by Tad Crawford
“As I reached my middle twenties, and the war years receded, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would make of my life. My father practiced medicine. I considered medical school, but I couldn’t decide to return to my studies. Then came the night of February 1, 1953. Our boat docked on the Hollandse IJssel River. The crew turned in at a small hotel in the town of Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel. This happens to be the lowest point in Holland. Much of the surrounding area was also below sea level, but the dikes holding back the sea allowed people to make their homes there. I had trouble falling asleep, because I kept wondering what would come next in my life. I felt I had to make a choice, but I didn’t desire one career or another. In a way, I lived outside the everyday world, floating on the rivers and canals, waiting to discover what would become of me.
“In the early morning hours an enormous storm came in off the North Sea. A huge, spinning dome of water, much like a hurricane, hit the southwest coast of Holland at high tide. Gale-force winds pushed the surge to record heights, as much as fourteen feet. In some places, when the dikes broke, walls of water twelve feet high rushed like a flash flood through the countryside, destroying everything. In the middle of the night I heard men yelling and banging on the doors of the hotel. I pulled on my trousers and rushed into the hallway. Our captain told the crew to get their gear and assemble in the lobby. Around us, in chaos, half-dressed people were evacuating the hotel to seek higher ground.
“When we assembled, the captain introduced the mayor of the town. He came straight to the point. The tidal surge from the North Sea had blocked the flow of the river. Tremendous pressure was being exerted on the Groenendijk, a dike on the west bank of the river. Never reinforced with stone, the Groenendijk was breaking apart. If the hole could not be plugged immediately, the flooding would imperil three million people in the city of Rotterdam and the surrounding lowlands to the east. The mayor ordered our captain to take our boat and ram it into the hole in the dike. Only that, he said, might hold back the water.
“Then our captain spoke. He simply said that whether we succeeded or failed, we were all likely to die. He wouldn’t want any man to go against his will. Instead, he asked for three volunteers from the crew of eight. I stepped forward without hesitation. Really, I didn’t think at that moment. The captain chose among the volunteers who had neither wives nor families. Leaving our comrades behind, we hurried out into the high winds and the stinging rain that flew horizontally along the streets.
“On board the ship, I went below deck to warm the engines. There, alone, I began to doubt my choice. I was young and could have a long life. If I remained on board, I would be an accomplice in my own death. What hope could a ship, even a ship of steel, have against these forces of nature? If we didn’t sink before we reached the levee, how would the ship survive the impact? Why should I die for some mad scheme that had no hope of success?
“As these thoughts ran through my mind, my hands moved over the controls, bringing fuel and fire to the hidden chambers. When the captain called on the intercom, I told him the engines were ready. The ship began to move away from its moorings.
“I knew I would die. At the same time, in that windowless hull of metal that carried me beneath the water’s surface, I couldn’t believe in that death. The captain called for maximum power. The pressure gauge trembled in the red zone. I could smell a burning scent in the thick odor of the fuel. We would either explode or hit the levee at full speed.
“Our captain feared that the ship might go right through the gap in the dike and fall to destruction on the far side. To prevent this, he brought the ship in at an angle in front of the growing hole. I blacked out when we hit and woke in utter darkness. Acrid smoke burned my throat and lungs. Strange as it sounds, I didn’t know who I was. I had no idea what had happened. A man’s voice screamed a name over the intercom. Slowly I realized that it was my name, that he was my captain, and that I lay on the hard metal floor of a ship. He ordered me to shut down the engines. I struggled until I raised an arm and felt my way across the controls to pull down the levers. For a few moments, a silence surrounded me as the engines quieted. I could feel liquid, it had to be blood, soaking the hair on the back of my skull and running down my spine.
“The floor was fixed at an odd tilt beneath me, an equipoise that could only mean we had plugged the fissure in the levee. The ship trembled and groaned like a man tormented on a rack. I realized how temporary our achievement might be. The surging waters must be working ceaselessly to dislodge and destroy us. I could do nothing but wait and hope. But later, on the bridge with the captain, I saw that the rushing current had pressed the ship across the dike like a floodgate. By a miracle, the very force of the water had held our ship in place and saved the dike. I knew that if I lived through the storm, I wanted to harness and shape these great forces.”
“Were you afraid?” I asked.
“In a way, yes.” He nodded, his blue eyes focused in an inward gaze. “But in another way I forgot myself. I was no more. There was only the drama of which I was a part.”
“Were you afraid because, now that you knew what you wanted, you might die before you could attempt it?”
“I didn’t think like that. I simply wanted to study whatever might help prevent another disaster of this kind. Because the Groenendijk withstood the flood, much of South Holland was spared the devastation in Zeeland where the dikes gave way.”
I couldn’t help but contrast my background to his. He had been shaped by war and found his calling in an act of heroism during a natural catastrophe. I doubted that anything similar would ever happen to me.
