The Death Ship

by B. TRAVEN

  The others, who could greet only an army which had not been victorious on the battle-field, but which never had been defeated on the battle-field, did not wave flags and handkerchiefs, but cried instead at the tops of their voices: “Doesn’t matter at all. Next time it will be our turn. Hurrah! Hail!”

  The workers and the plain people became dizzy when presented with the bills they had to pay. If they tried to rebel they were led to the tomb of the unknown soldier, where they were lectured so long and with such deafening jazz that they could do nothing but admit their solemn duty to pay the bills and believe in the existence of the unknown soldier. In those countries where there was no unknown soldier to offer, a whole army was stabbed right in the back, and all the workers and plain people were kept busy smashing each other’s heads to find the man who had stabbed the army in its back.

  This was the time when in Germany one match cost fifty-two billion marks, while the expenses for making these fifty two billion marks were higher than a whole truck-load of Kreuger matches. For this reason the Danish shipping company thought it most profitable to send her ships to the dry-docks of Hamburg to be overhauled. For twenty Danish kroner five hundred German shipyard workers would work six weeks under the whip of a Socialist president who had ordered his Socialist secretary of war to break the bones of every German worker who dared strike for better wages. The German labor leaders, having sold every sound principle to satisfy their personal ambition, and having handed over the fate of a newborn republic to unscrupulous financiers like Sklarz and Barnat, had taken already their first successful steps in paving the way for the powerful foes of modern civilization.

  The future, which lately had looked so very rosy for Stanislav, was darkened once more for him. He came with his Danish ship to Hamburg; and when it was docked he was laid off.

  Thus he found himself again without a berth.

  37

  The more the Americans advertised all over the earth that the world had now been saved for democracy, the more narrow-minded became all nations, including the American. Only true Englishmen could hope to land a job in England if there was any. If you had not been English for ten centuries, you had to look elsewhere. Italy did the same; only good Italians were allowed to work for the profit of Italian exporters. The States, feeling as nationalistic as the other nations, closed all the doors against immigrants, with the exception of the Russian grand-dukes, and only Americans were sure to get a well-paid union job. If the great-great-grand-uncle of your great-grand-uncle had not come over on the Mayflower, there was little chance for you to be employed as a street-cleaner in an American city.

  Since this fine spirit of human fellowship was enforced all over the world, it was not strange to see Stanislav, with his Danish sailor’s pay-book, go in Hamburg from ship to ship and from agency to agency without the slightest chance of getting a job. All and everything was reserved for their own nationals. Even Danish ships did not want him any longer. Their shipping business had gone from bad to worse and was actually on bed-rock.

  ‘When he, then, came again to German skippers he was told: “No Danes for us. To hell with the Danes, who have taken our Slesvig and who now want Holstein also. No Danes, off you go.”

  While the pay for German sailors went down more each day, it was still the only hope he had, as Danish ships without a complete crew hardly ever put in port.

  Stanislav had to look for a good German sailor’s book.

  Asking at the office of the seafaring bureaus where such papers were issued, he was ordered to go first to police headquarters and take out a certificate of good behavior.

  “I have got here my old sailor’s book.”

  “Let’s see. That is Danish. We are not in Denmark, we are in Germany. We do not recognize what those people up there write or say.”

  His Danish book had his assumed, not his true name. So he could not very well present it to the police authorities.

  At police headquarters he gave his right name and asked for a certificate with which he could secure the sailor’s book. “Registered in Hamburg?” he was asked.

  “No. I arrived here only yesterday, coming in with a Dane that went to dry-dock and was laid off.”

  “Then you will have to send first for your birth-certificate; without it we cannot certify you anything,” the police inspector said.

  Stanislav wrote a letter to Poznan, asking for his birth-certificate. He waited one week. No certificate came. He waited two weeks. No answer. He waited another week. The certificate still did not come. He had sent a registered letter and put in two hundred and fifty billion marks to cover the expenses. All this was of no avail. No certificate was sent and no answer either.

  He should have known better. What does anybody care about a jobless worker? It would have been different if he had been a banker or a railroad president. But just a bum sailor without money and without a job. Why doesn’t he die or emigrate? And, besides, what did people care in Poland about the birth-certificate of a jobless man living in Germany? If he were a good Pole, why didn’t he live in Poland and be decent and join the army? The Poles had other worries right then. There was for instance Upper Silesia, about which Poland was rather patriotic, because it had rich coalfields and well-developed industries. Then there was Danzig, another worry of the patriots who wished to own all Germany up to sixty miles west of the River Elbe, which part of the world had been in possession of the Slays two thousand years ago. And why not also take all Saxony, which had been ruled two hundred years ago by a Polish king, the strong man August?

  Once granted the right to be an independent nation, make use of it and take in all the world. Who knows anything about that god-damned birth-certificate of that drunken sailor? Let’s go out and see the parade of the army in their new uniforms.

