The Yellow Sailor

by Steve Weiner

  A crescent moon rose over Denmark. Nicholas walked the deck. He sang.

  Hot with kisses

  Bees swarm

  Around Erika

  Brown-horned cattle plodded in muddy fields. Blonde Danish girls walked under streetlights. Nicholas dropped his cigarette. He watched it drown.

  “In the mood for love?”

  “Oh, hi, Karl,” Nicholas said. “Why not? It’s the best time of life.”

  “Some bastards never get over it.”

  Nicholas laughed.

  “The world is a dirty place, Nicholas,” Karl said. “Without romance.”

  A valve stuck. Alois rubbed it with kerosene and pumped oil by hand.

  Yellow Sailor went north. Radio stations changed: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish. A hawk spread its fantail. Clouded light filtered through the feathers. At twilight a sloop from Narnik passed. German U20 grounded on the Danish coast. Moltke went to help but U20 had to be blown up. Norwegian battleships Norge and Eidsvold blocked Flekkefjord.

  Yellow Sailor crossed into the Baltic. Germans celebrated Wedding Between Two Seas. The cook made grog: boiled water, candy stick, rum. Alois dressed as Rute twig—Penis. Nicholas was Dünne Braut—Thin Bride. He wore a black dress with bread for breasts. Jacek brought up two bottles of Dom Pérignon.

  “Where did you get that?” Nicholas said.

  “I was saving it!”

  Jacek played a broken trumpet.

  “Kiss!” he shouted.

  Alois giggled.

  “Kiss!”

  Nicholas giggled.

  “No tongue!”

  Alois kissed him. Nicholas drank. He and Alois danced. Nicholas fell. He crawled.

  “At least I didn’t break the Dom Pérignon.”

  He laughed.

  “Dear God, I’ve never been so drunk.”

  Nicholas’s eyelids trembled and his face was flushed. He clung to a rope.

  “What bliss …”

  He laughed again.

  “… I must be in love …”

  Germans toasted Admiral Karpfanger and burned an effigy of Julius Bernai.

  “No more homosexuals!”

  Nicholas crawled to a cargo hold. A laundryman carried a tub of steaming towels.

  “Beautiful young man,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “I’m worth shit.”

  “With the blond hair.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And loyal green German eyes.”

  U-boats surfaced, machine guns dripping. Yellow Sailor smoked to Kiel. S18 and S19 docked. Posen loaded, twenty light machine guns, eleven-inch guns. Desna, nine torpedo tubes, one-hundred-millimeter guns, stood in bright morning mist. Above them all, Kronprinz’s 30.5-centimeter guns were covered in tarpaulin.

  “Bremml.”

  Nicholas turned. Karl and Jacek wore shore blues, black shoes.

  “Come on, Bremml.”

  “Where?”

  “To a bordello,” Jacek said.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t feel like it.”

  “Have you ever been to a bordello?” Karl said.

  “None of your business.”

  “Woman.”

  “If you call me that one more time, Karl, I’ll kill you.”

  Jacek took Nicholas’s arm.

  “Come on. It’s natural as a sneeze.”

  Nicholas changed to shore blues. They walked Bahnhof Quay. Confectioners streamed out from the Great Fleet. Germans hauled army blankets, revolvers, preserved beef, military boots, paraffin. They carried anti-tank rifles by Mauser, big bolts, long barrels. Stevedores pulled carts of belts and bridles. Cattle cars shunted off a concrete platform. Men hauled wagons of artillery shells.

  Powder snow fell. Nicholas pumped a fist. The skin cracked. Blood trickled between his thumb and fingers.

  “Christ, it’s cold.”

  Jacek held out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Cigarette?”

  “No.”

  “Du smoökst?”

  “I smoke,” Nicholas said. “Just not now.”

  Mustached Germans hammered steel. A sign hung: Conceived in Kiel, Built in Kiel! A steelworker smiled at Nicholas. Jacek took Nicholas by the arm.

  “Come on, Nicholas.”

  They crossed railroad tracks and ate wursts, standing at a kiosk. Snow fell harder.

  “Don’t be frightened, Nicholas” Jacek said.

  “I’m not.”

  “Everyone is, the first time.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  Nicholas wiped mustard off his face.

