“I AIN’T TELLING YOU the word of a lie but this Yankee fellow came up to me and ’e sez steyord ’e sez fond of cigars so I sez yes I am fond of cigars—like who wouldn’t be on this here fore-and-aft sea crane. Waal ’e says ketch hold of these—plenty of these where they come from. And he give me a great box of cigars. Yes.”
“Yes, but that’s only cigars. This bird was a journalist or something of that on a paper in Australia. He’s travelling round the world for it and singing songs at the piano. He says if you talk to me—”
“Lor lumme days. Talk to you. Do you mean he stood you that feed just for talking to him?”
“Certainly he did. He kept saying, now say that again. And all the while he was writing in a little black notebook.”
“Well, what did you tell him?”
“’Ave you heard about Hilliot, chaps? Andy nearly crowned ’im this morning with a frying pan. The seven bell dinner watch sent ’im up to the galley to tell him the sea pie was lousy.”
“—guano—”
“Well, so it was, lousy.”
“-Pass-”
“I don’t like ’im; serves ’im right; he’s what you call a no-classer, that feller.”
“Where is he now?”
“—one no trump—”
“Oh, dreaming about on the poop, he always gets up there during the lunch hour.”
“—Gang—”
“He’s probably listening at the skylight to all we say.”
“Three hearts.”
“Probably-”
“Romeo; wherefore art thou Romey bloody O—”
“But I didn’t know there was a seven bell dinner today—not on Sunday.”
“That’s not your ruddy heart! It’s my ruddy heart!”
“Yes. We’re sailing this evening. The mate came down and served out a lot of bull about getting in more mail. So Mister Hilliot had to get a seven bell dinner in.”
“And Andy nearly crowned him for telling ’im it was lousy. Well let me tell you that that’s the lad’s job. The sailors’ peggy always has orders from the bosun to complain about the food; you know, if it’s rotten—”
“Yes. But the silly devil went about it in the wrong way. You know the way he’d go up. Not going straight to the point, like. You know the way ’e does … . Well, it’s no business of mine sort of thing but these fellers—these damned sailormen say your food’s rotten. No wonder that Andy got on his ear.”
“Well, for God sake. But Andy’s all right, eh?”
“Yes, Andy’s all right, fellers.”
“Guano gang—”
“Well, wot did Hilliot do?”
“Hey, you didn’t shuffle up these cards right and all.”
“Damn all. He didn’t do a dam thing. A good thing for Andy, I reckon, but any way Hilliot just said well, just as long as you know, Andy. And walked out.”
“Oh, wot a twirp!”
“Hullo, ’ere’s the second steward.”
“’Ow go, second?”
“My trick—”
“Second, while you’re about it, you might give this godawful peggy of ours a clean dishcloth. He never washes the thing he’s got: and it’s about as white as a gyppo’s—”
“Are you still abusing that boy? I like him for myself like. He’s got pluck that Hilliot. I seen him aloft too, right on the foretopmast there, swinging on the ladder and laughing like a son of a bitch.”
“And the bosun bawling him out from below.”
“Guano—”
“Yes, mister!”
“One club—”
“Well, what about that dishcloth, second?”
“Pass.”
“Reminds me of the story of the nigger fireman on one of Lamport and Holt’s. Ah doan’ min’ dirty hands: Ah doan’ min’ dirty face: but ah du like clean food!”
“Ha ha ha!”
“Pass—”
“Well, well, so do we-”
“But Andy doesn’t like ’im, second.”
“Gang, guano—”
“No, my gosh.”
“Andy crowned ’im this morning with a frying pan. Or would have done if Hilliot hadn’t got out of the road.”
“So I heard.”
“It was pretty good, I thought. It’ll teach ‘im that not every little Christ Jesus in the temple can come running round cargo steamers.”
“My trick!”
“Well, no. But what he done in coming to sea at all shows the right spirit.”
“My trick!—”
“He came up to the ship in a car didn’t he?—no—I dunno—but the Chinese storekeeper tell me.”
“Well, boys, he didn’t come up to the ship in any car last night; as a matter of fact, he got on to the wrong ship.”
“The wrong ship? Second, how come?”
“The Hyannis. Sister ship to this one came in late last night. He was tight as a tick so couldn’t tell the difference.”
“—my trick—”
“But the Hyannis, her fo’c’sle’s forward, ain’t it? Like it should be on any ruddy boat, instead of being stuck under here like a lot of bloody ventilator covers.”
“Yes. That was the joke. He went right down aft looking for the forecastle and, of course, couldn’t find it; so being very drunk he slept on the poop.”
