Chapter Text
Excerpt from Ancient Marine Chronicle, page 3457
Old pilots and coastal monks report that the Koningskinderen, a race of mermen rarely seen and seldom understood, are not as docile as once written. Although they do not seek open warfare like men of the sword, they possess a firm and ardent nature, being creatures of vigilant spirit and severe control over what they take as their own.
They are recognized, it is said, by their red or reddish tails, a color that varies from burnt copper to blood diluted in water. Such coloring, according to the belief of sailors, is not merely an adornment of nature, but a sign of a strong spirit and territorial inclination. Where a Koningskinderen establishes its dwelling—be it a deep cave, a submerged stone arch, or a field of dense seaweed—it reigns with zeal, tolerating no intruders without proof of peaceful intent.
They do not attack without cause, but neither do they retreat easily. When another being invades their boundaries, they first show signs: wide circles around the intruder, stiff tail movements, and a brighter glow on their scales. If the affront persists, they become quick and direct, using their bodies with the dexterity of a sea beast, not out of cruelty, but out of a guarding instinct. Thus, many sailors have learned not to cross certain waters where the silence seems thick, for it is said that such red guardians live there.
In their dealings with their peers, they maintain deep loyalty. Their companion is not just a seasonal ally, but a bond that awakens constant protection. Although their unions may change over time, while the bond lasts they are attentive and possessive, watching over their surroundings and maintaining frequent proximity, as if they feared that the world would take away what they had chosen to keep. Such zeal is not manifested in words, but in continuous presence and prompt reaction to any threat.
Chronicles write with greater amazement about the young. For if in other customs they seem moderate, in guarding their offspring they become almost indomitable. The young are always kept close to the circle, rarely straying from the safe shadows. Any sign of danger causes several adults to immediately intervene, forming a living barrier between the threat and the young. There are reports of larger creatures retreating before a single Koningskinderen in silent fury, such is the intensity with which they defend their own.
They also say that, in these moments of guarding, the red tail darkens, like embers covered with ash, and movements become short and tense, resembling a bow about to release an arrow. They do not pursue for pleasure, but if forced, they can become difficult adversaries, for they fight not for dominance, but for bond — and bond, among them, is worth more than territory or life.
Thus remains the record in the pages worn by salt: creatures of reserved nature, not given to gratuitous violence, but firm as submerged rock. And the ancients conclude that, where there are silent waters and red tails under the moon, it is advisable for travelers to keep their distance and show respect, for there live the Koningskinderen — fierce lovers of their own kind and unyielding masters of the space they call home.
-
“Damn it!”
The cry came out hoarse, almost swallowed by the wind coming in through the open door of the shed. I had just knocked over the entire bucket of crushed ice on Emma's deck. What was supposed to be a thin, neat layer had turned into a slippery pile that was now melting too quickly on the already cold wooden floor. I stepped on it and felt the cold rising through the soles of my boots as if I were walking on blades.
I cursed under my breath, nonstop, in Dutch, in the Flevoland dialect, even using a few words I had learned from Belgian sailors that weren't exactly polite. My hands, already red from the cold, trembled as I tried to salvage what I could: I grabbed handfuls of ice and threw them back into the Styrofoam boxes, but most of it had already turned into a dirty soup mixed with wood chips and leftover dried fish from the day before.
The wall clock read 4:58 a.m. The sun was still at least an hour away from rising, and I was already behind schedule.
Late because I slept poorly, late because the kerosene heater went out again in the middle of the night and I woke up with a bloody nose because the air was so dry, late because the whole world seemed to be conspiring to make me miss the tide.
I took a deep breath. The air burned my lungs. I spat on the floor (a thick, white spit from the cold) and forced myself to stop. If I continued like this, I would end up breaking something on purpose, and I didn't have the money to fix it.
I knelt on the deck. The wood was so cold that it hurt my knees even through my old sweatpants. I started scraping the ice with my hands. My fingers, calloused and full of old cuts that never healed properly in winter, were turning white at the tips. I could feel each crystal as if they were needles.
“Slow down, Max,” I said to myself, in a low voice, almost a growl. “Slow down.”
That's what my father used to say when I was a kid and wanted to do everything in a hurry at the port of Harderwijk. Slow down, or you'll break the boat, break your body, break your head. He was right. He always was.
I cleaned what I could. The rest I pushed with the old broom to the corner of the stern, where it would freeze again before noon.
I got up. My back ached. Thirty-two years old, but I feel like fifty when winter sets in.
I went back into the shed to get more ice. The floor inside was covered with a thin layer of frost; the door hadn't closed properly for about five years. The old freezer (a green 1970s Frigidaire I bought at auction for two hundred bucks) hummed loudly, the interior light flickering. I opened the lid. The smell of frozen fish and mold rose strongly. I grabbed two bags of crushed ice that I had made myself the night before, hitting the blocks that the refrigeration guys give me for free with a sledgehammer.
