Book 2 : 662-665

3 August

I am a fool.

By this time tomorrow, I shall be dead. Or in jail again, if I’m lucky. Or a fugitive again, if I’m very lucky.

Dempsey was seventeen when I last saw her. Aari is seventeen.

We talked, we only talked, but I have made a promise. In stumbling Manafai.

6 August

Aari and I are on the Manafariiba. Getting here was quite an adventure, which I must write about sometime. Aari’s pimp has his own knife through his heart.

12 August

I am working a watch and a quarter, while Aari is in training in the kitchen. I don’t get much time to write! Mkembi says she is proud of me for rescuing Aari, but I think she’s annoyed, too. Aari doesn’t have the muscles to fly a sail. I’ve found out a bit about her history, and will write it when I have the time.

22 August

Manafa, our first port after Yambai. Aari and I have been put ashore. Well, Aari has been put ashore, and I have taken my pay and come with her. She would be in the same trouble in Manafa as she was in Yambai otherwise.

Anwar has introduced us to his sister and brother-in-law, where we can lodge for a few weeks – longer if we can earn some money in Manafa somehow.

Aari is from Mezham, a place no-one has heard of. It’s not on the coast. It’s two or three days’ difficult travel from the nearest big port, Laanoha. Not many people have heard of that, either. Mkembi has heard of it, but she’s never been there, and doesn’t know where it is.

Aari’s mother died when Aari was very young. Since then, until a few days before I found her, she had sailed with her father, the captain of a small trading ship. He went ashore in Yambai, and never came back. What happened to him, Aari does not know.

The sailors on the ship began to get restless. Aari realized that the first mate was wavering about whether to stay faithful and risk being overthrown, or to try to lead a mutiny himself. Aari was very afraid of what might happen to her, and made her escape.

But she was completely lost in Yambai, and very rapidly picked up by the pimp.

23 August

If we can find a ship that needs us both, Aari could be worth her weight in gold. She can read and write and is really good at arithmetic! She’s been keeping the ship’s books for her father for years.

She wondered what I was doing with my diary; my English writing is completely strange to her. And her Laana writing is completely strange to me.

Laana numbers are almost the same as English ones, which I find very interesting. Manafai numbers are quite different. She is fluent in both, and in both Laana and Manafai writing. So far, I’ve only been learning spoken Manafai.

Reading and writing and any arithmetic beyond the simplest are rare skills here, even more so than in England. They’re skills captains generally have, both sides of The Weather, and maybe first mates on larger vessels, but other sailors? Rarely, if ever. Certainly not Anwar or Mkembi.

I asked Aari whether she would really like to return to Mezham or Laanoha, or anywhere in that general area. She says maybe, she’s not sure. And she doesn’t know how to get there anyway. She says there is no chance of a ship sailing from Manafa to Laanoha, and she doesn’t know which port one might go from. She says her father seemed to avoid the area after her mother died, and she didn’t start to learn all the ports until she was nine or ten.

But it would be interesting to at least visit, even if we live the rest of our lives afloat. We should keep our ears open for where ships are headed.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We haven’t got work at all yet, and it’s a bit of a challenge to both get work on the same ship. Which we must: she needs my protection.

24 August

This is going to be difficult. Captains do not seem to want someone who can read and write, and now I think about it, I can understand why. I’m glad I realized while we still have a good amount of money from my pay. Sadly I cannot afford even the smallest sea-going vessel for us to start trading in our own right, never mind the pay for the sailors I’d need, or for our first cargo.

I’m not sure how much I trust Anwar’s brother-in-law. I’m not sure how he makes his living. He’s clearly making a good living, but where does the money come from? I can’t ask, and he isn’t saying much.

25 August

Another hopeless day at the docks.

Aari really is no fool. She knows that I have the skills needed on both large and small ships, and that her own special skills are not wanted. But if she had a normal sort of skill for a small woman on board, we’d get by until we can find a better role for her. She started to learn kitchen skills on Manafariiba; she just needs to polish them up a bit until she can pretend to be expert. And keep quiet about writing and arithmetic for the moment. That was my fault.

And help with kitchen work is something she can ask Anwar’s sister about. She’s going to ask tomorrow.

Everyone thinks we’re a couple, and we sleep in the same bed, so I suppose we sort of are. And she sleeps with her head on my shoulder, and our arms around each other. But that is all.

I suppose I love her, and I think she loves me. We’ve been together for three weeks now.

I think she saw the look in my eyes as I just looked at her. She cannot read English, so she asked me to translate today’s entry for her. So I just did.

She says, yes, we are a couple, of course, but that we cannot have children.

And then she thought for a moment and said – Yet. And kissed me. I think I am happy, but life is going to be difficult. For both of us.

Now she wants me to translate my whole diary to her. This will be hard. My Manafai is not that good.

Will we really be together forever? Perhaps I should learn Laana too.

Now I have to tell her everything I write as I write it. This is good practice for my Manafai, but it slows the writing down a lot!

She laughed, and said yes, she’ll teach me Laana.

I like it when she laughs. That’s the first time she’s laughed since we met.

31 August

Aari reminds me that I haven’t written anything for a few days. I’ve been translating for her every evening, We’ve got up to the 8th of May, when I wrote that I hadn’t felt like writing for a few days, which raised the obvious question.

She’s teaching me to read and write Manafai. She’s not going to teach me Laana – yet.

At least Manafai numbers are easy. They work exactly the same way as English ones, you just have to remember which digit is which.

