by Mark Helprin
“Sacramento!” blurted out the little girl, eager for points.
If François Villon could write on the scaffold a poem swift and sure enough to save him, could he not have eaten the platform itself? If Pizarro could subdue the vast Inca Empire with a handful of men far from home and only one casualty, then surely people had wrong ideas about the possible.
In the war, he had wanted to be a hero and was forever trying to find the proper position. At a Norfolk bar he talked for several hours with an air squad mechanic from a carrier, about which parts of an airplane engine, upon being struck by a bullet, would cause the whole to fail and the plane to crash into the sea. Paul Levy’s intention had been to shoot down an enemy plane with small arms fire. Given opportunity he would have stood in the open as the planes swept by, eyeing their engines and firing with careful fury until either he or they were crushed. It never happened. He used to lie awake at night thinking about ways for one man to sink a warship. He speculated that his obsession with the impossible would some day bear fruit or kill him. He could not restrain himself from consideration of that which was feasible mainly in the magical world and, strangely enough, sometimes in this one.
He had chosen quite a task. A ship out of port is a difficult creature to sustain, much less to convert; especially if it is crowded with children, the old, the sick, the dejected, and the insane; especially if it is a quarter-century-old coal-fired coastal freighter destined to match up with a contemporary imperial warship. But a cat can outrace the best thoroughbred horse if only it can grasp the idea of racing.
It was Paul Levy’s moment, to tell the old ship how to do the right and proper thing. He ignored the cries and plaints, the colors and the sea, the beautiful women who go for a captain like a sea bird for water, the captivating children, the smashing luminescence of the bow waves, the rapid winds and the sea lure, and stayed in his cabin to concentrate on the plan. His lantern swayed back and forth with the ship; its brass flashings caught his eye in a circular dance, but he tightened himself and worked. Over the sea, bright angelic winds prodded up whitecaps.
After a night and a day the infant scheme coalesced. He had laid it out while in port, but several problems had persisted, problems he knew would submit when he was again in his familiar element and could marshal the genius of the sea.
The windows of the wardroom were sparkling with spray. All the men there were in khaki as in the military, although they had forsaken its precise and terrible beauty to convey east the men, women, and children who were the sweepings of the great European war. They took for their Midway or Coral Sea a ship loaded with cynical innocents. Paul Levy spoke as waves of white rolled and battered the ship in a night hour in the Mediterranean. His plan was quite complicated and quite correct.
“First, I want the census to be analyzed. Separate the people into those who can effect the skills they claim, and those who cannot. Appoint one able man for each twenty-five who are incapacitated. He will be their captain, and he will drill them in lifeboat procedure, response to instructions in English, etc., etc.
“As for the rest, they are the heart of the matter. I want you to pay particular attention to athletes and strong workers. They will be put in the combat sections. Welders, mechanics, engineers, smiths, tinkers, will form a technical section. I want four translators who are proficient in our five main languages. Appoint five cooks. It would be best if they were professionals, but it doesn’t really matter, since what we eat is important but how it tastes is not.
“At the proper moment, about three in five of the engineering force will transfer to combat. The rest will be damage controllers. I want a medical staff of at least five, and one man, preferably an entertainer, to play records and to talk over the public address system. Oh yes, if there are enough musicians and musical instruments aboard, I want a little orchestra. It will change everything, as you will see if it materializes. When combat isn’t drilling it will labor for engineering. Anyone who is double or triple qualified will do double work. But there will be priorities. First is engineering and technical; second, combat. The rest, even.
“Before tomorrow, I want two things. First, five of you will circulate among all the people to wake them up and tell them that we are going to fight the British. Second, another five will do a competent analysis of the census in light of what I have just told you.
“Remember, when you awaken someone in the middle of the sea, you are awakening him from a state of special dreaming, and he can rise to anything. If you tell him that he is to fight the British you may renew the man who was beaten down. Go and do it. Tell them that we will force our way past the cordon. Tell them anything. Tell them that their mothers and fathers are poised in heaven waiting, that now is the time for the dream of the Jews. By the love of God this ship rides eastward on moon-driven waves and with escort of heaven. Tell them that. With all they’ve been through, they are due for some sweet language.”
4
THE CENSUS proved a valuable tool. Four hundred and twenty people were aboard. Of these, sixteen were musicians but only ten had instruments. A ten-man band was set up on the main hatch cover. Its composition was especially strange in view of the rousing marches and bandshell waltzes it played: it consisted of four violins, a bassoon, a guitar, a trumpet, a concertina, a snare drum, and a harp. At first there were six alternating conductors, but then from the bundles and scraped suitcases came another concertina, two harmonicas, and an ocarina. Although it was difficult at first to get any of the musicians to play the ocarina (they sneered at it as if it were a dead animal by the roadside), eventually a complex rotational system evolved in which everyone shared his instrument, and from this arose an extremely attractive little orchestra which played a sort of harp-and-bassoon-punctuated, violin-laden ragtime—further exoticized because one of the violinists was a Greek and could play only in Hellenic style. They set themselves up each morning and played until five, and they played a small concert of favorites before everyone went to sleep. Little children, including the tiny girl with perfectly proportioned Japanese-like features, ladybug eyes, and the white dove of ribbon, danced on a wide canvas-covered expanse behind the conductor. They behaved exactly like small children at a wedding. Sometimes even their elders did dances of delight as the strange ship steamed over the electric blue Mediterranean, stacks trailing a constant unraveling cloud of steam. The music was good for the workers, the children, the fighters, the crew, and, some said, even the chickens. Although they did not dance, they seemed to lay a great number of eggs, and as maritime chickens usually veer toward the unproductive, this was seen as a good omen—even by the rabbis, who would normally have cautioned against such divining. But the times were not normal.
