My Father, His Son

by Reidar Jonsson

  “Whatever you do, do it at home,” Ollie was always fond of saying.

  It was on such a day in the attic, one year later, that I heard her voice outside. If she had guessed what I was doing, she had decided to leave me alone in the attic. Peering through the small window, I saw two men standing beside her. They were inquiring why I had not been attending school. Poor Ollie, she was in despair. I suggested that she falsify my father’s signature and offered to get my sailor’s papers and go to sea rather than dishonor her. It seemed meaningless to go to school in order to become something. Better I went to sea to acquire a somewhat childish nature, like my uncle. A couple of years of being rocked by ocean waves would make me a new and better human being.

  Remembering my cooking classes at school as being fun, I decided to sign on a ship as a cook’s apprentice. It gave one a feeling of security to know how to cook one’s own food, prepare the sauces, and take care of oneself.

  It seemed acceptable at the seamen’s agency. Ollie decided to help in my new life, and we bought half a dozen checkered cook’s pants. I paraded proudly around the house in my new pants until my assignment arrived.

  Ollie insisted on driving me. She went as far as to follow me aboard the ship, introducing herself, asking questions about cleanliness and hidden dangers, telling everyone that she knew the lay of the land at sea. She was married to a seasoned deep-sea sailor, and I was the son and heir to that wonder of a man. The whole thing was terribly embarrassing. Such motherly concern was new to me. With mixed feelings, I waved good-bye to Ollie. I would deal with the suppressed laughter aboard later.

  A storm of raw laughter greeted me as I stepped out on deck in my checkered cook’s pants, asking the whereabouts of the cook’s domains. I had been signed on as unseasoned seaman and not as cook’s boy, because such a position did not exist at all, I was told, except on passenger ships.

  The crew would probably have laughed me over the railing and down into the North Sea, on which we were already rocking, had the boatswain not taken me under his wing.

  “Leave the lad alone,” Bengtsson said.

  Boatswain Bengtsson was from the Swedish west coast. He had been at sea so long that he walked like a crab. Walking behind him made me dizzy. He grabbed a paint bucket and brushes and scurried back and forth with me at his heels across the ship all the way to the capstan.

  “Red lead,” he said and put a brush into my hand.

  I stared at the colossal iron heap. Wheels and levers, winches and chain cables. Which was front and which was back? And why did boatswain Bengtsson want the gray-painted capstan red?

  But those were questions a mere deck boy could not bring forth. I peered into the bucket with red paint and went to work.

  I was alone up front by the capstan. I stayed there painting for hours, experiencing my first feeling of intoxicating delight in hard, physical work. Before long, a flaming red monument towered before me. Bengtsson had a real shock upon seeing the capstan. He was so utterly amazed that he dropped his left eye. It rolled down toward the cable hold, and I threw myself after it before it disappeared into the sea. I picked up the small hard porcelain ball and held it in my hand.

  It had happened so fast I acted on pure reflex. Bengtsson hastily put the eye back in his face and began scolding me very loudly as if a demon had possessed him. The idea had of course been for me to find bare rust spots and cover them with the red lead.

  I began to cry. It wasn’t fair. I wanted to go back home. But then I remembered that I had left home forever. That made me cry a little more. Bengtsson came close to dropping his eye again. He had never seen a sixteen-year-old cry before. I told him it was probably an old case of nerves.

  We chatted for a while, standing by the fire red capstan, while the North Sea’s green waves were growing taller and taller, leaving Sweden behind. I swore to Bengtsson that I would not tell a soul about the porcelain eye.

  “I can’t see well enough with the other one,” he explained. “It would mean packing my bag and walking down that gangway plank, should anybody ever find out about it. You can’t have visual aids if you’re going to work on deck.”

  It was difficult to understand the logic in Bengtsson’s reasoning. How could a porcelain eye be a visual aid?

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Bengtsson said with conviction. “A strong will — and you can do anything.”

  His initial surprise at my tears was quickly transforming itself into a strong paternal feeling. But before going on about my new dad, I must describe how I became a real sailor during my first journey out.