“Well, wot did he do in the morning?”
“—my trick—”
“He just got up and walked off. Nobody said a word to him.”
“—for Jesus sake—”
“—for Jesus sake—”
“—told me so himself this morning when he came aboard. I was standing on the gangway—”
“The damn fool—eh? That’s why he’s on the poop now. Afraid the Captain’ll tell his mama.”
(But, tut-tut, a pipe must be filled to contemplate this scene with more penetrating intelligence, and a thick dirty hand inserted into my right dungaree pocket in search of the tobacco pouch, the last birthday present you gave me, Janet … do you remember? It was in the Central Park, a year ago tomorrow, when we paused to watch the children playing on the swings, and then, “Look, would that be any good to you, dear? Many happy returns of the day … ” Loew’s Orpheum. Ruby fisheries. Do you remember going there to get the cod steaks for your mother? Well, I have my pouch now, which I have drawn out, crackling and yellow, sprinkling crumbs of tobacco around me. And now I have my pipe well alight. The day? What of the day? Well, the sky has that sort of blackness which in February, in England, would presage thunder. There was wind last night; and moreover I slept on the wrong ship. But there is a feeling of approaching disaster, of terrible storm, and my own mood, one of hilarious morbidity, conceals also just such a thing. It is useless of me to tell you about it. Instead—what shall I tell you? Of the junk that is standing out to sea? Of the Japanese destroyer that came in the morning? Of your letter, which I lost, leaving it in the hands of a drunken German wireless operator, and how I wept all night thinking of it, peering at Liverpool through a telescope, counting the waves? Or shall I make the tactile effort, surprise my mind in a state of dishevelment, and give you a sober collocation of the news? No. Let me tell you of the fortune-teller then, who said “Everybody like you when you play instrument, nobody like you when you not play … .” The Taropatch? Tarot Pack. Or, as a last resort, merely of the crew or of those at any rate whom I can see through the skylight. Mcgoff, for instance, down there, filling his pipe too, the old devil, with hasty trembling fingers; Ted, taking the scurf out of his fingernails: ha, a touch, a visible touch! Horsey: lying across the table with his face on his arm. The second steward’s broad back and the patch on his trousers; Andy, too, has a patch on his trousers … . But the joke’s on me. I have to admit that of these men who become day by day more intricately and more intensely part of me I know nothing. Nothing at all! Even of Andy, the great Tattoo, who is not present, but who is more a part of me than the rest, I know nothing. That awful incident in the galley—everybody is talking about it. Why do I not fight Andy then? To know a thing is to kill it, a post-mortem process! Why won’t I? Undignified? Too Richard Barthelmess? … Perhaps, but I might have lost, and I know less than nothing. But there is no reason to fight, even about last night! Bad, dreadfully bad, as that was. My fault. But how can I stand for it, how can I suffer on top of last night’s usurpation when I was beaten out by that simpering chinless applesquire, this further petty insult added, in the galley, to an injury of which he was not aware? I won’t stand for it, by God. Jimminy Christmas no, as Taff would say! But perhaps Andy won’t want to fight, even if he has invited it plainly enough. Then this is not heroic, and there’s the humour of it. To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength, gives in his weakness, strength unto his foe, and so his follies fight against himself. Argal. Let us take refuge in the sailor’s coil, contemplate a world of winches as a world of machine guns: let there be a sabbath of earthworms, a symphony of scorpions, a procession of flying grand pianos and cathedrals, and the idea, the absolute, is fly-blown. Tucket within, and a flourish of strumpets. Beware Andy! I move like a ghost towards my design, with Tarquin’s ravishing strides … . Nevertheless, I fear too greatly decisive action in an emotional crisis of calibre; nor do I wish to admit to myself that I consider Andy sufficiently important; but this, as you say, is clearly enough a case of self-defence—)
“—one club—”
“—one heart—”
“—one diamond—”
“—one no trump—”
“Well … I”
“Lor lumme bloody days eh.”
“I don’t care if he do, mate.”
“Lor lumme bloody days eh.”
“This first mate’s a man; he’s got me weighed up; like that.”
“—dishcloth—”
“—here, you’re cheating!—”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Yes, I am too.”
“He had the ace in his shanghai jacket.”
“No, I tell you, the poor twot didn’t say a thing. He just said well as long as you know, Andy.”
“All these bloody no-classers are the same.”
“You can bet your boots. We had a feller once—been in the Royal Air Force he says during the war as a capting. Capting hell. First time he goes aloft he nearly throws a fit.”
“I wonder wot made that bird ’Illiot come to sea; doing a good lad out of ‘is job, that’s wot I say—”
“That’s what Andy says.”
