Authors: Mark Lavorato
When we were ready, hands came from everywhere, and we all heaved, pushed, and pulled to get him onto the deck, slowly inching his weight up the rope ladder. And as we did this, Aimil brought the gravity of the situation to another level by mumbling an eerie encouragement. "Come on Solmund, you're almost there," came muffled words spoken through bandages, which were soaking and had flopped in front of his mouth. A few of us exchanged a doubtful expression. Solmund couldn't hear us - and we knew it.
Mikkel had left the helm to help lift him onto the deck as well, and with all of us grabbing hold at every angle, we finally managed to heave him up with one determined effort, and those of us in the water watched as his legs disappeared over the gunwale.
The first thing they did once he was on board was to drag him toward the centre of the deck, as if the water were an exploitative and devious creature that might try to claim him again if we weren't careful. The rest of us climbed the ladder as quickly as we could, and gathered around him, Mikkel already kneeling at his side. "Solmund? Solmund." He leaned in close to his face and pulled his eyelids up. They stayed open, staring unblinking and unfocused at the bright sky. There was no reaction. He slapped him across the face. Still nothing. He slapped him again. "Solmund!" he screamed at his forehead. The rest of us cluttered in a circle and stared down at them both. Finally, Mikkel formed a fist in the air above his chest, as if threatening to punch him if he didn't react in some way. Solmund was perfectly still. "Come on!" hollered Mikkel, bringing his fist down against his chest with solid force. But the sound that was produced was not the hollow sound of childhood play fighting; it was a thin, dense noise, as if striking a piece of wet wood. A bubble of murky water oozed out of his mouth, streaming down the side of his head and over one of his ears. His expression was still placid, unmoved, unconcerned.
He was dead; and we all seemed to realize it at the same time.
Everyone reacted in their own way. Some of us raised our heads to look at one another before taking a few slow steps away from him; others put a hand on their forehead and paced around the deck; Mikkel stood up and looked down at the body for a few minutes before walking over to the rail and slumping onto it with all of his weight; while Onni was the only one to stay there, standing over him, looking down with his hands cupped over his nose and mouth, shaking his head every once in a while. The only thing consistent between our reactions was the silence.
It was shocking, to say the least. How many minutes ago had Solmund been alive and well, provoking people with his squeamish dignity? How was it that one tiny second of bad judgment, or of mistaken caution, or even of completely normal behaviour could be exchanged for a life?
And so I stood there, dizzy with a sudden appreciation of consequence; knowing that from every one of our actions was born some unknowable effect, which, in turn, would give birth to another of equal unpredictability - and then another. It was somehow daunting. Solmund had been walking around unaware of his approaching disaster for weeks of his life, days, minutes, seconds, all without ever coming to understand how very thin the thread was that he was dangling from. In the same way that I was oblivious of all the things that were just about to be snipped from me.
24
After a long, long while, Mikkel interrupted everyone's self-consoling quiet to ask the obvious question, which had to come at some point, but which, unfortunately, no one was really prepared to answer. When he asked it, his tone was sorry, unsuspecting, "What happened?"
Toivo exchanged a quick glance with Knut, who looked at the ground.
Onni slid his hands from his mouth to the sides of his face, continuing to look at Solmund's body. "He couldn't swim."
I shook my head. A drop of seawater trickled down my arm and curled into my fingers.
"Yup," sighed Mikkel, turning around to face us, "we now know that Solmund couldn't swim. But I guess I was asking: what was a person who couldn't swim doing in the water? Did he fall? Was he setting up the fishing gear? What happened?"
Toivo suddenly seemed to jar awake. "Yeah," he professed, "he fell."
Mikkel turned to look at him, blinking.
Then, Knut, also seeming to snap out of the state he was in, stepped forward. "Toivo's right. Solmund fell in by accident."
Onni looked carefully in my direction, wondering whether this was the safest story to endorse. But I could only squint at all three of them in complete amazement. I simply could not understand why they were saying this! Knut and Toivo didn't
mean
to kill Solmund. Not a single one of us knew he couldn't swim. So what was the incentive to lie? What would we serve by it?
