Consequently I sit here, trying to mend an old turtle and deciding to be nice to a mad dog while I wait for Louise. I have written her a letter and asked Omar to mail it to the strange oasis. Not even he knows where it is. Other than that I spend my time trying to find myself.
AUSTRALIA
1962
Every day the German fixed his pale eyes on mine and asked if I had spoken about Cape Town. And every day I told him that I had not. The same thing happened today. Again he did not believe me, spat into the dirty, yellowish water, and told me that, in his opinion, little turds like me would not be able to swim across the harbor basin, if one day I happened to lose my balance and fall into it.
I replied that I had actually qualified for the Sharks. Only two out of ten managed that at the swim club’s first tests for seven-year-olds. The rest ended up with the Sticklebacks. That was an outright lie, but he couldn’t know that. We were tramping a Swedish ship deck and nobody there had kept a written record of my pitiful Stickleback existence, shameful and long ago as it was. I was now seventeen years old, not seven. And Sweden existed somewhere on the other side of the globe. Furthermore, Cape Town would remain a secret between me and the German. We were not going past it anyhow. The trip home would be through the Suez Channel. So why did he keep nagging me about the past?
We had headed into Gulf St. Vincent and were safely moored in North Haven’s outer harbor. Beyond the smoking, flat, tongue-shaped land, the dry brushwood, and the metal sheds smoldering in the heat lay Port Adelaide. Farther on, the city of Adelaide was supposed to exist. To me that was nothing but hearsay. Exactly as the rest of Australia’s ports, by the way. Judging by North Haven, we had come to the end of the world. That was an opinion the captain shared loudly with the agent who delivered the message about a dockworkers’ strike that had brought all work to a complete standstill. In North Haven we would stop, and in North Haven we were stopped. A place where nobody came and nobody went voluntarily.
We were kept immobile by mooring gear at the quay, the gangway plank was down, but the city and the whole immense Australian continent turned their backs to us at the last minute. Everybody aboard, except me, was tired of the country and had counted on loading quickly, casting off, and slipping away over the meridians and on home. The crew sighed and whimpered hypocritically, as always. Everybody wanted to leave, get moving. Such is the sailor’s lot and such desire burns like a poison in his blood. But Port Adelaide on Saturday night wasn’t too shabby. Old Sweden could wait. Come sing me a song.
In front of us was the ugliest ship I have ever laid eyes on. It came from Jidda and was built to carry live sheep from Australia to the Muslims, who neither butchered sheep nor transported them frozen. Something to do with their religion. A short distance above the wa-terline, the ship looked like a gigantic open steel cage. Inside that cage were rows of smaller cages, filling deck after deck with tightly packed sheep. The animals couldn’t move. They stank in the scorching heat and at times made such weird noises that many of us aboard at the approach to the port of call felt the chill of an alien horror sweep along the spine.
The strange dockworkers’ strike that nobody could explain kept this sheep-filled ship tied up at the dock.
That is how things stood when the German came over to the bulwark and made his remark about my inability to swim across the basin. Defiantly, I had thrown one leg over the rail in order to jump into the water and swim clear across to the other side of the long, curved pier toward Gulf St. Vincent, when he tugged on my arm and pointed out toward the bluish ocean swells. A dead sheep was floating, so swollen it seemed almost alive. The head stuck up out of the water and nodded in the ground swells.
“One can trace that coffin all the way to Jidda. The sheep are already dying,” said the German.
He grinned stiffly and spat toward the sheep.
“If it weren’t for one thing. The sharks. Sooner or later the sharks come.”
If he meant to scare me, he succeeded.
I understood clearly that I ought not to swim across the harbor inlet nor go out alone on deck in the dark. The German distrusted me and was prepared to throw me overboard. Less than two months ago, he had been like a father to me, checked to see if I had washed behind my ears, threw my underwear in a pail to soak, taught me ten German words a day, preached cleanliness, hard work, and everything in its place.
Leisure time had its place.
