by Diane Lowman
It was late. I was swimming in a pool of that strong beer. It seemed like a good time to go. The close cabin felt like the inside of one of the containers we carried on board.
“Claudia, it was really nice talking to you. Thank you.”
She looked at me as if to say, thank you for what? She had no idea how much it meant to me to feel even a small hope that I’d have a friend on board. It would be a real lifeline in this sea of men.
“I’d better go. I have to be up early, to see what Herr Most wants me to do.” I wanted her to know that I was not sleeping late and lolling about all day. It occurred to me that they had no idea what I was doing on board, in both the narrowest and broadest senses.
“Ya, me too,” but she made no motion to stand. I saw her look out of the corner of her eye at Tim, who returned the glance.
“Gute Nacht,” I told the group, raising minor objections from a few.
“Not time for bed yet,” they said.
“Danke,” I said, and slipped out of the door.
The wall phone sounded especially loud. I looked at my little clock: 0530, for the second day in a row. No way. My head hurt. My mouth stuck closed.
“Most here. You come up to the galley now. Schnell.”
Shit. He’s kidding, right? Never a “please.” I must be in trouble for going to the party. Normally I’d report to him at 0800. What could he need now? He hung up before my tongue loosened.
I stumbled my way into my clothes and grumbled my way out the door. He took one look at me and burst out laughing.
“You make drink too much last night, ya?” So Herr Most shared with my mother both a passion for sunscreen, and the uncanny ability to know everything that went on anywhere. Was it that obvious?
I just looked down, chastened, and not in the mood for this chiding.
“I talk quietly then, ya? When you go with the crew you make them buy the beer, ya? You don’t pay.” He handed me a glass of water.
This tack took me by surprise. He was being nice.
“Danke.”
“But Fraulein Meyer, where did you put sun cream? Not on you, I see,” he said, lifting and rotating my milk-chocolate arm as if examining fish in a market.
“Um, I. . . .” I started. Why the fuck am I here at oh five forty hours? Surely not to talk about sunscreen. I’m tired. I have a giant headache. I did NOT say this.
“You use it next time, ya?” he said as he dropped my arm and handed me two aspirin to go with the water.
“We have not so much mending now.”
Because of your thorough sewing skills, I knew he’d never say.
“So now that we are past the canal, you will have new jobs. You will report to the bridge every morning at 0600 hours to make clean before Herr Kapitän reports. I will show you this morning. Also you will help me with Kanteen. And you will mop the hallways and stairs inside, ya? And clean the walls. Claudia will help.”
No way. I’d actually be swabbing the decks? The cliché materialized. So the kid gloves were off. But I could hardly complain. It was all inside the air-conditioned superstructure, and it was still a fraction of what everyone else on board did.
“Ya, ya,” I said. But at 0600? Couldn’t the bridge wait until, say 1500, to get clean?
“After bridge, you eat breakfast. Then come to me. We go up now, to make clean.”
The bridge was narrower than it was long, an almost semicircular room atop the superstructure. It afforded a spectacular, panoramic, nearly 270-degree view through large, invisibly seamed picture windows. Looking out toward the bow where I’d spent most of the previous day gave an awe-inspiring perspective on the containers we carried. And I could only see those that were above deck. For nearly each one I could see, I knew there was also one below. It humbled me with respect for this scarlet lady. The bow bobbed up and down from this vantage point, gently, and in time with the silent music of some invisible sea muse.
Sturdy, dimpled, plastic flooring steadied our steps. The burled counter below the glass panes clicked and flashed with an array of incomprehensible gauges, levers, and lights. Behind a railing, and us, a shiny silver wheel the size of an extra large pizza was mounted on a dais. Even though it didn’t have wooden spokes, like the ones in old pirate films, I could see Captain Hook and Smee at the wheel. Everything else about the scene screamed movie set. It was a little surreal to be standing where I could watch the bow dip up and down like a novelty bird at the rim of a cocktail glass.
Already dazed by the hour and the hangover, this just struck me dumb. Herr Most had to nudge me out of my reverie.
“Morgen,” he nodded deferentially to Second Officer Betz, who was finishing up his overnight shift.
“Morgen,” he nodded back.
