Das Boot

  A voice chants, “Turn not Thine eyes and Thy countenance from me.” The Bible Scholar? Why the crowd in the control room? Who’s fouling everything up around here?

  Suddenly a hard blow knocks me off my feet. I roll forward, put my hand on someone’s face, pull myself up against a body in a leather jacket. Out of the forward hatch come screams, and then, like an echo, more screams from aft. Cracking and clattering, the floor plates are repeatedly flung upward. Cascading noise of glass shattering, as if a Christmas tree had fallen over. Another heavy blow with a droning echo—and another. And now a high-pitched screech that saws straight through my body. The boat vibrates madly, shuddering under a series of dull blows as though we were being dragged across an enormous field of rubble. From outside comes a monstrous groaning howl—then a mad screeching, two more resounding blows. And suddenly it’s all over. Except for a high-pitched whistle.

  “We have arrived!” The clearly articulated words seem to be coming through a distant door. The Commander.

  Lying on my back, I wriggle until my legs with their heavy boots are under me, wrestle myself up, twist, lose my footing, fall to my knees. A cry rises in my throat. I choke it back just in time.

  Light! What’s happened to the light? The emergency supply—why does no one turn it on? I can hear the gurgling of water. Is that the bilge? Water from the outside wouldn’t gurgle.

  I try to separate out the sounds and locate them. Cries, whispers, murmurs, the high note of panic, questions from the Old Man. “Where are my reports?” And immediately thereafter, imperiously, “I demand proper reports!”

  Light at last! Half-light. Just what are all these people doing here? I blink, hood my eyes, try to penetrate the semi-darkness, catch fragments of words and a shout or two. The racket seems to be loudest aft. Christ! What exactly has happened?

  Sometimes it’s the Old Man’s face in front of me, sometimes the Chief’s. More snatches of reports. Sometimes a whole sentence, sometimes mere fragments of words. Men rush past me toward the stern, their eyes wide with terror. One bumps into me, almost knocking me down.

  “A shovelful of sand”—where did those words come from? The Old Man, of course.

  “A shovelful of sand under our keel!”

  I try to understand: It must have been dark on the surface. Not pitch black, but not moonlit either. No flyer could possibly have discovered us in that gloom. Aerial bombardment at night that never happens. Perhaps it was an artillery shell after all? Naval artillery? Land-based artillery? But the Old Man did_ roar, “A bee!” And the droning just before the detonation?

  The Chief drives his men from pillar to post, barking out orders.

  And then? “We have arrived!” Field of rubble—the pressure hull—we’re as defenseless as a raw egg! The mad screeching—a streetcar rounding a curve. Of course: We ran full speed into the rocks on the bottom. What else could it have been? Both motors full speed ahead and our nose down. To think the boat could stand all that: the steel stretched to tearing point by the pressure, and then the impact itself.

  Three, four men are lying on the floor. The Old Man stands like a dark mass under the tower, one hand on the ladder.

  Clear as a bell over the confused roaring of orders, I hear the droning song of the Bible Scholar:

  Glorious, glorious that day,

  When, no more sin, no more dismay,

  We march into the Promised Land…

  He gets no further. A flashlight blazes out. The control-room mate fetches him a jarring blow on the mouth with his right hand. It sounds as though the man’s front teeth have been broken. Through the haze I see his wide, astonished eyes and blood streaming from his mouth.

  The smallest movement hurts. Somewhere I must have struck my right shoulder as well as both my shinbones. Each time I move, I seem to be wading laboriously through water.

  In my mind’s eye I see a cross-section of the Strait of Gibraltar: on the right the African coast: tectonic plates descending toward the middle of the sea bed; and halfway down the slope between the African coast and the deepest part, our tiny tube.

  The Old Man—that maniac—was he hoping against all better judgment that the British would be off-guard? Wasn’t it obvious what massive defenses would have been prepared against our arrival? There he stands, one hand on the ladder, the crumpled cap on his head.

  The First Watch Officer’s mouth is open, his face a single, horrified question mark.

  Where’s the Chief? He’s disappeared.