I carried the bags on my shoulders. They were heavy. The nylon strap cut into my flesh right above my sweater. I walked back to the Emma, treading carefully on the slippery pier. The port of Urk was still asleep. Only the streetlights flickered in the wind, and the sea crashed heavily against the concrete pillars, a low, constant sound, like a giant, angry heart.
The Emma rocked slowly, held in place by thick ropes covered in barnacles. The hull was covered with a thin crust of ice where the spray from the night had frozen. The white paint was peeling off in large patches, revealing the old red underneath. The name on the bow was almost illegible, the black letters faded and cracked.
I jumped aboard. The boat groaned. I put the bags on the deck and opened the first one. This time I did it right: a thin layer at the bottom of each Styrofoam box, newspaper on top, more ice, more newspaper. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. My fingers no longer bent properly. I took off my wool gloves to work better, and the cold bit immediately. My fingernails were purple.
While I worked, my mind wandered.
I thought about Jos. He should be arriving soon. He was always late, carrying that rusty thermos full of coffee and gin. I wondered if he would be in a bad mood today (his wife had had a big fight with him last week because he spent the rent money on a new radio for a friend's boat). I wondered if he would bring that mutt he adopted in the summer and now slept in the boat's cabin. I thought that if Jos didn't show up by six, I would go alone. It had happened before. It wasn't the end of the world.
I thought about my brother. He hadn't called in four months. The last time was to ask for money. I gave it to him. Of course I did. I always do. Then he disappeared again to Rotterdam, to his construction job, to his new woman, to the life he thinks is better than mine.
I thought about Sophie. Her letter was still on the table in the shed, open. It arrived the day before yesterday. Two pages. She talked about her psychology course, a small apartment in De Pijp, a boyfriend who plays the saxophone in a bar in Leidseplein. She sent a photo. She was smiling. I looked at the photo for about ten minutes and then put it away.
I haven't answered yet. I don't know what to say.
“Congratulations, you made it out of here”?
“I'm proud of you”? “Come back”?
I finished the ice. I closed the boxes. I checked the lids. Everything was secure.
Now the nets.
I went down to the hold. The smell down there was strong: diesel oil, wet rope, mold, dried fish. The old lamp swayed, casting dancing shadows on the beams. The nets were rolled up on the wooden supports that I had nailed to the wall myself about three years ago. I picked up the first one. Heavy. Still wet from the last day of fishing, even though it had been drying for three days. The nylon was stiff from the cold.
I climbed up with it on my shoulders. The ceiling was low; I hit my head on the stairs. I cursed again. I always hit my head there. One day I'll remember to duck.
On deck, I slowly unrolled it. I checked every meter. The knots. The meshes. The buoys. There was a small tear near the mouth of the net. Shit. I should have seen it yesterday. I grabbed the repair needle (a piece of thick curved wire) and the nylon thread. I sat on the stern bench, with my back to the wind, and started sewing.
My fingers wouldn't obey me. The needle slipped. The thread got tangled. The cold seeped in through the cuffs of my sweater. I could feel my nose running. I sniffed loudly. The whole world seemed reduced to that piece of net, that tear, that knot that I had to make perfect because if I didn't, I would lose fish, and losing fish meant losing money, and losing money meant not paying the electric bill, not fixing the engine when it finally broke down.
It took me twenty minutes to fix a tear that in the summer I could do in five.
I got up. I stretched my arms. My back hurt. I looked at the sky. It was still dark, but the east was beginning to take on a dirty gray hue. The wind had picked up. The Emma rocked harder. The ropes creaked.
I went back to the hold. I grabbed the second net. Same thing. Check it. Fix a loose knot. Climb up. Roll it up on the deck.
Then the hand lines. The bait. The hooks. The sinkers.
Everything had to be in place.
Everything had to be perfect.
Because the sea does not forgive mistakes.
And I had no margin for error.
I kept working. Alone. In silence.
Just the wind, the sea, and the sound of my own footsteps on the icy deck.
Only when I was done did I leave Emma with a short jump, my rubber boots hitting the pier hard. The wind hit me like a slap in the face. I had to close my eyes for a second. When I opened them, I almost bumped into someone.
“Damn it, Max! Watch where you're going, damn it!”
The voice was high-pitched, full of Randstad accent mixed with port slang.
I knew that voice better than my own mother's.
Lando.
He was standing there, an orange scarf pulled up over his nose, an old Feyenoord cap pulled down over his ears, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a sailor's jacket that had once been navy blue and was now more of a dirty gray. Behind him, his little cutter, the LN4 (he painted the number on it like it was a race car, the idiot), swayed, tied by two loose ropes. The boat was smaller than mine, lighter, faster, but also more fragile. He always said that one day he would trade it for a steel one, but I knew he would never have the money for that.
