III

THE OEDIPUS TYRANNUS WAS still asleep, lying against the wharf; all the ships in the harbour were asleep. The stevedores had not yet come to work; the winches lay idle; the dew was not yet dry on the derricks. And it was then, as I prepared the coffee for the crew at five-thirty, that I made up my mind. It was as if I had made up my mind to commit a murder. Passing between the galley and the forecastle in the long cool grey of the morning, I thought about it calmly—

The captain stood on the bridge, cleaning his teeth in a draw bucket. The mate, his forehead pearling with sweat as the morning drew on, yawned beside me, pulled out his watch. But I turned away from all with a grim look, which meant: let them go down below and argue about the Trocadero. That night I was to go ashore myself, to have a night’s drift.

Now the tropical sun rose high above the Oedipus Tyrannus. Loading resumed, coaling began; she was taking in bulk oil and water. The derricks swung ceaselessly to and fro, like dinosaurs at play. The fiendish heat of the day seemed to make the rattle of the winches more monotonous, and the heavy stink of molasses and urine hanging about the ship made my thoughts darker and more fearful. To hell with Janet. She could take care of herself, and let whoever wanted shed tears of blood about it.

I gave Norman’s pigeon a drink of water: Andy still had a taunt for me, and Norman said again that the Janes weren’t any good. But I would have to find all that out for myself.

Surely Janet wouldn’t mind that; she would want me to be a man, a hell of a fellow like Andy. Besides, I felt with a renewal of intensity my failure to be a shipmate among shipmates. My breaking faith with Janet in this simple fashion meant, I argued to myself, my acceptance by the community in a matter of hours; then, surely, it was worth while. Moreover, the crew itself would at once be unified. Plainly, every one on the Oedipus Tyrannus, even the fairy quartermaster and those few who were either too old or too dumb to do anything save sit around and sew, had, at any rate, tried it!

Meantime, I had a lot of lousy jobs to do. I began by chipping a stanchion on the port side by the galley. From where I worked I could see Norman’s mickey, in its cage of unpainted white wood. It was so innocent there, it seemed to me. When Norman had dumped his last mess down the ash chute, hung up his dishcloths, and made up the galley fires, he would share his own supper with it, then turn in himself. He gave it as much freedom as he could during the daytime by letting it out on to the number four hatch forward of the galley. When it wandered about there Norman always had it tied by the leg on a long heaving line to a cleat. And as I chipped, long, uncoordinated thoughts of home blossomed out of this innocence. It would be summer at home now, and the turf crisp with the summer heat; again the lazy tennis players lay below me, on the bank; blue speedwells suddenly started up from under a hedge. That time Janet and I had crossed Marples field together. Milk-white stitchworts … No! To hell with that—to hell with it! Gritting my teeth I chipped the more furiously. Tonight all that would be stamped out. It was necessary to work hard, for the mate was watching, and the sweat, which made my eyes tingle, poured off me like water off a dog: all round people were sweating, and the stevedores working numbers five and six hatches had taken off their dirty rags, placed them under the tap on the well deck, and were piling cargo naked. Some women were among the coal-humpers, and I remembered with horror having seen one of them in the luncheon hour lying with a stevedore down a coal bunker. Hawkers had spread out their goods—lacquerware, postcards, rings, and toothpaste—on the tarpaulined bunker hatches and on the hatches that were not being worked; a barber on the poop cut hair and shaved for a few sen, or whatever the currency was; sow-sow women invaded the forecastle with their “changey for changey”; all day naked boys moaned for chow, and once a native appeared on the wharf and shouted in English for newspapers. Andy threw down an old copy of the Mukden Daily News; the native tore it into strips, set fire to them, swallowed them one by one, and produced the newspapers whole again, and folded, from his right ear. One of the officers threw money to him. Andy, white-aproned, dishcloth on his arm, hung over the rail watching. Jesus, I muttered, how I hate that bastard. And I remembered with remorse letting Norman get the pigeon from the topmast, and how Andy had taunted me for my fear.

But tonight things would all be changed, tonight I should be the hero, the monster—

The day rang with shouting and confusion; the sky was a blue wall which reverberated and echoed with din. Cockroaches and steam flies crawled in the messroom. Flies were crying “like bleeding babies,” the bosun said, as they died, heaving, on the yellow flypapers. Sweating rust and coal dust, I made my bunk, which was full of chippings shaken from my dungarees. Then I had to chip the bed of a winch … . “See those bloody great chunks of paint; pull them off with your fingers,” said the bosun. “Like that, see … ”

“Oh Christ, I can’t do any more,” I moaned. The sack I was lying on seemed to be searing my stomach; there was no room to work with my wrists, which were bruised every time they came into contact with the sprocket of the reverse gear. Paint and burning oil dropped off the winch on to my face, mingling with my sweat. I longed for the open sea, to be able to wash myself, to be able to wash my clothes—to be clean! Tomorrow would be Sunday, but how would I be feeling then? Ah, Sunday’s little idylls which the week’s toil had earned! That Sunday, bound for Hong Kong, we had come up on deck. We paused; God brought a wind, a wind! And the sun and wind danced through our clothes, strung on the line. All around us was the morning’s blue crystal; the sun sparkled with a thousand flashes on the waves’ gentle fall. The sun shone on deck as I washed and scrubbed my coal-black dungarees, stiff from dust and ashes, red lead and rust and grease; I stole a heaving line from the poop, and my washing dangled along the line, so that the forecastle was quite dark. But the sun spun round in its might towards the evening land of clouds, the atmosphere turned to evening with the burning of pale red stars—that night the Oedipus Tyrannus had reached another port, Hong Kong. She glided in silently at four bells in the evening. Lanterns were swinging at the water’s edge, an army of lights marched with torches up the slope to the barracks, a few natives came aboard wearing enormous cymbal-shaped hats. Behind the ship the Peninsula Hotel at Kowloon loomed darkly, but on the ship was dead silence, save for the hiss of water that was part of the silence, falling from her side into the darkness. Oh God, oh God, if sea life were only always like that! If it were only the open sea, and the wind racing through the blood, the sea, and the stars forever!

But although that was not the way of things, the thought of it gave me courage, and soon I had finished the winch, only to be called forward to shift hundred-weight barrels of oil and paint in the lamplocker with the lamptrimmer. My right arm ached terribly with sea boils, and I had bound it with a sweat rag belonging to a fireman. Gritty coal dust was everywhere, and flies heaved and sizzled and bred on the bulkheads. Coal dust got into my eyes and blackened my nostrils, while the sweat rag round my arm was covered with a black film. The heavy-smelling lamplocker lay right forward by the chainlocker in what was really the forecastle, and I had wondered at first why it was not used as the men’s quarters. Later I had discovered that five Chinese deportees were berthed there, and they had remained there as far as Shanghai. Some of the drums of oil were so inaccessible that we had to shift them with a block and tackle, others we carried, piling them neatly in corners. With only three of the former shifted I caught four fingers in the snatch block. The drum of oil fell on a bag of lime, which it opened, then on to my feet. The lamptrimmer took three minutes to free me. “Now get to hell out of this,” said the lamptrimmer. In the fore-cabin three sea apprentices, painting the name of the ship on lifebelts laughed. “What you want is a good strong woman!” I staggered aft, covered with lime, my temples beating, my fingers bent back, dazed, and trembling in every limb. In the forecastle there was a smell of damp straw from the winch mats left overnight by the stevedores and thrown down the forecastle skylight. On the table there were two letters for me, one from my mother, and one from Janet. My bowels melted, all my strength flowed out of me like water, as I saw her boyish handwriting. And then I made a queer grimace. How bloody funny! You can’t fool me, you little bitch. What was the use now? My mind was made up. And suddenly I hated her for the letter!

So now she would try and console me, would she, just at the right moment; try and warn me what was coming to me if I wasn’t faithful to her; but this time she’d be disappointed. I’d show her, by God, that nothing was so homeless as that letter! And I forgot all my pain as I stood there stupidly reading and re-reading the address. So the letter had been forwarded from Singapore? Why, she hadn’t even troubled to consult the posting date I had given her. She might at least have taken the trouble to look the ship up in the Journal of Commerce—

Flinging myself down on the bunk, I groaned and cursed. Then I looked at my hand. The blood had run out of the fingers of my right hand, and they were all twisted together anyhow, like strands of a heaving line in an unfinished eye splice. I separated them one from one with the left hand. Soon the blood was coming back; there was no serious damage. Pull your bloody self together. There was a heavy step outside … . The bosun entered the forecastle. “Well!” … he drew a long breath. “Well, you’re the strangest bird I ever met and I’ve seen some. What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

“A drum of oil dropped on my foot,” I said.

“Why, can’t you walk?”

“Certainly I can walk.”

“All right. Come on, then. Turn to.”

The bosun said no more but went immediately out of the forecastle, so there was nothing for it but for me to follow him. Outside, the iron well deck was so hot I felt it burning through the soles of my shoes.

“You could fry an egg on this deck,” said the bosun. “Now then, son,”—he pointed to the stevedores’ rags that had been left behind under the tap at the well—“shovel these overside—on the wharf. If they fall in the ditch so much the better. They’re not likely to go in swimming after them.”

“Are there sharks here, then?”

“Yes, you can bet your boots on that … . Well, get that squared off,” the bosun said magnanimously, “then when you’ve finished them dishes you can put on some clean gear and go ashore.” The bosun winked evilly. “Well, there’s no need to do that,” he added. “I forgot for the moment you were one of those who preferred your right hand—”

As I shovelled, flies rose in a cloud of steam from the clothes and something that looked like a flying walnut glanced in my face. The garments, sweaty and obscene, fluttered in a cloud of flies down to the wharf, some falling in the gap of water between. Those that fell on the wharf were pounced on by naked boys who fought for them. When they had decided who was to have them, they went on shouting for chow, so Andy threw them a dirty crust that had fallen in oil and coal dust and water, and they fought for that too.

I squared up and went to the washhouse for my bucket. There was no room in there. A trickle of blue water ran down the dirty tiles and over the step from where someone was scrubbing his dungarees. I looked into the stewards’ room, bucket on my arm. Taff and Ginger were sound asleep. From the alley I could see out on the well deck and up the galley companion. The lamptrimmer leaned over the galley rail, pausing with the anchor light in his hand. Andy was hanging a singlet on a line. Outside, I found the crowd watching a ship come into harbour.

“P. & O. boat over there.”

“Garn, that’s not a P. & O. boat. That’s a bloody B. I. boat, for Jesus sake.”

“That’s a bloody P. & O. boat.”

“And I say it’s a bloody B. I. boat.”

“Then you’re bloody wrong, you bloody twat. Can’t you see her house flag?”

