Das Boot

  “…racket… can’t be avoided… can’t be done… buoyancy cell three…”

  What’s he saying about buoyancy cell three? It can’t have suffered any damage, it lies inside the pressure hull. What was it they said: The boat can float on buoyancy cell three alone—but with so much water aboard, the amount of lift this one cell can give is naturally not enough_nothing like it. So it comes back to this: The water has to be got out of the boat as quickly as possible. I haven’t the faintest idea how he intends to pump the water from the control room into the regulator cells and then from the regulator cells overboard. But he’s no fool. He never proposes anything if he’s not sure of his facts.

  I gather that he’s unwilling to try to free the boat from the bottom until all necessary repairs have been made. Apparently one attempt is all we’ve got.

  “Boat… first get her… even keel!” The Old Man. Of course the damned stern heaviness! But there’s no question of pumping the water forward now. So?

  “…water by hand from aft into the control room.” “By hand.” For chrissake—by hand? In pans? Hand to hand? I stare at the Old Man and wait for him to make his meaning clear, then I catch the words, “bucket brigade.” He really means it.

  A fire brigade forms up through the petty officers’ quarters and the galley, and I join it. My place is beside the hatch. Hoarsely whispered directions and curses. A bucket comes toward me—the kind the steward uses to wash dishes. It’s half full. I reach for it and let it swing like a U-shaped dumbbell through the hatch; the control-room mate has the job of taking it from me. I can hear him empty it out into the control-room bilge level with the periscope. The sharp gush and splash are suggestive, disgusting.

  More and more pails and buckets are also being handed back in the opposite direction to be passed through toward the stern. Instant chaos. Hissing orders, the Chief straightens out the confusion of empty and full.

  The man who hands the pails to me is Zeitler, wearing a filthy, torn shirt. With each bucket he shows me a grimly determined face. From behind him come croaks and whispers of “Look out!”: a particularly heavy bucket appears. I have to seize the handle with both hands. It still slops over. The swill soaks my trousers and shoes. My back is already wet—but that’s sweat. Twice as I pass a bucket I get an encouraging grin from the Old Man. That at least is something.

  Sometimes the procession stops because there’s been a foul-up somewhere astern. A few half-suppressed curses and then the chain begins again.

  The control-room mate doesn’t have to be careful. He’s the last in line and can let the water spill over onto the floor plates. I can see that the floor in the petty officers’ compartment is also wet. But under the floor plates in that compartment is battery two. Won’t it be damaged? I tell myself that the Chief is around: He’ll take care of it.

  Another slop—right over my stomach this time. Shit!

  A dull bang, curses, the chain stops again; this time a bucket has apparently hit the hatch rim of the galley.

  Am I wrong? Or has the boat already tilted back a couple of degrees toward the horizontal?

  The water in the control room is now ankle deep.

  How late is it? Must be at least four am. Too bad about my wristwatch. Of course the leather band was a dead loss—glued together, not sewn. Modern trash. But the works were good. I had it ten years without a single repair.

  “Look out!” Zeitler snaps. Damn it, I must be careful. I no longer have to bend my arm. If Zeitler hands me the pail properly, I can save a lot of strength. He has a worse time of it: He has to heave the pails through the hatch, and he needs both hands to do it, I only have to use my right. I no longer even notice the way it reaches out and lets the pail swing through like a trapeze until it reaches the catcher on the other side.

  “When’s first light?” the Old Man asks the navigator. Kriechbaum thumbs through his tables. “Morning light begins at 07.30.” So there’s very little time left!

  It may already be later than four o’clock. If we don’t make our try soon, surfacing will be out for a whole day—we’ll have to wait till evening. That means the people up there will have those hours of beautiful sunlight to play games with us.

  “Take a break.” The whispers from mouth to mouth. “Break—break—break.”

  If the Old Man is thinking of making a run for the coast—always assuming that the attempt to surface is successful—then he needs the protection of darkness. We hadn’t even reached the narrowest spot in the Strait. The coast is still quite a stretch from here, so the time that remains to us, if we’re to succeed, is even shorter. Will the bit of juice in the undamaged cells be enough for the motors? And what good is the whole patchwork on both batteries if the shaft bearings are damaged? The Chief’s misgivings weren’t just thin air.

