“Because inside are the three opals I had in my hand when Allen was going to help me get out of the mine. I fell. Since then I’ve been unable to walk. He didn’t dare to ask why I wanted to get back into the daylight so quickly. There are three of them, big as eggs. And they are mine!”
Else laughed and rocked the canister in her arms. Allen could gamble away his pebbles, but this fortune was hers to keep. Until one day …
That day seemed far away without a passport. Australia’s passport police is harder than stone. We discussed the matter back and forth. She was inexorably stuck. What could we do? Go to the police? Find a lawyer? Sell the opals? If they were that large, rumors would start up and the truth would become known. A poor wheelchair-bound woman who becomes a millionairess is hard to hide. She would be a choice tidbit for all of Australia’s tabloids. Allen would demand his share. A worthwhile trade in order to gain freedom. But no, Else did not want to let go of her stones.
“In Genoa, one can sell opals. And buy traveling papers really easily,” I said without thinking.
The matter was settled anyhow.
It was so settled that nothing more needed to be said.
Else held the canister close to her breasts when I picked her up. A small distance from the camp, my own surprise went to sleep. I had not taken advantage of the poor woman’s dilemma. And Else did not need to buy her freedom from me. But later … with her hidden in my cabin as a stowaway, we would have time to get to know each other. One day she would give me a sign. It could be the day we crossed the equator! What a wonderful christening, compared to mine the first time across. A mermaid, that’s what she was. I promised myself not to hesitate another time.
It was past midnight. The first mate would be standing there, waiting. Wouldn’t he be surprised when I returned, carrying a Swedish girl from a good family in my arms?
Meanwhile, I had not the faintest idea how I would get Else aboard the ship. If her plan was an old leaky barge, mine was ready for the ships’ graveyard. But I could always trust luck. Within the last twenty-four hours, I had received my life back more than once. And I did not lack courage. Sharks and first mates, jealousy and madmen, what did all that mean compared to washing a woman such as Else?
I parked the truck a small distance from the port, pulled off the wheelchair, and lifted her down. By now we were like old partners in a routine criminal task. In silent collusion we moved forward, Else on whirring rubber wheels and I behind the chair. My head could as well have been a hollowed-out pumpkin. Fresh air blew right through it, and I did everything with good steering speed and precision.
The first mate stood stock-still by the gangway. That touched my heart. I parked Else behind some bales and hurried over to him. Boldly, I blew my breath toward his suspicious, sniffing nose. The smell of the green juice drink enveloped us like a cloud of sweet perfume. His surly grimace turned into a fatherly grin. I was stone sober. But what had transpired at the front?
I entertained him for a while, telling about my waiting at his recommended spot until late in the evening. Then an old cleaning woman came to do her thing. The beautiful and alluring females? On Sundays they go to church. Then it’s time for Sunday roast. Grilled kangaroo tail. But on Mondays, they all return, as impious and round-heeled as always. Could it really be true? The thing about the kangaroo tail?
The first mate’s eyes filled with tears. In other words, I was an innocent boy. For my own good, I ought never to go ashore but stay aboard ship and knock rust. I understood how to do that. That I understood nothing else should not give me any sleepless nights. There are few universally talented men. And every first mate has not as much consideration and care for an unimportant louse called a deck boy. But perhaps there weren’t that many truly innocent boys left on the seas? Now he had seen such a one with his own eyes and could get his well-earned rest. We were touchingly in agreement and said good night as bosom buddies.
I looked after him. There my own truth went to bed, never to awaken again. He wasn’t a bad sort, the first mate. It was uncomfortable to lie to him. I was a miserable, wretched human being. Inside me existed nothing but bottomless lies. I whispered my hope that the first mate might rest in peace for quite a while.
I, on the other hand, had a lot to do.
Quick as a river rat, I whipped back down to Else as soon as the coast was clear. I pulled my troubled friend out of the wheelchair and heaved her up on my back. Now or never. With legs moving faster than beating sticks on a drum, I ran up the gangway and further astern, while I silently chanted phony explanations for my burden in case somebody would ask any idiotic questions.
