Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison!

by Harry Harrison

  * * *

  Brian fell in love with Yugoslavia. He liked it so much that he planned an extensive visit, and arranged to write a book for Faber called Cities and Stones, a travel book about Yugoslavia. His wife, Margaret, was going to collect recipes for a Yugoslavian cookbook. One of the porters at Trinity College in Oxford was a Yugoslavian, and Brian and Margaret took private lessons until he could get by in the language. Then they took off to Yugoslavia. They had an ancient Land Rover, which Margaret drove because Brian couldn’t drive at that time. A few months into their trip we arranged to meet them. We made an appointment by postcard, to meet at this campsite that I found in an Esperanto travel book. Serendipity; we arrived there within an hour of each other.

  Brian weighed about ten stone, 140 pounds. He’d lost so much weight he was ghostlike. Apparently the Yugoslavian food was the worst food in the world, once you got away from the tourist areas. There was nothing to drink and nothing to eat, and the idea of doing a cookbook was quickly abandoned. Open another tin we’d brought.

  We were just tourists here, way down in the foot of Yugoslavia, practically in Greece, and Brian was right. Every restaurant we went to had nothing on the menu, and we’d say, “What do you have?” And they’d say ćevapčići, minced pork on a skewer, served with tomato and onion. Not bad. Or we have raznjići, which are pieces of pork on a skewer cooked over a charcoal grill. But that’s all they have. Period. It’s good the first time you eat it, but as the sole item of a diet …

  Later I learned two words. We went to this very charming tourist spot, Plitvice, which is a series of natural springs. There was a lovely dining room with white tablecloths and a thick menu. They had everything on the menu that you could possibly want. I went through the whole menu with the waiter and I learned two words: neiman—we’re out of it—and odma—we never had it in the first place.

  I had found the campsite in the Esperanto yearbook, and I brought a lot of tinned food from Denmark, tinned herring and pâté from France. As we were driving down I’d buy some more food for him. It was greatly appreciated. We ate it all, Brian finishing every last crumb. Then rain cut the trip short and we had to get out of the campsite and head home. Some time passed before I saw Brian again. We reminisced about our Yugoslavian adventures.

  “You know, Harry, we had a good time there—and we had some really good wine. Including a very black wine called dingac. But it was nothing but very bad food and I spent the whole time looking for those big black olives and I never found them.”

  Sadly I spoke: “Brian, I’ve got some very bad news for you … we took those across with us from the hotel in Trieste!” We still occasionally refer to those black olives.

  Yugoslavia really was a broken-down country then, but while I was there I got the idea for a “first contact” story—“Rescue Operation”—which I grew out of that landscape.

  There was a friend we knew from the science fiction meetings who we used to call Joe the Jug; his real name was José Dolnicar. He was a physicist, an astrophysicist from Ljubljana. We had planned to meet him in this little town, but found him pulled off by the side of the road. “Harry, I’m so pleased to meet you.” He was a scuba diver and he’d found a two-thousand-year-old wreck. He had dived on the wreck, which had been carrying amphorae of wine. Alas, all broken. When he opened the boot of his car it was filled with broken amphorae. I took two, still covered with seaweed, back to Denmark and gave one to Brian.

  José became the hero of the story I wrote as a result of this chance encounter. Within two hundred miles there is an advanced physics institute and here, only the superstition of the miserable peasantry. They were the most peasant peasants I met in my entire life.

  13

  It was late afternoon. We were all in the sitting room being very laid-back. I had finished my quota of writing for the day and had crawled out of the studio and into a very dry gin martini. Joan had a glass of wine. The kids had a few friends over but they were on the way out now. We were talking Danish. But why? I realized suddenly that the Danish children were gone. “Speak English!” I said, and there was an unexpected sharp edge to my voice. The kids didn’t notice this—just shifted gears out of Danish and went on with the Lego machine they were building, talking in English. Joan raised her eyebrows. I apologized and put my attention back to the gin for a bit.

