A Matter of Time

by Alex Capus

  Ruter gave the wooden planks of the main deck a last, keen glance, then looked up at the smoking funnel with its glinting brass steam whistle. Old Meyer would soon be driving up in his car accompanied by three gentlemen from Berlin, the Colonial Office having requested an opportunity to inspect the ship under steam before she was dismantled into her component parts. To the sirens strident accompaniment, workers were streaming out of the soot-stained brick buildings and converging on the slipway - boilermakers, coppersmiths, mechanics and all. Even the bookkeepers and secretaries came hurrying out of the administration building, likewise the drivers and stableboys from the stables. Many of them huddled behind stacks of timber in groups of four or five, seeking shelter from the glacial North Sea breeze; others made themselves comfortable on makeshift benches or wooden crates. They turned up their collars and lit cigarettes, buried their hands in their trouser pockets and watched seagulls cavorting in the wind beneath the low, grey overcast.

  Ruter walked down the gangway to the cobbled quayside. He checked that all the blocks were firmly wedged and all the hawsers taut. At the last moment he spotted a broom leaning against the Gotzens hull and hid it behind a woodpile. Meyers black Benz limousine entered the yard at half past ten precisely. Describing a wide arc, it forged a path through the assembled work force and pulled up beside the gangway. Ruter briefly considered hurrying forward and opening the passenger door, behind which he had glimpsed his employer, but he decided to leave the chauffeur to open the door and await the top-hatted, tail-coated, cane-carrying civil servants from Berlin, who were climbing out of the back, at a respectful but self-assured distance. Watching them submit the Gotzen to a preliminary inspection, he inferred from their aimless, superficial glances that they didn’t know a thing about shipbuilding. He squared his shoulders, expecting to be introduced to them right away, but they

  strode past him as if he were a sawhorse or a parlour palm, and the boss merely nodded and patted him casually on the shoulder in passing. Riiter relaxed, stepped aside, and watched them ascend the gangway. They were scarcely aboard when the Gotzen made herself heard. First, the foghorn sounded to prove that it worked. Then the anchor chain rattled and the steam engines increased their revolutions, hissing and snarling in a way that brought a worried frown to Riiter s face. The lights went on and off, the two steam winches turned, and the rudder astern responded to the commands of the steam-powered steering gear. The gentlemen from Berlin appeared in the bow, glancing keenly to left and right, then repaired to the bridge. They operated a lever here, threw a switch there, and ran their fingers over the gleaming brass instruments. Finally, they bent over the stern to look at the slowly rotating ship’s propellers, which glittered like gold.

  Anton Riiter marvelled at the calm and courteous way in which Joseph Lambert Meyer, the shipyards owner, showed his guests around and the aristocratic restraint with which he explained the technicalities to them. He displayed the same gently authoritative manner as Riiter himself did when supervising his workers, all of whom were disarmed by it. Riiter had known old Meyer longer than anyone else in the world. The first third of his life he had spent as a child, the remainder as a worker at the Meyer shipyard. Raised as an orphan by his uncle, a peat-cutter who lived out on the moors, he had earned money in Meyer s carpentry shop, smithy and foundry as a ten-year-old during the school holidays. In the twenty years that had gone by since then, Riiter had acquired a thorough grounding in every branch of the shipbuilders trade. He had had only six years of schooling and there was never any question of his studying marine engineering, but if push came to shove and he had been given enough time, he would have been quite capable of building a ship like the Gotzen single-handed. He could read plans and draw them, estimate the time any piece of work would take, calculate costs, lay down effective working procedures and weigh up risks - and he had a better knowledge of the Meyer shipyard than old Meyer himself. He knew which slide valve to operate when the foundry furnace started to roar, and how much