He also planned to teach me that. When we arrived in Cape Town.
Nothing turned out the way I had expected. There is nothing to tell. I had taken my punishment and expiated his crime — completely voluntarily, since it could not be overlooked that it was mine, too. As I had assured the German.
He, however, was a man who did not want to lose face, not even in front of a little stickleback like me. I recognized those strange drumbeats in my stomach. Thump thump. God, his pain only kept growing; he couldn’t forget. But did he have to wish me dead because of that?
To him I was clearly of no more value than the sheep bobbing out there. I thought of something reassuring to say, something along the lines that we were in the same boat, but I didn’t get further than a few staccato sounds because suddenly the water around the dead sheep foamed. The animal disappeared quicker than I could say “shark.” Or perhaps I said “shock.” And that with my mouth wide open! I stared and blinked in astonishment. No shark fin, no advance warning, just the boiling foam. I sat with one leg up and both hands grimly locked around the sun-warmed, salt-spattered railing. My right leg felt heavy as lead and melted down toward the surface of the water. The piece of steel I held on to was my most valued possession. The welder would have to pry me away from it.
“A big son of a bitch,” said the German and left.
Help! I wanted to holler the word, but it sounded as if emitted by a wretched cat in a much too tall tree.
Why do I always feel compelled to make myself conspicuous? It’s as if I have a magnetic ability to adhere to life’s exaggerations. In only seventeen years of life, I had done enough to qualify for a rest home. As early as age twelve, I dreamed of being taken care of in an old folks’ home. But even there I’d attract trouble. Probably wet the mattress until it would have to be thrown out. During this process, the one carrying the smelly evidence would stumble, fall down the stairs, and break his neck. To die weighed down with guilt seems to be my heritage.
I had to agree with the first mate: The population of Australia ought not to be burdened with the likes of me, even though I hungered for a glimpse of those black, small, quirky creatures who threw boomerangs against boxing kangaroos.
“Sure. You’ll go ashore when kangaroos turn into camels,” said the first mate.
A certain amount of bitterness and meanness mingled with my thoughts of the first mate. Then I had to laugh. He had been on a diet during the trip down here. His five-foot-five frame weighed around a hundred and forty-five pounds to begin with. Now he was down to a hundred and twenty-five. A vain, rather good-looking little dandy with American work gloves made of yellow pigskin. Blue eyes with an intense shine beneath inky black hair. A workaholic, generally doing things he had no business doing.
Whoever saw a first mate working with a rust hammer?
It made us sailors uncomfortable, and gave us the feeling that we ought to give him a hand. I believe that may be what is called moral superiority. He took one look at me and immediately put me in sail-sewing class during the watch. While the immense ocean mirrored the light of dawn, my fingertips were sore and bleeding. Now and then the first mate came out on the bridge wing to inspect. He tapped dots and dashes with his smoking pipe and urged me to learn the Morse code right away. That’s how he was: It wasn’t enough that I was stitching stiff, old, crumbled sailcloth, I should also learn the Morse code at the same time.
“Bon voyage,” he tapped.
A really pleasant trip.
I and several of my shipmates suppressed hearty laughter when he climbed up the foremast to in
spect. He inspected everything. In his short khaki pants, his yellow pigskin gloves, and his bone white uniform cap, he climbed upward, newly thin and quick as a small monkey. A few yards up, the wind took hold of his loose skin. See, there had been some skin left over. He looked as if he ran around inside himself. One bag of skin was close to blowing off. His monumental vanity did the rest when he saw his own fluttering upper body. With as much elegance as he could muster, he slid down. The inspection would have to wait.
I grinned. Others did too.
I let out an evil chuckle. Forty-five years of age meant that he was terribly debilitated. Why didn’t he leave vanity to the young? For him it was too late, but we who were in our youths should love our bodies, I thought with steely fingers on the rail.
Besides — had I not just regained my life?
A life that nearly fell overboard when somebody bestowed a manly slap on my back.
