Nothing But Blue

by Diane Lowman

  My small sanctuary was empty except for two very large, weathered teak armchairs. A larger deck, adjacent to the bridge where we’d stood to stargaze, jutted out just above me. The captain or another officer would often stand there to observe as a tug or pilot boat led us into or out of port. Occasionally now, the shift officer would wander out, I imagined, just to get some fresh air or look at something on the horizon. But out that far at sea, the horizon remained infinitely empty. I could assume almost complete privacy up there.

  The sun pinged off the relatively calm water like sonar. The maximum forward velocity of twenty-two knots always manufactured a breeze at this level, as if an immense, invisible fan sat poised on the bow, blowing back at us. But this close to the equator, the wet air weighed me down nonetheless.

  In short-shorts and a halter top, and slathered in Bain de Soleil, I brought D.H. Lawrence up to share the afternoon on deck with me. I wrestled with the heavy teak chair to create a perfect vector between the sun’s rays and the breeze. When I thought I had it exactly right, I dragged it just an inch further to get close enough to the white metal railing to rest my feet on the second rung.

  I settled in and looked out to the horizon. The taste of salt on my tongue made me think that one of those hoppy amber Holsten beers would make this moment sweeter. No one could see me here. I let my guard and my shoulders down for a moment, and opened Women in Love.

  Before I could dive into D.H., the door behind me swung open, crashing steel on steel, as it ricocheted off the outside wall. A heavy metal echo rang in my ears.

  I heard him before I could see him, because although I turned quickly, he had started shouting even before he’d stepped out. Werner or Wolf or something—that lurking, low-level machinist. I didn’t know him. I’d only seen him creep in and out of the mess hall. Of everyone on board, he scared me the most. Nearly six feet tall, with a well-developed beer gut, he mostly skulked and leered. I’d never seen him interact with anyone, nor speak above a mumble. He wore tattered, gray coveralls that I’d likely mended, and clunky, rubber shower shoes with white socks. He now raised and waved his bratwurst arms overhead, shaking his fists at me like an angry bear. He loped toward me, shouting something in German that I could not possibly understand.

  I dropped the book, jumped to my feet, and backed up to the railing in the only defensive position I could muster: a vague cowering. My right forearm rose instinctively and involuntarily overhead, and I held on to the railing with my left.

  He charged toward me and continued the incomprehensible tirade. I knew with absolute certainty that he would pick me up in his large claws and throw me overboard. Would I make it to Australia or back to Middlebury? Would I ever see my family again? My heart rate was so high that blood would surely spurt from my ears at any moment. Herr Rose’s words echoed loudly: “Don’t go overboard. We would not turn the ship around to fetch you. You would be dead by the time we could reach you.”

  But he paused for a moment, like a beast distracted from his prey by a butterfly, took one step back with his right foot, grabbed the teak chair in both hands, and held it high overhead, like an orangutan waggling a limb overhead to assert his dominance. I’d moved the chair around enough that I knew it was heavy. But he shook it and shook it like a baby rattle, as he continued to shout with such rage that hot spit hit my face like spewing sparkler embers.

  So he’s going to throw the chair over, and then me? Instead of me? We seemed momentarily to be mulling the ramifications of this choice together. And then, just as suddenly as he had burst, a bucking bronco, out of the door, he stopped. His face looked like it would boil over and his head would melt as he slammed the chair back down. Not once, or twice, but three times. The deck below me reverberated with tsunami waves after each contact. He slammed it down with a thud, and punctuated his rant with one final point. I considered myself very lucky not to be able to understand the slew of invective that he hurled at me. He turned and stomped off back to his cave.

  I stared at the door that closed behind him for a long time, completely unconvinced that he’d not just gone inside to grab an axe or some other sharp object to finish me off, even though I could not imagine what I’d done to deserve this.

  When I finally started breathing again, and could feel my body at all, I realized my knees had buckled and I had crumpled to the floor with my feet tucked under me. Every molecule of every bone, organ, and inch of skin vibrated so violently that my teeth chattered and I thought I’d throw up. I let my head drop near my knees because I felt dizzy with hyperventilation. And only then started to weep. The sobs wracked my body in time with the concert of everything else that was shaking.

