We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [52]
And that's how he first came among us.
The next day Giovanni brought O'Connor his food in a dog bowl and placed it on the deck at the first mate's feet.
"Enjoy your food," he said, and turned to leave.
"Where's my dinner?"
O'Connor's voice was low and menacing.
"There." Giovanni pointed to the bowl. "If I were you, I'd hurry up before the dog gets to it."
In that moment, he sealed his fate.
Giovanni was far more than a mere cook. When a ship is at anchor in New York, it's not just tailors, shoemakers, butchers, ship's chandlers, and fruit sellers who come on board—all those practical men no ship can do without before she sets sail. No, along with them comes a motley crew of fences, offering false gold rings and pocket watches that stop at the slightest knock; tattoo artists with filthy needles whose every tattoo becomes a weeping infection; beggars and magicians; jugglers, fakirs, and fortunetellers; procurers, pimps, and thieves. Giovanni, standing on the deck with a red bandana around his ink-black hair, juggling four eggs at a time without dropping a single one, seemed more at home with this crowd than with the crew of the Emma C. Leithfield.
No one had the faintest idea how he'd ended up at sea, but he'd begun as a circus performer. He'd been a knife thrower as well as a juggler, and sometimes when we were off duty we'd linger in the doorway and watch him practice. He could juggle three or four sharpened knives until they whirled about in a deadly spinning wheel. He never dropped one, he never missed a catch, and he never cut himself.
"Giovanni's setting the table," someone would shout on deck, and the crew would rush to the mess to grab a front-row view as he set the table without moving a single inch from where he stood. Knives, forks, and tin plates would fly through the air—and land exactly in the right spot, right next to each other. It set his audience dizzy with excitement. He never broke anything—but no one could understand how.
"How do you do it, Giovanni?"
He smiled and shook his head. There were no secrets. "It's all in the wrists," he said, flexing them.
The men winked at one another. They were proud of their cook. With the whiskey thrown overboard and the ship at sea, it was Giovanni who got them straightening their backs and going about their work feeling like a crew.
It was a fortnight since they'd left New York. The Emma C. Leithfield had just passed the equator, heading for Buenos Aires, and the men were admiring Giovanni as usual when O'Connor suddenly appeared. The cook was busy setting the table, and the plates were sailing accurately through the air en route to their destinations, when O'Connor stuck out his giant fist and intercepted one, sending it crashing to the floor. Tin plates don't break, but the effect of O'Connor's sabotage was greater than if it had smashed into a thousand pieces.
Giovanni's reaction was instant. When he performed, he was at once focused and dreamy. But now, his expression switched to something new: wariness. When O'Connor's fist came at him, he dodged it with the same lightning agility with which he threw cutlery and plates, and O'Connor's fist, which would have turned his narrow, delicate-featured face into a bloody mess, slammed into the bulkhead, with an ugly crunch. When he regained his balance, his knuckles e were bloody.
Giovanni stood his ground, his face showing not hostility, fear, anger, or panic, but the concentration of an acrobat high in the circus tent, preparing for a tricky jump, with no safety net. And when O'Connor lashed out again, he ducked with the same accuracy as before.
O'Connor stumbled forward as if he'd lost his balance. But those playing close attention sensed something was up. His eyes, narrowed to slits in his swollen, scarred face, bore a calm chill, which indicated the stumble was premeditated.
Giovanni leapt to one side and out of the path of the toppling giant. But instead of thrusting