The radio corporal locked the latch on my cabin

I knocked on the office door with two sharp raps and stepped back. The commander’s voice took a few seconds to answer from inside.

—Come in.

I went in with a firm stride, stopped a meter from the desk, and came to attention. Commander Eikre was still reading the dossier open in front of him. He barely lifted a hand to indicate a chair.

—At ease, Lieutenant Aaberg. Sit down.

I obeyed in silence. I let my gaze roam over the walls of the office, covered with framed diplomas and commendation plaques, while I tried to control the knot tightening in my stomach. Never before had I been summoned like that.

When he finally closed the folder, he interlaced his fingers on top of the desk.

—I see in your file that all your postings have been on land. You’ve never served afloat.

—That’s right, sir. Not since cadet training.

—I don’t like making this kind of decision at the last minute. I prefer to prepare my officers in advance. But I have no other choice. You are to replace the doctor on the Triton, who was evacuated urgently two days ago. The submarine is heading to the shores of the eastern Mediterranean and is waiting moored in El Ferrol.

I swallowed in silence. A submarine. Four months underwater.

—You have forty-eight hours to report aboard —he added, sliding a dossier across the desk—. You may go.

—Aye, sir.

I left the office with slightly unsteady legs. Military medicine had paid for my studies and a salary from my first year of school. That was the price. I had repeated it to myself so many times over the years that I no longer needed to say it again.

***

Forty-eight hours later, cold drizzle was hitting my face as I made my way along the pier. The Triton’s gangway was narrow and slippery. Two soldiers flanked it. I held out the dossier.

—Permission to come aboard.

—Granted, Lieutenant. The captain asked that you meet him as soon as you arrived. Command room.

I climbed the gangway slowly. As soon as I set foot inside the hull, the atmosphere changed completely. The air was thick, slightly metallic, and the light seemed to swallow the colors. I had to duck to avoid brushing the pipes on the ceiling. The walls were far too close; I already understood why people talked about the “coffin effect.”

Captain Vinter was a dry man in his fifties, with a trimmed beard and huge hands. As soon as I had finished the salute, he handed command to his second and invited me to follow him down the central passageway.

—It’s your first time on a submarine, isn’t it?

—Yes, Captain.

—Four months is a long time when you’ve never done it before. I should warn you that space here is limited. Too limited. Most of the crew sleeps in hot-bunking arrangements; officers have a certain privilege, but also a particularity —he paused to look at me—. There’s only one other woman aboard, Corporal Lindgren, the radio operator. It isn’t usual for an officer to share a cabin with noncommissioned personnel, but in this case the two of you will share one. Your shifts are different, you’ll hardly cross paths. I trust that won’t be a problem.

—None at all, Captain.

—We eat when we can, we sleep when we can, and we save ourselves the niceties. This is not a surface ship. Your shifts are twelve hours, but since you’re the only doctor aboard, you’ll always be on call. Understood?

—Understood, Captain.

He pointed to a narrow door at the end of the passage.

—This is your cabin. Make yourself comfortable. Dinner starts at eighteen thirty. Your shift begins at twenty hundred.

He went back the way he had come. I opened the door and stood for a moment in the doorway. The cabin was tiny. A bunk built into the wall, a fold-down table, a chair, and two lockers. The smell was a mix of oil and overheated plastic, with something else, something sweet I couldn’t identify.

It took me ten minutes to hang up the two white coats and the three changes of underwear I had in my kit bag. I sat on the bunk, unlaced my boots, and let myself fall backward. I closed my eyes. Just as I was about to doze off, the door opened.

—Good afternoon, Lieutenant.

I propped myself up on my elbows. It was a small girl, no more than five-foot-three, holding a small kit bag in her hand. Her hair was pulled back in a low bun. It was blond, almost white. Her eyes, however, were gray, almost the color of polished steel. Her skin was so pale that the tiny blond freckles seemed to blend into it.

