Das Boot

  I clamp my mouth shut and hold my breath. There’s green glass in front of my eyes. I make myself as heavy as I can so that the solid current won’t tear me off my feet. God—are we going to drown? The whole bridge cockpit is full to overflowing.

  Finally the tower tips sideways. I bob up and gulp for air, but at once my breath is cut short. The bridge is heeling even farther. Can a U-boat capsize? What about our ballast keel? Can it withstand this sort of fury?

  The whirlpool is trying to rip the clothes from my body. I open my mouth wide, breathe hard, and pull first my right foot and then my left out of the vortex, as though out of a snare. Now I can venture to look up. Our stern is vertical! Quickly I turn my head front, force my bent knees to straighten, allow myself a quick glance over the bulwark. I glimpse the face of the Second Watch Officer: his mouth is wide open and he looks as if he’s yelling at the top of his voice. But nothing seems to be coming out.

  Water drips from the Commander’s face. The rim of his sou’wester is streaming like a roof gutter. Stiff and unmoved, he’s staring straight ahead. I follow the direction of his eyes.

  The other craft must now be on our port bow. Suddenly its whole length is laid bare. The same wave that ran under us is lifting it skyward. This takes no more than a moment, then its bow is buried in a flood of foam. It looks as if they’d gone to sea with only half a boat. A column of spray shoots straight up from their tower, like ocean rollers colliding with a cliff. They disappear completely in the gray spindrift.

  The Second Watch Officer roars something that sounds like “poor devils!” Poor devils! Has he gone mad? Has he forgotten that we’re being shaken and thrown around in exactly the same way?

  We swing around farther. The angle between our course and the running of the sea grows steadily less. Soon we’ll be able to take the waves head on.

  “Good work—oh, hell!” roars the Second Watch Officer. “If only that bunch—over there—doesn’t go and try—something fancy!”

  I too am afraid that they won’t be able to hold their boat on course in this sea. Our turning circle quickly carries us closer to them. Already the waves thrown off by their bow, which is acting like a snowplow, are colliding with the choppy cross-current stirred up by our own. Sheets of water shoot into the air—dozens of geysers, small, large, gigantic…

  Then we’re on our way up again. An insane wave surging out of the depths like some fabled leviathan has taken us on its back. We rise—a Submarine Ascension—Kyrie eleison! As if struggling to free ourselves from the earth we soar like a black zeppelin, higher and higher. Our foreship is right out of the water.

  I might as well be on the roof of a building as I look down into the bridge of the other boat—god! Hasn’t the Old Man cut it too fine? We could be slammed down on top of them!

  But no commands come. I can now recognize each of the five men who are bracing themselves against the starboard bulwark and staring up at us. Thomsen is in the middle.

  They’re all gaping like the wooden dolls with mouths you try to pop cloth balls into—or like a brood of nestlings waiting for their mother to return.

  So that’s the way it looks! That’s how the Tommies would see us if they were around just now: a barrel with five men lashed down tight inside—a black kernel in a patch of foam, a pit in the white flesh of a fruit. Only when the wave subsides does the image change—and a steel tube comes rolling out of the water.

  Now the whale lets us slide sideways off his back, and we’re on our way down again. Down and down.

  My god—why doesn’t the Old Man do something?

  I catch sight of his face. He’s grinning. The maniac can grin at a time like this.

  “Heads down!”

  Quick, arch your back like a cat. Hold tight, knees against the bulwark, back against the periscope housing. Tense your muscles. Tighten your belly. The wall, the wall of water, bottle-green and heraldically decorated, rises before us like Hiroshige’s Great Wave off Kanagawa.

  It becomes concave, curves toward us—get your head out of the way! Still time to gasp a lungful of air and huddle up, press the binoculars against your belly—and the hammer strikes again. Hold your breath, count. Fight down the choking and go on counting till the tearing flood recedes.

  I’m amazed: our terrible sideways slide didn’t happen this time.

  The Old Man—hardened skipper that he is—knew how the whale would behave. He can sense what the water will do, predict the behaviors of sea monsters.

