Chapter 2 — First Night in the Boarding House
The long table in the main room was already crowded when Nikos came downstairs at six. The air hung heavy with the smells of roasted lamb, garlic, lemon, and fresh bread. Lantern light flickered across the faces of a dozen men, most of them weathered and thick-muscled, their forearms scarred and their hands rough as sharkskin. They spoke in low Greek, voices overlapping like waves.
Nikos hesitated in the doorway. Every head turned toward him for a moment—assessing, measuring—before conversations resumed. Yiorgos waved him over to an empty chair near the middle of the table.
“Sit, boy. Eat while it’s hot.”
Nikos slid into the seat. The men around him continued as if he were part of the furniture. On his left sat a broad-shouldered diver with a thick black mustache and a fresh bruise blooming along his jaw. On his right, a quieter man with gray at his temples picked at his food in silence.
The hierarchy was unspoken but unmistakable. At the head of the table sat the older, proven divers—the ones whose names carried weight on the docks. They spoke least and were listened to most. Younger men and tenders ate toward the ends, laughing louder to cover their lower status. Nikos, clearly the newest, occupied the lowest rung.
Sophia moved between the table and kitchen like a quiet storm, refilling plates and bowls without a word. Her eyes flicked to Nikos once or twice, but she said nothing.
The meal passed in a rhythm of clinking forks and grunted conversation. Then, as plates began to empty, one of the older men—a lean, sun-baked diver named Kostas—leaned back and tapped his glass with his knife.
“Petros,” he said simply.
The table quieted.
Nikos felt the shift in the air, like a sudden drop in pressure before a storm.
Kostas stared into his wine. “Three weeks ago today. They found his helmet tangled in the lines two days later. Suit torn open like paper. Currents must have dragged him along the bottom for hours.”
A younger man across the table muttered, “He was good. Strong.”
“Strong ain’t enough,” Kostas replied, voice flat. “Pump man got distracted. Line got fouled. Petros signaled to come up, but by the time they hauled him…” He shrugged, a small, hard motion. “The bends got him on the way up, or maybe the suit breach did. Didn’t matter. He was already gone.”
Silence settled over the table, thick as the humidity outside. Someone poured more wine. Another man crossed himself.
Yiorgos spoke without looking up from his plate. “Petros owed money back home. Two little girls and a wife who waited every season. Now they wait for nothing.”
Nikos’s appetite had vanished. He stared at the half-eaten food in front of him, the rich smells suddenly cloying. He had heard stories back on Kalymnos—men lost to the sea, bodies never recovered, widows left behind. But those were distant tales. Here, they had names. Faces. Empty chairs at the table.
The man with the bruised jaw—Markos, someone had called him earlier—leaned forward, eyes glinting with something sharp.
“New blood always thinks it won’t happen to him,” he said, voice carrying just enough to reach Nikos. “Thinks the sea will make an exception because he’s young and pretty.” A couple of the younger men chuckled.
Nikos kept his face still, though heat rose in his neck. He met Markos’s gaze briefly. “I’m not here for exceptions. I’m here to work.”
Markos snorted. “We’ll see how long that lasts when the helmet goes on and the world goes black.”
Yiorgos shot Markos a warning look, but the damage was done. The table slowly returned to quieter talk—complaints about the price of sponges this year, gossip about which boat was bringing in the best haul, arguments over whose tender was the most reliable.
Nikos ate mechanically, the food tasting like ash. When supper ended, the men pushed back their chairs and drifted outside to smoke or upstairs to their rooms. He helped Sophia clear a few plates, earning a small nod of approval from her, though her eyes still held that same quiet pity.
Later, in the dim upstairs room, Nikos lay on his narrow cot staring at the ceiling beams. The two other men sharing the space—both tenders—were already snoring softly. Through the open window drifted the distant sounds of the Gulf: water lapping against pilings, the creak of boats at anchor, a faint laugh from the docks.
He thought of his mother’s face when he’d told her he was leaving for America. The hope in her eyes. The way she’d clutched his hands and whispered, “Be careful, my son. Come back to us.”
Petros had probably had a mother who said the same thing.
Nikos turned onto his side, the thin mattress creaking beneath him. For the first time since stepping off the bus, the weight of the danger felt real—not as a story, not as a warning, but as something heavy pressing down on his chest, as real as the lead boots he would soon wear.
Sleep came slowly, and when it did, it was troubled by dark water and tangled lines.
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