Slow Birds: And Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  But I must recount a few incidents, simply as a setting for what happened later.

  As I have hinted, the British passengers – two of whom had journeyed all the way around the world on the Lübeck, with the other four joining at Colombo – and the German officers were engaged in a masque, a mental drama re-enacting the national hostilities of the Second World War. These passengers were British officers (with their ladies) under the guard of a brutally polite Kommandant, and were determined by various subtle little acts of sabotage – such as witticisms which the Captain could not quite understand – to undermine him.

  For example, the frail-looking (yet tough spirited) Mrs Hetherington one day quite casually and innocently asked Herr Grünewald whether, since he had been in the Brown Shirts, he had learned how to goose-step; and was it difficult? She soon had the ageing Steward kicking out his legs in the Nazi march, parading right across the saloon – at precisely the moment that the Captain happened to put in an appearance.

  But this ‘innocent’ British joke was to rebound; later, we all saw the Chief Engineer raise his right arm to the Captain in the Hitler salute – and the Captain responded in kind. For the Germans were subtle too, in their own way. And in the isolation of the Pacific, with not another ship in sight – except once – this game became immoderately real.

  So much so, that when one ship did pass us by a couple of weeks later, heading in the opposite direction, all of the British passengers – and myself along with them – flooded to the rail, and waved and capered, and cried out, ‘Help! Help! Rescue us!’ Naturally, no one on the other ship heard our cries; but the Captain of the Lübeck heard us clearly enough, up on his bridge, and descended upon us in baffled fury.

  It was during meals that the Captain and his officers usually had their revenge. For, though they could not starve us – since we had paid our fares, and it was a point of honour with them that we received full value – they could nevertheless see to it that we were fed … in the spirit of prison warders in charge of a group of hunger-striking suffragettes. The Captain would slam his fist on the table – his favourite gesture of emphasis.

  ‘That was good flesh,’ he would call out to Herr Grünewald. ‘What flesh was that?’ (Well might he ask, since all the meat we ate had been transported deep-frozen all the way from Germany. They did not believe in provisioning in alien foreign ports, such as Colombo or Yokohama. Whether the meat was swine flesh, or sheep flesh, or cow flesh, it all tasted exactly the same.) ‘Bring more flesh for everyone!’

  This was a particular torment for me, with my taste for the subtleties of Japanese cuisine; and it affected Mrs Hetherington too, with her weak stomach – though she soldiered on. But it was merely a preliminary to the more exquisitely sadistic rite which the Captain decreed for every Sunday morning, in lieu of worship. For then we passengers were all mustered on deck at eleven A.M., the crew was assembled on the lower deck, and a canvas seat was slung from a meat-hook attached to a balance. We were publicly weighed. This week’s weight was called out loudly, and last week’s for comparison, from the Captain’s notebook. The crew either cheered or booed, depending on whether – or by how much – each passenger had put on weight. (In fact, we were soon all putting on weight steadily, with the sole staunch exception of Mrs Hetherington. I presume that she vomited up her meals when she returned to her cabin. Would that I had studied such Yoga.)

  The Captain’s imaginative excuse for this ritual, when I challenged it, was that he must declare the exact ‘kerbside weight’ of the Lübeck to the authorities at Panama before he could use their canal. So he was merely being methodical and obeying orders. How could one argue with such a – yes – stroke of genius?

  Yet if he was ‘obeying orders’, of his own inspired invention, the ship itself was in relative disorder. That we passengers should be attempting to erode his authority was ironic, since his authority was already severely diminished in the eyes of the crew, who saw him as an inconsistent bully, a hypocritical martinet. They were not allowed to have women on board, but the Captain – on the way out to Japan – had bedded a woman passenger, a Japanese. He had made her his mistress of the voyage.

  As though to express the crew’s disgust at this miscegenation – or their envy of it – a Chinese cook, the only non-Aryan in the crew, had been ‘lost overboard’ somewhere in the Indian Ocean. The Lübeck dutifully returned and sailed a search pattern for the regulation six hours, but his body wasn’t found. We suspected, of course, that the Chinese cook had been pushed into the sea by night.

