Das Boot

  “Well… yes… there are quite remarkable conditions there.”

  Pause. Now the rules require that I fix my eyes on his face to keep his remarks staggering on.

  “You already know that the Mediterranean not only has a current that flows in but also one that flows out. Two of them, one above the other: upper one in, lower one out. The reason is that there’s practically no rainfall anywhere in the area. There’s endless sunshine, though—so a lot of water evaporates. And as the salt obviously doesn’t evaporate along with the water, the salt content increases. The saltier the water, the heavier it is. All clear and logical, isn’t it?”

  “So far—yes.”

  The Old Man hangs fire. Dragging on his cold pipe, he behaves as if the whole theorem were now resolved—QED. Only when I start to get to my feet does he go on. “The salt solution sinks; it forms the deep water of the Mediterranean and, with its tendency to seek even greater depth, flows out through the strait into the Atlantic and settles at about three thousand feet, where it has the same specific gravity as the surrounding water. Meanwhile equalization is taking place up above. Less salty water is flowing from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, replacing the water lost through evaporation.”

  “…and the deep water that has flowed out.”

  “Exactly!”

  “And what we intend to do is to profit by this sensible arrangement—I.e., to slip in with the less salty replacement water?”

  “It’s the only way…”

  On the Commander’s orders I’m standing watch as an additional lookout.

  “Tricky, being this close to land!”

  In less than half an hour the port lookout aft roars: “Aircraft at seventy degrees!”

  The Second Watch Officer whirls around to stare in the same direction as the outstretched arm of the lookout.

  I’m already at the tower hatch. As I drop through, I hear the alarm, immediately followed by the shrilling of the bell. The Chief comes through the forward hatch in a single bound.

  The emergency air exhausts are opened, the red and white hand wheels spun.

  From above, the voice of the Second Watch Officer: “Flood!”

  Slowly, as if in the teeth of fierce resistance, the needle of the depth manometer begins to move.

  “All hands forward!” orders the Chief. Falling rather than running, the crew storms through the control room toward the bow.

  The Commander is sitting hunched over the chart chest. I can see nothing but his bent back. He’s the first to move again: He gets up and, like an angry director, makes a gesture of dismissal with his left hand while he pushes his right deep into his trouser pocket. “Nothing! Stay underwater for the time being!” And, to the Second Watch Officer, “Good work, Second Watch!”

  He turns to me. “Good start! We’re beginning just fine! We’ll make great progress if it goes on like this.”

  There’s just enough room for me at the chart table for once. I get a good view of the Gibraltar chart. From the African coast to the British docks is about seven miles. These docks are the only ones at which the British Mediterranean fleet can put in for repairs, the only ones that damaged commercial vessels have at their disposal. The British will do everything to protect these facilities.

  Only seven miles from coast to coast—a narrow corridor, but we have to slink through it.

  The Pillars of Hercules: in the north the Rock of Gibraltar, the Mountain of Saturn; in the south, on the coast of Spanish Morocco, the Rock of Avila close to Ceuta.

  We will probably have to stick close to the south coast, steal our way in along the wall, so to speak.

  But would that really be a good idea? The Tommies can figure out for themselves that a German U-boat would hardly sail straight through their wartime harbor; they’ll take measures to protect the other side accordingly. The Old Man, of course, must have made his plan long ago. I’m curious to know what course he’s worked out.

  The Second Watch Officer appears and bends over the chart table beside me.

  “The enchanted meeting place of two seductive climates, where the mildness and beauty of the Mediterranean world encounter the strength and sheer immensity of the Atlantic!”

  I look at him in amazement.

  “That’s what it says in the sea manual!” he says indifferently, as he goes to work with the protractor.

  “Seven miles—well, we’ll have room!”

  “Depth?” I ask.

  “Up to thirty-two hundred feet. That’s plenty!”

  The Chief joins us.

  “Once a pack of us attacked a Gibraltar convoy. The ones that were left must have felt pretty good when they finally saw the Rock. There were twenty of them when the freighters put to sea. And after we’d finished, there were only eight left. It was somewhere around here—perhaps a little to the west.”

