Lunch
"Yeah you know, we don't know what to feed him. It would be a lot easier if he'd just eat a sandwich," I said.
"For a long time I would give away half of my sandwich to my friend. He was unlucky. His mother was an alcoholic and his father wasn't around. And he never had a lunch - my friend was always hungry. So for many years I would give him half of my sandwich. Later on of course he would share his cigarettes with me, it was a very fair trade," he said, laughing.
"But," he said, his face unfolding from a smile and refolding into a frown, "it is a sad story - he really had no luck at all. Much later, when I was an engineer on the ship, he was a sailor, he worked on the same ship. The boat was in Rotterdam, in this port, and he fell off and died. Or maybe he was pushed, I never knew. I would see him around on the ship and there was always a lot of drinking, gambling, things like that. This was a very good job at the time, because you could get goods from other countries when you were at these ports, and people would smuggle them in and sell them. Was he pushed off? I don't know, I never knew. I never got to see the body, it was...well, the channel was narrow and there were many ships, and these," he makes a circular gesture with his hands, "what is the word."
"Rotor blades?"
"Yes! Rotor blades. They teared him up. He was all cut up. They used his DNA to identify him. He was a very good friend of mine. Unlucky."