“That’s no ruddy house flag. That the Chinese No. 1’s ruddy dungarees hanging out to dry.”

“Aw, shag off with you all,” said the lamptrimmer, coming down with the anchor light. “I’ve just been putting in some overtime. What’s all this about? … Aw, it’s a P. & O. boat.”

“It’s a British India boat, I’m telling you. For Christ sake shut up, let a fellow have a nap, can’t you—”

“Ay, you’re right, Lamps. It is a P. & O. boat.”

When I had washed I saw that there were crenellations of light in the sky, against which the latticed cranes dipped and beckoned. Come. Come. Come. Night glided down on the Oedipus Tyrannus, and the dishes strapped up at last, I reentered the forecastle to dress. There I took my blue suit out of my sea box. While dressing I remembered how the first night aboard the ship I had creased these self-same blue trousers, holding them under my chin, folding them over and over and then, with such remorse, dropping them into my sea box, a part of my life gone. The end of a chapter. Clean, blue dungarees, drained of most of their original colour, and brown shoes, were the general rule when the Oedipus Tyrannus push went ashore. But now it was the right time to wear my blue suit again. I put my two letters in my inside pocket—I would read them ashore, that was all they were worth! Then I struggled my arms into the sleeves, and went out on deck, where wire runners and derrick blocks and wedges lay in all directions, and all was noisy confusion. For a minute I peered down into the deep rectangular well of number six hatch, where a cluster of lamps glared on six stevedores, a new shift, their backs as glossy as moles, and watched them rolling boxes into place. One of the sea apprentices who had laughed at me in the fore-cabin was on watch down there, huddled half asleep on a bundle of cured goatskins. I made a rude gesture at him. Good-bye to the ship for a time. Beside me a great derrick slowly reared its long neck into the dark sky.

I arrived amidships among the screeching coolies with their bandy legs, who tipped coal from their baskets into the bunkers. They ran in a never-ending procession up the swaying planks. I splashed through coal dust and oil and water. The dust was whirling everywhere from the clattering buckets of coal thrown into the bunkers, sticking to the white paint that was damp with the tropical dew. The loneliness struck up from the wharf, never before so painfully new, and footsteps, shadows, arc lamps, the hum from the dark town. There man was met by man with a call, a glance, a smile—

Never before had my heart loved in that solitude!

It was as if the air quivered with an electric tension, with hesitating, anxious desire, with derision and petrified delight. My yearnings sailed over sea and evening and dawn; and for the first time I felt I knew the meaning of the city, where all nights could intoxicate and torment, and where all hearts spin towards the light and burn themselves in its fire, whose nerves are played to death and sing like violins in defiance and painful exultation, because we still exist—

Standing at the gangway head a moment, I looked along the wharf, and then I went down. The quartermaster, who had just arrived on the gangway, shouted amiably at me, “Don’t come back so bad we have to haul you up in the coal mast.”

I shouted over my shoulder to the quartermaster swaying down the last few steps of the crazy gangway, “Well, if you don’t drop the gangway down enough for the tide I’ll be in the dock anyhow.”

I sprang to the wharf, the unyielding solidity of which felt strange to my feet. Close by the coal-humpers wailed as they ran up the planks to the bunkers. Near them, standing by a coal heap, was the first mate. He was rolling a cigarette, and looking at the rusty, fouled side of the ship. “Dirty old cow, isn’t she,” he remarked cheerily to me as I passed.

“Well, you can’t expect anything else, with this coaling, sir.” I paused, embarrassed.

“We’ll have her all cleaned up before we dock in Liverpool. We’ve got a winter in New York before that. But we can’t get any coolies to paint her here, though. No sir,” said the mate. “We ain’t got time. Well, I see you’re all titivated up to go ashore. Going to give the girls a treat, eh?”

I compromised. “I want a walk more than anything else.”

“Don’t you get enough exercise on this ship then, for Christ sake? Chipping that samson post, eh? I wish your mother could have seen you yesterday.”

I thought, but said nothing, remembering the letter.

“Well, go along ashore and have a good time,” chattered the mate, and added expansively, “The Trocadero’s a good place. And the Miki or the Baikine; you’ll find plenty of bobbed head tigers in this dump.”

“Well, I hope so. Good night, sir.”

“Good luck!”

I moved off quickly. Let the mate do his chattering to the skipper!

Seamen’s Temperance Restaurant … The harbour was lit up like a town. The dock was a coffin of molten iron, with long white candles burning. A hooting siren called from a ship coming in, Hoo! ah hoo! and in answer the tenuous stutter of winches in different stages of acceleration, like a number of sewing machines, was borne over the water from the roadstead. Row on row of angular sheds frowned at me as I walked along, and in a gap between them I saw the wide scarlet tracery cast in bars of riding lights on the water. No. 1 quay. No. 2 quay. No. 3 quay. No. 4 quay. I passed a priest, who might have been a Russian Jew, in long black robes, his beard reaching well down his chest. He had a seraphic smile on his face as he paced the quay, and I thought he looked like Our Saviour. Above him distorted giant skeletons of cranes waved their steel and bronze arms. There was the sound of hammers banging in a rhythmic thunder, harshly reverberant steel. Native night shift. The song of iron accompanied my footsteps infuriatingly until I realised I had gone the wrong side of the restaurant and was keeping too much to the line of the docks for the town. It became gloomy and smelly, round behind a godown, and I was just making up my mind to retrace my steps when a voice hailed me, “Abend.”

“Hullo!”

The man was sitting on a bollard smoking a pipe, and rose to meet me. Near him, a row of natives squatted on their haunches, fishing in the dock.

“What can I do for you?” I asked politely.

“You are an Englishman?”

“Yes.”

“I am a German. I was wondering if you could tell me where I could get a bumboat back to my ship. I am more or less stranded here. The last boat, surely, it appears, has gone anyway, otherwise.”

“I see,” I said. “You’re moored out in the harbour, and you can’t get a boat. Too bad. Ich bin auf ein Englisch Schiff Oedipus Tyrannus. Luckily we’re alongside. No, I don’t think you will get a bumboat now,” I added.

“Nein?” The German shook his head.

“So spät—”

The German looked tough in the light of the fishermen’s dim kerosene lamp, and rather dirty. Whatever his rating, he wore mufti—a blue suit similar to my own.

“Ich bin ein Matrose,” I said. “Und Sie sind ein—Heizer, nicht wahr.”

The German roared with laughter. “I shall tell the bloody skipper your story,” he choked. “Ein Heizer, a stoker, you say? Nein, nein, I am der—zum Beispiel—I am the you say Sparks, nicht? Ein Heizer! Gut! Gut! Fabelhaft! … I am on the Wölfsburg.”

“Well, I am sorry! Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr. Es tut mir leid.”

“Es tut mir leid.”

We laughed happily, and for a moment all the harbour noises stopped at once, so that we heard the sough and lap of the green water against the quay steps. Eight bells struck from somewhere out in the harbour, and then another, but suddenly the titanic thunder of the native night shift started again. There was a smell of fish and seaweed and strong tobacco.

“That is the Wölfsburg.” The German pointed.

“So.” I looked out at a silhouette, with a dancing reflection of mast lights in the water.

“Well, what do you say you let the Wölfsburg look after herself for the time being and come into the town?”

“Wie?”

“Kommen Sie mit, zu trinken,” I said.

“Nur habe ich zu viel, verstehen Sie! On the ship!”

“Oh,” I said laughing. “But Pilsner, Münchener; we will have the hell of a time. Let us enjoy ourselves.”

“All right,” said the German. “Come on then. It’s no good staying here … . This way, then, past all the tramps. Liners, ja, Atlantic service. Aber, nach dem Krieg, we have no mercantile marine service. The Wölfsburg is a tramp ship, though.”

“Schrecklich, es ist schrecklich.” I nodded.

We started to walk together. A miasmic stench rose from the docks. A stern rose up before us: Matsuye Maru—Osaka. It was an old passenger steamer with raking masts and one black smokestack with an O on it in white. The boatswain and his men, under dim ceiling lights, were washing down her decks, and the hose was splashing water on the quay. That was the sort of thing Japanese did at night. A fireman with a sweat rag round his neck, off watch, grinned over the bulwarks at us. Forward, under a lamp as yellow as his face, another of the crew washed singlets in a bucket.

A second receding stern loomed up before us. Jefferson—Seattle. An obscene monster, with ashes pouring out of her side.

Seattle—where was Seattle? But the Stars and Stripes floated and furled listlessly over her stern.

“Amerikanisch,” said the German.

White-capped sailors, smoking, craned over her rail. Three men aft were rigging an awning. The German and I were spelling out together Maharajah—Liverpool, and I explained gaily, even proudly, that she was a sister ship to the Oedipus Tyrannus, and that those two standing by the roundhouse talking must be the cook and the galley boy. There was a light in the galley, and I said then, “Somebody must be making coffee.” The last ship on that wharf was the Martensen, from Oslo. But the Martensen was as silent as a graveyard on a dead planet.

“I was born in Norway,” I said, “and our cook and galley boy are both Norwegian. I was born in Oslo when it was Christiania, so I can always say if anyone asks me, that I am a Christiania boy—”

“So.”

“Is this a little like Hamburg?” I asked.

“Ja. Oder London. Oder Liverpool.”

“Or Saigon. Or Trebizond. Or Samarkand.” I said.

We came to another wharf, passing slowly other great ships: Petropalovsk, Erzherzog, Franz Ferdinand—

We reached the tram lines, and soon three trams, crowded to overflowing, passed, wailing as they swayed down the lines in rapid succession … .

As we walked on in silence I thought of New Brighton trams —other trams in other places: strolling with Janet over beyond Sandvika. The cowbells had tinkled faintly up the forest road. The woman was picking berries—red currants. Crickets chirped. Dandelions—wild sweet peas—cornflowers—oats. Tinkle tonkle tankle tunk. Spinkle sponkle spankle. The pig chased the dog round the lawn. There was a snake in the grass … . You see, that is Orion. And that … Cassiopeia … And that? We call it the Milky Way … And we call it Wintergarten. Well, where’s Saturn then? … A goat bell had shaken its measure of notes from the terror of the woods, and we ran hand in hand through the forest to look for Saturn—

“Es ist gut so,” I said to the German.

Rickshaws whirled by, a native clerk pedalled by on a shiny new bicycle, a sikh—would it be a sikh?—policeman looked disdainfully at us at a crossroads. We passed the south station of the town, an anatomical museum, and a Scandinavian sailors’ home.

A poster of the Free Press in English, said: Murder of brother-in-law’s concubine … Bar. Boston Bar. Café Baikine. Bar and Cabaret. Trocadero. Satsuma Wares. Grand Revival—Richard Barthelmess in “The Amateur Gentleman.” Miki Bar. Dancing. Norddeutscher Lloyd Steamships.

