by Diane Lowman
I was still mulling my amazing mother’s powers when Herr Most broke my reverie: “You will continue to clean the bridge at 0700 hours. And Herr Rose or Stuhlemmer will contact you later to alert you, but now with the new workaways on board, you must switch to the port side lifeboat to balance things out. If we muster, go there.”
My arrival must have caused imbalance. I was happy to do whatever I could to restore order and accommodate the crew, the new people, the ship, and the universe. This was such an insignificant adjustment, yet it made me wonder why I felt the need to meet their needs before mine. I resolved to take the time left in the journey to strike a balance of my own. Somewhere between Auckland and New York, I hoped to find a happy medium between obsessive people-pleaser and selfish bitch. Between worrying about others’ welfare and neglecting my own. I hoped to find a bright spot amid all the dark blue. I’d made it this far; maybe this was the reason for me to complete the trip. So I looked at the crossing with new eyes, with new resolve. I had a mission.
I met Mark and Barbara at breakfast. They’d been assigned, or fell into, the outsiders’ table with me and Karl, our lifeline to the crew.
Barbara, my mother’s namesake, was solid, sturdy, and sensible. I could see that she would make a good sailor. Her halo of shoulder length, shag-cut hair frizzed permanently around her head in the humidity. She had a broad, freckled face and classic Irish-blue eyes. Hers was the third iteration of accented English that I’d heard on the trip, and her lilt lulled me as much as the others. Her straight, white, evenly spaced teeth surprised me for not being a typical British Isles mouthful of dental mishap. She smiled often, as if to show them off.
“It’s so nice to meet you. We can’t believe you’ve been on board since New York! You’ll have to tell us everything we need to know about the ship,” she said, sipping tea and then biting into a piece of buttered bread topped with liverwurst.
So I was the expert? The veteran? What an interesting tidal turn. I supposed it was true. As far a workaways went, I had seniority.
Mark was tall and gaunt, almost unhealthy looking. Sunken cheekbones protruded through the curtain of his full beard, and his hairline ran away from his forehead. Chunky knuckles punctuated the long continuous lines of his finger bones. He looked, I thought, as skeletal as Tim, and I wondered about drugs. When I’d see him working outside, shirtless, his ribs protruded for easy counting.
But there was nothing unhealthy about him when he opened his mouth. He spoke quickly in his Scottish brogue, which I could isolate absolutely only in contrast to Barbara’s Irish when they were together. He spoke quickly and animatedly and seemed eager to plunge into ship life. This was clearly not someone on drugs. What a treat, I thought, to have so much pretty English to listen to all the way home.
“We’ve been traveling around before we go home to settle down—a honeymoon of sorts,” he said. “This was by far the most economical and the most adventurous way to get from Down Under to the States.” He thus reminded me that I was on an adventure, too. It slipped my mind occasionally. They’d met at university and married recently. His teeth were more UK standard issue, but he smiled sweetly nonetheless.
“Do you know what they will have you do for work?” I asked.
They both nodded. She said, “I’ll assist Claudia serving meals and cleaning up the kitchen and the mess hall. And other general housekeeping duties, I guess.”
Mark said, “I will paint the outside of the ship with the crew.” Wow, I thought, hard work for both. My jobs seemed cushy in comparison, especially with Mark’s. I knew that the crew painted the exterior continually, round trip on every trip, because the ocean was so hard on the heavy metal. I had seen the men, shirtless and tethered to the decks with harnesses and wires, like window washers high up on Manhattan buildings, except that those buildings were not moving forward at twenty-two knots through choppy water. At meals, their gloppy paint makeup told us on which area they’d worked that day: red-splattered skin for the sides of the ship, white-dotted for the superstructure, and black-streaked for some of the trim.
I didn’t ask about Mark and Barbara’s accommodations because I already knew from Herr Most that they lived below deck in hell, and I didn’t want to flaunt my relative heaven. I never did invite them up to my cabin. We only met up at meals or in the common areas for gatherings.