There were about a hundred and twenty of the very old, the sick, and small children. The group captains zealously overdrilled their charges by herding them into the lifeboats and marching them from one area of the ship to another perhaps a dozen times a day. Levy closed his eyes to this, letting the frail be driven, until they dispatched from their number a delegation demanding more consideration. He cut the drills by half, but only because he was convinced that entering the lifeboats was by then instilled into their natures.
A hundred, mainly women and merchants, were neither fighters nor engineers. They tended the animals, inventoried and rationed provisions, cooked, mended, watched the children, kept things in supply, and, most importantly, were an extraordinarily adept cottage industrial force. For instance, the wicker furniture was torn apart and rewoven into shields. It took the housewives only three days to create one hundred light and sturdy shields of various sizes, fashioned with strips of rawhide and sisal rope. Similarly, they finished the same number of lethal fighting sticks, turned on an improvised lathe, in less than a week. They sewed canvas garrison belts into which weapons were to slip. In battle, they were to serve as powder monkeys and medical auxiliaries. These one hundred worked very hard and were to be seen in only apparent disorganization laboring at a score or mor
e of tasks.
Two doctors and seven nurses established fore and aft sickbays and took care of the ailing. Except for a few, those who had not been well quickly regained their health. After the seasickness wore off it became obvious that fresh air, decent food, sun, activity, music, and the promise of a place to settle were good medicine for the heat-oppressed souls and their thick ledgers of real and imaginary complaints. The decay of Brindisi and its garbage-filled harbor, where it was not unusual to find the corpse of a dead horse lapping against a quay, was replaced by long glimpses of chalk-white islands floating in a summer sea. Sweet pines and lemon trees grew on quiet terraced slopes. Resources of summer began to act upon shattered lives. At night after work, as the sea rolled and winds swept by, they felt satisfaction and equanimity.
Of twenty crew members, including Levy and Avigdor, ten worked below on the engines. The combat section sent regular shifts to relieve the stokers and help with heavy work. Eight deck hands took care of the rest—more than enough, since no one was interested in long-term maintenance: the ship was to be rammed against a beach south of Haifa. The deck hands climbed up and down the masts, supervised drills, and did watches on the bridge. Levy spoke through several translators. The newsletters also were multilingual, and the entertainer wrote jokes for them, sweetening the directives at Levy’s command. Before dinner this same entertainer read the news in Swedish and Italian, and played scratchy opera discs over the public address system. Items of news were broadcast between the scenes of the operas—Madame Butterfly seemed most upset at the building boom in California.
Among those not classified in any major categories were three brothers who had been circus acrobats, two professional cocoa-tasters, and half a dozen rabbis who made the ship quite holy even though in many cases they were dealing with hardened atheists. Several refused the census and did not come to the bridge when summoned. When finally brought to Levy, they looked like criminals. They were criminals. He said, “I’m going to put you in the combat division. Any objections?” They said nothing, but some had expressions which meant that they intended never in their lives to do any work.
“You know,” said Levy, “I’m the captain, and I’m the law. If you don’t work and do what I tell you, I’m going to throw you off the ship ... when we’re far from land.” He opened his desk drawer and took out a revolver in a leather holster wound around by a cartridge belt. The thick magnum bullets were somewhat terrifying to see in their dull symmetrical brassiness. Levy withdrew the pistol, snapped out the barrel, and turned it so that the criminals could see brass inside blue chambers. “Got news for ya,” he said, chewing his gum fast, as sheriffs had done in his youth when they had questioned him. “I’m from Texas. Know what that means?” They were fascinated. “It means if you don’t work and you won’t jump...” and here he hesitated for a long time even after the translators had caught up, “I’ll put a bullet through your head.” Then he winked, but stood up and strapped on the pistol, with no intention of taking it off.
Including seven officers, the combat battalion numbered sixty-three. When augmented from other sections it reached over a hundred. They were divided into ten platoons of ten, each with an officer in charge. Every day they drilled for hours in fighting with night sticks, fire hoses, chains, long pikes, and their fists. They exercised and practiced climbing the masts and cables, swinging from ropes, broad-jumping from hatch to hatch, and maneuvering in unison. The criminals were especially aggressive, and this stimulated the others.