We still haven’t had any luck at the docks. Bihi – that’s Anwar’s sister – says ship’s kitchen work is nothing like restaurant kitchen work. Oh, and Hunhu – Bihi’s husband – runs a restaurant, but doesn’t need any more staff. Perhaps he doesn’t want staff who can do calculations.

I think they’re worried about what will happen when we run out of money. They thought we were just having a break ashore and would be back at sea soon. I hope we are, but I’m worried, too. Perhaps we need to find cheaper accommodation. I think they’re rather taking advantage of our ignorance.

When I translated that for Aari, she whispered in my ear that she thinks Hunhu sometimes listens in to our conversations through the wall, and I must talk more quietly.

Perhaps I should learn Laana quickly. No-one else knows Laana.

Laughter.

I love you, Aari.

More laughter.

5 September 662

We took a day’s break from visiting the docks, and went for a long walk around town. Quite by accident we found Hunhu’s restaurant. It’s very posh compared to most of the other restaurants we saw.

We decided to ask in one of the other restaurants whether they knew anywhere we could stay, and whether they needed any staff. We were quite open that Aari needs to learn kitchen work to join me when I work as a sailor, and that for now I can do lifting and carrying or anything. As long as we get enough to keep body and soul together, we’ll be happy.

They didn’t have work for us, but were friendly and suggested somewhere else where we might be luckier. We’ve followed a trail of such suggestions, and here we are.

We haven’t been back to tell Bihi and Hunhu. They really were taking advantage. I wish we’d done this sooner. I wonder if I’ll ever seen Anwar again? I’m sure he doesn’t know what they’re like.

Aari says she’s not sure Bihi knows what Hunhu is like. She doesn’t think Bihi knows the price of anything.

I’ve translated the whole diary to Aari now. She knows as much about me as I know myself.

Laughter. Not really, she says, and it’s true. I’ll write a lot more.

And we’ll write more of her story too.

Laughter. She says I already know as much about her as she knows herself.

Well – I know more than I’ve written, but not all that much.

One thing I know that I didn’t write before is that the pimp – she won’t say his name, says it’s bad luck – never raped Aari, and the only reason was that he thought she was worth a lot more as a first-timer. I was the first person to pay the price.

Not half as much as he paid.

Aari wants to know how I feel about having killed a man, and I have to tell her he wasn’t the first. You don’t take prisoners when you fight pirates. It’s you or them, and I’ve always made sure it was them. Senghor was a good teacher.

Aari wants to know how many? I don’t know. You can’t count the ones who go down with their ship, and I’ve done that twice. And you don’t hang about to look for survivors in the water.

Have I actually put a knife in anyone before? Yes, twice before. Not a nasty little dagger like the pimp’s, a proper knife. And not so much putting a knife in, as slashing a throat. From behind. Both times. Messy, but you take whatever opportunity presents itself.

How did you know how to knife the pimp so efficiently?

Like I say, Senghor was a good teacher. A good man, and a good friend. When I think of him drowning near Kep I can’t help crying.

Aari, do we have to think about this sort of stuff?

She’d rather not, too, but she had to know.

It’s quite a relief to know that we don’t have to worry about running out of money. We have a place to be for as long as it takes. We’re not rich, but we’ll survive.

Well, we think we know. We’ll see.

I’m writing this, and we’re chatting, sitting on a wall in the evening sunshine, not lying on a bed in a tiny room, not wondering whether our landlord is listening through the wall, and not worrying about the future.

Aari, I love you.

6 September

Here we are, sitting on the same wall in the evening sunshine again. I have spent the day unloading carts and peeling vegetables, Aari has spent the day preparing food and serving customers. Pili doesn’t mind at all that Aari can keep track of the takings, says it’ll be useful to have someone else who can do it. She’s not realized that I could do it too, but I don’t think she’d care anyway. She knows we don’t want to cheat her, and she doesn’t cheat her suppliers or her customers so she’s nothing to fear.

What a different world from Hunhu’s – or, I suspect, most of the ships’ captains.

Aari says her father never cheated anyone, but he knew that a lot of captains did. The captain and the purser together, on bigger ships. I think she’s telling the truth.

Ha. You did all the books for your father, Aari! Did you cheat him?

Laughter. She knows I’m joking.

Translating my diary slows my writing down. Writing down our conversations slows the conversations down.

Laughter.

Translating what I’d written before we met was good for my Manafai. Writing our conversation down isn’t good for my Manafai at all. Perhaps I should learn to write in Manafai?

Aari says, No, imagine if someone else gets to read it? It’s great that you write in English. Nobody can read English.

Maybe Browth can. I never saw him reading or writing, but I expect he does. There are a few English speakers around, and some of them may be able to read, who knows?

Actually, the spoken language isn’t the same. Close enough that I can mostly understand it, and they can mostly understand me, but not the same. Maybe the writing isn’t the same at all? English English, French and German – and Spanish too – all use more or less the same alphabet, plus or minus a few letters and little marks, but Manafai uses a completely different system.

And Laana, Aari says, uses a completely different system again.

And there are even fewer Laana speakers than English speakers here?

Yes, anywhere except around Laanoha, Barioha and Meyroha, and that’s a long way from here.

Then I really should learn Laana!

Maybe, but Aari says she thinks English writing is pretty safe. I hope so. It would be interesting to see some local English writing though, but I shan’t go around asking about it.

7 September

Aari says that working in Pili’s kitchen is very like the work she was doing on Manafariiba.

Pili laughed like mad when Aari told her that Hunhu had said that working in a restaurant kitchen was nothing like working in a ship’s galley. She said the only big difference is that most restaurant workers would get seasick, and that’s not going to be a problem for you, is it?

