by Sten Nadolny
‘One gets used to that,’ said the woman, ‘and to worse things which you don’t even know yet. Here’s something to drink.’ With their stolid domesticity, the women lent the war an air of matter-of-factness it didn’t deserve. This woman was of the pale kind, with freckles. She had belonged to the purser, who was dead now. Hours later John no longer knew whether he had kissed her or had slept with her or whether it had all been merely a fantasy, a vision as suggested by the Bishop of Cloyne. No sun, in any event; no present tense.
He still worked reliably. ‘I can be awake for thirty-six hours and still work,’ he said in order to hold on to something, since the victory over the French gave him little. But he did remark that the number of hours that had elapsed was no indication of the amount of time that had passed. Besides, he didn’t know whether shooting someone could be considered work. In the distance he observed a signal from the Euryalus, Collingwood’s new flagship. The schooner Pickle was ordered to London to carry victory tidings. For a moment John imagined her commander, Lapenotie ‘re, the man with the long nose, as he appeared in London and, for all his eloquence, had to say only four words to make everyone leap to his feet: ‘Victory at Cape Trafalgar!’
The Bellerophon was anchored at Spithead before Portsmouth. Southsea castle turned toward them brightly with its banners. To the right one could discern with a good telescope the hulls of ships that had been outfitted as prisons – mouldy, worn-out men-of-war which were now to receive the French prisoners of war. Those gigantic old cut-down hulls were painted grey and stripped of their masts, each now equipped with its own pointed roof and several chimneys. They looked like plump houses standing in the water. What is a ship without a mast?
The streets of Portsmouth were still teeming with throngs drunk with victory – or did it only seem so? Perhaps it was just the alcohol. After all, it was Sunday, and the dockworkers did not have to go to the shipyards. On top of the semaphore tower, John noted, the signal flags were being waved busily. Evidently another message to the Admiralty was being produced to be relayed from hill to hill all the way to London. Surely it was still another confirmation of victory – the sort of things admirals liked to hear.
John headed for Keppel Row as quickly as possible, and among the many low houses he immediately found the right one.
An old woman he did not know peered out of Mary’s door.
‘What Mary? There’s no Mary here.’
John said, ‘Mary Rose. She lived here.’
He had recalled her face again long ago. And the house was the right one.
‘Mary Rose? But she’s gone down.’ The door slammed shut. Inside, John heard laughter. He pounded until the door was opened once more. ‘Well, then, nobody here’s called Mary,’ said the old woman. ‘Or are you thinking of the old woman next door – what’s she called still …?’
‘No, young,’ said John, ‘with high arches above her eyes.’
‘She’s dead, isn’t she, Sarah?’
‘Nonsense, Mother. She’s moved away. She was crazy.’
‘Such arches above the eyes belonged only to one person,’ said John.
‘Well, then you’ll find her.’ With that the old woman went inside again. The younger woman hesitated another moment. Then she added, ‘I’d let it go if I were you. I believe the woman you’re looking for was taken away. She is, I think, in a workhouse somewhere. She probably couldn’t pay any more.’
Workhouse – that was the poorhouse. There was one on Warblington Street. John went there and asked to speak with Mary Rose. The porter was regretful. They didn’t have anyone by that name. In the rear an old man screamed again and again: ‘Help! Rats! Rats!’ The porter said only, ‘Try in Portsea. Elm Road.’
Half an hour later John reached that place. Another poorhouse, surrounded by a thick wall. There were no windows, only holes through which the miserable inmates peered and begged from passers-by. Innumerable old hands, twisted by gout, stuck out of the holes; between them, two children’s arms. The matron was very friendly. ‘Mary Rose? That’s the one who killed her child. We no longer have her here. She’ll be in the White House in the High Street. Is anything wrong, Mr Officer?’
John turned back to the city. If this place was a poorhouse, what would a prison be like?
The guard at the White House shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not here, in any case. Perhaps on one of those prison hulks about to be deported to Australia. Or try the new prison. Penny Street.’
John marched there. Darkness had fallen. In Penny Street he found that nothing could be done until morning.
Since he had definitely decided to sleep in a bed that night, he rented a room in an expensive hotel, the Blue Posts – nothing else was available. He didn’t much feel like seeing the Bellerophon and his shipmates. First he had to find Mary Rose again, even if he had to take her off the hulk.
The next day dawned. Determined, John pushed his way into the prison’s workroom accompanied by an official. He saw a few spent, worn people who picked oakum out of tar-stained ropes, their fingers bleeding. Another official arrived. Yes, there was a Mary Rose in the place, but she was dangerous and uncontrollable. She often screamed for hours. Why did he want to see her? ‘To convey greetings,’ John said, ‘from her family.’
‘Family,’ the official echoed doubtfully. ‘Well, then, perhaps this will quiet her down a bit.’ He went to get her.
The woman wore chains, hands tied behind her back. She was not Mary Rose at all, at least not the one John was looking for. Instead, she was a somewhat plump young woman with a sickly pallor and a completely vacant gaze. John asked her where the other Mary Rose was, the one from Keppel Row. She suddenly gave a laugh. When she laughed she was almost pretty to look at, because she wrinkled her nose.