With almost fifty engineers, technicians, and artisans, Levy worked on the war engines. There were to be three corkscrew-type augurs on both sides of the ship. As well as rotate, each had to be able to move back and forth, up and down, and in and out. From the limited materials available, design and manufacture of wheeled and geared augur carriages was a feat. So was the installation of variable-length, angled power trains to provide turn for the drills, three of which would be operating at once. The two cargo booms were modified to slide at the base and lock down. At their tips huge weights were placed in opposition to conical projections with barbed ends of solid steel. These looked mysterious and dangerous.
Turrets were built on the superstructures, and holes made in bulkheads and decks in order to run hose to the upper fortifications thus created. The deck winches which were to power the augurs were taken apart and overhauled. To get metal for these projects, for the hinged barbwire fences which hung off the sides of the ship, and for the various camouflage structures created to mask most of this from view, parts of the vessel were cannibalized. The effect was one of great sloppiness and disorganization, especially since the windows had been blacked out with an orange antirust paint and the wash fluttered from lines on all decks. The Lindos Transitlooked like a fruit wagon which had rolled down a steep hill and crashed into a laundry truck.
Hundreds of people crowded the decks, practicing club fighting, doing calisthenics, peeling potatoes, welding, painting, putting out imaginary fires, calling orders, playing violins and an ocarina, praying, dancing, running with messages, nursing children, pushing around supplies, sewing, polishing, bathing, climbing into the lifeboats, climbing the masts, running lines, arguing, jumping from hatch to hatch, drawing plans, singing, sawing, rolling bandages, tearing up wicker chairs, weaving shields, piling rocks and rubble, erecting barriers of wood, metal, and wire, cutting apart rubber tires, treating the sick, hiding, laughing, doing everything except standing like a zoo animal behind bars watching as the world passed by. They had no tolerance for reflection; any motion seemed sacred. Only Paul Levy was privileged to look from afar. They had taken to movement unlike anything he had ever seen, and he thought that should this venture of the Jews prove successful, the new state would be filled with dancers and musicians, but especially dancers, for dancing like nothing else says: I am still alive. And although that simple statement will appear vacuous to those for whom living has always been a right, for those who have been challenged on this score, it is the most beautiful and momentous thing to be said or heard in the world.
Paul Levy would sometimes stand on his sway bridge and look backward over the sea along the ship’s white wake churning up green water in a continuous noise that sounded like krill or dolphins. He remembered when early in the Battle of the Atlantic he had gone to the bow of the destroyer to hide his face between the converging gray plates and be alone. He had been so exhausted, so frightened, so tired, so cold all the time, and he had always had the feeling that he was going to die. That was when he thought the song “Speed Bonny Boat Like a Bird on the Wind, ‘Onward,’ the Sailors Cry” meant that the sailors were aforeship crying as they left their homes and country. They were in the mid-Atlantic hunting U-boats and hoping for contact with a surface raider. They were going fast through waters in which there had been a storm and the clouds were trailing rapidly across the sky. As he bent forward to rest against the bow and give his sadness free rein, he realized that in the preceding days he had not been paying enough attention, that his watches and interrupted sleep had left him ignorant of the ship’s course. They had penetrated the tropics—a warm wind circled about him and he undid his coat—for the sea was green and thick. As he looked into the bow waves he saw the faithful and miraculous shape of dolphins, speaking to one another in chirps and whistles. They had great strength and endurance, and yet they were beautiful and not hard. By observing this he settled a conflict within himself, determining to be as strong as was necessary and yet not to be hard. One of them veered outward and in so doing made it possible for his eye to catch Paul Levy’s eye, and both seemed to smile without smiling. From that day forward he knew how to knit together strength and love.
Almost as if by magic he was afforded another eye in which to look and by which to receive a reflected message from the sea. There was a girl amidships, sewing belts. She was small and delicate, with strong and graceful limbs. Using shreds from the wicker and reed she had woven a straw hat and it framed her gold hair and blue eyes in a rough
warm cream color. She was pregnant. Levy could not help staring, so great was her beauty, so different from the saddened beauty of the others. She returned his gaze. The beams between them were as steady as a compass needle. The ship swayed, a water dancer, and the waters fumed and glistened to left and right. There was heat and love in the gaze, an aura of gold as with the dolphins, an interference locking them together for a moment utterly out of their power. Paul Levy felt as if he would go to her, but he turned away. She undoubtedly had a husband, and he was captain of all the ship—a rigor unquestioned, to which he had to keep faith.
He did not know that she had lost her husband and believed that he was dead, and that despite the vibrant light surrounding her, the flash of her golden coloring, despite her beauty and despite the captain’s skill, she was soon to die alone. Her name was Katrina Perlé.
5
SOMETIMES IN the frozen dry winters which made the Russian foresters fear for their young trees, Katrina Perlé’s father climbed the stairs to her room directly under the roof, and there, as the wind howled and his little girl lay curled up under a cloud of silk and down, he would tell her stories. In summer she wanted fairy stories and tales of magic in the forests, but when the snow mounted its lethal attack she wanted to hear about those who had been before and survived. Her father knew little about his family, which had come on horses and mules from somewhere in Central Asia, perhaps from as far as Sinkiang.