The worst problem I could imagine for Esmé and myself, as we got a little closer to Italy, was the transporting of our trunks to the city. There would not be porters at one of Captain Kazakian’s landing stages. I refused to voice my fears to my little girl, whose (ever subsided after I had managed to get her to take some cocaine. The drug’s restorative properties rarely failed and in this case helped to bring her to her senses. I could now force her to nibble on Mr Kiatos’s figs and sausage. We were sustaining ourselves entirely on borrowed food. Without the silent kindness of those other people we might have starved to death. Kazakian and his crew had certain supplies, but had no intention of sharing them with what they plainly regarded as a troublesome cargo. They would have treated cattle better.
By the next afternoon Esmé had recovered still further. She looked fragile; her eyes had a bleak, wounded quality, but she was better able to move and to talk.
‘Where are we now, Maxim?’
‘Nearing Venice,’ I said.
The sky had a few strands of cloud but was otherwise perfect; the sea might have been an ornamental lake. The engine steadily turned the paddlewheels which, with light glinting on their green metal covers, sent refreshing spray into our faces. The gods, it seemed, were favouring this Odyssey, at least for the moment. I sat with my darling beneath the stained canopy and held her hand, murmuring of half-remembered Greek legends, the glamours and treasures of the Venetians, the engineering marvels we should find in Europe. Meanwhile Captain Kazakian came up onto this deck and, with a nod to us, stretched himself full length on the planking beyond the awning. Stripped to the waist and smoking a cheroot, he was enjoying the sun. Occasionally he would turn his massive head towards us and call out encouragement. ‘Everything’s under control. Just a few more hours.’ They were meaningless words. He was relaxing because he had actually recognised the coast of Cephalonia and had recently passed a number of large ships. Every time Captain Kazakian had seen one of these he had given a cheerful greeting on his whistle. The nearer we were to land, the more vessels there were in the immediate vicinity, the happier he was. We had flown the Turkish flag when we left Constantinople but were now carrying Greek colours. That evening, just after dark, we let off three passengers and took several more on board.
The newcomers were all middle-aged men walking with that swaggering gait I identified with well-to-do bandits or comfortably corrupt police officers. Until dawn, they remained standing around the wheelhouse, chatting to the Captain and later to the bosun who relieved him. They offered no recognition of the other passengers and never looked at anyone else directly; they were of the type for whom eye-contact is a weapon, a means of threat or persuasion. They did not waste it on casual socialising. Eventually a small sailing vessel drew alongside and took them in the direction of Corfu (according to Kazakian, who seemed greatly relieved when they had left). He reassured me we would be in Venice ‘tomorrow’. He nodded at me, as if I were a mute baby. ‘Yes,’ he said smiling. ‘Yes.’
By noon the next day the engine suddenly stopped. I at first assumed we were making another rendezvous. The boat drifted under a copper sky, away from the hazy outline of land to starboard. Esmé lay in my lap breathing deeply and the world was filled with an enormous silence. I was enjoying the sensation until, from the wheelhouse, Captain Kazakian began to yell fiercely in all the languages of the Levant and Mediterranean.
I saw the engineer come running along the deck. He was waving his arms and screaming. I sat upright. Thick black smoke gouted from the little engine-room and drifted towards us. It was menacing. Like a sentient, supernatural creature which might devour us if we moved.
A few moments later Kazakian left his post and with one eye on the cloud, as if he shared my impression of it, walked slowly up to where we stood. He was grinning and shaking his head, his hands going through their entire vocabulary of gestures, a sure sign of his utter terror. ‘I thank God you are with us, Mr Papadakis, for you are the only one who can help us with our problem. You are a genius of a mechanic. Everyone in Galata says so. I know it.’ This litany of praise was merely a preliminary and I suffered through it, waiting for him to reach his point.
‘Will you please look at our engine?’ he said.
Esmé had become frightened again. In spite of the sun’s warmth, she pulled her coat about her and withdrew to the bench.
Reluctantly I followed Kazakian into the tiny engine-room, having taken the precaution of placing a handkerchief over my mouth and nostrils. I staggered before what was almost a tangible wall of heat. I gave instructions to shut everything down and tried to look for the trouble. The engine was typical of its kind, of no specific manufacture and operated by people who treated it with more superstition than mechanical skill, repaired so many times that scarcely an original part remained. I had become used to understanding the individual logic which went into these pieces of machinery; one had to guess the quirks of another’s mind. There was no manual which would have been of the slightest possible use to me. After a while it emerged there was a blockage in one of the pistons. I set about dismantling the whole primitive system, having them clean each part as we went. The launch was burning any fuel she could find and the engine was patched with rags, bits of metal, even the remains of a corned beef can, while the boiler was a nightmare of welded scrap iron. Carefully I reassembled everything and gave orders to make steam again. To my enormous relief she ran more smoothly than before. I had not looked forward to being some minor Daedalus to that seedy Minos.
Delighted, Captain Kazakian insisted we go to his cabin. It was little more than a cubbyhole behind the wheelhouse and smelled worse than any other part of the boat. He wanted to drink some arak. But by now I was firm. First, I told him, I must see if my sister was all right. It was growing dark. I found her shivering on the bench where I had left her. I was worn out and inclined to greater anxiety. I was determined to get us to Venice before anything else went wrong with the boat. I returned to Kazakian’s cabin. I thought Esmé had typhus, I said. This impressed him. He looked grotesquely startled, as if he suspected himself of giving her the disease. Then he insisted vigorously that she was merely seasick. I had lost patience with him.
‘You had better understand, I think, that it is not only possible to lift a curse placed on an engine. I can also make a curse. Without moving from here, I could immobilise you completely.’
He sneered at me but I had obviously impressed him. My guess was that he was too superstitious to risk very much. Also I had proved so useful to him he was willing to placate me. He called his bosun in and gave orders that Esmé be taken below to one of the recently-vacated cabins. ‘At no extra charge,’ he told me with the air of a man who knew he was being stupidly generous. The stuffy cabin had a bed with a single dirty sheet on it, but it was better than the bench. Lifting her fragile little body onto the bunk, I made the others leave; then I undressed her and washed her. She awoke for this and did not resist me, showing no interest when I told her the engine was working well and we were on the last lap of our journey. ‘We should be sighting the Italian coast tomorrow. I have taken charge here.’