Then she said that maybe working in Hunhu’s kitchen might be a bit different, making fancy food for rich folk, but she’s sure that an ordinary kitchen like hers isn’t a lot different from a ship’s galley. Certainly the food is much the same, whether from the galley on a small ship or from the kitchen on Manafariiba.

I’ve been writing “restaurant,” because I’m just translating the word from Manafai into English the way I first learned it, but “cafe” would be a better translation for most of the places – apart from Hunhu’s and one or two others. The same word does for both in Manafai.

Aari says that happens a lot, translating between Laana and Manafai. Most often there are three or four words in Laana that are all the same in Manafai, but sometimes it’s the other way round. I wonder whether that’s just because she knows Laana better, and it might seem the other way round to a native Manafai speaker.

No, she says, she’s been speaking mostly Manafai since she was about seven years old. Even conversations with her father have been mostly Manafai in recent years. They’ve not had a single Laana speaking sailor for many years. She’s always kept the ship’s books in Laana though.

I asked if that was to keep them secret from the sailors. No! Of course not, she says. None of the sailors can read Manafai either.

How will the crew of her father’s boat cope now, if none of them can read and write? That’s their problem, she says. They’ll think they can manage, but they’ll lose money on every cargo, or get caught cheating someone, deliberately or by mistake, and someone cleverer will take the boat off them. That’s life, she says.

She’s very pragmatic about it. She doesn’t feel much attachment to most of the sailors. If they lose the boat, what’s that to her? She’s lost it herself already. She says she feels a bit sorry for the first mate, the only one she’s known a long time, but she knows he wouldn’t have taken care of her at all.

He’s a fool. She can read and write and he can’t.

He doesn’t think it’s necessary, she says.

Like I said, a fool.

28 September

It’s raining and we’re in bed in our room, which is on the top floor above Pili’s restaurant cafe. It’s the middle of the afternoon, but the cafe is quiet because of the rain. It might get busy later on – Manafaloka arrived this morning, so there’ll be eighty or so extra sailors in town, and Pili’s quite popular with them.

We’d given up bothering with the diary. We’ve been spending our spare time chattering, or wandering around town, or taking a look at what’s going on at the docks. My Manafai is improving all the time. Pili says she’ll miss us if we leave, but that she thinks Aari can honestly say she’s an expert cook and not expect to be found wanting, and that she doesn’t want to hold us back.

Aari says that Pili thinks we should find somewhere we can settle down properly, maybe back near Laanoha, because she thinks we ought to have a family. And you can’t have a family on a ship – unless it’s your own ship, and we can’t afford that.

Did Pili really say that, or is Aari putting words into Pili’s mouth?

What have I written? Oh, okay, Aari. Yes, I wrote that. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t you believe me? Yes, I believe you. Are you writing down what we’re both saying? Yes, I’m writing down exactly what we’re both saying. Yes, I really believe you. What do you think yourself? I don’t know. That’s what Pili said though.

That’s going to be confusing if we read it again later. Even more confusing for anyone else! If anyone else ever reads it. If anyone else ever can read it.

Should we try to get work on Manafaloka? Aari’s not sure. She doesn’t know which ports it plies between, but she doesn’t know which ports might be in the direction of Laanoha, either.

29 September

We decided to try for Manafaloka, and here we are. They’re very happy to have a sailor who can already fly a full sail, and can use an experienced kitchen hand. They laughed when we said we’d share a bunk.

We can travel all the way to both ends of her line, and back here. We’ll see what we can hear about ships going elsewhere at each port we visit – or maybe change ships if we hear anything about Laanoha.

We’ve not told anyone that’s our plan – apart from Pili. We told them we worked on Manafariiba before, which is true, and they know it must be true, because they’d obviously find out pretty quick if we didn’t know the ropes.

Pili said again that she’ll miss us, but that she’ll find new workers easily enough. She says next time we’re in Manafa – if we’re back here before we find our way to Laanoha – we must come and see her. She’s unlikely to have work for us, but she’ll probably be able to find someone who has. And she might well have a room, anyway.

What will we do if Manafaloka visits Yambai? It’s normal enough for ladies to stay aboard, but people will think it’s odd if I do. But for safety’s sake I must.

Aari laughs, and says everyone will understand. We share a bunk.

6 November 662

So here we are, anchored off Yambai! Yambai looks as incredible now as it did first time, but much less inviting. I wish I could draw, though. I’m glad it looked inviting first time, even if I did rather get into trouble.

Aari won’t even let me help with loading and unloading – which is probably sensible.

There’s no Mkembi on Manafaloka. Nor any Anwar. I haven’t really made any friends. Oh, everyone is friendly, but no particular friends. I do my work, Aari does hers, and we spend time together when we can – in our bunk, or leaning over the rail watching the water and chatting or just in silence.

Just now she’s working in the kitchen. Even the kitchen isn’t very busy, with just the ladies and a few men to feed. Not many people know I’m aboard – just Aari and her special friend Titiya, and the chaps we share a cabin with. They know I got into trouble in Yambai once, but they don’t know what sort of trouble! And they’re good enough not to tell anyone else. I hope.

Most of the crew are ashore, apart from a few helping load and unload, but apart from overseeing, most of that work is done by dockers from Yambai. Some men like to earn a few extra nrega loading and unloading, but most prefer to take some of their pay and head for town.

Titiya brought me some food a little while ago, and either she or Aari will probably come in a few minutes to take the plate and spoon away. It’s strange, being shut in the cabin for days, but the fewer people know I’m here, the better. When Aari’s not here, I’ll have nothing to do but write – when there’s enough light.

