Soldier, Sail North (1987)

by Pattinson, James

  Donker moved another piece, and promptly lost it.

  “Why, you damned silly old bastard!” Agnew exclaimed.

  “Here, here!” said Donker. “Not so much of the old!”

  “Did you get through all right?” asked Payne, who had wandered into the mess-room. “You didn’t get bumped with that lot on board?”

  “No,” said Donker, “we didn’t get bumped then; but we did on the next trip, and then we was alone. It was like this: we’d left the convoy off Halifax and turned south, having some cargo for Valparaiso and meaning to go through the Panama Canal. But we never got that far, because in the middle of the Caribbean Sea a dirty big submarine came up and put four torpedoes into us. Four! You wouldn’t have thought they’d have wasted all that lot on one poor old tramp steamer. It was only to be expected that she’d sink pretty quick with them in her guts; but we got two boats away; crowded they was and all.

  “The submarine came up alongside us soon after that, and the commander asked us some questions. He was a young chap, not more than twenty-five I’d guess, and a lot of the crew didn’t look more than eighteen or so. He spoke with a thick accent, but pretty good English; asked us if there was anything we wanted. Well, of course, what we really wanted was a bit of dry land, and he couldn’t give us that. What he did give us was some chocolate and brandy—both French—and a few fags. Then he told us the latest bearing and sheered off. He wasn’t a bad feller as Huns go.

  “As I say, we was pretty crowded at first; but we soon thinned out. There was one kid in our boat what had had his right arm blown off close to the shoulder. It was an untidy job, all jagged and messy, with the end of bone sticking out. We did our best for him; we tied it up as best we could; but we weren’t none of us doctors. He kept moaning; he never left off moaning. Well, I expect it hurt. It wasn’t the only thing, you see; he’d had a great piece ripped out of his left buttock, and because of that he couldn’t lie on his left side. But owing to his arm being off he couldn’t lie on his right side either. No wonder he moaned.

  “You wouldn’t hardly have thought a man in that condition could have lasted any time; but he took four days, to die, and moaning all the time, except when the pain took him real bad, and then he’d shriek. Some of the men wanted to throw him overboard to the sharks; he got on their nerves; but Cap’n Pown’ll wouldn’t hear of that, and he was master in that boat just like he’d been master in the ship. He wouldn’t have it—not at any price.

  “There was a nigger—one of the greasers—got a bit mad at the end of the twentieth day—lack of water and sun and that. He picked up a hammer and was going to do for somebody, and he didn’t care who. The Old Man just looked at him and said, quiet as you like, ‘Drop it!’ That’s all he said, and the nigger dropped the hammer. He dropped himself overboard two minutes later, and we was well shot of him.

  “Huff you!” said Donker, rubbing the knob on his neck as though he were polishing a door-knob. “Huff you! You could ’a took me there.”

  Willis swore. “That’s what comes of listening to your talk. Well, what happened to you?”

  “Nothing much,” said Donker. “We just drifted on and on. Somehow or other the sail had got lost, so we just drifted. We lost touch with the other boat the first night, and never heard of it again. The heat was the worst thing; there wasn’t no shade and precious little water. Sometimes we used to hang over the side and soak ourselves, but there was sharks and barracuda, which didn’t make it a safe occupation. Besides, the Old Man wouldn’t allow us too much of that. Proper discipline he kept; proper rationing of food and water, and proper routine. That’s what held us together, I reckon. All the same, we’d had about enough of it when we was spotted by a seaplane. There was five of us left then out of twenty-one. Funny thing, we was only twenty miles off one of the Leeward Islands; that night we was ashore.”

  “I bet it got your weight down,” said Agnew.

  “Ay,” said Donker, “it did that. What’s more it taught me always to keep my teeth either in my mouth or in my pocket. That time I left ’em in the cabin. It’s a job eating biscuit with no teeth.”

  “How long were you in the boat?” asked Willis.

  “Forty days and forty nights, just like Moses in the mountain.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “People have been in boats longer. There was a Chinaman lived on a raft for a hundred and thirty days, and then drifted ashore little the worse.”

