by B. TRAVEN
Pretty, isn’t it? So I thought. But the depressed feeling that was looming up within me didn’t grip me in full. Before it could get hold of me I knocked it cold.
Shit the bucket. There are lots of other ships in the world. The oceans are so very big and so full of ships. They have hardly room enough to sail without choking each other. How many ships are there? Surely no less than half a million. One of those half a million seagoing ships, one at least, will need, some time sooner or later, a plain sailor. My turn will come again.
As for Antwerp, well, it’s a great port. All ships make this port some day or other. What I need is just patience. That’s all. Who would expect that somebody, maybe the skipper himself, would turn up immediately and yell out: “Hey, sailor, what about signing on? Union pay!” I can’t expect anything like that to happen.
Thinking it all over, well, what’s there to worry about a faithless bucket leaving me flat in Belgium. Like all women do leave you the first time you try it out with another dame. Anyway, I have to hand it to her, she sure had clean quarters and showers and swell grub. No complaints about that. Right now they’re having breakfast. Those guys will eat up all of my bacon, and the eggs too. The coffee will be cold again when I come into the mess. If they leave any coffee at all. Sure the cook has burned the bacon again. He’ll never learn. I wonder who made him a ship’s cook. Perhaps a Chinese laundry man. As for Slim, I see him already going through all my things, picking out everything he likes, before he hands the bag over to the mate. Maybe they won’t even turn in my things to the mate. Those bums. Not a decent sailor among them. Just running around with dames. Using perfume and facial soap. How I hate them! Sailors? Don’t make me laugh. But I’d never have expected this from Slim. Seemed to be a regular guy. You would not have believed Slim’d be that bad; no, sir. You can’t trust anybody any longer. But then he always used to steal my good toilet soap whenever he could lay his hands on it. What can you expect from a fellow who steals your soap when you’re out on deck?
What’s the use worrying about that bucket? Gone. It’s all right with me. Go to the devil. The ship doesn’t worry me at all. What worries me is something different. I haven’t got a red cent in my pocket. She told me, I mean that pretty girl I was with during the night, protecting her against burglars and kidnappers, well, she told me that her dear mother was sick in the hospital, and that she had no money to buy medicine and the right food for her, and that she might die any minute if she didn’t get the medicine and the food. I didn’t want to be responsible for the death of her mother. So what could I do as a regular red-blooded American except give her all the money I had left over from the gilded house? I have to say this much, though, about that pretty dame: she was grateful to me for having saved her mother from an early death. There is nothing in the whole wide world more satisfying to your heart than making other people happy and always still happier. And to receive the thousand thanks of a pretty girl whose mother you have just saved, that is the very peak of life. Yes, sir.
3
I sat down on a box and followed in my mind the Tuscaloosa steaming her way home. I wished earnestly that she would spring a leak, or something, soon, and be forced to return and give me a chance to hop on again. I should have known better; she was too good a bucket to run foolishly on the rocks.
Another hope of mine went bluey. I had hoped that the crew might object to leaving me behind and make it tough for the skipper, or even engage in a mild form of mutiny. Apparently they didn’t care. Anyhow, I wished that damned canoe all the shipwrecks and all the typhoons any sailor ever heard of from old salts spinning yarns that made even drunken quartermasters get the shivers.
I was just about to doze off and dream of that little peach of a girl when somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
Right away, without giving me a chance to see what was going on, he talked to me so rapidly that my head began to buzz.
I got mad and I said: “Rats, be damned, beat it, leave me alone. I don’t like your damn jibbering. And besides I don’t know what you want. I don’t understand a single word of your blabbering. Go to the devil.”
“You are an Englishman, are you not?” he asked, speaking in English.
“Nope; Yank.”
“Then you are American.”
“Looks like it. And now that you know all about me, leave me in peace and go to your wifie. I’ve nothing to do with you, no business.”
“But I have some with you. I am from the police.”
“Your luck, old man. Fine job. How much do they pay the flats here? What’s troubling you with a swell job like that?
Something wrong?”
“Seaman, hey?” he asked.
“Aha. Any chance for me?”
“What ship?”
“Tuscaloosa, from New Orleans.”
“Sailed at three in the morning. A long way off, I dare say.”
That made me mad again. “I don’t need you to tell me any stale jokes.”
“Your papers?” he asked.
“What papers do you mean?”
“Your passport.”
“What?”
“That’s what I said; let me have your passport.”
“Haven’t any.”
“Then your sailor’s identification card or whatever you call it in your home country.” He sort of pushed me.
“My sailor’s card? Yes, yes.” Hell. My seaman’s card. Where have I got it? I remember now, it’s in a pocket of my jacket; and my jacket is in my sailor’s bag; and the bag is stowed nicely away under my bunk in the foc’sle in the Tuscaloosa; and the Tuscaloosa is now gee, where can she be right now? I wonder what they’ve got for breakfast today. Sure, that damned cook has burned the bacon again. I’ll get him some day and tell him what I really think of him. Just let me be around, painting the galley. Guess I’m getting hungry.
“Well, well,” said the flat, shaking me, “your sailor’s card. You know what I mean.”