  I want to go home. I want to go home now. Right now, was all I could think.

  I lay there, contained in myself, for I have no idea how long. Until the quaking quieted. I reached for the book and stood tentatively on uncertain fawn legs to make my way inside.

  I cracked the door open ever so slowly, half expecting to find him waiting inside to finish me off, and crept to my cabin. Behind the bolted door, I turned on the shower, sunk to the floor of the stall, and curled into a ball to let the water wash away the snot and the salt in my hair. I’d settled down into a post-ugly cry-whimper, glad the water would drown out the sounds. I tightened into myself and just let the cascade quiet my mind and wash away the image of him wielding the chair overhead and the sound waves of his harsh, incomprehensible tirade.

  I had to collect myself because if I didn’t go downstairs to collect my snack, Herr Most would come looking for me. My eyes were as puffy as the pastry he had on a plate awaiting me. I kept them down, as if avoiding eye contact would somehow prevent him seeing the distress. I needn’t have bothered. His own gaze down, fingernail-focused, he said, “So. What happened, Fraulein Meyer?”

  I started to cry, as furious at myself for not being able to hold it in as I was at the raging machinist.

  “I don’t know! I have no idea!” I said, telling my truth. “He came up screaming at me. I thought he was going to throw me overboard.”

  “Ya, ya, Herr Betz heard everything from the bridge deck. All the men on the main deck, too.” Oh great, the adversarial officer and the public at large heard it all.

  “I didn’t understand him,” I said. It began to dawn on me that somehow I was in trouble.

  “Ya, ya Fraulein Meyer. Herr Wimmel, he works at night, so he sleeps at the day. His cabin it is just below the deck where you sun—.”

  I interrupted. “I was reading!” but he stopped looking at his nails long enough to put his hand up. I froze.

  “So when you move your chair you wake him up.”

  Oh my god, I thought. I understood. While maneuvering the massive chair around to get it positioned just right, I was jack-hammering his ceiling.

  “You should apologize to him.”

  Wait, what? I should apologize to him? I didn’t realize what I was doing and certainly didn’t mean any harm. He, on the other hand. . . .

  “Ya, ya Fraulein. Herr Kapitän is furious with him. I am certain he will discipline him, which will not make him happier. He was wrong, but it will help if you can say you are sorry.”

  I understood that he was defending me and not accusing me. He was trying to prevent further animosity. I did not want to cause trouble for my boss.

  “I understand. I will say something to him at dinner.”

  He nodded, and refocused on his fingers. The discussion was over, with nary a nod to how it might have impacted me. I took my treat and retreated to my cabin, humiliated, frustrated, and not just a little scared.

  At dinner that night I walked up to his table on shaky legs. My head was down, as was his. He looked more like a chastised little boy bully, despite the five o’clock shadow.

  “I am sorry that I woke you up. I did not know your cabin was below that deck. I did not know you were sleeping,” I said.

  He nodded. I do not think he spoke one word of English, but he could certainly tell from my
demeanor that I came in defeat and not offense. All eyes were on us, and I felt I might melt, Wicked Witch-like, into a puddle right where I stood. That was it. He nodded. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t apologize to me. Perhaps he didn’t have the words in my language, but just as I’d conveyed my meaning, so too could he have. But he didn’t. I slid back into my seat. The show’s over, everyone, just eat.

  Land Ho

  June 29, 1979

  33.8688 S, 151.2093 E

  Rumors flew around the ship like the odd white birds that circled us. We wouldn’t get into Sydney for a week, they said. Dockworkers in Australia had strikes and slowdowns often. It could take days to unload and load once in. The talk swirled with the birds. The closer we got, the louder it got. With every squawk I calculated and recalculated our arrival date back into New York in my head.

  “That would put us back on August 27,” I said to Ingo. “I’ll never make it back for the start of school.” He smiled and wiped his hands on the apron that struggled to circle his belly.

  “Ya, ya. They can start without you I’m sure!” He nudged my shoulder. My distress amused him. I should have fretted to myself.