  The lighthouses I find on the chart have foreign names. One is called Zem Zem. Then there’s Cape Saint Vincent. What was that about Nelson and Cape Saint Vincent?

  An hour later we surface again. The First Watch Officer has hardly mounted his watch when the alarm bell jolts me once more.

  “Suddenly came from way up—don’t know what type!” Zeitler blurts out, breathing hard.

  “They must have spotted us,” the Commander remarks. “We’ll stay underwater a while.”

  He doesn’t leave the control room again, and he’s visibly uneasy. The moment he squats on the chart chest, he seems impelled to get up again. He’s looking his most morose. “Probably it’s all part of the outer defenses.”

  Another half hour goes by, then the Old Man climbs into the tower and orders us to surface.

  The engines have been running a bare ten minutes when the alarm bell shrieks again. Its ugly tone no longer pierces me to the very marrow but it still gives me a violent start.

  “If it goes on like this, we’ll be stuck here the whole day going up and down!”

  The Old Man continues to pretend indifference, but he knows the difficulties. Conditions are about as unfavorable as they could possibly be. After that long period of bad weather, there’s barely so much as a ripple to disturb the surface of the sea. Which means that aircraft will have no trouble finding us, even without a moon.

  The British may not be able to close the strait with underwater nets, but they’ll be putting in every tub they’ve got that floats. They’ve probably known for some time what our Command has in mind. Their secret service, after all, works.

  Letting ourselves drift through the narrows sounds perfectly plausible, but its only advantage is that the enemy can’t actually hear us. It gives us no protection against Asdic.

  I witness the control-room mate getting out his escape gear from behind his bunk. He’s visibly upset that I’ve seen him, and, looking indignant, immediately throws the gear down on top of his bunk. As if it had got into his hands by mistake!

  Pilgrim comes through, trying to use his body to conceal what he’s carrying. I can hardly believe my own eyes. More escape gear. Funny how differently people react. Forward in the bow compartment, the “lords” are acting as though nothing special were afoot, and here the escape gear is being dug out.

  I notice that the bananas we strung up across the control room are getting yellow. The people over in La Spezia would be delighted. And all that red wine the crew of the Weser put aboard! The Old Man swore a blue streak when he discovered the bottles. But he didn’t have the heart to order them thrown over the side.

  I decide to take a quick look at things topside. I’ve hardly stuck my head out when a fishing boat emerges from a low fogbank.

  “Damn close. Must have seen us!”

  This is an act we’ve all sat through before.

  The Old Man snorts. Silence for a while. Then he starts theorizing: “Has to have been a Spaniard.”

  Let’s hope so, I say to myself.

  “Well, anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it!”

  The Portuguese coast looms up. Over the reddish rocks I s
ee a white house. Looks like Brittany, like the Côte Sauvage at Le Croisic, where a storm can make the surf explode like shells from the big guns. First a couple of hollow booms, immediately followed by geysers shooting up between the black rocks. When the sea is calm and the tide is out, tiny yellow beaches stretch between the cliffs. Pale-yellow rustling sedge in the damp bays. Prickly gorse garlanded and festooned with spindrift when the northwest wind rages against the coast. Deep-worn roads buried in foam like snow. Pale silver stars of thistles on the sand. Sometimes, too, a cast-up paravane lost from a mine sweeper. High two-wheeled carts the farmers use to gather half-dried seaweed together into great piles. And to seaward the lighthouse painted red and white like our Papenberg.