It felt somehow reassuring to have them on board, but they kept to themselves and often retired early. They must have been exhausted by day’s end, especially since we were losing an hour, and hence the corresponding sleep, every other day heading in this direction. I believed, as with small children when someone else’s parent is around, that the crew would watch their behavior more with the two other sets of outsiders’ eyes on them.
I didn’t sleep well for the several following nights; the waves grew each day and conspired to make restful nights a distant memory. Maybe I ought to have worked as hard as they did, so I’d be more tired. In the evenings I watched the sun set in a spectrum of popcorn-butter-yellow, Creamsicle-orange, and cough-drop-red before I walked over to the other side of the ship to watch the moon rise. Sometimes the sky and clouds would conspire to hang a full rainbow over the whole spectacle. I’d only seen phenomena as breathtaking as this at sea. Witnessing this miracle every day at dusk—ever-changing in shape and intensity with the tides and temperatures— inspired as much awe the last time I saw it as the first. But for some reason, despite—or perhaps because of—the incomparable quiet in the middle of the ocean, which itself seemed quite restless with nary another thing in sight, I felt a vague sense of foreboding.
One night I fell asleep early, very early, at perhaps 2030. The time changes dogged me. At 2200 the fire alarm sounded, and not knowing if it were a real emergency or a drill, I scrambled to get out on deck—port, port, port, I kept reminding myself—in some presentable, or at least decent, state. There was no time to delay on a ship. If it were real and I got trapped up that high in the superstructure, I could only go up higher and then jump. I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to go to the lifeboat or somewhere else in case of fire or fire drills, but only half awake, I couldn’t think of where else to go, so I headed to my lifeboat. Fortunately it was only a drill, and fortunately my instincts were right, so I incurred neither wrath nor ridicule. The captain excused us with a nod after a few moments; we’d mustered in time. I zigged and zagged back to my cabin, in part because I was groggy, and in part because of the growing swell. At night, the waves were wraiths, their wrath invisible but strong.
Karl told me there were some nasty storms in the South Pacific on the route we’d normally take, so we were heading even further south to try to avoid them. I knew this meant more time en route. Maybe that haunted my sleep, too.
Cramps kept me from getting comfortable once I got back in bed, and I cursed myself for forgetting to buy more Midol or Feminax, the Aussie equivalent, before we’d set sail. I’d been too busy souvenir shopping. I chuckled at the thought of the likelihood that Herr Most stocked it in the Kanteen. Not much of a demand for it among this crowd, I imagined. I wished I had a beer.
I gathered a few of the new books around me—B.F. Skinner’s Science and Human Behavior, Herman Wouk’s City Boy, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion—trying to figure out which one would tire me out the most. In the end I dumped them all on the floor and pushed play on the eight-track player to let Genesis sing me to sleep.
But I thought Peter Gabriel got it wrong in Cinema Show. From where I sat, there was way more sea. . . .
“Do you want to see below?” asked Karl at breakfast. I sat, glum, eyes at half-mast. I looked up at him. He never messed with me, but this sounded like some bad joke. Not him, too, I thought.
“For a tour. Have you gone below deck to see the ship’s workings yet? She is an amazing machine. Would you like to see?”
“That would be so cool. I have to work this morning. Could we go after lunch?”
“Ya, ya,” he said, and I went to sco
ur the interior walls. The air-conditioning never quite reached this core area enough to cool it, so the stultifying air kept me as wet as the walls I was washing. I couldn’t wait to finish and get back to the chilled mess hall and the afternoon adventure.
Karl got me the smallest pair of coveralls he could find, but I still swam in the deep blue cotton. He laughed, but not in a mean way. “Still it is better to wear them. You can get very dirty down there.” This would have sounded scary from anyone else in the crew. I’d been below with Herr Most before for beer, but that was only one level down. Karl, who had told me to wear sneakers instead of flip flops, led me down steep, narrow, textured metal stairs that turned back on themselves between each tier.