  On our way down through the Bay of Biscay, on a summer day sated with blue when the water looked like oil, we were given the order to open the fifth hatch. The third mate had been down there and noted moisture damage to the dynamite, which, according to the bill of lading, required a completely dry storage space.

  Never had I seen such weather before. Our ship crawled forward between two enormous blue planes. Heaven and ocean melted together and it was difficult to know if we were right-side up. The horizon was endless. In this wide expanse, with enormous quantities of nature and water, everyone was becoming spiritualized, as if walking in some glorious light. Everyone except me.

  I was lost in erotic fantasies.

  Right on top of the fifth hatch, a girl was sunning herself. She seemed to have come out of the sea itself. She did not look to be older than I. There I was, struggling with the enormous bolts of the lid, screwing and screwing, switching to another bolt, and, during half an hour’s intense work, I had seen her from every one of the three hundred and sixty degrees. Now and then she changed position. The hatch was in line with my chest, so it was as if she were lying on a gigantic table, squirming and moving. I tightened my muscles. I too kept changing positions in order to look professional while I was screwing and unscrewing with the large T-shaped lever. Sometimes I had to bend and pull. Sweat dripped into my eyes. I slipped and dropped the lever. I could hardly breathe. I don’t know where love takes root in others but in me it gets stuck a little everywhere. First a big frog lodges in my throat so I can neither swallow nor speak normally. Then I get some weird, burning spots along my back. My legs turn numb. I trip over things. The blood boils. There is a buzz in my head and my body becomes seemingly fragile. I have given these symptoms quite a bit of thought. Perhaps love is nothing but reflexes, memories of the totally defenseless child’s experiences of panic and pleasure.

  Bengtsson came hurrying along with his crablike walk, wondering what the hell I was doing. He shooed the girl away as if she were a fly, and she disappeared without even a glance at my bulging muscles. A few hours later, I stretched my ears as a gigantic tent all over the ship and managed to pick up her faint laughter and snatches of conversations she was having with an older woman. She was the daughter of the chief engineer and it was her mother who was with her. What could I do to get close to her?

  I went to Bengtsson for advice. He was doing some calculations in a small black book and on the shelf next to him were some well-worn math textbooks. He was grateful for the interruption, scratched his head, inspected my clean ears, and was clearly pleased that I had come to him to learn. A discussion on the art of seducing women was a welcome distraction from mathematics. I kept my questions as general as possible, hoping he would not guess who it was that had so turned my head.

  “Women,” Bengtsson said and closed his real eye. “Women are drawn to that which is male.”

  “One would hope so,” I mumbled, careful not to disturb his train of thought.

  I was disappointed.

  “Then the question is: What is truly male?” Bengtsson continued and removed the porcelain eye in order to scratch. “I’ll give you an example.”

  He replaced the porcelain eye and squeezed the good one tightly shut while asking me to hold up in the air any number of fingers I chose.

  “Two,” Bengtsson said.

  That was correct. I held up one finger.

  �
��One,” Bengtsson said.

  This went on for a while. He could see with his artificial eye! I had to keep my hand in front of his other eye to make absolutely certain.

  “We have here an example of the total power of the imagination. I make myself believe that I can see with my porcelain eye and consequently I can,” Bengtsson explained to me.

  “Why can’t you learn mathematics the same way?” I asked, trying to break the magic.

  “I probably don’t really want to. But let’s leave the math on the shelf and go back to women. You’re wondering what to do, what the art of seduction really is, and I’m going to tell you. It’s as simple as learning to see with an artificial eye. It has to do with will, total concentration, and complete conviction, that’s all. They become a power greater than you. If we have time one day, I’ll teach you. But practice on that chick for now.”

  Bengtsson brought out needle and thread to fix a pair of worn jeans. The séance was over. I shivered in spite of the heat. He had understood everything. And the rest? I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. He winked at me and smiled. With his good eye closed, he held up the needle and threaded it without any trouble.

  “You see? It’s all a question of willpower.”