“There,” I said, “your great line, Norddeutscher Lloyd—”

We paused before the brilliantly lighted windows in which were two models of the company’s ships; there were also timetables and a garish poster.

“Ja,” said the German.

“Ja,” I smiled.

“That might be our ship or your ship.”

“Ours have only one funnel each; that has two.”

“Well, let’s shoot a few whiskies down the hatch, and you’ll see three.”

“I see you want to make me drunk,” he laughed.

“No, it’s not that. It’s simply that I’m damned lonely.”

“Lonely,” the German sighed. “I also.”

“Ich auch.”

Cabaret Pompeia …

We entered a little bar and sat down. We were the only two in the place. A native came from behind the counter like a spider from under his leaf.

“What’ll you drink?” I asked. “Pilsener, Münchener; I don’t know what they’ve got.”

“Nay, nay. Gin.”

“Gin. All right. Waiter, three triple gins, please.”

“Triple—?”

“Bring six glasses of gin. Our friends are coming.”

The waiter brought six glasses of gin on a tray, and the card of the house. I handed him a ten-yen note, and some coins with holes in them, which the purser had given me as part of the port’s draw.

“Prosit.”

“Prosit,” said the German. “This mixes well. Es ist gut so.”

We drank the first one straight, no heeltaps.

“Drei?” said the German. “All these—für mich?”

“Ja, ja,” I said. “You will be drunk.”

“I am never drunk,” said the German.

“Let us get really drunk,” I said.

“I was drunk when you met me.”

“You will be drunker still.”

“All right, let’s drink them both this time.”

“Alles gutes.”

“Alles gutes.”

“Come on now, what are you going to have now?”

“Beer. Let us get really drunk.”

The waiter brought Pilsener and some change. There were some coins with holes and a five-yen note. The beer creamed deliciously in the glass.

“Salt air makes thirsty men,” I said. “Where have you been this trip?”

“Oh, we have been away a long time, over a year,” he replied. “This time we made a trip to Sud Amerika—Santos and Paraguay, San Francisco, Florianopolis—Port Allegre. We have been rolling all around the world, you know. Ach! But everywhere is the same—Prosit.”

I drank deeply, tilting the rim of the glass and pressing it on my nose. I had not heard of many of the ports, and it seemed to me that some of them were not ports, but countries. But what did it matter? We were ashore! And I felt suddenly comfortable and happy. I would dismiss Janet from my mind. I could drink, anyway; there were no complications about that. While here—and what could be more delightful?—was a representative of another community, another world, drinking; the wireless operator of a world such as my own, with a stokehold, a galley, and a forecastle. It was like being in Homer and drinking with an Ethiopian. Or “Ben Jonson entertains a man from Stratford.”

“You know English pretty well,” I said.

“Yes, not bad. I knew many Englishmen when I was in Bonn.”

“You were in Bonn?”

“Ja. Vor dem Krieg.”

“I was at Cambridge. Nach dem Krieg.”

“What is your name, may I ask?”

“Hilliot. Dana Hilliot. And yours?”

“Hans Popplereuter.”

“Well, hooray!”

“Hooray!”

“This is a one-eyed hole,” I said. “Let’s see what it says on their card. Cabaret Pompeia and first-class Restaurant,” I read. “Meals served at all hours and all kinds of best liquors. Best dancers on the stage. The best Jazz Orchestra Pompeia. Dancing. Please show this card to the rickshaw coolie. A block from Yamato Hotel, 45 Naniwa-che 2-chome. Proprietor and Manager: A. J. Fourmanento.” I called the waiter. “Hi Confucius! What about this dancing?”

“Behind,” said the waiter. “We used to. We shut up that last night. Miki Bar is your place. All same firm, sir.”

The waiter returned to the counter.

“We’ll go to the Miki Bar some time tonight,” I said.

“Ja, you don’t like this.”

“Well, nicht so besonderes schlecht!”

We ordered more drinks.

“Have you been in Bonn then?” asked Popplereuter.

“No. As a matter of fact I didn’t learn German at school or at Cambridge. But I took a course once in the holidays at a local school of commerce. Not that I learnt anything. You see, I was in love, and I was always late—”

Suddenly I remembered imitating the Herr Professor for Janet.

“The Herr Professor used to say, ‘Ah, Herr Hilliot ist spät,’” I continued. “‘I was expecting you. Ein Vater, Herr Hilliot, und ein Sohn dienten bei demselben Regiment-Corporal, nicht wahr? In French, n’est-ce pas? Pronunciations of both exactly the same … Can the man not answer because of the colonel I will open his mouth for him. No. Ein Vater, Mr. Echtwarts … I am waiting, Mr. Echtwarts. The father of the Unter-offizier? Nein. Too bad, too bad … you might please all write down the following—all, you too, Mr. Hilliot. Sie robt ihn. No, no. Sich weden. I am going to gif you a number of worts and sentences of my own! You know the style!’ I never learned a bloody thing.”

“Wie geht’s?” said Popplereuter. “You are in love.”

“I was in love.”

“Nicht so besonderes schlecht.”

We rose and shook hands solemnly.

“Salt air makes thirsty men.”

“Salt air makes thirsty men,” assented Popplereuter. “Are you,” he smiled, “as the English say, an old sea dog?”

“No. This is my first voyage to sea.”

“So. I am interested. What makes you come to sea?”

“Ah, well. There you have me. I don’t know.”

“You have been to Cambridge?”

“Yes. But I was sent down.”

“You were-?”

“Sent down. Expelled. Fired. Sacked. Herausgeschmissen!”

“Mein Gott, you are like me. Vor dem Krieg I go to Bonn Universität as a student. I belong to a good corps, too. But at this Cologne Carnival I threw a man into the Rhine. Also … all my life I have been fond of wireless. I became a wireless operator in the navy. When the war is over I fall in love, and then more trouble.”

“That’s where the trouble begins.”

“Then more and more trouble.”

“Oh hell! It’s the same with me. I didn’t come to sea entirely because I was sent down.”

“Your father, then, what did he say to you?”

“My guardian? He was good to me. You see, I had only one year at Cambridge. He took me to the pictures, the Lichtspiels, the very first night home. He said you better settle down now and do some work … .”

“Why were you sent down, as you say?”

“It was nothing, nothing at all. I failed my first-year examinations, verstehen Sie, what we call ‘Mays.’ And I was had up once for leaving a pub after ten—what you call a Weinlust. And I was arrested on November the fifth for knocking off a policeman’s hat. Silly, silly, silly things. The Master of the College sent for me and said, ‘You neither ride, row, nor read—’”

“Schrecklich,” nodded Popplereuter. “Schrecklich.”

“But that was not really why I came to sea.”

“Nor I.”

“It’s hell.”

“Were there nice women in Cambridge? Not for business, eh? Ha ha!”

“I don’t know. Since I was sixteen I’ve been faithful to one girl.”

“Faithful, ah,” said Popplereuter. “What is that?”

“Virgo intacta.”

“Gesundheit.” Popplereuter raised his glass.

“Chimborazo, Popocatepetl … ,” I toasted.

We sang. We sang Drei Segelmann, which I don’t know, but I joined in the chorus. We sang Mademoiselle from Armentières, Deutschland über Alles, and Lisa; For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, and God Save the King; Lisa again, and The Bastard King of England, with which Popplereuter was unfamiliar, but he waved his glass and sang, “Back to the Bastard King of Eng-England,” again and again, to the inscrutable pleasure of Confucius.

“England good country. Wunderbar,” hiccoughed Popplereuter.

“Germany bloody good country,” I hiccoughed.

“We fought because we had to,” Popplereuter went on, “for the ‘balance of power,’ you call it.”

I forgot to mention there was a war on about half a mashie shot away, it being June, 1927, but that has no part in the story.

“War is a bloody good thing,” I said. “I’d like to fight against Belgium. I don’t blame you marching on the bastards.”

“War is schrecklich, schrecklich. You have to fight to know that.”

“Yes, war is schrecklich.”

“Perhaps you will write a book of your experiences.”

“Ja, perhaps,” I said. “That is certainly a point. But the desire to write is a disease like any other disease; and what one writes, if one is to be any good, must be rooted firmly in some sort of autochthony. And there I abdicate. I can no more create than fly. What I could achieve would be that usual self-conscious first novel, to be reviewed in the mortuary of The Times Literary Supplement, a ‘crude and unpleasant work,’ something of that nature, of which the principal character would be no more and no less, whether in liquor or in love, than the abominable author himself. I fear, also, that the disease is a childish one, diarrhoea scribendi simply. But I don’t expect you to follow me. I’m sorry; I always speak like this when I’m tight.”

“No. I don’t understand you.”

“I was bitterly hurt when my supervisor in his last interview with me before I left the college said, ‘You are not nearly so unusual a type as you think you are!’”

“So.”

“That was a bitter thing to say, eh?”

“Ich weiss nicht … . Herr Ober!”

“Hail, Confucius!”

“Noch ein—Zwei—”

“Two more—”

“Nein-”

“No; come back—let’s have two starboard lights. Savee starboard lights?”

“Me savee.”

The drinks were brought, and I had to explain to Popplereuter the difference between a starboard light and a crème de menthe. When he had tasted it, he asked how my mother liked my going away.

I made no reply, remembering the letter.

Then I remembered Janet’s letter. “Forget it, you son of a bitch,” I said aloud.

“Wie?” said Popplereuter.

I felt in my inside pocket and brought out the letters. My heart seemed to be beating in the pulses of my body and in my mouth.

“I can’t read it,” I said to Popplereuter. “You read it.” I handed him the two letters.

“Read the top one first,” I said. “It’s from my mother.”

He opened it and read: “‘My Dearest Son—Just a little note to say may God bless you and keep you in the right path. I do hope you are comfortable and keeping clean, because I don’t want my son coarsened by a lot of hooligans. I’ve no time for more because as you know, my eyes are so bad these days. Very much love from your own Mother.’”

“Does she really say that—‘I don’t want my son coarsened by a lot of hooligans’?”

“Yes. The other letter is from your girl. Don’t you want me to read that?”

“Not yet, no.”

I made my mother’s letter into a funnel, and filtered the starboard light through it into an unfinished glass of beer.

“She doesn’t love me,” I said. “I wish she did. What’s the use of anything.”

“Who—your mother?”

“Yes—and now I feel somehow that I daren’t hear my girl’s letter—six weeks is a long time, you know, and she hasn’t written before.” I began to feel sorry for myself, and rather drunk.

“Well, I don’t know.” Popplereuter took a long breath. “I think you are very lucky and young. I must tell you that I am trying to forget. I got news here, my little girl, my little love, daughter of the house, of the Hotel Rheinischer Hof. She has just got married. Oh, Hans is very unhappy, very, very unhappy.”

