The Kid from Hoboken

by Bill Bailey

A grain barge pulled alongside of us and all that day poured tons and tons of grain down into one of the cargo holds. We put to sea. Over my bunk was the first Marxist-Leninist library that ship ever saw.

  The Exchange was a turbine-driven freighter. She carried two passengers, both of them schoolteachers. She was a well-kept freighter. The fo'c's'le housed 12 men in one room. The inner structure was cleanly maintained and painted brightly, with a place for everything and everything in its place. From the time I awoke to go on watch until the time I went to bed, I agitated everyone I met. The topics covered everything, from creating one big union to a classless socialist society. I always made myself known as a Communist. The crew respected me for my openness and honesty, but more for my dedication to the work.

  One night I sat lounging in the mess room; some men played cards or checkers, while others engaged in friendly debates on various subjects. Until now I had no idea of the background of my brother's buddy, Trader Horn. All across the Atlantic he had remained silent, being content to sit around reading or playing cards. Now he perked up when I mentioned a more desirable form of government, like that of the socialist kind in the Soviet Union. "Have you ever been to Russia?" he asked.

  "No."

  "Well, I have, and it's not like you say it is. I know. I even spent some time in their jails." He smiled as he watched the reactions of the crew members. He held their attention.

  "Maybe it was partly my fault, but let me tell you one thing, it's no joke trying to live on two bowls of cabbage soup a day. That was more than the average worker was getting--out of jail." Even the checker players stopped playing.

  He continued. "I answered an ad in the papers. They needed engineers to go to the Soviet Union to work for a year's contract. Two-thirds of my paycheck would be deposited in the bank in New York while I worked there. They gave me 50 men and women to train as engineers. With every damn move I made I had five of them under my feet, jotting down every damn thing I was doing. Some were so starved I had to smuggle some food to them. It was awful. I could have slept with anyone just for a piece of bread."

  I was furious listening to this sonofabitch demean everything that was sacred to me. He went on.

  "When I had been there about 11 months, I was arrested--pulled out of my bunk and carted off to jail. A couple of people who worked with me and spoke some English suddenly forgot how to speak. No one would tell me for three weeks what it was all about. In the mornings they opened the door and pushed in a bowl of cabbage soup and some black bread. Late in the evening they would do the same thing. After three weeks of this they accused me of being a spy and threatened to shoot me. After five weeks they yanked me out and shoved me aboard a train. For three days it rambled through Poland and into Germany. I ended up on board a limey ship and sailed from Hamburg to New York. If this is what you want to put over in this country, you're crazy."

  "I don't believe one word of it!" I shouted.

  "Do you read Russian?" he asked.

  "Of course I don't."

  "Well, let me help you." He reached into his pocket and took out some papers. A document had his picture on it. The page of writing with official seals were all in Russian, with a hammer and sickle imprint. There was no doubt that they were identification papers. "This is my special work permit, stating that I'm an engineer. This other document is my pay and subsistence book. Over here is the amount of rations I drew each week. Everything is here in writing. So there you are. I wouldn't be caught dead back in that place."

  As they say in show business, this was a tough act to follow. There had to be more to his story than a group of Russian soldiers simply pulling him out of his sack and throwing him in jail. I must find out. I couldn't stay satisfied with his story. The next day, smarting under the abuse my ideals had undergone, I asked my brother about his "dear friend." "I won't tell you anything now," he said. "Maybe later."

  A month later he told me the true story. Trader Horn had signed up as an engineer for a year in Russia, along with some 50 others. En route to the country, while passing through Rumania, someone contacted him and they made a deal. The Roumanians would deposit into a bank of his choosing the equivalent amount he was to make in Russia if he would submit a weekly report through a woman contact. He agreed, and for nearly a year he made his reports like clockwork. Then, either through his carelessness or the super work of the Russian police, Trader Horn and his double dealings were discovered. He fared a lot better than his young Russian contact: she was quickly disposed of by firing squad.