—At ease, Corporal Lindgren. If we’re going to live two women in this hole, I’d rather we skip the formalities. I’m Sigrid. And you?

—Mareike —she smiled shyly—. I’m sorry you have to share the space with me. This cabin used to be shared by the previous doctor and his orderly, Ensign Holm, who had to move to the noncommissioned cubicles.

—Did you used to share a cabin with five men?

—There wasn’t room for private space. Now that there are two women aboard, it’s easier.

I looked at her for a couple of seconds longer than I should have. Mareike was small but had a wiry body, almost gymnast-like. She moved with a lightness that was even more noticeable in that narrow corridor.

—How do you keep from going crazy in a place this suffocating?

—You get used to it. Are you claustrophobic?

—Not that I know of. It’s my first time on a submarine.

—We’re going to be moored for several days before we sail. That’ll help you get used to it little by little. If you want to rest, do that. I’ve just come off shift and I’m going to eat something.

—Wait. May I come with you? My shift doesn’t start for another three hours, and it would be good to start getting familiar with the people.

—Of course, Lieutenant.

—Sigrid.

—Sigrid —she repeated, lowering her eyes as if saying it aloud had cost her something.

***

I spent the first two days alternating twelve-hour shifts in the infirmary with short stretches of sleep on that bunk. I barely crossed paths with Mareike, except for brief exchanges of a few minutes when she came in to sleep and I headed toward the engine room, or vice versa. The officers treated me with courtesy, but with that distance reserved for the newcomer.

On the third afternoon I was sitting on the bunk reviewing some protocols when the door opened. Mareike came in wearing her dress uniform, the dark blue jacket open and her hair loose over her shoulders for the first time.

—Aren’t you going down to see the port?

—I can’t. The captain told me that when I wasn’t on shift I’d be on call.

—On call, yes, but not locked up. You can go out as long as you keep your phone on you and stay within sixty minutes of the port. Nobody told you to sit in here breathing plastic.

—I didn’t know that.

—If you feel like it, I know this town a little. I can show it to you.

—That would be great. Fifteen minutes.

—I’ll wait for you on deck.

***

The tavern was three streets from the port. It was an old place, with wooden barrels for tables and yellowed posters on the walls. Most of the customers were local sailors, some foreigners in uniforms I couldn’t read. We sat by a window fogged with steam.

Mareike ordered for both of us. Red wine, a couple of plates of food, bread. She spoke to the waiter as if she already knew him, and then, when she turned back toward me, she did it in a different voice, softer, more curious.

I was surprised by how different she was outside the submarine. Inside the hull she moved with her head lowered and her voice held in, almost as if she were apologizing for taking up space. There, by contrast, she talked with her hands, laughed with her shoulders, and looked me in the eyes a couple of seconds too long before dropping her gaze to her glass.

I watched her without being able to help myself. There was something in the way she tucked a blond lock behind her ear that made me have to look away. I had never been with a woman. I had thought about it once or twice, dismissed it many more times. But that afternoon, with the wine slowly rising through my veins and Mareike’s voice telling me stories about patrols, I couldn’t stop imagining things I had no business imagining. I pictured her naked on top of me, her small breasts brushing my mouth, her fingers slipping between my legs. My cunt tightened just thinking about it, and I felt myself getting wet inside my regulation trousers.

It’s the height, the confinement, the exhaustion, I told myself. Tomorrow it’ll pass.

—What are you thinking about, Sigrid? —she asked suddenly.

—Nothing. About the cold outside.

She held my gaze a second longer than necessary and smiled again. I couldn’t read that smile.

When two sailors from the Triton came into the tavern, they shouted greetings to her from across the room. Mareike invited them to sit with us. The conversation filled with technical words I didn’t understand, stories from previous patrols, barracks jokes. I barely spoke. I only watched her.

***

We went back to the submarine almost three hours before her shift began. I walked behind her along the gangway and then down the central passage. The yellow ceiling light fell on her loose hair. I couldn’t stop looking at the back of her neck.