  Christ, look at the men! Green faces, yellow faces; green-black circles around the sockets of red-rimmed eyes. Mouths half open from lack of air, dark holes.

  The Chief reappears to report that the motors are out of danger. However, he wants more water out of the main motor room.

  “All right,” says the Commander in his normal voice. “Carry on!”

  The first time I reach for a pail again I realize how sore my muscles are. I can hardly manage to get back into the proper swing.

  Choking, heaving lungs. No more air in the boat. But one thing is certain: We are definitely getting back onto an even keel.

  The Commander sloshes over to the hatch. “Going okay?” he calls aft.

  “Jawohl, Herr Kaleun!”

  I could drop right here, in the muck all over the floor plates—I wouldn’t give a damn. I count the pails. Just as I’m saying “fifty” to myself, the order comes from astern. “Belay the bailing!”

  Thank god! I still have to take four or five buckets from Zeitler, but the empty pails no longer come back from the control-room mate: They’re passed on farther forward.

  Now to get my wet gear off. Chaos in the petty officers’ compartment because everyone wants dry clothes. I get hold of my sweater, even manage to find my leather trousers on my bunk. Fantastic! Dry things! And now into my seaboots. Frenssen’s elbow lands in my ribs, and Pilgrim tramples on my right foot, but finally I manage it. I splash through the control room, bouncing like a street urchin. In the Officers’ Mess I can finally put my feet up.

  Then I hear “oxygen.” From mouth to mouth the order goes through the boat, “Adjust potash cartridges. All men off duty rest on their bunks!”

  The Second Watch Officer stares at me in consternation.

  Another message is passed from mouth to mouth. “Watch one another. Be sure no one’s snorkel slips out of his mouth while he’s asleep.”

  “Haven’t used one of these for a long time,” mutters the bosun next door.

  Potash cartridges. That answers the question—it’s going to take a long time. No rosy glow of dawn for us this time. The Second Watch Officer says nothing. He doesn’t bat an eye, though the orders don’t seem very welcome to him. I see by his watch that it’s five o’clock.

  I stagger back toward the stern again, splashing through the water in the control room, aware of the frozen faces of the personnel. Breaking out the potash cartridges means that there’s no possibility of surfacing during the next few hours. Which also means: wait till dark. A whole day on the bottom. God Almighty! The engine-room crew will have ample time to put their shop in order again. No reason to hurry now.

  With trembling hands I fish around in a corner at the head of my bed until I find my potash cartridge, a rectangular metal case twice the size of a cigar box.

  The other inhabitants of the petty officers’ compartment are already at work screwing in the tubes with the mouthpiece and getting the rubber nozzle—the snorkel—between their teeth. Only Zeitler hasn’t got that far: He’s swearing a blue streak. “Goddam shit—I’ve fucking well had enough!”

  The black tubes are already hanging out of Pilgrim’s and Kleinschmidt’s mouths. I put on the nose clip,
noticing as I do so how shaky my hands are. Cautiously I take the first gulp of air through the cartridge. Never done it before. Nervous about how it’ll work. As I breathe out again, the valve in the mouthpiece rattles: that can’t be right. Was I breathing too hard? Well then, slow down, do it more quietly. The air from the snout has a foul taste of rubber. Hope it won’t go on like that.

  The box is heavy. It hangs in front of my stomach like a street vendor’s tray. Weighs a good two pounds. The contents are supposed to absorb the carbon dioxide we breathe out, or at least enough of it so that what we breathe in won’t contain more than four per cent. More is dangerous. We could suffocate in our own exhalation. “When it gets chemical, it gets psychological,” said the Chief. How right he was!

  How long will the oxygen really last? The underwater endurance of a VII-C is supposed to be three days. So there must be enough oxygen in the tanks for three times twenty-four hours—without forgetting the period of grace contained in the steel cylinders of the life-saving gear.

