to shield himself.
“Molim te,” Otik wheezed. “Ja umirem.”
“You’re going to be okay, Otik,” said Radar, rubbing his back. “It’s just a storm. It won’t be long now.” He had no idea how long it would be. The storm felt like it might last forever.
“I’m dying,” wheezed Otik.
“You’re not dying, Otik,” said Radar. He blundered across the room and grabbed a towel. Scrambling back to Otik, nearly falling into him, he began to wipe at the vomit smeared across the floor.
“Lars!” he yelled. “We need to get out of here!”
“Ostavi me,” mumbled Otik. “Reci im da mi je žao. Reci im da nisam kreten.”
“Don’t say that, Otik. You’re going to be fine.”
“Ja sam Dubre,” Otik wheezed.
“You’re doing good work,” said Radar. “You’re doing great work. No one can do what you do.”
“Ja nisam dobra osoba.”
“Ti si dobar covek, Charlie Brown,” said Radar. It was one of the few lines he could say in Serbian.
Otik opened his eyes and looked up at Radar. He was crying. Radar tried to heave him off the floor. It was like trying to lift a small car.
“Lars!” he called. “We need to get him out of here. The tools—” He ducked as a bow saw came flying off its hook and twanged against the table.
Lars had a rope in his hand and was attempting to lash the lathe to the wall. The lights inside the container suddenly flickered and went out. Radar felt his heart sink. Not another blackout. Here? In the middle of the ocean? In the middle of the storm of all storms? He could think of nothing worse.
The lights blinked and buzzed back on again. Radar looked up. The birds. He had forgotten about the birds. They still hung from the ceiling, swaying wildly about, palindroming with the sea.
“Lars!”
“What?”
“We’ve got to get him out of here!” he yelled.
With much effort, they managed to half-carry, half-drag Otik out the door.
“Ostavite me,” he kept saying. “Ostavite me, ostavite me.”
Outside, in cargo hold number four, there were no flying projectiles, but the sound was even more hellacious than inside the container. The wail had turned into a full-pitched scream, and Radar could hear the ribs of the ship straining, their fibers pulled and compressed to the breaking point. It was like being in the belly of a dying whale. At the next roll, Radar tripped and fell and immediately found himself soaked. The floor of the hold was covered in seawater. The water quickly slopped away as the roll reached its vertex and then just as quickly came spilling back onto him. The beams, the bulwark, the very superstructure of the ship screeched in protest. From somewhere ahead, what sounded like an essential support cracked, and the cargo hold around him gave what could only be described as a death rattle.
For the first time, Radar saw what was going to happen: This ship is going to sink. I’m going to die on this ship. The idea of his own death did not elicit panic but rather resignation, as if he had known it would end like this the whole time.
“Get him upstairs!” shouted Lars. “There’s a lounge on the lower deck.”
Radar snapped out of his morose reverie and grabbed Otik’s shoulder. Urged on by adrenaline and the threat of a watery grave, they maneuvered themselves to the opening of the stairwell. Radar would have thought it impossible to go any farther, but somehow they pinballed up the four flights of stairs despite his own handicaps, the immensity of Otik’s mass, and the heave and throes of the boat. Radar’s shoulders were sore from crashing against one wall after another. Yet he had almost grown accustomed to the rhythms of the egregious rolling and pitching. Even if the rules of the world had gone haywire, he sensed a method to this madness. When the boat reached the top of its tilt axis, his body was already readying itself for the release and the counter-tilt.
They slammed against the door to the lounge and then collapsed onto the floor. The lounge was abandoned. The Little Mermaid was playing silently on the television. Radar lay there, panting, watching Sebastian merrily sing and leap about on the screen, when a single idea occurred to him: Ivan. He need to find Ivan. If he was with Ivan, all would be okay.