“Damn it, Lando,” I said, rubbing my shoulder where I had bumped into him. “What the hell are you doing here at this hour? It's still fucking dark.”
“I should be asking you that,” he replied, taking one hand out of his pocket and pointing at Emma. “Did you spill ice again? The deck is shining like a skating rink.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don't bother me.”
He laughed, that boyish laugh that hadn't given up on everything, even though he was twenty-eight and his face was full of windburn. His beard was sparse, barely covering his chin. He always looked like he was fifteen when he laughed like that.
“Come on, help me out here,” he said, already walking toward his boat. “I brought a bag of new sinkers, traded them with old Van Basten yesterday. He gave me a good deal because I fixed his radio.”
I followed him. The pier was slippery as hell. Every step was a risk of cracking my head open. The LN4 rocked heavily, the mast creaked. The hull was painted white with an orange stripe that was already peeling. The name on the stern was crooked, spray-painted by him on a drunken night in 1994.
Lando jumped aboard first, light as ever. I followed, heavier, and the boat tilted. He was already opening the hatch to the hold.
“Look at this,” he said, pulling out a full burlap bag. “500-gram sinkers, all cast just right. Perfect for the bottom of the Markermeer. I'm going to catch more flounder than you this week, Verstappen. Get your pocket ready.”
“You dream big for someone who caught only half of what I did last week,” I retorted, but I took the bag anyway.
It was heavy. The sinkers were brand new, still shiny with tin.
He sat down on the stern bench, legs spread, and lit a cigarette. The Bic lighter took three tries to light. The wind blew the smoke away before it even rose.
“You know what I heard yesterday at De Haan's bar?” he asked, his voice lower now.
“I don't want to hear bar gossip,” I said, but I sat down next to him anyway. It was so cold that sharing body heat was almost a necessity.
It's not gossip. It's serious.“ He took a long drag. ”The folks in Lelystad are saying there's a new group prowling the northern routes. Fast boats, no lights, powerful outboard motors. They say they're Balkan. Or Albanian. I don't know. They're stealing nets, stealing fish, even stealing motors if they can."
I kept quiet. I'd heard that before. Every year there was a new story.
Smugglers, traffickers, illegal immigrants. The IJsselmeer was big, dark, and the maritime police only had three boats to cover it all.
“Last week Willem lost two whole nets,” Lando continued. “Cut clean off. And his little outboard motor was gone. They found his boat drifting near Enkhuizen, with no one on board.”
“Willem is stupid,” I said. “He goes out alone at night. I never go out without at least a knife and the radio on.”
Lando laughed, but it was a weak laugh. “You have a radio that works?”
“I did. Until last month. Now it only picks up static and German music.”
He shook his head. “I changed the battery in mine. And I bought a new VHF, second-hand, but it works. If you want, I can lend it to you sometimes.”
“I don't need charity, Norris.”
“It's not charity. It's survival. If I ever need help at sea, I want you to be able to hear me, you stubborn fool.”
We were silent for a while. Only the sound of the sea crashing against the pillars, the creaking of the boats, the wind howling in the cables.
“What about the fish?” I asked, changing the subject. “Do you think they're different this year?”
He took a long swig. "They're smaller. Much smaller. The flounder I caught yesterday... half the size it was in 1993. And there are some strange things. The other day I caught one that had a kind of tumor on its side. I threw it away. I couldn't even sell it to the cat."
“Pollution,” I said. “The big ships dump everything into the sea. Oil, garbage, chemicals. And the heat... winter is less cold. The water is warmer. Fish don't like that.”
“It's not just that,” he said, his voice even lower. “There's less food for them. The German and British industrial trawlers clean everything out before it gets here. By the time it reaches our area, there are only crumbs left.”
I knew he was right. Everyone knew. But no one did anything about it. We just kept fishing what we could.
“This week I'm going to try more on the Stavoren side,” he said. “I heard there's still good cod there. If I catch more than you, you buy me a whole round at De Haan. If you catch more, I'll pay.”
“Deal,” I replied without thinking. It was our ritual. Every week, the same bet. I won more often, but he was catching up. The kid was a quick learner.
He threw his cigarette into the sea. The ember sizzled and died.
“It's fucking cold here,” he said, getting up. “Let's go to your boat. At least it smells like home.”
We went. We jumped onto the Emma. The deck was still cold, but it was mine. It was familiar.
Lando leaned against the cabin, arms crossed.
“You know what I was thinking?” he asked.
“That you're finally going to paint your boat properly?”
“No, you idiot. That one day we could save up some money. Buy a bigger boat. Share it. Go further. Norway, maybe. They still have real fish there.”
I laughed. A dry, humorless laugh.
“With what money, Lando? I can barely afford the diesel. You can barely afford the pier rent.”
“I know,” he said, looking at the floor. “But dreaming costs nothing.”
Dreaming did cost something. It cost sleep.
