Das Boot

  “Two hundred sixty degrees—getting louder!”

  The Commander raises his head. He’s reached a decision.

  “Hard a-starboard!” And immediately afterward, “Sound room—we’re turning to starboard!”

  A wrench has to be passed through to the stern. I reach for it eagerly and hand it on. Dear god, to be able to do something—turn handwheels, adjust levers, man the pumps…

  The operator leans out into the passageway again. His eyes are open but he’s staring into infinity. He sounds like a medium speaking. “Sounds growing louder—two hundred thirty—two hundred twenty.”

  “Nonessential lights out,” the Old Man orders. “Who the hell knows how long we may need the current!”

  The operator reports again, “Attacking again—sounds bearing two hundred ten degrees—getting louder fast! Quite close!” The excitement has upset his delivery.

  The Commander orders: “Both engines full ahead!”

  The seconds stretch out. Nothing. No one moves.

  “Let’s hope they don’t get their friends in on it!” The Old Man voices a fear that’s been in my bones for a long time: the sweepers, the killers… a pack of dogs is death to the hare.

  Whoever has us on the hook now is no beginner, and we’re defenseless in spite of the five torpedoes in our tubes. We can’t surface, we can’t come speeding from behind cover and throw ourselves on the enemy. We haven’t even the grim assurance to be had from simply holding a weapon in your hand. We can’t so much as shout at them. Just creep away. Keep going deeper. How deep are we now? I can’t believe my eyes: the pointer of the manometer stands at 465. “Shipyard guarantee three hundred” flashes through my mind.

  Ten minutes pass and nothing happens.

  Another handful of pebbles hits the boat high up on the port buoyancy tank. I can see from the operator’s face that more depth charges are coming. He’s moving his lips, counting the seconds before detonation.

  The first is so well aimed that I feel the shock all the way up my spine. We’re in a huge drum with a steel plate for a drum head. I see the navigator’s lips moving but I hear nothing. Have I gone deaf?

  But now I can hear the Commander. He’s ordering higher speed again. He raises his voice to be heard over the pandemonium. “All right! Carry on just as you are, gentlemen, pay no attention to this nonsense! At home there are…”

  He breaks off in mid-sentence. Suddenly there’s a humming stillness. Only the occasional swish and slap from the bilge.

  “Bow up! Steady!” the Chief orders the hydroplane men. His whisper sounds too loud in the silence. Once again the E-motors have been reduced to crawling speed. Bilge water gurgles toward the stern. Just where does it all come from? Wasn’t it properly bailed in advance?

  “Thirty-eight… forty-one!” the navigator counts.

  With the roaring and bursting of the bombs still in my ears the silence that follows seems like a bizarre acoustical black hole, bottomless. Probably just to keep the silence from becoming too painful, the Commander whispers, “I’m not sure whether those characters up there are in contact!” At the same moment new detonations shake the depths: the answer is plain.

  Once more my ears can’t distinguish one explosion from the next. Nor have I any impression of whether the bombs are exploding right or left, above or below the boat. But the Old Man can obviously locate them. He’s probably the only one who knows our position relative to our tormentor. Or is the navigator calculating too? In any case I no longer have the slightest clue. I see only the needle of the depth manometer moving slowly forward over the dial. We’re going deeper again.

  The Chief is bending forward toward the hydroplane operators. His face is thrown into unnatural relief against the dark background, like that of an actor lit only by the footlights, every bone emphasized by dark lines or shadow. His hand looks waxen. There’s a black streak across his right cheek. He’s narrowed his eyes as if dazzled by the light.

  The two hydroplane operators crouch motionless in front of their control buttons. Even when they change the hydroplane settings one sees no movement. The slight pressure of a finger requires no shift of their limbs. Our hydroplanes are power-operated. What more could we possibly want? Except for some piece of equipment that would allow us to observe the enemy from way down here.