At home, the basements were the iciest part of everyone’s home. Even in the throes of the hottest summer day, we’d go down into Sharon’s dungeon to drink oversweet iced tea and talk for hours. Even though the upstairs had no air conditioning—they were just renting the house—each step down felt like a slow decent into a cool pool. Sharon, her mom, and her stepbrother had moved away to Texas after high school. After her stepfather died. Sharon died on her nineteenth birthday. She had stopped taking her epilepsy medication and had a seizure and drowned in her bathtub. In so little water, I thought now, in contrast to the vast amount that surrounded us. I felt as if I were drowning some days, in nothing but air.
But in the ship’s bowels, the temperature rose as we descended; just the opposite of what I’d expected. I was Dante, following Virgil into the Inferno. I cannot remember if there were nine flights—one for each circle of hell—but there may as well have been. We just kept going lower and lower. By the time we could go no further, it felt vaguely like a way-off-the-strip casino. No windows, dimly lit, with lights flashing from some gauge at every turn. Clicking and growling and gurgling all around. I could easily imagine getting lost down here in every sense of the word. I could barely see, and I realized that I’d placed my hand gingerly on Karl’s shoulder for guidance and security. Thankfully the narrow walkways had railings on both sides. I held on tightly, glad for the barrier between me and the labyrinth of asbestos-covered pipes, and mélange of metal I might fall into with one misstep.
“Don’t touch anything,” shouted Karl. It was hard to hear him over the mechanical chorus.
Don’t worry, I thought, walking through this whale’s abdomen. I had no intention of poking and prodding the metal innards.
“These are the sea water tanks,” he said, as he pointed at the immense containers that pulled in salty water and desalinated it for cooking, showers, and, I realized, drinking.
Further aft we approached two even larger dark steel cubes. Together they might have filled one of the containers on deck. “And these are the boilers. The steam from these powers the turbines,” he said, pointing them out as we continued on slowly, as if he were a host at some surreal car show, highlighting the latest model’s fancy features.
The turbines roared at us like two trapped lions, their clawing and thrashing channeling energy to power the massive vessel. I could barely hear him now, and the heat, especially swathed shoulder to ankle in thick blue, was almost unbearable. We walked even further back—I could just make out a monolithic mass that must have been the stern. It was so dark that the devil red down here appeared nearly ebony. The few light bulbs strewn too far apart overhead barely impacted more than a small space around them. It felt as if the turbine’s reverberation were Roger Waters himself welcoming me to this machine. I’d played that Pink Floyd eight-track in my cabin on an endless loop, too.
“And,” he paused for effect, “the turbines turn the propeller.” He pointed at and past the stern, where the propeller turned eternally, inching us along. I had no context for the scale of this mechanism. We couldn’t see the propeller, but I felt it, and silently thanked this nearly two-story, hundred-ton hunk of metal fan that moved me ever closer to home.
As we wound our way back up, the deafening roar tamed to a steady hiss. “She is a beauty, ya?” asked Karl, clearly proud, as we emerged into the refreshing air of the superstructure.
“Ya, ya,” I said. “She is impressive.”
I could not peel the coveralls off quickly enough. I handed them to him, a little self-conscious because they were dripping. I was as drenched as if I’d just jumped into the small deck pool, which sounded very appealing at that moment. He laughed again. “Ya, it is so hot down there, no?” I nodded, with a new respect for the poor souls whose jobs kept them below deck for their entire shift: engineers, electricians, machinists—and awe for what this ship did every day with serene efficiency.
She showed off now by bringing us to full speed since we were free of pesky landmasses. The forward motion minimized the impact of the immense sea surge, and it felt like progress.
Two crewmembers, Walter and Franz the baker, celebrated their birthdays the next day, so that meant two beers per person. A sense of relief washed over the ship, similar to the one I’d noticed after we got through the canal, but even more palpable. We had successfully delivered and taken on all the required cargo without incident. The captain’s mood impacted everyone, and his relief at the accomplishment infused us all with light.