  The sound man reports, “Sound gear’s gone dead!”

  The two hydroplane operators remain seated at the control table as though there were still something to control.

  The graduated circle of the sky periscope dangles from its wire. Funny—that happened to us once before! There must be some better way of making them. This, let’s face it, is a botched job.

  For the first time I notice a sharp whistling and hissing from forward: water break in the foreship too? Cracked and leaking flanges! What sort of plugs are there in the foreship anyway? The pressure hull must have held, otherwise it would all be over by now. A leak through a tear—that goes faster.

  Sank like a stone. A miracle that our back wasn’t broken as we banged and rattled down. And that crash landing at some mad depth for which we were never designed! I feel a sudden respect for our tube and its powers of resistance. Thin steel, but first-class. Special quality. Superbly well made.

  Suddenly I understand. The Old Man has got our leaking vessel into shallower water. Turning south! A short sprint in the direction of the Coast and the Old Man has saved us. Hats off! Bet everything on one card and charge full ahead on one diesel. A moment’s hesitation and the ground we’re now resting on would have been unreachable.

  But what’s that? Instead of the high forced singing sound, I can now hear quite clearly a strange vitschivitschivitsch.

  I strain my ears. That’s the sound of propellers. No doubt about it—and getting closer.

  The sound makes everyone stop dead as though touched by a magic wand. Now they’ve got us. The killers! They’re directly overhead.

  I lower my head, hunch my shoulders, and look at the rigid figures out of the corner of my eye. The Old Man is gnawing his lower lip. Forward and aft they must have heard it too: the sound of voices has stopped at a single stroke.

  Under the gun! Looking straight into the muzzle of a pistol. When will the finger tighten around the trigger?

  No motion, not the quiver of an eyelid. Like pillars of salt.

  Vitschivitschivitschivitschivitsch.

  That’s only a single propeller: vitschivitschivitschivitsch. Unchanged. The high-pitched singsong plucks at my nerves. The vessel up there is running at slow speed, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to hear the splashing sounds. A turbine engine, no piston strokes.

  But, after all, he can’t just remain directly over our heads with his propeller going! After a while this swishing will have to fade. Christ, what does it mean?

  I can’t see the Old Man’s face: that would involve pushing my way forward and I don’t dare do it. Just stay still, muscles taut. Bated breath.

  There—the Old Man has just muttered something in his deep bass. “Lap of honor—they’re doing their lap of honor,” and I understand. The vessel up there is turning in a circle, as tight as it possibly can, right over us. With full rudder. Marking out a funnel. And we are the point of that funnel.

  They know exactly where we are.

  The swishing grows no weaker, no stronger. Somewhere beside me, I hear a grinding of teeth, then a choked sigh. Then another—more of a smothered groan.

  Lap of honor! The Old Man is right: they’re waiting for us to come up. All they need now is some bit of proof—pieces of wreckage, oil, a few fragments of flesh.

  But why don’t the swine drop any bombs?

  I hear water dripping. No one moves. Again the growling voice of the Old Man. “Lap of honor!” And again, “Lap of honor!” Someone whimpers. That must be the Bi
ble Scholar again.

  The words fill my skull. Long-distance bicycle races in Chemnitz. The mad thrashing of legs. Then the slow pedaling with uplifted, waving hand, a huge golden wreath slung over one shoulder and across the chest—the victor! Lap of honor! At the end, brilliant fireworks, and the crowd busily winding their way homeward to the streetcar station like a great black earthworm.

  Vitschivitschivitsch…

  Reports from astern, whispered from mouth to mouth. I don’t catch them; all I hear is the beating of the propeller. It fills my whole body. I become a drum resonating under the unvarying throb of the screws.

  The Bible Scholar keeps on whimpering. We all look away from one another, stare at the floor plates or the walls of the control room as though expecting pictures to be projected on them. Someone says, “Jesus!” and the Old Man laughs hoarsely.

  Vitschivitschivitsch…

  Everything seems far away. A misty veil in front of my eyes. Or is it smoke? Are we on fire again someplace? My eyes focus. But the bluish haze remains. Yes, smoke! But god knows where from!