  Some fights had even broken out below decks; and one man was locked up now, for the duration, with his front teeth knocked out.

  All of which leads me to the ship’s attitude towards oriental people – an attitude which was agony to me, not least because I, an Italian (and worse, a Sicilian) was viewed by them as a kind of European oriental: swarthy, excitable and unreliable.

  Herr Jünger’s hobby was home movies; and second only to the torment of meals was the torment of watching his home movies, screened in the saloon after dinner to ‘entertain’ us.

  There was no choice in this matter. One could not retire gracefully to one’s cabin to curl up with a copy of Chikamatsu’s Drum of the Waves at Horikawa. Mrs Granger, who was circumnavigating the world on board the Lübeck with her husband as a cheap form of cruise (and bitterly regretting it) attempted to escape one performance, protesting that she had already seen the movies twice over, and making various barbed comments about the quality of the film library in this floating prison camp. The Captain actually laid hands on her, twisted her arm behind her back, and – grinning jovially the while – marched her into the saloon and parked her in a seat.

  Herr Jünger, the Second Officer, was a large grizzled man with wildly flying, electrified hair, who had been a midshipman on the pocket battleship Graf Spee during the Second World War. His wife, he always left at home; but for this trip alone his daughter was accompanying him, cruising around the world as a twenty-first birthday treat. A champagne reception would be held a day short of Panama, to mark the actual event – to which we were all, of course, invited. Fräulein Jünger was quite pretty, in a bourgeois way – and she had certain airs and graces, including a way of tossing her head in impatience. She had all the makings, I thought, of a highly gemütliche Hausfrau.

  Herr Jünger was also travelling with another, inseparable companion: a grotesque red and blue plaster garden gnome named Friedolin – the Second Officer’s mascot and familiar.

  The home movies all devolved around the adventures of Friedolin. They were travelogues of the world seen from the viewpoint of a garden gnome – thus demonstrating, presumably, that Herr Jünger was at heart a sentimentalist. (But I shall make no rash generalizations about national characteristics. To me, the cliché is anathema.)

  ‘Here,’ Herr Jünger would proclaim, ‘are the Pyramids. And here is Friedolin.’ And because of the excellence of his movie camera, both were equally in focus. Friedolin appeared to be the same size as the Great Pyramid.

  But worse was to come. For Friedolin, with his red nose and his big belly swollen with flesh and beer – this obscene Nibelung – was filled with a mixture of mischievous lust, cruel practical joking, and Aryan pride.

  One film sequence showed peasant wherry-boats clustering around the Lübeck in some Asian port. The Second Officer ordered the decks sluiced and the bilges drained, at this moment. How Friedolin laughed from his safe perch on the rail to see the ragged oriental natives get a soaking. The fact that they had probably possessed a religion, palaces, philosophers and highly stylized dance-dramas three thousand years ago was of no consequence to Friedolin. His idea of art was far cruder.

  Cut: to an Asian street, with lovely slender women in cheongsams walking away from the camera, ogled by Friedolin as their split skirts hinted at their legs, and their bottoms swayed. The camera zeroed in – telephoto – on one particular bottom, following it down the exotic street.

  ‘Aha,’ cried He
rr Jünger, ‘she was not Friedolin’s! She is the one who got away!’

  We were treated to many such images, of Asian women – most of whom were not to be Friedolin’s; yet some of whom …

  Well, it appeared that Friedolin sated his lusts in a number of Asian brothels; though, of course, since there were ladies present, this could be no more than hinted at.

  This in some way explains our Captain’s bedding of the Japanese woman passenger – so as not to be outdone by his Second Officer’s gnome.

  One of the worst of all the scenes was of rafts of starving Vietnamese refugees in some backwater, observed placidly by Friedolin.

  ‘Too thin for Friedolin, that one!’ commented Herr Jünger.