  Now it’s Thomsen’s turn to wobble on the crest of a mountainous wave, pushed upward by a gigantic fist. Peering through the glasses, I see his diving tanks come completely free, glistening brightly. The boat hangs there for an eternity—then is suddenly slung into the next valley. A torn white comb shoots up between us, and the others disappear as though they had never existed. A dozen heartbeats later and I still see nothing but gray-white boiling waves, wind-whipped mountains of snow. They look primeval, having swallowed up the other boat.

  To think that down there in the belly of the other boat, in the midst of this wild dance, there’s the watch standing by the engines, the radioman crouching in his shack, and men braced in their bunks in the bow compartment trying to read or sleep; lights are burning down there and human beings are alive…

  See here, I tell myself, you’re acting like the Second Watch Officer. You’re completely forgetting that we’re traveling in the same sort of boat. Our men are putting up with the very same treatment as the ones over there.

  The Commander calls for signal flags. Signal flags? He’s gone completely nuts! How can anyone signal here?

  But he grasps them like two relay runners’ batons, and as we hurtle up again toward the sky he quickly unsnaps his safety belt, braces himself against the periscope housing, high over the bulwark, and keeping himself firmly wedged unrolls the hand flags; with complete composure, as though we were on an outing on the Wannsee, he sends his message: W-h-a-t-h-a-v-e-y-o-u-s-u-n-k.

  Hard to believe: a man on the other boat actually makes the arm signal for “Understood.” And as we’re being swept down again on our conveyor belt, the other lunatic over there signals: T-e-n-t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d-t-o-n-s.

  Like people in the cars of two ferris wheels turning in opposite directions, we exchange information in deaf and dumb language through the flying spray. For seconds at a time the boats hang level with each other. As we rise again the Old Man gives the other boat one more signal: G-o-o-d-l-u-c-k-y-o-u-b-a-s-t-a-r-d-s.

  The other lot have now got out their flags. We read aloud in chorus: R-e-g-a-r-d-s-b-r-o-k-e-n-m-a-s-t-s-a-n-d-s-h-r-o-u-d.s-t-o-y-o-u.

  Suddenly the wave lets us drop, and we are pitched downward at racing speed. Heeling to the limit, we sink into a valley filled with spindrift.

  High above us the bow of the other boat is pushed free, way out over the abyss; it’s left hanging—both torpedo tube doors on the port side clearly visible, as is every individual flood slit and the whole underwater hull—until the overhanging foreship drives into the valley like a falling ax blade. With a fury that could split steel it slices into the wave. The water is suddenly hurled aside to left and right in huge, glassy, green masses. The waves meet over it again, cover it with boiling eddies, and wash over the bridge. Only a few dark flecks remain visible in the raging foam: the heads of the bridge watch and one arm waving a red signal flag.

  I intercept a dumbfounded glance from the Second Watch Officer to the Commander, and then I see the face of the Chief, distorted in ecstasy; he must have been on the bridge for some time.

  I hug the periscope with one arm and hoist myself higher. The other boat remains hidden astern in the trough of the waves. Then suddenly a barrel is there, tossed high, then sunk; after that there’s only a dancing cork, and a few minutes later nothing whatever.

  The Old Man orders a resumption of course. Up with the tower hatch—keep your eye on a passing wave—and down through the gullet.

  The helmsman in the tower squeezes Out of
the way, but the boat heels to starboard, so he gets a dash of water just the same.

  “What was going on?”

  “Met another boat—U-Thomsen—pretty close!”

  The hatch is kicked shut from above. Pale faces emerge from the darkness as if picked out by miners’ lamps. We’re underground again. I suddenly realize that not even the helmsman saw what was going on.

  I undo my sou’wester from under my chin, laboriously pull off my rubber jacket. The control-room mate is hanging on my every word. For better or worse I have to throw him a scrap or two—“Hard to believe the way tile Commander handled her—honest—it was a model exercise!”

  The excitement seems to have loosened my muscles: I get out of my soaking clothes much faster than the day before. Next to me the Chief is meticulously drying himself.