  “What did he live on?”

  “Flying-fish and rain-water chiefly, I believe.”

  “Chinese are different,” Payne said. “They haven’t got the same sort of minds as we have. A white man would have gone mad.”

  “You don’t know. Depends on the man.”

  “A ship I was in ran across a strange piece of business in the Sargasso Sea,” remarked Rogerson. He was a small, studious-looking sailor, who seemed out of place in naval uniform—rather like a serious-minded reveller in fancy dress. “You know what the Sargasso is like—all that floating weed. We were steaming along the edge of it, and the weed wasn’t so thick—just chunks about two or three feet across, looking like overgrown bath-sponges, and drifting silently past. And then we saw something that wasn’t a chunk of weed at all, though at first we couldn’t tell what it was. Then when we got nearer we could see it was a raft, and the Old Man gave orders to heave to and investigate.

  “We were sailing alone, you understand; and when the screw stopped churning and we just drifted up to the raft we seemed more alone than ever. I don’t know what it is about the Sargasso, but it always makes me think of a dead world. There it is, all that weed, drifting there—Gulf weed, so I’ve heard, carried out there from the Gulf of Mexico; more and more coming out and dying. It’s like an immense graveyard; and there’s the heat and the stillness—not a breath of wind; it seems unnatural, somehow.

  “Well, there it was—this raft—a ship’s raft like we carry. And there was nobody on it.”

  “Nothing very strange in that,” said Payne. “It’d have been stranger if you’d found a dozen men waiting to be picked up.”

  “Wait a bit, though,” Rogerson said. “There wasn’t anybody on the raft; but there was something. It was wedged between two of the slats, and it was black and skinny; but you could see easily enough what it was; it was a human hand. There was nothing else on the raft—nothing at all; just that hand, broken off at the wrist and wedged between the slats.”

  “No rings on the fingers?” asked Payne.

  Rogerson frowned. “You can laugh,” he said; “but none of us felt much like laughing at the time. There’s a lot you can build up from a hand and a raft if you have the imagination; a lot that isn’t very pleasant.”

  “That’s true,” said Agnew. “You don’t know how many men there were on that raft to start with, and you don’t know how long they lasted or how long it was before they gave up hope. You don’t know how that hand came to be torn off. There may have been some bloody work on that little island. But nobody’ll know now; nobody’ll ever know. What did you do?”

  “We left it there,” Rogerson said. “We left it just as it was. It seemed a long while before it vanished out of sight. Maybe it’s still there, still floating about in the Sargasso with that hand wedged between the slats.”

  Donker knocked the ash off his cigarette and studied the draught-board. “Wonder whose hand it was,” he said.

  A Russian interpreter had come down into the mess-room. He was a young man with very thick black hair and black eyes. His English was remarkably good. He picked up a book that was lying on the table.

  “I see you read Dostoevski.”

  Vernon nodded. “I have just finished it.”

  The interpreter was an earnest young man who appeared to take himself and life very seriously. Vernon had invited him to come down into the gunners’ mess for a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

  He murmured the name of the book, The Brothers Karamazov, and put it down again. “What did you
think of it?” he asked.

  “Frankly, I don’t know that I quite understand it. It was heavy going in parts, especially at the start; but it held me later on. It held me as a nightmare would. That was how it impressed me—as a nightmare. I felt the power of the writing, but I did not altogether understand.”

  “But is that not true of all books that have any value? One does not fully understand them at once—perhaps never. And to understand Dostoevski I think it is necessary to be a Russian.”

  “Your writers are inclined to obscurity.”

  “English writers too. I am often puzzled by Dickens.”

  “Dickens! Then you read him?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But why are you puzzled? Dickens is quite straightforward.”

  “To an Englishman, perhaps; for a Russian he is not so easy to understand.”

  Vernon made coffee and handed a mug to the Russian, who sipped slowly.