  I hear the words, “oil spouting!” Good god, must there be an oil leak too? I see brilliant smears, serpentine Art Nouveau configurations, marbled end papers, Icelandic moss.

  I try to calm myself. The current—it may be a blessing. Wash away the iridescent slick and disperse it.

  But what good will that do? The Tommies know the current. They’re at home here. They’ll take it into account in their calculations; they weren’t born yesterday. God knows how much oil has spouted up from our bunkers. But if a lot has escaped, perhaps it’s a good thing. The more the better: the Tommies will think they’ve actually finished the job. Which tank can have cracked?

  Once again everything inside me begins to spin. I want to escape, smash out of the encircling jungle of pipes and machinery, flee the valves and apparatus that are no longer of any use. I suddenly feel a bitter cynicism. After all, this is exactly what you wanted. You were up to your neck in easy living. You wanted to try something heroic for a change. “To stand for once before the ineluctable You got drunk on it all. “…where no mother cares for us, no woman crosses our path, where only reality reigns, grim in all its majesty…” Well, this is it, this is reality.

  I can’t keep this up for long. Already self-pity is mounting and I find myself muttering, “Shit, you goddam shit!”

  The propeller scratching is so loud that no one can hear me. My heart is thumping in my throat. My skull is threatening to explode.

  Waiting.

  Wasn’t that something scraping lightly along the boat—or am I raving?

  Waiting—waiting—waiting.

  Never before have I known what it’s really like to be without some weapon in my hand. No hammer to strike out with, no wrench to throw my weight behind.

  The vitschivitsch up there isn’t getting any fainter. Unbelievable! Why no Asdic?

  Perhaps they don’t have it on board. Or perhaps we’re lying in a hollow? In such a position that they can’t single us out? In any case, we didn’t land on sand, that’s for sure. That howling and screeching came from scraping along rocks.

  The Commander inhales loudly, then mutters, “Incredible! A straight dive, right out of the darkness!” So it’s the airplane he’s thinking about.

  I hold my breath for as long as I can, then gulp spasmodically. My teeth are forcibly torn apart, and with a single wheezing inhalation I pump myself full of air. Once more I hold my breath, compress it, force it down—renewed choking in my throat.

  When will the bombs come? How long are those swine going to go on playing with us? My stomach contracts. They wouldn’t even need to use their ejector. They could simply roll a canister overboard—quite casually, like an unwanted barrel.

  From the stern come whispered reports to the control room. The Old Man seems to be paying no attention.

  “…surface bomb—contact detonator—directly beside the boat—level with the cannon—incredible—so dark—and yet!” I hear him muttering to himself.

  Madness, forcing us through these narrows. It had to go wrong… Anyone could work that much out. And the Old Man knew it! Has known it all along, ever since the radio orders to break through. The moment he read that signal, he knew we were already half done for. That was why he wanted to disembark the two of us in Vigo.

  What’s he talking about now?

  Everyone in the control room has heard him. “Polite bunch—doing their victory march!”

  The sarcasm works. The men raise their eyes, begin to move again. Gradually action resumes in the control room. Hunched over and on tiptoe, two men make their way, swaying, toward the stern.

  I stare blankly at the Old Man: both hands deep in the pockets of his fur-lined vest, right foot on a rung of the ladder. Caught in the beam of a flashlight, he’s visible to one and all, and it’s obvious that he’s lost none of his casualness. He even offers us a condescending shrug of the shoulders.

  Somewhere there’s a clatter of tools. “Quiet!” snaps the Commander. Gurgling in the bilge. It must have been going on for some time but this is the first time I’ve noticed it. It startles me: We’re lying still. So how can the bilge be gurgling? Shit, the water must be rising under the floor plates.

  The Old Man continues his repertory heroics. “They’re taking care of us. What more can one ask?”

  Then the gruesome whirring begins to fade. Unquestionably the vessel is moving away. The Commander turns his head this way and that, the better to pick up the fading sound. I’m just about to take a deep breath when the swish of the propeller comes back at its old strength.