We were anchored off Hadiboh¹ for three nights on the way here, and then off Wahebr. Going the other way, from Yambai to Manafa on Riba (it seems the crew of Loka miss Manafa off the beginning of all the ship’s names) we sailed direct. It’s quite a lot further via Hadiboh and Wahebr, but there’s trade on this route in this direction. Going the other way we’ll go direct again. Probably. It depends what cargo the captains get.

Hadiboh is mostly a fishing port. One of the chaps in our cabin, Bampang, comes from another town on the same island. He says it’s heaven, and he intends to retire there when he’s saved enough money to buy a patch of land. He doesn’t have a girl there, but he says he’ll find one and get married and raise a family when he has his patch of land. The other chaps think he’s dreaming, and laugh at him, but Aari and I listen to him and think he sounds as though he knows what he’s talking about. If he’s really managing to save enough money. If the captains are trustworthy, perhaps he is. I think he knows arithmetic, which is more than the other chaps do, I’m sure.

He goes ashore at ports, but he doesn’t take much of his pay. He’s obviously not using prostitutes, he barely takes enough to feed himself, and he says he sleeps under bridges if it’s too cold or wet to sleep in the open.

He doesn’t say as much when the other chaps are here, but occasionally when there’s just him and Aari and me, he’ll open right up. I like him, but he’s not like Anwar, and I don’t open up much with him, and Aari says very little about herself.

Bampang says you can easily sail all round his island in a good small boat in a couple of days if there’s enough wind, and there usually is. He went ashore there, of course, but that isn’t what he did with his time. He said we could have done, if he’d got a friend to take us, but it would have cost us a lot, and there’d have been a risk of not getting back in time before Loka sailed.

If the other ports we’ve visited are on islands, I think they’re big islands, or only separated from the mainland by a narrow strait, but I don’t know. It’s very hard to get a handle on the geography when you’re not privy to the navigation. The other side of The Weather it was easy: I’d learnt the geography of England, Germany, France and Spain in school, and from there, apart from the Canaries, it’s just a long line of ports all down the African coast. Oh, there’s the Mediterranean between Spain and Africa, but I’ve never been that way. There are trading ports in a country called Italy that way, and the sea goes on further, but beyond Italy it’s wild country and not somewhere anyone honest wants to go.

And if you’re mad enough, you can get a ship that’s going over the open sea to a place called Brazil. I did that once, while Mnonkor was in dry dock in the Canaries. But you have to be mad. Not every ship that goes that way ever comes back. Whether that’s weather, or pirates, or because they make a new life over there, I don’t know, but I find the idea of a new life over there hard to believe.

The people there are completely wild. You can’t do enough trade with them to make the trip worthwhile. There are no ports. All you can do is cut timber yourselves. At least there’s little expense in that, but it’s slow, hard work, and the ship’s idle while you’re doing it. And there’s no profit in the outward journey.

Another thing is that some of the timber from Brazil doesn’t even float, so getting it out to the ship is damned hard work too. But that timber is the most valuable, so our captain was very keen we found it. We had to go miles into dense jungle to find it, and then drag the damn stuff miles back to shore – and then it doesn’t bloody float. It’s hell to cut down in the first place, too.

And on top of that, some of the crew got very ill while we were there. Two men died. Never again.

Well, that was what I said to myself at the time, but of course it’s not possible for me any longer anyway. I’m the wrong side of The Weather.

No, I’m the right side of The Weather. Aari’s side.

I just wish Dempsey was here too. And Mother, and Clara, and Agni. And Belinda, but she’s got her own family now, and I can’t wish everybody here.

Dream on, Gom, you can’t wish anyone here. And Clara and Dempsey probably have their own families too by now.

Titiya has just been and collected my things, and says Aari will be here soon.

I went ashore, leaving Aari on board, at both Hadiboh and Wahebr, but only for the day. I came back overnight. I tried to ask whether anyone knew of Laanoha, but not many people understand Manafai in either place – and of course no-one understood English or French or German! The few people who understand Manafai have never heard of Laanoha – nor Barioha or Meyroha. Aari says there is no chance at all of anyone having heard of Mezham!

Aari’s name is really Anaari, but everyone calls her Aari and she prefers that. Most people don’t even know her real name. I told her about Dempsey calling me Gom – in fact I think I’d written about it in the diary before, and translated that for her – and now she’s taken to calling me Gom. But only in private. Everyone else calls me Gordon.

Or Gordian. I think that’s a name some of them have heard before.

Aari is here, and I’ve just translated today’s writing for her.

Her full name is Mezhab Anaari. I didn’t know that. It means Anaari from Mezham. Her father’s name was Mezhab Tomaam. Her mother’s name was Oushab Faahi until she married Aari’s father, and then it was Mezhab Faahi. She wasn’t from Oushi, but her grandfather had been, so the whole family was called Oushab. O...kay...

Aari wants to know my family name. I tell her that it’s Beer, so she calls me Beer Gom, and I laugh, and it takes me a moment to realize that in Laana, they put family names first, and I explain that my name is really Gordon Beer, not Beer Gordon. And Beer is just a family name, it doesn’t really mean anything. Well, it means an alcoholic drink, but if someone a long way back in our family used to drink it, or brew it, that’s not my fault, and I don’t drink alcohol at all. And she says her father never did, either, but that most sailors do. And she got the idea of family names coming last absolutely straight away.

Okay, she says, that wasn’t hard for her: they come last in Manafai, too.

7 November

Aari is in the kitchen again, and here I am in the little pool of light under my porthole again.