“Just a girl from a good family.”
It was brave in all its simplicity. Of course, one may think that a girl from a really good family would not set foot on a ship’s deck. A lot of loose rubbish, not to mention what was welded in place, seemed made to order for damage to family girls’ tender extremities.
Outside the bosun’s porthole, I shook with laughter. I practically went on all fours beneath it with Else on my back. The bosun was talking in his sleep.
“Catch that shark!” he hollered.
The clear pronunciation meant that he wore his false teeth when he slept. What good did they do? Perhaps his tongue would fall down his throat and suffocate him otherwise? That was a piece of information worth looking into.
I deposited Else on the only chair in my cabin.
We were bickering like an old married couple when I told her why I had laughed. She did not find it amusing. She was angry and embarrassed. Of course both of us were scared. She pulled herself up and hissed, the way people do in real marriages. I beamed. We were indeed growing closer. A few weeks aboard the ship, and we would be a true couple.
We argued about the wheelchair. I refused to carry it aboard. Better to roll it off the pier.
“It may float,” I said. “Tired of your life, you have given yourself to the sharks. It lies there as a warning sign to Allen, something to think about alone in his hole.”
“But you were the one who wheeled me out of the hotel,” she pointed out.
She was right, of course. To rot in prison was not my goal in life. Or perhaps they went so far as to hang people in Australia?
So why argue?
I was catching my breath to deliver the next argument when the same thought hit her. She smiled and asked my forgiveness. The excitement, the heat, the feeling of safety — I don’t know what, but suddenly we were like two empty sacks of flour, falling against each other. She was both heavy and light. Her chin rested against my collarbone. She raised and lowered her arms, and the dress draped itself around her feet. She kept her balance by leaning against me while I tore off my shirt. I felt her breasts, and her breath was warm and alive.
The next moment, there were loud hangings and reverberating knocks on the door.
Instead of putting her softly and carefully in the berth, I threw her in and pulled the curtain. The privacy of even a deck boy’s cabin is supposed to be respected. I had to open the door, but to let anyone over the threshold was unthinkable. Not even the captain had any business in the cabin, other than to inspect after cleanup in the forecastle, and such inspections were not carried out in the middle of a night between Sunday and Monday.
I opened the door to utter a few well-chosen words but was instead blinded by a roaring pain in my head. Exactly in the spot where the corpulent cop hit me with his revolver. Red flames danced in front of my eyes. The Southern firmament could not compete with the stars I saw glowing in the orb of my head. But they paled at the sight of the crowd in the corridor. There stood the man who owned the hole in the wall, the cabdriver, the suspicious bartender from the hotel, looking like at least a cousin of the first; there stood the first mate and there stood a tall, brawny man who looked ferocious. For once, I am not exaggerating. It had to be Allen. All of them pointed at me and hollered in unison that I was the one!
“Who else would I be?” I asked, trying to sound sleepy
.
But the game was lost. The cop drove the revolver up my nose in spite of the first mate’s quiet remark that the ship was Swedish territory and that the crew was under Swedish jurisdiction. Even if it hurt to nod with a revolver up my nose, I agreed with him.
“Kidnapping topped off by murder knows no limits,” hissed Allen. “You perverted turd! What did you do to her before you threw her off the pier?!”
There was only one thing to do. To deny everything.
“She jumped in by herself!” I cried out.
That was a rather stupid thing to say about a woman in a wheelchair. But with a revolver in the nostril, one thinks of the strangest things to say.
I was ready to swear that I was innocent, when a chilling female howl made everyone freeze. Nude and whiter than I remembered her, Else flew out of the berth. To everybody’s amazement, she ran like a gazelle past the group of perplexed men.
The cop stared stupidly into the muzzle of the revolver. Either he was looking for what had been in my nose or else he was pleading with the bullet to choose its own direction. Allen’s eyes were bursting out of their sockets.
“See for yourselves,” I said. “She went on her own.”
