Das Boot

by Lothar-Günther Buchheim

  At the pier lies a destroyer, all its decks lit up. Floodlights blaze down on a freighter. You can clearly see that her loading cranes are at work.

  A circle of yellow light shines up from below us—the open torpedo supply hatch. The galley hatch is open too. I hear voices. “They’ll never be any use to me again, these good clothes!”—“Oh, cut the rubbish—get going. Grab that!”

  That was unmistakably the Berliner.

  Subdued singing echoes from below decks in the Weser.

  I’m excited by the sparkling lights, the rosy-red halos around the streetlamps over there on the shore. They’re surrounded by an aura of sex. I smell bed, the warm milky smell of skin, the sweetish smell of powder, the anchovy-sharp smell of cunt, Eau de Javel, sperm.

  Interrupted shouts, fragments of commands, the loud banging of metal.

  “What a racket,” says the Old Man.

  The situation obviously disturbs him. “Those people on the fishing boat—they must have seen us,” he says finally. “And the men on the ship. Who knows whether they’re all reliable? It would be easy enough to flash a signal from here to shore. In any case, we’re going to put to sea earlier. Not as arranged. And we’ll take the same way out. Not the southern passage they recommended. If only we had more water under our keel around here…”

  Blue sparks flash on the shore like a short circuit. Another trolley. Sounds of chattering borne on the wind, then the honking of cars and the dull clanking from other ships. Suddenly a deep silence.

  “Just where do they get the torpedoes?” I ask the Old Man.

  “Other boats deposit them here—the ones on return voyage that didn’t use up their whole quota. They drop in here on a visit, as suppliers, so to speak. Return voyages are very useful for that. It’s the same for any superfluous fuel oil in their tanks.”

  “How well has it worked up to flow? After all, we aren’t the first.”

  “That’s just it… Three boats have already been supplied here. Two were lost.”

  “Where ?”

  “That’s what’s not clear. It’s perfectly possible there’s a Tommy destroyer on duty, waiting for us off the southern entrance. I don’t like any of this!”

  From below we can hear a kind of communal singsong. The First Watch Officer should be here. Then by way of climax we get the melody of the “Internationale,” but with new words:

  Brothers of freedom and sunlight!

  Buy condoms cheap at the co-op!

  In the pale glow of the distant floodlights I can see the Old Man grinning. He listens a while longer, then goes on. “They’re not nearly careful enough around here! This is hardly a reliable operation!”

  A stab of memory: I realize that somewhere before I’ve seen a box of Spanish matches like the ones lying in there on the table.

  “Those Spanish matches,” I say. “I recognize them.”

  The Old Man doesn’t seem to be listening. I begin again. “A box of Spanish matches like those, just like the ones on the table in the saloon, I’ve seen one before…”

  “Really?” he says.

  “Yes, in La Baule on the table in the Royal. It belonged to Merten’s First Watch Officer.”

  “So Merten has already been here once—interesting!”

  “The box of matches suddenly vanished. But no one admitted to taking it.”

  “Interesting,” says the Old Man again. “I don’t like it at all!”

  “And then a box like that turned up another time…” But this doesn’t seem to matter to the Old Man. It’s enough for him to know that our method of provisioning hasn’t remained as secret as the gentlemen sitting around the green table imagine. The boxes of matches—perhaps none of it is that important. Perhaps I’m only imagining things. But Spanish matches—you can’t help noticing—Spanish matches in France.

  I suddenly remember the ensign. Let’s hope Ullmann doesn’t try anything silly. Better have a look and see where he is. I pretend that I have to take a leak and climb over the tower down into the boat. How shabby it suddenly looks down here!

  I encounter Ullmann in the control room. He’s helping to stow away fresh bread. The net that hung low in front of the radio shack when we put out is being filled up again.

  I’m suddenly embarrassed, and can’t think what to say to him.

  “Well, Ullmann,” I manage, and then add, “A pretty mess!”