  A breathing space? I try to settle myself more firmly. The corvette certainly won’t keep us waiting long. It’s simply circling again; even when it’s moving away from us, the goddam Asdic keeps us cornered. The people up there have got every man they can spare on the bridge, peering at the choppy sea, searching the marbled foam for some sign of us. Nothing—zebra patterns drawn in green; green and white oxgall paper streaked with black… but it’s the iridescent sheen of oil they’re really after.

  Still no move from the hydrophone operator: no sounds to report.

  A strange clicking noise. A new device to locate us? Minutes pass. No one moves a muscle. The clicking stops; in its place another handful of pebbles strikes the boat, small gravel stones this time. Abruptly the Commander raises his head. “D’you think we’ll get them—again?”

  Get them again? Does he mean the convoy, or the corvette?

  He leans forward and speaks softly to the hydrophone man. “Find out if she’s going away.” Seconds later he asks impatiently, “Louder or weaker?”

  “Staying the same,” replies the operator, and after a while, “Getting louder.”

  “Any deviation?”

  “Bearing still two hundred twenty degrees.”

  The Commander immediately has the rudder put hard to starboard. So we’re going to double back again.

  And now he orders both motors slow ahead.

  Drops of condensation punctuate the tense silence at regular intervals: Pit-pat—tick-tack—pitch-patch.

  A hard blow makes the floor plates jump and rattle. “Forty-seven—forty-eight.” And then, “Forty-nine—fifty—fifty-one.”

  A glance at my wristwatch: 14:30. When was the alarm? Must have been shortly after twelve. We’ve been under pursuit for two hours!

  My watch has a red second hand on the same pin as the two main hands, so that it’s constantly circling the dial in a series of jerky movements. I concentrate on this hand, measuring the interval between the individual detonations: two minutes, thirty seconds—another one; thirty seconds—the next; then twenty seconds.

  I’m happy to have something to do. Nothing else exists. I take a tighter grip with my right hand as though to focus my concentration. It has to come to an end. Has to.

  Another hard, sharp blow: forty-four seconds this time. Up to this point I’ve been mouthing syllables noiselessly, but now I can clearly feel my lips spread into a flattened oval, baring my teeth. Now I need my left hand to hang on with too.

  The Commander orders us down another seventy feet.

  Almost seven hundred now. A loud crackling and snapping runs through the boat. The new control-room assistant glances at me in fear.

  “Only the woodwork,” whispers the Commander.

  It’s the wooden paneling that creaks and snaps so loudly. The interior structure can’t stand the compression. Seven hundred feet. Every square inch of steel skin now has to withstand a weight of 284 pounds, which means over twenty tons per square foot. All this on a hull less than an inch thick.

  The crackling’s getting sharper.

  “Unpleasant,” murmurs the Chief.

  The excruciating tension exerted on the steel skin is torture to me: I feel as if my own skin were being stretched. Another crack resounds, as loud as a rifle shot, and my scalp twitches. Under this insane pressure our hull is as fragile as an eggshell.

  The ship’s fly appears less than two feet away. I wonder how she likes this infernal drum solo. Each of us chooses his own fate: it’s as true for the fly as it is for me. We both embarked on this undertaking of our own free will.

  A double blow, then a third, not much weaker than its predecessors. The people up there are fi
shing for us with an even tighter net.

  Renewed clattering of floor plates and deafening after-roar.

  Peace lasts only a couple of heartbeats. Then two shattering blows and the glass plates of the depth manometers fall tinkling to the floor. The light goes out.

  The cone of a pocket flashlight wavers across the walls and comes to rest on the dial of the depth manometer. I make a terrifying discovery: the hands of both manometers are gone. The water gauge between the two hydroplane operators has cracked and is shooting a hissing stream of water straight across the room.

  “Leak through the water gauge,” I hear a shaky voice report.

  The Commander snarls, “Nonsense, cut the dramatics!”

  The empty dials stare like the eyes of a corpse. We can no longer tell whether the boat is sinking or rising.

  My scalp crawls again. If the instruments have failed us, we have no way of telling our position.

  I stare intently at the black ends of the shafts, but without a pointer they are meaningless.