“That’s what we all says, I reckon”
“No. You’ve got the lad in wrong there. You can’t get him on that at all. It’s up to the man himself to get the job. If he don’t, why then, I guess he don’t.”
“That sucker’s got influence at the office.”
“He came to the ship in a car. Do you know that?”
“Oh, watch it! Let’s talk of something else.”
“—and listen here, this mate, he, he, says—Air Force officer or no perishing Air Force officer, you’re not nut—”
“Go on, you ain’t got hiccups, ’ave you, mate?”
“Not going up to that nest again or I’ll lose my bonus. So no more painting for you, Mister Officer, he says; the next job of painting you’ll do will be—”
“Aw shag off, second, you’ll be in the boy’s bunk next.”
“This Air Force officer I was telling you about was always falling off derricks. Hullo, Andy.”
“Hullo, there.”
“I ain’t telling you the word of a lie but this Yankee feller come up to me and ’e sez steyord ’e sez fond of cigars so I sez yes I am fond of cigars—like who wouldn’t be on this fore-and-aft sea crane. Waal he says ketch hold of these—plenty where these come from—”
“Hullo, Andy. ’Ow go?”
“All right. But do you know what? We’re taking a cargo of lions and bloody tigers and elephants to London. Then we’re going to New York and nobody’s to be allowed to pay off. But elephants—Christ, what’s the ship coming to. I know because I was told the cook’s to feed the bloody things.”
“Well, it doesn’t interfere with us much. There’s nothing like that in the articles. No bloody fear!”
“Well, the skipper reckons he’s getting the Greek to lend a hand to the keeper.”
“Well, he’s got a way with animals. I suppose Spanish Pedro will go with him. But I don’t reckon it matters much to the crowd.”
“Hullo there … hullo, second; hullo Mcgoff.”
“What about last night, Andy. We saw you.”
“Oh, you did. You may’ve seen me at half-past nine—but you didn’t see me at ’arf-past two this morning. Or if you did you oughtn’t to have done.”
“No—nor me.”
“Nor me.”
“Nor my ruddy self.”
“Well, what were you doing, Lofty?”
“What do you think? I didn’t go ashore at all. I’m a Godfearing man and I don’t go running after women.”
“Aw, watch it. Well anyhow, it’s Sunday today.”
“I don’t care if he do, mate. That’s wot I always says. I’m a feller like this, I don’t mind … . Always willing to do a good turn for anybody, that’s me. I don’t care if he do.”
“Russian, eh?”
“Second—can we have another pack of cards—the King, Queen and Ace are all bollocksed up in this pack and you can spot ’em, you know.”
“A change for last night, eh? Won’t your usual Jane get jealous?”
“Sure. There’s a pack in the linen locker. Here are the keys.”
“A fine woman.”
“Well, before I was in the guano gang, I was only an apprentice lad for myself like, apprentice, and we was going out to Walfish Bay, the whole gang of us, with a cargo of lighters in sections, although at Cape Cross they had to lead from surf boats because the lighters all got all broke up—”
“Six pounds a month, mate, and all found.”
“Well, I can’t rightly say as I’ve ever been on a ship with animals before but this much I will say, and I ain’t tellin’ you the word of a lie, that I was on a bloody ship once that was carrying a stuffed hippopotamus, for Christ sake! She was called Huberta or something of that and she’d been shot in Cape Province, you know, King William’s Town. This hippo’d been the bloody masterpiece in South Africa, see? They reckoned she’d walked ten thousand miles and the natives thought she was a goddess or something and sacrificed oxen to her. And I ain’t telling you the word of a bloody lie but a special law was passed—nobody could shoot her, see? She walked all the way down from Vongolosi and Lake St. Lucia to Durban where she walked into a concert just as they were starting Tschaikovsky’s
1912 or something of that and she walked through the main street of sodding Durban too, only in the end four bastards of farmers shot her—”
“Is that so-”
“—is that so—”
“Carbeerian sea, a guinea note—”
“Well, I don’t care if ’e do, mate-”
“Six months or so I suppose we was there under canvas like and I’ll tell you it was a rum shop. There was one chap we had and we called him Deaffy—”
“Wot do you think of that for a cockroach?”
“—this is better, eh? You shuffle them—”
“—king of the steamflies, eh—”
“Everything in white, you know, lovely buildings, very nice indeed.”