‘The other Mary Rose. That was me, of course,’ she said.
Then she started to scream and was taken away.
John drifted about the city and reflected. At noon he lingered for a long time near a soup kitchen for the needy and asked about Mary’s arched eyebrows. Some of them said again, ‘She’s gone down.’ For there had been a ship by that name.
Otherwise they knew either no one or too many women by that name. Specially constructed eyebrows they did not recall, or they had not looked that closely, anyway. How could they? Not look? They wasted everything good, starting with their dull eyes. But perhaps they thought of themselves as wasted. He noticed that misery repelled him.
For three days John remained in the city. He visited the worst drinking-dens, which mostly bore proud names like the Heroes; he even went to the notorious Ship Tigre in Capstan Square. Nothing! He asked three unemployed dockworkers, but they had other worries. A scoundrel named Brunel had set up a new machine on which ten unskilled workers could produce as many tackle blocks per day as one hundred and ten skilled men. They were looking for gunpowder to blow the thing up. John advised against it and walked on. He asked about a hundred sailors, around thirty streetwalkers, two doctors, a Town Hall clerk. He inquired even at the Methodist Sunday School. In the tavern Fortune of War an old man showed him his wilted arm in place of an answer; one could see on it the tattoo of a beautiful naked woman, once drawn with brimming breasts and full flowing hair, but now somewhat damaged by the wrinkled skin. Above the tattoo John read ‘Mary Rose,’ and below ‘Love.’
At last he found a whore who said, ‘I knew one who looked like that. But her name wasn’t Mary Rose. She got married a little while ago – to a tradesman or hatter from Sussex. What she’s called now I don’t know.’
The soles on John’s shoes had worn thin. He felt every cobblestone. At one point during the day he sat on top of a cart at an intersection and didn’t know how to go on. He stared in front of him and said, ‘So that’s how it is.’
The Bellerophon soon sailed away. His sea-chest remained on board. One didn’t necessarily have to be where one’s sea-chest was. The man who had hoisted the well-known signal on the Victory, an able seaman named Roome, had deserted at the firs
t opportunity after the battle. But John didn’t want to do that under any circumstances. He couldn’t imagine what he would do. They had refused to release him to serve with the East India Company. So what was left for him? Moreover, his shipmates were now all he had. At least he knew them. He found it harder than ever to address anyone, to acknowledge that he knew no way out. He got up to walk to the pier.
‘To defend England,’ he said, and smiled that thin smile which he disliked in other people.
The last person he asked about Mary Rose was a little boy. He didn’t know her, either, but he made John stay and wanted to know about animals on the other side of the earth. John sat down and told him of a giant monitor, a lizard named Salvator. He had observed the monitor in Timor. But he was now amazed that quite against his will he managed to say so many bitter things about this strange beast.
‘The lizard Salvator doesn’t flee. But neither does he like to fight; that’s against his nature. He’s smart like a human and enjoys friends. But he barely moves – most of the time he just sits – and so he finds few friends. He grows older than all the other animals; all his friends die before he does.’
‘What does he do, then?’ the boy asked impatiently.
‘He’s modest and good-natured. Only chickens upset him. He gobbles them up whenever he can. At close range, he sometimes doesn’t see very well what’s ahead of him.’
‘Better tell me what he looks like.’
‘He has high brows that shield his eyes, and nostrils the shape of eggs, and there are yellow dots on his black skin. His tail is long and jagged. His tongue is thin. With it he examines everything very carefully.’
The boy said, ‘I don’t think I like this one so well. He’s certainly poisonous.’
‘No, poisonous he’s not,’ John answered sadly. ‘But people think he is. Therefore, he has to suffer so much. The Timorese torture him with rocks and fire.’
‘If he’s that slow it’s his own fault,’ the boy decided.
John got up. ‘Slow? He’s only slow apparently. The fastest runner in the world can’t catch up with him, and he can see many miles in the distance, to the other side of the horizon.’
With that he went, and that was his farewell to Portsmouth.
He was infinitely tired. He didn’t believe he would go down; still, it seemed to him that, in an as yet undetermined way, everything was over even if it went on. He couldn’t cry like a child any more, especially since he no longer believed that weeping could change anything in the world. But instead a lasting sorrow nested deep inside him – a sorrow which shunned the light and was universal. It spread out yet remained concealed. It bore the name of Mary Rose within, but it held out its hand to the rest of the world. John did not want to go down: he again decided to endure. He carefully avoided his tendency to disapprove. For that he was praised and made a lieutenant. That was no mean feat.
For ten whole years he relegated the most important decision, the decision concerning his life, to his sea-chest. That time became almost too long.
10
End of the War
In the mud, beside the broken gun-mount, someone woke up. He raised his head, moved his fingers, then turned his hands on their wrists, his arms on his shoulders. Gingerly he began to touch all over his body. In the middle of his forehead he found a bleeding hole, and another in the back of his head. His ribs and one shoulder, too, throbbed fiercely with pain. He couldn’t move his legs.
For a while he just sat there, staring at his boots, watching them lie so incredibly still. Then he pulled himself up on the wreckage of the gun-mount, just a little, and tried to look around.