  The control-room mate fumbles about among the pipelines by flashlight. Apparently trying to reach some valve that will close off the spurting stream of water. He’s soaked to the skin before he finds it. Although the flow is choked off, he continues to feel about on the floor. Suddenly he’s holding a pointer. Cautiously he lifts his precious find and places it on the square shaft of the small manometer, the one that registers the lowest depths.

  It feels as if all our lives depend on whether the thin strip of metal will move or not.

  The man takes his hand away. The needle quivers and slowly begins to turn. Silently the Commander nods approbation.

  The manometer shows six hundred feet.

  The hydrophone man reports, “Sounds getting louder—two hundred thirty degrees_two hundred twenty degrees!”

  The Commander takes his cap off and lays it on the chart chest. His hair is matted with sweat. He takes a deep breath and says, “Keep it up!”

  For once his voice isn’t entirely under control. There is an unmistakable undertone of resignation in it.

  “Noises bearing two hundred ten degrees! Growing louder—attack beginning again!”

  The Commander immediately orders full speed ahead. A sharp jolt runs through the boat as it leaps forward. The Commander leans against the shining oily column of the sky periscope, resting the back of his head on it.

  Long-forgotten images rise in my mind: two cardboard disks painted in spirals and spinning in opposite directions on the ice cream machines at country fairs. The tangle of red and white completely fills my head and becomes the trail of two depth charges, flaring comets that consume everything in a blaze of white.

  The hydrophone operator startles me. Another report. I stare at his mouth, but his words don’t penetrate.

  More waiting, more holding my breath. Even the smallest sound is painful, a touch on a raw wound. As if my nerves had escaped the outer layer of skin and were now exposed. I have only one thought: they’re up there. Right overhead. I forget to breathe. I’m stifling before I slowly, cautiously, fill my lungs with oxygen. Against closed eyelids I see bombs tumbling perpendicularly into the depths trailing sparkling air bubbles, exploding into fire. Around their incandescent cores all the colors of the spectrum flare up in mad combinations, leaping and dying again but growing steadily more intense until the whole interior of the sea glows like a blast furnace.

  The control-room mate breaks the spell. Gesturing and whispering, he calls the Chief’s attention to a corner of the control room where a can of lubricating oil is overflowing. This is about the most trivial problem imaginable right now, but it upsets him.

  The Chief nods permission for him to do something about it. The pipe that is dripping oil reaches straight into the can. He can’t simply take the can away from under it, but has to tilt it to get it out. As a result, more oil spills onto the floor plates and forms an ugly black puddle.

  The navigator shakes his head in disgust. The control-room mate withdraws the overfilled can as cautiously as a thief trying to avoid setting off a burglar alarm.

  “Corvette noises receding astern!” reports the operator. Almost simultaneously, two more bombs explode. But the roar of the detonations is weaker and duller than before.

  “Way off,” says the Commander.

  Rwumm—tjummwumm!

  Even fainter. The Commander seizes his cap. “Practice maneuvers! That’s the sort of thing they ought to work on at home!”

  The control-room mate is already busy fitting new glass tubes into the broken water gauges; he seems to know that the mere sight of the breakage effects us like poison.

  When I stand up, I’m stiff all over. No feeling in my legs. I try to put one foot in front of the other—feels like stepping into the void. I hold fast to the table and look at the chart.

  There is the pencil line showing the boat’s course, and the pencil cross indicating its last position. And here the line suddenly stops—I’m going to make a note of the latitude and longitude of the place if we get out of this.

  The operator sweeps the whole circumference of his dial.

  “Well?” asks the Commander. He acts bored, pushing his tongue into his left cheek till it bulges.

  “Going away!” the operator replies.

  The Commander looks around. Satisfaction personified. He even grins. “As far as I can see, gentlemen, the incident is over.”

  He staggers a little. “Very instructive, of course. First, all that damn chasing around and then a real bomb scare!” He climbs through the circular door and into his cubbyhole.