  I’m notoriously unsuited to the role of comforter. The ensign looks pathetic. How often must he have told himself in the last few hours that there’s no way back from La Spezia to La Baule? What I would really like to do is take him by the shoulders and give him a thorough shaking. Instead of which, I do what he’s doing, and stare at the pattern of the floor plates, only able to stammer out, “This is just—this is just miserable!” The ensign blows his nose. Jesus, he has to pull himself together. I have an idea. “Ullmann, quick, fetch me your letter… Or do you want to add a line to it? No, better write it over again as of now with no giveaways in it—got it? I’ll see you in ten minutes in the control room.”

  It’d be ridiculous, I think, if I can’t persuade the Captain of the Weser …

  The Old Man is still brooding at the railing, and I stand silent beside him. Soon a squat shadow appears: the Captain of the Weser. The Old Man goes through his customary trampling dance, and says, “I’ve never been to Spain before.”

  My thoughts are with Ullmann.

  The Captain of the Weser is not a voluble man. He speaks in an agreeable, cautious fashion, his deep voice tinged with a North German accent. “We have a Flettner rudder—designed by the same Flettner who invented the rotor ship. The rotors were a flop, but the rudder has been a great success. We can turn on a coin. In a narrow harbor that’s a big advantage.”

  A queer bird—giving us a lecture on his special rudder at a moment like this.

  A dull bumping disturbs the Old Man. The First Watch Officer turns up. “Just see whether the lines and fenders are properly cleared!” the Old Man orders.

  The wind is freshening quite perceptibly.

  “Would the Commander not like to take a bath?” asks the Captain of the Weser.

  “Thank you, no.”

  A man comes up to announce that the meal is served in the saloon

  “Let’s enjoy it!” says the Old Man, and moves after the Captain.

  Once again the change from darkness to the blinding light of the saloon makes me pause for a moment. The two vultures seem to have got themselves plastered. Their faces are flushed, their eyes no longer as alert as they were around midnight.

  I steal a glance at my wristwatch: two thirty. I have to sneak out again and look for the ensign. He slips his letter into my hand, like a pickpocket passing something to his sidekick.

  Meantime the First Watch Officer and the Chief have relieved the Second Watch Officer and the assistant engineer. It’ll probably be five o’clock before we’re ready for departure.

  I wish I could stretch out and sleep, but I go back to the saloon.

  The two civilians are now being hail-fellow-well-met. The Old Man has to permit the taller of the two to slap him on the shoulder and babble, “Sieg Heil and fat booty!”

  I almost sink through the floor in humiliation.

  Fortunately, when the time comes, there’s a companionway instead of the Jacob’s ladder on the way back. Everything has been carefuly blacked out, so I manage to exchange a few words with the Captain of the Weser, thereby detaining him so that we lag some way behind the others. I don’t say much. He takes the letter without any fuss. “I’ll see to it,” he says.

  A gangway has been extended from a lower deck to our bridge. With one hand propped on the TBT I let myself drop into the bridge cockpit. There wells up in me a kind of affection for the boat, and I lay both hands flat against the damp metal of the bulwark. The steel is vibrating: the diesels are beginning to run.

  Commands to cast off. Shouts from above.

  The Old Man sees to it that we get away quickly.
Already I can barely make out the waving figures on the Weser.

  The port running light of a steamer is suddenly very close. The Old Man calls for the signal light. What is he up to?

  He himself signals over, “Anton, Anton.” A hand-held searchlight flashes back from the steamer.

  “B-u-e-n-v-I-a-j-e,” the Old Man reads out.

  And then he replies, “G-r-a-c-I-a-s.”

  “Yes, I have foreign languages too!” says the Old Man. And then, “They saw us—no doubt about it. Now perhaps they’ll assume we’re polite Tommies or something of the sort.”

  Our course is one hundred seventy degrees—almost due south.

  The provisioning in Vigo has cheered the men up.

  “Went off pretty well—but they could have rounded up some dames while they were at it!” I hear in the wardroom. “A quick one on the gangplank!”

  “Those guys were absolutely shattered by us! The Old Man in that sweater of his—it was an act in itself!”