  On June 29 we finally got close enough to see the big island continent. “Land ho! Land ho!” I wanted to shout from the nonexistent crow’s nest, like a crazed pirate too long at sea.

  We anchored and waited. A wash of terra-cotta-tiled roofs dotted the hills by day; at night the lights ringed the curve of the coastline like strands of diamond clusters. Like Pip longing for his beloved Estella, I saw Sydney as “tangible yet unattainable.” It was almost too much to bear after seventeen days of ocean, to see it, to imagine my toes touching an unmoving surface, my ears hearing proper English, and being understood rather than ribbed and ridiculed, but still to be stuck on the ship.

  That night at dinner, I asked Karl if he knew the name of the birds that dove like bombardiers around the ship all day.

  “They’re not seagulls,” I said.

  “No, they are . . . let me think of the name in English.” He tugged at his tight blond curls. “Albatross,” he said.

  I laughed out loud.

  “What? Why is that funny?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing. There’s this famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” I said, “by Samuel Coleridge. A sailor kills an albatross, and they force him to wear the carcass around his neck as punishment. We have a saying in English about a burden being like an albatross around your neck.”

  He mulled this over for a moment. I could tell he was translating and trying to make sense of it. He kept twisting his hair as if it helped him think. Finally he laughed. “I see. So perhaps we are your albatross?” He laughed again. I didn’t, even though I knew he meant no harm.

  “Or perhaps I am yours.” I headed up to await our grand entrance into Sydney Harbor in my cabin where I could curl up in my window well and watch alone.

  Just as I slipped the key into my lock, the captain opened his, startling me. In all the time on board, we’d never bumped into each other at our doors, even though they abutted. When we did meet he only barely nodded in acknowledgement. He’d scarcely said a word to me, and I suspected he did not welcome my presence. Women on commercial ships caused problems, especially young unmarried ones. He was still in uniform, but he’d undone his white shirt’s top button and donned brown leather slippers. I could see just past him into his cabin, and make out a sitting room separate from the bedroom behind it. A full suite. He looked down and a little flustered. I realized he was not so much aloof and arrogant as painfully shy. A man of middle age, no wedding ring adorned his finger; he seemed a loner. He held something that I couldn’t quite make out in the hand not on the door handle. He looked up, eyes only, barely lifting his head.

  “Abend, Fraulein. I hope everything goes well for you on board,” he said, so quietly that I had to strain to hear, especially through the accent.

  “Ya, ya, danke,” I answered.

  He held out a book, offering it to me. “This guide to Australia, it contains all the ports we will visit. Perhaps you would like to have it for the visit. You plan to go ashore?”

  “Yes, I look forward to it. That would be very helpful. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.” Stop gushing, Diane. “I will return it once we leave for New Zealand.”

  “Nein, nein, please keep it. I have read it. I have been here many times before.” And he looked back down. “Well, gute Nacht, Fraulein. Enjoy your visit in Australia.”

  “Gute Nacht, Herr Kapitän, and thank you.” He nodded again and turned to go into his dimly lit quarters. I cherished that book because of the kindness it represented.

  I slept fitfully in the ship’s stillness. The lullaby of motion silenced the ship, and I filled the void with anticipation and anxiety and excitement.

  In the morning, Herr Most seemed unusually cheery. “We don’t go in until July ninth,” he said, looking right at me, not at his hands, almost smiling.

  Oh no. No. No way. I tried frantically to do the math in my head, which I shook back and forth. “How can that be? Why do we have to wait so long?” He just shrugged his shoulders and concentrated again on his fingers. I stormed out and went to breakfast, too upset by the setback to even ask if he had anything for me to do later. This was devastating.

  I plunked down at my place with my head hung low. I nodded at Ingo, but just barely. He wiped his big hands on his aproned waist, and then came over and poked me gently in the shoulder with one of his pudgy fingers.

  “Was ist los?” he asked. “What is wrong?” “Nicht. Nothing. I just . . . Herr Most told me about the delay until July ninth. That we will just sit anchored until then. I’ll never get home.” God, I needed a fairy godmother.

  Sometimes, though, they don’t come clad in sky-blue crinoline. Mine held his shaking belly as he laughed loud and hard, more Wizard than Glinda.