Naturally the slapper was the first mate. He uttered brief, rapid orders about rust removal and painting of the ship’s outside together with seaman Svenson on the raft. If I did a good job, I would get Sunday off. Otherwise there would be overtime. He would make me work so long and so hard that I wouldn’t even be able to crawl ashore.
Gloomily I contemplated the raft, lying on the deck.
Was it sturdy enough to stop that giant shark lurking in the harbor?
A painting raft consists of a wooden platform and a framed structure of planks around four oil kegs. To give stability, the oil kegs are half filled with water. In order to work on the raft, one stands three inches from the water surface on old, worn planks, hammering and scraping away spots of rust, red-leading the surface, and then painting the enormous exterior with gray outdoor paint, pulling oneself forward by the long mooring lines. An endless job for two men, and nowhere to hide. The first mate was a guaranteed frequent visitor by the rail to inspect and tap his “bon voyage!”
For the moment, however, he had disappeared and left me with Svenson and the grinning German, who had already started up to the winches. There is an unwritten law that only able-bodied seamen, occasionally an ordinary seaman, crank the winch. Svenson and I fastened the hook with its clanking chain to the slings of the raft, pulled the bar over the rail and as far as possible over the raft. It’s far from easy to handle a winch. Even experienced men can drop a sling on the dock, especially if it happens to be a case of Swedish export beer being unloaded right before lunch. Under such circumstances, a veteran longshoreman may easily have a little mishap.
So what could not a hostile seaman drop into the harbor basin, I thought with sinking heart as I stepped onto the raft to follow on down and undo the hook. Svenson was only a year older than I. That’s why he took his position and duty as superior being totally seriously. He waved and directed the German’s maneuvers with the winch so pompously that someone lacking experience would have thought he was the world’s foremost hoisting supervisor. I myself saw his contradictory signals as yet another seal of fate. There was no doubt anymore: I was being prepared for a shark’s supper.
The raft swung with dizzying speed over the rail. We broke toward the filthy, yellowish water while I hollered to Svenson to make the German slow down. But no, the raft hit the water with awesome force. I had no time to grab hold of the looped slings. Here goes the next sheep! I thought as I made contact with the water and swallowed enough of it to drown both my cries for help and Svenson’s roaring laughter. To him it was an innocent joke on the part of the German. Meanwhile, I broke every speed record in crawling up on the raft. I lay on my stomach and coughed over the raft’s edge, straight down into the eye of a shark. The shark rolled over, leisurely turning its belly toward me, and was gone without even touching the raft ever so slightly. An elegant exhibition put on before a hypnotized stickleback. I inched closer to the surface of the water and even dipped the tip of my nose into the water in order to see better. The visibility was a little over a yard. The shark was swimming toward me, again with the same gracious, rapid turn.
Or perhaps there were two sharks?
For the moment, I had to leave that question unanswered. Because it was not I who was inching closer to the water surface with the tip of my nose. The raft was about to tip over! And I slid down into the water again!
The German must have dozed off at the winch. The heavy hook with its chain cable kept flowing and pulled the raft along. I was back in the water but now underneath the raft and totally helpless, like a floundering morsel for a couple of ravenous sharks. Two immense shadows moved toward me at full speed while I hit my head against the raft and, from below, tried to claw my way right through the planks.
The sharks must have shared my confusion. Everything was total and absolute chaos. They glided past and took off, obviously not crazy about the idea of going under the raft. To get back up, I would have to let go, dive, and perhaps encounter the sharks during their next turn. My lungs were ready to explode, but I know that I hollered at the top of my voice underwater. Now or never. I pushed off and managed to complete the necessary arch below the water in order to heave myself back up on the raft.
The first sound bouncing against my eardrums was the first mate’s voice, as he bellowed less than politely phrased questions about what I was doing. He thought me the only one who could do something so stupid as turning over a painting raft. I had neither time nor strength to defend myself. Completely spent, I happily counted the number of arms and legs. Miracle of miracles, everything was still there, exactly as before.
