Das Boot

  Another blow strikes the tower. A heavy wave smashes down on our bent backs. But the Second Watch Officer is already up, his eyes focused on the horizon. He continues to roar. “Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink!”

  I have no desire to compete with the weather, so I simply touch my forehead when he turns to look at me.

  Every time I take the binoculars from my eyes, water runs down my arms. There’s always trouble with the oilskins and more damn trouble with the glasses! Most of the time there isn’t a single pair on the bridge because they’ve all been hopelessly fogged by salt water. The men are always working on them in the control room, but as soon as a pair is well polished and handed up, it’s a matter of minutes for the salt water to ruin them again. We’ve long since given up trying to make any use of our sodden polishing leathers.

  Suddenly I grin, remembering the storms they make in sea movies, in a tank with model ships, and for close-ups a piece of the bridge mounted on rockers and tilted left, then right, while buckets of water are being thrown from all sides in the actors’ faces. And instead of ducking down, the heroes stare all around, looking threatening.

  Here they could take lessons in the real thing: we’re only visible for seconds at a time. We bend our heads, hunch over, presenting nothing but the tops of our skulls to the waves. An instant to observe your sector out of closely narrowed eyes, then down with the face. No matter how we dodge, the thin whiplashes of spray strike home. There’s no protection against them. A real wave that smashes you straight in the face is always easier to bear than these fierce, underhand lashes. They burn like fire.

  Immediately I have to take another gurgling cascade full in the back. Looking down, I see the water eddy around the sides of my boots, flood up, and ebb sucking away, leaving them like the piles of a wharf. Another flood, and then another.

  The change-over ahead of time is a blessing. The Second Watch Officer may act as tough as he likes—not even he could endure a full stint.

  Undressing is hard work. Just as I have one leg halfway out of my trousers, the floor goes from under my feet. I land full length on the floor plates. Lying on my back on the hand wheels, I finally get both legs free.

  The control-room mate throws me a hand towel. I still have to get out of a dripping wet sweater and soaked underclothes before I can dry myself with one hand while I brace myself with the other.

  I am terrified of the night. How will I be able to get through the hours on a mattress that is bucking, swaying, suddenly dropping out from under me?

  Tuesday. It’s been a week and a half since the storm began, a week and a half of martyrdom and torture.

  In the afternoon I climb onto the bridge. Above us a tattered sky and the waves leaping at it in unceasing insane attacks; the water seems to be making a desperate effort to tear itself free from the earth, but however high the waves arch and leap, gravity drags them back, collapsing them with a crash into one another.

  The speed with which the waves approach us is breathtaking. The breakers no longer have a crest of foam; even as each one forms, the storm snatches it away. The horizon has completely disappeared. I cannot endure this for more than half an hour. My hands are cramped from holding on. Water streams down the hollow of my spine and into my trousers.

  The moment I am below, the boat resounds with the blows of a gigantic sledgehammer. The pressure hull quivers in every rib. It creaks and groans.

  Wednesday. In the late afternoon I am perched with the Commander on the chart chest. From the tower down into the control room comes the sound of violent cursing. It goes on and on until the Commander gets up, seizes the ladder to the tower hatch, and keeping his head at a safe distance from the continual trickle of water demands, “What the devil’s going on?”

  “Boat keeps swinging to port—hard to hold her on course.”

  “Don’t get excited!” the Commander shouts up. He remains standing beside the tower hatch, then bends over the chart table. After a short time he calls for the navigator. All I grasp is, “No longer any point—hardly any headway over the seabed.”

  The Commander still hesitates for a while, then over the loudspeaker system announces, “Stand by to dive!” The controlroom mate, who has been crouching on the flood distributor like a tired fly, springs to his feet, heaving a sigh of relief. The Chief comes through the hatch and gives his orders. There is only the slurping of the bilge water to be heard and the drumbeat of the waves greatly magnified by the sudden stillness. A shower of water pours down through the tower; the bridge lookouts climb down dripping. Two of them immediately take charge of the hydroplanes; the First Watch Officer is already ordering, “Flood!”