  “Well,” Karl said.

  “Well.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Jacek turned.

  “Are you coming, Nicholas?”

  “No.”

  “What are you waiting for? Love eternal?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Love is a dream, Nicholas,” Karl said. “We screw for real.”

  Karl and Jacek went to a green door between a bicycle shop and a sandwich store. Nicholas strolled to a café. He sat at a round table. A waiter came.

  “Bottermelk,” Nicholas said.

  The waiter brought buttermilk. Boy cadets went by outside in hats with red, white, and black ribbons. Nicholas wiped his mouth. He went out. The cadets were gone.

  “Hey!”

  Sailors stood at Kronprinz’s rail.

  “Come aboard!”

  “No,” Nicholas said.

  “We’ve waited for you.”

  “No.”

  “Ach. Dumb toad.”

  Nicholas went back to the kiosk. Karl and Jacek crossed the road.

  “It was all right,” Jacek said.

  Yellow Sailor loaded canned meat and went east along the German Baltic coast.

  German nets to tangle British submarines floated loose and wrapped around the propeller. Germans hacked them loose. It fell to ten degrees below zero. Snow turned to a blizzard. Nicholas listened to the radio: German V99 had burned. S31 had sunk. Battleship Friedrich Carl hit mines.

  “Hey, Bremml!”

  Karl came in. His shirt was torn.

  “What do you want?” Nicholas said. “Red wine? You’re supposed to be down in the diesel room with Alois.”

  Karl handed Nicholas a bottle.

  “What’s that?”

  “Samahonka,” Karl said.

  “What is it?”

  “Russian liquor.”

  “I don’t like Russian things.”

  “Try it.”

  Nicholas swallowed some.

  “God, it’s awful!”

  Nicholas drank more. His face flushed. He laughed.

  “You’re not a bad bastard, Karl!”

  Nicholas made chocolate puddings. He kept laughing. He put cherries on the pudding for Karl.

  It was night. Fehmarn Island came to view. A steeple stood behind an oak. A horse ran through frosted catnip. Yellow Sailor went into Puttgarden Riff. Cargo boxes stenciled Lübeck–Copenhagen tumbled on black rocks. Dora Gorski, a Polish galleass, turned around and around, spilling beans.

  A bright light hit Nicholas.

  “Jesus—”

  Mary Gjetson, a Norwegian luxury liner, crashed into Yellow Sailor.

  “Torpedo!”

  “Shut up,” the cook said.

  “We’re not panzered!”

  “Shut up!”

  Somebody ran up the stairs.

  “Lights out!”

  Nicholas groped in the dark. Mary Gjetson bumped. He crawled. Germans shouted.

  “Rudder damage!”

  “No steering!”

  Mary Gjetson left a big hole. Repairs went on all night. Yellow Sailor drifted into the Gulf of Danzig. Russian mines floated loose.

  “Still no steering!”

  Russian gunboats Khrabi, Grozyashchi, and Slava opened fire. A torpedo hit a horse shed.

  The Polish-German sun rose on iced lagoons. Polish snipe
rs shot from trees. A thousand watersheds broke over sandspits. The Sulzer-Diesels vented white smoke. Alois opened the crankcase door. The diesels were too hot. Oil vapor hit the air and blew him against a wall.

  “Nicholas!!”

  Nicholas ran down. Black oil was blown with blood across Alois’s forehead.

  “Get up, Alois!”

  “I can’t! My arms are broken!”

  “Where’s Karl?”

  “Drunk!”

  Nicholas cradled Alois.

  “Nicholas, let out ballast—”

  There were three levers.

  “Which one?”

  “The gray one.”

  Nicholas pulled the wrong lever. Seawater poured into empty fuel tanks. Yellow Sailor settled, screwed into grit. Metal stairs buckled. Lubricants spurted.

  “Damn you, Nicholas!”

  “It was Karl’s fault!”

  Nicholas dragged Alois to the deck. He ran to the dormitory for his suitcase, revolver, and Karl’s bottle of samahonka. He ran back up.

  Yellow Sailor cracked.

  “Mein Gott!”

  The stern drifted to deeper sea. The bow turned in the sand. Jacek jumped. The sea was so shallow he broke his ankle. Nicholas rowed Alois to shore.

