21
At 2100 Sung was removed to the after heads, in convulsions but not yet diarrhoeic. He became diarrhoeic shortly after, and the captain hosed him down himself. The mate spelled him on the bridge during the night, which was a restless one, for he looked in on Sung every hour. The man looked bad. His head threshed on the stretcher, his teeth rattled, and he gurgled continuously. Also his deepening pigment seemed to show up the bruises more, which worried the captain. The bosun had volunteered twice to take charge, but the captain kept the key himself.
At eleven in the morning, still sleepless, he called Green Cape and received a cheery response.
‘Suzaku Maru, Suzaku Maru, hello! Good to hear you. Maybe we have something for you.’
The captain smiled grimly. Playing games after all. For certain they had something for him. And now they’d got him. His Russian was rudimentary but serviceable.
‘Green Cape, is good to hear you. I have something for you, too.’
‘For us? What for us, captain?’
‘I have a sick man aboard. I need assistance.’
‘What’s the sickness, captain?’
‘I think jaundice, I’m not sure.’
‘It’s not a problem. What’s your ETA?’
‘My ETA is 1600, repeat 1600.’
‘ETA 1600, good. Captain — you want a cargo?’
‘What’s the cargo?’
‘Maybe fish. Boxed and palleted.’
‘Salt or frozen?’
‘Maybe both. You want some?’
‘How much is there?’
‘Maybe not much. It depends.’
Of course it did. It depended on the rate.
‘Well, let’s see,’ the captain said.
‘For sure. We’ll see! Okay, captain.’
‘And my sick man?’
‘We’ll let you know.’
They’d let him know. At the last minute they’d let him know. It was their way. They certainly wouldn’t let him know before 1400.
At 1400 they let him know.
‘Suzaku Maru, Suzaku Maru! Green Cape here.’
‘Hello, Green Cape. Suzaku Maru.’
‘Captain, you are to stand off Ambarchik. A medical officer will board you there, okay?’
‘Stand off Ambarchik, okay,’ the captain repeated. ‘Where off Ambarchik?’
‘A boat will meet you at the point. You follow that boat, captain. We made all the arrangements, okay?’
‘Okay. Thank you, Green Cape.’
He knew Ambarchik well enough. He hadn’t made this passage for three or four years. Another one of the line’s ships had been doing it, the one they’d broken up a few months back. Still, he remembered the place. It stood at the eastern mouth of the river. Several mouths led out of the big messy estuary, but he recalled that this was where they liked to keep the fish, waiting in barges. It was waiting for him there now, he didn’t doubt it: they had ‘made the arrangements’ …
He now had to make some himself. He went below and let himself into the after heads.
By 1530 when a voice from the bridge reported they had the boat in sight, Sung was cleaned up and in the captain’s cabin. Rice water had abated the diarrhoea but an arrangement involving towels and a rubber blanket was still necessary. The man was snugly wrapped in blankets and the stretcher was on the cabin floor so the retaining straps were no longer required. He was lightly sedated, his head still moving restlessly, eyes open and glazed, some gurgling coming out of him. The captain had thought it unwise to put him out completely. In the case of Ushiba a fast exit from Japanese waters had been required. In this case the ship would be in Russian waters for days: time enough for them to stop him whenever they wanted. It was common sense to let them find out right away.
The boat led them round the point, and once they were in the estuary the captain changed places with the mate and took the ship in himself. He saw an old hand from Green Cape watching him through glasses in the boat, remembered him from years back, and returned his wave. And he nodded to himself as he saw where he had to pick up his buoy: half a mile offshore, near the first of the small islands. Four barges were strung together there, all laden. About a hundred tons, the captain estimated. The haggling would begin after they’d taken Sung off.
It was half an hour before the quarantine boat arrived, and he had the ladder out waiting. The medical officer, a bulky individual hugely wrapped in a dogskin coat and cap, came nimbly enough up the ladder, and the captain went down to meet him. To his surprise it was a woman and he led her down to his cabin, somewhat moody. He knew right away he had got a bad one here, haughty and officious, unlike the jovial rascals he knew from Green Cape. She looked down at Sung while divesting herself of her coat, irritably shaking off the captain’s efforts to help her.
‘How long has he been like this?’
The captain briefly outlined the duration and symptoms of Sung’s illness, omitting all mention of Ushiba.
‘Why is his face bruised?’
‘Seamen fight.’ The captain shrugged.
She looked at him sharply, and bent to Sung.
‘This is not jaundice,’ she said presently.
‘I thought the yellow —’
‘Jaundice is present, but this is not all. Have you kept specimens of his faeces?’
The captain admitted that he hadn’t, and by way of lightening the atmosphere remarked mildly that the process was continuous and that she might yet find some.
She looked sharply at him again.
‘The man is very ill. I will need more details. Show me his quarters.’
A purgatorial half hour began for the captain. The termagant examined not only Sung’s bunk, now bare again, but every inch of the fore ends, the galley and the heads. Fortunately the captain was the only Russian-speaker and he saw to it that nothing compromising came out of the crew.
But he observed with gloom that the light was going. The haggling over the fish had still to be gone through, by which time it would be too dark to load. He would have to stay overnight.
‘Very well,’ she said, back in the cabin. ‘I will take him to the isolation wing at Tchersky. I need his documents. Do you intend waiting for the results?’
‘How long — the results?’
‘Five days.’
‘No,’ the captain said.
‘Then I will take his belongings, also. They will need treatment, in any case. What is your destination, captain?’
‘Murmansk.’
‘I’ll contact them. Of course, if this is what I think, they won’t let you in. You understand that?’
‘Won’t let me in?’ the captain said.
‘It’s a highly infectious fever. You would be well advised to stay here until we can identify it.’
‘But the sea will freeze!’
‘Then go on, if you want. I can’t stop you. Or turn back.’
‘I have a ship full of cargo! I have to pick up more cargo here. For Murmansk.’
‘What cargo?’
‘Fish. Tons of it, out there in the barges.’
‘That’s quite impossible. I can’t allow it. You have fever on this ship.’
The captain felt himself unhingeing. He couldn’t pick up the fish. He couldn’t stay here for five days; he’d never get out at the other end. He couldn’t go back to Japan with a shipload of cargo for Murmansk. And they might not let him in to Murmansk.
‘Well, decide for yourself, captain. I have no power to prevent you, but I definitely prohibit the loading of any fish. Meanwhile, the first thing is to get this man off the ship.’
And this was the first thing that happened. Sung was loaded into the quarantine boat and taken upriver to Tchersky. And the captain, after frantic cogitation, arrived at a decision, and took it, fast.