by Diane Lowman
I got up to go inside once the sun had dipped all the way down. Alois said, “Let’s go up to the bridge. You can see the stars.” I suspected his offer was nothing more than another attempt to strengthen our tenuous thread of connection, but I’d longed to stargaze ever since Herr Rose had invited me.
“If Herr Kapitän or Herr Betz are on duty, they won’t want me there,” I said. Betz always baited me when I cleaned in the morning, and I studiously avoided him.
“I don’t know who has watch. We will go up and find out,” he said.
Fortunately, it was Herr Rose, who seemed pleased that I’d taken him up on his offer. The three of us walked over to lean on the railing before the wide windows. The dark was so dense that it engulfed the slow bounce of the containers below. The sky was clear now that we’d left the lonely thundercloud behind.
“Let’s go outside. We will see more clearly,” said Herr Rose, and he opened the door to the bridge’s side deck that protruded over the ship’s edge, way above the deck below where we had just been sitting, and just above the deck near my cabin. The sky was a navy-blue, pastina-dotted soup. A celestial riot compared to anything I’d seen, even up at the lake house on a moonless night. There was no sound. No scent. Just sky.
“Now that we have passed the equator, you can see the Southern Cross,” he said, pointing up. “It is not possible to see it in the Northern Hemisphere.”
Alois added, “And there you see Scorpio” —he outlined it with his finger— “and there alpha and beta, the two stars closest to the earth after the sun.”
We went back inside, and Herr Rose explained how, even in the absence of satellite guidance, they could chart our course provided they had a clear view of the sky.
I felt like Galileo. As long as I could see the sky, I wouldn’t get lost.
At the same time, each milestone we passed en route to Australia took me further from home. We’d left the East Coast, but at least I could understand the Spanish in the canal. Once through the canal, we dove into an ocean I’d never experienced, and my connections to home felt even more tenuous. I forgot how their voices sounded and could not easily conjure faces without looking at the few photos I’d brought. Crossing into a different hemisphere turned me upside down. I was gone. It filled me with as much longing as wonder. I felt the separation more acutely, and wondered how I’d stay attached now that the equator had even more definitively severed the cord. I was suddenly untethered and ungrounded, and it had nothing to do with the ship’s motion.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’d better head back down.”
Alois objected. “No, no, the night it’s young, we can go back below.”
But I’d suddenly had enough and just wanted to sit in my cushioned, carpeted solitary container.
Which surprised me because I spent most of my waking hours there. The work, no matter how Herr Most strove to find more for me to do, barely filled five hours each day. Since I started most mornings at 0600, I finished before lunch. Even meals took up only so much time. No matter how much Ingo or Karl engaged me—and I appreciated it when they did—I never lingered for long because I felt too self-conscious, given the palpable air of antipathy and indifference that wafted from the others along with the scent of spaetzle. How resentful they must have felt about me spending my summer vacation at their place of work as a favor to some American shipping agent in New York!
I would lock the door behind me and let my key and my shoulders drop. I tried to keep to some kind of structured routine to minimize the pining and make the hours pass. I missed my family and friends. I missed all things familiar. I missed an environment that wasn’t always mildly menacing.
I’d put on an eight-track and let the music reconnect me to home, as I sat at my table, treating it like an office desk, and wrote in my journal and composed letters home. I’d sent a few from the canal, and would have a slew to post in Sydney. I started writing poetry at that table, inspired by the natural wonders that surrounded me every day beyond the ship’s railing: the vast sea, the fickle sky, and the sun and the moon that rose and fell with symmetrical precision in infinitely varied iterations.
My grandfather, or Papoo in Greek, wrote poetry, too. When I got home, my father’s eyes welled up to see that I’d followed in his father’s footsteps. He bound both of our oeuvres in matching hardcover volumes that I still have on my bookshelf. I doubt the verse was good, but it did help me spend hours in creative reverie.
