*
When Max walked into the house by the beach, Alicia’s note lay on the dining-room table, which meant that his sister had not yet returned and was still with Roland. The empty house only intensified the loneliness Max felt at that moment. The old man’s words echoed in his mind. Although he’d been hurt by the lighthouse keeper’s tone, Max was not angry with him. He realised the old man was trying to protect them all from something that scared even him. Yet, Max couldn’t help shuddering, for what could be worse than what they already knew?
He went up to his room and lay on the bed, thinking that the entire story was beyond him and that, although he kept staring at the pieces of the puzzle, he couldn’t find the right way to put them all together.
Perhaps he should follow Victor Kray’s advice and forget the whole thing, even if it was only for a few hours. He looked at his bedside table and saw the neglected book on Copernicus still lying there, like an antidote to all the mysteries that surrounded him. He opened the book at the point where he’d left off and tried to concentrate on the rational arguments regarding the orbit of the planets. Maybe Copernicus would have been able to help him unravel the mystery, but the astronomer had clearly chosen the wrong time to alight in this world. In an infinite universe, there were too many things that escaped human understanding.
13
Hours later, when Max had eaten some food and was only ten pages away from the end of his book, he heard the sound of bicycles entering the front garden. Then came the soft hush of Roland and Alicia’s voices, as they whispered for almost an hour on the porch. Around midnight, Max returned his book to the bedside table and turned off the lamp. Finally, he heard Roland’s bike setting off down the road and Alicia tiptoeing up the stairs. His sister’s footsteps paused for a moment outside his door, then continued along the short distance to her own bedroom. Max heard Alicia dropping her shoes on the wooden floor then a creak as she lay down on the bed. He recalled the image of Roland kissing her that morning on the beach and he smiled in the dark. For once, he was certain that his sister would take much longer getting to sleep than he would.
*
The following morning, Max decided to rise before the sun and by dawn he was already cycling towards the bakery. He wanted to get something delicious for breakfast and prevent Alicia from preparing her speciality – leftovers of bread, jam and milk. In the early hours, the town nestled in a calm that reminded him of Sunday mornings in the city. Only a few people out for a quiet walk broke the sleepy mood of the streets, in which even the houses, their shutters closed, seemed to be dozing.
In the distance, beyond the harbour wall, the few fishing boats that made up the local fleet were gliding out to sea and would not return until sunset. Max was greeted by the baker and his daughter, a shy young girl with rosy cheeks who stared at him as if he were some kind of prize. While they served him from a mouthwatering tray of sweet cinnamon buns just out of the oven, the baker asked after Irina. Clearly the news had spread: the local doctor obviously did more than take his patient’s temperature when he made home visits. As his father liked to say, in small towns news travelled at the speed of boredom.
Max managed to get back to the beach house with the breakfast buns still irresistibly warm. Without his watch he wasn’t sure what the time was, although he imagined it must be close to eight o’clock. The thought of having to wait for Alicia to wake up so he could have breakfast was not tempting, so he came up with a clever plan. With the excuse of giving her a hot breakfast, he prepared a tray with his booty from the bakery, milk and a couple of napkins and went up to Alicia’s bedroom. He rapped on the door with his knuckles until his sister’s sleepy voice gave an unintelligible mumble.
‘Room service,’ said Max. ‘Can I come in?’
He pushed the door open and stepped into the room. Alicia had buried her head under a pillow. Max looked around at the clothes hanging over chairs and her huge collection of random possessions. A girl’s room was always a bewildering place, thought Max, a complete mystery.
‘I’ll count to ten,’ he said, ‘then I’ll start eating.’
His sister’s face peeped out from under the pillow, scenting the sweet aroma in the air.
*
Roland was waiting for them by the edge of the beach, wearing just a pair of old trousers cut off at the knees. Next to him was a small boat that couldn’t have been more than three metres long and looked as if it had spent at least thirty years bleaching in the sun; the wood had acquired a greyish hue, visible under the few remaining smudges of blue paint. Despite all that, Roland seemed to be admiring his boat as if it were a luxury yacht. As Max and his sister walked down towards the shore, negotiating the stones on the beach, Max noticed that Roland had inscribed the vessel’s name on the prow with fresh paint, probably that very morning: Orpheus II.
‘Since when did you have a boat?’ Alicia asked, pointing at the ramshackle tub into which Roland had already loaded the diving gear and a couple of baskets with mystifying contents.
‘Since three hours ago. One of the local fishermen was about to break her up for firewood, but I convinced him to give her to me in exchange for a favour.’
‘A favour?’ asked Max. ‘I think you’re the one who’s done him a favour.’
‘You’re welcome to remain onshore if you’d prefer to have first-class accommodation, sire,’ retorted Roland. ‘Come on, all aboard.’
Max decided to keep his mouth shut and not wrestle with Roland’s pride. As far as he was concerned, the expression ‘aboard’ seemed inappropriate for the vessel in question. However, once they’d covered the first fifteen metres and he could see they were still afloat, Max thought better of it and opted not to judge the boat by its hopeless appearance.
‘Well, what do you think, my lord?’ joked Roland.
‘Fit for a prince, cabin boy.’
In fact, the boat moved swiftly in response to Roland’s energetic rowing and clearly had a lot more life in it than Max had originally imagined.
‘I’ve brought along a small contraption that may surprise you,’ said Roland.
Max looked at one of the covered baskets and lifted the lid a centimetre or two.
‘What’s in here?’ he murmured.
‘An underwater window,’ Roland explained. ‘Really it’s just a box with some glass at one end. If you place it on the surface of the water, you can see to the bottom without diving in. That’s why it’s like a window.’
Max pointed at his sister Alicia.
‘This way, at least you’ll be able to see something too,’ he said, teasing her.
‘Who says I’m going to stay here? I’m the one who’s going down today,’ she replied.
‘You? You don’t even know how to dive!’ cried Max, trying to wind his sister up.
‘If you call what you did the other day diving, no, I don’t,’ responded Alicia, not wanting to start a war.
Roland continued rowing, staying well out of their argument. Finally he stopped the boat some thirty metres from the shore. Beneath them, stretched out on the bottom of the sea, the dark shadow of the Orpheus waited like some gigantic shark lurking on the sand. Roland opened one of the baskets and pulled out a rusty anchor attached to a thick, frayed rope. When Max saw the state of the equipment, he assumed that all these bits and pieces were part of the batch Roland had bargained for in order to save the miserable rowing boat from a dignified and fitting end.
‘Careful, it’ll splash!’ cried Roland, as he threw the anchor into the sea. It plummeted in a vertical line, raising a small cloud of bubbles and taking with it most of the rope.
Roland let the current drag the boat along a few metres, then fastened the end of the anchor rope to a ring that hung from the prow. The boat swayed gently in the waves and the rope tensed, making the wooden structure creak. Max threw a suspicious look at the joints of the hull.