“And one night this chap Deaffy come into wot you might call the messroom, you know. And ’e sez, look ’ere fellers come along with me there’s a bloody big barrel or wine oooooh eh. Just been washed up on the shore. So we got our cups and a corkscrew and followed him along—it was pitch dark outside—and we came to where the barrel was—and one chap had brought a basin—”
“—your deal—”
“Can’t you see the water biling, I sez; and this bloody old skipper turns round to me and ’e says, Lamptrimmer, ’e says, we always speak the King’s English on this ship—”
“And it wasn’t wine at all but Cape Dopp, wot we call Cape Dopp—raw spirit gawd blimey. Why, do you know, we all went mad, mad, and they had to tie Deaffy up to the bullock post.”
“—two diamonds my bloody foot!—”
“—two diamonds my bloody foot!—”
“Yes. And the joke about it all was that it hadn’t been washed up on the shore at all, but Deaffy had pinched it, see, from the store.”
“Good God!”
“And there we all bloody were doing time and building breakwaters round the magistrate’s house.”
“See in the Free Press here two freighters collided in the fog, not a hundred miles from here … . Not so bloody funny eh, if we’ve got these bloody animals on board if we get fog.”
“Oh stop growling, for gosh sake!”
“Yes, round the magistrate’s house.”
“Fancy that, now.”
“That reminds me of the time in—”
“Chameleons. Fellers used to keep ’em as pets and make ’em drunk on Cape Dopp. They were as long as that, you know. Beautiful pretty things. They used to roll about and change into all sorts of colours: it was like being at Masculine and Debutante, you know, and then I had a pet one and one day a silly bastard fed it on nuts and bolts. Nuts and bolts, yes. Oh, we had a rare time there, I can tell you … didn’t wear no shoes! Oh no, no shoes, walking on the salt plain, we wore what we called veldshols. One day coming back from the West Indie feller’s tent—I’d had one or two, you know—I got lost in the salt plains all night and there were jackals and scorpions, bags of the bounders—”
“Scorpions. You ain’t heard nothing yet. Let me tell you this when I was in Belawandelli, it was on a Norwegian bastard out of Trondhiem, the Hilda—”
“—herons, vodka distillery—”
“Your trick, Ted.”
“We had one fellow there in the guano gang, not a surf boat man, but loading the bags. He used to work from five in the morning till about nine, he was a sneak, a proper sneak, and a religious bounder too, you know … and he was always going to the boss with !complaints! We got no money ourselves, we used to gamble with sticks of tobacco, and you know how expensive clothes are out there—well he used to get clothes sent from home and sell them to us at a much increased price like, the bounder. So one day we kidded him along that there was going to be an attack by the Vompas—a tribe—wot we call the Vompas, yes—they come from Vompaland, and we kidded him along and kidded him along and one night, see, he was in his tent—”
“—she’s only got one titty but she’s all the world to me—”
“One titty—”
“But she’s all the world to me.”
“—one heart! —”
“—two diamonds!—”
“And you know how cold it is at night there and the tents were stretched tight as a drum; and there we all were outside firing off rifles into the air; and throwing haricot beans into the tent, and of course he thought they were bullets and then we went into the tent with assegais—there were always plenty of those knocking about—and some of us pretended to be wounded and one thing and the other, and there this bounder was all the time underneath the bed, praying for Christ sake!”
“—fer Christ sake—”
“—praying!”
“Niggers. Yes. Fuzzy-wuzzy niggers there used to be there, curly-headed. Dirty? My God, I’ve seen them cooking the entrails of a sheep and squeezing the stuff out of them like putting your mouth under a tap and eating it, and if you asked them they say Wo! auh! Wolla wolla! Very good! Very good!”
“—yes? —”
“—yes? —”
“But in the end Deaffy went mad with the loneliness; and it took nine or ten strong men to hold him; and he used to lie down on the ground with his eyes wide open and let the flies crawl over his eyeballs … yes, and one day he was in charge of a donkey-wagon with guano; and the donkey died; and he lay down beside the donkey and died too; and so in the morning when we found them, the jackals had scooped them both out—”
“Gawd blimey eh!”
“Well, talking of niggers, there was two whacking bull niggers in the Miki too, last night; firemen they were, and when I told Olga—”
“No, you don’t say for gosh sake, Andy.”
“For gosh sake.”
(έπι δέ τω τεθυµένω
τóδε µέλος παρακοπà
παpαϕoρà ϕρεναδολής
ΰμνος έξ ’Eρινύων.)
“And do you know what she said? He he!”