  The consternation that reduced them to silence after the Gibraltar signal seems to have vanished. Now they sound as though they’d wanted the Mediterranean all along, just to make a change.

  Frenssen claims to have had a brother who was in the Foreign Legion. He describes a desert landscape with date palms and oases, fata morganas, desert fortresses, and luxuriously equipped whorehouses “with a thousand women—and boys too—something for everyone!”

  Pilgrim starts reminiscing too.

  “I had a girl once who was crazy about pants with zippers. Couldn’t control herself, even on the streetcar. Kept grinding her hip against my fly, zipping it up and down, up and down… like the guillotine—makes a man nervous!”

  “So what did you do?” asks Wichmann.

  “Do? What the hell can you do? It’s like the Grand Old Duke of York in the nursery rhyme—’when you’re up, you’re up’…”

  “Well, easy come, easy go!”

  “You’re a real gorilla—no class at all.”

  Wichmann suddenly gets dreamy. “One of those real leisurely afternoon fucks—a bit of music—a little something to drink—that’s still the best. You and your slam-bam-thank-you-ma’ams!”

  Memories come to mind: lazy lovemaking on rainy afternoons. The doorbell rings, but we pay no attention. In another world—far from everyday reality. Curtains half drawn. Landlady out shopping. Only us and the cat in the apartment.

  Later Frenssen and Zeitler quietly and matter of factly discuss the varying merits of certain postures during intercourse.

  “It can drive you crazy sometimes,” Frenssen says. “I laid a doll on the heath once… straight up a slope. Christ, was that a job—uphill, you know—but finally, just as I was coming, I turned the lady around a hundred and eighty degrees.”

  He makes a scooping motion with both hands to illustrate the turn.

  Later there is whispering back and forth between two bunks. “How do you feel?”

  “How do you think I feel? Doesn’t matter a damn where they send us, does it?”

  “Come on, admit it! Do you think I don’t know why you’ve been so down in the mouth? But, that’s all over with now! Don’t worry about it. Your little girl will be taken care of. After all, she’s a very presentable doll, something like that doesn’t get dusty…”

  The next day a thoughtful atmosphere prevails in the petty officers’ quarters, a few swaggering speeches by Zeitler and Frenssen notwithstanding. No chitchat from bunk to bunk. It’s not going to be child’s play—everyone has realized that by now.

  At the midday meal the Old Man begins to talk about the way he plans our passage past Gibraltar—hesitantly, trying our patience as usual; anyone would think he was putting his thoughts together for the first time like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—that he hadn’t spent hour after hour concocting his plan, weighing the risks, then discarding the whole project, recombining the elements, weighing the advantages and disadvantages.

  “We’ll use the nighttime approach—on the surface. As close as we possibly can. It’ll be a real obstacle race.”

  Obstacles like destroyers and other patrols, I add silently.

  “Then we’ll simply dive and let ourselves sink our way past.”

  I don’t dare expose my curiosity with so much as a glance, so I pretend to understand: perfectly clear—let ourselves sink our way past. That’s the latest style.

  The Old Man simply continues to stare straight ahead. He pretends to be thinking and says no more, as if he’d explained himself fully.

  Sink! Not exactly an attractive expression. Makes for a feeling in the pit of the stomach like a falling elevator. But if the Delphic oracle wants it that way, that’s what we’ll do: sink!

  The Second Watch Officer doesn’t have as good a control over his face as I do. He seems to have a nervous tic in his eye—it makes him look as if he’s asking questions with his eyelashes—a new, unobtrusive way of gathering information.

  But the Old Man simply leans his head back in his barber-chair posture. Finally, after two or three minutes, he directs a few explanations to the finely grained plywood on the ceiling. “You see, there are two currents in the Strait of Gibraltar: a surface current from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean and a deeper one that flows in the opposite direction. And there’s quite a bit of push behind them.”

  He thrusts out his lower lip and sucks in his cheeks, then looks down and just sits there in silence again.

  “Seven-knot current,” he finally tosses in, like a tidbit for us to chew on a while.