  Ten minutes later we’re assembled in the Officers’ Mess.

  I’m still wound up, but I try to behave casually: “Wasn’t that all rather informal?”

  “What d’you mean?” the Old Man asks.

  “Our meeting.”

  “How so?”

  “Weren’t we supposed to fire a recognition signal?”

  “Oh god,” says the Commander. “That tower—you could recognize it at first glance! They’d have had a fit if we’d shot off a rocket. It would have meant they’d have had to answer at once, And who knows whether they’d have had the shells ready in weather like this? Wily go around embarrassing our friends?”

  And just because recognition signals are never to be used in doubtful cases, we get rousted out of our seats a couple of times a day while someone fetches them!

  “No grumbling, says the Old Man. “A must is a must—regulations.’

  Ten minutes later he comes back to my criticism. “In weather like this we don’t have to bother about the Tommies’ subs anyway. What would they be looking for? A German convoy?”

  Saturday. The excitement is over. At lunchtime we sit tightly braced around tile table and chew. The off-duty lookouts are gradually sinkmg into their old lethargy.

  The meal is over before the Old Man finally opens his mouth. “They got through fast!”

  “They” must mean Thomsen and his crew. The Old Man is astonished that Thomsen turned up in our area. “After all, he only got in a short time before we put to sea—and the damage!”

  Got through fast—that means a short time in dock.

  “The C-in-C’s in a hurry these days!”

  Shortened dock time—sketchier repairs. Can’t allow the patient to lie about in bed instead of getting back on his feet. No more malingering.

  A good quarter of an hour goes by before the Old Man talks again. “There’s something wrong about this. Even if we’re supposed to be well equipped with boats in the Atlantic, that can’t mean more than a dozen. A dozen boats between Greenland and tile Azores—and yet we’re practically tripping over each other here. Something’s not quite right! Oh well—nothing to do with me.”

  Nothing to do with him! Yet he racks his brains from dawn till dusk and probably through the night as well, brooding over the obvious dilemma: too large a field of operations—too few boats—no supporting aircraft.

  “It’s time they came up with something.”

  When I wake up on the third morning after our meeting in the storm, the movement of the boat tells me that the sea’s running lower.

  I clamber into my oilskins as fast as I can and head for the bridge. It’s not yet fully light.

  The horizon has been blown clean. Only an occasional crest breaks on the high groundswell. The waves are running almost as high as in recent days, but their motion is far less violent—the boat is no longer being shaken and jarred.

  The wind is steady. Once in a while it moves uneasily a few points from its main direction, which is northwest. It blows cold.

  Toward midday the wind drops almost completely. Instead of its howl there is only a subdued hissing and rustling. The wild uproar still echoes in my ears and the unaccustomed quiet makes me uncomfortable, almost as if the soundtrack had stopped in a movie theater. The waves are still high, an endless white-maned herd sweeping past the boat, solemn, awe-inspiring.

  For all their movement it’s hard to realize that the waves aren’t actually advancing—that the whole surface of the ocean isn’t speeding past us. I have to summon up the image of a wheatfield waving in the wind in order to make myself see that these enormous masses of water are as anchored as the wheat stalks.

  “Rarely seen a groundswell this size,” says the navigator. “It must stretch a good thousand miles.”

  We pick up a radio report from Flossmann: “Lone ship sunk with triple salvo.”

  “He’ll make admiral yet,” says the Old Man. He sounds more disgusted than envious. “Up there in tile Danish Strait.”

  The Old Man’s bitterness finds relief in an outburst of rage. “They can’t keep us hacking around like this—on nothing but a hunch! The whole thing’s futile!”

  For diversion I rearrange my tiny locker. Everything’s a mess: gray-black spots of mildew on all my shirts, belt turned green with mold, all my clothes smelling of damp rot. A marvel that we ourselves haven’t decayed—gradually watched our living bodies turn putrid.