It cost peace. It cost remembering every morning that reality was this cold harbor, this old boat, this life that was going nowhere.
But I didn't say that.
I just nodded.
“One day,” I said.
He smiled. That smile of someone who still believed in something.
And for a second, just a second, I almost believed it too.
The sky was beginning to lighten. A dirty, heavy gray, but it was something.
“Has Jos arrived yet?” Lando asked.
“Not yet. The son of a bitch must be sleeping.”
“Do you want me to wait with you?”
“No need. Go get your boat ready. The tide waits for no one.”
He patted me on the shoulder. Hard.
Then he jumped back onto the pier.
“See you at the market tomorrow, Verstappen,”
he shouted as he walked away. “Get your wallet ready!”
“Get your ass ready, Norris!” I shouted back.
He laughed loudly, his voice lost in the wind.
I stood there, alone again.
The Emma rocked.
The sea crashed.
And I went back to work.
There was still a lot to do before I could cast off.
Ψ
I closed the last Styrofoam box with a sharp snap that echoed across the still-empty harbor. The lids were so cold that my fingers stuck to them for a second before coming loose. I checked the box ties with sisal rope: two knots on each, tight, just like my father taught me when I was barely waist-high. Then I climbed into the cabin, opened the chipped wooden panel, and turned on the main battery. The voltmeter trembled, slowly rising to 12.4 volts. Good. It could still last another day.
I climbed down again. The deck was tidy. Nets rolled up, buoys lined up, hand lines on their supports, a scaling knife in its leather sheath hanging from the mast, a full kerosene lantern, the radio tuned to frequency 16, just crackling with static, a canteen of fresh water, a bottle of gin hidden under the bench (for later, always for later). I looked around once more. Everything in its place. Everything as it should be.
The sky now had that dirty Dutch winter hue: a heavy blue-gray, as if someone had thrown a lead blanket over the world.
On the eastern horizon, a thin line of dirty orange began to appear, so faint that it seemed as if the sun was too lazy to rise. The seagulls began to cry louder, flying low, searching for fish scraps on the docks. The wind was still biting, but it was no longer so cruel. The cold was settling into my bones, becoming part of me.
I leaned on Emma's railing, my forearms resting on the cold wood, and watched the sun rise. It was an opaque red disc, weak, hidden behind low clouds that looked like dirty cotton. The light hit the water and turned the IJsselmeer into a mirror of liquid metal, dark blue mixed with bottle green. The waves broke white against the breakwater, and the noise was constant, hypnotic. I took a deep breath, the air burning my throat, and for a moment I let my mind go blank. Just the sea, the wind, the boat, me. Nothing else.
I heard heavy footsteps before I saw the figure.
Jos.
He came snorting, his green army coat open despite the cold, his red beard full of ice, his eyes red from lack of sleep or too much drinking (probably both). In his right hand was the usual thermos, in his left a bag of bread wrapped in newspaper.
“Good morning, you son of a bitch,”
he muttered, his voice hoarse from sleep and cigarettes.
“You're twenty-three minutes late,” I said without taking my eyes off the horizon.
“My wife decided to fight at four in the morning because the baby kicked and she couldn't sleep. Then the oldest woke up, then the middle one started crying, then the twins decided it was time to feed. Damn it, Max, I have five kids and a sixth on the way. Leave me alone.”
He climbed aboard with a grunt. The Emma rocked hard. Jos threw the bag of bread on the seat and opened the thermos. The smell of coffee with gin rose warmly.
“Want some?” he offered.
I took it. I took a long sip. It burned nicely.
I released the bow line first, then the stern line. Jos was already in the cabin, turning the engine key. The old Volvo Penta coughed, spewed black smoke, and died. He turned it again. The third attempt worked, and the deep roar filled the harbor. I put it in idle and we maneuvered slowly between the other boats still asleep.
When we passed the breakwater, the wind hit us head-on. The Emma tilted, the bow cutting through the first wave with a dull thud that made the wood groan. Icy spray flew over the cabin and hit my face. I blinked quickly to get the salt out of my eyes.
Jos came to the stern and stood next to me at the helm.
“She's unbearable, Max,” he began, without preamble. "She says I smell like dead fish, that I'm never home, that the kids will grow up without a father. Damn it, I spend all day at sea to put food on their table! What else does she want? For me to become a civil servant and earn a fixed salary?”
I didn't answer. I just adjusted the rudder a little to port, keeping the bow steady against the waves.
“And the oldest, Thomas, twelve years old, is already talking back. Yesterday he called me a drunk in front of the neighbors. Twelve years old! At his age, I was already cleaning fish with a real knife."
The waves were short and choppy. The Emma rose and fell with force, her hull hitting the water like a hammer. I held the rudder with both hands, my arms already starting to ache.
Jos kept talking. He always talked. It was his way of not going crazy.
