Suddenly Thomsen springs to his feet, terror in his eyes. Glasses fall and break. The telephone has rung. He must have mistaken it for the alarm bell.
“A can of pickled herring!” he now demands, swaying heavily. “Pickled herring all around!”
I half hear fragments of what Merkel is reporting to his group, behind me.
“The chief petty officer was good. First-class man. The diesel mechanic I’ve got to get rid of, he’s a dead loss… The corvette was at position zero. The chief was slow in getting the lifeboat down… There was one man swimming around in the drink. Looked like a seal. We ran up to him because we wanted to know the name of the ship. Black with oil. Hanging onto a buoy.”
Erler has discovered that it makes a murderous noise if you run an empty wine bottle along the ribs of a radiator. Two, three bottles burst, but he doesn’t give up. Scattered glass crunches under foot. Monique throws him a furious look because she can hardly make her groans heard over the uproar.
Merkel staggers to his feet and gives himself a thorough scratching between the legs through his trouser pocket. Now his Chief Engineer appears. This man is universally envied for his ability to produce a tune on two fingers. He can do anything: the fanciest whistling, commando signals, wild musical arabesques, tremulous fantasies.
He’s feeling expansive and immediately agrees to teach me. First, however, he has to go to the can. When he comes back he says, “Get going, wash your paws!”
“Why?”
“If you’re going to be difficult—okay—one hand will do.”
After I’ve washed, Merkel’s Chief thoroughly examines my right hand. Then decisively pops my index finger and middle finger into his mouth and begins to whistle a couple of trial notes. Soon a whole melody emerges, getting gradually shriller and sharper.
He rolls his eyes as he plays. I’m stunned. Two more cascades of sound, and finish. I examine my wet fingers with respect. I must pay attention to the finger placement, says the Chief.
“Good.” Now I try it, but only extract a couple of honking noises and the sputter of a leaky pressure hose.
Merkel’s Chief rewards my attempt with a despairing glance. Then with an air of assumed innocence he puts my fingers in his mouth again and out comes the sound of a bassoon.
We agree that it must have something to do with the tongue.
“Unfortunately, they’re something you can’t trade!” says the Old Man.
“Youth without joy!” Kortmann roars unexpectedly during a pause in the hubbub. Kortmann with his eagle’s face: “the Indian.” At U-boat Headquarters in Kernével he’s been in disgrace since the incident with the tanker Bismarck. Kortmann, the disobeyer of orders. Rescuing German seamen! Taking his boat out of action to do so. Failing to follow orders out of sentimentality! Could only happen to Kortmann, one of the old guard with the antiquated credo branded on his brain: “Concern for the fate of the shipwrecked is the first duty of every seaman!”
Much good it’ll do him to roar, old-fashioned Herr Kortmann, whom U-boat Headquarters finds a little slow on the uptake and who has not yet noticed that requirements have become more rigorous.
Of course bad luck came into it as well. Did the English cruiser have to turn up just when Kortmann was securely connected by fuel hose to the tanker? The tanker had really been intended for the Bismarck. But the Bismarck didn’t need any more fuel oil. The Bismarck was at the bottom of the ocean, along with twenty-five hundred men, and the tanker was wallowing along, full to the brim and with no takers. Then Command decided the U-boats should suck it dry. And just as Kortmann was partaking, it happened. The Englishmen shot the tanker away from under his nose, the fifty-man crew was floundering in the drink—and warm-hearted Kortmann couldn’t bring himself to let them go on floundering.
Kortmann was still proud of his catch. Fifty seamen on one VII-C boat, where there’s hardly room for the crew. How he stowed them away is his secret. Probably by the canned sardine method: head to toe, and no unnecessary breathing. Good old Kortmann certainly thought he’d performed a miracle.
Drunkenness begins to wipe out the boundary between the old warriors and the young strutters. They all try to talk at once. I hear Böhler reasoning, “After all, there are guidelines—explicit guidelines, gentlemen! Orders! Perfectly clear orders!”
“Guidelines, gentlemen, clear orders.” Thomsen imitates him. “Don’t make me laugh. Nothing could be less clear!”