“Well, we’re a pair of them, that’s all,” I said. “I’ve got a girl on my mind too—I’ve been trying to explain—”

“Yes, but you are too young for such a big worry.”

“Oh hell.” I sighed. “What I might have explained was this. Your calling, your profession, is the sea, whereas mine simply is not. I’m not going to stick around chipping winches, don’t you think it. I simply can’t imagine why I’m here so many miles away in this god-awful place. At least, I’ll try to explain—”

“Prosit.”

“Prosit.”

I felt my eyes dim, my eyes grow placid. I didn’t want to try and explain. I gazed at a thousand bubbles on top of my beer. I had thought of explaining to Popplereuter just why I had gone to sea, but surely that was not possible. Were it possible to explain he would not understand any more than I would understand why Popplereuter had gone to sea. I could not for that matter explain to myself. I had already been sufficiently difficult, as always, for one evening. One bubble makes a grain of sand. Sixty stars to each man. I put down my glass noisily then picked it up again, and gazed mournfully at my reflection. Narcissus. Bollocky Bill the Sailor. Bollocky Bill, aspiring writer, drawn magically from the groves of the Muses by Poseidon. But had it been so much Poseidon? I looked more deeply in the glass. Christ, was this me? What was there? Sadness! Misery! Self-disgust! Terror! No getting away from it, no getting away from the unfortunate Hilliot, this strong creature with a head of filthy, infected hair, and a maggoty brain and a rotting consciousness, who dreams of archetypal images; this sad dish, Eugene Dana Hilliot! Thy hand, great Anarch, evil ghost who must follow me wherever I go! Hear chaos! Hear me, stinking cod fulfilled of donge and of corrupcioun! Tinfoil Jesus, crucified homunculus (who is also the cross), spitted on the hook of an imaginary Galilee! Who is the crown of thorns dripping red blossoms and the red-blue nails, the flails and the bloody wounds. The tears, but also the lips cupped to embrace them as they fall; the whips, but also the flesh crawling to them. The net and the silver writhing in the mesh, and all the fish that swim in the sea.—The centre of the Charing Cross, ABCD, the Cambridge Circle, the Cambridge Circus, is Hilliot—but every night, unseen, he climbs down and returns to his hotel—while the two great shafts, the propeller shafts, the shafts of wit, laced with blood, AB, CD are the diameters.

Now with his navel as centre and half CD as radius, describe a vicious circle! An order imperiously given! Hear me, Janet, maker of all these thoughts and words, these finite stupidities and speculations, an incantation for yourself, our unborn son, and me. Repeat them slowly and fondly to yourself as though you loved them … . Did you know I was liable to stigmata? Yes, the blood flows from my feet, from the upper surface as well as the soles, and from the palms and backs of my hands. My forehead becomes moist with blood, and blood flows there also. I lie on my back, my bleeding hands enveloped in cloths on my knees. And at the same time blood oozes out of the stigmata of my side and feet, and it trickles down my temples, cheek, and neck. My head drops to one side, my nose, as in a mescal trance, feels like wax; my hands are icicles… . A clammy sweat breaks out over my whole body. And that is only one thing! There are a thousand other more significant disclosures I could make of myself! After which, could you still believe in me, still believe in the notion that my voyage is something Columbian and magnificent? Still believe in my taking a self-inflicted penance; in this business of placing myself within impenetrable and terrible boundaries in order that a slow process of justification to yourself may go on. Very well, then, prepare to be disillusioned, for, like Melville, I shall strip my motive like an onion down to the innermost bulb of degradation; listen, if you value my love, to the story of my obfuscated ignorance, of my bespattered idealism; of my flawless insincerity … .

“I don’t know, Hans,” I said. “I don’t know what I could tell you about my life that would interest you, or if it did interest you, what you would understand. First, I am a strange man, or I would like to be a strange man, which is nearer the truth—you will have seen that: some might say, almost, the fool. I was born in Christiania, in the Christian den 4 des gade, dangerous names for me! My youth was ruined by a curious passion for collecting, among other things, universities. For instance, I played baseball in Harvard and set fire to Brattle Square. In Princeton I nearly drank myself to death. In Moscow I was a camera man under Pudovkin. In Oxford, Missouri, I wrote a song. In Yokohama I taught botany. When Christiania became Oslo I sold, in my desperation, the Dagbladet, and lectured on the Greenland occupation. Cambridge, Eng., where I remained ten years as a fellow of Westcott House—playing the mandolin on Armistice Days—gave me an honorary degree. At Cape Cod I held office simultaneously as the town constable, the ticket collector at the cinema, and the local bootlegger; it was there, also, I committed my first murder, in a windmill. In Barbados, in Bridgetown, I remained a week, playing the taropatch in a brothel. While accepting the offer of the fifteen-year-old daughter of the house, I sold her to the Negro doorkeeper for a bottle of gin. This, however, I was in too feeble a condition to drink. In Tsintao I defrauded a Chinaman of a bottle of Batavian arak, weeping afterwards, when he refused, publicly, to shake hands with me. In Stamboul, I played chess with the Sultan’s sister. I pursue women from street to street, from lamp to lamp, from Petty Cury to old Chesterton, always remaining a virgin. When they speak to me I run away. But why go on? I have lived. I have bathed in blood at Saigon and Singapore. I have, like Masefield, worn my jackknife in my cap to catch the lightning at Cape Horn—what my shipmates called being on the horn of a Demelia. Once, for a week, adrift in an open boat, I kept up the spirits of the crew by playing the taropatch. In the end we had to eat the strings. But no, please do not interpret my conduct as unconventional or schizophrenic. No, a thousand times no. I have always been popular with officials. Yes. Men in authority, many hundreds, have seen me home when drunk. At Honolulu it was the harbourmaster. At Yokohama it was the assistant harbourmaster. At Bombay it was the deputy conservator of the Port Trust. At Naples it was the capitano del porto. At Constantinople it was the captein port. In Turkey the newspapers described my arrest for the little matter of the Sultan’s sister as ‘une fantaisie bien américaine.’ I had given my name to the police as Whitman … .

“In Batavia no one saw me, but at Calcutta hundreds of people wondered why I took the sacred water of the Ganges. Barcelona I knew as well as Rangoon. Piraeus as Gibraltar. Manila or Surabaya? They are all the same to me. You know what they say in the Bible … ‘And they removed from Ezron-Gaber and pitched in the wilderness of Zion which is Kadesh. And they removed from Kadesh and pitched in Hor in the edge of the land of Edom … . And they departed from Zalmonesh and pitched in Punon. And they departed from Punon and pitched in Oboth … . And they departed from Almon-dib-lathaim and pitched in the mountains of Abarim, before Nebo.’

“Well, that’s me. The almanac. And in all these places I have wept; wept for my lost opportunities and my found opportunities, my profoundly lost and my profound opportunities, for my lack of wit and my overflux of power, for my tenderness, my super-sensual cruelty, for my lost childhood and my extramundane intelligence; and then, as the roar of a million cities has closed over my mind, I have wept for them altogether because I was always very drunk. Yes, Hans, yes, and in Literature my name is scarcely less momentous. The Honolulu Star Bulletin says, ‘A name to conjure with.’ You see, unemolumented but monumental. When I was fourteen I was under the delusion for a year I was Thomas Chatterton … mad? No … not even that. But a kind of semi-madman, pernicious and irritating and apathetic in the extreme, for whom in madness, as in death to the impotent, exists the only dignified escape. No, no, no, no. Yes, yes—still, after all, who am I to care if nobody believes me?

“Read my collected works first, several thousand volumes, including the much-discussed Othello, all tightly bound, paying special attention to my masterpiece, How to Be Happy Though Dead. Some say, admittedly, that these are small beer, but there is always plenty of it; a friendly critic, J., said that I have strained at a gnat and swallowed the Round Pond; another, mentioning that Hilliot had written a thousand lines, added, ‘Would he had blotted them all.’ Undoubtedly these remarks are to some extent justified, and my critics correct, but taking it all in all, by and large, isn’t it enough to drive any man into the forecastle, or to drink?”

“You are lying to me,” Popplereuter said, puzzled, leaning over, glass in hand.

“Yes,” I said, “I am. I’m sorry, you don’t know how little. But even if I were to put the case more directly, if I were to make a tactile effort in the direction of clarity, a sober collocation of the news—I know you don’t understand me, but I’m getting just drunk enough to be determined to bore you to death—or I can be a tomb! The important point is that the apparent facts are largely imaginary. I assume the guilt of a mother, or of a father, or of a heredity, imagine it completely, to be able on the one hand to give an adequate explanation of my more inexplicable actions, and on the other in order to be clothed in a dark, blood-stained dignity. Some of these points are raised, and you may have read for yourself, in my much maligned and certainly dangerous and misleading work, Hamlet. I delight to imagine that my father is mad, when as a matter of fact he is only in a nursing home with a stone in the kidney; I delight to imagine that my mother, who occasionally suffers from conjunctivitis, is going blind. But it is I who am the father, or who would be the father, the mother, and who postulate the responsibility for both; it is young Dana who belongs to the ranks of the blind and the dumb. I grant you, there is the business of my aunts, all knocked for a row of milk bottles in the cemetery at Oslo, but that was the consequence not of some terrible physical cataclysm, so far as I can make out, but of frailty unhappily wedded to a titanic strength and an irrefragable stupidity. At least I hope that that’s all there is to it. But out of this emerges something simpler. I am sick with love for a girl. She wears a white skirt, and a soft blouse and a school blazer edged with brown.”

“Ah, I love her! You love me! Nicht so besonderes schlecht. Ha ha ha!” chuckled Popplereuter.

“My grandfather, on my mother’s side, was a sea captain who went down with his ship. He was bringing my mother a cockatoo. Prosit.”

“For the balance of power,” said Popplereuter.

“Consequently I have in me an inborn craving for the unrest of the sea. Meereinsamkeit. Oh, but this craving was not, is not conscious enough, as Petit the poet said, intellectually to be diluted into a mere intangible wanderlust … No sir. Well! … Good night, Confucius; I envy you your extreme happiness!”

Norddeutscher Lloyd Steamships: Miki Bar—Dancing; Richard Barthelmess in “The Amateur Gentleman.”

We paused, swaying on our heels, before the snowy theatre front. A sailor was reeling round in front of the box office.

“Hullo,” I said, “that’s next week. Look what we’ve got today, for Christ sake. Olga Tschechowa in Love’s Crucifixion. What do you make of that, Watson?”

“Olga Tschechowa in Love’s Crucifixion,” spelt out Popplereuter. “Richard Barthelmess in The Amateur Gentleman. A smashing drama of the good old days of Merrie England! Next week!”