  Now I was really mad at the bastard. Not only was he a liar, he was a two-bit spy who would sell his birthright down the river for a month's pay.

  Aboard our ship there was a full-fledged, native-born Russian. He was called Big John. His last name was difficult to pronounce. He weighed about 245 pounds. He was very muscular and spoke decent English. The story went that his mother picked him up during the revolution and fled the country by way of China and Japan, finally settling in the United States. While he remembered little of Russia, his heart was in the Soviet Union. He hated his family for fleeing the revolution; he felt they should have supported the overthrow of the Czar and supported the soviets, or at least they should have stayed in the country to help rebuild it. Now that he was grown and could make his own decisions, he was trying hard to return to the Soviet Union. The Russian Consulate had his case under advisement and he was waiting daily for the news that it would be okay to return. In the meantime he pursued the sea for a living. On board he retired into his own world and had little or nothing to do with the rest of the crew, socially or politically. But my presence on board and my daily praise of the new Russian lifestyle aroused his interest. One day he invited me into his room. He told me about his life, how he grew up in an Indiana town and how he yearned to return to his native country despite his mother's protests. The Russian consulate had told him to "keep his nose clean" and perhaps in a year he would be allowed to "come home." This was the reason he stayed aloof from the crew.

  Big John knew what was being said on board the ship. It was common knowledge now that Trader Horn had been a Roumanian spy operating in the Soviet Union. While Big John said nothing to anybody about it, he distorted his face in disgust whenever Trader Horn's name was mentioned.

  We tied alongside the dock in Genoa. Just a few yards ahead was the stern end of one of Italy's big troop ships. It was quickly being loaded with thousands of young soldiers. In a few hours she would head across the Mediterranean, just another ship bound for the inglorious saga of Italian fascism and the invasion of Ethiopia. Blackshirt Fascists were among the mass of people who came down to the dock to see their sons off. Nearly every five minutes a cheerleader screamed out, "Viva il Duce!" and from a solid wall of outstretched hands a chorus echoed, "Viva il Duce!" Few smiles could be seen on any of the faces, except for those of the Fascist officers and Carabineri, who looked ridiculous with tall feathers streaming from their Alpine-style caps.

  In the Mediterranean ports, a breakwater of stone generally curves out from the inlet, and the docks are built of solid slab stone right at the shoreline. Thus the ship lays snugly inside the breakwater against a flat wall. If the tides go down extremely low, one can wake up in the morning facing a solid stone wall. This was an opportunity I could not let pass. The tide was going out. The side port was already below the surface of the dock. A blank granite wall faced me. I got a can of white paint and a brush from the paint locker. With no one around to witness what I was doing, I faced the granite side of the pier and started painting.

  The next night we finished discharging our wheat, and in the darkness we moved away from the dock and sailed for Leghorn. No one noticed the six-foot by six-foot hammer and sickle painted in white with the word "VIVA! written across the top. It wasn't much of a contribution, but it was something. That bastard Mussolini would know that no matter what his secret police did to wipe out the Communists, there was always one around to remind him that his days were numbered.

  Ou
r ship made some 14 ports around the Italian boot, and a few in Sardinia and Sicily. Our next and last port in Italy would be Naples. I had met a seaman in Palermo who had just arrived from Naples. He told me he had seen several Russian ships in that port. That suited me fine. If one was there when we arrived I would try to get a delegation from my ship to visit, so our crew could see the splendid conditions the Russian seamen were enjoying. I was on watch in the engine room when we sailed into the Bay of Naples. I had given instructions to a friend to scan every ship in port, and if he saw one with a hammer and sickle to pinpoint it for me when I came off watch.