But I knew. We would serve our cowardice, our incurable cowardice - the very thing that the Elders had endlessly preached about. Perversely, the damage to Solmund's life seemed less somehow, than the damage we would cause to ourselves by admitting we took it. Yet we had. We'd all made a horrible mistake, myself included, and we had to see it as such - we absolutely
had
to see it as such. Did they think they were going to absolve themselves by ignoring their mistake? And even if this worked for them, absolving ourselves of something doesn't wipe away the culpability. We didn't murder Solmund, but nothing was ever going to take away the fact that we'd killed him.
I looked at Knut, measuring his words. I was furious. He narrowed his eyes at me and crossed his arms over his chest, probably knowing full well what was coming. "What in the
fuck
are you guys talking about? You know perfectly well what happened. You and Toivo..."
"NO!!" he screamed, interrupting. He took his arms from his chest and pointed a finger at me, "No! No, I don't think I know a lot of things, Joshua," he took a step forward, and, after seeing my reaction, judged it safe enough to start walking toward me as well. I swallowed, looked behind myself nervously. "I don't know why we're on this ship, for starters. And I don't know what your chemicals are for, either; or what our Incision is all about, or what you learned in secret inside the Great Hall. But most of all, I don't know why you lied to us - or why you keep lying to us."
What had I done? Why hadn't I just kept my big mouth shut? Looking back, I find it almost poetic that I would demand unconditional truth from someone, all while standing behind a quickly thinning lie. I began to step backwards. I tried to say something, but couldn't. (There are times in our lives when silence is the wisest alternative, and then there are times when it isn't, yet it is somehow the only thing left to say.)
"But I can tell you some things I
hear
; some things we've figured out." Though it probably wasn't the case, it seemed as if the others began to step in my direction as well, their heads twisting to abandon their guilt and pity. There was suddenly something more interesting to pay attention to. Something easier. After all, why confront yourself with things you've done when you can pounce on someone else for something they have?
"There are people on this ship that think there's still a big secret, that when we Came of Age, we weren't told anything close to the truth - which is why the Elders had to be there whenever we were rehearsing the bullshit they fed us." Knut stopped walking as my back pressed against the rail. He seemed to be angry, but still able to contain himself, making his accusations without losing control. It couldn't have been worse. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I understood that this would be the end of the story that the Elders had so carefully constructed, that the crew's version of the truth was about to stride out into the open and make a stand there. And after hearing Peik's name the night before, I had known that this moment, whether I was there to witness it or not, was on its way, but I couldn't help but feel that its timing was completely tactless. There we were, squabbling over a dead body, and one of our companions no less; someone we'd grown up with, someone who'd always been in our lives - no matter how much we didn't like him. It seemed vulgar, degrading, and I glimpsed at Solmund for a moment, and then back at Knut, almost wishing that he would lower his voice.
"Would you believe me if I told you there're even people who think this 'big secret' is exactly what Peik said it was, that the Elders are the ones that somehow killed everyone in the world, and that this voyage is really meant to wipe out the only people left - not to save them?" I looked at the floor, wondering how far Mikkel would let this go before he intervened. "And that maybe," Knut continued, "like the Elders, you want everyone in the world to be like Solmund is: dead. And that once you've used us for your sick plan, you're going to kill us with those poisons you brought along." He moved his face close to mine, the reek of his empty stomach fogging my face. "And maybe," he shot a glance over his shoulder at the purple lipped body, "Solmund is only the beginning.
"Because everything matches up, doesn't it? The Elders' constant criticisms of everything that people do, the things Peik said before his 'suicide', the expedition being announced - just as he said it would - your secretive training, the strange vials in your room, your lying about the communication device, even your objecting to the knife game." Both Niels and Toivo had joined the confrontation by coming to stand at Knut's sides, and he seemed to be encouraged by this, shoving his finger into my face and lowering his voice, "Because you hated the idea of us having the skills to stand up to you; because you were afraid we'd rebel if we ever figured it out - like Peik did. What you want is for us to just stand by and obey, to be easily manipulated." He paused, seeming to understand something for the first time, and when he spoke again, he completely surprised me by trying to involve me in the conversation, "Don't you have anything to say to all of this?"