  “Dostoevski suffered; he suffered deeply; that suffering found expression in his books. You have read Letters from the Underworld?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, you should. There you will find the agony of his soul —a great soul, but a tortured one. You know that he spent five years in a penal settlement in Siberia, and that once he was about to be shot, but was reprieved at the last minute?”

  “Yes, I have read about that.”

  “Such experiences affect a man’s character and have a bearing on his work. Turgenev could not have written as Dostoevski did.”

  The interpreter sipped his coffee; his eyes were dark and brooding.

  “Ah,” he said, “if only Tolstoy were alive today, how much he would have to write about—the struggle of our people against the forces of evil! If only he had seen the epic of Stalingrad! You have heard the latest news from there?”

  “No,” said Vernon, “we don’t get much news.”

  The interpreter spoke as though he were quoting a news item which he had learnt by heart.

  “Our troops are moving in for the final, crushing blow. The German armies attacking the city are trapped. It is reported that they have lost more than three hundred thousand men, including twenty generals. The Red Army has captured seven hundred aircraft, fifteen hundred tanks, six thousand guns, and sixty thousand motor vehicles. It will be difficult for the Nazis to replace such losses.”

  “They made a mistake,” said Vernon; “they made a mistake in attacking Stalingrad; it couldn’t have been as important as that; the cost was out of proportion. But I don’t think Germany is beaten yet.”

  “It will not be long,” said the interpreter. “It will all be over very soon.”

  “It can’t be over too soon for me. I wish it would end before we have to go back.”

  The interpreter looked sharply at Vernon. “It is, then, so bad out there beyond the river-mouth?”

  “Bad enough. It’s no pleasure-trip.”

  “I have heard so. It is not easy for you. I expect you are glad when you meet our warships and our aircraft half-way.”

  Vernon stared. “Do you mind saying that again?”

  “I said, you are glad to see the warships we send to meet your convoys.”

  Vernon laughed. “Somebody’s been telling you fairy-stories. The only warships out there are British and German ones—apart from an odd Pole or Norwegian.”

  The Russian stiffened, and his face darkened. “That cannot be true,” he said. “You forget our North Fleet.”

  Vernon did not pursue the subject; it seemed hardly worth a quarrel; but it showed where propaganda led you. The Arctic convoys would be in a poor way if they had to rely on Russian escorts. And as for Russian aircraft, why, you never saw any of them until you were practically in Kola Bay.

  He began speaking of other things; but he could see that the interpreter was offended, resenting the slight upon the Russian naval forces. Soon the man got to his feet, thanked Vernon formally for the coffee and cigarettes, and took his leave.

  Payne guffawed. “Well, what d’you think of that? North Fleet! You know what it is—half a dozen motor-boats which only go down the river when there’s an air-raid on Murmansk. Meet us half-way! Oh, dear, what next?”

  Vernon let the book fall from his hands and lay on his back, staring at the bunk above his own. From the deck he could hear the intermittent clatter of steam winches, and from closer at hand the sound of Warby scraping burnt toast. Always Warby seemed to be making toast; always the winches clattered overhead; and always the stove poured soot into the fuggy atmosphere of the cabin. Everywhere there was soot; blankets were no longer white, but a dirty grey; clothes carried their load of grime; dirt was ingrained into the skin and seemed to be there permanently, never again to be got out. On everything in the cabin, on bunks, on books, on shelves, on men, soot had laid its grimy finger, smearing them all, as though in anticipation, with the mark of the grave.

  Vernon picked up his book and began to read again. He read:

  What wondrous life is this I lead!

  Ripe apples drop about my head;

  The luscious clusters of the vine

  Upon my mouth do crush their wine;

  The nectarine, and curious peach,

  Into my hands themselves do reach;

  Stumbling on melons, as I pass,

  Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass….

  Vernon took his eyes away from the words of Andrew Marvell, and saw the bulkhead covered with moisture like great drops of filthy sweat; he passed his fingers through his hair and felt the grittiness of coal-dust; he saw a pair of sea-boot stockings hanging from Payne’s bunk and smelling of Payne’s feet; and he heard the heavy thud of some piece of cargo bumping against the side of the hatch as it was drawn up from the hold.