  The money which Stanislav had brought from his Danish ship was long since gone. It was spent all over St. Pauli. There they knew, especially in those times, the exact value of genuine Danish kroner. Danish kroner were almost as good as dollars, and sometimes even more welcome. No one in St. Pauli better knew the kroner, carried in the pockets of a fine-looking sailor, and appreciated them more than the janes. Didn’t the gals of St. Pauli do everything to get just one Danish krone from that swell-looking swanker Stanislav? I should say they did. And of course that’s the way of all money in the world. It always goes so easily and friendly. After it’s all gone and not a cent left, then you know how hard it comes in.

  “Anyway, only dumb-heads and oxen heave coal and take any job,” Stanislav said. “An honest trade will always keep a good man above the mud. Just take it up and stick to it.”

  So it happened that occasionally a box or a crate would drop out of a freight-car of which the door opened too easily. “All you have to do,” Stanislav said, “is be close to the spot at the time when boxes or crates are tumbling out of a freight-car. That’s all there is to it. Easy, isn’t it?”

  “Looks like,” I said.

  “What else could I do? Hell, how I wished to work honestly! Heaven knows, bigud. But simply you could not land a job even when you tried to hire out as a dumbwaiter. Other times, if you had a bit of good luck, a couple of bags of sugar or green coffee would open almost by themselves, and right in front of you. Now, if you happen along at the right moment with an empty knapsack and you hold the knapsack right under the spot where the bags ripped open, then, of course, the goods would drop into your empty knapsack. If you don’t put something under the rippings, then the whole thing would go right to the ground to feed only rats and mice. Well, it surely is not my intention to fatten up rats. And if the sugar and the coffee, so useful for human beings, fall into the street-mud, man, it would mean an insult to God, who gave the goods that humans might enjoy themselves. And suppose the coffee or the sugar or whatever it may be has dropped, by chance, into your empty knapsack and you were fool enough to pour it out again, somebody might see you doing it and might think you stole it and call the cops to have you arrested for pilfering from
freight-cars. You may get into such trouble quite innocently, see.”

  There was also cocaine and salvarsan and such things. “You must have a feeling for the poor, suffering beings badly in need. You can’t help it. It is your heart that commands you. You don’t realize what it means to be in need of salvarsan and then not have it. You mustn’t be that kind, always thinking only about your own welfare. If you wish to be good, you have to think of other people who suffer.”

  “You see, Pippip,” Stanislav explained, “there is a certain time for everything. Then a time will come where you will say to yourself it’s better now to think about something else for a change. You see, the big mistake most people make is that they do not say at the right time: `Now you’d better hop down from the baby because the old lady is about to make a surprise visit with all the trimmings, before you can get out of the window.’ So I said to myself: now you have to get a bucket even if you have to steal one or you will find yourself in a tough spot.”

  When Stanislav came to that decision he again went to the police and told them that his birth-certificate had not arrived yet.

  “There you are,” the police inspector said; “those damned Polacks, they do this just to make us mad. But don’t you worry, we sure will make it hot for them when the great day comes. Let only the English in China and India, and the French in Africa, and the Italians in Albania, have their hands full of mud one pretty day, and then we will show these stinking Polish pigs where they get off.”

  Stanislav was not interested in the political opinions of the police inspector, but he had listened and nodded his head to make himself amiable to the authority that had the power to issue passports and sailors’ books. After he had fully agreed with the killing of all the Poles he said: “Where do I get my sailor’s book, Mr. Inspector?”

  “Ever lived in Hamburg before?”

  “I have.”

  “Before the war?”

  “Yes, Inspector.”

  “Long?”

  “More than half a year.”

  “Properly registered with the police?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Which ward?”

  “This one here. In this same precinct.”

  “Everything fine,” the inspector said. “Now you go to the head office of the police registration and let them hand you an application paper. You bring it with you and three photographs so that I may stamp it all.”

  Stanislav obtained the application paper from the head office, and he came back to the station.

  The inspector said: “Application is all right. Yet how do I know that you are the person named in this certificate of registration?”

  “I can easily prove that. You see, I may bring up here Mr.

  Andresen, the sail-maker, with whom I worked when I lived in Hamburg. But no need to do that. There is a sergeant who knows me, right behind you, sitting on the bench.”

  “I? Know you?” the sergeant said sourly.

  “Yes, sergeant, you know me rather too well,” Stanislav explained. “I have still to thank you for a nine marks’ fine which I received on account of your reporting me for disturbing the peace when I was in a row. That time, of course, you carried a little fly-brush on your lower lip; you have shaved it off since then, I see.”

  “Yeap, yep. Now I remember you. So you are that guy. Well, how do you do? Grown up since that time. You were working with old man Andresen all right.” The sergeant came closer, and he smiled as though he were thinking of the good old soft times before the war. “Yea, I remember all of you. We had lots of trouble with you. Poznan was looking for you. You had left home, and the whole world thought you butchered. We did not send you back to Poznan, because we had no right to. You were working here and there were no bad records on file. So Poznan lost all interest in you.”

