Antwerp - Ireland - AntwerpDAY 5

- by Ward Hulselmans

- Sunday 20 May 2019

At 5.30 am I am woken up by the banging of containers coming down. Loading continues unabated. I go out on deck in my pajama pants. The sun is shining without a trace. The holds of the ship are now open, the floors are upright and the ship looks like a giant sardine can that has been pulled open. Containers are now being hauled up from deep below. Going back to sleep is difficult. I miss the monotonous, reassuring hum of the ship's engines and the swell of the sea.

*

 At breakfast The Monk stays seated while the other officers leave. The giant in black silently slurps his coffee, sunk into his unfathomable self. It stays quiet and I feel uncomfortable because he's so close. I don't dare to look at him and make a long study of the Polish sausage on my plate. When he does speak to me, I almost drop my fork. He has conjured up a picture and shows it with a smile that totally changes his appearance. I see a row of colourful old-fashioned VW-camionettes standing in front of a white plastered building, a kind of Slavonic palace. "Lituwania," he says. "Me from Lituwania". I nod, but I don't see any connection with the VW vans at all. I ask if one of those vans might be his - he could be an old-timer freak, they always push you this kind of pictures under your nose. He looks at me like I'm out of my mind. "No no!" Hm. I still don't see any connection to Lithuania, so I ask which car he does have. "Mazda 6!" is the answer. A red one, I ask, because my neighbour has one of those and he thinks only sporty red suits his streamlined Mazda 6. "Yes." says the Monk. He puts away the picture with the vans. On which he stands, nods for a moment and leaves without a word. I keep asking myself what I did wrong. It takes some time before it dawned on me: The Monk did not break off this meeting prematurely for some reason. This just wasn't a meeting. It was a gesture of goodwill on his part. He let the picture and his smile speak because he doesn't know a word of English. There is no further meaning. With his smile he just lowered a bridge and picked it up again. He completely dominated this moment, like a monk who knows the outside world and has thought about it. An hour later I see him in the engine room, first behind a glass wall in the control room, then in the corridors along the pounding ship's machinery. He is just a bit too big and has to stoop all the time. In this witch's kettle full of noise he is at peace himself. This is his world. There is only one language here, that of the machines, of the marvellous technology that propels this ship forward. He doesn't see me, he's too busy.

*

 Rey Mark is waiting at the gangway and notes in the logbook that I disembark at 10.30 am. I already have my passport and board document ready, but the terminal barrier is just up and there is no one in the office. A van with a container leaves the harbour without stopping, everyone walks in and out, no one checks. I hear our captain growling: Ireland. It is an hour's walk to Cork, which according to tourist brochures is a picturesque town - euphemism for a place where there is little to see. Luckily I'm not here for the monuments; after days of meat I yearn for fresh fish, anything, as long as it comes out of the water.

"I'll find a reasonably clean pub and dive into a jar of mussels. They're not big but fresh and they smell like the Irish sea."

For even more fish, the owner refers me to the English Market, the covered market of Cork. It's like stepping into Walhalla for foodies. Never, not even in France, have I seen such a mass of fresh food in one place. Butchers chop into cow carcasses, vegetable farmers scream for attention, but I follow my nose all the way to K O'Connell's fish stall. Per linear metre there are freshly caught fish in all shapes and sizes among lobsters, oysters and sea urchins. I drool for minutes before I finally order a piece of freshly smoked salmon and a pot of inlaid squid. That's how my eye catches a picture of Queen Elisabeth, during a visit to this fish stand. Why is it that an Irishman hangs a picture of an English Queen on his wall? I heard that the queen absolutely wanted to know the name of a hideous sea monster that was for sale right under her nose. "Oh, that's the Maidfish", the owner shouted, well aware of the double bottom of his answer. But the Queen could taste this Irish humour to such an extent that she later invited O'Connel to tea at Buckingham Palace. Whether this is true in whole or in part? It's Irish in the first place, so it's hard to tell. It is part of the Irish Factor, of the incalculability you feel here, of the nonchalance that sometimes tends towards fatalism. Let it blow, or lie. Don't do today what you can tomorrow. In that sense, the Irish are the Walloons from across the sea. Whether this equation is correct or not, I think Irish are the last to even think about this for one second. 

