My Father, His Son

by Reidar Jonsson

  I was sitting alone on the poop deck. Except for poor seaman Svenson, it looked as if there would be only myself and Woolakiiaan sagamaaroo left aboard.

  That’s exactly how it turned out.

  Toward evening a cooling breeze fanned my face. The captain sat on the main deck with his beer mug on his stomach. I sat on the poop deck and kept an eye out for sharks. Everything in North Haven was peaceful and serene.

  The same words can unfortunately not be used to describe my dreams that night. I have always had big ears for my age and thanks to my dear uncle’s instructions, I learned to wiggle them. He ought to have taught me how to furl them inward instead so I could have turned off sailors’ manifold tales of women and heights of ecstasy, burning disappointments and alluring promises, of farewells and tears, and, to top it off, mystical and indescribable venereal diseases.

  Such was the stuff my dreams were made of while the rest of the crew, each according to ability, tried various kinds of amusements in Port Adelaide.

  In the middle of one such dream, I was grateful to be awakened by a strange sound. I peered through the vent. Our ship’s huge searchlights were turned on, the beams of light cutting wide rivers on the harbor basin’s agitated water. The excited voices of the crew blended in with other sounds, like the screech of a gigantic washing machine whipping and reverberating in the water. I blinked hard several times. It took a few seconds before I realized what was happening. Protected by the dark, the crew on the Jidda ship had dumped a load of dead sheep into the basin. Every shark in Gulf St. Vincent had received a personal invitation to the bloody banquet. Hundreds of sheep corpses were torn to bits and ground down in the bloodred, spuming kettle.

  The first wee hours of Sunday after a Saturday night ashore, you are used to hearing sounds of fun and merriment, bragging and crying, someone throwing up, someone laughing, someone fighting, and someone insisting on singing himself to sleep.

  That is normal. And after such a remarkable shore leave as a Saturday night in Port Adelaide, the cabins sternward ought to rumble with liberated life. But after the first few excited voices, even the most arrogant and wisecracking mates fell silent. Perhaps the chilling spectacle lasted an hour, perhaps fifteen minutes. Or perhaps the loathsome feast went on until the first grayish streaks of dawn. I don’t know. I remained right there on the bench, leaning against the bulkhead and looking out over the water as it slowly quieted down.

  Nothing would ever make me dip even one toe in that harbor basin. I would prefer a bullet between the eyes.

  But then, why would anybody want to, I thought, and began to scrub myself clean for my Sunday outing. I trimmed my toenails, shampooed my hair, and would have shaved my face, had I owned the right tools. The crew slept right through the sumptuous Sunday breakfast. The cook seemed to have counted on that. His bloodshot eyes expressed no surprise, only relief, when I asked for half a dozen raw eggs rather than fried ones.

  Among the conditions for my Sunday adventure were my solemn promises to the first mate to be back aboard the ship before midnight. If I figured that the city’s temples of pleasure would open around three o’clock in the afternoon and subtracted one hour for my return trip, I ought to be able to keep at it rabbit-style a little more than eight hours. Oh well, subtract another hour for changing partners now and then. I was determined to work through Port Adelaide’s supply. Besides sufficient funds, raw eggs constituted a recommended preparation for such debauchery.

  I was ready. Clean and innocent on the outside but filled to the bursting point with wild desire and hard lust within, I left the hungover crew’s speculations about catching sharks. From the telegraph operator I received cash and from the first mate a word of advice for the road. He stuck a piece of paper in my hand and mumbled something about a harmless place, but he seemed to have lost his fighting spirit.

  I waved good-bye and walked toward Port Adelaide.

  According to descriptions, this paradise was located beyond the harbor shacks and a stretch of wasteland. The heat shimmered over road and land. I moved cautiously so I wouldn’t sweat. Like an aging crab, I worked my way along sun-drenched streets. It was so hot that the six raw eggs swilling around in my stomach turned into an omelet. Such things were mere trifles. Here I was, an unknown talent in this enormous country. Here existed gigantic opportunities to become, finally, the one I really was. Here the water swirled to the left in the toilet bowls and here I actually walked upside down. Why then should not my life take new and unexpected turns and trajectories, and why should not the bad luck ooze out of me and into space? My earlier fateful life may have been caused by magnetic disturbances from the North Pole, I reasoned optimistically while I shuffled along.