As we approached the box office I saw that the drunk sailor was Norman. He was wearing only a singlet and a pair of dungarees. I thought he was drunker than I was. Norman suddenly put his arm through the woven wire guichet of the box office, and thumped his fist.

“I want one third day-return to Birkenhead Central,” he roared.

“Hullo there, Norman,” I said.

He turned round, but spun again on his own volition before recovering his balance. It seemed as though a recognition of myself was slowly filtering through his veins.

“Hullo there, chummy! Are you with me, shipmates? You’re with me? Good!” He staggered to the box office again. “Three, four, five, fifteen day-returns to Birkenhead Central. Do you hear me? Hey, where’s Andy, you fellows? I’ve lost Andy. Where’s Andy, do you know?”

“I haven’t seen him, Norman,” I said.

“I’ve lost him. I don’t know where I’ve lost the sod. You seen the sodding sod anywhere?”

“No, I haven’t. What about coming into the pictures?”

“Nei, I must find that sod.”

“Oh, let him go to hell!”

“Yes, go to hell,” grunted Norman, forsaking Andy a little at a time.

“Everybody go to hell.”

While we were talking, Popplereuter, who had been sitting on the kerb, suddenly pulled himself together and got up; he walked the length of the step and pushed some money imperiously into the box office.

We were admitted. The cinema glowed with pink light inside. The walls were fairly plain and the concealed red lamps gave it to me the appearance of a tomb or a catacomb burning with fire. To enter it was to enter a mephitic forecastle, for it seemed to me that the place was full of seamen and firemen. The audience moved, smoked, coughed, and murmured as a single mass, colourless and quiet. A long note from the orchestra drew two halves of a gauze curtain lamely across the screen, meeting in the centre. Drunk. We were all drunk.

“Andy said he’d meet me at the Sailors’ Home,” babbled Norman, who couldn’t find his seat anywhere.

“Well, why not go there?”

“No, let’s stay here.”

“Is it the English Sailors’ Home?”

“Scandinavian.”

“There’s a Norwegian ship in dock, Norman,” I said.

“Let’s go there. What ship?”

“T.S. Martensen.”

“Let’s go there.”

“We’ll stay here for the time being and see if there’s anything doing.”

“Norway, eh?”

“Yes. It would be all right to be in Norway again,” said Norman.

I buried my face in my hands. What was Norman thinking of? Janet came to me across the snow. The seasons changed quickly: spring plants were staring at the sun in Tvedestrand; there were bare arms among the storm-tossed washing; the soundless black depths of a fjord closed over my head. Home. Yes, everybody wanted to go home. But home to what? A little imagination and this was home! One of those Saturday nights with Janet at the Birkenhead Hippodrome. Twice nightly, 6:30, 8:40! Two two-and-fours please! The first house. The orchestra tuning up, like tired men snoring in different keys. The gathering rush of the falling curtain. When there is a fireproof screen to the proscenium opening it must be lowered at least once during every performance to see that it is in proper working order … .

“Are you asleep?”

“Bitte?”

“Asleep?”

“Nay, nay. Besoffen.”

The curtain parted in two, each half creaking back into the wings. To whom did this island belong? The American Hatoba, the Oriental Hotel, and the Kyo-Bashi … Oh these infernal advertisements on the screen! No. 1 quay. No. 2 quay. No. 3 quay. No. 4 quay. O Hiro Bar Yamagata-Dori. Phone number, Sonnomiya 2580. Possibly Aeschylus’ geography was not much more chaotic than my own. Janet, writing to the ship agents in Singapore, did not even trouble to find out where the ship was, which she could easily have done, by buying the Journal of Commerce. I hadn’t read her letter yet. I felt it inside my pocket, warm against my heart. Hilliot invictus, Prometheus absolutus, Dana solutus. The solution on my chest. No bad geography in the λύομενος, Desmotes. The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills cried misery then; the hollow heavens replied misery; the ocean’s purple waves, climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds, and the pale nations heard it, misery!

Two shillings please. This way, Janet. Clutching the metal disc, then leaning together against the gallery, while all Liverpool coughed below.

“Des flammes déjà!” I screamed, as the theatre suddenly blazed with light for the intermission, and two sailors from the Oedipus Tyrannus entered noisily. “This reminds me of the old Bermondsey Music ‘All, Bill.”

“No, boy, you can’t beat it.” They started to sing. The audience protested with a thousand hushes; it sounded like a sort of unanimous organ pedalling; I thought, my God, one might as well be back in the Central Cinema, Hobson Street, Cambridge! The whole bloody business is retrogression, anyway. A small boy chased by the Furies. Good God, good God.

Sudoh and Co.—manufacturer and exporter of curios and vases, porcelain and satsuma ware, tea sets, screens, bronze wares, pearls … Cloisonné lacquered wares, tortoiseshell wares. 10, 11, and 12 Chickaramachi 4 chome, Nagoya. P.O. Box No. 2 Akatsuka. Tel. 586 Higashi. Factories: Chikusa-cho, Nagoya and Mino, Seto, Oswari … We deal Production of our Own and all Round value Call and see them Everything so Lovely we’ll give you A1 satisfaction inspection invited call and see them Now is best chance.

I started to clap, and the audience joined in. They clapped and stamped, roared and spat and belched. The stamping was a horrible noise, and again I thought of the pedals of a thousand windless organs being rhythmically tramped upon—

Mano Hotel ideally and beautifully situated by the romantic sea. The house of excellent service. Music and Dancing every evening. The grand ballroom has just been reconstructed. Commands a fine view of the bay overlooked from Verand. Auto service under the same management at any time. Baths always readly. Swimming always readly horn directly out pier. Radio has been installed. Serve nothing but best beer and liquor and other refreshments.

“We want the picture,” I roared … . The lights were slowly liquidating. A caption appeared. Everybody loved Mary Lou, the cutest girl in Oshkosh … . Mary Lou appeared on a balcony, and put her head on one side; she clapped her hands and jumped about with admiration as a horseman, pursued by a youth in a shining two-seater, approached in a white whirl of grainy dust … . “Where did you get the cuddle buggy?” she asked. The audience screamed and trumpeted and hooted. “How do you get that way? It was not my husband. It’s that human balloon over there.” The comedy went on, without aim, without meaning, pathetic images of the perfect absurdity of life. “Wait a minute, just wait a minute, can’t you? Now then, listen everybody, if men were dominoes, why, you’d be the double blank!”

But suddenly the machine gave out with a whirr, the screen grew bright, the lights were turned up. The clapping began again.

“Come on, let’s go,” I said impatiently. We edged out into the alley and staggered down the steps into the street.

On—on to the Martensen.

“We’re going the right way to the wharf,” said Norman. A native passed, clacking on sandals, pulling a carriage by the shafts. “Rickshaw!” he shouted. “Rickshaw, rickshaw, rickshaw!” He pranced round us as excitedly as a dog.

“Yes,” I said. “Drive to the Scandinavian Sailors’ Home first—”There was no need to be afraid of Andy now!

“No savee.”

“It’s this way, somewhere,” said Norman drunkenly.

“Go on, drive,” I cried.

“Me no speak English.”

“Go on, man. Go straight ahead, for Jesus sake.” Somehow we all squeezed in together. The rickshaw-wallah ran away with us, his sandals padding; the starry night was full of clack-ack-ack, the soft sound of wheels. Not like the Lake Isle of Innisfree, I thought, as we passed an hotel, the Oriental, blazing with light. The wheels made a gentle sound, like stirring leaves. A wealthy Chinaman smoked a cigar. A drift of cold sparks settled on Popplereuter. The driver spat contemptuously. On—on—on. Three stokers swayed along the road, singing Seraphina. “Sera-phina’s got no drawers, I been down and seen her, Seraphina,” they shouted happily.

“Stop!” Norman shouted. “Here we are.”

Without knowing it we had reached the Sailors’ Home. Norman clambered out and reeled along the road to see if it was open and Popplereuter put his arm round my shoulders.

“This is life, eh?” I grinned.

“Mein lieber alte Freund,” Popplereuter chuckled affectionately.

“Is that bloody place open?” I said.

“Nordiskt Lasrum for Sjömaen. Oppnaski … Ingang till Lasrummet. Oppet fra Kl 5 tell Kl 9 lm … Lasrum Skandinaviska Sjoman-Shemmet … Fornningen for de Skandinaviska Sjomannshjem,” I read.

“I can’t find the bloody door,” said Norman.

“To hell with you,” I said. “Hurry up.”

Popplereuter and I shouted, barracking him. The rickshaw-wallah stood in the shafts watching in silent contempt.

“Here’s a church. Gustaf Adolf Kyrkan,” said Norman.

“Come back, you can’t go in there.”

Popplereuter and I both laughed. He produced his pipe, and started filling it from a tin of Brinkmann’s Standard Mixture.

“You can’t go to church, Norman,” I said.

Norman lurched back to us. His features collapsed suddenly.

“I don’t know why I’m on this bloody game at all—”

Again the rickshaw started off with us, and now I became conscious for the first time that I was sweating. We stopped at the south station and mobbed the booking office.

“Third return Birkenhead Central,” said Norman.

“Third return Port Sunlight,” I insisted, because I was not going to be beaten tonight.

At last we were forced to leave the station. We paid off the rickshaw-wallah. The streets flowed on like mad canals of light, while cars and trams, like barges of fire, madly sailed them. “Free Press, Free Press, Murder of Brother-in-Law’s Concubine,” screamed the posters. “Tennis shoes for the whole family.”

Then we were standing on the wharf, looking up at the soaring stern of the S.S. Leeway from Swansea, which had docked forward of the Martensen. Two stewards stood up there, high up on the poop, their dishcloths over their arms.

“Have you seen Andy?” I shouted up to them. “You couldn’t mistake him. He’s a big guy with no chin, showing the influence of whisky.”

“No. We’ve just come in. The skipper’s having a dinner,” said one of the stewards. He spat; the spittle landed on the “Y” of Leeway and dribbled slowly into the harbour.

“Hey, have you lost a pigeon,” I asked.

“Come off that, anyway,” said Norman. “I don’t want to lose my sodding Mickey.”

“Are there any bumboats,” whimpered Popplereuter.

“Come on, let’s all go to the Martensen.”

But the Martensen still seemed to be deserted. We hauled ourselves, panting, up the gangway, and stole down to the engine room. “Fuld, Halv. Sagte. Vel. Stop. Klar. Sagte,” we read. But a quartermaster came out of the dark to meet us.

“We only came to see if you’d lost a pigeon.”

“We wanted to see if you’d found Andy.”

“Bumboat.”

