Blood Cruise by Mats Strandberg
Johan is filling in as host in Dan’s absence. He is on stage in his grungy T-shirt, clearly uncomfortable, asking a fake-tanned booze hag what her name is. Fredrika. She is from Sala. Yes, she is having a lovely cruise. The food is so good. And the sea is so lovely. And she is singing her favourite Whitney Houston song.
Johan steps off the stage and Dan goes to meet him at the technician’s booth.
‘You’re back?’ Johan says, looking relieved.
‘Yep,’ Dan replies.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Never been better.’
Johan nods and turns on ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’. The woman on stage spins and wiggles her flat bum.
Dan notices Johan looking at his hand, his smooth knuckles.
The woman starts singing, if you can call it that. Dan closes his eyes and sinks deeper into the sensory impressions. So many feelings in here, undiluted in the cramped space. They seem to bounce off one another, causing each other to shrink or grow.
‘Dan?’
He opens his eyes and meets Johan’s searching gaze.
‘Are you on something?’
Dan grins. Johan must have suspected, of course, after all their nights in here. But he has never asked straight out before.
‘I don’t think I need that any more,’ Dan says, and walks off towards the stage.
The audience is clapping to the beat as Dan makes his way forward. He has despised them for so long. Depended on them. Whatever it is that has happened to him, at least he is finally free of them now.
Dan steps out into the spotlight; his eyes sting as if he is staring straight into the sun. But he smiles, and for the first time on this stage his smile is one hundred per cent genuine.
Fredrika keeps singing, smiling shyly at him.
He tears the microphone out of her hand. ‘Really, Fredrika, I think we should let Whitney rest in peace.’
A few members of the audience gasp; others rouse themselves from their half-sleep. The muscle guys in tight tank-tops laugh raucously. Fredrika looks at him uncertainly.
‘See this hand?’ Dan says, holding it up and making a fist. ‘Get it?’
No one answers. The clicking of mobile phone cameras echoes in the darkness beyond the spotlight.
‘No,’ Dan says, ‘of course you don’t. You have no idea what’s going on here. Even I don’t.’ He feels as if he is several feet taller in the bright light. His thoughts are racing through his head. He can’t seem to catch them.
‘I would like to kill all of you,’ he says, ‘every last one. You are so fucking stupid, and there are so many of you … I would be doing the world a service … It would be much better off without you. You have no power over me any more. Do you know what it’s like to—’
The speakers fall silent. Johan has turned off the mic. But Dan doesn’t need it. His voice is clearer than ever before; it makes his chest vibrate.
‘—to be dependent on people you despise? To rely on idiots like you? You are so fucking pathetic, with your terrible taste, your self-centred little lives, your paltry dreams …’
Several people in the audience boo him. Dan smiles at them.
‘Come on, Dan,’ Johan says. ‘That’s enough now.’
‘And you know it, deep down,’ he continues. ‘That’s why you come here, to make yourselves even stupider, drinking until you turn into cavemen …’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ shouts a man who has got to his feet at the far end of the room, ‘or you’re going to get a bloody good drubbing. I’ll make bloody sure of it! Real bloody sure!’
With his new senses, Dan can make out the man’s outline, even with the spotlights blinding him. The smell of him. The way the air in the room moves around him.
‘No one is going to remember you,’ Dan says, pointing at him. ‘Your grandchildren or great-grandchildren will find an old photograph of you and ask who you are, but there will be no one left who can answer.’
A beer bottle comes flying at him and he casually ducks; it breaks against the wall behind him.
‘You are trying to find the meaning of your meaningless lives, but you have missed the crucial point, that there is no point …’
Dan trails off when something in the room changes. He holds his hand up to shield his eyes and spots a white-blond boy in the darkness by the entrance. The boy is studying him, fascinated. And Dan knows instantly that there is something special about him.
He recognises himself.
Calle
Calle is sprawled on Filip’s bed, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling. He could drink his own weight in alcohol and it would still do nothing to silence his thoughts. They are far too loud when he is left alone with them; they outnumber and overpower him. He has nothing to distract himself with. Filip doesn’t even have an old newspaper lying around. Every now and then he glances at the internal telephone on Filip’s desk. It would be so easy to call the suite. Just dial the four numbers: 9318.
But what would he say if Vincent picked up?
He takes a slug of vodka straight from the bottle. The white-gold ring is heavy on his finger. Warm against his skin. He thinks about when he slipped it into his bag this morning. How nervous he was.
Was that just normal? Something that comes with the territory? Or did he already know that Vincent was going to say no? That something had crept in between them? Was that why he had decided to make such a big deal of the proposal, in front of an audience, in a context where Vincent didn’t feel at all at home?
‘What was I supposed to do, in front of all those people? What was I supposed to say?’
A cavalcade of memories of everything that has happened since midsummer rushes over him in a jumble, through apparently disjointed chains of associations. He scrutinises them all, turning them over and over in this new light, trying to find a point where everything went wrong: the reason why Vincent is on the fence. He has to find it and come up with a solution, and then tell Vincent what it is. He is going to fix this, for both of them.