  However hard I searched, I could not find one bar that was open, much less the kind of temples I had in mind. Everything was closed, the doors bolted. The Australian population had been blown off the face of the earth. No kangaroos. Not even an aborigine throwing a boomerang. Only weak tones from an asthmatic organ and human voices droning from something that had to be a church.

  By and by, I began to understand the crew’s interest in sharks as a Sunday amusement. They must be laughing in unison at the idiot who floundered about in the cinder-dry Sunday heat.

  My worst misgivings turned into harsh reality when I saw the sign on the nearest bar door. In Australia, the church orders a day of rest, whether you want it or not. This very fact was cursed by a sleepy and angry drunk, whose foot had gotten stuck in the door after he unsuccessfully had tried to kick it open. I helped him get unstuck. He thanked me by using me for support, while we struggled toward what he called The Very Last Resort.

  Even an inexperienced deck boy could see that this joint was the last outpost of humanity, but shame on the one who gives up easily. I stepped into the hole in the wall along with the stinking drunk, mobilized all my courage, banged my fist on the rickety bar, and demanded a beer. In the semidarkness I could sense the others, my brothers in search of pleasure. Thoughtfully they swallowed thick saliva and stared at me.

  Well-combed and clean, perhaps just a little sweaty and stinky after the contact with my new friend, I was still smelling like a rose in comparison with them. Consequently I was rather surprised when the man behind the bar amicably informed me that he did not serve minors, whereupon he listlessly threw me out.

  As if he had touched something repugnant, he brushed off his hands and placed himself, broad-legged with authority, in front of the hole in the wall. Since the place was anything but attractive, I certainly had no intention of fighting to get back in. Besides, paradoxically enough, I was grateful. My playing macho and banging on the bar was only a decrepit defense action, not rooted in reality. The drunk and I had shared the path to the place, but his apparition had done its work. That was not the road for me, my mind told me shakily. What if I ended up like him?

  Instead I would choose the first mate’s harmless place. And make up a reasonably likely story about a girl from a good family. I fumbled for my crinkly piece of paper and asked the bar owner if he knew the address. His face lit up. He promised to call for a taxicab and stated that this would be the right place for me, if I turned to the left right after I had entered.

  “Just like the water,” I joked.

  He did not seem to understand, or perhaps he was not interested in the enigmatic ways of water. Or else he failed to comprehend my dainty English. He himself sounded as if he had a mouth full of beer.

  While the taxi went on its bumpy way with me inside, he was probably pouring more beer into himself.

  Certainly no Swedish shipmate has ever been driven this far from Port Adelaide, I reflected, feeling a mixture of pride and worry, the latter having to do with the relentlessly ticking taximeter. The address was in the city of Adelaide itself. Now, there are cities and there are cities. If one blinked, one could easily miss the center of this one. Most of it consisted of huge suburban areas with parks and more parks in such numbers that I began looking seriously for kangaroo
s.

  As I sat there staring out into the foliage surrounding us on all sides, a kangaroo jumped out. I yelled, “A kangaroo!”

  The cabbie shook his head. What in the world had he picked up as a fare from the infamous hole in the wall? But I kept hollering and pointing. He shook his head more vigorously. I did the same, though for other reasons. The kangaroo had disappeared behind a clump of trees. In its stead a live camel strode across the lawn. I took hold of the cabbie’s head to turn him forcibly toward this unbelievable magic trick. This made him really mad, and he threw me out of the cab, as soon as he had my money in his huge fist.

  “Jesus Christ,” he bellowed. “A shitty little zoo. That’s nothing to make a federal case out of.”

  Shamefacedly, I realized that my Nordic foolishness continued to swirl to the right. I was the same as I had always been.