I would eat my schmoke-time treats at the table, too, taking care to set it up like a proper meal so it would take more time. I cut the pastries with a fork and knife, and chewed slowly like Mom told me to. I tried to stretch out every activity in my cabin as hard as I tried to complete the manual labor outside it quickly.
I organized and reorganized the few things I had on board. I cleaned the cabin often. How amused my mom and my college roommate would be. Mom had cajoled and threatened me to get me to clean my room at home. At school, Randy and I would let the dust bunnies accumulate under our beds until we feared we’d have to start feeding them. And here I happily took the supplies Herr Most offered me and vacuumed, dusted, and cleaned the bathroom as if I’d expected my next-door neighbor, the Herr Kapitän, to stop by, donning white gloves to check for grime.
And I read, either stretched out on the golden sofa, or curled up in the well just above it, where I would gaze out of the porthole to let the omnipresent but ever-changing sea and sky hypnotize me. By then I’d made it through Hailey’s Airport (my dad gave me that one) and was well into Updike’s Rabbit Run. I longed for someone with whom I could discuss that dark novel. I sensed that its themes lay just beyond the reach of my age and experience. On the shelf, Slaughterhouse Five, Women in Love, and Watership Down awaited. I knew that once I got to Australia I’d have to buy more. When I packed, I’d had no idea just how many hours I’d need to fill.
I made feeble attempts to exercise, but resisted the temptation to do laps in the small pool because I did not want the men to catch me clad in a bathing suit. So I feebly sat up and pushed up to try to keep down the amount of fat I may as well have injected directly into my cells in the form of pink strawberry pastry cream filling.
I tried, especially on nights without Kino, Kanteen, or some other activity, to just go to sleep early. The sheets were soft and the dreams of home sweet. But even with a 0530 wakeup time, sleep eluded me at 2030, no matter how bored I felt. The vast oceans of down time left me adrift between exhaustion and sleep.
I tried not to think too much about what everyone at home was doing; all those things that, as a smug college know-it-all once seemed so plebian. I longed to sit with Lauri and Sharon and sip too-sweet iced tea all afternoon; with Sharon gone that would never happen again. Or ride my bike into town with them to sit at the Woolworth’s counter for a lunch of Coke and fries, the former served in a white paper cone cup in a red plastic hourglass-shaped base, the latter in a white wax-coated paper box with a red-lattice design to make it look like a basket, and, I suppose, to match the soda cup. Or if we could convince one of our parents to let us use a car, we’d drive out to the Howard Johnson’s near the Garden State Parkway’s Exit 135, and annoy the waitresses by ordering a carafe of coffee and nursing it for hours while we talked and talked.
I even missed the things I thought I hated. Like my heretofore annoying younger sister. Herr Stuhlemmer let me call her on her birthday from his office near the bridge, but the crackly connection and exorbitant expense prevented me from talking to her for long.
Or like my father’s bad chicken jokes and tendency to control . . . well, everything. Shortly after I arrived at Middlebury my freshman year, I found a letter in my mailbox. He must have mailed it the day he got back from dropping me off, if not before we even left. He, with nothing but the best of intentions, had pored over the course catalogue and constructed a four-year plan of classes that he “thought I’d like to take.” Did he mean him or me, I wondered? But that letter screwed me from day one. If I follo
wed his suggestions I’d major in something “practical” that did not interest me. If not, I’d implicitly disappoint him. I convinced myself that majoring in economics was really my choice, but he had made it for me the day he sealed, stamped, and sent that letter. I crammed in all the English and Spanish literature classes I could, tucking them in any crevices left between the economics requirements. I dared not defy Daddy. Yet even so, I could not wait to see his unmistakable ornate handwriting in letters I hoped would meet me in Sydney.
Or like my mother’s loud, shrill voice and her soft, compassionate heart. No one takes care of you like your mother. Especially no one on board a German container ship full of men in the mid-Pacific.