  Friedolin was not, of course, being unfaithful; for these people were not quite human, after all.

  The camera zoomed in, on a despairing face which had retained its beauty.

  ‘Now that one, he could enjoy!’

  Fräulein Jünger’s interest in all these movies was quite different from Friedolin’s, as I discovered one day when she talked to me freely on deck, in a moment of excitement.

  She had her father’s camera with her, having rushed to the rail to do some photography when Herr Jünger sent a crewman running to her cabin to tell her that the Lübeck had hit a baby whale.

  Now, the Lübeck had a very bulbous bow, down at the water-line. Though it might seem that a sharper shape would cleave the water faster, in fact this was not the case. The ‘bulb’ dispersed more drag from the ship. Coupled with the lack of stabilizers, this saved perhaps a day overall in journey time – and profited the owners in proportion.

  A little baby whale had indeed crashed on to the ‘bulb’ and lodged there, brokenly. Though the beast itself was invisible from where we stood at the rail, its blood was evident enough. Long thin streamers of red blood washed past us through the blue Pacific water – to the delight of the Fräulein, for this provided a beautiful colour contrast.

  ‘Ooh!’ she exclaimed, filming assiduously.

  The only missing element was Friedolin, Fräulein Jünger had neglected to bring him from her father’s cabin, to admire the blood-letting.

  Alas. My elbow would dearly have loved to nudge Friedolin accidentally into the sea, just as the Chinese cook had been nudged. (Though I suspect that the consequences of such an accident – to me – could have been dire. One does not drown with impunity another man’s household Gods.)

  ‘Ooh!’

  ‘Ah,’ she sighed in disappointment, as the blood-flow slackened. She lowered the camera.

  ‘You forgot Friedolin,’ I observed, somewhat acidly.

  She pouted.

  ‘I think you do not like the movies which my father makes!’

  ‘Perhaps I take a little exception to Friedolin’s viewpoint on the fair sex: namely, from the rear.’

  ‘Oh, that is nothing! At home, many wives and husbands are very intimate with many other wives and husbands. We think nothing of it. In fact, one is glad to get away for a holiday with just one husband. I am getting married when we return,’ she added.

  ‘So you’re enjoying a rest cure, in advance?’

  ‘Not at all!’ She flushed, to think that I was accusing her moralistically of intending to be a person who sleeps around – when her future behaviour would be the height of hygienic propriety.

  ‘But I wonder why anyone would endure the monotony of the oceans of the world – for how long: three months in all? – when they are about to get married. It seems odd.’

  ‘Since you ask, Herr Landolfi, and since I will never see you again once we disembark, I shall tell you.’ Fräulein Jünger patted her hair, which the breeze was playing with.

  I should explain that her face, with its rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes and pert nose, was framed by a coiffure of short black curls. She was a chocolate box cover.

  ‘I look like a little Mädchen, do I not? And I wish to be a woman. I do not look mature enough, to be my Carl’s wife – with the company he keeps. His colleagues, their wives and mistresses … He has sent me away to become mature. When I return, I will look quite different.’

  ‘But how?’ I wondered.

  ‘You will see, at my birthday party.’

  ‘Tell me now, won’t you? I’m intrigued.’

  ‘That would not be interesting! It would spoil the fun.’

  ‘And fun matters, doesn’t it?’ (Like the bright blood in the sea, I thought.) ‘Please tell me. I’ll keep it secret.’

  She relented.

  ‘Oh very well. My father has a very special present for me: it is a long black wig. I will wear it when I return for my wedding. I will be a sophisticated woman.’

  ‘But … anyone can buy a wig, surely? You could buy one in Germany, and wear it the next day.’

  ‘No. You don’t understand. I would be laughed at, in my circle. It would be too sudden: die Verwandlung … the metamorphosis. We have our little rules, of etiquette. My long hair must be won. It must be a trophy. An achievement. Anything of that sort must be. A suntan under ultraviolet lamps is cheating.’

  ‘You mean, it’s like a Red Indian head-dress?’