  We talked about living in Denmark at some length, then broke for dinner. We picked up the thread later that evening when the children were in bed. One thing was painfully clear; we were Americans, not Danes, and we should be speaking English, not Danish. We were being absorbed by a culture that was not ours. The children spoke and thought in Danish. As fine as this was—it was not English. They were Americans and it was time that they saw something of the land of their birth and spoke a language with a little more international appeal than Danish.

  The words come easily enough when I look back now, but it was very difficult facing up to facts at the time. It must have been cooking on the back burner of our brains, because suddenly there was a lot to think about. As we talked around the problem we realized that here was a major decision that had to be made, but we weren’t sure just what had to be done. The kids went to their Danish schools here and worked hard. They seemed to be enjoying their circle of friends. The same with me and Joan. Life was smooth and sweet. We went out in Copenhagen lots of evenings; we had just seen the Bolshoi on tour from Russia. We had friends over for dinner and enjoyed dining at their homes.

  My work went well. The future was ordered, smooth, and clear. We could relax and do nothing. Or uproot the family in a major move that would see us leaving Denmark: a very major move whatever way one looked at it. We would be leaving and destined never to return. There could be no turning back. It had been seven years since we had made the big move that brought us here, but now it was time to leave.

  However—for a lot of reasons—we weren’t ready for the big trip back across the Atlantic; we weren’t emotionally prepared for it. We decided then—for better or worse—that we should move to England for a trial year. Years later, with Moira an adult, we mentioned it; she agreed that she was not ready at the time to face a major change to the United States. She agreed that the year in England had been a good decision.

  Looking back at it now, decades later, I believe that it wasn’t the wisest of decisions—it just postponed the significant move back to the land of our births. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. And Moira approved of the move as it worked out.

  Once the decision had been made we acted upon it. All the furniture, the shelves and books, the whole lot—went into storage. We rented a furnished house in Sutton, Surrey—the stockbrokers’ clerks belt. Packed up, said a tearful good-bye to friends, and drove to the ferry to Harwich.

  What can I say about that English year? Joan and I enjoyed it, that was clear. Seeing all our English friends, enjoying speaking English full time. It was hardest on the kids. Moira was young enough to go to a little Dame’s school right across the road, a sort of kindergarten where she made out pretty well. But not Todd. He had left all of his Danish friends behind, particularly Peter. They had cried when they parted. He made no friends in Sutton; he was in the wrong culture there and kids can be very cruel.

  Then the twelve months were up and it was time to leave. This time it had to be to the United States. We would stay in Joan’s parents’ house; the welcome mat was always out there. The next step would be decided after we settled into Long Beach, New York.

  But we had to cross the wide Atlantic first. How we did that requires more than a little explanation. It starts with an old friend and collaborator, Leon E. Stover. Leon was a cultural anthropologist and sinologist—and a good friend of many years’ standing. We later collaborated on a novel together, titled Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died. Leon was a professor who taught at IIT in Chicago. One of his students was Georges Pappadakis. We discovered that Georges was a student there at his father’s command. He had also worked as a fisherman on a
n Italian boat learning fishing—and Italian—the hard way. I’m not sure what other travails he undertook at his father’s orders—but the deal was surely worth the price. For Georges’s father was a shipping magnate and, upon completion of his seven labors, Georges would be master of his own ship. Not a little yacht for putt-putting around in.

  He got himself a full-sized freighter, of which he was the new owner and master, and was based in London. I used to visit Georges when I was in London and we became quite close friends, so much so that when I mentioned our planned move to the United States—including shipping the loyal VW, he said, “If you are moving to the States you must go on my ship.”

  Just like that. I opened my mouth—then closed it: I could think of nothing to say. It is not every day that one hears this kind of offer. It was then that he insisted that I see his ship. He was visiting her that same afternoon and he took me along. It was an easy drive to Harwich and a warm Greek reception was waiting for us when we boarded the ship; paternalism personified. All of the sailors were from the same Greek village and Georges was treated like the elder mayor. The very first thing he did was hold an informal court where they brought him their problems. With the crew’s troubles sorted out we finally got to meet the officers.