The quartermaster gazed at us sleepily, thunderstruck. Suddenly we felt foolish, and turned tail. We tore down the gangway and ran together along the wharf till we were out of breath. We danced down the road. Oh, we felt fit for anything now!

The next thing we knew, a pimp was taking us down a dark side street. Two runnels of urine ran down either side. Women squatted on the steps of the houses, and, as we passed, hoisted up their skirts, as if mechanically. A gramophone was going somewhere, playing My Sweet Hortense. The street was mainly unlighted, but there were dim lamps in some of the windows. Girls called to us as we passed by. We were led through a swing door and down a dark passage into a lighted hallway. There was a continual uproar going on in the house—a kind of yapping. Then we saw that the hall was full of cots and the cots were full of puppies, three puppies to each cot. We turned round, to see an old harridan with a shaggy face, evidently a European, shuffling in carpet slippers. Her legs were bare but hairy. She drew back a curtain to the right of the nearest cot. Then we all went into a bedroom. A large bed with a much-haloed Jesus above it intruded on my consciousness, and next to Jesus a meek kitten—a photograph on a calendar-peered innocently from the wall. All around the rest of the room were Biblical mottoes and prints of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. Next to the large bed, which was covered with a single sheet, stained and splotched by footmarks, was another cotful of dogs.

“Hey, where are you going?” shouted the harridan.

“Out,” I said.

“You’re right,” Norman agreed, more sober.

On, more bars, more drinks, more rickshaws.

“Hans very unhappy, very unfortunate. Hans very homesick,” mumbled Popplereuter.

“All right. Come in here and cheer up.”

We pushed through the turnstiles into a small anatomical museum. …

“This super collection,” we read, “with all the latest additions, comprising upwards of a hundred models and diagrams, the only one of its kind in Asia … In these models the visitor sees the awful effects of MAN leading a DEPRAVED life visiting the iniquity of the FATHERS upon the CHILDREN and upon the CHILDREN’S children unto the third and fourth GENERATION … Model of well-developed CHILD just BORN all its proportions are such as to cause the mothers HEART to throb with THANKFULNESS for so great a blessing Obstetric preparations. The Forceps … Phimosis and Paraphimosis … The race of an old BACHELOR, he became IDIOTIC and rapidly sank into second CHILDHOOD; what a fearful account he will have to give of himself at the JUDGMENT DAY … THIRTY-SEVEN models in EIGHT glass cases portraying secondary symptoms all taken from LIFE. Some of these diseases have been greatly aggravated by the use of MERCURY and also wrong treatment namely ulceration smallpox warts and tumours … . Supinator-longus; pronator radii teres; flexor carpi radialis … fasculi of flexor sublimis digitorum. The HEAD and NECK showing the awful and DEGRADED state in which MEN come when they DISOBEY the laws of GOD; the wages of sin is DEATH.

“Extraordinary superfoetation of TWINS, one of the CHILDREN was white, the other black … Embryology and foetal development PARENTS frequently live over and over again in their CHILDREN for they certainly resemble them not merely in COUNTENANCE and bodily CONFORMATION but in the general features of their MINDS, and in their virtues and VICES … If she is disordered and defective its vital function must suffer; or gross food may render it FLABBY. If she does not RESPIRE sufficiently it will be PUNY and BLOODLESS; it she is drugged it will be of BAD habit; if she is mercurialised or antimonialised it will have a predisposition to CONSUMPTION … . Let the thoughtless man here pause, and read a sentence from the Bible; if any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, WHICH TEMPLE YOU ARE… .”

We pushed our way out into the street. There was a dead stillness in the air, presaging storm. A shaggy buffalo, head lowered, charged at the moon. We ran until we were out of breath and hiccoughing.

“What a hell of a place!” exploded Norman, and was sick, Popplereuter supporting him.

“It’s all nonsense,” I said. “All out of date; bunk. To tell the truth, I feel just about ready for women.”

“You can’t go, after seeing that.”

“Yes, I certainly can. That place is all rot!”

“You don’t know anything about it. You’ll have to have women first.”

“All right. Don’t make such a fuss about it,” I said, annoyed.

“No, don’t, please. For my sake, sonny,” he went on, growing maudlin. “For the sake of your shipmate, don’t go. Keep yourself decent for your girl.”

“I shouldn’t go if I was you,” said Hans sympathetically.

“I’m going,” I said, and strode off. Norman ran after me and caught me by the shoulder.

“Get off, you scared rabbit,” I said, making a wild cut at his arm. “You’re drunk.”

“Do it for my sake!” cried Norman.

But now it was my turn to climb the topmast. I shook Norman off angrily. “Mind your own bloody business.”

Sailors’ Temperance Restaurant … Soldiers’ Canteen Bar … Boston Bar … Café Baikine … Bar and Cabaret … Trocadero … Satsuma Wares … Richard Barthelmess in “The Amateur Gentleman” … Bar and Cabaret … Satsuma Wares … Norddeutscher Lloyd Steamship Company … Miki Bar … Dancing …

“Ah!”

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“A drink, please.”

“Certainly, sir. But I think you’ll have a bad head tomorrow.”

“No. I’ve got beyond that stage. But a wet March makes a sad harvest as you suggest.”

“Well, what is it to be?”

“Old squareface, please. Dog’s nose. Thanks. I’ll take it over here. What sort of a place is this, anyway? I seem to have strayed into a European quarter.”

There was a photograph behind the counter of a Calcutta rowing eight.

“Strayed is right. But European quarter my foot. At least—” A burst of syncopated music came from upstairs, a door banged, and all was as quiet as before.

“At least—what?”

“Well, we get all sorts here, American, English, Norwegian, German. All sorts.”

I sipped my gin.

“Well, you have dancing here, at any rate.”

“Oh yes. Would you like to go up and have a look-see?”

“Yes.”

“Well, go right up.”

I finished my drink and left the room, nearly tripping over a red weighing machine with a glass face which said: “Try your weight.” I did not think I would, but went on upstairs. Pushing open a door, I entered the dance hall. There were a few patrons and they were not dancing, but drunkenly cuddling their partners at their own tables. They looked like Scandinavian sailors. I waited by the door, sizing up the crowd. The band struck up a tune and dawdled through it haphazardly, without enthusiasm. Most of the women were lolling about, talking to sleepy-eyed waiters. They played again, this time a moderately lively dance piece, but after a dozen bars it deteriorated into a listless, lifeless rattle. “Tan-tan-taratatan,” whanged the cymbals. The entertainers—if entertainers they were—and harlots paired off with the waiters and hangers-on and began a lifeless, listless dance… . A girl came across to me and pulled out my tie.

“Hello darling.”

“Hello, love.” I felt gallant. “Feel like a dance?”

“Sure. Come on.”

She made a curious impression on me, the same way that Janet had done the first time I met her; there was something mysterious about her, like stars. I looked down at her thinking that in appearance also she resembled Janet extraordinarily. I shut my eyes and imagined that this was indeed Janet and I dancing at the New Brighton Palais de Danse. Then I remembered my letter. But the girl was speaking to me.

“Me nice girl; very nice very clean very cheap jig-a-jig very sweet very sanitary.”

I was brought back to earth laughingly.

“Yes I’m sure you are,” I said. “What’s your name? Oh, you’ve got a card—what a funny place to keep it! Now, let’s see—if I can see. ‘Olga Sologub.’ Olga Sologub. No relation to Olga Tschechowa? No? Not Olga Sologub—Love’s Crucifixion? ‘Olga Sologub, queen of love. Night work a speciality.’ Yes, I’m sure you are. But isn’t there a novelist? Russian? No relation? Yes, that’s very adroit indeed. They allowed you to have these printed, all right. Yes. And how old are you, may I ask?”

“Sixteen. I say!”

“Yes?”

“I kind of like you!”

“Yes, I like you too. Can you read the name of this tune on the score?”

“Dead Man Blues.”

“Well, we’re nice and close now. Dead Man Blues, a highflying hit. Good God! I had that tune on the gramophone in my digs at Cambridge—on Parlophone.”

“I say.”

“Yes?”

“You’ve got nice eyes—sailor boy.”

“No, no. Good God no.”

“Beautiful teeth. I like your teeth—sailor boy.”

“No. Good God, you mustn’t say that! You’ve got nice eyes.”

“You’ve got nice hands, sailor boy.”

“No, no. I say, nobody’s ever said that. Besides, you can only see one, as I’ve got the other round your waist. As for my eyes, they’re green. Green!”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Are you Russian?”

“Y es.”

“A refugee?”

“Y es. A Russian refugee.”

“Good God. The only Russian I ever knew was a lady undergraduate at Newnham; she was an awful bitch. But of course you don’t understand what I’m talking about. Do you know this lingo?”

“Japanese or Chinese—or what do you mean?”

“Well, er—Japanese is spoken mostly, eh?”

“I can teach you all the Japanese you have to know now. Listen to me. Good morning is Cha-yo. Good day, Konnichiwa. Good evening, Konbanwa. Good-bye, Sayonara. Take me to Katayama store, Katayama e tsure te yu ke. Show me kimono. Kimono wo misete kudasai. How much? Ikura? Show me better one, Motto yoinowo misete. This is very pretty, Korewa taiken kireida—”

“My God, have a heart!”

“Please don’t stop me, please!”

“Oh, I see!”

“I will take it, Sore ni shimasko. Too expensive, Amari takai. Show me some less expensive, Motto yasuinowo misete. Give me change, Tsuri kudasai. That’s all, Shimai—”

The tune suddenly, as if in annoyance, came to an end, with three muffled explosions on the cymbals.

“Let’s have this dance over again!”

I turned her round and, placing my two arms on either side of her neck, clapped her hands for her. The sleepy-eyed waiters, the entertainers, and the hangers-on clapped too. The band started in again on the Dead Man Blues. The Scandinavian sailors and their women started to sing something. Whatever it was it was out of tune.

“Tan-tan, taratatan; tan-tan-taratatan,” whanged the cymbals, and “whom wham,” went the drum. Whom wham! “I’ve got them! I’ve got them! I’ve got those Dead Man Blues, yes sir!” I crooned, looking down at Olga and drowning in her eyes.

Round and round we swung rhythmically, moving our bodies now in little quick nervous vibrations, now in long, sweeping drags.

“You enjoying yourself?”

“Sure.”

“Why ‘sure’? Why the American stuff?”

“Aw, you’re silly, you are, kid!”

“I’m in a silly mood, honey. I don’t often get an opportunity of going ashore. My supervisor would strongly object to it. Not to mention the proctors!”

“Well, are you going to come upstairs?”

Again I remembered the letter, and a deep wave of nostalgia and of physical sickness swept over me so that I staggered and almost fell. I felt I was going to pass out.

“You bet your life,” I managed to say. “But give me half an hour. I want to cool my brain a little and think.”