“My sailor’s card? If you mean mine, what I want to say, my sailor’s card I’ll have to come clean about that card. The truth is, I haven’t got any.”
“No sailor’s card?” He opened his eyes wide in sheer astonishment, as if he had seen a ghost. The tone of his voice carried the same strange amazement, as if he had said: “What is that, you don’t believe there is such a thing as sea-water?”
It seems that it was incomprehensible to him that there could be a human being with neither a passport nor a sailor’s card. He asked for the card for the third time, almost automatically. Then, as though receiving a shock, he recovered from his astonishment and sputtered: “No other papers either? No identification certificate? No letter from your consul? No bankbook? Or anything like that?”
“No, no, nothing.” Feverishly I searched my pockets, so as to make a good impression upon him. I knew quite well I had not even an empty envelope with my name on it.
Said he: “Come with me.”
“Where to?” I wanted to know. Perhaps he was sent to fish up some derelict sailors for a rum-boat. I could tell him right then that not even wild horses could drag me aboard one.
“Where? You will find out pretty soon. Just keep going.” He wasn’t so friendly any more.
After some hopping we landed. Where? Yes, sir, you guessed right. In a police-station. Here I was searched, and how! When they had searched all over, and had left unsearched not even the seams of my clothes, one of the searchers asked, absolutely seriously: “No arms? No weapons of any kind?” I could have socked him one right then, I was so mad. As if I could hide a machine-gun in my nostrils, and a couple of automatics under my eyelids. That’s the way people are and you can’t do anything about it.
The examination over, I had to stand up before a high desk, behind which sat a roan who looked at me as if I had stolen his overcoat. He opened a thick book filled with photographs. The guy that had pinched me acted as the interpreter. Without him I would never have known, until the end of my days, what the man behind the desk wante
d. Funny that these people understood our language pretty well when they needed our boys to fight for them, and when they wanted our money.
The high priest at the desk looked at all the photographs, and after each photograph he looked at me. He did this a hundred times. He had that way of looking upwards with his nose kept close to the thick book that people have when they look over the rims of their eye-glasses.
At last he got tired of moving his neck up and down. He shook his head and disgustedly closed the book with a bang. It seems he hadn’t found my photograph. I could have told him before that he wouldn’t, if he only had asked me, because I knew damn well that I had never been photographed in Antwerp. I too got tired of this lame business, and I said: “Now I am hungry. I want to eat. I haven’t had any breakfast this morning.”
“Right,” the interpreter said. I was taken into a small room, with nothing in it that I would call furniture.
I wonder if all the Belgians call what I got a breakfast coffee, bread, and margarine. It was the minimum in quantity and quality.
Then I was left alone to occupy myself with counting the bars at the window, a job I did rather well.
About noon I was again brought before the high priest. “There are nine,” I said right away, “exactly nine.”
“What nine?” the high priest asked with the help of the interpreter.
“Nine bars at the window,” I answered.
The high priest looked at the interpreter, and the interpreter looked at him, and then both of them looked at me, finally shaking their heads; and the interpreter said: “Well, they are this way, sir. You know it from the war. There is something loose in their upper stories. One cannot take them seriously.”
“Do you wish to go to France?” the high priest asked me.
“No, y’honor, I don’t like France. Under no circumstances do I wish to go to France. I don’t like war-mothers running wild about the battlefields. No, France is no place for me.”
“What do you think of Germany?” He asked.
“I don’t care to go to Germany either, if you please, sir.”
“Why, Germany is quite a fine country. Take Hamburg for instance. You could easily find there a good ship to take you home.”
“No, I do not like the Germans. They often go out of their minds without any warning.”
The high priest assumed a dictatorial attitude: “Well, then, it is all settled now, once and for all. No more objections on your side, sailor. You are going to Holland. And understand, this is final.”
“But I do not like the Dutch,” I said, and I was just about to tell him why, when he cut me short: “We do not care a rag if you like the Dutch or if you don’t. You may fix this with the Dutch yourself, when you meet them in person. In France you would be best off. However, for a rich gentleman like you, France is not good enough. Too bad we have nothing better to offer you. You don’t want to go to Germany either. The Germans also are not good enough for you. Hell, just tell me what people other than your own do you like? None apparently. So you are going to Holland, and that is that. We have no other border. We cannot, just to please you, acquire another neighbor who might find favor with you. And, just to make clear to you what we think of you, we don’t even care to throw you into the water. That is the only border we have besides the others already mentioned. It’s all right with me if you choose the water. We are at your service, mister. And so you are going to Holland and like it. That’s all. Be glad you’re getting off so easily. We have jails, and we have camps for people without papers.”
“But see here, gentlemen, you are all mistaken. I do not wish to go to Holland, because the Dutch —”
“Quiet now. This question has been settled, for good. How much money have you got?”
“Why, you searched me all over. How much money did you find on me? That’s how much money I’ve got.”
“Which means, in other words, not a single cent. Is that what you mean?” he asked.
“Exactly, y’honor. Right you are.”
“Take him back to the cell,” commanded the high priest. “Let him have a bite to eat.”