Thomsen glances up sideways at Böhler. Suddenly he has a devilish gleam in his eye and is entirely aware of what’s going on. “Actually, it’s part of their plan, all this uncertainty.”
Saemisch sticks his carrot-colored head into the circle. He’s already half smashed. In the murky light, the skin on his face looks like a plucked chicken’s.
Böhler begins to lecture the carrothead. “Here’s the way it is. In total war the effect of our weapons can…”
“Pure propaganda rubbish,” Thomsen jeers.
“Let me finish, will you? Now take this as an example. A support cruiser fished a Tommy out of the drink who’d already been overboard three times. What does that imply for us? Are we carrying on a war or just a demolition campaign? What good is it if we sink their steamers and then let them fish out the survivors so they can just sign on again? Of course, there’s a lot of money in it for them!”
Things are really hot, now that Böhler has opened up the burning topic that is usually taboo: destroy the enemy himself or merely his ships?
“That’s neither here nor there,” Saemisch insists. But here Trumann breaks in. Trumann the agitator feels himself challenged. A thorny problem that everyone ducks—except Trumann.
“Be a little systematic for once. U-boat Headquarters gives orders: Destroy the enemy, with unswerving warlike spirit, with unfaltering severity, implacable effort, and so on—all that crap. But U-boat Headquarters hasn’t said a word about attacking men who are struggling in the water. Am I right?”
So leather-faced Trumann is wide enough awake to play provocateur. Thomsen immediately jumps in. “Well, of course not. It has simply been made un-mis-tak-ably clear that it is precisely the loss of crews that hits the enemy hardest.”
Trumann looks sly and stokes the fire a little. “So what?”
Thomsen, inflamed by the brandy, promptly protests. “Then everyone has to decide for himself—very smart!”
Now Trumann really fans the flames. “There’s one person who’s solved the problem in his own way and makes no bones about it. Don’t touch a hair of their heads, but shoot up the lifeboats. If the weather happens to help them sink fast, so much the better—that’s that! The conventions have been respected. That’s right, isn’t it? U-boat Headquarters can consider itself understood!”
Everyone knows who is meant, but no one looks at Flossmann.
I have to think about the stuff I want to take with me. Only what’s absolutely necessary. Certainly the heavy sweater. Cologne. Razor blades—I can do without them.
“The whole thing is a farce.” Thomsen again. “As long as a man has a deck under his feet you can shoot him down, but if the poor bugger is struggling in the water, your heart bleeds for him. Pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?”
Trumann starts up again. “I want to explain what it really feels like…”
“Yes?”
“If it’s only one man, you imagine it could be you. It’s only natural. But no one can identify with a whole steamer. That doesn’t strike home. But a single man! Instantly it all looks different. That’s getting uncomfortable. So they patch an ethic together—and presto, everything’s beautiful again.”
The heavy sweater that Simone knitted for me is terrific. Collar reaching to the middle of the ears, all done in cable stitch; and it’s not an ass-freezer either, but nice and long. Maybe we’ll really go north. Denmark Road. Or all the way up. The Russian convoys. Lousy that no one has any idea.
“But the men in the water really are defenseless,” Saemisch insists in a plaintive, righ
teous voice.
It starts all over again.
Thomsen gestures in resignation, murmurs, “Oh shit!” and lets his head slump.
I feel an urgent desire to get up and get out, to go pack my things properly. One or two books. But which ones? No more brandy fumes! The atmosphere in here would flatten a prize fighter. Try to keep my head clear. Last night ashore. Extra films. My wide-angle lens. The fur-lined cap. Black cap and white sweater. I’ll certainly look silly.
The flotilla surgeon is supporting himself on outspread arms, one hand on my left shoulder, the other on the Old Man’s right, as though about to perform on the parallel bars. The music has started up again; over it he roars at the top of his voice, “Are we here for a Ritterkreuz celebration or a philosophy session? Cut the bullshit!”
