Das Boot

  The old harridan produces the bits of German she’s picked up. “No time. Move, move, don’t break anything!”

  Above her throne hangs a sign with a brightly colored rooster and the legend: “Quand ce coq chantera, crédit on donnera.”

  While each man is paying her, she tries to sell him one of her well-worn collection of photographs. Someone objects. “Auntie, nobody needs instructions. I’m ready to shoot as it is. They’ll be humping today till nothing comes out but blue air.”

  Mattress squeaking through the stained wall.

  A shrill nagging voice. “Come on, sweetheart, put the money right there.”

  And I was so stunned that she spoke German!

  “Don’t look so dumb! Fais vite! Sure, you’re surprised!—I happen to come from Alsace! No—no—-d’you think I want to be fired? Everyone has to pay in advance here, so let’s see your money, darling. Paying is always worse when you have to do it afterward. Come on—and put a little extra for Lily on top—you’re going to like her. Have you got another fifty? If you do, there’re some pictures I could show you—” And from next door: “Come in, sweetie. God, talk about baby-snatching.” Are they all from Alsace? “Does your kindergarten have the day off today? That all you can manage? No—keep your trousers on. And hurry up!”

  At the bottom of the couch a strip of shabby oilcloth to go under your shoes: taking them off here is considered a waste of time.

  “Man, that was quick. Well, that’s that.”

  Behind a screen I hear her pissing in a chamber pot. No niceties.

  Pale thighs. Wet pubic hair. Sickly face streaked with powder. Yellow teeth, one or two rotting and black. Breath reeking of Cognac. Red gash of mouth. Whitish intestinal ropes of used condoms tangled up in the wastebasket beside the bidet.

  Cursing in the corridor. “Money back—too much beer—I can never get it up.”

  Downstairs a man is protesting against the injection.

  “Then you won’t get your paybook back!”

  “Listen, I didn’t go bareback!”

  “Shut up. Everyone gets a shot here.”

  “I guess you get a free fuck, don’t you?”

  “Just be careful, man!”

  “Oh kiss my ass!”

  What a job! Injecting cocks all day long!

  “There, you’re done. Here’s your paybook back. Double precaution: a rubber and a shot. They’re real sticklers for etiquette in the Navy!”

  The pressure in my bladder is driving me mad. Didn’t the bosun set out buckets in the control room with a can of calcium chloride beside them? I struggle up and manage to get there, stiff-legged. Afterward, the Chief appears. Breathing heavily, he sits down beside me and stays very still. Only his chest moves. He purses his lips and inhales, which produces a whistle. He jumps, startled by the sound.

  I pluck the pig snout out of my mouth. “Chief, I still have some glucose tablets.” The Chief jerks himself back into reality. “No thanks, but a mouthful of apple juice wouldn’t be bad.”

  I push myself up quickly, work my way through the hatch, stagger to the locker, and reach for the bottle. The Chief puts it to his mouth with one hand but then has to use the other because the bottle is rattling against his teeth. He takes huge gulps. A trickle runs over his lower lip and is caught in his beard. He doesn’t even wipe it off.

  Shall I ask him how things stand? Better not. From the way he looks, it might be the last straw.

  In the petty officers’ compartment the curtains of the bunks on the port side are open but the bunks aren’t empty. Their occupants look like corpses laid out in their coffins. Zeitler, Ullmann, the Berliner, and Wichmann. Only the pig snouts don’t belong.

  The bunks of the engine-room crew are empty. So the diesel mates and the motor mates are still aft. I stretch out on the nearest lower bunk.

  The First Watch Officer appears. Looking officiously concerned, he makes sure that everyone still has his snorkel in his mouth. As I stare after him I realize that I’m drifting off to sleep again.

  When I come to, I recognize Frenssen. The way he looks, sitting there at the table, completely exhausted, goes straight to my heart. He has no snorkel. Of course—the men who have to work in the engine room can’t wear this damnfool contraption. I make a noise rolling over, and Frenssen slowly turns his head. He stares at me blankly. His spine no longer seems able to support the weight of his torso. Instead of propping himself up on the table, he lets his shoulders sag and his arms dangle between his knees as though they had no joints but hung on strings, like primitive marionettes. He seems to be doubly prone to normal gravity. His mouth is open; his glassy stare is terrifying. God, he’s going off the rails! Who knows how the others are holding out in this fetid air if Frenssen can no longer carry on. This bull of a man—and he’s as weak as a fly.