"What? No. I... don't know what you're talking about," I uttered pathetically, quickly worsening my position.
"Oh!!" he yelled, turning his head to the crew, who seemed to be gathering closer after hearing the lack of conviction in my voice. Some were eyeing me with a kind of shock, others with disgust. "You don't know what we're talking about!" he called out. "Of course you don't! And we can see that. Of course. Can't we guys?"
There were some concerned mumblings, a few shaking heads. Knut could see that his well-chosen words had had an effect; the crew were nervous, afraid. Because whispering wild theories behind closed doors was one thing, but actually having them loosely confirmed was another. And I think now of how frightening it must have been for them. They had no idea where they stood, where their questions would lead them. What was true? What was a lie? What were they going to do with me, now that I wasn't who they thought I was? And whom could they trust to make that decision? They were looking around frenetically, in need of something definite, explicit. Knut, seeing this, decided to give them what he could.
"So... let's think about what we know for sure." He walked into the centre of the crew, counting the 'facts' on his fingers. "We know we can't trust anything Joshua says. And we know that he's working with the Elders to do... something - we don't really know - but we can assume it's something we wouldn't really agree with, or they would have told us about it. We know... let's see..." he paused for a second, his eyes lighting up, "we know that he was the last person, besides the Elders, to see Peik alive! Yes! That's true isn't it! And that he hid the knives from us so that we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves." He gave me a suspicious glance, as if he were half expecting me to suddenly yank out weapons from under my clothes and massacre everyone in sight. I rolled my eyes at him, but he moved on as if he hadn't seen it. "Do you know what we know? We know that we're in danger. That's what we know. And maybe that's enough."
Knut hadn't gone out and actually said it, but the implication was pretty clear, and the crew looked me up and down, shifting nervously. It's an intimidating responsibility, weighing someone's life. But, all things considered, they seemed to be doing a fairly good job at it, busily scanning me while they mulled everything over, maybe picturing me creeping into their rooms at night, dripping poison onto their lips. Onni was the only one that looked at the ground.
Mikkel, who was standing furthest out of the circle, scratched his forehead. Perhaps, like myself, he was having a hard time grasping exactly how it was possible for the atmosphere of grieving over someone's death to crumble into a deliberation over killing someone else. Yet it had; and it felt like the air was becoming hostile, explosive, and if Mikkel wasn't going to interject with some sense, then it seemed like it was up to me. "Okay, look..."
"Shut up!!" Knut screamed, whirling around to face me. He had opened up his hand as if to slap someone and was pointing all of his fingers at my face. When he spoke again, his voice was struggling to be calm. "You just shut up. It's not your time to speak. Do you hear me? It's ours."
He took a step toward me. "Do you know what I think we should do with you?" I could feel the blood pulsing in my neck. Could he say it? And if so, could he be the one to do it? Though, thinking about it now, it might have been a lot easier than I'd like to imagine. I mean - throwing a person overboard wasn't the same as killing him. No. They knew that I was a strong swimmer; which meant that they would only see me bobbing healthily on the surface as they sailed out of sight. No gruesome corpse, no violent battle, no gushing blood; there would be nothing to deal with after the fact. It would be clean, simple. The only thing they needed was the nerve to push - and the consensus.
For some reason, my eyes wandered over to Solmund again. He was still dead.
Finally, Mikkel spoke up, interrupting both the judgment, and the flow of everything that was slowly setting itself in motion. His voice sounded drained of energy, "Knut. Step away from Joshua."
Knut turned around, and we watched as his expression transformed from a state of surprise to a state of defiance. The fact was that he had the support of the crew, and it must have crossed his mind to see just how far he could get with it. He thought very carefully of what he was going to say before saying it, that one word that none of us believed he had in him to say. "No."