Das Boot

  The group disperses; only the Commander and Isenberg, the control-room mate, remaining. For the benefit of the men inching their way past, the Commander makes a show of settling himself firmly on the chart chest, wrapped in his leather jacket, both arms pushed deep into the pockets, obviously at ease: the picture of a man who knows he can rely on his experts.

  Pilgrim comes through and requests permission to go forward in search of wire.

  “Go ahead!” says the Old Man. We need wire? Then wire will be provided, even if we have to reel it out of our own backsides.

  The bosun pops up in the forward hatch, as ecstatic as a child under a Christmas tree, a few yards of old thick wire in his oilsmeared hands.

  “Well, what do you know?” says the Old Man. “That’s something, anyway!”

  Number One goes splashing through the water that has now risen above the floor plates in the after half of the control room and climbs through the hatch into the petty officers’ compartment, to where battery number two is situated under the floor plates.

  “Great!” I hear the voice of the Chief from astern.

  The bosun comes back, acting as if he’d discovered America all by himself. A simple soul. Doesn’t seem to realize that a few feet of wire won’t solve our problems.

  “Go on looking!” the Old Man orders Number One. Then there’s silence for a good ten minutes: no audience for him to play to.

  “Let’s hope they don’t come back with sweepwires!” I hear him say finally.

  Sweepwires? I think of the Breton mussel fishermen dragging their trawls over the sandy bottom to pull out the half-buried shells. But we’re definitely not lying on a sandy bottom. We’re between rocks. Which means that sweepwires would be no way to catch our boat—if they’re what I think they are.

  The Chief reappears. “How’s it going?” the Commander asks.

  “Fine. Almost done. Another three cells, Herr Kaleun.”

  “And astern?”

  “So-so!” So-so. That means we’re in pretty bad shape.

  I collapse onto the leather sofa in the Officers’ Mess and try to visualize our situation: While we were plummeting down, the Old Man ordered us to blow with everything we had. But it didn’t do any good: We’d already shipped so much water that it couldn’t be compensated for by forcing the water out Of the buoyancy tanks. With all tanks blown, the boat still sank. It follows that we may be lying on the bottom, but there’s still air in our buoyancy tanks—the same air we blew in. And this air could lift us statically—but only if we succeeded in reducing the weight of the boat. It’s a bit like sitting in the gondola of a fully inflated balloon, kept anchored to the ground by excess ballast. Ballast has to be thrown out of the gondola so that the balloon can rise. Fair enough. But it only holds good for us on the assumption that the air vents in our buoyancy tanks are still watertight. If the valves have suffered too—that is, if they won’t close—then presumably there’s no air in the tanks and we can blow in as much more as we like—the entire contents of the compressed air cylinders—without the slightest effect.

  Of course there’s also the dynamic method of shifting the boat. With the engine going and both hydroplanes up, the boat can be raised diagonally like an airplane on takeoff. But this method is only possible with slight excess weight. It certainly won’t work in our case: The boat’s too heavy for that. And whether the juice we have left in the batteries is enough to turn our screws for even a few minutes is a big question. Does the Chief have any idea how much power the few undamaged cells can still supply?

  We’re probably stuck with the balloon method. So the water that has forced its way into the boat must be got rid of. Expelled. At all costs.

  And then up! Up and overboard, and swim for it.

  I can hang my films around my neck. I’ve made a watertight bundle. The ones of the storm have to go in. They at least must be saved. There’ve never been photographs like them.

  The damned current in the Strait—if it weren’t for that.

  A shovelful of sand under our keel at the very last moment. A miracle.

  The Old Man is chewing his lower lip. It’s the Chief who’s doing the thinking and directing. Everything depends on his decisions. How can he stand it? He hasn’t been able to let up for a moment.

  All breaches seem to have been stopped except for the odd trickle here and there, a few oozing wounds in our steel skin. But the water that’s already in the boat? I have no idea how much of it there is. Two pints of water equals two pounds weight—weight I feel in every nerve of my body. We’re heavy, heavy—monstrously heavy. We lie here on the bottom as if we’ve taken root.