  Fly? Where’s our fly?

  The thought of an underwater Christmas returns. If the men aft don’t get finished, we’ll still be sitting here on Christmas Eve. There’ll be an exchange of gifts. I’ll catch the fly as my present to the Old Man. Put it in an empty match box, one with a pretty Spanish label, which the Old Man can hold against his ear, so that if the fly is buzzing, he can imagine that the motors are running again. Brilliant! And we’ll make the Chief close his eyes and listen to the little box too. And if the Old Man agrees, it can even go the rounds and they can all listen to it for a whole minute—God’s gift to our ears in all this silence, another blessing to celebrate along with the birth of our Lord.

  I feel wretched, exhausted. I’d love to tell Frenssen, “I’ll just see where the tea is,” or some such nonsense, but with the snorkel I can’t. He doesn’t move an inch.

  The tea! The pot must be in the control room; I must have seen it while I was in there.

  I get up painfully. Frenssen hardly raises his eyes. In the control room the floor plates are still covered with water, so our worst problem hasn’t been cleared up. No doubt the Chief will get around to it. He has his plan, of course, but the sight of this flood, and my boots splashing in it, fills me with horror just the same.

  The tea: I look around, but the pot’s nowhere to be seen. I do know where the apple juice is, however. I clamber through the hatch and shuffle to the locker, get a bottle out, tear off its top on a hinge, and bring it to Frennsen. Dear god, it takes him long enough to realize that it’s for him. He could have spared himself the look of dog-like gratitude—after all, I’m not the Old Man.

  Nothing more to do but go on sitting here conjuring up pictures.

  Glückstadt comes to mind. That helps: immediately I turn bitter. The humiliations! Gluckstadt—Happy City. The name itself was pure mockery. That’s the way it always went: barracks, barrack rooms, barracks again. First fatigue duty and then the naval Mickey Mouse. Gluckstadt was the worst—nomen est omen—a superstition.

  The Greasy Spoon restaurant in town!—it had a different name, of course—where we spent our evenings eating fried potatoes by the plateful because we didn’t get enough at camp. Three of us had to report because the owner heard about our name for his wretched dump. Confined to barracks; assigned to eternal Mickey Mouse—the main thing was to yell at the top of your voice. My specialty: leading a detachment into open country, and telling the men to disappear into the dugouts for a quick game of cards while I stood around roaring orders over the landscape like a maniac. I enjoyed that—and everyone else did too.

  I see myself in the cutter, at the end of my strength, clinging to my oar and almost tumbling from the thwart. The mean, coarse faces of the mates, who made a kind of game out of pursuing, harassing, and bullying us new recruits. I see now-what they did to Flemming, poor, pathetic, nervous Flemming, who was handed over helpless to a collection of sadists in uniform. Into fatigues, out of fatigues! Rigging gear on, rigging gear off. Dress uniform on, dress uniform off, sports outfit on, sports outfit off. “Move it, move it, you shitheads!”

  Five minutes later: locker inspection.

  Poor Flemming neve
r caught up. He began to have the wild look of a trapped rat. And if the bastards noticed someone who couldn’t defend himself, they really went to town. On the double, three times around the barracks, once around crawling. A hundred yards’ rabbit hop. Twenty push-ups. Up and over the walls on the assault course.

  And then the special treats for all of us: to pull the cutter at full speed into the slime and then work it loose again, float it free—but only by hauling on the oars, pulling in rhythm on them for hours at a time until there was clear water under the cutter.

  Poor Flemming didn’t, couldn’t, hold out.

  One evening he was missing at roll call.

  The mutilated corpse was washed up in the harbor, among the old fenders, bottles, pieces of wood, and puddles of lubricating oil.