I’ve been wondering where we’ll be going next, whether anyone in our next port will have heard of Laanoha, whether we’ll ever find Laanoha, whether that’s where we really want to end up anyway. Should we take Bampang’s advice, and buy a little patch of land near Hadiboh, in his heaven? I didn’t ask him how many years he’s been sailing, and how many more he thinks he’ll have to sail, to save enough. I think he’s older than me though, and I know he’s not expecting to retire for a few years yet. He’ll be an oldish father. And Aari and I have only just started saving.

Will we have the same problem wherever we settle, though? Or are little patches of land cheaper elsewhere, or even just there for the taking? Are Aari’s connections in Mezham worth anything?

Or should I try to get work onshore, so we can start a family? Aari is still young, but I’m 28. We can wait a few years, but we shouldn’t wait too long.

Aari brought food today, we ate together, and she’s just taken the things back.

She liked what I wrote this morning, but says she doesn’t think Hadiboh would be a good place for us, because almost no-one there speaks Manafai, and she can’t read their writing, either. The system is completely different again from Manafai, Laana or English.

Manafai is almost universal on ships, and lots of people speak it in the big ports. But away from the ports, do people know Manafai? Or is it like Hadiboh in most places? Maybe it is.

Maybe we should try to find Laanoha, and settle somewhere near there, after all. Or find out about the area around Manafa.

We have some time. We must save as hard as we can.

Aari’s connections in Mezham may be worth something, she doesn’t know. She was only six when she left there. She has an aunt, her mother’s younger sister, who was young and not yet married at that time, and an uncle, her father’s much older brother, a widower with no children, who may or may not still be alive by now. He was horrible, Aari says. He often hurt her.

Her aunt was lovely.

Her father didn’t keep in touch with anyone, he seemed to want to stay away from the area completely.

I do wonder whether he was actually in some sort of trouble there. And now I’ve written that down and will have to translate it for Aari.

Aari is back, and now she is crying. I shouldn’t have written that. Only she says I should, and she’s often wondered it herself, but has never faced up to the possibility. She could never have asked him, and none of the sailors would have known anyway – not since they left the area, and didn’t have any Laanoha men in the crew.

We will never know, unless we go back there and people tell us. Surely they wouldn’t hold it against Aari anyway? Surely not, so she should have nothing to worry about going back there? Would she?

I am holding Aari tight, but she wants me to keep on writing, so I am.

She’s not sure whether they’d welcome her back. She half wants to go back there, and she half doesn’t. I’ve had the feeling for a while that that’s how she feels, but now she’s said it herself.

Mezham is a very small and isolated village, on a river, a large one, but navigable only in small boats. Laanoha is a big city, where at least she knows the language. Aari thinks that there are fishing villages not too far from Laanoha where we could probably find a niche. She says she thinks that in that area you can just find an unused bit of land and build yourself a house. But she was only six, and she’s not sure. We could save enough money for a small, second-hand fishing boat in just a couple of years. I’ve never sailed a small boat, but I can learn. I shall be a fisherman.

Now we have to find our way to Laanoha.

And I have to start learning Laana.

But thank goodness we will be leaving Yambai tomorrow, even if it does mean we’ll both be busier again.

Aari suddenly laughed through her tears, called me Beer Gom again, and laughed again. She says Beer Gom sounds more like a Laana name than Gordon, or Gom.

No, not Beer Gom, Beergom. No, Birgom.

I’m still Gordon – or Gordian – on this ship, but I’ll be Birgom on the next one. To get used to it.

She says I should be Mezhab Birgom. I need a proper Laana name, and Mezham is out of the way enough to explain my funny way of talking when we arrive in Laanoha. And she won’t have to change her name, and everyone will just know we’re married. And I’ll be able to talk fluent Laana by then, even if I still have a funny accent.

Aari is determined, and who am I to argue?

Laughter. She thinks that’s funny. And I love her.

4 December 662

We have at last arrived at Vamura. That took sixteen days on Riba in the other direction, a broad reach² all the way. We have been beating upwind all the way in this direction, and it’s taken twenty-seven days.

Most of the way we’ve been doing very long legs between tacks, and not seeing land at all, so this is an open ocean crossing. Oh, I would love to know the geography this side of The Weather!

I have learnt to fly a second sail at night, and worked a shift and a half, to save more money. Aari has been working two shifts in the kitchen. Her arms are getting stronger, and she jokes that she’ll learn to fly a sail next. If she does, she’ll be the smallest flyer ever.

There are no women flyers on Loka. There’s only Mkembi on Riba. And Mkembi is BIG.

Aari’s been teaching me a bit of Laana, but we haven’t had much time together on the crossing, and most of what time we’ve had we’ve been asleep, or it’s been dark. We’ve not started on the writing yet.

We are both tired, and ready for our break. Three days. I will only go ashore one day, to talk in cafes, find out whether anyone has ever heard of Laanoha.

5 December

Everyone has heard of Laanoha here, but no-one knows where it is, and they don’t think any Laanohan ships ever call here. They have only heard of Laanoha because of one Laanohan beggar who lived here for years after losing his job because of drunkenness, and failing ever to get another.

I’m going to go ashore again tomorrow, to see if I can find out anything else about this beggar. Aari has a suspicion about who he might be, and hopes he is still alive somewhere. Not because she has any attachment to him, but because he might have interesting information. I am to ask if anyone knows his name. If he’s who Aari thinks he might be, his personal name is quite a common Laana name, and Aari doesn’t know his family name – but it might be Mezhab, because she thinks he’s from Mezham, and most people there are called Mezhab. We’ll see what I can find out. If anything.