But this blissful math lesson did not last. I heard the first mate ordering us to bring the painting raft up on the deck. Such a maneuver would put me back into the water since the raft turned right-side up when the hook was raised. And this time the raft would continue through the air without me.
By now I was desperate enough to grab hold of the chain as it clattered by the edge of the raft. It burned and smarted the palms of my hands, but I clung to it, tightly, staying above the raft as it turned right-side up. I flew up in the air and didn’t let go until we finally swung in over the rail. Wet and miserable, yes, but my lungs were strong enough to draw the crew’s attention when I howled my news about the sharks.
Unfortunately for my credibility, those beasts had disappeared altogether.
Perhaps they had gulped down a can of red lead each and gone off to digest such potent soup. If so, they’d be rustproof for a long, long time. Of course, their reluctance to be seen translated unfavorably for me. They were thought to exist only in my imagination. Svenson had not seen any sharks and said that the German had not handled the winch according to given signals. The German just grinned menacingly.
“That’s what happens when you take crybabies aboard,” he muttered.
With my shipmates’ laughter ringing in my ears, I was told to put the raft back in order and, together with seaman Svenson, begin our neglected chore, quick as lightning.
I swallowed. I’d get my revenge. But how?
In everybody’s eyes I was nothing but a wet turd who had made a fool of himself one more time.
To change my clothes, a pair of cutoff jeans and a torn shirt, would be futile. Determinedly, I nailed a couple of extra planks below the raft to make it stronger. This way it had as good a deck on the bottom as on top. I also put cross planks along the sides, and would probably have continued to work with hammer and nails until this day, had there been enough planks.
My reinforcements made the raft float higher, as we discovered when we were lowered, amid loud cheers and stupid jokes about the preferred diet of sharks.
The raft wobbled with an unpleasant smacking sound every time we moved. It sounded slippery and ill-omened, but Svenson, who was all set to do Port Adelaide in the evening, joked and rocked the raft, pretending to keep an eager lookout for my imaginary sharks as he spoke glibly about women making the same smacking sound as the raft. But did I not see a glimmer of real caution and even fear in his round, slightly protruding eyes? Or was it just his regular pain fla
pping in there? Just a year older than I and already closely acquainted with alcohol, he had the kind of soft roundness that soon develops into flabby fat. In his eyes resided permanent spots of pain behind a dull grayness of disgust — as from a lighthouse before it breaks down and goes out completely. His sharks lived in his stomach. They would tear him to pieces one day; they were lying in wait.
Or could it be my own unnatural fear of alcohol that I read in his eyes?
When the sharks came toward me, I experienced paralyzing terror. When alcohol ran down the throats of human beings, I also felt a kind of terror. It began as a hollow, hopeless despair that grew into hate and disgust toward the slaves of the bottle.
Why? That’s another story.
I kept my mouth shut and began the monotonous work with the rust hammer. Svenson followed me with scrape and red lead. The sun’s heavy bolts beat on my neck. As the sun rose higher and higher, the rust-spotted gray metal of the ship’s outside blazed with broiling heat.
A dancing luminosity shimmered in front of our eyes —? and the rhythm of the hammer and scrape diminished like a weakened pulse. But at the very moment when the tediousness was at its most devastating point, I, as usual, ended up in the grip of absurd obsession. The rust spots had to be conquered, the surfaces ruled over, the sweat should flow.
That’s how it is with work for me. It grows suddenly inside me like infatuation. Even the mindless pounding with a rust hammer against a ship’s side awakens an excitement inside me. By forcing myself on the huge, dead, ugly iron, I change it. We grow together, the iron and I. We respect each other. There is enormous strength in a ship’s surface. All that metal could defeat me. But I’m young and strong, and I happily let beads of perspiration run like chilly mops over stomach and back. It’s a matter of finding the perfect balance, the ideal rhythm. Finally the iron and I become equals in strength. I solder my life into it and it returns hard energy.
My Father, His Son Page 3
