The bosun didn’t say if he understood him. He was crooning and gurgling in his throat as he held himself, his head down. This seemed to enrage Sung who took both of the bosun’s ears and shook them savagely, bringing the bull head up and staring into its eyes. ‘You no talk to me? Only spit in my face? Ah, you better fucking answer, man! I tell you, you better or I tear your fucking head off. You don’t treat me like shit! Understand? Understand me?’
The bosun’s head was shuttling so violently that his eyes were squinting. His mouth was still contracted in its painful crooning circle, but through it he grunted his understanding.
‘Well, that’s good. I’ve got things to say to you, bosun. Look, give me orders, make me work. It’s okay. I’ll do what I should. But something I don’t want to do, or I can’t do, you figure it out, and I don’t do that thing. Okay? Because you try to make me, I cripple you. I don’t care, see. Just don’t make me mad!’
The bosun was recovering slowly, and he shuffled himself into a sitting position. ‘Sung, you’re a crazy bastard,’ he said, ‘and you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ll break you.’
‘How you do that, bosun?’ He wasn’t sure if he was coming on too strong with the broken Japanese, and his impediment had slipped. But the general craziness was working, he could see. ‘You want to put me in irons, you want to lock me up? And explain why. Go to the captain, say, “Captain, this man too tough for me.” Or get help from the crew. What you need with that, bosun? Look — you beat me up, you mark my face, anyone can see. I didn’t mark your face. What I say? “Hey, I beat up the bosun”? Everyone laugh at me. I no say that. I no say anything. I just want you off my back.’
These arguments, he could see, were getting through to the bosun, who was slowly pulling himself together.
‘Sung,’ he said, ‘you’re going to be sorry for this. It’s a long voyage, and you’re going round the world. And you know what you’ll get out of it? You’ll get fuck-all. Not a yen. I’ll have every bit of pay docked. I’ll get you for one thing after another. See how you’ll like it, big boy.’
Sung stared at him and his eyes glowed. ‘You think about that, bosun. You think again, eh? You do that to me, I come wherever you are. I find you. I’m crazy? Okay, I put your eyes out. I break you up. I break your bones, your knees, your hands. You no step on a ship again. Say like now: I want to stamp on your balls, I do it. You walk bad for days. I don’t do that. But I give you something, so you remember, eh? Give me your hand, bosun.’
The bosun wouldn’t give him his hand so he jumped hard on the bosun’s thighs and as the man jerked in agony chopped his bull neck so that the head crashed back again on the deck.
‘Sit up, bosun. Give me a hand. Right hand.’
The bosun gave him his hand, and he carefully picked the little finger, and showed it to the bosun, and broke it. And then with the man gasping in agony he helped him to his feet.
‘Don’t ride me, bosun,’ he said simply. ‘I no hurt you any more. See what a face you gave me. I go below and show that face and everybody see. You beat me up — all right? Just rest your hand and remember. You do something to me I don’t like, I come and find you. Wherever you are, I come and find you!’
20
On the nineteenth of September the Suzaku Maru negotiated the Bering Strait, rounded Cape Dezhnev and radioed her arrival in Russian waters. The captain had his notification acknowledged, and set himself to wait in patience.
He regretted the loss of the tuna cargo for Murmansk and was hopeful that something might turn up at Green Cape. He thought it very likely. From radio traffic he knew that fish in the area had been plentiful. His refrigeration capacity was limited but if the stuff was boxed and ready-palleted he would lift it.
In the matter of instructions the Russians were not so much tardy as crafty. They waited till the last moment to catch you. They knew it would cost him nothing, except a few hours’ loading, to carry the stuff along to Murmansk. On the other hand, he knew that nothing else was going his way. All the Russian vessels were now going the other way, to the ice-free ports of the Pacific; his, certainly, was the last foreign ship of the season. He could wait.
His charts showed him at roughly three and a half days’ steaming from the mouth of the Kolyma river; which was where he suspected they would have the stuff sitting in barges. Foreign vessels were seldom allowed upriver to Green Cape itself; and crewmen were not allowed ashore at all. God alone knew what the Russians feared: that foreigners might seduce their citizens, tempt them to smuggle the gold and diamonds of the area. No. They were simply Russian: suspicious by nature, crafty.
That he had no cargo for Green Cape did not at all displease him. No trudging there and back up the Kolyma. He had been keeping close watch on the weather reports, and they were not good. The storms of the past few days had abated but in the frigid calm the icepack was spreading rapidly from the north. He wanted to be away and out of it, Murmansk well behind him, before the whole sea froze. They would know this in Green Cape. They wouldn’t delay long. They’d call him.
But by the next day, when he was again on watch, they still hadn’t called, and the captain hummed to himself. Cat and mouse. He was evidently supposed to call. Any fish you want carried? Nice price. Well, he wouldn’t. Let them call. It was growing colder and the wheelhouse windows were on permanent defrost. The new crewman, Sung, brought him up a flask.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘Hot soup, captain.’
‘M’hm.’ He hadn’t asked for it but the man was showing willing, a welcome change from his surliness in the first few days. His face was badly marked, one eye black, the nose swollen, mouth cut about and puffy. The bosun had evidently taken him in hand. The captain had noticed the bosun sporting a bandaged finger himself and had tactfully refrained from inquiry; a too-enthusiastic collision with the Korean’s face, he saw. The bosun had to keep order his own way, and a heavy hand was sometimes needed with the scum they had aboard. The captain kept himself above it, preferring to regard them as criminal children — simple-minded ones, very often. This one was now gaping all about him, the view here much better than from deck.
‘First time north?’ the captain asked him gruffly.
‘First time, captain, first. Is it Siberia?’
‘Yes. Chukotka, this region.’
‘Near Murmansk?’
‘Three thousand miles near.’
He saw the fellow gaping again, but realised after a moment that he was doing it over his shoulder. ‘Look, captain, look! They’ve got aeroplanes!’
The captain turned and saw a small one rising above the ice strip at Cape Schmidta, now going astern on his port beam. He studied it through his glasses for a moment and as he turned away noticed with astonishment that the Korean was bending over the chart table; that he actually had the impertinence to be tracing with his finger the pencilled positions of their track. The captain had not long before added the last point reached: Cape Schmidta: 1648 hours.
‘All right. That’s enough,’ he said curtly, and watched the man go. Simple-minded idiot! He watched the plane a little longer, and commenced humming to himself again. From Cape Schmidta it was under 420 miles to the Kolyma. They had less than forty-eight hours to call him now.