Aari is starting to teach me Laana writing, but it’ll be dark soon. I’ve spent most of the day ashore.

6 December

The beggar’s name was Mezhab Kaasham, and Aari is crying again. She’s certain she knows who he was now, and in her mind her father murdered him by putting him ashore here. He was the last Laanohan sailor, apart from her father, on their ship. She thinks all the others left of their own accord, while they were still where they could get a job on a ship returning to Laanoha.

She didn’t know the name of the place where he’d been put ashore; she was still only six or maybe just seven then, and hadn’t yet started keeping the ship’s books and noticing the names of the ports.

I found a cafe where they had regularly given him left-over food when they were about to close for the night, and they remembered him well. They felt sorry for him, but what could they do, but feed him what they would have thrown away otherwise?

He had arrived ten years ago, so that fits with Aari’s memory; they think he died maybe four or five years ago. They don’t know for sure, but he stopped coming and they think he must have died somewhere. They’ve not heard of anyone finding his body, but he could have drowned and washed out to sea, or died somewhere where no-one would find him, or he could even have been murdered and his body hidden. Anything.

He could barely speak Manafai when he first arrived, but he’d learnt quite a lot over the years. They say they never saw him drunk, but then he couldn’t afford drink, and no-one would give it to him for nothing. But they think his lack of Manafai – maybe that’s why people thought he was drunk – was the reason he could never get a ship, and it’s just possible that once he’d learnt Manafai he did eventually get a job.

Hold on to that, Aari. If it’s true, your father did him a great disservice leaving him here, but maybe he’s still alive and sailing again.

A smile through the tears.

It’s possible.

He was always kind to me, she says. No attachment? Well, a little, she says. Not an uncle, but like one. Like an uncle ought to be, not like her real uncle. Maybe more like an aunt.

But if Kaasham is still alive, he could be anywhere. Maybe back in Laanoha. Not here, anyway.

There’s still a little light, I have to practice writing Laana. No, Aari says, it’s reading Laana tonight.

{The next few paragraphs were written by Aari, in Laana – I’ve just copied them.} [But I’ve translated them.]

I like the way you just write what you think, without thinking about how I’ll feel about it until it’s too late. It means I can trust you not to keep secrets from me.

“I didn’t say anything about my suspicion about your father for ages, although I’d had the suspicion a long time.”

Because you weren’t sure, and you didn’t want to hurt me.

“Exactly, I was thinking about how you’d feel. Do you still think you can trust me?”

That was then, and this is now. You’re just writing stuff straight down.

“What are those little marks?”.

They’re speech marks, to show when you’re speaking.

“We have them in English, too – different ones – but I never use them. Well, not usually.”

“I don’t even know all the letters you’re using, how can I possibly read all this that you’re writing?”

{End of Aari’s writing.}

Aari started to translate what she wrote – but it’s pretty much exactly what we just said to each other. But I can see that she only used speech marks for what I said, not for what she said.

“Of course not,” she says, “I said it, I wrote it, why would I put speech marks round it?”

Logical, I suppose. Look, I can write speech marks too!

“But you had to write, ‘she says,’ in the middle, because otherwise you couldn’t tell who was speaking? Too silly!”

What if there’s more than two people speaking, or if neither of the two are doing the writing?

“Use different speech marks for the different speakers, obviously.”

O...kay…

There may be more to learn about Laana than just the letters and the words and the grammar.

“Of course, but those would be a good start. I’m sure there’s more to English than meets the eye, too. Learning to talk is the most important. Most people in Laanoha can’t read and write anyway. Almost no-one in Mezham can.”

7 December

Aari doesn’t know the geography here really, but she thinks that it’s basically a long coast with ports at intervals all along it, that bends back and forth so it’s possible to take shorter lines across the open sea to miss out some ports in huge bays – plus a few islands. With maybe a gap or two in the long coast where ships can go through to a different sea. She thinks she remembers coming through a wide strait just once when she was very young, with Laanoha in that different sea.

So a bit like the Mediterranean between Spain and Morocco, maybe. Maybe even the other end of the same sea? But a long way through, if so, with terrible wild country on both sides in between. And we can’t get to the Mediterranean anyway, it’s the wrong side of The Weather.

She thinks it was quite a long time after the other Laanoha men left that Kaasham was put ashore, and that most of the men left either before the strait or not long after. Maybe. Her memory is pretty hazy of that time. But it does sound as though we want to ask about Laanoha right at the other end of the line these big ships ply back and forth along. Or near it.

Aari really isn’t sure. As long as she can remember – as long as she’s been keeping the books – her father always dodged back and forth as the cargos took him, not steadily from one end of the line to the other and then back again.

Senghor always used to do his trip steadily from end to end. He never dodged back and forth. It could be the different geography I suppose, or just a different kind of mind. Or do small ships here always dodge back and forth, because the big ships corner the bulk of the trade?

No, says Aari, her father dodged back and forth before the big ships even appeared.

So the big ships are that new, then. Oh, there were always bigger ships than her father’s, just not quite as big as Loka, and not the same sort of design. Just like her father’s ship, only bigger. Probably pretty much like Browth’s ship, or Senghor’s, I expect.

How many men were there on your father’s ship? “Usually ten.” Same as Senghor’s and Browth’s, roughly. How many on the bigger ships? “Dunno. Just they’re bigger.”

I’ve not seen any like that, but you don’t see many other ships most of the time, just the small boats that come to load and unload ours. Sometimes when you go ashore you can see smaller ships in the harbour, but many harbours look so shallow that I’m sure even the small ships would have to anchor offshore.

Aari is going to the kitchen now.