  And now the box of Spanish matches is in my mind again. I knew it all the time, of course, without being willing to admit it to myself: The same box with the blazing sun on it—bright yellow on hot red—Simone kept one in the crocodile handbag she always carried around with her to hold “ma vie privée,” as she called it. Once she was rummaging around in it for a photo she wanted to show me and out fell the match box. She snatched it up again much too quickly. Why shouldn’t I see it? The First Watch Officer from Franke’s boat, who often came into her parents’ café, had given it to her—no, left it behind—no, she had begged it from him… suspicion flares again. Simone and the Maquis! Was she disloyal after all—despite all her assurances? Her constant questioning: “Quand est-ce que vous partez?—vers quelle heure?”—“ Oh, ask your friends. They know our timetable better than we do!”—And then the outbursts of tears, the pathetic whimpers, the sudden rage. “Mean, mean—tu es méchant—méchant—méchant!” Smeared makeup, sniffling. The picture of misery.

  But why didn’t she get one of those pretty little black-lacquered toy coffins in the mail the way her friends in the house did? Why was Simone the only person not to get one? Her sorrowful face—all pretense? No one can put on as good a show as that. Or can they?

  I see the wide low bed, the loud rose pattern on the cover, the twisted fringes, smell Simone’s fragrant dry skin. Simone never perspires. How she loves her delicate taut body, how aware she is of her every movement.

  I sit in the middle of the café not daring to meet her glance. But when she’s moving back and forth between the tables with the agility of a weasel, looking after her customers, I follow her with my eyes. Light and graceful as a matador in the ring. The layout of the chairs determines her figures and passes, gives her the opportunity for constantly new variations. She avoids these obstacles as she would the horns of a bull, swaying her hips to one side or drawing in her stomach a little. She handles her white serving napkin like a cape. I notice that she never bumps into anything, never so much as touches the corner or the back of a seat. And her laughter! Tossed out like sparkling coins. Again and again the violet of her sweater flits into view. In vain I try to keep my eyes on the newspaper. Who suggested to her this sophisticated combination of violet sweater and gray slacks—this quite remarkable violet, neither reddish nor bluish—like a painting by Braque? And on top of it, the ochrebrown of her face and the blackness of her hair.

  A lot of guests in the inn now. They come in thirsty from the beach. The waitress can’t keep up. It’s fun to see how Simone catches up with her at the desk between trips and reproves her, unobtrusively, like a silently threatening cat.

  I can still hear her voice. “We have to be careful!”—“Ach, always being careful!”—“You must beware; and so must I!”—“Who can stop us?”—“Don’t be stupid. There’s so much they can do without ‘stopping’ us!”—“But none of it matters!”—“Yes, but we want to survive!”—“Ach, no one’s going to survive!”—“We are.”

  She meets me at the train in Savenay, has a car from god knows where, won’t let me say a word because she knows I’ll start swearing, drives like a maniac, asks, “Are you afraid? If a military policeman shows up, I’ll step on the gas. They can never shoot straight!”

  I hear her on the morning before we put to sea. “Si tu ne turn over right now and get up—je te pousse dehors avec mon cul—with my ass, compris?”

  With a lighted cigarette she singes the hair on the calf of my right leg. “It smells so nice, of a little cochon!” She reaches for a fur-trimmed belt, clamps the end of it under her nose with her curled upper lip to resemble a mustache, looks in the mirror, and bursts out laughing. Then she plucks some wool from the fringes of the bedcover and stuffs it into her nose and ears. And now she tries German. “I am ready for misleading—I am noxious—je suis d’accord—I am very happy for it—with it—over it—how do you say that? I could become a nice little cannibal—j’ai envie d’être seduced. Et toi? And now I’m going to sing something for you:

  Monsieur de Chevreuse ayant declaré que tous

  les cocus devraient être noyés,

  Madame de Chevreuse lui a fait demander

  s'il était bien sur de savoir nager!"*

  [*"Monsieur de Chevreuse, having declared that all

  cuckolds ought to be drowned, Madame de Chevreuse

  put the question to him as to whether he was

  perfectly sure he knew how to swim!"]

  All play-acting? Pure deception? The Mata Hari of La Baule?

  And again, the morning we left. Simone crouching motionless at the table, shoulders hunched, staring at me: eyes swimming, mouth filled with half-chewed roll, butter, and honey.

  “Go ahead and eat!”