“And she wants me to stop smoking inside the house. Inside the house! It's my fucking house. And now with this pregnancy... the doctor said it's a girl. Another mouth to feed. Another school. More clothes. More of everything.”
He lit a cigarette, shielding the lighter with his whole body. The flame flickered, but caught.
He looked at me sideways.
"What about you, Max? Thirty-two years old. Still single. When are you going to find a decent woman and have some kids? My sister-in-law Anna, the one from Lelystad, is still single. Pretty. Good cook. Goes to church every Sunday."
I felt my stomach tighten. It was always the same conversation. Every single winter.
“Don't bother me, Jos.”
"It's not bothering you. It's concern. You can't live alone with this boat and this shed that stinks of kerosene for the rest of your life. A man needs a woman, he needs children. He needs someone to take care of him when he gets old and his back can't take it anymore."
I looked ahead. The horizon was clear now, just sea and gray sky. The sun had risen a little, but it was still a red disc without heat.
“I'm fine like this,” I said quietly.
“You're fucking lonely,” he retorted. “I see you at the bar sometimes. You sit in the corner, drink two beers, don't talk to anyone, and leave. No woman looks at you because you don't look at any of them.”
I bit my lip on the inside. The taste of blood came quickly.
The truth is, I had already tried. Years ago. I dated Liesbeth for almost a year. She was pretty, blonde, worked at the supermarket. She was a good kisser. But when it came time to go to bed, I froze. It wasn't fear. It was... emptiness. I looked at her and felt nothing. Nothing like the others talked about. No fire, no desire that made my blood run faster. Just a cold hole in my chest.
I broke up with her one summer night, sitting on the breakwater. She cried. I couldn't cry. After that, I never tried again.
I knew what it was. I knew since I was a teenager, when the other boys talked about porn magazines and I pretended to understand. I knew when I looked at the younger sailors in the harbor and felt something stir that had never stirred for any woman. But that wasn't something you talked about. Not in Urk. Not in a small town.
So I kept quiet. I fished. I drank. I repaired nets. I survived.
“I don't want kids, Jos,” I finally said. My voice came out harsher than I wanted it to. “I don't want a woman yelling at me at home. I don't want school debt, diapers, doctors. I have Emma. I have the sea. That's what I know how to do.”
He was quiet for a while. Only the sound of the engine and the waves.
“You're going to die alone,” he said at last. No anger. Just fact.
“Everyone dies alone,” I replied.
He said no more about it.
We sailed on in silence. The Emma cutting through the waves, the wind howling, the cold seeping into our bones. Jos went to the bow to check the nets. I stayed at the helm, my eyes fixed on the horizon, my heart heavy as lead.
The Emma sailed steadily on, the bow rising and falling with each wave as if breathing. I kept the compass needle pointing 320°, a direction I already knew by heart: eleven miles northwest of Urk, the spot we had christened “the corner of the flounder.” The seabed there was fine mud mixed with broken shells, eighteen to twenty meters deep, perfect for small trawl nets. In the good years, 1991, 1992, we would fill twelve or thirteen boxes before noon. Now we barely managed five.
The engine roared constantly, a sound that entered my chest and stayed there, like a second heart. I held the helm with my left hand, my right hand tucked into my coat pocket trying to steal a little warmth. Jos was sitting on the stern bench, his back against the cabin, smoking his third cigarette since we left port. The smoke rose in a spiral before being torn apart by the wind.
The sky remained heavy, with low clouds as dark as scrap metal. The sun was just a blood-red smudge behind them, too weak to warm anything. The water was the color I feared most in winter: so dark blue it looked black, with green reflections where the foam broke. Waves two and a half meters high, sometimes three, short and nervous. The Emma was hitting hard, the entire hull shaking with each blow. Icy spray came in from the side and froze where it fell. My face was already stiff, my lips cracked, my nose running nonstop.
After almost two hours, I saw the reference buoy: a yellow plastic bottle tied to a cement weight that I myself had thrown to the bottom in 1993. It was still there. A miracle.
“We're here,” I shouted to Jos, above the noise of the engine.
He threw his cigarette into the sea, got up with a grunt, and came into the cabin. I slowed down and put the engine in neutral. The silence that followed the engine was enormous, only the wind howling and the waves crashing against the hull. The Emma rocked heavily, the bow rising and falling like a wild horse.
“Today is going to be tough,” Jos said, looking around. “The sea is fucking rough.”
“Better than staying on land listening to your wife,” I replied.
He laughed, but without enthusiasm.
We began the ritual.
First, I turned off the engine completely. The silence grew even louder. I went down to the stern and tied the iron anchor with its rusty chain. I threw it overboard on the port side. The chain ran fast, and the weight sank with a muffled plop. The Emma slowly turned until it was across the waves, which was the way we liked to work with the net.