  Hissing, the air escapes from the diving cells. We quickly tilt downward. The bilge water shoots gurgling forward. A shattering blow smacks into the tower, but the next wave only sounds dull, and the following ones meet no resistance whatever. More roaring and gurgling, then silence.

  We stand around stiffly, bemused by the sudden peace. The stillness is like a great wall of insulation between us and the chaotic symphony above.

  The face of the First Watch Officer looks scalded. His lips are bloodless, his eyes deep in their sockets. There is caked salt on his cheekbones. Panting, he frees himself from the water-logged towel around his neck.

  The depth manometer shows 130 feet. But the hand moves further over the dial: 160, 190. This time we have to go deeper to find quiet. Only after 210 feet does the Chief balance the boat to an even keel. The bilge water rips through the stern, then back again. Gradually it settles down: the roaring and slapping cease. A tin can that has been rolling over the floor plates now lies motionless.

  “Boat in balance,” the Chief reports to the Commander.

  The First Watch Officer sinks onto the chart chest and dangles his white, bleached hands between his knees, too exhausted to take off his wet clothing.

  Two hundred ten feet of water over the boat.

  We are now as safe from the blows of the waves as though we were lying in the dead angle of a cannon. The sea protects us from itself.

  The Commander turns to me. “No need to keep hanging on.” And I realize that I’m still clinging tightly to a pipe.

  The steward brings in the dishes for the evening meal and starts to assemble the table railings.

  “Down with the railings, you there!” the Chief snaps at him and like lightning reaches to do it himself.

  The loaf of bread that the steward brings in has been almost entirely destroyed by the damp. Admittedly, the green islands of mold that spring up every day through the brown crust have been wiped away by Cookie with his stinking dishcloth—but that hasn’t helped much. The bread is penetrated by green mold—like Gorgonzola. In addition, yellow sulfur-like deposits have made their appearance.

  The Chief says, “Don’t say anything against mold. Mold is healthy.” He waxes enthusiastic. “Mold is a noble plant, of the same family as the hyacinth! In this place we should be thankful for anything that grows.”

  We apply the same patience we would bring to bear on complicated jigsaws to whittle out the small halfway-healthy cores of the thick slices. Out of a whole loaf only a fragment remains—smaller than a child’s fist.

  “Sunday art,” says the Commander contemptuously.

  The Second Watch Officer, however, maintains that this bread sculpture gives him pleasure. While he zealously cuts irregular stars out of gray slices of bread, he tells us about sailors who have nourished themselves for months on worms, mouse droppings, and biscuit crumbs. He embellishes his description with so many details that you could believe he has experienced it all himself.

  Finally the Chief interrupts him. “We know all that, you old Aztec. That was when you were roaming around the Pacific with Lieutenant-Commander Magellan, just because the old trophy-hunter wanted some straits named after him. I see it all. Must have been a hard life!”

  Thursday. Exhausted. Done for. No lessening of the storm. Deliverance, finally, toward evening, wh
en the Commander gives the order to submerge because of limited visibility.

  Gradually it falls quiet in the boat again. The Berliner is sitting close to the control-room hatch, taking a pair of binoculars apart—water between the lenses.

  The radio shack is empty. The radioman is next door in the sound room. He’s put on the headset and is casually turning the wheel of the sound detector.

  In the Officers’ Mess the First Watch Officer is busy with his loose-leaf notebooks—what else! He has even got out a stapler. Funny that we should have a stapler on board. There’s a pencil sharpener as well. Apparently we’re fitted out as a complete office. At least he leaves the typewriter alone.

  The Chief is looking at photos. The Second Engineer appears to be in the engine room. The Commander is dozing.

  Quite unexpectedly the Chief says, “At home they must have had snow by now.”

  “Snow!”