  Obediently she begins to chew. Tears pour down her cheeks. One hangs from her nose. It’s cloudy. I notice that especially. Probably the salt. Salt tears. “Now eat. Be good!” I take her by the back of the neck like a rabbit, pushing her hair up with the back of my hand. “Come on now, eat, for heaven’s sake. Stop worrying!”

  The heavy sweater—thank god for the white sweater with its cable pattern. Gives me something to talk about. “Lucky you finished the sweater. I’ll be able to make good use of it. It’s really cold outside these days!”

  She sniffles. “It’s fantastic—the wool—absolutely the exact amount. Only one little piece left over.” She shows me how much by spreading her thumb and index finger. “Not even four sous’ worth! What do you say to sweaters in the Navy? Something like happy? Or faithful? Are you happy with your sweater? Will you be faithful to it?”

  She sniffles again, holds her breath, laughs through her tears. Brave. She’s well aware that it’s not going to be any picnic. You can’t feed her tall stories the way you can to the women at home. She always knows when a boat is missing. But how? By accident? The evidence? There are, after all, a hundred “legitimately” possible ways of finding out. “Lords” who once used to be regular customers all of a sudden don’t turn up any more. And of course the French cleaning women in the billets know when a crew has gone to sea and when, according to all expectations, they should be back. There is far too much talk everywhere. And yet, and yet…

  The old Breton clock shows six thirty. But it’s ten minutes fast. A reprieve. The driver will be here in ten minutes. Simone goes to work on my jacket. “You have a spot here, cochon!”

  She cannot grasp that I’m going aboard dressed this way.

  “What d’you think it is? A pleasure boat?”

  I have stored up every word. “I come with you to the channel!” “No, you mustn’t do that. Besides, it’s cordoned off!”—“I’ll get through just the same, I’ll borrow a nurse’s pass. I want to see you run out!”—“Please don’t. It could cause trouble. You know when we’re leaving. You can see us from the beach half an hour later.”—“But you’ll be no more than a matchstick!”

  Again the word “match.” The red and yellow box. I strain my memory, seize hold of something: the bridge table with the brown cigarette holes burned in the light plumwood veneer. It’s easy to recall the trompe-l’oeil pattern of the tiles on the floor, which either make clearly defined cubes placed on end or negative geometric indentations, depending on whether you look at a white or a black tile firs
t… The gray ashes in the hearth… Outside the squealing of brakes. Then a horn. The driver in field gray—naval artillery.

  Simone runs the flat of her hands over the new sweater. She huddles up so small against me that she doesn’t even reach my chin. Also, I’m wearing my big seaboots.

  “Why do you have such big boots?”

  “They have cork soles and are lined and besides…” I hesitate for a moment but her laughter and her amazement encourage me to go on. “Besides, they have to be big enough to let you kick them off in the water without any trouble.” I quickly clasp her head and run my fingers through her hair. “Well now, don’t make a scene!”—“Your bag? Where is your bag? Have you noticed all the things I packed into it? The parcel is something you mustn’t open until you’re at sea, ja? Promise!”—“I promise!”—“And you’ll wear your sweater, too?”—“Every day, whenever we’re outside.’ And when I go to sleep I’ll pull the collar up and feel at home!”

  I’m thankful everything is so down to earth.

  “D’you need hand towels?”—“No, they have them on board. And leave half of that soap out. They have saltwater soap on board.”

  I look at the clock. The car has been standing outside for five minutes. We still have to pick up the Chief. If only it were all over!… It ends very fast. The garden gate at hip level, the turpentine smell of pine trees. Turn around one more time. Slam the gate. Over—fini!

  Night is falling quickly. The last light from the sky shimmers and fades in our wake.

  “Well, Kriechbaum, what sort of feeling d’you have about this?” the Commander asks the navigator.

  “Good!” he says without hesitation. But didn’t his voice sound forced?

  Another half hour—then the Commander sends me below, along with the three lookouts. He wants no one but the navigator up there. That must mean we’re already very close to where he assumes the ring of defenses are.