The surgeon’s bellow startles a couple of officers to their feet and they immediately proceed as if on cue. They get up on chairs and pour beer into the piano, while a lieutenant-commander pounds the keys like mad. One bottle after another. The piano swallows the beer unprotestingly.
The combo and the piano don’t make enough noise, so the phonograph is turned on. At maximum volume: “Where’s that tiger? Where’s that tiger?”
A tall blond lieutenant rips off his jacket, leaps smoothly into a squat on the table and starts flexing his stomach muscles.
“Ought to be on the stage!”—“Fantastic!”—“Cut it out, you’re making me horny!” During the frenetic applause one man wraps himself up comfortably in the red runner on the floor, puts the life preserver, which has been hanging as a decoration on the wall, around his neck, and goes right to sleep.
Bechtel, hardly one of nature’s exhibitionists, stares into space while clapping in time to a rumba that is demanding the utmost from the belly dancer.
Our Chief, who until now has been sitting silently, thinking, also gets out of hand. He climbs up the latticework attached to the wall above the platform and, imitating a monkey, plucks away at the artificial grapevine in time to the music. The lattice sways, remains standing for a moment two feet from the wall, as in an old Buster Keaton film, then crashes down with the Chief onto the platform. The piano player has his head bent way back—as if he were trying to decipher some notes on the ceiling—and bangs out a march. A group forms around the piano and bawls:
We'll march, march, march,
Though heaven rains down crap.
We're heading home to Slimeville,
From this asshole off the map.
“Classy, virile, Teutonic,” growls the Old Man.
Trumann stares at his glass, and is galvanized; he springs to his feet and roars, “Skoal!” From a good six inches above his mouth he pours a stream of beer into himself, sending a broad flow of slobber down his jacket.
“A real orgy!” I hear from Meinig, the dirtiest mouth in the flotilla. “All that’s missing is women.”
As though that were a signal, Merkel’s Numbers One and Two get up and leave. Before reaching the door they exchange meaningful glances. I thought they had already gone.
“Whenever you’re scared, go get laid,” mutters the Old Man.
From a neighboring table I make out:
Whenever passion seized him,
He'd leap up on the kitchen table
And screw the hamburger…
That’s the way it always is. The Führer’s noble knights, the people’s radiant future—a few rounds of Cognac washed down with some Beck’s beer and there goes our dream of spotless, shining armor.
“Remarkable,” says the Old Man, reaching for his glass.
“This shit of a chair—can’t get up!”
“Ha!” comes from someone in the neighborhood circle. “That’s what my girl says too. Can’t get up again—can’t get up again!”
The table is a wild mess of champagne bottles with broken necks, ashtrays swimming with butts, pickled herring cans, and shattered glasses. Trumann glances thoughtfully at this rubbish heap. When the piano finally stops for a moment, he raises his right hand and roars, “Attention!”
“The tablecloth trick!” says our Chief.
Trumann carefully twists one corner of the cloth like a rope; he takes a good five minutes because it gets away from him twice when it’s half ready. Then with his free left hand he gives a signal to the piano player, who almost seems to have rehearsed the act, for he strikes a flourish on the keys. Trumann settles his feet with the concentration of a weightlifter, stands perfectly still for a moment staring at his two hands as they grip the twisted corner of the cloth, and suddenly with a primitive war whoop and a mighty swing of the arms, he pulls the cloth halfway off the table. A jarring cascade of smashing glass, splintering crash of bottles and plates falling to the floor.
“Shit—fucking shit!” he curses, and staggers crunching through the shattered glass. He steers uncertainly for the kitchen and bellows for a broom and shovel. Then amid the mad laughter of the whole crowd he crawls around between the tables and grimly clears up the litter, leaving a trail of blood behind him. The handles of the brush and the garbage shovel are immediately smeared with it. Two lieutenants try to take the implements away from Trumann but he obstinately insists on gathering up every last splinter. “Clear up—everything—must first be ord—ly, cleared up—always just right, shipshape…”
Finally he lets himself down in his chair, and the flotilla surgeon draws three or four splinters out of the balls of his thumbs. Blood continues to drip on the table. Then Trumann rubs his bloody hands across his face.