We entered the cabin and I closed the door behind me. Mareike hung her jacket on the back of the chair. Her white regulation shirt was a couple of sizes too big and gaped a little at the neck when she moved.

I sat on the bunk and began unlacing my boots. I could feel her eyes on me. When I stood up to hang up my jacket, our movements crossed in the cabin’s tiny space and my arm brushed hers. Neither of us moved away.

—Sigrid —she said, almost in a whisper—, do you mind if I lock the latch?

—Why?

—So nobody comes in without warning.

I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do.

I heard the click of the lock and, without turning around, I knew she was coming closer. My hands froze halfway through taking off my shirt. Mareike stopped behind me. I felt her breath on my nape before I felt her fingers.

—If you want me to stop, tell me and I’ll stop —she murmured—. I have no intention of getting you into trouble.

—Don’t stop —I answered, barely recognizing my own voice.

Her hands slowly slid down my arms. She turned me little by little. Mareike was very close, wearing that calm, curious expression she’d had in the tavern. She looked at my lips for a second, hesitated, and then leaned in.

The first touch was barely contact. I closed my eyes. The second time, her lips pressed properly against mine and the tip of her tongue asked permission. I opened. I didn’t know when my hands ended up at her waist.

The kiss was slow, deep, unhurried, but soon it got out of hand. Her tongue slipped into my mouth and started fucking it slowly, and I sucked back on it as if I hadn’t kissed anyone in months. I felt a shiver run down my spine when she slid one hand to my nape and threaded her fingers through my hair, tugging just enough to make me part my lips wider.

When she pulled away, both of us were breathing fast. She rested her forehead against mine. I covered my face with my hands.

—What’s happening to me? —I whispered—. What am I doing?

Mareike didn’t answer right away. She gently moved my hands away from my face and made me look at her.

—That’s for you to decide, Sigrid. I locked the latch. But I’ll open the door now if you ask me to.

I looked at her. I thought of the captain, of the regulations, of the four months ahead of us in that steel hull. I thought of the woman in the white uniform waiting for me with her hand still in my hair. I thought of everything I stood to lose.

And yet, I heard myself tell her not to open it.

Mareike smiled very slowly, as if she had just received a permission she’d been waiting for all afternoon. Without taking her eyes off me, she finished unbuttoning my shirt. Button by button. When she opened it, she ran her knuckles over my sternum, between my breasts, and down to my navel. I had goosebumps and my nipples were so hard they showed through my military bra.

—You’re trembling —she murmured.

—It’s not from the cold.

She gently pushed me until I was sitting on the edge of the bunk. She knelt between my open legs, in that impossible gap between the fold-down table and my knees, and finished pulling my shirt off my shoulders. Then she ran her hands down my back and unclasped my bra with two fingers, never taking her eyes off mine. The garment fell to the floor between us.

She stared at my tits for a long moment, as if deciding where to begin. Then she leaned in and sucked one nipple. She didn’t touch it timidly: she took it fully into her mouth, pressed it against the roof of her mouth with her tongue, pulled at it with her lips until a gasp escaped me. With her other hand, she was squeezing my other breast and pinching the nipple between thumb and forefinger, twisting it until I started arching my back.

—Fuck —I whispered—. Fuck, Mareike.

—Shh. Keep your voice down. The walls are steel.

She switched breasts. She sucked the other nipple with the same methodical calm, barely nipping it with her teeth, and drew another moan out of me that I had to bite into my shoulder to smother. Her hands were no longer on my tits. They were on the belt of my trousers, undoing it, lowering the zipper.

—Lift your ass.

I obeyed. She pulled off my trousers and panties in one go, sliding them down my thighs, and I was left naked on the bunk. She was still dressed, with her white regulation shirt and her hair loose over her shoulders. She looked me over from head to toe without any shame, the way you look at a body that’s going to be yours for a while.

—Open your legs.