But also, I was determined—hell-bent, really—to see this adventure through. In some ways this was another “class” my father had urged me to take, but I wanted the lessons: to learn to be alone with my time, my thoughts, and myself, and to learn how to cope with isolation and scorn. Because even as I was once again following my father’s direction, I was striking out on my own, like Captain Cook, to explore the land Down Under. Or so I told myself. Over and over. The seeds that Dad had planted, and I watered with compliance, would produce a very different blossom than he’d imagined.
The phone rang one mid-Pacific night at around 2100 hours. Tim invited me down to his cabin.
“I want to talk to you,” he said. “Nothing funny, I promise. I just need to talk to you.”
I hesitated for a long time. “I am so tired,” I said, even though I couldn’t sleep. “Does it have to be right now?”
“I will not keep you long, I promise.”
The lowest ranking crew cabins sat well below deck. The air was so heavy and humid at this depth that we may as well have actually been under water. I could taste the salt water as I breathed it in. Even at night, the moon and outdoor fixtures lit the cabins above deck a bit. Down here, there was only the gloomy glow from metal-caged bulbs.
I tapped on Tim’s door, which felt like it was coated in something between mist and slime. It was lit even more dimly inside, so that everything blended into a denim-blue murk. Must and dust mingled with the scent of stale beer and cornflower-blue coveralls that needed laundering.
With one foot in the hallway and one in the cabin, I saw Tim’s outstretched hand. Ostensibly a gesture of welcome, it felt more like Charon welcoming me onto the ferry across the River Styx.
I was diving into a dangerous swimming hole, deep in the backwoods, forbidden by all parents to their children. “Come on in,” he said as he took my hand in his damp one. The water’s fine, I imagined I’d heard.
“Thanks for coming down,” he said.
“Sure,” I mumbled. Sure? I asked myself.
“Here. Sit,” Again, the imperative. I could barely see the place to which he pointed. Was it his bed? I sank into something dark.
“You know there is tension,” he began, “With the guys, I mean.”
I nodded. I knew. Tim and the puppy-like Chris had been at odds for a while, and Roland had been pissier. I just assumed that Chris’s cheery, chirpy demeanor annoyed Tim and that, well, everything annoyed Roland. I wondered why Tim felt the urgent need to share this with me. What it had to do with me.
“It’s over you,” he said, an octave lower, for dramatic effect.
“Me?” I asked meekly. Shit. I didn’t want to hear this. I wanted to be back up where I could breathe. Alone.
“Yeah, you. We want to know. . . .” he trailed off, clearing his throat, his blond, stringy hair obscuring his face as he struggled to come up with the right words, perhaps, even though English was his first language, too.
“We want to know which one you choose.”
“Which what?” I ask dumbly.
“Which of us. Which one you want to sleep with. It would be easier if you just tell us so we don’t need to fight about it and get annoyed with each other. Me, Alois, Chris . . . We gotta work together, you know? Kapitän Beucking made it very clear to us before you came on board that we were not to bother you. That we were to stay away from you. Nothing against your will. If you tell us who you choose, it will be easier.”
I was dumb. Dumbstruck. Dumb not to have seen this coming. Dumb because there was not a word my mouth could formulate. All I could think was that Tim was married and had a kid, and that I did not want to deal with this shit at all. And how could I get the hell out of there quickly?
He’d cornered and trapped me like a big cat taunting a small mouse. I knew my answer could determine how the rest of this long, strange trip would play out.
“No one, none of you,” I stammered. “I have a boyfriend,” I added, as if that would close the case. The naiveté of this defense, in light of the fact that this married father was the one posing the question, startled me even as I stammered it out.
Tim looked down at his hands and shook his head almost imperceptibly. This was not the answer this chosen emissary had hoped for.
“Tim, I just want to be friends with everyone.” I now oozed naiveté like a squeezed tube of toothpaste. “I’m sorry,” I added, completely uncertain what I was apologizing for as I gingerly backed out of his cabin and retreated to my own to lick my wounds and ponder my fate.