  The Commander opens his eyes. “Could be—we’re already well into November. Funny thing, it’s years since I’ve seen snow.”

  The Chief passes his photographs around: snowy landscapes. Figures like dark blots on pure white. The Chief with a girl, hills with ski tracks; a fence runs across the left side of the picture. At the base of the pickets the snow has melted away.

  While I stare at the picture, memories return. A mountain town, shortly before Christmas. The warm security of low-ceilinged rooms. Tireless hands using all sorts of knives and chisels to carve figures out of soft pine for the great revolving mechanical Christmas mountain. The smell of the wood, the warmth of the stove envelop me, along with the odor of paints and glues, and the sharp aroma of schnapps from the huge glass in the middle of the table, called the “riding school” because it goes around and around. The church smell of incense rising in smoking blue columns from the mouths of the little carved mineworkers and dwarfs in leather pants, and the wild mountain goblins sculpted out of turnips. And outside, snow and cold—so piercing it made your nostrils burn when you breathed. Horse-drawn sleds tinkling with many-toned bells. Steam from the horses’ nostrils white in the light of the harness lanterns. Illuminated angels everywhere in the windows between banks of moss.

  “Yes,” says the Old Man. “Real snow for once—that’s what I’d like to see.”

  The Chief puts his photos away thoughtfully.

  The Commander has the time of the evening meal moved up.

  “It’s specially for the Second Watch Officer,” he says. “He’s to be allowed to eat in peace!”

  Hardly has the Second Watch Officer washed down his last mouthful, when the command rings through the boat, “Stand by to surface!”

  Immediately my muscles tense.

  In the middle of the night the engines are stopped again. I sit up suddenly, confused, in a half-sleep. The drone of the diesels keeps on in my head. A single bulb is burning in the compartment. Through the hatch I hear orders from the control room, spoken low, as though the men were involved in some secret activity. I hear a hissing. The boat slants forward. The glow of the lamp moves upward above the hatch. The waves, still breaking against the body of the boat, sound as if someone were beating on tightly stretched canvas. Then silence. The breathing of the off-duty watch is clearly audible.

  A man taps his way from the control room through the compartment.

  Frenssen catches hold of him. “What’s up?”

  “No idea!”

  “Tell us what’s going on—c’mon.”

  “Nothing special. No visibility now. Black as a bear’s ass.”

  “So that’s it,” says Frenssen.

  I settle myself properly and go to sleep with a feeling of deep satisfaction.

  It must be five o’clock when I wake up again. It’s very hot in the compartment and the fumes from the resting diesels have penetrated the room. The ventilators are humming. I stretch out comfortably. The bunk doesn’t move. I feel this blessing all the way down to the pit of my stomach.

  Friday. The Commander doesn’t surface until breakfast is over. Even at 130 feet the boat is being moved by the groundswell. We soon break out into the tearing whirlpool and the first waves crash against the tower. So much water comes down that the bilge is instantly full. And there’s no position in which your muscles can relax.

  The direction of the waves must have changed again. Although the boat has maintained the same course underwater it’s now rolling more to port. At times it holds at an extreme angle for frightening periods of time.

  The navigator reports that the wind has shifted and is now westsouthwest. That explains it!

  “A beam sea—we won’t be able to take it for long!” says the Commander.

  But at lunch, while we are laboriously trying to keep ourselves at the table, he speaks reassuringly. “The waves are coming at a bit of an angle now. The wind will soon shift. If it comes from astern everything will be all right.”

  I decide to stay at the table after the meal. I discover a book sliding up and down the floor in front of the Second Watch Officer’s locker. I reach for it awkwardly and open it at random. I perceive only individual words: “Squaresail yard—inner jib—top gallant sail—back brace—jack block…”

  Professional vocabulary from the era of sailing ships: beautiful, proud words. We have nothing to compare with them.

  The roaring of the waves along our steel skin swells again and again in a furious crescendo.