  In a short while, however, I stood right in front of the first mate’s harmless place. A hotel. Nothing but a hotel, though rather impressive with porches and slanted canopies and gleaming, etched panes in the revolving doors that slowly swung back and forth as if in training for some distant onslaught of human beings. I saw no sign, but that wasn’t necessary since the whole front area was wrapped in an elegant aroma of tea and fruit cobbler.

  I sighed and entered.

  In order not to encounter any more kangaroos turning into camels, I acted according to the shady barman’s friendly advice. I turned to the left right away and banged my nose on another couple of revolving doors. These were white with gilded mirrors. Graceful golden letters told me with flourish the message the doors intended to convey:

  WOMEN’S LOUNGE.

  That’s what it said. The first mate gained several points in my estimation. He had loose skin, but obviously he had greater experience when it came to Australian niceties than anyone else aboard. Shiny door mirrors in golden frames, beautifully shaped letters … this was truly a place for connoisseurs, for people with class, who respected neither weekday nor holiday when the desire pulsated urgently. In short, in my simple soul I believed that this was a first-class bordello.

  I had no idea that the Australians were closely related to the Muslims. Exactly as the latter, the former separate women from men in public saloons. As it is said in the Koran, “Woman, your destiny proclaims that water slips through your hands while the man cups his hands and drinks from the holy well.” One understands that men with such beliefs feel shame in front of their women. But that the men in Australia in the middle of the twentieth century behaved as Muslims was news to me. You can’t know everything at the age of seventeen, after all. How that tallies with my knowledge of the Koran is easy to explain: Every sailor is filled with vague tales about that religion. That’s how it is, pure and simple. You inhale it on the sea. Some is true, some is not.

  Filled with desire, I took a deep breath in order to control my nerves and tiptoed through the doors.

  The room was swimming in a green, dim light. To walk inside felt like diving into the Sargasso Sea. Just to be on the safe side, I continued holding my breath. The large shutters were pulled closed on the wall with windows, but a tiny amount of light trickled in. The opposite wall consisted of green latticework all the way to the ceiling. Voices and murmurs slipped in from the other side along with cigarette smoke and the clink of glasses.

  On the wall across from the hinged entrance doors shimmered a painted fairy-tale landscape. A castle with pinnacles and turrets — and below it glens, ravines, and precipices beneath which flowed a river of silver. Over the wall painting drifted serpentines of smoke, as if an especially ordered effect. I let the doors swing shut behind me, fell down on the chair nearest them, and slowly let out my breath while attempting to assess the situation. Based on my scanty knowledge, this did not look at all like a bordello with style and class. Where were all the wanton women? I had imagined them lazily stretched out on red velvet lounges. In my fantasies they were dressed in light and transparent materials — a throng of skin and bodies multiplied by enormous, gold-framed mirrors. Over the splendor of it all, there would be wafts of mellow music. In other words, something quite like the illustrations to be found in A Thousand and One Nights.

  Once again disappointment took root in me. As usual I was struck down by myself.

  No matter. My boyish dreams contained realistic elements as well. Still, they were disturbing. I preferred to turn to other dreams, those tales woven of foreign, often Oriental, veils. Sometimes they were delicious and refreshing, sometimes heavy with musk and amber, intoxicating odors of myrrh, and smoke of incense.

  Well, there was certainly enough smoke in this room. Quite enough. But that was the only thing that muffled the chipped elegance of the dreary place. Either Australian men were sired by tight-fisted Scots and reached satisfaction from the smoke of their own fires or else I was the victim of a massive misunderstanding. Meanwhile my carefully measured time for fun and games was wasting away, slipping between my desperate fingers as I continued my futile chase. Time kept ticking away wretchedly while I stared at the horrendous wall painting. It was just about as naive as I was.

  “Garmisch-Partenkirchen. King Ludwig. Ludwig the Mad. He drowned himself in the lake you see down there to the left,” said a soft, melodious voice near my ear.