“Immediately after the disaster,” he went on, “a commission was set up to determine what had gone wrong and what must be done for the future. This led to the Delta Works, a true wonder of the modern world. It included an immense double gate to stop storm surges from entering the mouth of the Hollandse IJssel. I realized that by becoming an engineer I could contribute to these projects that might take decades to build.”
“Is that a storm surge barrier?” I asked, pointing to a rounded structure that spanned one of the model’s rivers.
“Yes, but I’m not satisfied with it.”
“Why not?”
“Because my dream is to repeat on a far grander scale what happened that night. To use the immense force of a tsunami or hurricane to protect against the very damage it might otherwise inflict. For many years, I worked in Holland to realize this vision, then traveled to foreign countries to continue my work.”
“What is that?” I pointed to a channel that led from the ocean only to turn back in the shape of a hook.
“If I could determine where a storm surge would hit first, I believe the force of that surge might be directed back toward the sea to block subsequent surges.”
“Does it work?” I asked, continuing to study the panorama.
“Sometimes it works. In the model, I mean, but it would need vast improvements to ever be useful. Look, I want you to see this.”
Pecheur aimed a remote toward the panorama and pressed several buttons. The waves of the sea rose higher and higher against the dikes. Then, in two places, sections of the dike slowly began to lower. One section sank first beneath the pounding water, which rushed through it and into the hook-shaped channel and sped back again toward the second section of the dike, which had by then lowered. The returning water met the inflow from the sea, and for a moment the two flows perfectly balanced one another. All was still.
“It can be done,” Pecheur said with a gesture of his hand.
I nodded in reply, watching as the two walls of water held one another motionless. Then, as if the force of the flows had become unequal, the water in the channel began to seep backward, and the water from the sea started spreading over the lowlands. Pecheur tapped the buttons of the remote, and the two sections of the dike rose from their nests in the ground. More remarkably, two holes opened on either side of the channel. I couldn’t see the actual holes at first but simply the spir
aling downward rush of the water. Within a minute, the dike stood like a solid wall and the water had completely drained from the land.
“How do you control the openings?” I asked. “Where does the water go?”
“My plan is to store it in underground caverns.”
“Does such a thing exist?” I asked as he clicked the remote and the holes gradually closed.
“Not yet,” he said, pointing the remote toward a different part of the panorama to show me another feature of his creation.
“Wait,” I said. “What if the channel were wider and closer to the second dike?”
He lowered his head to study the remote as his fingers played over the keys.
“Let’s try it.” He aimed the remote to start the sequence again. One section of the dike lowered as before. Now I noticed that the channel had indeed become wider and almost touched the base of the second section of the dike, which again lowered as the water rushed through the hook-shaped channel. Seawater poured through to meet the rushing current in the channel, but to my dismay the seawater flowed right over the shallower water in the channel and began to flood the lowlands. Pecheur used the remote to open the holes and drain away the excess as the dikes rose to form a solid wall.
“It’s not just trial and error,” Pecheur said. “It takes hours and hours of calculation on the computer. Even so, the best I’ve been able to do is what you saw before.”
“What if you had a second wall behind the first wall?”
“Very expensive. And for centuries they’ve been building walls to hold back the sea. I want the sea to hold back itself.”
“What if the openings were larger and the caverns could store more water?”
Pecheur shook his head. “The capacity of the caverns isn’t limitless. To lower the sea to the level of the land would mean shifting an enormous volume of water, far more than any network of caverns could contain.”
“What if the holes reached to the center of the earth?” I asked. “Then the molten core would evaporate the seawater.”
Pecheur looked at me from beneath his bushy white eyebrows. I felt like a fool to have made such a suggestion. No one could drill to the center of the earth, much less funnel millions of gallons of water down such a hole.
“If you did that,” he said, “you would release tremendous amounts of energy. You could harness the power, just like the early steam engines did. Of course, it couldn’t be done now, but what if the downward force of the water turned turbines? Even if it didn’t fall that far, it could generate huge amounts of electricity.”
Pecheur had used my impractical idea as a stepping-stone to explore another possibility. I could feel myself relax.
“Do you often have people help you with your work?” I asked when the conversation reached a lull.
“No, not often.”
“I’m afraid I’d make a very poor assistant.”
“Why?”
“I’m not handy,” I confessed. “I’ve never built anything, not even a model plane or boat when I was a kid. If something needs to be fixed, I take it to a repair shop. I know nothing about computers except how to turn them on and use some of the programs that are already there. I’ve never programmed anything on my own. I’m totally ignorant about engineering. In fact, I’d say I have no qualifications to be your assistant. Honestly, I don’t know why you would want me.”
Pecheur smiled at my little speech.
“You’re candid,” he said.
“What could I do here that would be of help to you?”
“There are things in the shop. But really it’s this work that I want to see continue.”
“I still haven’t digested what you showed me on my last visit, much less this. How can I help with something I don’t even understand?”
