The Man Who Wasn't in the Plan

One night in Urk became three.

For a person who writes itineraries for spontaneous trips, this constitutes a major incident. Delft, The Hague, Kinderdijk sat in my Google Calendar in tidy rows, and I dragged them, one by one, into next week. When I dragged the third, the calendar popped a warning: conflicts with an existing event.

No kidding.

The conflict's name was Lucas. Days, he worked in his father's business — I never quite pinned down what: fishing, shipping, trade with China, all of the above — which explained the terrifyingly good Mandarin: he'd learned it off business partners from Qingdao and Shanghai. He even used neijuan correctly. In context.

The second evening he walked me out to the lighthouse. The third day he said: I'm taking you out on the water.

"I get seasick."

"Not today, you won't." Flat certainty, like the sea was his backyard.

At the dock sat his family's old wooden boat, blue and white, paint peeled to exactly the right degree. While I hesitated on the dock, he'd already swung aboard, turned, looked at me, and said something in Dutch — the tail of the sentence lifting, like a joke.

"Meaning?"

"Nu moet de boot maar varen," he repeated, slowly. "Old saying here. It's come to this — so let the boat sail."

It's come to this. So let the boat sail. I got on the boat.

In that one hour on the water I inhaled a lifetime's quota of wind. He didn't talk much; working the lines, he became someone else, someone precise. Far out, he cut the engine, and the world reduced to water slapping the hull. The sunset laid a gold-red road across the sea, all the way out to where you couldn't see.

"So tell me," he said suddenly. "Why did you really come to Urk? Nobody comes to Urk."

Maybe because there was no one else on the water. Maybe because of that look of his — you can't lie to me anyway, so why try. I told him about the dream. Grey sea, low houses, small white flowers, twenty years of it. Then I laughed at myself first, before he could: "My therapist says it's anxiety. Immigrant family, generational trauma — the standard package."

He didn't laugh.

He didn't say anything for a long time. Long enough that I thought he hadn't understood, and turned to look — he was staring at the water, jaw set slightly wrong, the line in his hands gripped, not being tied into anything. Just gripped.

"Lucas?"

"Wind's changing," he said, and started the engine.

He was noticeably quieter on the way in. I assumed I'd weirded him out — who tells a three-day acquaintance about their recurring dream, like some kind of lunatic 🙃 At the dock I said thanks for today, and his hands paused on the mooring rope.

"Daisy," he said, not looking up. "In this dream of yours — is there ever a person?"

"Sometimes there's a figure," I said. "Can't see them clearly. Why?"

He pulled the rope tight and set a hard, clean knot, and when he straightened up his face was back to its usual calm. "Nothing. Fish market tomorrow, six a.m. If you can get up, I'll buy you the best herring in town."

Obviously I couldn't get up. Obviously I went.

My calendar surrendered to another human being for the first time in its life.

And that human being, having heard my dream, asked exactly one question: is there ever a person in it.