Jos was already unrolling the first net. I went to help him. His hands were shaking a little (from the cold, or the hangover, or both). The net was stiff with ice, the nylon creaking. We checked the orange buoys one by one, the lead weights, the cables. Everything was fine.
“First cast to the eighteen-foot depth,” I said.
He nodded.
We went to the stern. I tied the net cable to the manual winch, that old iron thing that creaked like hell. Jos held the mouth of the net open. I turned the crank slowly, the net descending meter by meter, disappearing into that black water. When the orange float remained on the surface, I stopped. I locked the winch. First cast done.
We repeated with the second net, further across. Then the third, shorter one, to catch whatever came up with the tide.
We were done. The Emma now had three lines of orange buoys dancing on the surface, marking our territory. We sat on the bench, our backs against the cabin, legs stretched out. The boat rocked heavily. Jos opened the bag of bread and cut thick slices with his pocketknife. The cheese was hard as a rock, but we ate it anyway.
He wiped his mouth on his jacket sleeve and began:
“Do you know what my wife heard from her neighbor at church yesterday?”
I groaned internally. When he started with “my wife heard,” it was a sign of long gossip.
“Get on with it, Jos.”
“It's serious this time. The pastor's wife said that people have been seeing... things. In the water. At night.”
I rolled my eyes. “Seagulls, maybe?”
“No, you idiot. Mermaids. Mermen. Fish people. I don't know what they're called.”
I laughed so loud that I scared a seagull that was perched on the mast.
“Damn it, Jos. Are you going crazy?”
“No, I'm not. But people are talking. Klaas's wife, the one who sells herring at the market, swore up and down that she saw a naked woman swimming next to her husband's boat last week. At night. She said her hair was green and fucking long, and that she sang something that almost made Klaas throw the anchor overboard.”
“And Klaas was drunk, right?”
“Of course he was. But he's not the only one. Hendrik, the one who fishes near Enkhuizen, told my brother-in-law that he heard singing too. And Ruud's boat... do you remember Ruud from Lemmer?”
I remembered. Ruud de Boer. Forty-something, always wearing a red cap, smoking stinky cigars. He fished alone on a seven-meter cutter called Zeeuw.
“What about Ruud?”
“He disappeared. Three weeks ago. His boat was found adrift near Ketelmeer. Empty. Engine running, net cut, fish box intact. But the hull... Max, the hull was covered in marks. Claw marks. Five parallel lines, deep as hell. As if something big had grabbed it and shaken it.”
I snorted. “Sharks don't have claws, Jos. Neither do dolphins. And mermaids even less so.”
"I know what it looks like. But the coast guard saw it. They took pictures. My brother-in-law works at their warehouse, he saw it with his own eyes. Deep marks, torn wood. And inside the cabin... there was hair. Long. Green. Tangled around the rudder."
I shook my head, chuckling softly.
“Seaweed, Jos. Green seaweed. It happens. And the marks were from the propeller of some big ship that passed by. Or Ruud hit a log. Or he cut the hull himself to collect insurance and ran off with some mistress.”
“Ruud didn't have a mistress. And he didn't have insurance.”
“Then he threw himself into the sea drunk and sank. It happens all the time.”
Jos was quiet for a while. Only the sound of the waves and the buoys hitting the water.
“I'm just telling you what's going on,” he finally said. “Be careful at night, Max. If you hear singing, don't go near the railing.”
“If I hear singing, I'll record it and sell it to the radio station as proof that you're crazy.”
He laughed, but it was a forced laugh.
I looked at the buoys. The middle one had sunk a few inches. A sign.
“Fish,” I said, getting up quickly.
We went to the winch. We started pulling. The crank creaked, our arms burned. The net was heavy. When it came up, the silver flounder glistened, thrashing on the deck. Good sizes. Some small cod. Nothing out of the ordinary.
But as I threw the fish into the boxes, one thing stuck in my mind.
Green hair.
Claw marks.
Ruud gone.
I laughed again, more quietly this time.
Legend of a drunken sailor.
That's all.
The sea was big, dark, and cold.
But there was no monster.
Just us.
Ψ
The sun was almost in the middle of the sky, a dirty white disc behind the thick layer of clouds, but at least it had stopped snowing lightly. The fog wasn't dense yet, just a damp mist that made everything look a little dull, as if someone had wiped the whole world with a wet cloth. The sea had calmed down a little: waves a meter and a half high, long, the Emma rocking slowly, almost lazily. The smell was strong: fresh fish, blood, melting ice, diesel. The deck was covered with scales that sparkled like silver glitter when the light hit them.
Seven boxes full. Seven. I hadn't seen that since October. Large sole, some over three kilos, fat loins, clear eyes. Small but firm cod. Even a few sea bass that appeared out of nowhere. Enough to pay for the month's diesel, the shed rent, and still have enough left over to fix the radio for good.
Jos was ecstatic. He slapped me on the back with his big hand, laughing loudly, his red beard covered in ice and fish blood.