Despite our proximity to the equator, a chill fell over the ship. Tim must have immediately broadcast the results of our chat. Those in the running and those who had placed imaginary—or real, for all I knew—bets on the outcome froze me out. Except Alois. I guessed hope sprang eternal in him, and he saw no downside in continuing the chase. Also, as an officer, he had a different mindset and position on board and in the company than the others. Steadfast allies, like Ingo, Karl, and Herr Most, stuck by me. I had no way of knowing if they’d heard what happened, but they remained as amiable as ever. I was even more grateful for their small kindnesses than before. But the excommunication took my isolation to a new level. What before ranged from indifference to distain ratcheted up to thinly veiled hostility. One man, in particular, a greasy-haired machinist, would glare at me so intently that I felt sure he was imaging what he’d do to me if he could.
That slut! I imagined them saying, as they glared at me from under furrowed brows. Aren’t German men good enough for her? What a tease!
I had studiously avoided flirting with anyone, dressed as conservatively as I could in the heat, wore no makeup, kept my hair tied back, and kept largely to myself. I resented being so confined, and resented being put in this position despite my virtually pristine behavior. I had, in fact, “gotten myself to a nunnery,” feeling even more sequestered than before.
I was the odd girl out in the school cafeteria, the target of mean-girl gossip. But these mean girls were big Aryan men.
I kept a low profile and felt even lonelier. I had no choice but to work at Kanteen, and I’d slip in and out of Kino night just because I was desperate for something to do. They showed The Fortune with Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and Stockard Channing, in English with German subtitles. The English sounded so soft and mellifluous compared to the hard-consonanted German that surrounded me. But I no longer attended any other gatherings unless they were ship-sponsored, and no more of those were scheduled until our return trip. Even the waves pawed and groped more menacingly as we dove deeper into the South Pacific. The rhapsody in blue was turning into a cobalt nightmare.
Herr Most must have caught wind of what happened because he treated me a little less curtly for a few days, and stepped up the “don’t let the boys take advantage of you” rhetoric. Yet he never directly asked how I was, what I was thinking, or about my experience on board. He was my boss, not my therapist.
One morning he thrust a few oranges at me while scrutinizing the cuticles on his other hand.
“Here. You must have vitamin C. You make finish early today. We pass Tahiti. It is nothing, really, just a big island, but if you want to look go upstairs, ya?”
I thought of stories of sailors in the olden days coming down with scurvy due to a lack of vitamin C; at l
east I’d avoid that fate. He knew very well I couldn’t wait to see Tahiti. I’d been asking about it since we left the canal.
I looked up and took the citrus. This was kind and unusual treatment. I just nodded. “Danke.” I didn’t want to say too much more because I wasn’t sure the words would make it up past the lump in my throat.
I perched on the smaller, more-secluded deck up by my cabin, alone and slathered with sunscreen this time. I took in the soaring, green-velvet spires, cooled by a tropical breeze. They were like jagged, spiky canines of some monstrous sea creature that hadn’t brushed his teeth, ever. I could just barely make out beige strips of pearly beaches below those majestic peaks, and I imagined happy, bikini-clad women frolicking with their new husbands in the clear cyan South Pacific lagoon. I longed to be on that shore in the shadow of the lush foliage. But soon the emerald crests began to shrink as we sailed past, fading with the fantasy.
Even with my new dawn duties on the bridge, there was just not enough work to fill eight hours. Herr Most wracked his brain to concoct chores, but he would not entrust those jobs with direct officer contact to me, nor would he assign me the arduous and dirty crew jobs. On most days, he would say “You make finish, ya?” long before lunchtime.
The weather was fine, so this was fine with me. The sun blazed unimpeded except for those few days when we’d sail into and quickly out of a refreshing rain shower. I’d run down to eat whatever lunch was on that day of the weekly meal rotation—in ever more abbreviated stays in the mess—and then head up to what I viewed as my own private deck. Just down the hall from my cabin, this small “wing” of a veranda protruded slightly over the other decks below. All outside flooring featured a mix of fern-green paint and something grainy that provided traction when navigating the often-slippery surfaces.