  weight a rotary crane could lift before it began to creak, and which office girl the company secretary was romancing, and which stableboy was filching half a sack of oats every Saturday. The tools in the machine shop were so familiar to him, they might have been made to fit his hands - or perhaps it was the other way round. At all events, all the tools were his tools, just as the machine shop was his machine shop and the apprentices were his apprentices, and the whole of the Meyer shipyard was his shipyard and old Meyer his old Meyer. The loyalty he cherished for his employer was not so much affection as a cannibalistic desire to assimilate him. He would have liked to possess old Meyers distinguished-looking grey moustache, his gentle voice, high forehead and melancholy gaze. He would have liked to belong, as Meyer did, to a ship-owners’ dynasty that had been building ships at Papenburg for centuries, and he would also have liked to have attended the Royal Shipbuilding College at Grabow and be the owner of a mansion within the shipyard precincts. But, since he would never be a part of that world, he was determined not to make a monkey of himself. He had no wish to wear a stiff white stand-up collar or own a gramophone and some Wagner records, nor did he ever want his daughters, who were two, three and five years old, to play Chopin and learn French. He wanted his blue overalls to be clean in the morning and dirty in the evening, and he was captain of the Workers’ Gymnastics Club, and his daughters looked after the rabbits in the hutch behind his house, and his wife powdered her nose on high days and holidays only, or when her stuck-up cousin from Hamburg came visiting. A few years ago, when he was in his early twenties, he had sometimes dreamed of marrying one of Meyer’s daughters and becoming a member of the family. He had spent a whole summer craning his neck for a sight of her white lace parasol, pink taffeta gowns and dainty little lace-up boots, and when Meyer’s youngest daughter returned to her English boarding school in the autumn he had written her two or three letters. He was glad now that he had never posted them. Instead, he had got married the following spring to the daughter of a ship’s captain, Susanne Meinders, to whom he had been linked since childhood by bonds of deep and steadfast friendship. True, Susanne’s ankles were not as slender, nor did

  she suffer from sudden fainting fits or bemoan her privileged existence in an interesting way, but she had spent her early years at sea with her parents, could navigate by the stars, and knew what the waterfronts of Portsmouth, St Petersburg and Valparaiso looked like.

  A group photograph taken on the day of the naming ceremony shows Riiter posing in front of a hoarding. A sturdy craftsman with a moustache a la Kaiser Wilhelm, he stands waiting with arms folded and eyes wide open for the photographer to emerge from under his black cloth and give the all clear. Looking at the youthfully plump face beneath the already thinning hair, one seems to discern a touch of fatalistic resignation in the two long furrows running across his brow. On the eve of his departure for Africa, it is quite possible that he is aware of the dangers of a long sea voyage, of the implacability of the equatorial climate and the brutality of colonial life. He may even have heard of the positively sadistic ingenuity displayed by God when creating tropical diseases. Nevertheless, he will make the journey because he has to. The Gotzen is his ship and Joseph L. Meyer is counting on him. Riiter is the youngest of all Meyer’s master shipwrights, the toughest and most dependable, the smartest and most experienced. Who better qualified than he to take the Gotzen to Africa?

  Riiter had tried to discuss the subject with his wife one evening after the children had gone to bed. Susanne was a big, strong, intelligent woman, and he valued her opinion. She lowered the newspaper she was reading and looked at him attentively. Then, removing the stubby tobacco pipe from her lips - she treated herself to one pipe a night - she simply said ‘Go ahead!’ and reimmersed herself in the newspaper. Anton Riiter got the message. She meant, first, that he shouldn’t shy away from the trip to Africa because he would find life dull if he did; secondly, he neednt worry about her because she would have a roof over her head, enough coal in
the shed and enough money in the savings bank; thirdly, he scarcely saw the children during the week anyway, so they wouldn’t miss him overmuch; fourthly, they would be able to pay off their mortgage and buy two bicycles with the money he earned during his year away; and, fifthly, it might even run to a fortnight’s seaside holiday. He had gathered all this and was grateful to her.