“So come to the party tonight for Walter and Franz,” said Karl at the breakfast table. “They are both Austrian. They will sing and dance. It will be fun. Right here, in the mess hall.” He smoothed his moustache and smiled.
I hadn’t had great luck with theses large gatherings. The men tended to get very drunk and act very badly. But the festive mood of the moment swayed me to try again. I had no idea why Austrian equaled fun in Karl’s mind, but I took his word for it. I hadn’t even realized until then that, aside from Tim and the phantom laundry man, anyone on board hailed from anywhere but Germany.
The party started as they all did, with a big group of tired men guzzling beer, and I sitting tucked into a corner, clutching my Holsten bottle like a life preserver, and peeking around furtively trying to blend into the Formica.
Ingo slid in next to me, his apron-less belly kissing the table, and nudged me with his elbow. “Wie geht es, Fraulein Meyer? Nice to see you leave your cabin.”
We clinked bottles.
“Prost!” he said.
Our eyes popped, and we looked at each other askance when Herr Most took the seat across from us. I couldn’t hold Ingo’s gaze for fear we’d gasp, betraying our incredulity, and scare him away. He was the most diurnal creature on board. After dinner service, when he’d finished tidying the galley or closing the Kanteen, he would retreat to the comfort of his cabin and rarely emerged after sundown. Like a reverse vampire, threatened by the dark.
“Abend.” He nodded curtly to me and then to Ingo.
“Abend,” Ingo returned.
“Hi, Herr Most!” I said. He lowered his eyes at my enthusiasm. His hands covered a small cellophane-wrapped bundle which he slid toward me. “My wife gave me a large box of chocolates for the crossing. I don’t know why. She knows I do not eat so many sweets. It is okay for you—you don’t worry so much about getting fat.” He smiled, but kindly.
Ingo jiggled with laughter as I thanked Herr Most, and said, “You must share? Ya?”
“Nein, nein, they are not for you, Ingo. You do not need any,” and he pointed to the place where the table dented Ingo’s soft midsection.
We all laughed as I unwrapped the treats and put one in front of Ingo. So Herr Most did not reserve his ribbing for me alone? I felt less singled out and more included, as Ingo pushed the dark square back to me. “Nein, your boss is right. It is for you.”
The cacao coated my tongue in dark bliss. Maybe the connubial visit had softened Herr Most’s sharp edges just a bit.
The birthday boys rose from the gathered revelers as everyone lifted their Holstens in a toast. A few gave individual, roast-like tributes in German that I completely missed, but the laughter told me that they were in good humor. Someone pushed play on a portable cassette machine, and festive Austrian mu
sic saturated the stuffy air.
Ingo said, “Ya, ya, here we go.”
The birthday boys started a round of intricate call-and-response clapping and toe tapping, and soon the room ignited with the clamor of hands coming together and feet pounding the floor. They swayed in time with the music, and then a few got up to dance. We could resist the tug of the tunes no more than the oceans can escape the pull of the moon. Soon we were all on our feet, heels slapping down hard and knees rising up high, hands hoisted overhead, with the Austrians, whooping and hollering words to the traditional songs. It was a regular whatever the word is in German for a hootenanny. It felt cathartic—a communal primal scream.
The energized, sweaty well-wishers then watched as the two honorees stood on chairs and began yodeling back and forth. Who knew that these rough, gruff men could produce such dulcet and dainty sounds? Robust, yes, but as clear and crisp as Alpine water.
It was far and away the most exhilarating, truly fun night I’d had on board. No one leered or lunged at me, and as I let my hair and my guard down, they welcomed me in. My feelings about this crew swayed as often as the ship in the swell. Sometimes, especially after something like this, I felt part of an exclusive, foreign fraternity. But more often I felt like the frat pledge who had been hazed and then rejected.