  They were quite a mixed lot. The captain had been an officer in the Greek navy, while the electrician, Sparks, was Dutch, a young man already on the fat side, with good reason. His cabin was stacked wall-to-wall with cases of Dutch beer. He had the endearing habit of checking to see if a circuit was live by bridging the poles with his index finger and middle finger. If the circuit was hot there would be a crackling and the smell of burning flesh, he would chortle and hold out his scarred fingertips for inspection. The kids were very impressed. I noted he had thick rubber soles on his shoes.

  The radio operator was a gloomy Yugoslavian named Vladimir. This was at the time of the Vietnam War and he was fascinated by the war in every detail. Yugoslavia was communist—of a sort—so I asked no questions. Until one day when we were talking about the war and Vladimir was at his gloomiest. Finally he sighed heavily and said, “I would like to fight in this war.”

  “On which side?” I said.

  “Don’t care about side. Just want to fight.”

  I opened my mouth—but there was really nothing I could say.

  In later discussions I found out some of the reasons for the international flavor of the officers. It seemed that the Dutch had excellent electrician technical schools and graduated—still young—well-trained professionals (for “young” also read “lower salaries”). The same went for Yugoslavia, which turned out well-educated, English-speaking professional radio operators, who sent home, by Western standards, a smallish salary—that was a small fortune in that now post-Soviet country.

  The elderly German chief engineer was really chief engineer of all the Pappadakis ships. He had had some minor surgery and was now recovering with a seagoing—working—holiday. And so it went. Expenses were pared to the bone in one of the most competitive fields, benefited by Georges’s most unusual education. Tramp steamer is an unfair appellation to this corner of the maritime field where ships competed for cargo. Some of them went to the wall; Georges’s ship survived and profited.

  Georges, in his role of village elder, dealt with the many small problems, mostly family matters of the crew. Then he consulted with the captain and engineer about repairs—putting them off once again; “save money” was the motto. It seemed that the propeller had been bent when it touched bottom in the River Plate. Repairs were not that urgent and would be delayed. But the vibration was doing no good to the shaft bearing, which needed replacement in the future. The delay made financial sense although the bearing was slowly beating itself to death. Later I was to discover that the highly efficient, naval-academy-trained captain had left the navy after some disagreements concerning a personal relationship with one of his young sailors.

  With all the minor problems solved and out of the way, Georges was faced with the major question of what next. “Unloading is complete and I want to get to the States,” Georges said. “There are a number of cargoes in the USA that we could pick up once we are there—but I hate the losses from an Atlantic crossing in ballast to get there.”

  He paused, rubbed his jaw in thought—then laughed and hit the table with his fist. “Your car—that’s the answer. Of course you can bring it—along with a load of stateside-bound MG sports cars. The ship will still be in ballast with this light cargo—but the costs for the trip will be covered.” He reached for the phone. “I’ll get onto the shipping agent right now.”

  The paperwork for our voyage was done that very day. I was signed on as crew—a supernumerary—the family boarded as that—family. After that it was a flurry of packing, saying good-byes, then a swift drive to Harwich one final time. Just as the first of the jazzy sports cars was being winched aloft and dropped into the hold.

  Then the crew—it was a familiar meeting, an encounter with a new family. Like all the Mediterranean peoples, the Greeks were mad for children and here were two blond ones! They and Joan, and our bags, vanished from sight. I watched the VW go spinning into the air then drop into the hold. The sun shone and the ship buzzed with activity. This was going to be all right! There was nothing but good vibes emanating from this little maritime adventure.

  I joined Georges in the wardroom where I enjoyed an excellent sherry and chatted with the officers, a mixed and cheerful lot. We all said our good-byes and Georges was off. The first officer showed me our quarters. “You’ll be here just behind the bridge. That is the captain’s quarters. Right next to it is the owner’s cabin. Mr. Georges insisted that you have it.” It was more of a suite than a cabin, luxuriously fitted out. “It is all officers’ country back here,” he said. “The second mate is joining the ship when we get to the U.S. so the children can use his cabin.” They certainly could. It had been a long and trying day and we retired soon after dinner.