(έπι δέ τω τεθυμένω s … If I could only shut my ears to this, and my eyes, and not have the whole sordid matter set forth in all its startling vividness; if I could drown or fly away; if I could only be walking again down Bateman Street, Cambridge, Eng., that day in late February with spring approaching and the grey birds sweeping and dipping in curves and spirals about the singing telegraph wires—or weren’t there any?—and later the two undergraduates fighting outside “The Red Cow.” And the green buses. Station—Post Office—Chesterton, which always swirled so surprisingly from behind corners as though they had some important message to deliver! … The same in Tokio as in Leicester Square. New Brighton. Half-past five, on a wet changeable evening in May, three months ago … The sun has just come out. The two figures, the girl with the brown eyes in the school blazer and a white skirt. Janet Travena and her lover walk slowly through the afternoon sunlight. Halfway down the Town Gardens, he pauses to light his pipe. An eddy of smoke pours on the damp air. The warped match drops in a puddle. The two figures, now triumphantly arm in arm, pass out through the open gate to the left of the deserted turnstiles. They stroll slowly in the direction of Egremont Ferry, along the desolate promenade, and past soaking walls where sodden advertisements are clinging like wet rags. The sun disappears behind a cathedral-shaped cloud, gliding solemnly, but reappears and what a warmth of friendship and light is then showered upon them, and upon the two saxophonists of the Palais de Danse, Zez and Mas, whom they know, who are squelching back to their lodgings along the shore, capering and laughing among the spinach-green rocks… . The sky has been quite emptied of its colour. “Mas, Mas, Zez!” they shout. “We must get them to play Chloe—but no, they can’t hear. It’s against the wind.”
With bodies braced and motionless the two figures look high up into the watery sunlight where white sea gulls are drifting backwards complainingly, they laugh up at them, and then look down at the tide, which is coming in against the wind, crumbling weakly on to the black beach. A dirty Belfast fishing smack, very low in this tide and under a modest spread of brown sail, suddenly careens as she slips through the lapping choppiness of the viscous Mersey, her patched brown sail bellying slightly out to leeward, leaning, leaning, till her curved gunwale is almost under. “Oh, look, Dana, look, it’s going right over, it’s going to capsize, look!”
“Good lord, no,” he gently reassures her with the pressure of his arm. “It’s intended to do that … .” But what does anything matter except their love? The fishing smack continues merrily and confidently upon her course down the Mersey. Later, however, avoiding Egremont Ferry as they ascend a street of houses built on an incline to Brighton Road, which runs parallel to the promenade, as they waver at the King’s picture-house, with its peeling stucco, where they are showing on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Love’s Crucifixion, with Olga Tschechowa, and mingle and flow with the crowd, they realise with a slow, dark horror that, even had Mas heard, it would have been all to no purpose, they would never have been able to dance to Janet’s favourite tune—Chloe, the Song of the Swamp—for this is the last day. They are parting, perhaps forever … .
At half-past seven, by the clock on the Liver Buildings, he returns on the ferry from Liverpool.
Sitting in a friendless saloon, semicircular, and bare of furniture, on a hard striped bench, he smokes his pipe in silence, raising his head only once to the multi-coloured chart of mercantile marine flags on the Journal of Commerce flagsheet. Outside it has started to rain again, a colourless dusty rain, and through the windows he sees two sailors in shining oilskins loitering under the gangway. Liverpool sweeps away from him in a great arc. Through the rain-scarred windows he watches Liverpool become rain … .
At a quarter to eight, descending from his train at Queen’s Park, where, to please her mother, he has once seen Janet safely into a tin church for a prayer meeting, the one figure now drifts slowly under the grainy sky past Morgan Roberts’ Osteopathy and Manipulative Treatment and the children’s playground on the left into Brighton Road again. Thence down the very street built on an incline he had ascended two hours before, a street of “by the yard” houses, he sees the Mersey slipping by like, he thinks, an enormous open drain. … He notices two children playing at the top of the steps, and remarks what they say: “Oi’m not going down there!” says one. “Oi am, Jim,” says the other.
It seems to him then that the Mersey is like a vast camera film, slowly and inexorably winding. Soon he will be entangled in her celluloid meshes, and wound out to the open sea. The Oxenstjerna, of which he knows, will be wound out again, away from her home port. “I have the sympathetic instinct, simpático; swordfish swim in me. I bear, not without murmuring, the burden of a thousand ships. But do you think I’m playing this game for nothing?” the sea seems to be saying. Simpático, simpático, it laps, sadly bantering him.
And now that lonely figure, a century or two older, lives in a decaying excavated world, with only a few white flowers of memory left, until they too crumble to dust and corruption. If he could only unlive the past two months, back to her, never to be separated from her!