  “So I see,” the inspector said, “all is in shape. Now of course I have no longer any objection to give you all the police identification stamps on your sailor’s book application and on your photographs. As many as you wish.”

  Happily Stanislav went next day with his application to the seaman’s registration office.

  The officer in charge said: “Application and police registration are in perfect order. The inspector confirms personally that he identifies you, the applicant. So everything seems to be correct.”

  Stanislav was smiling. He knew he would have his sailor’s book inside of two hours.

  “B-u-u-u-t,” the officer drew out to start a long bureaucratic explanation.

  Stanislav lost his smile and looked anxiously up.

  “But,” the officer said again, “the nationality, the citizenship, does not seem very clear in your case, as I see here, Koslovski. We doubt your citizenship as written here in your application. You say here: German nationality. You will have to prove this before I can give you a German sailor’s identification book. We do not issue sailor’s identifications to other nationals but our own.”

  He had been told already at the police station that he might have to prove before the seaboard authorities his genuine citizenship.

  Very politely Stanislav answered: “But, officer, I have served the K.M., the Kaiserliche Marine, the Imperial Navy, and I have been severely wounded at the battle of Skagerrack and picked up and interned by the Danes.”

  The clerk lifted his eyebrows high up. He felt himself growing to the size of a god. Before he spoke he made a gesture with his hands and with his head as though he wished to impress on a mortal in distress that the continued existence of the universe depended upon what he was to utter. From the attitude he assumed it could easily be expected that he might cry out: “Be there no earth before me!” and the earth would disappear into a fluttering fog.

  The great gesture finally materialized: “That time, when you were serving the Imperial Navy Hurrah for our poor great Kaiser! then, of course, without the slightest doubt, you were a German citizen. Because we never allowed an alien to set foot on our Imperial battle-ships. And that glorious day when you were wounded at Skagerrack you were still a German citizen; it was then that we gave these perfidious sons of that even more perfidious Albion the licking of their lifetime. Those glorious times! I pray to the old God of the Germans that they may come soon again to finish those stinking dogs for good. In those times you surely were a German citizen of whom the country could be proud. But, understand this, my man, if you are still a German citizen you will have to prove it, and there’s no way of getting out of it. As long as you cannot prove you’re still a German citizen, sorry, my man, I can do nothing for you, and there will be no sailor’s identification book for you. That’s all, good-by.”

  “Pardon me, sir, where do I have to go to prove my German citizenship?”

  “Police headquarters, Resident’s Registration, Citizenship Department.”

  38

  Stanislav had to eat. He could not have a ship without proper papers. So he had to take up once more what he used to call his honorable profession. If all people had a decent job to occupy their minds, and regular meals to satisfy their hunger, most crimes would not be committed. Sitting in an easy chair, the belly filled with an excellent supper topped off with a pint of good Scotch, it is a pretty entertainment t talk about crime waves and the vanishing morality of the jobless. Standing in the shoes of Stanislav, the world and its morals look entirely different. Stanislav could not help it. It was not his fault that the world was as it was presented to him. No job was to be had at this time, not even as third assistant to a rag-picker. Everybody lay upon the dole. Stanislav had an aversion to live on unemployment relief funds. He preferred his honorable trade.

  “You feel so terribly depressed,” he said, “standing all the time among the unemployed to get your few cents. The whole world looks then as if only unemployed were still alive and as if every hope for any better time had vanished for ever. I’d rather look around to see if somebody’s pocket-book is annoyed with its owner than stand in file with those jobless talking of nothing but their misery. M
atter of fact, I respect everybody’s property. But I assure you I didn’t make this world. And I have to eat. Had these god-damned bureaucrats only given me a sailor’s book, I would have been off on the great voyage long ago.”

  He went to police headquarters, Department of Citizenship. He was asked: “Where were you born?”

  “In Posen, or what is now Poznan.”

  “Birth-certificate?”

  “Here is the postal receipt of the registered letter I mailed them weeks ago to send the certificate. They don’t even answer. And the money I put in for expenses they have kept.”

  “The identification stamps of the inspector of your district will do. I accept them. It is only the citizenship which is in question. Have you adopted for Germany?” the clerk asked him.

  “Have I done what?”

  “Have you adopted for Germany? I mean have you officially chosen German citizenship? Did you, within the proper time given, declare before a German authority, especially assigned to take such declarations, declare that you wish to retain German citizenship after the Polish provinces according to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles were returned to Poland?”

  “I did not,” Stanislav answered. “I did not know that it had to be done. I always thought that if I was once a German I should always be a German as long as I did not take out citizenship for any other country. Why, I was in the K.M. I have fought for Germany at Skagerrack.”