  Having completed their tour of inspection within half an hour, the four gentlemen came ashore again. Speeches followed. Joseph Meyer was the first to mount the makeshift platform, which was festooned with black-white-and-red bunting. Speaking far too quietly, he thanked the dignitaries from Berlin for their expressions of confidence, thanked the workforce for its efforts, wished the Gotzen godspeed on her unusual voyage to the Dark Continent, and then gave way to the senior inspector from the Colonial Office. The latter conveyed the Kaisers greetings and called for three cheers for His Imperial Majesty. While the shipyard workers were dutifully complying with this summons, Joseph Meyer’s wife gathered up her skirts and mounted the platform. Taking hold of the bottle of champagne, which was suspended by a cord from one of the ship’s derricks, she flung it at the bow, where - having been scored in advance with a glass cutter - it duly smashed in an auspicious manner.

  The photographer stationed on the cobbled quayside squeezed his bulb just as the bubbly exploded like a firework against the ship’s black hull. While the neck of the bottle was dangling from its cord and the guests of honour descending from the platform, he looked around for his next subject. His eye having lighted on Anton Riiter standing beside the gangway, he got him and the two craftsmen who were to accompany him to Africa to pose in front of a wooden hoarding, hence the aforesaid group photo.

  Visible on Riiter’s left is Hermann Wendt, at twenty-three the youngest of the group. He faces the camera with the serene self-assurance of a mechanic for whom no problem is insoluble. He is accustomed to things going smoothly. Any problem that arises is food for thought, not grounds for agitation. You locate the fault, eliminate it, and check to see that all is going smoothly again. And if something breaks beyond repair, you don’t make a fuss but discard it. Hermann Wendt adopts this procedure in every sphere of human existence, and not only in matters mechanical. He gets on well with his father, beneath whose roof he still lives, knowing what they can talk about and what is better left unsaid. He has his finances under control; he earns a hundred marks a month and spends a little less. He also gets on well with girls; no means no and yes

  means yes, and when its over it’s over. He has read Marx and Engels at the Workers’ Cultural Association and is an admirer of their clockworklike theory of history, with its tick-tock of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. He won’t join the union, though. Where his wages are concerned, he prefers to discuss them in person with old Meyer, who has always treated him very decently up to now. Even if the proletarian revolution is historically inevitable, Hermann Wendt doesn’t see why he should sacrifice his precious spare time in order to bring it about. The trip to Africa doesn’t scare him. He’ll go out there, spend a year working for three times the normal rate of pay, spend almost nothing and then come home. If it’s hot in Africa he’ll sweat, if there aren’t any decent beds he’ll knock one up himself, and if the food tastes odd he’ll eat it regardless. A person can fall sick or get bitten by a snake, of course. That’s a nuisance, but there’s not much you can do about it, so there’s no point in worrying. If he makes it back to Germany he’ll build a house with the money, get married and have children. He has already chosen the plot of land. It’s out on the Wildes Moor, a long way from town near the Splittigkanal. There’s still no electricity, but it’s cheap. The town is expanding fast and the electricity will come in due course. He doesn’t yet know which girl he’ll marry.

  On the right of the picture stands riveter Rudolf Tellmann, at fortyfour almost twice the age of young Wendt. A married man with four adolescent children, hes balding, hollow-cheeked, and staring into space with a dubious expression. Tellmann likes to go shooting on the moor on Sundays, all alone with his shotgun. It can’t be said that he’s bagged much game over the years. A moorhen or a rabbit every few months, perhaps, for form’s sake. Most of the time he just sits on a tree trunk in some secluded spot with the shotgun, which may not even be loaded, across his lap, smoking cigarettes, thoughtfully scratching his neck and watching the seasons go by. He didn’t push himself forward when Meyer was looking for a riveter for the expedition. Seven or eight of his workmates were hell-bent on going because of the money. They jostled like schoolkids in a fairground and talked big, swaggered home with swollen heads and announced to their assembled families that great days lay ahead. But then the blood streamed back into their brains and they had

  second thoughts, and the next morning they slunk into the boiler shop, busied themselves with their forges and electric hoists and avoided all further mention of Africa. Later, when Meyer summoned Tellmann to his office and implored him to accept the job, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse point-blank. So he talked it all over again with his wife that night. The balance of the mortgage on their house, their eldest daughter’s dowry, the youngest child’s school books, the eldest boy’s apprenticeship in Bremen - all those problems would be solved at a stroke. They could build on a room at the back, out into the garden, for his mother-in-law. She had aged and become a bit odd lately. It was getting too dangerous, her living in that decrepit old half-timbered house on the moor. She’d recently gone shopping and lost her way home - they hadn’t found her until long after nightfall, sobbing like a child with her skirt all torn and her stockings in ribbons. Either they built a room on, or she’d have to go into an old folks’ home. And what was a year? It would soon be over. The older you got the faster time went. Besides, the shooting in Africa was said to be pretty good.