Now he can only wonder whether she has forgotten the things he told her; that story, for instance, poor Harry Crosby’s story, so incredible and delightful, of the man who invited the seamstress, the little seamstress with the cross eyes, to take her thread and needle and sew his mouth on to his lover’s—who asked the village blacksmith (in the bar of the Pip and Bellyache) to forge golden chains to tie their ankles together, and who arranged with the coiffeur for his hair to grow into hers and hers into his—yet with what result in the end? The scissors of the Fates were brought and severed them apart. A sad story, he reflects, especially when he thinks of Crosby’s own fate. But those lovers are you and I. It is spring again, the sun is on the lake, the daffodils are nodding and blowing. There are toy boats sailing, dipping their tiny prows into the cool water. The puddles are lying at the foot of the Wallasey sandhills after the rain, the groundsel is growing on the vacant lot by the County Inn. At eleven-thirty Samuel Broster comes smiling out of the bar parlour, tying his apron. The very same day. The same men have walked foolishly round the ferry boats on their way to business in the morning, smoking their pipes and reading the morning papers; tonight there will be the same hangers-on at the marketplaces, guiltily watching the naphtha flares.
Nothing has changed. Nothing. Only that the lonely figure, the lover, myself, Dana Hilliot—none of them are with you to see these things. The Yellow Sea, the Black Sea, the Dead Sea, the Red Sea and all of the seventy-seven seas, and more than seas, lie between us. Or is it only a nightmare? … I am not on a ship. I wish I were, since I don’t know what it’s like. I wish I were. I wish. I were—what? A pair of ragged clauses scuttling between two dark parentheses? Possibly I am. Anyhow I am not a seaman. No. The ship is not alongside the wharf in Tsjang-Tsjang. I am not on a ship’s poop, listening at a skylight. More likely I lie in my bed at home—a cold, dry bath of sheets! Beside me, the reading lamp with the scarlet shade. The cold marble mantelpiece with the gas fire beneath, the mysterious, quivering green curtains! Golf clubs in the corner, tennis racket on top of the wardrobe, toothbrush, sponge and soap. The copy of the Blue Peter on top of my heaped clothes. Bar-bells and a rifle. For a moment I think of the book I have been reading—Kipling’s Captains Courageous—and fall asleep, easy as a child, gliding down a steep incline into slumber. For a moment, like Proust, I listen to the noise of my own weeping; then I dream a dream. In this dream there is Andy—but who is Andy?—singing as he rolls aimfully down the Kuan Tsien road; Andy fumbling with his entrance ticket to the Miki dancing saloon; Andy dancing lumberingly and possessively with Olga—but who is Olga?—like a chinless orang-outang in the forest with his human captive; Andy leaving his shoes outside the door. And later, after the second bottle, shifting his shoes outside the second door. There is Andy leaning out of the window in his shirt sleeves, singing to the moon—)
“I don’t care if ’e do, mate.”
“No. Well, that’s what I sez anyhow, Andy; I see a look in his eye which means trouble.”
“Trouble. Yes. It will be trouble too if I have anything to do with it. Trouble! You’re right!”
“—three no trumps, Jesus Christ Almighty!”
“I’m damned if I see what you’ve got against the boy all the same.”
“Well, you’ll see right enough, once the fun begins. What you do with a chap like him, stamp on his foot, and—whup!—like that. Uppercut. That’s what he wants, the Glasgow punch.”
“Ah, that’s a deadly one that is—”
“Shut up, for Christ sake, we’re playing bridge.”
“He pinches my steam covers, too.”
“Ah, come now, what would he want to do that for anyway?”
“Gawd knows, I don’t. But I saw him with my own eyes, or rather, no I didn’t, but the chief steward did, and he says he took it to keep extra soda for scrubbing out! … And he pinches soft soap off me. He’d pinch the milk out of my tea, that boy, and that’s the sort of thing that comes out of your public bloody schools. Well, I don’t really know. I don’t really. Honest.”
“What Hilliot wants is a good strong woman!”
“Ha ha ha!”
“He went ashore last night.”
“Yes, and you all know what happened, don’t you?”
“He went and slept on the Hyannis.”
“Because he couldn’t find his way here.”
“—is that so? —”
“—is that so? —”
“What was the name of the place?”
“Sapporo Café and Bar. Here, I’ve got the card. Listen to this. Nice and clean accommodation. Quick service. Sapporo Café and Bar, No. 157, Yamagata-Dori, Tel. No. 6705. Soft and hard drinks. Mariners are all welcome. Here is a place you must not fail to visit, everything at very moderate charges.”
“Hello, Sculls.”
“’Ow go?”
“All right.”
“All right.”