  “What a bloody life!” he muttered.

  “It’s the first ten years that’s the worst,” said Warby.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tinsel

  THEY were the first slaves that Andrews had seen. The interpreter called them political prisoners, saboteurs, enemies of the people; but whatever name you gave them they were still slaves. They came shuffling down to the ships under an armed guard, trudging wearily through the churned snow; they came in a long, drab column, ragged, dirty, without hope and without joy, waiting for the old turnkey, Death, to release them. They were hungry, tired, and silent; they were men turned into animals, dumb beasts of burden. And they were like a blight falling upon the Golden Ray, a dark dew of misery.

  Andrews watched them coming up the gangway; he watched them taking off the hatch-covers; he watched them clambering down into the hold; and he thought of zombies—the living dead. They had the same drawn, earthy faces, the same expressionless eyes, the same slow, robot-like movements. The dock crane lowered a net into the hold, and they filled the net, awkwardly, inexpertly. Then the crane lifted the net from the hold, and they began filling another. So it went on; and on the snowbound, icy deck a Russian soldier lounged with slung rifle—the servant of a vast political machine.

  “There,” said Andrews to Miller; “there’s Communism for you. They look happy, don’t they? This is the bright Utopia you’re always preaching about.”

  “There’s prisoners in England,” Miller said. “They break stones on Dartmoor. This is more sense; this is useful work.”

  But after dinner Miller had something to think about, something to turn over in his mind, trying to find an answer.

  Andrews called to him to come up on deck, and he went, wondering what Andrews wanted. Up the iron ladder they went and out into the open.

  “This way,” Andrews said, drawing Miller towards the forward end of the poop, from which they could look down upon the main deck. “See that?”

  Miller looked in the direction in which Andrews was pointing and saw the Russians at work on number four hold. But that was not all he saw. A large packing-case had been dumped on the deck, and behind this screen Miller noticed that a man was hiding. He was crouched upon his haunches, picking something f
rom a bucket with his bare hands, and stuffing this something into his mouth. He ate as a man will who has long been starving, regardless of what it is he eats, so long as it may serve to fill the aching hollows of his stomach. Yet the man was fearful; frequently he would glance over his shoulder to see whether he was observed; then he would go on eating.

  “You see what it is he’s making a meal of?” said Andrews.

  “What?” asked Miller.

  “Our swill,” said Andrews. “That’s our gash-bucket he’s tucking into; there’s tea-leaves and all sorts of filth in there. Shouldn’t reckon the poor devil is overfed, would you?”

  Miller said nothing, because he could think of nothing to say. He watched the man eating, and thought that he had never seen a human being swallow food so ravenously. He put Miller in mind of a stray mongrel dog foraging among dustbins; and he had the same furtive, frightened air.

  “The guard’s seen him,” Andrews said. “What happens now?”

  The guard saw the prisoner, and the prisoner saw the guard at the same moment. The prisoner straightened up from the bucket and backed against the packing-case. In his right hand he still held a chop-bone; down his black, stubbly chin saliva had dribbled. He backed against the case, staring at the guard; and his hand, still clutching the bone, came up involuntarily, as though to shield his meagre body. Miller and Andrews could hear no word, either from the prisoner or from the guard, for the steam winches were clattering and the air was full of overpowering noise; they could only look down and watch what was taking place.

  Suddenly the guard kicked the prisoner; he kicked him in the lower part of the stomach; and as the man doubled up in pain the guard struck him on the side of the head with the butt of his rifle. The prisoner staggered back, and the guard struck him a second time. Blood began to trickle down from the man’s ear.

  The guard’s lips were moving, but what he said was inaudible to the two watchers above; it was like a drama enacted in dumb show. But the prisoner heard and began moving towards the hatch. As he went the guard kicked him again; he kicked him persistently until the wretched fellow disappeared over the coaming. And as he went down into the hold Miller saw that he still clutched the bone in his right hand.