A bite. I would like to know when these people really eat.
4
Late the same afternoon I was taken to a railroad station. Two men, one of them the interpreter, accompanied me. No doubt they thought I had never before been on a train, for they would not leave me alone. Not for a minute. One of them bought the tickets while the other remained standing near me. He took good care that no pickpocket should try to search again where they had searched without success. I’d like to see a smart pickpocket find a red cent in pockets that have been searched by the police.
Very politely they escorted me aboard the train and offered me a seat in a compartment. I thought the gentlemen would now take leave. They did not. They sat down. Apparently afraid that I might fall out of the window when the train was moving, they seated themselves on either side of me. Belgian policemen are courteous. I could find no fault with them. They gave me cigarettes, but no matches. They were afraid I might set the train afire.
We came to a very small town and left the train. Again I was taken to a police-station. I had to sit down on a bench. The men who had brought me told a long story to the high priest in charge.
All the policemen stared at me as if they thought me a murderer who had not been properly hanged and had escaped. Suddenly I conceived the idea that I was to be hanged and that they were all only waiting for the hangman, who could not be found for the moment because he had gone off somewhere to a wedding. This idea, that I was to be hanged, impressed me more and more every minute. Had not the high priest in Antwerp said clearly that they wouldn’t mind throwing me into the water? Why not hang me just as well? It’s the easiest thing to do in a lonely spot.
There’s nothing to laugh about; no, sir. It was a very serious matter indeed. Only consider, please: I had no papers; the high priest had not found in his thick book my photograph either. Things would have been different if he had found my photograph, because then he would immediately have known who I was, and that I was an honest sailor. Anybody could say that he had been left behind by the Tuscaloosa. Where are the proofs? I had signed on half an hour before the Tuscaloosa was leaving the port of New Orleans. The skipper had no time then to sign me on properly. I am sure he didn’t even know my name. He never cared to know it. What was a plain deck-hand to him? He had other worries; he was not sure what his woman was doing when he was at sea. Therefore, even if somebody took the trouble to wire him, he would just answer: “I don’t know the bum; hang him if you wish.”
He was that kind. Better for him to ignore me altogether than to run up expenses for his company bringing me back home. Y’see, sir, I had no proof of any sort as to my legal existence.
I had no established home anywhere in the world. I was a member neither of a board of trade nor of a chamber of commerce.
I wasn’t the president of a bank. The truth is I had no bank-connections at all. I’ve never heard yet of a sailor with a savings-account. It’s not the sailor’s fault. It’s the wages, which never allow him to meet all his expenses ashore.
I was just a nobody. You can’t blame the Belgians if they don’t want to feed a nobody. You see, the Belgians already have to feed so many nobodies who are only half Belgian, while the other half is French, English, Austrian, German, American, or Scotch, on account of the trouble they had with the war and the occupation of their country. I would have been only another reason for not paying us back the money they borrowed from us when they were in a hole.
So hanging me was the simplest thing to do, and the quickest. There was no one in the world who would worry about me. No one who cared. One bum more or less, what does it matter? There was even no necessity to put my name in the thick book in which all hanged people are written up.
Now they were waiting only for the hangman, because without the hangman it would have been plain murder, and illegal, and it would have been a blemish on as civilized a n
ation as the Belgians are.
I was right. They were waiting for the hangman. They made preparations. One of the flats came along and handed me two packages of cigarettes. The last gift to a condemned man. Then he gave me matches, seated himself near me, and started to talk English. He slapped me on the back, laughed, cajoled me, and tried to tell me an Irish joke, which, as he explained, he had studied in a book that was supposed to teach English in six weeks without a teacher.
“Don’t take it so hard, old man,” he said. “Smoke your cigarettes and be happy. See, we all have to die some day. I was spared in the war. But one day I too have to swallow dirt. As for you, sailor, we have to wait until dark. We can’t do it in bright daylight very well.”
Not take it so hard. I wonder if he ever was as close to being hanged as I was then. Perhaps he was the kind that doesn’t take being hanged so hard. Maybe he was used to it. I was not; no, sir.
The cigarettes had no taste at all. Straw and nothing else. Damn it all, I don’t want to be hanged. I looked around for a chance to make a clean get-away. Nothing doing. They were staring at me all the time. I was the first American sailor that ever had come their way. An interesting circus animal to them. How I hate these Belgians! I’d like to know why we ever helped them out when they had their pants full.
When darkness had fallen, about nine, someone brought me my last supper. Nasty people, these Belgians. So that’s what they call the last supper for a poor condemned man. I can assure them I will never commit murder in Belgium. Potato salad, three slices of liverwurst, each slice as thin as paper. Clever people, the Belgians, not cutting their fingers when slicing liverwurst for the last supper of a poor devil. There were also a few slices of a bread that was neither really black nor really white, and the inevitable margarine. Belgium has no cows and therefore no butter. Why don’t they come to Wisconsin, where people throw butter into the fire to make coffee boil quickly. What a supper! That’s the gratitude of these Belgians. And I was nearly wounded once when they were down on their knees begging us for help.