  “Interesting,” mutters the Old Man, and nods his head at the Chief. All I hear of their whispering is, “Didn’t withstand it—upsurge of oil—yes—”

  Then the Old Man hisses to the navigator, “How long have they been riding that merry-go-round?”

  “A full ten minutes, Herr Kaleun!” Kriechbaum whispers back. He doesn’t move as he answers; only his head turns a few degrees to one side.

  “Blessings be upon them!” says the Commander.

  The Second Engineer, I now notice for the first time, is no longer here. Probably disappeared toward the stern. All hell must have broken loose there, but there were also disaster reports from the bow. I didn’t catch them all. Lucky we have two engineers on board. That’s rare: two on one boat. Luck—we’re in luck! We plunge to the bottom, and the dear Lord slips a shovelful of sand under our keel. And on top of that, two engineers. Our cup overfloweth!

  The Old Man makes a face. “Where’s the Second Engineer?”

  “In the motor room, Herr Kaleun!”

  “Have him test the battery.”

  Suddenly there seems to be trouble in every quarter at once. I become conscious of a shrill whistling that has been in my ears for some time. It must be coming from the diesel room. The water leak. Our stern heaviness. After all, we hit bow on, but the ship is noticeably stern heavy, so water must be rising aft. Then why not trim forward? Normally we would be running the bilge pumps by now. But the main bilge pump is broken and, besides, would it be able to function against the enormous outside pressure? Nine hundred feet! No boat has ever been this deep! Our pump certainly wasn’t built for it. I glance through the hatch toward the stern. What’s wrong in the petty officers’ quarters? Why is it so crowded? Emergency light… can’t see a damn thing.

  The Old Man is leaning against the shiny silver shaft of the sky periscope. I can see the horizontal expanse of his thigh but not what he’s sitting on. His right hand is massaging his kneecap as though it hurt. His cap is perched halfway down the back of his neck, leaving his tangled hair free.

  Suddenly his face goes tense. He puts both hands behind him and pushes himself to his feet. His voice is no longer a whisper as he asks the Chief, “How much water have we taken? Which buoyancy cells are damaged? Which can’t be blown? Can we pump out the water already on board?”

  The questions rain down. “What’s wrong with th
e main bilge pump? Can it be fixed? If we blow out all undamaged buoyancy tanks and cells completely, will that give us enough buoyancy?”

  The Old Man moves his shoulder as if trying to loosen his back muscles, then takes two or three aimless steps. The control-room mate also begins to move again.

  I wrack my brains: we have three-compartment construction. Well and good. But what use is that now? If the Old Man were to have the control-room hatch toward the stern shut—just assuming, since it’s no use to us right now—and if we then made the hatch airtight, the control room and foreship would stay nice and dry. No doubt about it. Then all we’d have to do is wait until the oxygen ran out. So much for that idea. Keep thinking, I tell myself. The main bilge pump if it’s out of order, we still have compressed air. But after that futile blowing we tried earlier, is there enough left? Who really knows whether the compressed air tanks have remained airtight? Without bilge pumps and compressed air we’ve had it. That much is clear: We have to be able to run pumps and blow. Reduce our weight and_ create buoyancy. And what happens if the buoyancy cells can no longer hold the compressed air at all—if it immediately rushes out through a leak or a loose connection the moment we begin to blow? What if it just bubbles up to the surface without providing any lift at all?

  There’s an infernal stench. No mistaking it—battery gas—so the battery cells must have gone. Battery cells are fragile. The explosion and then the impact as we hit bottom… Our very ability to move depends on our batteries. If the batteries are gone…

  “Move it!” This from the Chief. “Faster, faster!” from the bosun. And constant whispered reports, mostly from the stern. I hear them, but can no longer take anything in.

  Men come through the control room swaying grotesquely as they try to keep their balance. I press myself against the periscope housing, tormented by the feeling of being superfluous. In the way.

  The Second Watch Officer, quite close to me, is also pushed to one side. The seamen have nothing more to do. Normally there is plenty of work for the sailors on a ship that has gone aground. But we are a sunken ship. No work for sailors on sunken ships.