*

 In the mess for the Philippines, Ramon sits beside the Presbyterian pastor Collin, who has just come on board for me. Collin is in his thirties with idealistic light blue eyes and the help and refuge for the low caste of sailors who do not get off board in Cork. He plays driver, supplier of all kinds of necessary stuff and only takes care of the souls in the last place. The practically minded servant of God reasoned according to the principle of Bertold Brecht: "Erst das Fressen, dann die Moral", although Fressen stands here mainly for 'telephone cards'. Ramon lets the shoulders hang. For the umpteenth time he has failed to buy his second hand bicycle. Yesterday he didn't get off board in extremis and today he was in Cork in front of a closed bicycle shop. Monday closing day. Collin patiently listens to the little cook and notes his budget and the requirements of the bicycle. The pastor takes care of the matter himself. When the Elbfeeder moors in Cork next time, he promises to have a used bike ready. Then he has to leave: a Chinese ship comes in where the needs of the under-deck helpers are even greater. He leaves some religious leaflets with images of Christ on the table and disappears. Ramon is back on top and immediately fires "the" question: what did you eat this afternoon? Mussels? Really? You don't mean it! What else do you like from the sea? I call haphazardly all the fish I know the English name for, or something like that. In the meantime, Rey Mark and Dennis have joined and my status is skyrocketing. I'm suddenly The Man Who Likes Mussels and Fish. Slowly I understand how irreconcilable the difference must be between the refined Filipino cuisine and the daily life on this ship full of carnivores and omnivores... I have to deal with these sailors and the plastic bag from O'Connell's is burning in my hands.

"In the end, I throw the salmon and the squid on the table. Filipino adam drops go up and down, saliva is swallowed. After two minutes everything is gone."

And then Dennis asks the burning final question, "Do you like crab, too?" Yes, of course I do. Why? Five minutes later I lower a basket of chicken waste overboard from the red-painted backside. The basket disappears into the ten meters deep water. According to Dennis they caught, cooked and ate "such" crabs here last week. A feast. The first time I pick up four little crabs. Then another one or two. My Filipino friends are already at work, but I fish bravely. The catch remains poor but the water is clear, the wind is blowing and I feel as happy as a little boy on the pier of Nieuwpoort. An hour later, Iwan taps me on the shoulder. We're leaving. I'm throwing back the last of the crabs. The pilot climbs the stairs to the bridge, the gangway is retracted and the ship's engines start to work. The familiar hum makes the deck tremble. Moments later we're off the quay. It now goes back in one pull. Wednesday we arrive in Antwerp. It will be night. 

*

 Apparently the Irish custom is to ask any foreigner if it was the "first time in Ireland". Every time I nodded yes. A lie for goodness' sake. Now, in bed, the past comes back. It's 1981 and I'm a reporter in Northern Ireland during the Civil War. IRA prisoners began a hunger strike which they persisted to death in protest at their treatment by the English authorities. I wander for days in the Catholic districts of Belfast: Fallsroad, Andersons Town, the Divis Flats...I am introduced to the raw violence of civil war, the palpable hatred, the fear, the decay of youth and the grief of parents. The hunger strikes reach their climax. After Bobby Sands, one after the other IRA prisoner dies of starvation in the H-blocks of Maze. I sit at the kitchen table with the mother of the fifth hunger striker when the phone rings. Her son - it must have been Joe Mc Donnell - is in agony. I ride with the mother in a taxi and see her disappear behind the prison gate, to watch her son die. Yes. First time in Ireland.  

*

 

- DAY 419 May 2019

preceding day

- DAY 621 May 2019

subsequent day