The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear Page B

and with the garbage cleared, the friendly dogs were gone. They sat in the car watching the fishing boats growing darker on the water, watching the warm light reflected from their sides until night arrived and their silhouettes melted away. They waited until they were approached, as planned, by a man who conducted an underground business of smuggling refugees across the water. For a fee, he would carry them across the Black Sea to the Bosporus.
    Soon after, they found themselves on the Zenica , a rundown Turkish freighter. The dark blue paint was chipped and cracked; rust was thickening on the hull; a red flag flapped in the breeze, stained and ragged at the edges. The man disappeared below deck. After a few minutes, he returned and gestured for them to follow. Andrei and Nicolae accompanied him down the ladder into the belly of the freighter. They were thirsty. They were scared. They had heard stories of stowaways betrayed by the very people they had paid.
    When they reached the bottom, the man smiled and reached for Nicolae’s wrist, silently removing his watch. He slipped it into his back pocket, then reached again for Nicolae’s wrist. He circled it withhis hand, touching his middle finger to his thumb, bounced it lightly, then dropped it like a twig.
    “Are you strong swimmers?” the man asked. “I hope so. The shore will not be easy to reach.”
    “We’ll make it,” Andrei replied. Then added, “We’ve practised.”
    Before the man turned to leave, he gave them a blanket, a flashlight and a jug of water.
    He climbed the ladder and lowered the wooden hatch.
    The fisherman who found Andrei later on dry land noticed him from a distance, an ill-defined shape curled beside a rock.
    Andrei had collapsed on the shore of a small Turkish village. The man who discovered him had come to fix his cast nets. When Andrei was revived, he was on the edge of delirium, sweltering in the midday sun. Only the breeze masked the scorching heat. His face and body were burnt on one side, almost raw at the shoulder blades and neck. His hair was still plastered to his face from the oily water.
    The fisherman brought Andrei home, wrapped him in blankets and put him to bed, where he spent the next few days resting and waiting. Andrei was convinced it was just a matter of time before Nicolae would appear, staggering from exhaustion but grinning with relief.
    Several days after he washed ashore in Turkey, Andrei had satisfied his hunger and thirst and felt strong enough to ask his hosts for permission to call his mother. The fisherman’s teenage daughter led Andrei to a telephone in the dining room, brought him a wooden stool and politely excused herself as he began to dial the number of the dressmaking shop. He sat, cradling the phone against his ear, andfocused on the ringing. He felt as nervous as if ringing the Securitate directly.
    After four rings there was a hum and a hard click , followed by a sound like air rushing through a shaft. Then her voice, so clear he caught his breath.
    “Hello?”
    He exhaled and began to speak quickly. His eyes were already wet.
    “Mama, it’s Andrei. Please don’t say anything. Just listen. I want you to know that I’m safe and not to worry. I love you.” His words were followed by a forbidding echo.
    He heard his mother sigh and then the sound of something heavy being set down on a solid surface. He pictured his mother’s fabric shears, the plywood shop counters. He pictured the white walls speckled with starching spray, the window propped open with a stack of old textile catalogues.
    “Please hug Eli for me.”
    He thought he could hear his mother’s steady breathing and in the distance the call of children on the streets. Emotion swept over him. Romania was still there, people coping as they always had. The world hadn’t shattered just because he left.
    “Mama. I love and miss you so much, but we have to be careful. I have to hang up now. I want you to lock up, go for a walk right away.