Loves of Yulian Read Free Page B

hurried us onto the deck. Once there, we stood in little groups beside each lifeboat that the sailors were doing something to. One of the officers explained to our group that in a real emergency we would be instructed to climb into the boats and be lowered into the ocean. Also, that there would be a crewmember in charge of each boat, and we were to obey his every command since he was trained in these matters. Then, he went on to reassure us that the Brazilian flag painted on either side of our hull would keep German submarines from torpedoing us.
    There were two other children on board, besides me. They were two brothers from Holland, who looked exactly alike, except that one had his hair parted on the right side and the other on the left. Mother asked me why I didn’t go play with them, and I explained that I didn’t speak Dutch, and it wasn’t likely that they spoke Polish. Mother answered that they probably spoke some French, as I did, and, if they didn’t, it would be fun communicating through hand gestures and mime, which certainly didn’t sound like fun to me.
    Even if they had spoken Polish, I would not have been anxious to make their acquaintance. I had not had a good experience playing with other boys. They always wanted to pretend we were soldiers, and that I was their prisoner being tortured or that they were cowboys, and I was a robber about to be hanged.
    At the hotel in Barcelona, there had been a girl, almost a year younger than me, who was also Polish, and we made believe that we were riding in a car, with me driving, up and down the halls, or climbing the Carpathian Mountains the way Mother and I had done, to get away from Soviet border guards. But it turned out afterwards that it was she who had given me my scarlet fever, since she was just getting over it when we began playing together.
    But, with M. Gordet translating, Mother discussed the issue with the Dutch brothers’ parents, while sitting in deck chairs, and reached the agreement that the three of us boys would all benefit from playing together, while the four of them had cocktails. Then, the three of us proceeded to sit cross-legged on the deck, while I stared at them, and they stared at me.
    The four grownups seemed to fare a lot better, with no shortage of conversation. After a while, following some whispered conversation between the two brothers, one of them stood up and motioned for me to follow. While I would have preferred not to, I could imagine Mother telling me that I wasn’t playing nicely, so I got up and followed.
    The brother who had first signaled me to follow, led the way around to the other side of the ship, and the other walked along behind me. When we reached the section where the lifeboats stood, the leader indicated that I and his brother should stand together in front of one of the boats so that he could take a picture of us with the imaginary camera he now held in his hands. This, at least, was something to do, and it was something I had seen a lot of the grownups do with real cameras, so I took my place willingly, planning to propose a picture of the two of them, once each had been photographed with me. Watching him “photograph” us, I realized that I could mime the procedure much better with things like fiddling with the lens and turning the little knob that wound the film.
    But, suddenly, they had each grabbed one of my arms and were pushing me backwards, between two boats, towards where there was no railing between the deck and the ocean. Now I realized that they were trying to push me overboard. I couldn’t imagine that that was, really, what they were doing, since my absence would be quickly discovered and traced to them. This had to be a game—some kind of Dutch game. Looking down, I could see in my peripheral vision the wavy ocean rushing by and getting closer. But, on the other hand, they could just lie and say they didn’t know where I had gone. Or even that I had been showing off by standing near the edge