I opened them. I opened for her with a obedience I didn’t know I had in me. Mareike licked her lips and lowered her face. She blew gently on my cunt before touching it, and that one simple breath made me clench my fists against the sheet.

Her tongue came in flat, long, licking from bottom to top, from my opening to my clit. A rough moan escaped me. She repeated the motion three times, each time slower, until I was left trembling. Then she focused on my clit. She circled it with the tip of her tongue, went round and round, pressed it flat against the roof of her mouth, sucked it as if it were a tiny candy.

I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t scream. I buried one hand in her hair and shoved her face against my cunt without even thinking. She let me. She slid two fingers inside me, slowly, and I felt my wet walls open to receive them. She started fucking me with her fingers while she sucked my clit, searching for a spot inside, curling them upward. When she found it, a moan escaped me so long I had to cover my mouth with my arm.

—Like that, stay still —she murmured against my cunt—. Almost there.

She moved her fingers fast, never stopping sucking. I felt the orgasm rising from my heels, tightening my belly, leaving my legs rigid around her shoulders. When I came, I came on her face, my thighs trembling, biting down on my fist so I wouldn’t wake the entire submarine. She didn’t stop until I lay limp on the bunk, my chest rising and falling as if I’d just run.

She got up from the floor. Her chin was shining. She wiped it with the back of her hand and smiled.

—My turn now —she said.

I knelt on the bunk, still trembling, and started unbuttoning her white shirt with clumsy fingers. She helped me. Under it she wore a black sports bra that she tugged off over her head. Her tits were small, high, with nipples a very pale pink, almost the same color as her skin. I sucked them right away, one and then the other, imitating what she had done to me, and I felt them harden under my tongue.

—Lie down —I asked her.

She let herself fall back on the bunk. I pulled down her dark blue trousers and black panties at the same time. Her cunt was blond, with very little hair, and had thin lips, very pink, shining with how wet she was. I had never seen one so up close that wasn’t my own. I stared at it for a moment, dry-mouthed.

—You don’t need to know —she said, guessing me—. Just do what you’d like done to you.

I lay down between her legs. I kissed the inside of her thighs first, moving up slowly, and felt her shudder each time I came near the center without quite reaching it. When I finally ran my tongue over her cunt, she had to bite her lip not to scream. She tasted like salt and something sweeter, and she was so wet that my chin was soaked on the first lick.

I licked her as best I could, clumsy at first, learning how her hips moved against my mouth. When I went down, she moaned under her breath and pulled my hair to make me go back up. When I found her clit and stayed there, sucking and circling it with my tongue, her thighs began to tense around my head.

I slid a finger inside her and felt her close around me, tight, hot. I put in a second. I started fucking her with my fingers the way she had fucked me, curling them upward, searching for the spot, while I kept eating her cunt. Mareike covered her mouth with one hand to muffle her moans and with the other pressed my nape against her.

—Don’t stop —she panted—. Don’t stop, Sigrid, fuck, don’t stop.

I sped up. Tongue, fingers, everything at once. I felt her go rigid a second before she came. She came with a long moan, muffled in her own hand, squeezing my head with her thighs with a force that didn’t seem possible in that small body. Her inner walls clenched around my fingers in waves while I kept sucking her clit until she pushed my face away, too sensitive now.

I collapsed beside her on the bunk. We were two naked bodies crammed into a space that could barely fit one. Her skin was hot, wet, smelling of wine and sex. She slipped an arm under my neck and drew me in until I was resting on her shoulder.

—Are you all right? —she asked very softly.

—I don’t know what I am —I answered.

She kissed my temple. We stayed like that for a while, silent, listening to the dull hum of the hull. I could still feel my heart pounding against my ribs.

Four months. Four months in that steel hull, with this woman sleeping in the bunk above and the latch a meter from my hand. I closed my eyes. I was no longer thinking about the captain or the regulations. I was only thinking about how long it would be until her next off shift.