“Damn, Max! Seven boxes before eleven! Let's drink gin until we drop at De Haan tonight, it's on me!”
“It's really on you,” I replied, but I was smiling. It was impossible not to smile. My whole body ached, my arms trembled from turning the winch so much, my back burned, but it was a good pain. The pain of a job well done.
We hugged each other quickly, two fish-smelling idiots in the middle of the sea, laughing as if we had won the lottery. Jos opened the thermos, took a long sip, and passed it to me. I drank. The gin burned my throat and went down hot to my stomach.
For a second, the cold seemed less intense.
He sighed, placing his freckled hands on his thighs and making a pained expression as he stood up. “I'm going down to tidy up the hold,” he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “I want those boxes right at the bottom, with fresh ice on top. If it all melts by Urk, the fish will cook.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “I'll clean up here.”
Jos went down the stairs with a grunt. I heard him rummaging through the boxes, dragging them, cursing under his breath when something slipped.
I stayed on deck.
First I grabbed the old broom and started sweeping the scales and fish scraps to the stern. The floor was slippery as hell. There were guts, severed heads, pieces of fins. The smell was strong, sweet and salty at the same time. I grabbed the bucket of seawater and threw it on the deck. The cold water rose up my ankles inside my boots. I swept everything into the scupper. The blood ran pink, then bright red, then disappeared into the black water outside.
Then I went to the sides. There was seaweed stuck to the waterline, the dark green, slimy kind that sticks in winter.
I grabbed the wooden spatula with a steel blade that I use for this. I leaned against the railing, bent down, and started scraping. The algae came off in large chunks, full of small barnacles that fell onto the deck with a dry thud. The hull was covered in new marks: scratches from the net, waves crashing against it, some places where the white paint had come off completely, revealing the old red underneath.
The fog suddenly thickened. One minute I could see the buoys fifty meters away, the next I could barely see the bow of the Emma. The world turned grayish-white, the sea disappeared, all I could hear was the sound of the waves hitting the hull and the hoarse cries of seagulls that seemed lost.
I was leaning over the port side railing, scraping a long strip of seaweed that seemed to go on forever, when I leaned with both hands on the railing to push myself up.
That's when I saw it.
Directly below me, less than two meters from the hull, something cut through the water.
A dorsal fin.
Huge.
Blood red, almost brown at the tips, glistening wet. The shape was pure sea monster, but the size... damn, the size was wrong. It was almost the length of my entire arm, from fingertips to shoulder. The base was thick, full of muscle, tapering to the tip that trembled slightly as it moved.
It passed quickly. A second, maybe less.
It cut through the surface, raised a small wave that hit the hull, and disappeared into the fog. It made no noise. No splash, no sound of breathing. Just that bright red disappearing into the black water.
I stood still.
My heart beat hard once, twice.
Then it returned to normal.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.
A shark. It had to be. Maybe a stray basking shark, or a pilgrim shark. They sometimes appear in the North Sea, entering the IJsselmeer in pursuit of schools of fish.
They're huge. Harmless, but huge. The color... well, the light in the fog does strange things. It could have been a reflection of rust on the hull, or seaweed stuck to the fin.
It could have been one of those fish that are worth a fortune at the market. If I had had the net ready, if I had seen it sooner...
Shit.
I felt a pang of anger mixed with regret. A fish that size could feed an entire family for a month. Or pay for the engine repair with money to spare.
“Max! Are you sleeping up there?” Jos's voice came up from the hold.
“No, damn it,” I shouted back. “I'm cleaning up.”
I kept scraping. Harder now. The algae came off in pieces, which I threw into the sea. The red of the fin was still in my mind's eye, but I forced it out of my head. It's a sailor thing. We see all kinds of things at sea. Bad light, fatigue, fog. The brain plays tricks on you.
I finished the port side. I went to the other side.
The fog was so thick that I could barely see the water touching the hull. I could only feel the cold rising up my legs, the smell of rotten seaweed and old blood.
Nothing else passed by.
Nothing red, nothing giant.
Just Emma rocking, the sound of the water lapping, and me there, cleaning the boat like every day.
When Jos came up, the deck was already clean.
Scales swept away, seaweed gone, blood washed away. Only the smell never goes away.
“It looks good,” he said, looking around.
“Shall we go home?”
“Let's go,” I replied.
I started the engine. The Volvo started on the first try.
I dropped anchor. The Emma turned its bow south, cutting through the fog like a hot knife through butter, and finally I called Jos to tell him what I had seen.
Ψ
De Haan was crowded for a winter night. The smell was always the same: sour beer, cigarette smoke, smoked fish, sailor sweat, and kerosene from oil heaters that never got warm enough. Light bulbs hung from the ceiling on bare wires, swaying every time someone opened the door and let the wind in. The wooden floor was sticky with spilled beer and spit. In the corner, the old jukebox played André Hazes' hoarse “Bloed, zweet en tranen” at a volume low enough for us to still be able to talk.