  “Bring me a piece of paper!” Is he going to compose something really profound for the war log or a report for the High Command? No, it’s sure to be nothing more than, “Surprised by corvette in rain squall. Three hours of depth bomb pursuit.” I wouldn’t bet on anything more colorful than that.

  Five minutes later he’s back in the control room. He exchanges a glance with the Chief, then orders, “Take her to periscope depth!” And climbs deliberately to the tower.

  The Chief has the hydroplanes adjusted.

  “Report depth!” The Commander’s voice comes down.

  “One hundred twenty-five feet.” Then in sequence: “Sixty feet. Forty-five feet—periscope above surface!”

  I hear the periscope motor hum, stop, hum again. Minutes pass. Not a word. We wait. Not a sound from the Old Man.

  We look at each other questioningly. “Something wrong?” the control-room mate murmurs.

  Finally the Commander breaks the silence. “Crash dive! Deep! All hands forward!”

  I repeat the order. The hvdrophone operator passes it on. From astern I hear it in multiple echoes. Tense with anxiety the crew rushes through the control room toward the bow.

  “Goddam filthy weather!” the Chief curses under his breath. The hand of the manometer moves forward again: sixty, one hundred, one hundred fifty feet…

  The Commander’s seaboots appear. He clambers slowly down into the control room. All eyes are fixed on his face. But he merely smiles sardonically and orders, “Both motors slow ahead. Course sixty degrees.” Finally he enlightens us.

  “The corvette’s lying six hundred yards away. Stopped, as far as I could see. Wanted to surprise us, the bastards.” The Old Man bends over the chart. After a while he turns to me. “Fucking maniacs. You can’t be too careful. Well, let’s crawl our way comfortably westward for the time being.”

  Then, to the navigator, “When does twilight begin?”

  “At 18.30 hours, Herr Kaleun.”

  “Good. We’ll stay down for the time being.”

  There no longer seems to be any immediate danger: at least the Commander was speaking loudly enough. He inhales with a deep snort, arches his chest, holds his breath, and nods from one of us to the other.

  “After the battle,” he says with a meaningful look at the confusion of broken glass, strewn oilskins, and upturned buckets.

  I see drawings by Dix: horses lying
on their backs, bellies torn open like exploded ships, all four legs stretched rigidly toward the sky, soldiers sunk in trench slime, teeth bared in final madness. Here on board, however, we may have just narrowly escaped destruction, but there are no sprawling tangles of entrails, no charred limbs, no lacerated flesh bleeding through canvas covers. A few fragments of broken glass, damaged manometers, spilled cans of condensed milk, two crushed pictures in the gangway—these are the only traces of battle. The steward appears, casts a disgusted look at the debris, and begins to clean up. The photo of the C-in-C U-boats, alas, has not been touched.

  But there’s been a lot of damage in the engine and motor rooms. The Chief recites a long list of technical details. The Old Man nods patiently.

  “Just let her plow along steadily. I have a feeling we’re still going to be needed around here.” And then to me, “Time to eat. I’m starving!” He takes his cap off and hangs it on top of the oilskins on the wall.

  “The fried eggs have probably gone cold,” the Second Watch Officer remarks and grins.

  “Hey, Cookie, fry up some more eggs,” the Commander shouts toward the stern.

  I’m in a daze. Are we really still here or is it an illusion? There’s a ringing in my inner ear, as if someone’s playing back a recording of the bombs going off. I can’t really grasp the fact that we’ve come through the storm in safety. I sit there silent and shake my head to try to banish the sights and sounds that haunt me.

  Still less than an hour since the last depth charges fell, and the radioman is putting a record on the phonograph. Marlene Dietrich’s voice is soothing. “Put your money away—some other time you can pay…” It’s a record from the Old Man’s private collection.

  At 19.00 the Commander gives the order over the loudspeaker to surface. The Chief swings himself through the circular door and gives the necessary instructions to the hydroplane operators. The bridge watch climbs into their rubber clothes, stands ready under the tower hatch, and fumbles with their binoculars.