His thoughts spin faster and faster and Calle wonders if this is what it feels like, the first few steps towards losing your mind.
There is a knock on the door. Has Filip told Vincent where he is after all? But no, it is probably Sophia. What are you doing here? Come and celebrate with us already! We need to toast you!
Calle lies stock-still.
‘It’s me,’ a familiar voice says on the other side of the door.
He puts the bottle down on the floor, almost knocks it over but then manages to catch the neck at the last second. He opens the door. Pia is standing outside in her uniform. He can tell straight away that she knows what has happened.
Pia puts her arms around him, and even though she is smaller than him, he feels completely enveloped.
‘What happened?’ she says.
‘I don’t know.’
They sit down on the bed. Pia looks haggard in the light from the bedside lamp. She is pale; the circles under her eyes have darkened since they were standing together on the bridge. When he had just proposed to Vincent. And she hugged him and cried and said she was happy for him.
If only he could cry. If only his thoughts would shut up so there would be room for feelings.
‘How are you?’ he asks.
‘I think I’m coming down with the flu,’ Pia says, and presses her fingers against her temples, moving her jaw slowly from side to side. ‘Hopefully it’s just a tension headache.’
‘Tough night?’
‘Not as tough as yours,’ Pia replies.
Calle attempts to shoot her a grin, but it doesn’t really come off. He picks the vodka bottle up off the floor and takes another swig. ‘Tell me,’ he says.
‘Wouldn’t it be better to talk about you instead?’
He shakes his head. ‘I would like to think about anything other than me.’
‘All right,’ Pia says. ‘Well, for example, some lunatic attacked Dan Appelgren on stage. He bit him. On the hand.’
‘We put the guy in the drunk tank. It was all four of us against him and we still only just managed to get him under control.’
Pia shakes herself. He can tell what happened affected her more than she would ever let on. Unlike him, Pia rarely exposes any weakness. Now, knowing a bit more about the world and having gained some measure of critical distance from the Charisma, he realises that she could hardly afford to, being a woman in a workplace like this.
‘Jesus,’ he says again, because he can’t think of anything else.
‘Appelgren will be fine,’ she says. ‘He’s been to see Raili. She patched his hand up.’
‘I’m having a hard time sympathising with him,’ Calle says. ‘At least if all the stories are true.’
‘I know,’ Pia says. ‘We’ve had our fair share of distraught girls, but none of them wanted to press charges. It sucks the big one, but in a way, I understand them.’
He studies her face, wondering what she is thinking. He knows almost nothing about Pia’s ex-husband, apart from random details that have leaked out here and there. What little he has been able to puzzle together has been drawn more from her total avoidance of the subject.
‘He was bloody unpleasant to Jenny at one of the staff parties,’ she continues.
‘Jenny?’
‘The girl who sings down at Starlight. In the end, Filip had to step in. We tried to persuade her to speak to the managers, but she was afraid of losing her job.’
Calle takes another sip, making the vodka slosh around inside its bottle.
‘Are you sure you want to drink more?’
‘Yes. I’m trying to get drunk.’
‘Seems to me you’re drunk enough as it is.’
‘Not even close.’
‘I can hardly blame you,’ she says.
They look at each other in silence. Pia absent-mindedly pats a cut on her wrist.
‘I should never have proposed here,’ Calle says. ‘I should never have proposed at all.’
‘Don’t you think you can work it out? Maybe he just needs time to mull it over?’
Calle rubs his eyes. ‘I don’t even know if we’re together any more. And I don’t know what the fuck to do now.’
‘You’ll figure something out,’ she says. ‘Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but you’ll figure it out.’
‘I wish I believed you.’
‘Me too.’ She puts her arm around him, and he suddenly feels grief flickering to life inside him.
‘I’m happy you came by,’ he says. ‘I was just starting to wonder if I was losing my mind up here.’
‘Of course I came by.’
‘Yes,’ he says, and his voice is thick now, a breath away from the tears that could set him free. ‘Of course you did.’
Her belt crackles. Whoever is trying to reach Pia right now, he loathes that person.
‘Now what?’ she mutters, reaches for her radio and pushes the button. ‘Pia, over!’
‘We have trouble down at the gaming machines on seven,’ Mika’s voice says, much too loudly in the cramped, quiet cabin. ‘Jarno is already on his way. Are you coming?’
‘I’m coming,’ Pia says, and shoots Calle a resigned look.
‘And keep an eye out for Dan Appelgren,’ Mika says. ‘He flipped his lid on stage just now. He might be in shock after what happened, but to be honest, I reckon he’s high. The captain wants to see him.’
Pia squeezes Calle a little harder with the arm that is still around his back.
‘Just another day on the Baltic Charisma?’ he says.
‘True story. And the drunk tanks are all full. Don’t you miss working here?’
Pia
Pia jogs down the hallway and opens the steel door to the staff stairwell, hoping fervently that Calle will manage to sleep until morning. He is going to wake up with a hell of a hangover on top of everything else, but at least she can be there for him tomorrow.