Herr Most led me around the bridge with a collection of cleaning supplies to show me how to make it shine in the most unobtrusive way possible. He forbade me from getting in the way of the duty officer.
I became intimate with and made that bridge glisten almost every morning for the balance of the trip, unless we were in port. I did not mind the work. It was boring, but satisfying, as I could easily see when my efforts turned something from dusty or dull to shiny. I sensed that Herr Most wanted the officers to see me busy. I wondered who had done this before. Claudia? Whatever phantom did the heavy inside cleaning? The officers’ eyes on me while I worked made me feel awkward. The bridge was quiet at that hour; the ship on autopilot, I imagined. The duty shuffled papers and checked the instruments periodically. The silence magnified every noise I made. Officer Betz rarely said more than “Morgen.” Officer Rose would make small talk, but whoever was there was at the end of an overnight shift, and generally in no mood to chat.
One morning, Herr Kapitän came up early. My cabin sat right next to his suite, and sometimes I could hear him at night. I wondered how he became captain, what he thought about his job, what he worried about most, and whom he missed. If he reciprocated the curiosity, he didn’t let on. He nodded politely and curtly whenever we passed. He was a German Clint Eastwood, tall, tight, and rangy, with weathered leather skin. His blue eyes were permanently narrowed to a squint behind the rectangular, gunmetal-gray, wire frames of his glasses, and his jaw clenched tight all the time. I never saw him smile, and I never saw him wear anything except his dress uniform.
My stomach tightened to match his tight temporomaniblular joint. Betz jumped up and stood tall. “Herr Kapitän,” he said.
“Betz,” he nodded, and then noticed me, in sloppy shorts and T-shirt, hair pulled back and hands covered in yellow rubber gloves. I stopped wiping the glass that covered the gauges.
“Fraulein Meyer,” he nodded again.
“Guten Morgen, Herr Kapitän,” I said, not knowing if I should bow or curtsey or salute. I fumbled to remove the glove from my right hand, but by then he’d turned away and picked up some paperwork to study. Relieved, I finished up quickly and scurried off the bridge, not quite sure why I felt like I ought to have my tail between my legs.
The next morning, I squinted at my reflection in the small medicine cabinet mirror, its edges rounded and rimmed in brushed chrome, to see cracks. On my forehead. Not in the mirror. It looked as if those Lilliputians from the canal had returned and plastered my brow in tiny taupe tiles—or maybe rectangles of thin tissue paper, with flesh colored-grout in between. They had not done a very good job, though. As I peered more closely, I could see that the tiles were peeling up at the corners. I put my hand up to touch my brow, I guess to be sure what I was seeing was real, and several pieces flaked off like phyllo dough from the edges of baklava. I’d literally baked myself in the Panama sun. No amount of nagging from a parent or other adult (say, the Chief Steward) could have had the impact of watching the better part of my face flake off into the porcelain basin below. I didn’t even need water for the sloughing. Gentle exfoliation with my washcloth filled the sink with the miniature brown paint chips falling from my face. Well, a clean slate, and a strong reminder to use the sun cream
.
My favorite duty by far was assisting with Kanteen, the small on-board supply shop that felt like a Playskool store. Herr Most and I stood in a closet-sized storage room, lined floor-to-ceiling with inventory, behind a closed half-door featuring a protruding lip that formed a small counter. A metal hook secured the top half of the door to the outside wall so it didn’t constantly slam open and closed with the ship’s motion.
The Kanteen resembled a cross between a Little League concession stand and a military PX. We sold cigarettes and condoms, shampoo and stamps, beer and Barbasol. I had wondered where the crew got their brew, and how they stored enough toiletries in their small quarters for an entire trip, but now I understood. They didn’t always have time to run ashore when we docked, since we were never in port for very long, and not everyone had the time off. So the ship made this service available, and made a little profit, too.
We stood together, Herr Most and I, shoulder-to-shoulder, since he was only marginally taller than I. We took each man’s order and Deutsche Marks, and handed him goods and change. Like playing “store” in the backyard with Suzanne when we were kids. Selling leaves and twigs to faux customers in exchange for pebbles.