  The voice saved me from drowning right there on terra firma. Overwhelmed by disappointment, I had forgotten to breathe. Now I filled my lungs with air and turned toward the voice. And blushed beet red, since I had already indulged myself by sitting down at the woman’s table. To her I must have looked like a puffed-up pig with big staring eyes. I stared because she was so beautiful. My eyes turned into eager cat tongues, lapping up her long, ash blond hair, deep gray eyes, straight nose, generous mouth, a simple linen dress, slender fingers that amused themselves by drumming against a tall glass. She sat in a high-backed rattan chair; a lace-trimmed pillow peeked out. She was a lonely mermaid on her throne in the Sargasso Sea.

  She leaned forward and sipped something green and bubbly out of the glass through a straw and at the same time smiled toward me. It was a childish smile though it also betrayed an aura of no trespassing. In the sea green dusk, it was impossible to determine her age. Perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty. Absolutely no more. One thing was certain. She was a family girl of the highest order. I had gotten lost but had found what I was looking for.

  Everything about her seemed white, as if she had been sitting forever in the shadows, the smoke, and the loneliness, at some distance from male murmur and clamor. I could not stop my staring, and she fell back into the shadows. My chances of introducing myself, as a normal human being would, were long since gone. I felt desperation and intense joy — and did not know if I’d dare to let out my breath in front of such a perfectly divine manifestation.

  She held out her hand.

  I took it, cleared my throat, and could no longer contain my breath. To my despair, I drooled saliva over her slim white wrist.

  “I beg your pardon.” I hiccuped as best I could.

  She laughed. And said she liked the fact that I had studied her with such profound interest.

  ‘Others just sneak glances now and then. What are you drinking?”

  She sounded like a genuine English lady. With cool perfection and without anxiety, she put forward such a tremendous question as to what I was drinking. Oh, good God, what was I really drinking? I suggested whatever she had in her glass. Obviously that was all right, since she knocked on the wall and shutters flew open.

  Are all barmen in Australia ruddy, pale, and freckled? Do they all keep their mouths full of beer when they speak? Such questions occupied my feeble brain while I waited in terror for him to throw me out. But besides glaring suspiciously and asking if I was bothering the woman, he did nothing except hand me a glass of green stuff. “For the boy,” as she put it. From their exchange I also learned her name. Else. It sounded as if she stemmed from the Bavaria of the wall painting. Else. A little vacuous for my taste. Else. No! The most beautiful
name on earth!

  Her laughter directed toward the ingratiating barman served to disappoint and infuriate me. It was the same smile and laughter she had bestowed on me, soft as a warm wind over peaking waves rolling in toward some exotic land. How could she? How was it possible for her to laugh exactly the same way toward this doughy, freckled relic from a penal colony?

  Luckily, I managed to shove my disappointment down into my shoes before she turned back to me. With the same drink as hers in front of me, I was finally able to collect myself enough for a real introduction. I removed the straw and raised my glass.

  “Ingemar Johansson,” I said simply.

  I held out my glass to toast her with suitable dignified elegance. But, horror of horrors, my hand began to tremble and to my own consternation it threw the drink into my face!

  Total and utter fiasco. Nervous breakdown already in the first round. This business about not being able to hold on to a glass is an old affliction of which I had thought myself cured. It’s the old shakes from my childhood, a kind of cramp that not even my beloved mother could prevent, in spite of her frequent and painful thrashings for the purpose of beating it out of me. Now the spasmic cramp had returned. It had sailed in my backwash from the other side of the globe while I meditated on water that swirls to the right or left. I could stop brooding. For me personally, all fluids jump straight into my face.

  One might imagine Else laughing at me. She did not. Instead she began to cry. Quiet, dignified sobs. Oh well, I was used to all kinds of strange reactions since the real Ingemar Johansson lost the match against Floyd Patterson, and I was eternally grateful that she did not laugh at my sticky, green face. But for someone to take it so hard that our national hero lost match and title that she cried from the bottom of her heart was a new experience.