Magnolia

The sky always appears blurred, ever since I got aboard the Magnolia. I have forgotten how long I have been on this cursed ship. Smith, who is also from my hometown, a bilge rat in this ship, used to strike black lines in coal each week, on our dishevelled basement cabins, before he ran out of space. Relentless, he started keeping a mental track of each passing day or night, before his memory failed him. It wasn’t long before it happened to me as well. Holy mackerel! I have lost track of how long I have been on this wretched ship! The constant ebb and flow of the sea, sometimes extremely tempestuous, being the only reminder of the journey still going on.

I remember walking in the market lane in Plymouth, when I heard a couple of sailors atop a fish cart, addressing a crowd of onlookers gathered around the flagpole in the middle of the market. A crooked looking sailor was accompanied by  a young man, not more than twenty five, and who, by the fear in his face while looking at the older sailor speak, must have presumably been his subordinate. The old man was brawling at the top of his voice, the words rolling out of his drunken mouth, sounding gibberish. I got wind that they were looking for young sailors for a ship sailing to the lands of spices in the Orient. Rush of blood in my veins, a feeling of exuberance in my head making the filthy market feel like the stage of an opera. Could this be it? My dream of becoming a sailor!

Coming from a family of sailors, I grew up hearing tales of exotic faraway lands from my old man and my uncles. We kids used to play imagining ourselves as the legendary Captain Jack Sparrow manning the Black Pearl. The reckless life, the rush of testing uncharted waters, the promise of endless adventure and copious casks of dark rum, wanted me to become a sailor. Hell ya'll landlubbers,  you would have still believed the earth was flat, if not for us brave explorers.

On that windy new moon day of July, the Magnolia began her journey, with Captain Haddock shouting 'Ahoy' from the starboard. I couldn't quite get the sight of him somehow. The young recruits were exuberant in the initial few months of the voyage and the sails flew whole nine yards all the time. One of them, Smith who slept in the lower decks with me, became my close pal. We talked a lot, shared many a tale. If there was one gossip which every tongue on the vessel wagged about, it was about our skipper. It seemed many of us had never got a good glimpse of the captain. We had heard his hoarse voice, sometimes uttering curses on an unlucky crew. Even with the few who claimed to have seen him, it was only a shadow or just his back against a wall, never the complete face.

We estimated we would reach our destination in a year's time.  We had rough weather a few times, yes, yet we sailed constantly every single moment. We didn't stop anytime, anywhere, not a single instant as far as my memory can serve me. Months became years. Many wanted to question the captain. The few, higher up the ranks, who had the guts to enter the lion's den were always met with failure as they couldn't get to him.  We had three square meals a day, at least for a few months. Our supplies had been planned to last us for utmost a year. As months became years, we barely had a few morsels each day. Interestingly the rum started getting more intoxicating each day, making us see spectacular islands and hear the mellifluous cry of mermaids. It made us forget hunger.

Sometimes I wondered if all of this was just a dream or the sordid reality was we had become zombie prisoners of the Magnolia? Have we entered some forbidden enchanted sea with no way out to the land? The only change in our eternal journey was the colour of the sky. Sometimes shaky blue, many a times overcast with different shades of grey and charcoal black at nights. Waves lashed high enough to cover the sails many times and I wished one of those mammoth waves would just submerge the wretched ship and put an end to my bleak empty existence. It felt like getting tantalisingly close to the dark lips of Lady Death only for the whimsical maiden to turn her head away from one last kiss. 

Kazuo Takahashi, a seasoned fisherman, started his day well before dawn to make the most of the unusually calm sea, off the coast of Iwaki, in northern Japan. Over the years Kazuo had acquired Zen like tranquillity and sense of timing in his craft. He was precise in timing the casting and the pulling of the nets. He had already made a good enough haul the four times he had cast his net this morning. The sky had gone from deep purple to reddish orange and was now already dim yellow.  Time to cast one last time for the morning. The last haul, not as copious as the previous ones, was still sufficient. As he cast aside the fish by type, preparing to leave home, he noticed a shiny object glinting the morning sun across his eyes. He picked up the glass bottle and peered through its mouth. He found an intricately carved miniature ship , with English letters engraved on its side. He had never seen such a ship in his lifetime. Perhaps it was from his great grandfather's times when pale men from the lands across the Pacific came to trade with the Japanese.

Takahashi wiped the bottle clean and put it in his bag with a rare smile on the edge of his mouth. Akihiko, his youngest son, with his curious mind, would surely like it.