  “To the Fatherland!” Nicholas shouted. “To beautiful Hamburg!”

  The dinghy hit a sandbar. Nicholas pitched overboard. Samahonka went flying.

  “Nicholas!” Alois shouted. “Don’t leave me!”

  Nicholas stumbled in surf. He fought into a panicked crew: tangled arms, legs, torsos, mouths.

  BROKEN DOWN, RAISED UP

  JACEK LIMPED ALONG the East Prussian coast.

  A U-boat’s gasoline motor poked from dunes. A mitrailleuse rolled in the surf. Four days of squalls tore orchards. Jacek went as far as Villa Panker. Private guards patrolled the grounds. He crept through the estate grounds and slept by a grave.

  He limped along the highway. A farmer cradled a rifle across the road. Jacek stopped.

  “Mojn,” he said. “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “I’m German, too.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Do you have eggs?”

  “No.”

  “Who does?”

  “Nobody does.”

  The farmer raised the rifle. Jacek backed down the road.

  “Germans used to help each other!”

  A Renault speeded by. Troops from Libau leaned out.

  “Cowards like you lost the war!”

  Jacek came to Kiel. A cruiser listed, pouring water. Anarchists stole ship lights. Soldiers in long coats ate soup by fires. One ate with burned hands. They slept in odd positions. Jacek went toward the soup and a soldier raised a revolver. Jacek backed went down cobblestone lanes. Corroded fuses had frozen to the stones. He ate jellied artillery glue. Military police threw him against a warehouse door.

  “Deserter?”

  “Nein, Herr Gendarm!” Jacek said.

  “Papers!”

  “Lost at sea.”

  “No papers? No uniform? You could be shot.”

  “I was shipwrecked.”

  “Where?”

  “West of Danzig.”

  A military policeman pushed Jacek’s face into the door.

  “You walked from East Prussia to Kiel?” he said. “With that leg?”

  “There’s no food in East Prussia!”

  A military policeman pulled a revolver. Jacek fell to his knees, crying.

  “Forget him,” the other policeman said.

  They left. Jacek pushed the door open. It was a cheese warehouse. He licked cheese-stained paper. Tiny feet scampered down the rafters. He threw paper in the air.

  “Eat, rats.”

  Rain swirled in. A man in rags stumbled through the door. He was blind.

  “They gassed us! Like lice!”

  The soldier collapsed. Jacek stepped over him and went out. It was twilight. He limped up the fjord to the Kiel Canal, the massive Holtenau Gates. Trickles of water spilled out under electric lights. Jacek climbed to the upper basin. A torpedo boat started its engine.

  “Take me to Brunsbüttel!” Jacek shouted.

  “They’re shooting deserters in Brunsbüttel!”

  “I’m not a deserter!”

  “Tell them!”

  The torpedo boat left. Jacek walked down the canal. Military police came up from the Elbe. He ran west along the Eider River. A smuggler ran out of a ditch.

  “Man, where are you going?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  The smuggler threw a ham at Jacek. Jacek tore into it with hands and teeth.

  Jacek limped past tombstones carved with leviathans. Thatched redbrick barns stood against purple clouds. Fens had flooded. The wind picked up. Pink hollyhocks blew apart.

  “The flood is coming!”

  Jacek looked up. A fish gutter climbed a ladder to a flood platform.

  “Blanke Hans is coming,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The storm-flood! Already a meter above Normal Null!”

  Jacek turned. To the west were dark grassy mounds. Fishermen carried lanterns.

  Jacek climbed the dike. Lacy masses of black North Sea humped the halligs. A German side-wheeler turned turned on its side. Lights rose and fell.

  Women carried baskets and pots to a church on a knoll of oaks.

  “Come! The storm-flood comes!”

  Jacek went into the church. It smelled of wet wool and rubber boots. A stained-glass window was dark. Candles burned. Children cried. Jacek helped lay sacks of potatoes against the church door.

  The pastor sang.

  And when from the northwest

  Death-empowered Flood comes

  And overflows the tiny halligs,

  I do not fear,

  For thou art my harbor

  In boiling waters.

  A fisherman came down from the bell tower.

  “Blanke Hans is in the graveyard!”

  The congregation sang.