“Hell’s teeth!” says the Old Man.
“Doesn’t matter a shit!” Trumann roars, but allows the waitress to apply small adhesive bandages, which she brings with a reproachful look in her eyes.
He has hardly been in his chair five minutes when he pulls himself to his feet again, yanks a crumpled newspaper out of his pocket and yells, “If you’ve nothing else to say, you boneheads, here—here are some golden words.”
I see what he’s holding: the will of Lieutenant-Commander Monkeberg, who died ostensibly in combat but actually lost his life in a completely unmilitary fashion, to wit, by breaking his neck. And his neck broke somewhere in the Atlantic in a smooth sea, simply because the weather was so fine and he wanted to go swimming. Just as he dived from the conning tower, the boat rolled in the opposite direction and Monkeberg cracked his head against the ballast tank. His manly swan song was printed in all the papers.
Trumann holds the clipping out at arm’s length. “All alike—one for all—all for one—and so I say to you, comrades, only a unique determination to fight—the background of this dramatic battle of worldhistoric significance—anonymous heroic courage—historic grandeur—wholly incomparable—standing alone—imperishable chapter of noble endurance and martial sacrifice—the highest ideal—those living now and those yet to come—to be fruitful—to prove oneself worthy of the eternal heritage!”
Still holding the sodden and illegible piece of paper, he sways back and forth, but he doesn’t fall. His shoes seem stuck fast to the floor.
“Crazy bugger,” says the Old Man. “No one can stop him now.”
A lieutenant sits down at the piano and starts playing jazz, but this makes no difference to Trumann. His voice cracks. “We comrades—standard-bearers of the future—life and spirit of a human elite with the concept of ‘service’ as the highest ideal—a shining example for those left behind—courage that outlives death—lonely resolve—calm acceptance of fate—endless daring—love and loyalty of such boundlessness as you rabble couldn’t begin to conceive of—more precious than diamonds—endurance—jawohl—proud and manly—hurrah!—finds his grave in the depths of the Atlantic. Hah! Deepest comradeship—battle front and homeland—willingness to sacrifice to the utmost. Our beloved German people. Our splendid God-sent Führer and supreme Commander. Hell! Hell! Hell!”
Some of them join in. Böhler looks severely at Trumann, like a governess, pushes himself up out of his chair to his full height, and disappears without
a word of farewell.
“You—you there, get away from my tit!” Monique screams. She means the surgeon. Apparently he has made himself too companionable.
“Then I’ll just crawl back inside my foreskin,” he yawns and the circle bursts into uproarious laughter.
Trumann collapses onto his chair and his eyelids droop. Maybe the Old Man was mistaken after all. He’s going to pass out right in front of us. Then he leaps up as though bitten by a tarantula, and with his right hand fishes a revolver out of his pocket.
An officer near him has enough reflexes left to strike down Trumann’s arm. A shot hits the floor, just missing the Old Man’s foot. He simply shakes his head and says, “Not even much of a bang with all this music going on.”
The pistol disappears, and Trumann sinks back in his chair, looking sullen.
Monique, who has been slow to recognize the shot, springs out from behind the bar, sashays her way past Trumann, stroking him under the chin as though she were soaping him for a shave, then leaps quickly onto the platform and moans into the microphone. “In my solitude…”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Trumann rise in slow motion. Re seems to divide each movement into its individual components. He stands, grinning craftily and swaying for at least five minutes until Monique has finished her wailing, then during the frantic applause he feels his way between the tables to the back wall, leans there a while still grinning, and finally whips out a second pistol from his belt and shouts, “Everyone under the table!” so loud that the veins in his neck stand out.
This time no one is close enough to stop him.
“Well?”
The Old Man simply stretches his feet out in front of him and slides out of his chair. Three or four others take cover behind the piano. The piano player has fallen to his knees. I too crouch on the floor in an attitude of prayer. Suddenly there is dead silence in the room—and then one bang after another.
The Old Man counts them aloud. Monique is under a table screaming in a high voice that cuts to the bone. The Old Man shouts, “That’s it!”
Das Boot Page 3