  It was a straight case of murder. Systematically harassed to death. He’d drowned himself in desperation, even though he could swim. His corpse wasn’t a pretty sight: It had got caught in the propellers of a steamer. I had to go to Hamburg to the hearing. Now that it’s gone this far, I thought to myself, the shit will really hit the fan. But what happened? His dear relatives, fine Hamburg shipowners, found the idea of suicide unpalatable. So they stuck to the Navy version: accidental death in the course of duty! For Volk, Führer, and Vaterland. In loyal performance of his duty. Apparently they couldn’t bear to forego the three salvos over the grave, so we fired our rifles over Flemming’s hole in the ground. Salute—raise rifles—fire. And then again. And again. No one was even allowed to smile.

  And then in France: the way I wrenched the pistol away from Obermeier, the radio announcer, when he was going to shoot himself on the beach in front of our requisitioned villa. What a farce, just because he’d had an affair in Paris with a lady who turned out to be half Jewish. Asshole Obermeier behaving like a madman, roaring, “I am a National Socialist! Give me my pistol, give me my pistol back!” It wouldn’t have taken much for me to do him the favor.

  I begin to choke. My mouth is swollen full; it tastes as bitter as gall. I can’t stand the snorkel any longer. My mouth ejects it almost involuntarily. Saliva dribbles onto my shirt. I study it intently. I need a drink. Frenssen won’t hold it against me if I reach for his bottle.

  What the hell’s that? My wristwatch lying on the table! Who put it there? I reach for it, feel as if my Christmas has come early. The sweep second hand is still hurrying around the dial. A good watch. It says a little after 20.00.

  Which means we’ve already been down here almost twenty-four hours. The Commander wanted to try surfacing when it got dark. 20.00—then it must have been pitch black up there for a long time. At this time of year. But why did the Commander ask the navigator when the moon set? I’m not mixing this up. The Old Man asked twice, after all—just a couple of hours ago. But wasn’t there a new moon a short time ago? That means almost no light at all, let alone setting. So what? The usual dilemma: no one to ask—neither the Old Man nor the navigator. Apparently it will only be really dark somewhere around four a.m.

  That would mean the whole night to go. Another whole night—unendurable. The oxygen won’t last that long. And what about the potash cartridges?

  Restlessness forces me to move. I head for the Officers’ Mess in a trance. My place on the Chief’s bunk is unoccupied. The Second Watch Officer has disappeared. This day seems to have lasted a hundred hours already.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been dozing in the corner of the bunk when I wake up and recognize the Old Man in the gangway to the Officers’ Mess. He’s supporting himself with both hands as though we were in a surface vessel in a heavy sea. He must have come out of his cubbyhole. Feebly he lets himself onto the Chief’s bunk beside me. He looks gray and exhausted, seems completely unaware of me, absentminded. For a good five minutes he doesn’t utter a syllable. Then I hear him mutter, “I’m sorry.”

  I sit there as if turned to stone. “I’m sorry.” The words echo in my head.

  Two words, and the Commander has stamped out all hope. The renewed clutch of fear. No hope. That’s what it must mean. Dream exploded. A few more charades, some stiff upper lip… and that’s it. The whole exercise, all our efforts—nothing but bullshit. I knew it: We’ll be stuck here till Judgment Day.

  We might still have had a chance to swim for it. Overboard as soon as we surfaced. But now—what now? Slowly fall asleep as the oxygen gives out?

  I take the snorkel out of my mouth although I don’t want to talk. My hands do it automatically. Intelligent hands that say to themselves: What’s the point? Why this snorkeling if there’s no chance left? Threads of saliva drip from my mouth, grow longer and longer. Like trumpeters emptying their U-shaped mouthpieces.

  I turn to look directly at the Old Man. His face is a lifeless mask. I have a feeling that I could peel the mask away, but then I know for certain that I would have to look at raw flesh and sinews, like a picture from an anatomy book: spherical eyeballs, bluishwhite; branching fibers; narrow tubes and veins; bands of muscle.

  Have the Old Man’s exertions finally done him in? It can’t possibly be true! “I’m sorry.” He can’t have meant it seriously.

  He doesn’t move an inch. I can’t catch his eye because he’s staring down at the floor in front of him.