  ‘Oh, I hardly think that!’ She began to flounce away.

  ‘Wait! Your friends will all conspire to pretend that you grew your hair long on the voyage? (“For want of anything better to do …”)’

  ‘Have you noticed,’ she asked dreamily, ‘all the beautiful long hair in my father’s films? Oh, it is wasted on those women – but only oriental hair grows so quickly and strongly. That’s why they can sell it, and grow a new crop.’

  ‘I think they probably sell their hair because they’re starving!’ I protested, incensed. ‘They sell it to the wig-makers because it’s the only way they can get a little money for a bag of rice. That’s even worse than selling one’s body: it’s selling years of one’s life – the years spent growing the hair. It’s …’

  ‘Oh, you think so, do you?’

  ‘They aren’t a flock of sheep, you know.’

  Suddenly she looked as though she was about to burst into tears.

  ‘I have told you my secret! And now you pour scorn. You are no gentleman at all.’

  But I couldn’t help recalling the hills of shaved hair inside the concentration camps, as captured on film by the Allies. Yet this thought provided a way out of my dilemma, since I did not dare quarrel with her – not op this ship, where she was the apple of her father’s eye.

  ‘Well, don’t use all your film on the sea,’ I suggested. ‘Your father will want to make a movie of your birthday party.’

  ‘He has many packs of film in his cabin,’ she retorted. ‘And many exposed films that you have not seen!’

  This time she did flounce off, all the way to her cabin.

  True to her implied promise – or threat – there was another session of home movies two days later after dinner, which had consisted of double helpings of calf flesh.

  We were herded into the saloon, the curtains were pulled across the windows, the lights were doused. The screens flickered white numbers, then went into handheld Technicolor.

  A junk was floating in a becalmed blue empty sea, weighted down with people and their possessions. Eighty or ninety people were crowded on to that tiny boat. It was a miracle that it hadn’t sunk already.

  ‘This was six months ago,’ commented Herr Jünger. ‘These are some boat people. From Vietnam. The Lübeck happened upon them in the open sea. But alas, we were not able to take them in tow. Our ship tosses up too much wake. Their junk would have overturned.’

  Friedolin was beaming down with cheeky benevolence at the refugees.

  ‘And we could hardly take them as deck passengers. The decks were too crowded with containers, as usual.’

  The camera zoomed in upon the upturned faces, searching. It lingered long upon an extraordinarily beautiful Chinese woman with long black hair, dressed in a dirty torn shirt and skirt. As the Lübeck responded to the swell of the sea, Friedolin
– lodged in his safe vantage point – seemed to nod.

  ‘Naturally, we gave food and water – and radioed their position. They had been stripped of all their gold by a Communist patrol, or pirates.’

  The next few frames of the film were underexposed and of such brief duration that I wonder whether the camera had been operated accidentally – by Friedolin’s plaster fingers? – or whether a whole section of film had been imperfectly edited out.

  But I know that I saw a woman’s semi-naked body lying on a bunk, black hair fanned out around her. And I know that at that very moment Fräulein Jünger glanced in my direction.

  The next sequence showed the junk receding into the distance beyond the foaming wake of the Lübeck. It was late afternoon by now; the sun had moved on by several hours. Standing in the stern of the junk, in her rags, we could just make out a bald-headed figure (perhaps an old man, perhaps a younger woman) who was clutching a bundle of something or other to her, as though it was her life. Maybe it was a baby, maybe it was food.

  ‘We hope they got towed into port. But who would want them?’ sighed Herr Jünger. ‘Anyway, they fed well from us – though I expect too much flesh would make their stomachs sick.’

  ‘Did they get rescued?’ enquired Mrs Hetherington.

  ‘I do not know. We never heard. There are too many junks like that, adrift in the China seas. It is the fault of Communism. Anyway, we did our duty.’

  ‘Poor souls – but what can one do?’ asked Mrs Hetherington. ‘There are too many immigrants in our own country already. One must be charitable, but they upset the economy.’