  “What?” I asked. “Don’t make fun of me now, Ingo, please.”

  “Nein, nein, I don’t make fun of you. Herr Most makes fun of you. He plays a joke! We go in today, around ten hundred hours.” His laugh was a magic wand that made Herr Most’s evil joke disappear.

  That asshole! I couldn’t decide if the potential delay or the arrow that Herr Most had sharpened and shot directly into my tender Achilles’ tendon hurt more. That asshole!

  We started in at 2220, sailing under the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge, known as the Coat Hanger, its suspension cables concave compared to the Verrazano-Narrow’s convex ones. I felt no foreboding under this elegant arch. Its twinkling corona of light crowned us with the promise of land and egress. We passed the iconic Sydney Opera House, its huge crustacean claws rising out of the black harbor, reaching for the sky. The tiny mighty tugs did their job and had us tethered alongside the dock under the cranes in—relative to the crossing we’d just made—no time.

  I was too excited about the arrival to sleep, so I wandered around to see what would happen. Two groups came on board in every port, regardless of what time we docked, each to service the ship in their own way. The first represented the port: two uniformed customs agents, not much older than I, sauntered through the hallways. I guessed that they needed to collect some sort of documentation from the captain, but also to make a visual inspection of the premises. For me, they were relief in the form of English-speaking, amiable eye candy.

  “Hello, luv.” Luv? I was smitten, especially with the accent. They removed their inspectors’ caps. After introductions they asked the anticipated question: “Whatever are you doing here?” I gave the standard response.

  We chatted for a while, and they told me where they came from, what weather I could expect, and made a few suggestions for things to see in Sydney. I wished they could serve as tour guides. I couldn’t wait to get out and explore.

  “You’ll want to go over to the Opera House—it’s beautiful and something’s always going on there in fine weather,” said one.

  “And go wander around The Rocks a bit,” said the ot
her. “The prisoners from England landed there. There’s a great place called ‘Pancakes on the Rocks,’ too. Good food and quite reasonable. And don’t forget to taste a Fosters!” They both laughed, but with no ominous overtones, nothing but warm Aussie welcome.

  I could have listened to them say anything in their accent for the whole evening, but they had to get back to work.

  “Ta, luv.” Love. Just what I missed and needed the most.

  The second, less official group arrived to service the men. A gaggle of prostitutes always materialized whenever we docked. Not knowing their profession the first time I saw them, I wrote in my journal that night that “the ugliest group of girls I’ve ever seen just came on to the ship.” Scantily clad, garishly made up, and dramatically coifed, they entered as one colorful, cohesive, cackling coven.

  They waved at me, the ugly duckling, and giggled. I flattened myself against the wall to let them pass. I just nodded in greeting, struck dumb by the sight of them, and wondered, naively, which one of the crew knew so many women so well in Sydney that they’d come to visit this late at night.

  “They are whores.” Said Herr Most the next morning. “They come on in every port. For party with the crew. They are trouble. I am married. I stay away. You stay away, too.”

  “You’re married?” He’d never mentioned it before. We rarely discussed anything personal. He wanted to be neither my father nor my friend. Heaven knows I didn’t need another of the former, but I was desperate by then for the latter.

  “Ya, ya.” He waved at the air dismissively. No big deal. Nothing to see here. “She lives in New Zealand. In Wellington. We married two years ago. I will see her when we stop there.” He gave no more detail and clearly did not want to talk about his personal life. I had so many questions. “You stay away from them. They are not good girls.”

  I felt like such an idiot. He clearly got that I hadn’t caught on, but thankfully did not thrust his toe in the door I’d left ajar for ridicule. I sensed that they offended him too much to joke about. Maybe he felt badly about the decidedly unfunny misinformation he’d given me about our approach to Sydney. Maybe he was looking out for me. Was he this inscrutable with his Kiwi wife? It seemed like an odd arrangement to me. Neither of them was young, and they’d only been married a short time. I tried to imagine how he’d met and courted her, but didn’t dare ask. He seemed devoted and loyal, and the “girls,” as he called them, bothered him. He had no intention of glorifying them, joking about them, or letting me get anywhere near them.