I made a mental note to remember that line. Evidently I would become famous all over the world, since I had performed a miracle. The closest my family had come to medical wonders was when my grandfather was operated on by the world-famous surgeon Professor Crawford. Grandpa let himself be known as the Crawford Aorta Constriction. Now I would be famous because my healing love for Else had actually made her stand up and walk.
Allen, however, wanted revenge. I should be shot on the spot, like a dog. He threw himself on the cop and wrested the revolver from him much too easily. To stay there and act the target would be not only stupid but dangerous to my life. I made a wild break, similar to Else’s, and was out on deck almost faster than she.
What had happened to her?
How come she could run, fleet-footed as a hind?
To receive an answer to these questions this side of death seemed unlikely because right then the first bullet bounced off the sill of the fifth hatch. The midship aisle was straight and illuminated like a shooting gallery in an amusement park. Ten yards more and I would literally die in the middle of a leap, as my uncle did when he was goalie for the glass factory’s soccer team. He was never really good at it. He always died in the middle of a leap, the old sports veterans said.
This was no time, however, to think of those near and dear.
I ran past the place where the painting raft ought to have been. It wasn’t there. Otherwise I could have thrown myself behind it. And the rope ladders up to the boat deck were bathed in light. Allen’s mad shrieks were closing in behind me, closely followed by yet another bullet that crackled into the midship structure. It was sufficient incentive to speed up my brain’s decisive faculty.
I jumped overboard.
Even in such a robust construction as an oceangoing modern freighter, there is something called the exhaustion phenomenon. A gigantic ship can split along the welding seams, an enormous wave can rip the ship in two and sink it in ten seconds. Unfortunately, those who have experienced this phenomenon cannot tell us how it feels, since they are no longer among us. But I can imagine the experience vividly. It’s exactly as if you for a moment are sure of having found the perfect hiding place from whizzing bullets — and in the next moment you reflect that nobody is stupid enough to jump into a harbor basin crawling with sharks. Only to discover yourself to be that stupid.
Among human traits there is a specific one: the attempt to do the impossible, such as to nullify the law of gravity or climb in the air. “Nothing is impossible. The impossible just takes a little longer,” was my competent first mate’s spirited motto. I would have liked to ask him what one does when there is no time to take a little longer. Does one tap the SOS against God’s benevolent forehead? And what is the correct response if He taps “bon voyage” back? How many times have I not heard my grandmother talk about those who were not destined to live to a ripe old age. Perhaps I turned out to be one of those.
No! Not on your life!
I landed in the water with a splash, determined to keep on living, even if I had to bite off shark fins with my young, strong teeth.
An enormous splash too close to me interrupted such galloping plans. It was Allen. He had jumped in after me, determined to drown me. He was snorting and hitting wildly all around. I was nearly paralyzed but kept floating like a sour old piece of wood. I didn’t dare move. With tiny, cautious hand movements, I kept my nose above the surface of the water and steered away from Else’s murderous Allen, moving smoothly along the ship’s hull. Its surface felt like rough, slimy skin to the touch. Allen had the same idea, of course. He treaded water a few yards away and listened. I moved along, my nails digging into the ship’s metal, pulled at some seaweed, and got scratched by tiny shells, while the crew kept shouting up on deck. Everybody was awake by now. Presently they rearranged the floodlights. Thanks a whole heap! To be drowned mate to lash the bandage in place. The bosun grabbed hold of an iron bar that happened to be lying around. That way they got leverage to tie the cloth tightly against the leg stumps.
Allen was quiet. He had fainted long ago. Soon he was carried across the deck to the ship’s other side. The cop ran ahead. I wanted to call out and recommend that they use the truck but was struck silent by the sight of bloody bone pipes beneath Allen’s thighs. I closed my eyes. It’s possible that I fainted.
When I came to, my old enemy Svenson was sitting on the raft, sobbing loudly. The bosun bawled him out, but the German defended him, saying that unreliable scum like me would probably just poison the sharks and reappear as pestiferous seaweed during the trip home.