“I ain’t telling you the word of a lie but this Yankee feller came up to me and ’e sez steyord ’e sez fond of cigars so I sez yes I am fond of cigars—like who wouldn’t be on this here fore-and-aft dunbarge. Waal, he sez, ketch hold of these—plenty of these where they come from. And he gave me a great box of cigars. Yes.”
“I had an experience like that on the Plato—in Manila—last voyage … ”
“Last game—”
“Listen to this, just listen to this. Here you will find every comfort and equipment that is sure to please you. Here you will find also best foreign wines and liquors of well-known brands only. Sold by retail or bottle. He he, just listen to this little lot. A variety of magazines and newspapers are kept in our hall for your free inspection.”
“Ha ha ha ha”
“Hullo, Lamps, boy. How are yer doing?”
“Hullo, Jim boy.”
“All right there, Jock.”
“All right.”
“That’s right.”
“Me nice girl, very nice, very clean, very sweet … ”
(Why not, Janet? I put it to you; I mean really kill Andy. Everybody knows he can’t swim. And we’re going to sea tonight. That habit he has of sitting on the starboard rail behind the galley! It will be dark before he has knocked off, which makes it all the simpler. Yesterday, a little way up the coast, two freighters collided in the fog. At sea tonight. Murder at sea. A murderer in thought, a murderer indeed. Now I see it plainly. Listen. All is set. Andy sits on the rail. No fog yet—but a ship has signalled “fog ahead.” All clear for the moment, dangerously clear. The starlight’s cold. Wait your moment. The lookout changes, but the watch below still lie in their absolute slumber; high up above me the topmast trembles in a gush of wind and the aerial aloft sheaths a gentle threnody; the watch on deck lean idly against the bunker hatch until, a spatter of rain coming, one moves aft to turn the ventilators. This is the hour of consciousness, the hour of blood, dedicated to the sea tiger. My mind is brilliantly clear; every seam in the ship, every nut and bolt, every steamfly, every thought and dream of every member of the crew is there minutely drawn and of extraordinary importance. The ventilators themselves, yellow-throated, moan and hush like cowrie shells, echoing the surge of the water. The bosun snores as he has never snored before, within his narrow bunk, his white cap neatly folded under his slim white pillow; the carpenter lies on his side, counting, through the brass-rimmed porthole, the reeling stars; now the stars are numbers of hammers he has in his shop, now the digits of the tank sounding on the blackboard in the engine-room entrance, the number of steps from the galley to the clusterlocker, the number of taps under the steam piping, flakes, flakes, flakes, flakes of shavings ceaselessly tumbling and fluttering. Cloom-cloom. Andy sitting on the rail. Cloom. Wait your moment … . The door of the lamptrimmer’s cabin, white-silled, windily creaks and strains softly on the taut hook; a shaft of wild moonlight turns to silver the dull yellow curtain rail of his bunk, the carafe of cloudy water clicks in its hole, glock-glut, and the kerosene lamp is moving slowly over in its chain with the long roll of the ship; the photograph of his wife has come adrift from the bulkhead and hangs, limply flapping, on one nail. Norman is asleep, and in his dream he sees a procession of policemen, bandy-legged and smiling, twirling batons absurdly as they pass down Scotland Yard on the night of Bank Holiday, the last policeman being actually Norman himself. Steamflies are creeping among the tarred seams in the blackness beneath the lamptrimmer’s bunk, narrow as a baby’s coffin, making a tiny noise in the stillness like the pattering of rain outside as they are stealthily prowling over the dirty discarded chain-breaker singlet, underneath the maul and the heavy-smelling sea boots, and the limp bags of caustic soda—lunar caustic—and soogie. Outside all is silence. It is the silence of the jungle, roaring with a noise worse than death. Cloom-cloom-cloom-cloom-cloom … suddenly the telegraph rings, the silence changes its note. Fog! It rolls up in scurrying wisps, a phalanx of ghosts which fills the alleyways with white breath. The siren sputters, blasts a terrible warning over the grey wilderness. Fog banks to left of us, fog banks to right of us. Every two minutes the foghorn must go, according to Board of Trade rules; wait two minutes, Andy-sitting on the rail. Now I can do it pat. Now. Oh, oh, oh …
Once again, but now with what satisfaction, I move into the forecastle and light the hurricane lamp against the darkness. How the solitude of the friendly lamp penetrates me now! Perfect, just as I thought. Nothing could have been better than the way his death-cry had been strangled by the siren! All just as I thought! I light the hurricane lamp in the darkness and it fills the darkness of the messroom with a solitude which becomes my own. I become a part of the sea—solitude of the hurricane lamp and of the sea-darkness and spray flowing over the ship and into it, a part of the messroom itself—six feet by six—of the oilstove, and of the fly-blown light which is never used, and the strip of oilcloth on the deck, and of the pink-patterned cotton clothes; for now in the light of my ghastly deed all these respond as they have never done before; and, as never before, I feel my mood communicable to the imponderable alley outside, and to the sea-breathing of mariners, to the remote sea-sobbing and the beating heart of the ship.