  Suddenly the boat heels to port. I am thrown out of my seat, and the bookcase empties itself completely. Whatever was left between the railings on the table falls crashing to the floor. The Old Man has braced himself sideways like a tobogganer putting on the brakes. The Chief has slid to the floor. We all remain like this for some minutes as though posing for an old-fashioned camera. The boat will never right itself from this extreme roll. My god, we can’t get out of it!

  But after several minutes the compartment tilts back to the horizontal. The Chief exhales with a shrill siren wheeze. In slow motion the Commander props himself upright and says, “Man alive!”

  “Oha!” someone roars in the bow compartment.

  I want to stay huddled on the floor. The room immediately heels to starboard. The din is even wilder. My god, how can they survive up there on the bridge!

  I pretend to read, but thoughts are whirling through my head. The boat is sure to make it, says the Commander. More seaworthy than any other vessel. A ballast keel one yard wide, half a yard deep, filled with iron bars. A long-armed lever, balanced in the middle. No superstructures. Center of gravity lies below the structural center. No other kind of ship could withstand this.

  “What’s that?” asks the Old Man, looking over at my book.

  “Something about sailing ships.”

  “Hah!” he answers. “A full storm on a sailing ship, there’s something you ought to live through. On a boat like this you don’t feel a thing.”

  “Thanks!”

  “Make fast the tower hatch—that’s all we have to worry about. But on sailing ships—good god! Reefing and furling sails, spare gear lashed fast to the spars, storm jibs bent on, handlines rigged on deck, hatches battened down—the work never stops. And then nothing to do but sit in the cabin and trust to the Lord God. Nothing to eat. And up in the shrouds again, torn sails to clew up and unreef. New ones to lash on while you’re standing on the jackstays. And then the braces every time the wind shifts…”

  There it is again, that precise, vigorous, powerful language; we’re poorer now that it’s gone.

  As the room heels to port I get to my feet. I want to go and see the inclination indicator in the control room.

  The inclination indicator is a simple pendulum with a scale. The pendulum has now swung a full fifty degrees, so the boat is heeling fifty degrees to starboard. The pendulum remains stationary at fifty, as though nailed at this extreme, because the boat hasn’t righted itself. I can only explain this by supposing that a second wave must have crashed over her before she could free herself from the first. Now the pendul
um moves even further—to sixty degrees. And for an instant it reaches sixty-five!

  The Commander has followed me. “Looks impressive,” he says behind me, “but you have to subtract something, because the pendulum’s own momentum carries it too far.” For the Commander to be really disconcerted, the boat would probably have to be sailing keel up.

  The men on duty in the control room are now wearing oilskins, and the bilge has to be bailed almost continuously. It seems to me that the pumps are running nonstop.

  The navigator lurches into the room, like a man with a broken foot.

  “Well?” The Commander turns to him.

  “Since midnight a drift of fifteen miles may be assumed.”

  “You could really express yourself a little less tentatively. You’re always right.” The Commander adds under his breath, for my benefit, “He’s always that cautious, but in the end his calculations work out almost exactly. It happens every time.”

  A radiogram has arrived; the Commander is handed the slip of paper. Bending over his arm, I read the message with him. “Impossible to reach area of operations at designated time because of weather—UT.”

  “We’ll copy that and sign it with our own initials,” says the Commander. Then he pushes himself to his feet and, calculating how much the boat will heel, staggers forward. Soon he’s back with a half unfolded chart that he spreads out on the chart chest.

  “This is where UT is—almost directly in our line of advance. And here is where we are.”

  I can see that these two points are some hundreds of miles apart. The Commander looks morose. “If it’s all part of the same depression, then good night! It looks like an enormously extended storm system, and there’s no indication it’s going to move on soon.”

  Thoughtfully he folds up the chart and pushes back the sleeve of his sweater so that he can read his watch. “Not long till dinner,” he says, as though to sum up the whole point of the radiogram and his reactions.