  I ran out of there and up on deck. Bengtsson’s laughter echoed behind me. It was evening and the moon was out full. I sauntered around the fifth hatch and tried to concentrate. If my will was strong and I believed in my ability hard enough, the girl with long, blond hair would suddenly lie there in her scanty swimsuit.

  I concentrated until my scalp ached. Nothing happened.

  Bengtsson’s power wasn’t working. To count fingers and thread a needle with a glass eye seemed like minor accomplishments. I was less sure that the power he was touting could be transferred to something as mysterious as girls.

  My head hanging low with disappointment, I walked up to the bridge. I had the eight-to-twelve watch, and it was time to take my turn. The seaman standing on the bridge wing grinned, mumbled something that I did not understand, and disappeared down the steps. He was a Spaniard, and I had not yet learned the common mixture of Spanish, Italian, English, and a smattering of French. The ship had collected a mixed crew during many years of journeys between the Mediterranean ports.

  I just nodded. I was in a terrible state. I could hardly breathe. I was not even sure I still possessed legs. When I walked, it felt as if I were grazing the deck with the trunk of my body. I couldn’t get the chief engineer’s daughter out of my mind. To use me as watch and lookout was putting the whole crew in peril. The only thing my retina retained were endlessly varying images of the sunbathing girl

  Boatswain Bengtsson was wrong. It was not a question of concentrating on the object of my infatuation but rather of my inability to concentrate on anything else. What was her name? How old was she? What if she were all of seventeen? That would be horrible since I was sixteen. We’d never be able to communicate across such an age gap. She was probably going to school, preparing for one degree or another. That would also be an insurmountable barrier. I would never be able to write her a letter. I couldn’t spell! Imagine me writing “my beautiful lady” and have it come out as “my beautyfull laydee.” Her friends would all giggle about it.

  On the other hand, all I would have to do was to leave out words I could not spell. “Hi!” I could spell that. When we were married, I might cautiously go as far as to “Hi! Hi!” and later to a “Bye!”

  But would that be enough if I were at sea and she at home caring for the children? Perhaps so if I added the date of my return? My father had managed with only a postcard communication, so why not me?

  The picture was clear. Instead of sky and ocean, I was seeing our cozy little cottage. We were sitting in armchairs reading poetry during the evenings, quoting an especially delightful line to each other. At night, we first kissed our rosy little children on their cheeks, then folded our clothes neatly and crawled into bed, turned off the light, and made love to some exquisite, surging music.

  I smiled to myself and hummed a little in the soft, warm night. The Bay of Biscay looked like molded tinplate under the friendly face of the moon.

  It would be a perfect marriage.

  All I needed was to meet her and learn to spell.

  “Are you standing there singing to yourself?!”

  It was the second mate. The second mate was retired from the marine corps. Always dressed with careless elegance, he looked as if he had stepped off the cover of a book about English Second World War flying aces. He smelled of after-shave from his graying mustache and mints from his mouth. Unfortunately he couldn’t see more than ten yards ahead of him. He more than anyone would have needed Bengtsson’s ability. This good old guy’s surname was Hawk. I have no idea what had driven him to enroll in the merchant navy or how he had managed to get to sail as second mate. But as such he was dangerous to one’s life, charming, and well versed in deceit.

  Already when I had my first watch he declared his intention to impart to me the mysterious knowledge of navigation. Rules for yielding, the different ship lights, and other essential pieces of information. After just a few days I had become his infallible hawk eyes. My pride knew no boundaries. I thanked my lucky star for not having been born a hundred years earlier, when chief mates whipped their unseasoned deck boys with cat-o’-nine-tails.

  “Listen you,” Hawk said. “If you can tear yourself away from your operatic practice, Katrin would like to learn how to steer the ship.”

  I had just put my body back in working order. The legs reached down to the deck of the bridge wing and my breathing was generally normal. But now I was losing it all over again.

  “Help!”

  “What is it?”

  Hawk let out a cloud of breath mints and after-shave over my head.

  “I can’t walk.”

  “Sure you can,” Hawk said. “She isn’t dangerous. She’s only fifteen years old.”