Bampang has just arrived, and says that if I want to earn some extra money, they’re going to depart this evening instead of tomorrow morning, because they’re all loaded and there’s a good wind getting up, and if I get up on deck now they’ll give me a night shift if I can handle a full sail at night.

Well, I can handle a full sail by daylight, and I can handle a second sail at night well enough. Dare I take on a full sail at night?

It’s a clear sky, and tonight will be a full moon. Tell Aari where I am, Bampang. And wish me luck.

8 December

Last night was hard. Aari came up on deck after her evening shift in the kitchen. She didn’t want to be alone with the men, but I’d committed to the night shift, fool that I am. It’s a good thing it wasn’t too cold, but with a clear sky and a good wind it wasn’t very warm. Between tacks she could rest against me, but I had to wake her up every tack, and we weren’t doing very long legs.

I don’t know why we were doing short legs. On the starboard tacks we were in sight of the coast, but the port tacks were well out to sea. Were there reefs out there, or a contrary current, or what? Or was the navigation relying on seeing the shore? It couldn’t on those long crossings.

She says it was fine, and I should do it again if I can. Can I manage full night shifts and half day shifts? We’ll save more money that way, and she doesn’t mind sleeping on deck. And she can do the early morning shift in the kitchen – she’s sure they’ll be very happy if she offers to do that instead of the lunch shift.

Maybe I’ll offer to do night and a quarter. Night was hard, it takes more concentration. What it’s like on a moonless night I dread to think, but they usually do it.

Oh. Maybe not when we’re beating along a coast, particularly if it’s cloudy or raining.

Aari’s off to the kitchen now, and I’m going to get some sleep when I’ve booked my next shifts.

Booked. Night and first quarter, ten hour stretch, as long as the wind holds, even if it rains. I wonder what shifts Aari’ll get?

Aari’s back. I slept well. Aari’s working evening and breakfast, and will sleep on deck. I hope it doesn’t rain!

9 December

We spent the afternoon yesterday on deck, watching the water, chatting. Learning Laana talk. On and off. Feels funny, writing in English now, after chatting in Manafai and learning Laana, but I can’t really write Manafai yet, never mind Laana. Aari is asleep, and I ought to be, but I’m not. She didn’t sleep very well last night, with the short legs we were doing. My arms ache from all the tacking, but I managed all ten hours, and will again tonight. Aari’s booked on evening and breakfast again, too. We’ll have to get into a habit of sleeping in the day.

I can talk while I’m flying, but I can’t concentrate enough to learn Laana at the same time. But it’s good to practise Manafai anyway.

Aari has woken up, and wants me to come and hold her. She wants me to get some sleep, and she’s right. I’m coming.

16 December

We are anchored for two nights at Verhoyek. We stopped for just a few hours here in the other direction, on Riba, but I never caught the place’s name.

Everyone needs a break. It’s been a hard slog, beating all the way with short legs, and we’ve taken three more days on the passage than we did running the other way. I’ve done ten hours every night and I’m exhausted.

Plus most of one day repairing keels after we hit driftwood.

No-one is going ashore until the morning. Aari’s just gone to start her evening shift.

17 December

Nobody here has ever heard of Laanoha. Not many people speak Manafai – just the cafe people. And probably the prostitutes, but they aren’t around yet and I’ve come back aboard before they are.

I’ve said I can’t do solid night shifts on every passage, it’s too much, but there’s a chap who’ll go halves with me, so I’m doing the first half of the night shifts and a full day shift on the next passage. It should be just four days – it was two the other way – and then there’s another two night anchorage. Maybe I’ll do solid nights again after that, we’ll see.

1 January 663

I don’t remember the names of all the places we’ve anchored, sometimes two nights, sometimes just one. If we’re ever back here, maybe I’ll write them down. If we aren’t, do they matter?

Aari knows them. Of course. Fool I am.

No-one has heard of Laanoha anywhere.

I can read and write Manafai fairly well now, and I’m beginning to get to grips with Laana, too. And we’re earning good money, both working as much as we can manage. The purser wanted to know what I’ll do with all the money, and someone has told him about me and Aari, and he laughed.

30 January

Faguri. I have mixed feelings about going ashore here, but I can speak Manafai reasonably well now, I have money, I won’t be wandering around looking lost, and I have a ship to go back to. I’ll go ashore for a while tomorrow.

31 January

Faguri is a big town. I may need to go back again tomorrow, I haven’t visited every cafe. So far, no-one has heard of Laanoha. Or if they have, they don’t want to tell me. This is a strange place, where people seem afraid all the time. I don’t like it.

Aari says not to go again. She’s sure Laanoha is on a different sea, through a strait near the other end of the line. I wonder if anyone knows the whole geography? Maybe Aari’s father did, but Aari just knows the ports he visited. She hasn’t got the books from their ship, and can’t remember the order the ports came in, or how long the passages were.

She’s a bit cross with me for writing that. She says the passage times vary with the wind, which of course is true, and that her father would take a cargo from one port to another in either direction and miss out several ports in between, back and forth, so even the order wasn’t easy to know. I am ashamed, I should have realized.

Will I be more thoughtful, she asks? Then quickly she adds that she hopes not. She likes being able to trust me.

I hold her tight and she goes to sleep. I am awake, and there is still a little light.

What a strange life I have. What a strange life Aari has.

Is everyone’s life strange?

1 February 663

I am not going ashore today. Aari is not working in the kitchen. There are only two ladies working there today, and they say Aari is taking too many shifts and they need more money. Hey ho, they’ll want her when all the sailors are on board again.