  “Stinks of shit in here!” That’s Tin-ear Willie.

  “So open the windows!” jeers Frenssen.

  From the stern there’s an explosive hiss like escaping steam. It goes right through me. For chrissake, what’s happened now? The noise changes to that of an acetylene torch cutting steel. Impossible to get back there and see what it really is.

  What does the Old Man have in mind? What’s he thinking about as he sits there staring into thin air? Will he attempt to surface, run for the African coast, and beach the boat? That would seem the most likely, because he wants to surface before it’s light. If all he had in mind was to surface and have us go overboard, he wouldn’t care whether the men aft got their place clear before dawn or not. But that is exactly what he keeps asking about.

  Swimming in the dark would be much too risky. The current would split us up in no seconds flat. Would the Tommies even notice us at all? We have no emergency blinkers on our life preservers. Not even red flares. Totally unequipped for special emergencies.

  Not a sound from the Old Man. I can hardly question him. The first thing is obviously to try to free the boat from the bottom, get rid of ballast. But then, if that works, what do we do next?

  At this moment he appears in the Officers’ Mess. “He’s bound to get a medal for this,” I hear him say. “One of those nice jingling ones, the Victoria Cross or something.”

  I stare at him, moonstruck.

  “He’s certainly earned it. Perfect piece of work. No fault of his we’re still lying around here instead of being blown to bits!”

  I can see it now. A low barracks on Gibraltar. A crowd of pilots in their overalls, champagne glasses in hand, gathered to celebrate the sinking of a U-boat—a definite kill, confirmed by aerial reconnaissance, and with additional corroboration by the Navy.

  “Naked fear,” whispers the Commander, pointing at the back of the new control-room assistant. His sarcasm is like a laying-on-of-hands: Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

  The navigator is standing in the gangway and reports, “Periscope top’s cracked.” It sounds as if he’d discovered a hole in his shoe. “Sky periscope’s gone too!”

  “So,” is all the Old Man says. He sounds tired and resigned, as if a little destruction more or less no longer mattered.

  Things must look worst aft. I wonder how the bomb could have worked so much havoc in the stern. The damage in the control room and in battery one is understandable, but that so much should have been broken aft is a mystery. Perhaps there were two bombs? Didn’t it sound like a double explosion? I can’t ask the Old Man.

  The Chief comes through the aftership to report to the Old Man. From his outpourings I discover that almost all the outboard plugs have leaked. The whole electrical system has failed. As a result, the gunnery control is also out of commission. The bearings may also have been somewhat damaged. However, all that means is that they’d run hot if the driving shafts could turn.

  What he’s providing is a complete inventory of the damages. Not only the main bilge pump but all other bilge pumps have failed. The cold-water pump ditto. The forward trim cell is no longer watertight. The foundation bolts of the port diesel—miraculously—have held. But those of the starboard diesel are sheared off. The compressors have been torn from their bases. The forward hydroplane can hardly be
moved—probably wrecked when the boat slammed into the rocks on the bottom. The compass system is ruined—magnetic, gyro, secondary—everything. The automatic log and the sounder system have been torn from their supports and are probably out of action. The radio has been badly hit. Even the engine room telegraph is out of order.

  “Babel is not yet lost,” mutters the Old Man. The Chief blinks and seems to have trouble recognizing him. What’s the exact quotation? I rack my brains. Babel lost? That’s not it.

  Suddenly I hear a new sound. No question, it’s coming from outside: a high, rhythmic singsong with a duller beat in it. There they are again! The Old Man heard it at the same instant I did. He listens with his mouth open and a scowl on his face. The vibration and whining increase. Turbines! The Asdic is sure to be next. Everyone freezes—sitting, standing, kneeling. I have trouble identifying the dark masses around me. To the left beside the periscope—that must be the navigator. Recognizable as usual, because his left shoulder is higher than his right. The hunched figure in front of the hydroplane table is the Chief. The man to his left must be the Second Watch Officer. Directly under the overhead hatch is the control-room mate.