“Aw, what do you want to go and think for?”

I caught hold of her by the neck.

“Hey, do you love me?”

“Sure I love you. Do you love me?”

“Rather. I’ll be back in half an hour. I must cool my brain a little and think. But will you wait for me?”

“Yes. I love you.”

“Say ‘I promise.’”

“‘I’m not a fool I’ve been to school.’”

“Say, ‘I promise.’”

“I promise.”

“All right then,” I said. I staggered to the door. As it swung to the last chords of the Dead Man Blues were truncated. Try your weight. I did not think I would, but went on downstairs. “Gordon’s Old Holland Gin.”

“You going out?”

“Yes. I’m all seized up. I must go out and think.”

“You look all corked up to me. But you’ve got hold of a fine bird up there. Olga, eh?”

“Yes, but let me tell you, we’ve got a finer bird on the ship. A fine bird. Yes, sir.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. All the seamen and firemen come along and look at her while she’s having her bath. I put her to bed too; goes to bed without a murmur.”

“No? You can’t fool me. It’s the skipper’s canary.”

“Ah, you’re too clever. It’s not. It’s a pigeon.”

“Is that so? And where did you get that?”

“It flew aboard. It came from Swansea.”

“Well, I never!”

“Well, I’ll be back soon!”

Richard Barthelmess in “The Amateur Gentleman”; Satsuma Wares; Trocadero; Bar and Cabaret; Café Baikine; Boston Bar; Bar.

The night wind ruffled my hair. It was a tepid wind. I opened my mouth and swallowed it. But the night was dark and the sky tempestuous. Olga liked my hands! Strange … my all-abiding sense of guilt about my hands! Well, I felt better now, in the air again. But supposing Janet had said—announced one day as if casually: “What nice hands you have, Dana … .” It would have made all the difference—all the difference.

After I had been sick I entered the Yumato Hotel once more. I looked nervously at three tourists (were they Americans?) arguing in a corner of the lounge. “Une fantaisie bien américaine.”

“Yes, sir?”

“A starboard light. Savee starboard light?”

“Me savee.”

I lit my pipe and settled myself in the chair. Now I could read Janet’s letter in comfort.

Somehow it had gone.

What the hell—what the hell—what the hell! I can’t have lost it. I couldn’t possibly have lost it, possibly. But it’s no good looking, Dana, it isn’t there. Oh, Mother, what have I done? My God, is this me? Is it? Oh, forgive, forgive, forgive, Mother and Father forgive. Don’t let me die; don’t don’t.

“—why didn’t you stick up for me, then?—”

“—I’m not going to stick up for you—”

“—you’re wrong!”

“You’re either one way or the other!”

“A quizzy little bitch, anyhow!”

“—that’s unfair. You said that before. I simply agree—”

“—she said that, and I agree—”

They were Americans. Passengers? Yes, obviously—off the Jefferson. So here was another nightmare of indecision; another dispute about a P. & O. boat; perhaps even another lost letter!

How ridiculous it all was! All truths wait on all things; they neither hasten their delivery nor resist it; they do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon; the insignificant is to me as big as any. And so forth, and so forth … The conservation of the human sub-species. I have lost Janet’s letter. Whether life was worth living or not was a matter for an embryo rather than a man. “Post coitum omne animalia triste est. Omne? Supinus pertundo tunicam.” “For on this my heart is set, when the hour is nigh me, let me in the tavern die, with a tankard by me, while the angels looking down, joyously sing o’er me—‘Deus sit propitius huic potioril.’” What was it my supervisor said? “Dana Hilliot is a tinkling sciolist.”

“She said that, and I agree—”

Suppose I offered to rescue Olga, and she accepted. What then? What, indeed! I could carry her away in a rickshaw to the ship. There might be a little unpleasantness with the quartermaster on the gangway. But let that pass. I would bribe him, with a kiss if necessary. Hide her in my bunk. But how would the others take that? Draw lots for her; quarrel among themselves. Murder! We’re going to have our home comforts, the same as any other bloody man. I have lost the letter … .

“You’re either one way or the other, Kenneth.”

My mother soaped my face all over; my mother cleaned my ears. My mother separated one from one my inexpressive toes. A daddy-longlegs straggled round the light; the white ceiling sweated; the shadows of the trees shook darkly on the frosted glass of the window. A sudden draught came up the waste pipe. Afterwards, gazing at the picture of my grandfather in the old nursery, I noticed for the first time how infinitely blue his eyes were, and slightly obscene; watery, as though he had never wiped the salt spray from them. “Why are you so dirty, Dana? My father was always so clean, so spruce. He had his master’s certificate before he was twenty-three. When he came ashore he always came in a cab, and wore a top hat. He always wore a deerskin cap; you never see them like that nowadays. He was an angel from heaven. He was bringing me a cockatoo.” And my grandfather’s eye would water visibly in the picture and seem to say: “Don’t listen to what she says, son. The sea will get you as it got me.” Lost. Lost. The letter! Searching, groping all the time for things: for facts, for letters, for dates, for beauty, for love. And never knowing when we have found it. If we will ever find it. Absolute beauty, absolute truth, did they exist? Of course they must. Could one be, as it were, within touching distance of the one, the supreme, inerrable truth and yet never realise it, never grasp it? If there was such a truth, had someone ever stumbled on it unawares and been dazzled by the blinding light of absolute and piercing veracity? Had Christ? Had Buddha? Had Confucius? And what then was that truth? Absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute good, absolute everything—were they all one? What the hell! Did they all converge to one main-masthead finial of absolution? One simply did not know. But there was always that faint hope, that shadowy expectation that some day—when one was chipping a deck, or splicing wire, or reading The Blue Peter—there would come on one out of the nothing of nescience, this conscious knowledge of the one truth which would mean absolute power, absolute happiness.

But that being so, what was there to be done about it? Nothing. Nothing at all. Take refuge in the comic strip, then associate the mackerel with the goose, the gooseberry with the swan; dream of lutes, laurels, seas of milk, and ships of amber; observe that the “hopeless flux and the temporal order of things belong merely to the material occasions upon which essences recur, or to the flutterings of attention, hovering like moths about lights which are eternal.” Consult the midbrain, the misencephalon. Port and starboard—the misencephalonic lights. To your post, lamptrimmer! Proceed, Phlebas, to the forecastle head, binoculars in hand! You, carpenter, to the windlass to await orders!

Lookout reports a large sea moth, two points on the starboard bow, proceeding in an easterly direction! Bosun, see that all hands are on deck in ten minutes with their oilskins, sea boots and butterfly nets … . Away. Away. I shall bend my sail when the great day comes; thy kisses on my face—and anger and regret shall fade, and in thy salt embrace all that I knew in all my mind shall no more have a place; the weary ways of men and one woman I shall forget… .

Janet Rohtraut. Beauty Rohtraut, listen to me. I am so tired of holly sprays and weary of the bright box tree. As for you, Andy; as for your weary ways, I shall prepare for them a bath of steaming hornets, while through the attic window must be blown the scent of stock-gillyflower; I shall read for the last time, the hundred and first, reading the story, the only story, of Apuleius, while, from afar, Mikhail Kuzmin’s flute is heard, playing softly—

Soldiers’ Canteen.

Heres to Pa nds Pen Da Soci alho uR

InHa RmlE ssmiR THan

Dfunl Etfrie ENDshiprEi

GnbeJ Ustand

Kin DanDevils Peakof None.

Hey, buddy, come and sit down. There’s room for you here … . Certainly I’ll sit down. Here, there’s no room here. Then move your big knees, Alf. Here, your nose is bleeding, buddy, who’ve you been leaning against? What’ve you been doing, crying or something? Oh you’re the gear, the proper ruddy masterpiece, you are. I don’t know. I must have banged it against something. I lost a letter from my girl. Come here, that’s right. Let me wipe your face. He’s lost a letter from his girl. Why, he’s only a kid. How’s that? That’s fine, thanks awfully. Would you like a drink? … Like a game of darts, son? Aw, you can’t hear yourself speak in this sodding place. Can’t bloody breathe neither. Can’t bloody move and that’s a fact. Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Were you at the cricket match? No, I didn’t know there was one, see? Would you like to buy a concertina?

Would you like to buy a cockatoo? No, our galley boy’s got a pigeon … . Well, what of it; what’ve you been doing with your bloody self, eh? Getting drunk, now? I am drunk. No you’re not, certainly you’re not. Say Lake Chagogawogmanchogomogchawgohuatungamog. If you can say that you’re not drunk. Well, I’m defeated. I plead guilty. Three months’ C. B. for you, my son, drunk and disorderly. We’ll put you in the Chinese Labour Corps. The order of the rising sun—tee hee!—for promiscuous gallantry. What was that you said? Don’t send my boy to prison, it’s the first crime wot he done … . There ain’t enough glasses to go round. No? Oh well, you have mine, sonny. What are you, you talk like a colonel. No, I’m a quartermaster. Not a quartermaster on the Oedipus Tyrannus are you? Do let’s get this straight. Are you a soldier or a sailor? Well some say soldier-sailor but we say sailor-soldier. Of his Majesty the King? Yes—of his Majesty the King. And fighting against whom? Fighting against whom? We ain’t fighting for any bloody body. We’re fighting against China. With bamboo guns. You’re plastered! We’re in Japan. Well, what if we are? It’s on the China coast. You’re not drunk. Say perturbatantus Constantinopolitani innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus. If you can say that you’re not drunk … . Come again, have you any more of those? You bet … . Think about this. The English say ivory; the French say ivoire; but the Germans say Elephantum-beinstein! I’ve just been with one so I know. The débris, rather than the fruits of my knowledge. It’s the heat, it often makes me feel that way. Well, where’ve you sprung from anyway? I’ve sprung from a ship. What—a football boat? No, a coffee pot. Fore and aft and six standing derricks. So you’re just Jack ashore for tonight, eh? Yes, we’re homeward bound after Manila. You ought to go and see our museum. It’s one of the seven wonders of the world. I’ve been to a museum. It’s the damndest place I ever saw. Our galley boy was sick when he came out—sicker than when he found the miscarriage down the number seven hold. Hell—are you a pilgrim ship, then? We were last voyage and this got left there some way. Well that’s the place. It’s a rare spot. That’s there for your benefit. You’re in it. Ha ha ha ha. Here’s looking at you! Where are you out of? Liverpool. Liverpool; did you say Liverpool? That’s my home town, or nearly. Yours; my gosh where do you come from? Where? New Brighton. Do you know it? That’s where my girl lives. I’m a Port Sunlight man … . There’s a museum in Liverpool too; did you know that? No—where? In Paradise Street. As I was walking down Paradise Street … Well this godforsaken place has got about three names and we can’t pronounce one of them. But we must have another drink on that. Pass the jug. Well, here’s to Port Sunlight! Here’s to New Brighton! … Hey, get out of there, Gandhi! “Listen to me, I tell your fortune.” We don’t want our fortune told. Get out! … No, here’s a Port Sunlight man wants his fortune told. Go on, sailor, and he’ll tell you what the Tranmere Rovers are doing this season. All right. “Listen, I tell your fortune. No, how much. Anything you like. Thank you very much. I talkee English a little. You are interesting, very interesting, study. Let me see your hands. Your hands—oh, poor, poor hands—have not been used to the hard work; not till now, but now you work hard. You get home and then you get rich—oooh very rich, richer and richer, day in by day out, little by little, slowly by slowly. You play well on the instrument. What are you—American?”