He barely said a word to anyone; just nodded and provided the perfect foil to my Chatty Cathy. It afforded me the opportunity to have more social interaction, but from a safe distance behind a barrier. I got to see some of the crew with whom I rarely crossed paths, and I studied each one, as though I were cataloging them or keeping inventory, like I did in the shop. Most of them ignored me, but some smiled and engaged in conversation. Alois and Chris always seemed to need something, and tended to linger over their orders. Although they were making it fairly obvious, I tried to ignore the fact that they’d both started to compete for my attention. The former in a goofy, awkward way—always poorly timed and just a little off. The latter like an overzealous, panting dog.
“Fraulein Meyer!” said Alois. “Wie geht es? So nice to see your lovely face here to serve us.”
Herr Most looked up and glared at him and frowned. Alois stopped grinning. “Herr Ganser, what do you need tonight?” he asked in English, blocking any further attempts at small talk.
“Abend, Fraulein! How are you? We have Kino night tomorrow! Do you go? It is an American movie, I think you will like it!” said Chris.
Herr Most cleared his throat. All business, this man. Move along, said his body language. But I sensed, too, that in some way he was part of the barrier that kept me safe.
I’d never, even in the Middlebury frat houses, seen men consume so much beer. We sold more of it at Kanteen than anything else. It cost less than soda. We could never keep enough in stock. Whence, I wondered, came this endless wellspring of ale? And then one day Herr Most walked in while I was setting the table for the officers’ lunch.
“Come.”
I looked down at the silverware in my hand, unsure if I should leave it or finish, and again he said, “Come. Zip, zip.”
I dropped the forks and followed behind him. I never knew, when summoned, what to expect, and always felt just a little afraid that I was in trouble, even though I’d never done anything to warrant admonishment (except for my glaring failure to use sunscreen). “Schnell,” he said. Where was the fire? Why the urgency? But I’d begun to realize that Herr Most’s default mode was “urgent.” It’s probably what made him good at his job, and kept him so thin. His metabolism had to rev high to keep up with him.
“We need to restock the Holsten. You will help.”
Ah, he could have said that to begin with.
We descended further into the depths of the ship’s hold than I’d ever been before, wandering through a red intestinal maze of pipes and other tangled protuberances, over metal floors embossed with interlocking petals for traction. Herr Most stopped abruptly in front of a large padlocked door and unlocked it with a key from the ring that he, the gatekeeper, carried at all times in his pocket. A welcome rush of chilled air counteracted the gray steaminess that clutched us.
He turned to me and motioned. “Come.” I stepped into a pitch-black cool cave. A container of different sorts below deck. I expected to trip over stalagmites and bump my head into stalactites, dodging furry black bats all the while. Until he flipped the switch and revealed another movie set: a warehouse scene straight out of On the Waterfront, but it wasn’t ship’s cargo. Scarlet cases of Holsten, emblazoned with that familiar knight, sat stacked from floor to ceiling, so deep that I couldn’t see the walls in a space the size of a small elementary school gym.
“We have six hundred sixty-three cases here.” He said. My Middlebury friends would have had to pinch themselves, as I was tempted to do, to confirm they weren’t dreaming. And then they’d proceed to get so drunk that they’d pass out right here in the giant refrigerator.
I struggled to do the mental math. I gave up the fight, and just said, “That’s a lot of beer.”
He chuckled and retrieved a large hand truck that stood strapped to the wall. “You load them here.” We stacked as many as we could, and took the elevator up to the galley level, where we stored some, and stowed the rest in the Kanteen.
He clearly had not needed my help. My brawn hardly facilitated the task. He just wanted to show me the skyscrapers of suds, but could not allow himself to simply say: “Hey, come on down, I want to show you the ridiculous amount of beer we have in an enormous cold storage locker.” He would not tip his hand by showing that much enthusiasm, nor let me know that he cared enough to amuse me. A sweet heart beat somewhere beneath that icy veneer, but he took care not to let the shell melt.
I now knew that no matter what else happened for the balance of the trip, we would not run out of beer.