  * * *

  Next morning I woke early and stepped out onto the bridge. Not early enough—because the kids were up well before me. Todd was there, engrossed in the ship’s technology. A sailor was updating one of the charts and he was a silent but attentive observer.

  “Is my son bothering you?” I asked the officer on watch.

  “No! He is always welcome. He’s learning to be a watch sailor.” In Greek culture no child could ever be in the way. But where was Moira? I need not have worried. In fact I had to get out of the way. Back in the passageway one of the sailors hurried by with her on his shoulders, wailing loudly, imitating an ambulance. He went right to the mess hall where her skilled attention was badly needed. I only then noticed that she was wearing her nurse’s outfit, Red Cross cap, and carrying a plastic hold-all of toy medical equipment. One of the plump cooks was stretched out on a table, groaning loudly. Stethoscope and thermometer were employed, candy medicine administered, the cure quick if not miraculous. I went in search of coffee to take to Joan. Moira kept her human ambulance running for hours and had no shortage of victims to cure.

  The weather was perfect, the trip paradisiacal. The food in the officer’s mess was of course Greek—and all the better for that. We sunbathed during the day, played cards in the evenings. The captain was partial to a game of canasta, probably because he cheated so outrageously. No one else seemed to have noticed: the chief engineer marveled at his good luck. The stakes were low, my losses minuscule—I looked on it as some small payment against our passage.

  We never had to worry where the kids were, with countless eyes always on the watch. Moira was showered with gifts that the seamen undoubtedly were bringing back to their own children. Joan insisted that they must stop spoiling her so and returned most of the expensive stuff. Todd was in mechanical heaven. He was happiest on the bridge—and I soon found out why. That was the day I found him standing on a beer crate in order to see the compass, which he had to do since he was steering the ship!

  This was a little too much
: he was only twelve years old. This could not be right, and I felt I had to protest. But to whom—the first mate was standing right behind him, a seaman next to him. The officer saw my gaping jaw and smiled. “He is a very conscientious little boy—and a quick learner. We are here to watch him but there is little we have to do. As soon as he learned to compensate for the turning factor of the ship I knew he would be all right. This is a long ship and any course corrections take a while to be felt. Novice helmsmen always tend to overswing, so the ship follows a snakelike course. Not with your son. He caught on right away.” He smiled down at his new sailor, then spoke quietly. “Frankly I have some teenage seamen who don’t do as good a job. They never seem to catch on.”

  The sun was shining, the sea empty in all directions. I stood back out of the way and watched awhile. The officer was now busy with a chart, the sailor was polishing brass. The ocean was empty. The officer and the crew were well aware of the ship’s steering wheel. If they were happy with their new unpaid employee I couldn’t complain. The beer crate raised Todd to steering height—and no farther. On future sunny days when I stood at the ship’s bow and looked up at the bridge—and saw no helmsman—I knew that my son was at the wheel. I could say nothing—but I still found it disconcerting.

  It was a slow crossing if you measured it in days, but all too fast for us. Joan and I talked about the future and it was none too clear. One thing we emphatically agreed upon was that we would not be staying in New York. Nor could we think of any reason to stay in suburbia or anywhere on the East Coast. We had heard nothing but good about California and we thought: why not? The climate was right; the film industry there was industriously booming away—and we had friends who worked in it. It had the added and attractive fact that it was hooked on to Mexico. Yes—California it would have to be.

  Then we were just one day away from New York Harbor. Being a freighter we stayed away from the Manhattan passenger wharves and instead plunged into the massive commercial dock area on the other side of the Hudson River. A tug eased us up against a dock in the Port of Newark. Cables were thrown and secured and we were now home. Officially and physically. We put down the anchor in the outer bay, in a spot designated by the port authorities. In the morning a pilot and other harbor authorities would start boarding. As a native-speaking American I was asked by the captain to aid with officialdom and I was more than happy to oblige.