“I have a hunch. I’ve pursued my work in a certain way. Engineering seemed a reasonable choice. Maybe other skills would have been even better. You offer something different from what I have to give. Maybe you won’t be able to do this work at all, or maybe you’ll be better at it than I am. In any event, there will be time for me to train you.”
I mulled this over as we rode down in the elevator and returned to the model boats.
“This one is based on Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria,” Pecheur said with a gesture of his hand. “He sought a route to the Indies and discovered America. Of course, he wasn’t the first to discover America, but he had a theory that opened the way for those who would follow him.”
“What theory?”
“That the winds blow from west to east in the temperate zones and from east to west in the tropics. The ships of his day had trouble sailing into the wind and tended to cling to the coasts of known continents. But if they were to sail along the coast to where they could pick up winds blowing in the right direction, he conjectured, they could go back and forth across the Atlantic with those winds behind them. Once his theory proved true, explorers began to sail on the oceans to every corner of the globe.”
I looked closely at the model of the Santa Maria.
“I doubt if I can afford to buy a boat,” I admitted when I looked up at him.
“Why don’t you borrow one?” he suggested.
“Could I?”
He nodded.
“I like the junk,” I said.
“Then take it.”
“When do you want it back?”
His eyes searched my face before he replied.
“When you’re ready to return it.”
12
“You were out late.”
I couldn’t believe she had stayed up. She always went to bed an hour or two before me.
“What do you care?” I replied.
“And you’ve been drinking,” she added.
“I had a few drinks. So what?”
“With anyone special?” She had kicked off her shoes and settled on the couch. Shopping bags littered the floor around her bare feet.
“Nobody special.”
“Just someone.”
“Someone I met there,” I admitted.
“Want to sit down?” She gestured toward the other end of the couch.
“Sure.” I sat, not certain I really wanted to.
She looked at me and didn’t say anything.
“Taking care of some shopping?” I asked.
“You’re not wearing your wedding ring.”
She ignored my question and leaned forward to peer sharply into my eyes.
I felt guilty, even though she had been the one who pulled away.
“I’m not sure we’re married anymore.”
“I see.” She didn’t elaborate, but continued to study me.
“Do you want something?” I finally asked.
“Maybe.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure you can give it to me. In fact, I’m pretty certain you can’t.”
“Try me.”
“I saw the model boat on your desk,” she said, changing the subject. “Where did it come from?”
“You were in my room?”
“You left the door open, so I looked in. I didn’t touch any of your precious stuff. It’s a beautiful model, but you have no interest in boats.”
“A friend is lending it to me. I might be interested in a model boat. It’s a new interest.”
“Really?” She looked doubtful. “So a lot’s going on with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you’ve been looking for an apartment.”
“How could you hear that?”
“It doesn’t matter who told me … ”
“It matters to me,” I said, my voice rising.
She came closer and raised a hand to touch my cheek. The familiar softness of that skin silenced me.
“I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you.”
As usual, my anger felt like self-pity. Why didn’t she love me anymore? I wouldn’t be looking for an apartment if she hadn’t left me. And at the first hint of intimacy I wanted to make
the sort of clinging assertion that she hated and I didn’t like either. She raised her lips to mine and with a simple, lingering kiss restored me to myself in a way I never could. Embarrassing to depend on another to create that inner certainty, but I did. Easily, as if it had never been in question, she rose with my hand in hers and led me to the bedroom we had shared.
I found myself in an embrace I had lost hope of ever experiencing again. We moved with a languid slowness, as if waves lifted and lowered us together. She raised herself on her arms and rocked above me. I watched through half-opened eyes like a voyeur. This feeling of being an outsider made me anxious and I rolled her beneath me. I quickened as if to join us inseparably in a frenzy of movement.
“Make love to me,” she cried out.
For a moment I had the dizzying sense that my gyrations had wakened in her an insatiable need for me.
“Make love to me,” she cried out again, but now the words sounded torn from her and I heard her inflection. She meant that my lovemaking failed her, that she didn’t feel loved by me whatever the connection of our bodies. I tried to slow myself, but my body had its own hurried rhythm.
“Stop it.” Her voice pleaded at first, then gave way to anger. “Stop it!”
What did she mean? Stop the thoughts pouring through my mind? Stop moving my flesh on hers?
She started hitting me, swinging her hands up from the sheets to slap my shoulders, my chest, my face.
“You’re just screwing me. Get off. Get off me!”
I separated from her and stood beside the bed.
“Get out of my room.” She curled on her side. “Leave me alone.”
She didn’t sob, but I could hear the whining of her breath. She clutched a pillow in her arms the way a child might hold a teddy bear. I considered sitting beside her and comforting her, but I didn’t know what to say. I felt she had rendered a judgment against me. Nothing I could do would change it. I picked up my clothes and closed the door behind me. Standing in the quiet of the living room, I wondered how this could have happened. What had made her want me, however briefly? Fear that I would find an apartment of my own? But if that were true, she must have at least a small hope that we could mend our marriage. Whatever it might be, I felt I had lost an opportunity that wouldn’t come again.