Unless she is passed out herself by then. Her head is aching dully – even the roof of her mouth is taut – and she is feeling dizzy.
Pia pauses in the doorway. She is so tired. Breaking up yet another fight, even walking down the stairs to get to it, feels impossibly difficult. She clutches the door handle, suddenly afraid. She knows this tiredness and it has nothing to do with the flu. It is a tiredness that makes everything pointless. She has always managed to keep it at bay on board; it’s when she is at home, alone, that it catches up with her. Inside her, there is a dark space she thinks of as a basement. It’s where she shoves all her forbidden thoughts and locks them in. Nails the door shut and prays it will hold. And it does, for the most part. But sometimes the door opens a crack, and at those times she can’t make it out of bed on her days off.
She shakes herself, runs down two flights of stairs and spots Dan Appelgren on his way into the goods lift. He is carrying a boy in a red hoodie in his arms. Dan starts, but the child eyes her calmly and curiously. He is almost unbelievably adorable, like something out of an old-fashioned soap ad.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Do you work here?’
‘I do,’ Pia says. ‘I’m the one who makes sure people don’t misbehave.’
She looks at Dan. His pupils are big and black. ‘What are you doing here?’ she says.
‘My nephew is visiting,’ Dan replies. ‘I’m just giving him a bit of a tour.’
‘I’m going to work on a boat too when I grow up,’ the boy says precociously, ‘but I’m going to be the captain.’
‘That’s great. You can never have too many good captains,’ Pia says, her eyes still on Dan. She is pondering how to proceed without scaring the child.
‘How are you feeling after … after what happened?’ she says.
‘Dandy,’ Dan replies. ‘Never better, actually.’
He holds his hand up for her to see and she stares at it in bewilderment. No wounds. Not even any scars.
‘Fast healer,’ he says, anticipating her.
She glances at the boy. For a split second she thinks she glimpses a hint of something in his smile: something that doesn’t belong in a child’s face.
As if he is mocking her, as if he knows something she doesn’t.
She suddenly becomes aware of the pounding in her head again. It has grown roots in her sinuses.
‘Captain Berggren wants to talk to you,’ she says. ‘I think it would be good if you went up to the bridge as soon as possible.’
‘In a minute,’ Dan says.
‘I need to get back to Mummy soon,’ the boy says.
‘Of course,’ Pia says, and tousles his hair.
But it feels wrong. The boy looks at her searchingly, an almost imperceptible smile curling the outermost corners of his mouth. She pulls her hand back.
‘Pia?’
She jumps when Mika’s voice comes on the radio. ‘Here,’ she says, after pushing the button.
‘I think you should hurry. Jarno is already there. It’s about to turn properly lively.’
‘On my way. I just ran into Dan.’
‘Tell him to go see Berggren immediately.’
‘He will. He’s just showing his nephew around. Then he’ll head straight there.’ She turns to Dan. ‘Right?’
Dan nods impatiently, but the boy smiles politely and waves. ‘Be careful,’ he says.
Göran
Göran holds on to the banister as he walks down the steep stairs past the car deck. He has no particular desire to fall and break his neck.
He pulls the door to deck two open and notes with a grimace that the septic-tank smell has grown more intense. He continues downwards, breathing through his mouth as he turns right and finds the short hallway where Marianne’s cabin is. Thankfully, he made a point of memorising her cabin number. One of the doors at the start of the hallway is ajar. It is dark inside and he ponders whether he ought to pull it shut. Someone might be asleep in there, or might have left and forgotten to lock their door. But he quickly dismisse
He walks up to Marianne’s door at the far end of the hallway and taps it lightly. Fixing his ponytail, he realises that he is shifting from one foot to the other like a nervous schoolboy.
‘Marianne?’ he calls. ‘It’s me, Göran.’
He waits, straining his ears, but there are no sounds coming from cabin 2015. He vacillates for a minute. Does he really want to wake her? Yes, he does. He wants to see Marianne again. He wants to lie down next to her, between the sheets in the bed where they made love. He knocks again, harder this time.
Is she awake? Is she angry with him? She looked so disappointed when he said he was leaving, but he had thought she would be coming with him, that it was a given. And when he realised he had messed it up, it was already too late: she looked like she’d wanted him gone as soon as possible. Maybe she doesn’t want to see him now.
He knocks a third time and hears a shuffling sound, but it is not coming from Marianne’s cabin.
Göran turns around and can’t see anyone in the hallway. But the gaping door seems to have opened further.
Suddenly he is convinced someone is lurking in the dark behind it, watching him, and Göran is acutely aware that he is in a dead end and that there is no one else around.
He turns back to Marianne’s door and pounds it hard.
The decks above him are full of people, all hustle and bustle. Music and fresh air. He tries to remind himself of that, but down here it is hard to believe.
The darkness behind the crack in the door seems to be spreading out into the hallway. He listens hard.
This is ridiculous. Just some curious person staring at him from inside their cabin. So what? He should yank that door open and stare back.