  If Simone could see me like this, with the snorkel in my mouth and the potash cartridge on my stomach…

  I stare at Zeitler, taking him as my mirror image: wet matted hair; drops of sweat thick on his forehead; great, staring, feverish eyes with violet-black rings underneath; nose clamped shut by the clip. Under it his dark rubber proboscis protruding from a matted stubble of beard—a terrifying carnival figure.

  Those ghoulish beards! How long have we actually been out? Try counting: seven, eight weeks? Or is it actually nine or ten?

  Simone drifts in again. I see her on a movie screen, smiling, gesticulating, pushing down her shoulder straps. I blink—and she disappears.

  Just a look around the control room, I say to myself, and clamber laboriously through the hatch. This damned street vendor’s box! Now I see Simone projected directly onto pipes, shafts, and manometers. I see the tangle of ducts and hand wheels for shut-off valves, and over them Simone: breasts, thighs, fluff, her moist, half-open mouth. She rolls over on her stomach, raising her feet in the air, reaches for her ankles, and does the “swan.” The striped shadows from the venetian blinds glide back and forth over her body as she rocks. Zebra-swan. I close my eyes.

  Then right in front of me a double exposure: a face with a proboscis growing out of its mouth. I jump: It’s the Second Watch Officer. He’s staring at me. He seems to want to communicate. Awkwardly he pulls the rubber nozzle out of his mouth, dripping saliva. “Refrain from use of pistols. Danger of explosion!” he says nasally, lifting his eyebrows. Of course! The gas from the battery.

  He sucks in his pacifier again, and winks his left eye before sitting down on his bunk. I can’t even say, “Very funny, you idiot!”

  Unsteady as a drunkard, I feel my way along the lockers, touch the Old Man’s curtain, then more paneled walls. No contortions needed to get into the Officers’ Mess. The floor plates have been laid down again. The battery’s probably not a total write-off. In rudimentary form it may still be usable for a very short distance under power.

  There’s a light burning. If we left only this one bulb on it would probably keep burning forever. An electric bulb—forty watts—must use less current in a whole week than is needed for a single turn of the propellers. The Eternal Light—nine hundred feet down!

  Someone has cleaned up—more or less. The pictures are back on the wall again, admittedly without glass. Even the books are in the shelf, in some kind of rough order. The First Watch Officer must be lying in his bunk. At any rate his curtain is closed. The Second Watch Officer is sitting in the left corner of the Chief’s bunk, eyes tight shut. He’d do better to lie down properly instead of slumping in a corner like a wet sack. He’s wormed his way in so firmly that he doesn’t look as if he ever intends to move again.

  It has never been so peaceful in here before. No traffic, no changing of the watch. Pictures and books. The familiar lamplight, the handsome veined woodwork, the black leather sofa. No pipes, no white ship’s paint, not so much as a square inch of damaged hull. A green silk shade and glass bead fringe on the lamp and it would look just like home. A bunch of flowers on the table—artificial ones for all I care—and a fringed tablecloth, and it would be an honestto-god living room. Of course the leather sofa should have a piece of wood over it with branded letters or a sampler in cross-stitch with the motto: “A poor thing, but mine own.”

  Admittedly, the Second Watch Officer spoils the picture. Or rather his snorkel does. No fancy-dress party in our living room!

  This silence in the boat! It’s as if the crew were no longer aboard, as if we two—the Second Watch Officer and I—were all alone between these four walls.

  The Second Watch Officer has let his head sink down on his chest. He’s succeeded in shutting out the surrounding world. No worries to trouble the Baby Officer, our Garden Gnome. How on earth has he managed, now of all times, to go dead to the world? Is he resigned to his fate, like most of the men? Or is his particular sleeping pill the Old Man’s confidence act? Blind trust in the abilities of the Chief, in the skill of the repair crew? Or is it simply discipline? Sleep is the order, so sleep he does?

  Now and again he grunts or chokes on his own saliva; he doesn’t wake up but suckles away with smacking noises like a piglet at the tit of the mother sow.

  Ready to drop. Sometimes I drowse for minutes at a time, then force myself back awake. It must be after six o’clock now. Now the Second Watch Officer looks like an exhausted fireman.