  Again the clamps around my chest, the choking in my throat.

  My pulse is hammering. Everyone in the room must be able to hear it.

  My ears pick up a whole range of tiny sounds, including all the ones they missed earlier: the squeaking of leather jackets, for example, and the tiny mouselike peeping of the soles of boots on iron floor plates.

  Sweepwires? Asdic? Maybe the ship that was so fond of making the lap of honor had no depth charges on board, and this is its replacement. I tense every muscle, go totally rigid. Mustn’t let anything show.

  What’s happening? Is the whining of the screws letting up a bit—or am I just fooling myself?

  Pain in my lungs. Cautiously, gently, I let my chest expand. Breathe in unsteadily, then gasp for the next lungful. No doubt about it, the noises are getting weaker.

  “Going away,” mutters the Old Man. And immediately I go limp.

  “Destroyer,” he says expressionlessly. “It’s teeming with ships around here. They’ve called up everything that can float!”

  By which he means it was pure accident that a ship passed over us. A stone is lifted from my heart.

  New sounds to jangle my nerves—this time the ringing and pounding of tools makes me jump. They’re apparently hard at work again in the aftership. Only now does it dawn on me that once again there are more men in the control room than belong here. This attempt to get a place under the tower when the enemy is around is pure atavism. As if the “lords” didn’t already know how deep we are. Down here the seamen have no advantage over the engine-room personnel. The rescue gear isn’t worth a damn. Except, that is, for the oxygen cartridges, which contain half an hour of life if our oxygen cylinders give out.

  The thought that the Tommies have long since written us off and that our presumed sinking has been reported hours ago to the British Admiralty fills me with something between contempt and horror. Not yet, you fuckers.

  As long as I am aboard, this boat cannot perish. The lines of my hand say that I will have a long life. So we’re bound to get through. Only, no one must find out that I’m immune, or I’d be a jinx. They haven’t got us, not by a long shot! We’re still breathing—under pressure and gasping, admittedly, but we’re still alive.

  If only we could send out a bulletin! But even if our radio hadn’t gone to hell, we couldn’t transmit from this depth. So no one at home will know how we met our end. “Died nobly in his country’s service,” the usual letter from the Commander in Chief to the next of kin. Our disaster will remain a mystery. That is, unless the British Admiralty relays over the Calais radio how they caught us.

  They’ve developed death reports into a fine art: precise details, so that the people at home will believe them; name, birthdate, size of the Commander’s cap. And what about H.Q.? They’ll take their time before sending out the three-star report, as they usually do with the Dönitz Volunteer Corps. Besides, we might have valid reasons for not sending signals. We’re sure to be ordered to report in the near future. Once, twice—the same old story.

  But the way things stand, the gentlemen of the Staff will soon conclude—correctly—that we haven’t achieved the requisite breakthrough. There was, after all, very little chance we would, as Kernével was well aware. Their mad slavedriver can gently break the news to himself that he’s short one more boat, sunk off Gibraltar—British war port—a rock inhabited by apes—Mediterranean location—the “enchanted meeting place of two seductive climates”—that’s what it said, after all! Christ! Don’t go to pieces! I stare at the bananas hanging from the ceiling over the sound room, quietly ripening away. Two, three splendid specimens of pineapple among them. But this only makes me feel worse: below, the smashed-up batteries; up there, a Spanish garden!

  The Chief appears again, opens the locker containing the rolledup diagrams, riffles through, pulls one out, and spreads it on the table. I come to his assistance by weighting down the corners of the diagram with books. It’s a longitudinal section of the boat, with the pipelines drawn in as black veins or red arteries.

  The Second Engineer bobs up, tangled mop of hair, out of breath. He bends over the plan beside the Chief. Not a word out of him either. Silent movie stuff.