I was in my usual corner, at a corner table, leaning against the wall, facing the door. Jos sat across from me, his coat still on, his red beard wet with beer. In front of us were five empty mugs and a sixth that was half full. The gin he had promised was on the table too: a nearly empty bottle of Bokma, two dirty shot glasses. We were already at the point where the cold of the day was disappearing and the warmth of the drink was rising up our legs.
“Seven boxes, Max,” he repeated for the tenth time, his red eyes shining. “Seven boxes before noon. The folks at the market tomorrow are going to go crazy. Van der Meulen will offer any price just to keep it from the competition.”
I nodded and took a sip of beer. It was warm, but it went down well.
“I'll be there at five,” I said. “Boxes in the wheelbarrow, straight to the auction. Then I'll go back to the shed, fix the nets again, and go out again on the second or third tide. If the weather holds, I'll get two or three more boxes before the end of the week.”
Jos raised his glass of gin.
“Here's to Verstappen, who never stops.”
We toasted. The glass hit the table hard, splashing a little gin onto the table.
“You're crazy, you know that?” he said, laughing. “I have five kids at home and a pregnant wife, and yet you work harder than I do.”
“Because I don't have six screaming kids,” I replied.
He laughed loudly. Then he suddenly became serious, as he always did after his third gin.
“Max... seriously. You're going to end up truly alone. That's no way to live.”
I didn't answer. I just downed my drink, feeling the liquid burn my throat.
The bar door flew open, banging against the wall. A cold wind blew in, extinguishing two candles on the table next to us. Everyone looked up.
It was Lieske. Jos's wife. Huge belly, nine months pregnant, black shawl on her head, looking like she hadn't slept in weeks. Her eyes found Jos immediately.
“Jozef van der Meer!”
Her voice cut through the entire bar. Even the jukebox seemed to get quieter.
Jos froze with his glass in his hand.
“Damn,” he muttered.
She marched between the tables, her heavy boots on the sticky floor. Some sailors laughed quietly. Others pretended it wasn't them.
“You said you were just coming for one drink! One! And look at you, reeking of gin, looking like you don't know your own name!”
“Lie, I...”
“Don't give me that Lie crap! Thomas threw up his entire dinner, the twins won't stop crying, and there I am, alone, with this belly that feels like it's going to explode! Get up now!”
Jos looked at me, eyes wide, asking for help that I wasn't going to give.
I just raised my glass in a silent toast.
She grabbed his arm. Jos was big, but she was stronger when she wanted to be.
She pulled. His chair scraped across the floor with a long creak.
“Max, I'm sorry,” he managed to say as he was dragged away. “See you tomorrow at the market...”
“Bring the bet money,” I shouted back.
The door slammed. The whole bar laughed. Someone shouted, “Good luck, Jos!” The jukebox returned to normal volume.
And I was left alone.
The table now had an empty chair in front of me, five empty mugs, and a bottle of gin with enough left for two more fingers. I ordered another beer. The waiter brought it without saying a word; he already knew me.
I drank slowly.
The bar gradually emptied.
Sailors left, their coats dripping with melted snow, their voices loud as they said their goodbyes.
The fog outside was so thick that the light from the streetlamps barely penetrated the window. The world seemed to have disappeared beyond the door.
I stayed.
The beer ran out. So did the gin. I ordered one last small glass. The waiter served me, already looking like he wanted to close up.
And I thought about the fin.
Red. Huge. So close to the hull that I could have touched it if I stretched out my arm. I couldn't get the color out of my head. It wasn't the color of a basking shark, it wasn't the color of a dolphin, it wasn't the color of anything I had ever seen in twenty years at sea. And the way it disappeared... too fast. Too quiet.
I tried to remember the details. The edge was smooth, no cuts, no scars. The base was thick, full of muscle. The tip trembled slightly, as if it could feel the water. And the color... fresh blood mixed with red wine. It glowed even in the fog.
I shook my head. I drank the rest of the gin in one gulp.
Tiredness. Bad light. Reflection of my own red coat in the spray. Or a piece of canvas lost from some big ship.
Anything.
But I knew it wasn't.
I got up. I left the money under the empty glass. I put on my cap, zipped my coat up to my neck. I left.
The fog swallowed the world. The harbor was empty, only yellow lights flickering in the mist. The Emma rocked in the corner, a dark silhouette. The sea lapped softly against the breakwater, a muffled sound, almost a whisper.
I stopped on the pier for a moment. I looked at the black water between the pillars.
Nothing moved.
Nothing red.
Just the faint reflection of the lights and the fog slowly descending.
I went into the shed. I lit the kerosene heater. The strong smell filled the air. I took off my boots and sat down on the old chair. The lamp flickered.
And the red fin was still there, behind my closed eyes.