  He did sight a Russian freighter. It was tied up at the local coal dock not too far from where we were tied up. Now was the time to take this crew to see socialism at work. Ten men came with me, five, I'm sure, only because they liked me. Like most American seamen visiting strangers for the first time, they dressed in their best clothes--starched shirts, flashy ties, shined shoes. The day was hot and sultry. After we had walked about a block, I could feel the sweat running down my back. When we reached the coal dock we could barely see the freighter through the mist of coal dust that covered the area. We had to be careful making our way through the yard, crossing over several sets of railroad tracks and watching out for the huge buckets filled with coal that were constantly in motion. They swung from the ship's hold across our heads to the coal yard, where the coal was deposited in huge piles. The dust was heavy, and every time we put our feet down a cloud of coal dust arose. A few of the guys wanted to turn around right then and there, but since we had come this far they decided to complete the mission.

  At last we reached the gangway. I encountered the first of several shocks.Not only was the gangway a rusty, dirty mess, but several steps were missing, rotted away. It would take a skillful sailor to be able to navigate the gangway if he returned to the ship drunk on a dark night. Our fellows were hesitant to climb aboard and they started to balk. I knew I had to take quick action, so I started up the gangway and showed how easy it was to bypass the broken steps. The men followed. About two steps from the top, a big Russian sailor suddenly appeared. He spoke in a deep bass in Russian, saying what could have been, "Where the hell do you think you're going?" I tried to explain in English. "Look, comrade, we're Americans. We come from that ship over there. To foster and cement comradely relations we would like to pay our respects to the crew of this ship and invite them to visit ours."

  The Russian looked dumbfounded. "Nyet," he replied.

  I gathered that that meant no. I would try another approach. "Look here, comrade. I am an American Communist and these are my friends. We want to look over conditions on your ship so we can make comparisons."

  Again he answered, "Nyet."

  "Hey," shouted one of the guys, "let's get the hell out of here before we're buried in coal. Tell him he can shove his ship."

  The radio operator came on deck. He spoke some English. "What you men want?" he asked. I repeated what I had said to the sailor just seconds earlier. "But," he said, "I do not understand. Why you want to come aboard this ship?" Again I used the political approach. The fact that I said I was an American Communist may have swayed his decision. He allowed us to board. He said a few words to the sailor, who shrugged and walked away.

  If the state of the gangway was a shock, so was the rest of the ship. A seamen can tell the condition of a ship by looking at two things: the crew quarters and the mess room. If the mess room is clean, with lots of portholes and plenty of condiments on the tables, one can assume she's a good feeder. On the Russian ship, there were no condiments other than a big bowl of salt. In the dish rack there were only soup plates. On the mess room bulkheads, or walls, were pictures of Lenin, Stalin and Marx. In one corner of the room was the "Red" library, which consisted of 40 or 50 books. On another part of the bulkhead was a three-foot-long design of the Russian rifle. There were no individual chairs at the table, only benches.

  Our fellows scanned this room quickly and didn't find it interesting enough to spend more than a minute in it. Out on deck again, we came across a few crew members who eyed us suspiciously. We smiled at them and they returned the smile meekly, wondering if they were doing the right thing. They watched as we walked into the crew quarters, small rooms with two sets of double bunks. An old fruit box used as a chair was the only furniture around. A few hooks on the bulkhead held some dirty work clothes. The washroom was decrepit. The few sinks were stained with rust and water dripped from the faucets. No seats were on the toilets, and the deck was wet from leaky pipes. This was by far the worst ship I ever had the misfortune to be on board. There had to be something wrong. Surely a nation of revolutionaries who had just knocked off the Czar and repossessed the country would not tolerate such conditions.

  My shipmates were giving me the nudge to get the hell off the ship and head for a gin mill and a cool drink. Since I was disappointed with what I saw, I looked for an explanation. I could not communicate with the crew, who just stood around grinning whenever we caught their eyes. As we moved closer to the gangway I met the radio operator. "You see what you want?" he asked, grinning.

  "Hey," I said. "why the hell is this ship so rusty and filthy?"

  "This ship was purchased from Romania six months ago," he said. "Maybe two more trips, maybe three more, who knows, we will finish with ship. Very old. We use to transport coal. Very dirty cargo. Too rusty to put on paint. Paint fall off. Chip rust, we put many holes in ship. Soon we make new ship. Russian needs many new ships. Goodbye."