  Everything hangs on their deliberations. They’re sitting in judgment on our fate. I keep quiet. Don’t disturb them. The Chief’s pencil points at a place on the diagram and he nods at his colleague, who nods back—“understood.” Both straighten up simultaneously. It looks as though the Chief now knows how to go about getting the water out of the boat. But how will he manage to make any headway against the external pressure?

  I catch sight of a piece of bread with a bite out of it on the table in the Officers’ Mess—fresh white bread from the Weser. Thickly buttered, with a chunk of sausage on it. Repulsive! My stomach turns. Someone must have been eating just when the explosion came. Amazing it didn’t slide off the table when the boat stood on its head.

  Breathing is getting harder by the minute. Why doesn’t the Chief release more oxygen? Pathetic that we’re so dependent on air. I need only hold my breath for a short time and the seconds begin ticking in my ear, and then I get a choking sensation in my throat. We have fresh bread, we’re fully stocked with food—but what we really need is air. It’s being powerfully brought home to us that man can’t exist without it. When else have I ever dwelled on the fact that I can’t live without oxygen, that behind my ribs two flabby lobes are unceasingly expanding and contracting. Lungs—I’ve only seen them cooked. Boiled lungs—a favorite dog food! Lungs with dumplings, an entrée for sixty pfennigs in the main depot, where they kept the liver-dumpling soup warm in marmalade jars, inside sauerkraut kettles along with all the sawdust from the floor-or did, until the health squad shut the place down.

  Nine hundred feet. What’s the weight of the column of water that’s resting on the boat? I used to know: I had the figures imprinted on my mind. But now they’ve faded. My brain is hardly functioning at all. I can’t think with all this dull pressure inside my skull.

  In my left-hand trouser pocket I feel my talisman—an oval piece of turquoise. I open my left fist and run my fingers lightly over the stone: like smooth, slightly rounded skin. Simone’s belly! Immediately I hear her babbling in my ear, “That is my little nombril – what do you call it? Button in the belly? Belly button. Funny—pour moi c’est ma boite a ordure—regarde—regarde!” She fingers some fluff out of the depths of her navel and holds it up with a giggle. If she could see me now, nine hundred feet down. Not just anywhere, somewhere out there in the Atlantic, but with a permanent address: Strait of Gibraltar, African Side Of. Here we are in our little tube with its cargo of fifty-one bodies: flesh, bone, blood, spinal jelly, pumping lungs and racing pulses, twitching eyelids—fifty-one minds, each with its own world of memories.

  I try to picture her hair. How
did she wear it toward the end? I rack my brains but can’t remember. I try to bring her image closer, see her hair, but it remains indistinct. Doesn’t matter. It’ll come back suddenly. Mustn’t try so hard. Memories return of their own accord.

  I can see her violet sweater. And the yellow bandana and the mauve-colored blouse with the tiny pattern that, if you looked at it closely, read “Vive la France” a thousand times over. The orangegold tone of her skin. And now I have her mad hairdo as well. The strands that always fell across her forehead were what excited me. It was important to Simone to look deliberately disheveled in an artistic way.

  It wasn’t right of her to swipe my new binoculars for her Herr Papa. He must have wanted to test them out to see whether the new design really is so much better than the old, must have been intrigued by the new blue tint that makes our glasses so much better for night work. And Simone? Did she simply want to show off? Monique got a toy coffin, Genevieve got one, Germaine too—but not Simone.

  The Old Man turns up with the Chief. They bend over a diagram. I catch the words “by hand into the regulator tank.” Aha, that must be about the water that has got in! By hand? Will that work? Anyway, both of them nod.

  “Then outboard from the regulator tank by means of auxiliary pumps and compressed air…”

  The Chief’s voice has a distinct vibrato. A miracle that he’s still on his feet—he was already wiped out before this mess began. Anyone with a couple of dozen depth pursuits behind him is inevitably used up. Which was why he was due to be relieved. Just one more patrol!

  And now this! He has big drops of sweat on his forehead, but his brow is so furrowed and wrinkled that they can’t run off. When he turns his head, you can see his whole face shining with sweat.