  I ought to try to keep moving. Not just sit around here on my backside. Better to concentrate on everything that’s going on in the boat right now. Fix the details. Focus on something. But none of that requires any movement at all. For example, I can fix my eyes on the Second Watch Officer’s glittering rodent teeth. Then his left earlobe: properly developed, better formed than the First Watch Officer’s. I observe the Second Watch Officer with scientific precision, divide up his head into separate sections. Make enlargements of his eyelashes, brows, lips.

  I try to organize my thoughts. But it’s like turning on a defective motor: It fires a few times and then goes dead.

  How many hours have we actually been down here? It must have been around midnight when we sank, by ship’s time in any case. But that doesn’t correspond to our geographical location and is also off an hour; on board, we’re on German Summer Time. Do I subtract or add? I can’t decide. Not even something as simple as that. I’m completely off track. According to ship’s time it must be at least 07.00. In any case we’ve lost any chance we had of attempting to surface in the gray of dawn. We’ll have to wait till it’s dark again up there.

  The British cooks must have been up long ago, serving huge quantities of fried eggs and bacon, their standard breakfast for the fleet.

  Hunger? For god’s sake, don’t even think about eating!

  The Old Man was only suggesting that we try to surface before dawn in order to keep us on our feet. Clever of him not to make it definite. False optimism? Bullshit! It was just to keep the men going.

  A whole day down here? Maybe even longer—and this eternal snorkel in your mouth. God!

  In my sleep, I hear the Second Watch Officer clear his throat. I struggle back to consciousness, surface, and blink hard. Rub my eyes with the knuckle of my index finger. Heavy head. Lead in my skull. Pains behind the eyebrows—even worse farther back in my head. The snouted animal in the other corner is still the Second Watch Officer.

  I wish I knew what time it is. Must be midday. My watch was a good one. Swiss. Seventy-five marks. Already lost it twice, but always found it again—a miracle each time. Where can it be lying around now?

  And still this quiet! No humming of auxiliary machinery. The same deathly silence. The potash cartridge weighs on my stomach like a monstrous hot-water bottle.

  Now and again a man with oil-smeared hands and arms comes through the compartment. Still something out of order back there? Hasn’t our position improved at all while I was asleep? Is there new hope? No one to a
sk. Secretiveness everywhere.

  But how do I know that the compass is functioning again—the whole system? Did I hear something while I was dozing? The hydroplane is only partially back in service, and hard to move. But that was already known before I fell asleep.

  How about the water? The Chief had a plan. But does he still believe in it? Shouldn’t have gone to sleep: lost track of everything, including time.

  At some point I heard the Commander say, “We have to surface the moment it gets dark.” But how long is it till then? Outrageous that my watch has gone.

  I start looking for it, and discover that our straw dog has disappeared. No longer hanging from the ceiling. Nor under the table either. I let myself slide out of the bunk, crawl through the rubber boots and cans of food, and fumble about in the dark. Damnation, a splinter! The Chief’s pillow. Then hand towels and leather gloves, but no dog. However tatty, he’s our good-luck charm; he can’t just disappear.

  I’m about to sit down again when I notice the Second Watch Officer. He has the dog tucked under his left arm; he’s clutching it the way a child clutches a doll, and he’s fast asleep.

  Another man comes through, stepping carefully, a heavy tool in his oil-smeared hands. I’m ashamed to be doing nothing. My only comfort is the fact that the Second Watch Officer and the entire naval contingent are also doing nothing. Orders to remain quiet, to sleep. In fact, we have the harder part: sitting here, lying here, staring straight ahead, having hallucinations.

  This goddam snorkeling. Too much saliva in my mouth. Before, my gums were as dry as leather, and now this overproduction. Salivary glands simply aren’t designed for this way of life.

  Only two boats out of three survive their first patrol. That’s the rule of thumb nowadays: Every third boat is sunk almost at once. Seen in this light, UA is one of the lucky ones. She has already inflicted all sorts of damage; she’s bled the Tommies white, as they so elegantly put it. And now the Tommies have turned the tables on us. Another of those silly metaphors: “turn the tables”—“bleed them white.”