  Then I see the light. Sink—this time he means horizontally, not in the usual up and down sense.

  Perfectly obvious—and brilliant!

  Nothing simpler: Dive, and let yourself be carried through the strait by the current—no noise, and it saves fuel.

  The rules of the game demand that we appear bored. No astonishment. Don’t nod; don’t move an eyelash. The Old Man thrusts out his lower lip again and nods deliberately. The Chief allows himself a sort of lopsided grin. The Old Man registers this, takes a deep breath, returns to his barber-chair posture, and asks in unexpectedly official tones, “Well, Chief, everything clear?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kaleun,” the Chief replies, nodding vigorously, as if sheer zeal might keep him at it forever.

  There’s a tense pause. What the Old Man needs now is an opponent, a doubter. The Chief gladly obliges. Admittedly, all he says is, “Hm, hm,” but that’s enough to indicate certain reservations. Although all of us—except the Commander—are now staring expectantly at the Chief, he simply cocks his head on one side like a blackbird searching for nightcrawlers in the short grass. He wouldn’t think of voicing his doubts—he’s just allowing them to flicker through. That’s enough to begin with. He’s an old hand—he takes his time, he dallies—something he learned from the Old Man.

  Our company devotes a good five minutes to this silent game. Finally the Old Man seems to have had enough. “Well, Chief?” he says encouragingly. But the Chief’s holding up remarkably well. He shakes his head very gently and delivers his dry curtain line. “Absolutely first rate, Herr Kaleun! Inspired idea.”

  I’m amazed at this cold-blooded bastard! And to think that I was afraid he was close to a nervous breakdown during the last attack.

  On the other hand, the Old Man’s doing well too, He betrays no visible reaction whatever; he simply lowers his head and observes his Chief out of the corner of his eye, as though he had to check on a patient’s state of mind without the patient noticing it. A raising of the left eyebrow expresses his concern about the invalid: pure drawing-room comedy.

  The Chief pretends to be unaware of the Commander’s psychiatric examination. With superbly mimed indifference he raises his right leg, clasps his hands under his knee and looks absolutely blank while casually observing the veins in the woodwork.

  Just as the silence threatens to become oppressive, the steward appears. Even the extras are in good form today, providing the action when it’s time to put an
end to the dumb show.

  The soup makes its rounds. We spoon it, chew, and are silent.

  Once again I notice the fly. She’s walking across the photograph of the C-in-C. Right into his wide-open mouth. Too bad it’s not happening in real life: a black fly the size of a small dumpling straight down his throat—right at the climax of one of his stemwinding speeches. “Attack—onward and up… ugh—” The fly takes wing and the C-in-C utters only the first syllable before he chokes. Our fly didn’t disembark in Vigo: she resisted all temptations to become a Spanish fly. Spanish flies—there are such things! She stayed on board, proved her loyalty No one deserted. We’re all still aboard, all present and accounted for, our fly included. At the same time she’s probably the only creature that can come and go as she pleases. Not bound by the C-in-C’s orders the way we are. An example of spectacular loyalty. Through thick and thin. Very commendable.

  Up in the bow, a kind of opera evening seems to be in progress. Through the closed hatch come scraps of song. When the hatch clicks open, there is rousing noise from the compartment:

  Here comes the sheik

  He's on the make.

  This is repeated ad infinitum. Just as I’ve given up all hope of textual change, some of them get together on the next verse:

  Through the wide, wide wastes of the Sahara

  There wanders a sex-crazy crone,

  Along comes a filthy old Bedouin

  First she screams, then he roars, then they moan.

  “It’s Arabian week! Probably something to do with the fact that we’re headed south,” says the Old Man. “They’re singing to pluck up their courage.”

  Because the Old Man seems to have some free time after breakfast, I ask him for some explanations. “This strong current flowing into the Mediterranean—I don’t understand it. Where does all the water come from?” I have to make up my mind to be patient. The Old Man is never quick off the mark. First he tilts his head to one side and frowns—I can see the sentences taking shape.