  He tore away my fingers that clung firmly to the railing, and I tottered over to the steering wheel.

  It was so dark that I could hardly see my intended wife. But that didn’t matter. Every line of hers was etched in my head. At age thirteen I had learned a lot from an artist in Småland. He and I could matter-of-factly catch the constantly changing play of lines in the female body. At sixteen, there was no question in my mind but that I was an expert on a woman’s body. I had spent years studying it intensely at a distance.

  Katrin stood by the steering wheel. I swallowed and said “Hi.” She might as well get used to my intended form of letter writing right from the start. Second mate Hawk could have married us on the spot, had we not been underage. A wedding at sea has a certain romantic flair.

  In the faint glow of the compass light, both of us were hardly visible. While I explained the principles of steering, someone installed tiny sprinklers in my armpits. Soon I was wet as the sea from sweat. Katrin had absolutely no idea in the world about manual steering or the compass. She was simply wonderful. When she was lying on top of the fifth hatch, I had had plenty of time to estimate her weight to be around one hundred and five pounds. Now I found it remarkable that so little could be so much. All the time she kept saying lots of fascinating things.

  “Gee … I can’t…”

  I consoled her.

  “You can.”

  “No! Look at this!”

  We were growing closer. A couple of more tension-relieving lines of dialogue and I would fall to my knees and propose marriage. I had to touch her hand lightly to correct obvious mistakes. At one point, she put her hand on top of mine as I was demonstrating how little really one had to do to make the huge ship move forward straight as a thought.

  The high point of the evening came when she ran off.

  “Gee … I'll never learn that!”

  A few days later we were unloading the dynamite at the roadstead outside Lisbon, and I was given the task of counting the wooden crates. All of me was afire. The reason was of cours
e Katrin. Secretly, we had stolen a few interesting minutes up on deck, protected by the darkness, and had agreed to do the White City together. All she had to do was to try getting away from her parents.

  As soon as the dynamite was off the ship and put onto barges, our ship was allowed to put in at the wharf. It was Sunday and the rest of the cargo could wait. A few cautious questions had supplied us with important advance information. You could take a bus out of the city to some not too remote beaches perfect for swimming. The knowledge had been forwarded to Katrin’s parents. They were horrified at the thought of taking a bus in the sweltering heat. That was when I, Ingemar Johansson, came into the picture. Simple conclusive arithmetic proved to her parents that I was the most suitable escort.

  After inspection, detailed instructions, and a few thoughtful ear pinches, courtesy of Bengtsson, we were able to walk down the gangway, continue across the quay, and then have Lisbon, Portugal, Europe, the World all to ourselves. I had entered the ship with checkered pants but was going ashore with the chief engineer’s daughter.

  The ecstasy of the shimmering afternoon was like a double-exposed photo. When Katrin laughed, I imagined the crew, lined up along the railing, staring at us as we disappeared side by side.

  Under the influence of Ollie’s liberal child-raising methods and my earlier rather parent-free condition, I was clearly on my way to becoming a rather boring type. I had nothing to rebel against. Ollie could have been the road to an interesting teenage life, but it was no fun sitting at her kitchen table drinking, swearing, and smoking.

  With Katrin it was different. The beach and the swimming could wait. She pulled me along to the nearest pub, drank poison green cordial and chain-smoked while she animatedly asked me about my favorite places. She had a much more fun teenage life ahead of her than I. Katrin was really prepared to do everything, drink, swear, and perhaps even to go all the way to leave her childhood and its ironclad rules.

  To my disappointment I understood that I would never be as childish as my uncle. Of course he always returned home bare-assed since he had a mother who made him new pants. Being both mother and father to myself, I had become prematurely old. As gently as I could, I put forward my opinions to Katrin. I was not going to indulge in any sinful activities with her before we were married. We could instead acquire a few memories for our old age. For instance, it would be nice for our grandchildren to hear about the Jesus statue at the inlet to Lisbon’s port. A Swedish connection existed, too. Jesus was made out of concrete from the Swedish city of Limhamn, which is why we sailors used the term “Limhamn Jesus” for him.