“English,” I said, interested. It was a good word to say when drunk.

“Now! Shuffle the cards. That’s right, now cut with the left hand, so. Three times … No! Like this, good, good, now; you know a club man, when I say a club man I mean a dark man … he thinks nothing of you; avoid him. He gives for you not one Jesus Christ goddam. You know him?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It might be nobody.”

“But he is not so important. You have a club girl! when I say a club girl I mean a dark girl. She thinks everything of you. She gives for you a Jesus Christ goddam. You know her?”

“I suppose there’s nothing for it, sweet hour.”

“She has a club man whom she thinks of a little too … . But you are a musician. Velly, velly good—everybody like you when you play. How do you play?”

“Badly.”

“Ah, no savee sing Tipperlairley, hey?”

“Come again, brother.”

“No savee sing Tipperlairley?”

“Oh, Tipperary. Yes, yes.”

“Your father is a club and your mother is a heart. They would like to do everything for you, but they do not know how to do it. Your mother loves you when you are a baby boy, but not so much now. They would like to see you better. You are not a good man.”

“Mucho bueno. I defy you!”

“You will soon be on board a ship. I see a friend on board the ship, a real friend. He is neither a club man nor a heart man. He has a funny face. You do not know him very well. But he is your father too. And I see another, a taller man, a big man, a friend on board the ship. And a friend of other friend. You do not know him very well. You will cross deep waters together.”

“I hope I don’t stay in this hole all my life, anyhow,” I said with a laugh. “God!”

“You will cross deep waters. You are tender man. You have tender heart. You are gentle. You are good man. Good boy.”

“I am not a good man.”

“You are a good man, good boy.”

“I am a good man … good boy.”

“You are a good bloody rich man. You get rich little by little, day in by day out, slowly by slowly.”

“Does anyone really love me at all, for heaven’s sake?”

“Two men on the ship, I see, will be your faithful friends. The girl she think about you all the time and fret about you. But you are good man, good boy—”

Yumato Hotel. Yumato Hotel. Bar. Bar. Bar. Bar and Cabaret. Café Baikine. Boston Bar. Richard Barthelmess in “The Amateur Gentleman.” Richard Barthelmess in “The Amateur Gentleman.”

Kickshaw! Rickshaw! Rickshaw! Hi tiddy wing tilly willy wong! Rickshaw! Hi tiddy wing tilly willy wong—”

“Hi! Are you a proctor? If you’re not a proctor, have you lost a pigeon?”

“Hi tiddy wing tilly willy wong.”

“You look as if you’ve lost a pigeon. You look like a proctor. Must be proctor.”

“Rickshaw! Rickshaw!”

“Here, give me that thing. I’m going to take you for a ride!”

“No, please, please!”

“Get in!”

Richard Barthelmess in The Amateur Gentleman…

The wind came slowly at first, like my own intermittent breath, as I ran down the Yamagata-dori in the shafts of the jinrickshaw. Like the beginning of Debussy’s Hommage à Rameau. Then it came in quicker puffs; finally it bellowed as if ejected from the maw of some dragon; it blew in the teeth of rickshaw-wallahs and in my teeth, and I braced myself against it in the shafts like a shying horse. It snatched at the bottom of lampposts whirling old copies of the Singapore Free Press across the road. Stones blew across the road. The holy chorus swept down the burning streets, the swinging signs stood high against it, and groaned. The posters shouted: Free Press, Free Press, murder of brother-in-law’s concubine. Shrill light flickered behind glimmering panes, where kimonos and soft fabrics slept. The wind flung down the streets and crumpled the waters of the street. The night, pocked with bright stars, twitched its face and drew black blankets over it. Ah, mother, mother, what is this man thy darling kissed and cuffed thou lustingly engenderest to make his brag and rot crowned with all honour and all shamefulness? The Amateur Gentleman? The Yumato Hotel, nine million two hundred and fourteen bathrooms, H. & C.? Me nice girl very nice very clean very sweet very sanitary? I don’t want my son coarsened by a lot of hooligans? My son whom thou lustingly engenderest? Ah, sorrow, who dost borrow the lustrous passion from a falcon’s eye, but you cannot borrow your son because he is being coarsened by a lot of hooligans. Ah, Zeus, hear me now. Zeus. Zeus. Dis. Dios. Dii. Deorum. Deis or dis. Dais. I. S. R. Miles, the mathematics master, sitting at the head of the hall, presiding over preparation, his eyes lecherous and rolling, the eyes of a ferret. One had always suspected his homosexuality. Herod, he looked like. Herod, watching Salome. Among them you will seem like a moon moving in a white cloud, but do not ask the head of this man! Male Salome. Satsuma wares. Salome wears—what? And they pierced his hands his side his feet, and dey heard dat noise in Jerusalem street … . My missus’s tightly bound, she’s all tightly bound. Harry Weldon in 1925 singing that at the Derby Castle, Douglas, his audience bringing him back for his curtain over and over again.

Twice nightly 6:30—8:40 … The rooty drip of manly blood, the surging sea outweighs; the world uncertain comes and goes, the lover rooty stays. Beware the pretty face, my son, and shun the scrumptious chatterbox. Still, we’re gaily yet, and sweetly tooly for a kiss.

An electric train, friendly, swayed past, blue lightnings in its wake. Yes, yes, yes, it said, as it clattered over the points, return to the wedding night, behold the bridegroom cometh! Behold the bridegroom cometh! Post coitum omnia animalia triste est … .

Hoo-ah-hooooo, wailed a siren from the river. But why all the bother? Do this thing. Laugh about it, because it is funny; cry, for it is beautiful; smile, because it is inevitable. Hold it ever in your heart for its preciousness; be proud of it, boast of it to Janet. Well, it was Janet, wasn’t it? But if I could only be purged before doing it, were I only cleaner, more beautiful, how much more lovely would it be! How appealing the simple sadness of the scene could only the soiled Narcissus that was Hilliot be washed by rain from heaven … . Hearts that should be white turned red … . And all the sorrow of her labouring hips. North wind blow south over my vineyards, north wind brings the snow; I do not think that this is the north wind. Snow on the high pitched minster roof and spire; snow on the boughs of leafless linden trees; snow on the silent streets and squares that freeze. Under night’s wing, down drooping nigh and nigher. To be plunged in snow; immersed soundlessly and without pain in a substance as cold as Janet’s cheeks were in November; cold as the dawn; or as a dry bath of sheets. As cold as green grass, early, on a March morning, or sea under a momentarily cloud-veiled sun, as oilcloth to bared feet; to be morally refrigerated and lastly to be eaten, without equivocation, by a lustless Eskimo. Inside the church within the shadowy choir dim burn the lamps like lights on vaporous seas. Drowsed are the voices of droned litanies. Blurred as in dreams the voice of priest and friar. Cold hath numbed sense to slumber here!

No—no—no, said a train empty, the conductor talking to the driver from behind, leaning over his shoulder, clattering downwards towards the Yumato.

I ran along the streets with the rickshaw-wallah. Snow fell softly across my dream and old bells chimed dully. The cold wind of which I thought chilled me to the bone and blew in my teeth; there was a procession of horsemen in high white hats; my heart rhythmically beat with the rhythm of the horsemen; πολλà δ’ avavτa κáτovτa πάρaτά τε δóχµιά τ’ ήλθov; my heart swayed and bounced to the motion of the horse, my heart bounced downhill like a Stone! ‘Aυτις έπειπa πέδóνδε κυλινδετο λαας àvειδης.

It was afterwards, though, in the stable, in the dreaming warm stable afterwards, that I saw her alone. Over the white familiar fields to happy go. Is that spring where you are, Olga darling, spring with the music of melting snow, spring on the Russian steppes, and spring in your heart? Spring on the West Cheshire Golf Links, with its background of cylindrical brick-red gas works, the daisies blowing (innocently!) in the wind behind the freehold land for sale, behind the chain factory. I dreamed back along a chain of days. Olga’s shadow ran before her along the snow. I saw her stir the samovar and sweep the kitchen and break the ice to get more water. I saw how in the deep dark cold winter her mother put more wood in the central stove and threw her wolfskin coat on her daughter’s bunk to keep her warm. I heard her brother’s merry shout, as he chopped wood, and saw him blow on his hands. I heard the tinkle of sleigh bells, and saw snow, light as wool, falling from the eaves. Cold hath numbed sense to slumber here! Then hark, one swift soprano, soaring like a lark, beats around arch and aisle, echoing dark with exquisite aspiration; throbs that soul of fire, higher, higher yearning with sharp anguish of untold desire; Café Baikine. Richard Barthelmess in “The Amateur Gentleman”; Bar and Cabaret; Satsuma Wares; Norddeutscher Lloyd Steamships; Miki Bar—Dancing.

“Hullo there!”

“Hullo. So you’ve come back after your think, eh? Well, there’s plenty of fun going on upstairs. You trot up.”

Try your weight? No. I ascended the stairs unsteadily and pushed open the swing door. I saw that all the girls were taken, dancing with soldiers or sailors. Soon Olga swept past; a sailor, a bad dancer, whose features were indistinguishable in the gloom, was bending over her.

“You’ve got nice hands, sailor boy,” I heard her say to the man. “You’ve got nice hands, sailor boy.”

They are dancing wildly tonight, wildly in the village of Czernoff—a Negro fireman had taken his shoes off and did a crazy dance upon his enormous bare feet, a coconut in each hand and a cigar behind each ear. The music rose to a scream of dreadful pain. Another Negro joined the first in his dance. Modo and Mahu. Olga came round again with her sailor, and as they passed they chasséed crudely under a light while I recognised the sailor with whom she was dancing. Andy.

Arrow points to your correct weight only if you stand still on the platform until red hand stops before dropping coin. Patent No. 1,546,553. Peerless Weighing Machine Co., Detroit, Mich. 186 lbs. You are of a simple disposition, quiet and home-loving.

Tin. The sailors’ kindled watch lamps burning; the harbour lit up like a town …