  Fear of the emptiness in my head. I don’t dare go to pieces now. Mustn’t let myself go. Keep an eye on myself and don’t let the Old Man out of my sight.

  No doubt about it: He’s all in. Why else would he say something like that?

  Perhaps everything is starting to work for us, only the Old Man doesn’t realize it. What can I do? Tell him that everything will still turn out all right? That when the need is greatest, the Lord is nigh?

  Revolt. No! His two-word judgment can’t take away my secret knowledge that I’m going to escape. Nothing can happen to me. I am taboo. Through me the whole boat is immune.

  But doubt sets in again. I’d realized it before—only not admitted it: It’s dark up there, has been for hours, and we were going to surface at dark. So we should have tried long ago. All that talk about the moon—nothing but pretext.

  The Old Man continues to sit there motionless as though all the life had drained out of him. Not even the blink of an eye. I’ve never seen him this way before…

  I try to shake off the stranglehold, try to swallow, try to choke down my fear.

  A tapping sound.

  I stare into the aisle. There stands the Chief, supporting himself left and right against the walls the way the Old Man just did. I try to read his face. But he’s standing in semi-darkness, and his face remains a blur.

  Why won’t he come into the lamplight? Has everyone here gone mad? Why doesn’t he sit down with us at the table? Surely not because his shirt is torn? Because his arms are smeared all the way up with filth?

  His mouth is open. Probably wants to make a report. Waiting for the Old Man to look up. Finally he moves his lips and takes his hands cautiously away from the walls. Must want his gestures to underline what he has to say. But the Old Man keeps his head down. Probably hasn’t noticed him standing six feet away in the gangway.

  I’m about to give him a push to bring him out of his trance, when the Chief clears his throat and the Old Man lifts his eyes irritably. Instantly the Chief is talking. “Respectfully report to Herr Kaleun—E-motors ready—water taken aboard has been pumped into regulator cells—possible to expel it outboard with compressed air—compass system ready—echo sounder ready…”

  The Chief falters. His voice is hoarse. From now on I hear nothing but an endless echo. “Ready… ready… ready…”

  “Good, Chief. Good, good!” stutters the Old Man. “Just get some rest now!”

  I stagger to my feet to make room for the Chief. But he stammers “…still some problems—still a couple—to clear up,” and takes two steps backward before executing a kind of aboutface. He’s going to fall over any minute. No longer has the strength of an insect. One puff, and you could blow him over.

  The Old Man has his
elbows braced on the table and half his lower lip is between his teeth. Why doesn’t he say something?

  Finally he lets go and blows out hard. “Good men—simply have to have—good men!”

  He lays the palms of both hands on the table, shifts his weight forward, and pushes himself heavily to his feet, then squeezes his way slowly past, hitches his belt up in the gangway, and sets off toward the stern wobbling like a drunk.

  I sit there stunned, holding my mouthpiece in my lap with both hands. Did I just dream all that? But the Old Man really has vanished. Where to? He was sitting here just a moment ago… “I’m sorry.” And then “…ready… ready… ready!”

  Where is everyone? I’m about to shout when I hear voices from the control room. “…going to try!… have to see if it’ll work!”—“When d’you think you’ll be more or less ready?” That’s the Old Man’s voice. And it’s sounding urgent. “Haven’t much time left.”

  My head’s spinning again. What am I doing still sitting around here? I replace my rubber mouthpiece. I’m wobbly too: I can hardly get to my feet. At each step it feels as if someone’s hitting me in the back of the knees.

  In the control room, the Old Man, the Chief, and the navigator, all with their heads together. A tight little group around the chart table.

  The usual mocking voice starts whispering in my ear: here we go again, stretching out the action, spinning out the scene, milking it for everything it’s got—a real crowd pleaser—the group of conspirators and their muffled whispers—always works.

  Then I notice: no more water in the control room. Dry feet. Missed it before. Blackouts. Am I actually in my right mind now?

  I hear the Old Man ask in a hushed voice, “What’s it like up there now, navigator?”

  “Been dark for some hours, Herr Kaleun!”

  The Old Man obviously has himself under control again. And the navigator knew the answer. Nothing confuses him, he’s right on the ball.