  With some of us, admittedly, the process seems to have set in already. Zorner’s face is completely disfigured by crimson boils with yellow cores. The contrast with his pasty complexion makes the inflammation look all the more evil. Tile seamen are the worst off because their constant contact with salt water keeps their cuts and carbuncles from healing.

  But the storm is over. Once again the bridge is a place where we can recuperate.

  Nothing breaks the circle of the horizon. A flawless line where sky and water meet and merge into one.

  I perceive the sea as a great flat disk supporting a gray glass bell jar. Whichever way we move, the bell moves with us, so that we always remain at the center of the disk. Its radius is only sixteen miles, so the disk is thirty-two miles in diameter—a mere nothing compared to the endless Atlantic.

  VII CONTACT

  The first message our radioman picks up today is a request for Thomsen to report his position.

  “Where is he now?” I ask the Old Man.

  “He hasn’t reported,” the Old Man says. “And there’ve been two more requests since then.”

  Images of disaster: boats under aircraft attack, bombs exploding around them like gigantic incandescent cauliflowers.

  I tell myself that Thomsen must have his own reasons for not replying. Situations certainly exist in which even the briefest radio signal can be a giveaway.

  Next morning at breakfast I inquire, as casually as I can, “Anything from Thomsen?”

  “No!” says the Old Man, and goes on chewing, staring stolidly ahead. Must be damage to the antenna, I tell myself. Or trouble with the transmitter. Radio mast carried away, something like that.

  Herrmann comes in with the daybook. The Old Man reaches for it impatiently, reads the signals, signs, and snaps the book shut. I take it and hand it back. The Old Man says nothing.

  Recently there’ve been cases of boats being bombed so badly that they couldn’t even get off a distress signal.

  “He should have reported long ago,” says the Old Man. “Without having to be asked.”

  Next day no mention of Thomsen. The subject is taboo. No theorizing, but it’s easy to see what the Old Man thinks. Before long, Headquarters is going to be issuing another three-star report.

  Around midday, just as lunch is about to be served, there’s a report from the control room. “To the Commander. Trails of smoke at one hundred forty degrees!”

  The Commander is on his feet in an instant. We rush after him into the control room. On my way, I grab a pair of binoculars from their hook and reach the bridge close behind the Old Man.

  “Where?”

  The navigator points. “There, on the port beam under the righthand bulge of the big cumulus cloud—very faint.”

&n
bsp; No matter how hard I look, I can’t make anything out in the direction indicated. The navigator certainly wouldn’t mistake a galleon made of cloud for a smoke trail! The area in question is like a crowded stage set, with screen after screen of cloud coming up over the horizon in a rich display of gray and mauve.

  The Commander bends his head to the binoculars. I work the horizon again inch by inch, while it dances violently in my glasses. Nothing but close-packed clouds, and every single one of them potentially a trail of smoke. I strain my eyes as hard as I can. Already they’re watering.

  What a witch’s cauldron! Finally I spot a thin pipe, a shade darker than the mauve-colored background and flaring out toward the top like a tuba. Close beside it the same shape repeats itself like a reflection—a little dimmer and more blurred perhaps, but unmistakable all the same. And there—a whole row of tiny pine trees, their thin trunks reaching down below the horizon. The Commander lowers his glasses. “Convoy! No doubt about it. What’s our course?”

  “Two hundred fifty degrees!”

  The Old Man doesn’t hesitate for a second. “Steer two hundred thirty!”

  “Course two hundred thirty degrees.”

  “Both engines half speed ahead!”

  He turns to the navigator, who has kept his eyes glued to his glasses. “Do they seem to be running on a southerly course, navigator?” “That’s my guess,” says Kriechbaum, still staring through his glasses.

  “Got to get ahead of them first and find out exactly where they’re headed,” says the Commander and orders the helmsman “Port ten degrees!”

  No excited outburst. No fever of the hunt. Expressionless faces.

  Wichmann is the only one to betray excitement: He was the first to discover the smoke clouds.

  “Third watch. Told you so. Leave it to the third watch!” he mutters to himself with self-satisfaction from under his glasses. But when he notices out of the corner of his eye that the Commander has heard him, he blushes and falls silent.