No, better to be dead than having to clear up the mess I had managed to make of everything. I was beginning to feel that it wasn’t so bad to be dead since I was still alive. To get involved in their discussion from the other side of life seemed not only stupid but meaningless. The German’s earlier threats rose in my ears like rancid old seawater. Let bygones be bygones, I thought — and by that I was referring to myself.
But why was seaman Svenson so unhappy?
I peered through the fissures when the bosun and the German left.
What I saw made the blood freeze in my veins. For a few seconds I’m sure that I was really dead, had anyone bothered to check the matter. Svenson was sitting with an enormous shark head over his shoulders, trying the jaws against his throat. Inside it, he mumbled thickly how intensely painful it must be when it happened for real. Now I understood the bosun’s excited speech. Clearly, the crew had managed to catch a shark. That was why the raft had been left outside the ship. Svenson had put the head of the shark at the foot of my berth to get back at me. And Else must have put her feet into the jaws and been so frightened that she had run away in spite of not being able to walk.
Just like me, Svenson had quite a bit on his conscience.
Obviously my power to heal was nothing compared to a couple of slimy shark jaws. As my grandmother used to say, “To do magic is all right, but to be proud of it is destructive.”
My spirits were low. But that was nothing compared to Svenson’s genuine sorrow. He sat there for so long, snuffling and clicking the shark’s jaws, that I was almost ready to tell him that things could be worse. For instance, he could have been me.
Finally he left me alone to ponder my fate.
Even dead, I had to depend on the laws ruling life on earth. The first thing was to get away from the raft and hide in a safer place until I could be resurrected. Once we were far away from the dangerous land of Australia, I could jump out. Who knows? The first mate may even be glad to see me.
A piece of advice to anyone who plans to hide in a lifeboat: Bring along a flashlight. I tried to open a tin of canned goods and broke my nails in the process. When I finally put its whole contents into my mouth, it turned out to be a fishing line with quadruple
hook and float. I spent many a sweaty hour trying to ease the hook out of my gap. It wasn’t fun at all.
The days passed. And the nights arrived with regular intervals. It was the worst strike in the history of Australian dockworkers, which is saying a lot. I had no concept of time, but I believe that we remained anchored four weeks more. Little by little, I was able to plan and execute small thieving expeditions during nightly hours and managed rather well in the lifeboat. After a while I became brave enough to use the commander’s toilet. It was quite luxurious. In the afternoons, he sat under the lifeboat and conversed with the beer mug on his stomach. One thing he could not understand: Why did he seem to keep forgetting to flush the toilet nowadays? I could have called out to him that flushing would have awakened him.
I spent most of the time thinking about Else. I came to no conclusion. That is a recurrent problem in my life.
After a considerable number of days, the loading began. It went fast. One morning I awoke, feeling vibrations in the lifeboat. The main engine was alive and running. We were finally leaving Port Adelaide. We were going home. I rejoiced and peered out under the cover of the lifeboat. Exactly as I thought. The hatches were all closed. Ready to sail. I felt almost like waving farewell from the lifeboat but quickly pulled back my hand. Right in front of my nose was Allen, moving past in Else’s old wheelchair. As soft and neatly as if on clouds with springs, the German with the help of winches lifted him up through the air and aboard, in spite of Allen’s rantings and ravings while he waved the small leg stumps.
Else’s voice reached my ears from the gangway. It sounded sure and happy.
What was this? What were they doing aboard the ship?
The captain’s stentorian voice explained the whole thing.
“It’s the least we can do!”
Aaaah! My sins paid for their tickets. All guilt and blame had conveniently been placed on the dead one. I felt like resurrecting myself on the spot in order to speak a few words of truth regarding Else’s part in our disastrous plan. She was the one, wasn’t she, who had seduced a poor innocent boy? No, I had to be careful with Allen aboard the ship. Who knew what he kept beneath the wheelchair plaid? Perhaps a sawed-off shotgun, perhaps a knife meant to nail and carve ghosts out of deck boys. I argued back and forth with myself a few rocky days while our ship set off at full speed for the Red Sea.
My Father, His Son Page 7
