Free Crematorium for Phoenixes by Nikola Yanchovichin Page B

moments of
happiness. Instead, in their heads only the scenes of harsh naval
discipline popped up along with the image of comrades lying on the
seabed of the Berber Coast. They had other companions all the way
in the islands of the Caribbean, who had been decimated by disease.
It comes as no surprise then that the feasts in the evening that
they had earned by hard labor were busted.
    In their consciousness floated the insoluble
matter of eternal mystery that is slugged between a Sphinx’s paws
while waiting for an answer to the question: “Why?”
    They were working, manipulating the machines
up and down through the hatch and seeking decisions, but they found
only silence.
    The Leviathan floated along, breaking the
iron-gray, jagged waves that churned from the moving molecules of
water just to fall into them again like a boat in a picture by
Hokusai.
    They stabbed the northern storm and were
tossed by its physical strength. The vessel navigated in the
Atlantic, embraced the titanium whose name it carried ashore on
four continents.
    Among this breath of water-cooled air from
the atoms, connected to the universe itself by the horizon, it was
quite possible to imagine that the inhabits would be gigantic
squids howling like a dragon or a basilisk raised over tens of
meters above sea level—very cold snow monsters that dragged the
helpless into the abyss of their mansions.
    That chilled wildness intensified the pain
and tossed a heavy hand as pushy as a drunk intruder.
    There was no one to extract them out of
these waters. They were met only with the inconvenient, the
pressure of pushed piano keys played in the deep extraction of loud
sounds that resembled whale songs.
    Thus, the distributed locations each emitted
a different water acoustics, and the men drove the boat while
trailing a torn iceberg adrift over the North Atlantic.
    In their minds, like sprayed and sparkled
crepes that embroidered the consciousness, waterfalls formed one
single question: “Why?”
    Despite the events that had happened deep in
the city, they had rehashed it over and over again. Still, no one
had found a solution that revealed itself in a spinneret of letters
to display a brilliant insight before them.
    Any exchange of thoughts, sporadic
greetings, or vague transaction of words felt inadequate.
    The technical condition of the Leviathan was
assured, measured by the bubbly gimbal mechanism.
    “What a story, huh?” Amos Oz said, standing
on the raised platform—the bridge of the ship.
    “Stupid and talentless. Perhaps those are
inevitable ingredients contained in every minute of a tragedy,”
replied Victor Drake, tinkering with the concave displays.
    Amos Oz looked around and went in search of
a puffer. Plowing furrows in the water, he sniffed and said again,
“You know, I’ve served as almost all positions in mankind—wherever
my fate has offered me bread. I seen a lot. From the whaled ships
departing the shelter of Nantucket while glaring into chunky snow,
to the fields of copra and pearls of Ceylon. And I’ve seen sailors
thrown to death, those who caught scurvy or dysentery.
    “And I swallowed, like every other man, year
after year, the morsels of sloppiness that life presents to us,
stuck with hooks and loops in a trap.
    “And once the greed for the several
doubloons had thrown me into the Gulf of Guinea, where I agreed to
hire in a blackbirding ship,” he said and after a long silence
added, “There is no worse thing than the muffled curse in this
world, Victor. It tightens and tightens like a noose, stifling any
hope.
    “So this is the way I felt listening afoul
to those unfortunate ones who had been kidnapped from their homes
as slaves. And that’s the way I feel now—a man whose nature is not
only ashamed, it has been strangled by reality.”
    “You’re right, Amos,” answered Victor. “How
could you say that we have some premeditated plan, such as one who
strikes with smartness by giving meaning to every obstacle, like