The Stowaway by Robert Hough Page B

so cold any longer Daniel thinks,
Yes, he’s right, it’s about time.
When their legs grow tired, they stop and eat the potatoes that Gheorghe was smart enough to stuff into his pockets. When they become thirsty, they drink from farm wells, taking turns pumping blue metal handles until water pours into the other man’s mouth. At one house, Daniel takes a pair of apples from a bushel he spots resting on an outside picnic table, and they savour them while cutting through a field cleared for seeding. Finally, the field gives way to a narrow track, which they follow into the town.
    The streets are filled with people eating in restaurants, a sight so wonderful that Daniel and Gheorghe keep their heads down, working hard to ignore all of the things they cannot have: fresh pastries, proscuitto the size of babies, balls of pecorino hangingfrom cheese-shop awnings, pretty brown-haired girls without a hint of the toughness, or the sadness, ingrained in the souls of Romanian women. (Oh
my
, Daniel thinks every time he sees a girl with dark eyes, or a button-shaped nose, or hair gathered upward, revealing the long, graceful line of her neck.) On the steps of an ancient stone church they smoke cigarettes and quietly sip the last of the vodka. A clanging comes from the belfry. As it echoes through the town, they get up and wander away, as though ordered off the premises.
    Along a narrow cobblestoned lane they find a bakery. Here, Gheorghe uses an American dollar to buy a stick of bread that’s hard on the outside and fluffy as a kitten on the inside; its flavour makes them both feel hungry, and tired, and wishing they weren’t so dirty. They walk on, coming to a small, one-room bus station. Inside, they study a bus schedule while counting out the last of their money. Soon, they are smiling, for they realize they have just enough for some cafeteria sandwiches and two seats on the gruelling twenty-hour ride to the city of Marseilles, a place so far from the chilly, bat-infested villages of Maramures it might as well be on the moon.

FIVE
    He sneaks through the ship’s interior, turning right and then right again, following the U-shaped hallway to where the ship’s oiler, Juanito Ilagan, has a larger cabin at the end of the corridor.
    He can hear voices coming through the door; again, he looks from left to right. When he knocks, the door opens just enough to reveal the right half of the oiler’s face. Juanito nods and indicates Rodolfo should enter.
    “Come,” he says, “please, have a seat …”
    The fitter and the electrician are sitting on the bunk against the nearer wall, talking to the second cook, who’s taken a space on the bed on the far side of the room. They pause to nod politely at Rodolfo before resuming their conversation, Rodolfo seating himself next to the cook. A moment later, the door latch turns, and Ariel Broas walks in and takes the chair beneath the porthole. He turns and nods to Rodolfo, and because he does not likewise greet the other three, Rodolfo understands that he, as the lone representative of the deck crew, is the new member of the group.
    The conversation resumes, the sailors talking of baseball games listened to via scratchy shortwave radio transmissions, the enjoyment not so much the game but the connection with home;of politics, both from Manila and the provinces, and how there’s always trouble in the cities, rice fields and jungles of their country; of some Bollywood videos an Indian crew left behind, and how the actresses always break into dance the moment the skies darken with rain, their saris soon soaked through and clinging like Saran Wrap; of the condition of the food—which, in reality, is as good as can be expected, given that the ingredients are generally frozen or freeze-dried, but which gives them an opportunity to rib the second cook about the spiciness of his
gulaman
, the texture of his
halo halo
, the crispness of his deep fry. Rodolfo is happy to once again hear the banter of