  At the conclusion of the ceremony the priest blessed the ship and all the Papenburgers present knelt and folded their hands in prayer. Wendt, Riiter and Tellmann frowned, exchanged cynical glances and shuffled their feet irresolutely. Like many Catholics, all three were more or less openly given to atheism in the confident belief that their merciful and forgiving God - if he really turned out to exist - would pardon their repudiation of him on Judgement Day; and if, contrary to expectation, he should deny them his forgiveness, grace-filled Mary would put things right.

  If Riiter, Tellmann and Wendt knelt notwithstanding, they did so as a courtesy to the priest and out of consideration for the religious sentiments of their neighbours, for who could tell whether they might not be secret believers despite their heretical remarks? All three realized that by kneeling down they were, strictly speaking, bearing false witness. But

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  God - if he existed - would not take even that sin amiss for evermore. In any case, none of this mattered right now. What mattered was the naming of the ship, not whether Riiter, Wendt and Tellmann believed in God. What mattered was that God had faith in the vessel and was granting her his blessing. The trio went down on their knees, caps clutched in their hands, and waited respectfully for the priest to finish.

  Living at that moment on the extreme western edge of the African continent was a man who would soon receive orders to make his way to German East Africa and sink a German steamship with a three-pounder. In November 1913, however, he had no inkling of this and was piloting a small, soot-stained steam launch up the Gambia River. He always kept close to the bank, skirting the silent wall of interlaced mangroves as he headed into the heart of darkness. The current was sluggish, the water brackish brown, the surrounding terrain uninhabited and so flat that the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean invaded the course of the river for 200 kilometres. At high tide the mangroves were deeply submerged, at low tide countless rivulets threaded the putrid, stinking mud and hosts of crabs and other exotic creatures crawled across it. The men on board the launch kept their eyes peeled for sandbanks, hidden rocks and fallen trees. Jutting from the surface, sharp as knives and brown as the water itself, these could have sl
it the hull open from stem to stern. Further upstream the land became drier and the mangroves thinned. The first oil palms came into view, then baobabs, mahogany and calabash trees and the occasional dracaena, ebony or kapok tree. Sometimes a bushbuck would appear on the bank, sometimes chimpanzees could be seen doing gymnastics in the trees. There were no lions, giraffes or elephants since the area had been discovered by British big game hunters.

  The boat made slow progress because the steam pipes leaked, the propeller shaft was bent and the propeller itself cracked - not that this mattered. No one was in any hurry. The trip might have a purpose, but it had no destination. The little steamer had been toiling up and down the

  Gambia River for nearly three years, and the men on board knew that no other water would ever flow beneath her keel. During the midday heat they lay at anchor for hours. The four black sailors dozed in their hammocks, the two officers shot crocodiles or played chess beneath the awning, and the captain transferred data from his notebook to the chart. At four in the afternoon, being British, they had tea. Then, for another two hours, the boat crept up the meandering river towards the rapids beyond Fatoto or sometimes downstream to the delta, where the jungle’s everlasting smell of decay gave way to a cool Atlantic breeze. When darkness fell and myriads of insects of every size congregated above the surface, the boat would drop anchor in some quiet bend in the river. At night the hippos came to scratch their backs against the hull. Then the boat rocked, the oil lamps beneath the awning swung to and fro, the brandy slopped over the rims of the glasses, and the men swore, seized their rifles and fired at the broad, whalelike backs of the grunting, snorting creatures as they melted away into the darkness.