At 1500 hours every day, all activity ceased and all hands streamed into their assigned mess hall, or in my case, the galley. Every single day. I had never heard of this custom before, and was unsure if it were a German tradition, a nautical tradition, or neither of these. It had food and hot beverages in common with British tea time, but it occurred earlier in the afternoon, included coffee but not tea—although we drank that with every meal—and had the odd (to me) adjunct of the cigarettes. Nearly everyone smoked. I could not get over that. Even back then, we knew the dangers of smoking; very few of my friends smoked. And I couldn’t understand how the ship—especially a meticulously spotless and disciplined one—allowed a practice that was both so dirty and potentially dangerous. The irony of being surrounded by all this water that would be of exactly no help in case of fire was striking. Perhaps the vice was too ingrained in the culture for them to even consider prohibition; perhaps the captain smoked, and it was, after all, his ship; but whatever the reason, smokers prevailed.
Herr Most would say, “Schmoke time!” when I walked in, as if I’d be surprised. Like a Pavlovian dog, I’d follow the scent of fresh-baked goods there on cue, salivating all the way.
He would have already laid out the goods for the officers, but always saved a stash of whatever Ingo and Bruno had baked that day. No Toaster Strudels, these, the waft would usually clue me in to what awaited. Cinnamon-scented, gooey apple or raisin strudel, crisp and flaky on the outside, soft and doughy and warm inside, drizzled with sweet white icing. Or cookies—chocolate chip or sugar, the latter frosted, too, with steam still rising from them. Or layered Napoleon-like concoctions with thick rich cream hiding in the layers. I’d sneak in, almost furtively, as if Herr Most and I were keeping some secret. “Schmoke time!” he’d say, and hand me a plate of pleasure and a carafe of coffee, and then say, “You bring the plate back, ya?” as if this were the first time, or as if I’d failed to do so every single day so far.
“Ya, ya, danke.” And I’d slip out, like a squirrel with an acorn, or more like an addict with a fix, to go back to the peace and privacy of my cabin, where I’d put on some music and stuff the confection into my hungry cheeks, unable to mainline it directly into my veins. I never knew why he let me come to the galley and take the treats back to eat by m
yself, rather than just making me join the crew in their mess, but I was eternally grateful. Or perhaps I shouldn’t have been. Maybe if I’d had to eat in front of everyone else, I’d have exercised some self-restraint. Or exercised my body more. As it was, no watching eyes prevented me from indulging. These sugar-filled respites provided me some shelter from the storm of conflicting emotion that buffeted me daily. Forget the Freshman Fifteen. Even with a nineteen-year-old metabolism and a moderate level of physical work, I gained the Nautical Nine in no time.
In seventh grade Doug Bauer, the first boy I kissed in Tamaques Park on the way home from school, told me I had fat thighs. We’d sat down on my front steps and, in cutoffs, gravity had flattened them out on the concrete. Self-conscious ever since then, I could not go back to school stuffed with pastry cream. But I also struggled with giving up one of the few comforts on board.
“I need to stop eating those pastries!” I noted in my journal. I started doing half-hearted push-ups and sit-ups in my cabin. These were no match for the sugar, flour, and butter. I could no more break this habit than an addict could quit heroin cold turkey. There were few pleasures on board; I was loath to give this one up. The sweet on my taste buds triggered serotonin that was sorely lacking otherwise.
I would slink back each afternoon, sated in a sugar stupor, leave the empty dish and carafe on the stainless-steel counter in the galley, and go back to my room, ashamed, to sleep it off.
The crew felt more comfortable with me on board; this was a blessing and a curse. I was very mindful of what I wore and how I behaved. I really enjoyed getting to know my shipmates and learning more about their lives on and off the ship, but I worked hard not to give a false impression of what I wanted from them, or what they might expect from me.
There were two kinds of party: events that the ship sponsored or sanctioned, and the unofficial, informal beer bashes in someone’s cabin. The former, like Kino Night or the “Western” BBQ, had themes and specific time frames, or might celebrate some event (like crossing the Equator). They seemed meant to keep up morale, provide much-needed distraction from work and the long crossing, and encourage camaraderie. High- and low-caste members mingled for these: any officer not on duty might show up, along with the lowest deck hands. I rarely saw the captain or Herr Most, and if they did show up it was almost ceremonial: they’d make a brief appearance and then evaporate. Also, I never, ever saw the Chinese laundryman and worried about how lonely he must be. He seemed to spend all his time below deck, like a mole. I never saw him, even at meals.