At least they are feeding us, and we’re not paying for meals ashore like the sailors are. And I get to do lots of reading and writing. Aari is a good teacher. She says that I am a good pupil.

We have spent some time just staring across the water at Faguri. From this distance it looks nice enough!

From here, Loka starts to return to Manafa. These big ships don’t call at Kep.

I’d love to visit Kep, but we’d have to wait here for a while for a ship going there, and then either come back with the same ship, which would be a very short visit, or stay there until another ship called, which could be a very long visit. And then we’d have to wait here in Faguri, or somewhere further along, for another big ship, unless we wanted to work on a small ship for a while. So no visit to Kep.

We won’t be following the coast this time, we’ll be calling at two ports on islands instead – Bankarh and Uguhhr – bigger than Hadiboh, but on smaller islands, and much further off the mainland. Shorter than going all round by the coast, they say. Shorter time, anyway. Likely to be a broad reach all the way in this direction, so much shorter.

Aari says she’s heard of Bankarh and Uguhhr, but her father never went there. She thinks he didn’t like long crossings far from the coast. I don’t blame him, although long passages along barren coasts can be quite worrying, too.

You can miss small islands, she says, and of course it’s true. I don’t know how our navigation on Loka works, but I shan’t ask.

6 February

We’ve arrived at Bankarh in the last of the daylight. Aari is in the kitchen, and I’m taking a rest. I’ve been working whole nights, and learning to fly a pilot sail for four hours every day. Learning: sending it up, and pulling it down again, sending it up, and pulling it down again.

Ditching it, again and again. Don’t worry, says Eprem, everybody does that. They’re much harder than the bigger sails. You have to be quick, and half the time it’s you, not the winch, holding the tension.

Oh, they’re the easiest sails of all if you’re just flying them – quick, but light work. But flying one as a pilot? Hard work. Damned hard work.

Aari is sure no-one here will know of Laanoha, but I shall go ashore tomorrow and ask, anyway.

I still don’t know how the navigation works in the open sea, but we don’t have to be as accurate as I thought. It’s not a sailor up in the crow’s next looking out for land – we don’t even have a crow’s nest.

I’ve heard them saying “flyman” before, but I thought it was just another word for a flyer, a sailor flying a sail. How wrong I was!

Sibhank is our smallest sailor, but there’s a couple of other chaps who will do it, apparently. The central sail has a harness, and up he goes. The central sail has a much longer rope than the others, too. I don’t know how high he goes, but they use the binoculars to see what he’s signing. I could scarcely see him at all.

I shall have to learn to fly a sail with a flyman. If Embar is strong enough, so am I!

Aari says she’s smaller and lighter than Sibhank. She wants to learn. Will they let her?

I worry what happens if you ditch a sail with a flyman. Or worse still, crash them on deck.

I remember fetching Aari across from Yambai to Riba, swimming about a mile in a rough sea, in the dark, holding her terrified non-swimmer’s face out of the water as best I could. Hoping against hope that nobody had seen us slip quietly into the water, or if they had seen us that they didn’t have a boat. Then trying to attract someone’s attention on Riba, and hoping they’d recognize me. Of course it was Mkembi who saw us, Mkembi who threw us the rope, and Mkembi who pulled us aboard.

Then I imagine that same non-swimmer in the water, in a harness attached to two hundred square yards of flimsy³ and a couple of spars.

It makes me feel ill just thinking about it. Really ill.

8 February

The doctoring on Loka is good. If the doctoring on Riba is as good as this, I take back what I wrote about it. They say they think I’ll be fit to fly a second sail on a half shift in a couple of days, and they hope I’ll be back to full fitness before we reach Uguhhr. Otherwise it’s shore leave for me there until the next ship calls! Aari and I have enough savings to survive that okay, but it’d be a setback to our plans.

But the doctor from Bankarh thinks differently. He says that if I start flying sails again I’ll be dead before we get to Uguhhr. He says our doctor has done very well to save me, and it’s just as well that Aari called him quickly, but that I really mustn’t do strenuous work. Not ever again. No, really, never.

Aari starts to cry, and I feel ill again. Really ill.

9 February

I am so lucky to have Aari, and that she is so smart. And that our captains, all three of them, and our purser, and our doctor, and the doctor from Bankarh, are good men and wise.

Aari decided that she had to tell them that I can read and write, and do complicated arithmetic. She thought it was our only hope, and she was probably right. And now I’m awake they’ve checked that it’s true. They understand that I’m only an early learner in written Manafai, but they don’t care. Aari has shown them my – our – diary, and they can see that I can write plenty in my own language, and they know I can talk Manafai well enough, and will master written Manafai quickly. They say there will be work for me in the port office in Manafa, reading and writing and calculating, and the pay will be better – enough for me and Aari. And we will travel to Manafa as passengers, courtesy of the captains.

Aari had the sense not to tell them that she can read and write and do arithmetic too. And they didn’t notice that some of the writing in our diary was in a different hand, in a different language – or they simply didn’t happen to look at that page. But they don’t know either English or Laana, so it will all have been just gobbledegook to them anyway.

Apart from a bit of Manafai in the back that’s obviously just a learner’s practising.

{The rest of this second book is filled with long lists of words in English, Manafai, and Laana, mostly in Birgom’s handwriting but some in what must be Aari’s – apparently her teaching him both Laana and Manafai, and maybe him teaching her a bit of English. They seem to have started at the back of the book, with Birgom practising writing Manafai letters, then Manafai words, Manafai grammatical constructions, then Laana letters. The diary continues in a different book. There might be one book of the diary missing, but I don’t think so. I think they just didn’t write the diary for a couple of years.}

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