  Unfortunately the men were already on the dock when I had this conversation with the radio operator. They heard none of it. The first cafe we came across, away from the sprawling coal dust and noise of the overhead cranes, we shook off the dust and ordered drinks. Then it started. Everyone agreed that the ship was a disaster. They wouldn't believe the story that the ship was just bought from Romania. "That was the first Russian ship I ever visited," said one. "And the last." And so it went on for an hour as the guys drank their beer and thought of new things to criticize. Since it was our first experience with a Russian ship, we had no prior examples to use as comparison. Even my suggestion that we find another Russian ship to visit was ruled out with sarcasm.

  The final shock came that evening when we headed back on board. Apparently Big John had run across one of the Russian seamen. After a number of drinks he invited the seaman aboard our ship. When we came aboard, Big John had left his friend in the mess room while he went aft to get something from his room. We found the Russian running his hand over the glossy-painted bulkhead and muttering in Russian. What the hell was he doing? As fate would have it, Trader Horn stepped into the mess room at that moment. He stood with us and watched the Russian now run his hand over the shiny, shellacked tabletop.

  "Hey, Trader," asked one of the crew members, "you know anything about this language? What the hell is he saying?"

  A grin appeared on Trader Horn's face. "He's telling us that he's never seen a mess room so beautiful and clean in all his life and how happy he would be to work on this ship."

  What a mess, I told myself. Here I am trying to convince an American crew that their future lies in changing the form of their government and adopting that of the Soviet Union, and now one of the Russians who is supposed to be the fruit of socialism is on board a capitalist ship going nuts over a stupid paint job. I was furious and embarrassed and wished the Russian would get the hell off the ship.

  Trader Horn's dislike of Russians surfaced. "Where did this crummy Russian come from? How did he get aboard our ship?" he shouted, grabbing the Russian by the shoulder. He was on the verge of dragging him to the door and shoving him out when Big John returned from his room. That was all it took. Big John swung an overhead right that caught Trader Horn on the head. He staggered toward the table. The Russian seaman, who was drunk by our standards, had no idea what was happening. He walked across the mess room to the icebox in the corner, opened it, reached inside and took out a few slices of bologna and started m
aking himself a sandwich.We quickly surmised that a serious fight was developing. Acting in unison, we grabbed both men and held them back from each other. Trader Horn was content to lay partially stretched out on the bench and work off the dizziness from Big John's blow. The more we tried to restrain Big John, the more he bellowed curses at Trader Horn who, under the best of circumstances, was no match for Big John. As the shouting got louder and our grips got tighter, I noticed that the Russian seaman was wrapping three sandwiches he had made in old newspaper.

  What had seemed like an eternity was over in a few minutes. Trader Horn was coaxed out of the messroom. Once he was out of sight, Big John quieted down and helped his friend bind up the sandwiches. On the surface, at least, peace reigned.

  The next morning I came out on deck and discovered that the longshoremen were discharging copper ingots from number four hatch. They were coming out 25 bars to the pallet. I started thinking: Here Mussolini was invading Ethiopia. What was essential to his war machine? Copper. Copper to make bullets and artillery shells and to wire his communications system. I was ashamed of myself for being on a ship that carried this kind of cargo. I had not been on board when it was loaded, but if I had been I figured I would have done something. Now it was being taken ashore and perhaps being sent directly to the munitions factory. As a Communist I felt that I had betrayed the Ethiopians.

  Marseilles was striking in contrast to the Italian ports. In Italy the national symbol was the protruding clenched jaw, steel-helmeted head and face of Mussolini. Most of the men there wore some sort of uniform, a sign of the war-oriented, Fascist regime. But here in this lovely seaport city the only sign of a uniform was that of the nattily-dressed French sailor with the red knob atop his blue felt hat. The dominant symbol here seemed to be the Communist Party's hammer and sickle. An election was in progress, and posters and signs were everywhere. One got the feeling of great strength and felt among friends. Only the language was different.