A ticket is ordered, things are packed in a bag, but there’s no way to put your heart in it! Neither in a suitcase nor in a bag. She does not want to part with either her family or the house. Levy lay on the couch and in one pose, and in the other – but we must go. I left the house once, went back. Again and again. But now he is already sitting behind the wheel of a car, waving to everyone who has stuck to the windows and standing on the porch: let's go!
The sun was shining. The weather was not February at all, but the spring. Today is Sunday. There are no traffic jams at all. For now, it seemed that the endless Haringsfleetbridge through Willimstad was left behind, and the gaping mouth of the underground dragon – the Jaenord tunnel – was waiting ahead. The Levy’s motorway leads first around Rotterdam, and then along endless refineries and the navigable river Maas. Which harbor number did I need?
– 5870. So this is it.
– Hallo! Your passport, please, the official nods.
– You are welcome. Here is the passport. Here is a Visa card. Is there no storm at sea? Not? Good. Then we go further.
– Hallo! Open, your trunk, please, – the gendarmes contact me.
– You are welcome.
The gendarmes, having not found there twenty or even at least some frozen Chinese or Indians, regretfully slam the trunk lid and point further towards the ship.
To get into his womb, you need to drive along an incredibly steep hill-climb, this womb continues to absorb and absorb the moving stream of cars, like sacrificial animals for a predatory gluttonous dragon. The name of the dragon liner is “Pryde of Rotterdam”.
Levy with a car in the womb of this dragon, in a cargo hold. He closes the car and steps to the counter, where he is handed the “key” from the cabin.
Standing on the right deck, Ari opened the door with a paper key card. I went inside. Two lower places are already occupied by more agile fellow passengers. Well, upstairs have a good place too. Settled. The co-passengers are completely taciturn – one German named Thomas Schuler, studying, for some reason, in England, and the other – it is not known who and where from – did not utter a word for this whole sea trip.
The hair of the head of the “other” and the tail of his beard were painted white, his face was decorated with earrings and piercings, he slept all the time while Levy was awake, and only informed him of the stink coming from him, declaring his love for alcohol and tobacco. Leaving this small colorful team, Levy left the cabin and went down to the lower deck into a spacious hall. Slot machines in rows, like soldiers in a parade, lined up on both sides of this hall. There were still others covered with covers, preparing to fire and defeat anyone who dared to approach them, guns, tables, roulettes. Steamboat-casino – rightly concluded Levy and went on, looking at and studying the insides and sights of the “Rotterdam Pride”. The farther he moved, the less he was surrounded by anything worthy of attention: numerous tables, bent under the weight of different-sized bottles, half-drunken imposing faces, reclining on burgundy plush sofas. At the end of the hall there were ship shops, clogged with a kind of weapon of mass destruction and objects of fleeting vicious pleasures: tobacco and alcohol products, piles of magazines with naked white-toothed beauties on their covers.
“Vanity and chasing after the wind,” Levy thought, “with the wind in his head and in his wallet.”
He went to the huge oval porthole window. A bottomless darkness silently looked at him in response. Waves not visible and not heard, not visible
and you cannot hear the stars and the moon. This is usually the night of the North Sea. Levy stood still a moment before this empty silent giant eye socket.
He stood, whispering his unpretentious requests with his lips – pleas for a safe trip, for blessing, for a good departure and return. He whispered, said “Amen,” and went to his retirement, on his own, this night, cabin 10218, whose iron lock was opened with a paper key.
On the upper left bunk was a sign: “Use the stairs”.
Levy hoped for his height and “sportiness”, climbed, but could not beat the climb the first time, jumped back to the floor, and then, the second time, still having overcome, rolled onto his back and sighed in relief:
– Well, the day has run out.
In another situation, it would not be easy to fall asleep in such a solid iron box, sloppy painted in a hospital-white color, like a real archaic safe, but the tiredness of the day, impressions, family twists and turns, moved so powerfully forever that he almost immediately plunged into a deep a sea dream, similar to the last view from the porthole – the black, impenetrable mess of the sea and sky, ominously toothless and silent, and fell asleep. Till tomorrow.