Just a short distance away in the trampled-down swamp lay a dead Englishman, a few steps on an American and then another Englishman. All their faces were contorted by exertion and rage; the American in his last effort had raised his sabre in his fist high over his head.
At first the lame man attempted to clamber up the small embankment so somebody could see him. But the thin, grassy shrubs broke off too easily; they gave no support. He took a breath and looked at the sky. Above round little puffs – possibly still the remnants of gun smoke – appeared sharply edged grey patches of clouds. The sun remained hidden.
All around him he heard the moans of the few who were still alive. Nobody answered his call. The soil was powdery on top of the knoll, trampled loose by the boots of the attacking English who were now lying there and of the Americans in their counterattack.
The noise of battle could still be heard a few miles off. The lame man began to scoop out holes with his hands to pull himself up the slope. He soon noticed that there was no point in holding on to corpses. They gave way and slithered down, taking the climber with them. It was cold and seemed to grow colder. Mid-January; then, too, the loss of blood. Something was on fire nearby; now and then his breathing was throttled by a fat, sooty cloud.
Far away, a man was walking, tall and slightly bent. For one long moment it seemed he was dressed in white. His movements were clumsy and groping. He stumbled again and again over debris and dead bodies, even trod painfully upon a wounded man’s chest.
Now his voice could be heard. ‘Blind!’ he shouted. ‘I’m blind! Can anybody hear me?’
‘Come here!’ shouted the lame man.
It took a long time for the blind man to come close. His mouth was smiling, but the top half of his face looked red, as if paint had been slapped on it. He said, ‘Can you lead me out of here?’
‘I can’t move very well. My legs. But at least I can see.’
‘Then I’ll carry you. Just give me directions.’
‘Too much honour,’ said the lame man. The blind man heaved him on his back.
‘Two points to port. More. Now straighten. Steady as she goes. Right.’
This new form of locomotion had to be practised. As a first step they fell off the slope the lame man had spent an hour climbing. There they lay.
‘I didn’t see that peg.’
The blind man’s mouth smiled, even though it pointed in the wrong direction. ‘The blind carrying the lame – what do you expect?’
That’s what war on land is made of: arduous lying and crawling on damp ground, constant getting down and getting up again in various positions, none of which allowed a wider perspective. It was a situation without any freedom. Sailors in a land war – what misery! On that the lame man and the blind man agreed. They had had enough. There had been that explosion in the ammunition wagon. Or the way the American schooner on the Mississippi had sneaked up on the British camp and shot it up, and how the Carolina itself was then blasted into the sky. ‘I saw a burning glove flying in the air. I’m afraid it was the hand itself.’ They had helped to dig the canal between the Bayou Calatan and the Mississippi, had commanded the open boats with which they tried to attack the American gunships. They had rowed thirty-six miles against the current by night, only to arrive in daylight – a fine target for the marksmen on the other side. Why had he got through all that without a scratch, and what for? Today they had moved on New Orleans. The battle was lost. Anyone who might still be alive wouldn’t be for long.
It didn’t matter which one of these two had endured worse horrors. To find a way into the open land was the name of the game, even if it was the desert itself. There was still more life there than here. To find some rest meant remaining in one place, anywhere, and never returning. Neither to help nor to be helped – just to get away from here as best as one could.
The lame man gazed over the top of the blind man’s head into the swaying, bouncing landscape and began to talk about himself. ‘I’m twenty-nine years old. Ten years of that I spent in war service. The Netherlands, Brazil, the West Indies. I’ve done everything wrong. At the same time, I knew better. But it’ll be different. There’s still time.’
They were now on a passable road. The blind man marched along and said nothing. He didn’t even give his name. But he seemed to want to listen.
‘As early as Trafalgar I was l
osing sight of myself, and then more and more. Yet all I wanted was to get rid of that trembling. I didn’t want to appear cowardly or stupid any more – never again! That was wrong.’
No answer.
‘A head can mislead the person who belongs to it. It can be a traitor head and so spoil everything for a long time. But I believe one can survive even long-term mistakes. – More to starboard. Always stem against the turn or you’ll go in circles.’
The blind man kept silent, corrected his course, and strode on.
‘I now speak of seeing; forgive me. But it all hangs together because of that. There are two kinds: an eye for details, which discovers new things, and a fixed look that follows only a ready-made plan and speeds it up for the moment. If you don’t understand me, I can’t say it any other way. Even these sentences gave me a lot of trouble.’
The blind man didn’t say a word, but he seemed to think.
‘In battle only the fixed look is possible – nothing else. It assaults, and it’s set like a trap for three or four possibilities. It works only when one must harm others in order to save oneself. If it becomes a habit, one’s rhythm gets lost, one’s own style of walking is gone.’
For some time now the lame man had been leaning against a tree stump while the blind man rested.
‘I’ve become addicted, addicted to war. Did you say anything, blind man? Did you say “slave”?’
The blind man crouched down and remained silent. The lame one continued, ‘I’m getting confused. I see a column rising from the sea, a tower of water. I see black before me. We loved Nelson. He forced us out of our ordinary pace and increased our rate of fire. We would have never won––’