  What, then, is man

  That thou thinketh of him

  In the endless space

  Or that you give him refuge

  In the storms from the northwest?

  Blanke Hans tore the door off. Mothers and children, men and old men, ran up the bell tower stairs. Shroud pins swirled. Jacek fell. The pastor shook his fist.

  “Trutz nun, Blanke Hans!” he shouted. “I defy you, storm-flood!”

  Blanke Hans threw Jacek into pews. He cracked his head on the stone floor. There was light.

  alleluja

  It was dawn. Jacek came to. He was crawling on orange-pink mud. One trail, the wounded ankle, was straight. An island was split in two. A house bobbed in between. Dead cows floated in lagoons.

  Dutch rescue boats poled corpses.

  “Stormtij! Waar is de man?” a Dutch man shouted. “Stormtide! Where is the man?”

  Jacek raised his head.

  “Here!”

  “Where?”

  “HERE!”

  “Duits?” a Dutch man said. “German?”

  “Jo!”

  “What?”

  “Yes. I am German!”

  “The German coast is ruined! We’ll take you to Holland!”

  The Dutch hauled him in. Jacek fell on the dead. The boat hit the side-wheeler.

  “In Goddes Namen—” a Dutch man said. “In God’s name—!”

  The Dutch boat passed Wangerooge and Harle Gap. Baltrum was ripped up. Norderney’s beach, casino, and cabins were ruined. The boat turned to the light. Floppy hats, oilskins, beards in an opalescent sky.

  You must praise the name of the Lord

  For he spoke

  And you were saved

  The boat chugged to Elbe’s mouth near Cuxhaven. A Dutch man pointed. A German destroyer leaked water. Canisters of meat bobbed.

  “The German Reich—” a Dutch man said, “—kaput!”

  Jacek cried.

  A Dutch
man covered him with a coat. They crossed the two mouths of the Ems to Delfzijl. Delfzijl was crowded with refugees. The Dutch took Jacek down an old canal to a pastor’s house of slate.

  There was a tin drum, a Bible, and a rocking horse. Photographs of Princess Juliana and Queen Wilhelmina stood in silver frames. Jacek’s leg was bandaged. He raised onto his elbow. He was in bed in an attic with a dormer window. A man with a goatee looked down on him.

  “I am Pastor Kock,” he said.

  Pastor Kock leaned closer.

  “Do you understand me?”

  “Jo.”

  “Dutch is like plattdeutsch. If we are careful, we can communicate.”

  Girls’ voices came from below. Pastor Kock stroked Jacek’s forehead.

  “Kinderliedjes,” Pastor Kock said. “Children’s songs.”

  Pastor Kock helped Jacek to the window. Two girls played below in a garden. One was dark. She must have come from Suriname or Batavia. A gardener worked Judenrosa, trimming old growth. A clock came on a barge. A man opened a sluice using wood stoppers with double handles. An electric train clacked by.

  Somebody groaned.

  “Wat is dat?” Jacek said.

  “I’ll show you.”

  Pastor Kock helped Jacek down a crooked corridor. Old engravings—de Beeke Kidron, valley of Kidron; den Berg Calvarien, Calvary Hill—hung on white walls. They came to a room. A glass clock with its mechanisms visible clicked the quarter hour. An emaciated old man arched his back.

  “In de dood wordt de mens geboren,” Pastor Kock said. “In death one is born.”

  They went downstairs. A Dutch soldier stood in the vestibule.

  “Name?”

  “His name is Jacek Gorecki,” Pastor Kock said. “He is from Hamburg. He has had a mental breakdown.”

  “No papers?”

  Jacek said nothing.

  “Navy?”

  Jacek said nothing.

  “Haben Sie Seuche?” the soldier said politely in High German. “Have you contagious diseases?”

  Jacek shook his head.

  “Stay here.”

  The soldier left. Pastor Kock took Jacek into a parlor. They sat on a dark blue couch. Outside was a pollarded tree. Pastor Kock served coffee. Jacek’s hands could not hold the hot, tiny cups. Pastor Kock dropped amber sugar chunks in warm sheep’s milk. The Dutch soldier came back. This time his sergeant came, too.

  “We have classified you Shipwrecked Mariner,” the sergeant said. “Not German Prisoner.”

  “Danke.”