Outside on deck where I must go to dance my wild delight
I feel the mood of the special night coming to take its place; the mood of time dripping its rain through the fog vanishes, and the mood of the roaring lion and tiger, the mood of the murderer, is resumed. The ropes are pearled with fog; the iron bows rise slowly to the rain-white swell; the siren diapasons AAAAAndy! AAAAAndy! And other voices, now near, now far and falling, call in reply: Aaaaaandy! Aaaaaaandy! The Oedipus Tyrannus is feeling her way along now, shrouded for the grave. Amidships the friendly cabin and ceiling lights, seen dimly from the well decks, suddenly plunge, with a sickeningly accelerated motion, into the infinite; there is the crash and clatter of shovels in the stokehold, and the ship, thrusting at my unsteady feet, soars upward—always upward, quiveringly into the darkness. The siren roars up after it on a note that Roland might have blown on the last fissure of the Malebolge; then there is silence again, the faint silence of waters.
No one has seen him go.…
In the morning Norman, whose duty it is to arouse Andy, upon being called by the quartermaster at four bells, slides his hands with their broken, blackened nails under his slim pillowcase to bring out half a crumpled cigarette, Gold Flake, charred and uneven at the end where it has been smoked before turning in. He jumps up and sits on the edge of his bunk, the lower one, with his legs swinging and his feet poised to drop into size seven unlaced sandshoes; he looks around the room, noticing particularly Ginger, the pantry boy, lying on his bunk with his mouth open, and his underpants, which are all he wears at night, vibrating with the thrumming of the engine.
He will remark for the hundredth time the pictures on the wall. Tallulah Bulkhead—or is it Bankhead? Ginger’s mother taken with an armful of horrible children. Joe Ward taken at the Police House. Flint with his twin brother. Monozygotic twins. Taff standing on Bull Bay sands, Amlwch, swinging a mashie niblick. He wishes profoundly and for the hundred-thousandth time that he may grow that extra inch, praying softly: “Our Father which art in heaven may I grow another inch and become a policeman of the Lord.” He pulls his check trousers on over his sandshoes and pays attention to his chainbreaker singlet. He brushes his hair—and oh, how yellow it is!—and cleans his teeth, spitting into a bucket. Now he is walking along the well deck, his bucket on his arm, scarcely pausing as he spits resonantly into the scuppers; now he is hoisting himself up the galley companion-steps. He enters the galley (where a quartermaster’s singlet is drying) and rakes out the fires. Four bells strike, he throws his cigarette to leeward, and goes to call Andy. The white cabin door, brass-silled, windily creaking on the prehensile hook. Everything the same as the chief cook left it when he turned in, according to his custom, just as eight bells all-hands-pipe-down had finished striking. The chief cook snores peacefully—let him lie till a quarter of six. Andy—where is Andy? His razor strop is stirring in a breath of wind through the open port; the canary in its brightly bordered cage is already chirruping with joy, its little heart almost breaking with anxiety to see the blue morning. The slim parcel of blankets, embroidered with the Company’s crests—1840 Steam and Sail—undisturbed. Andy! Andy! Anybody seen Andy! Was he sleeping out on deck, do you know? No, not bloody likely, too damp, not a worthwhile thing to do when the tropics was lousy with malaria! Too damp, Norman, that’s it, too damp. No good worrying any more about Andy, think of yourself, of your mickey, take the cover off his cage as though you should hope to find Andy there, and see—how knowingly and sagaciously the pigeon eyes you! He knows. Mark well the calmness of the sea, the clear sky of the summer sky engulfed by the porthole, and the new horizon which slowly diameters it and sinks again; mark well the kindly shadows swimming on the deck; hear, more acutely than ever before, the tramp of feet overhead, the bosun’s orders, and the insistent, dominant hiss of the hose; fill your lungs more gratefully than you ever remember, with the pleasant smell of the coffee being made by Dana Hilliot. For no—not an infinitude of despairing blasts can bring back Andy—and what, indeed, if they could? For tattoo marks, like the faces of the dead, tell us nothing. The peacock on his right bicep now, the eagle, the snake and the bathing girl remember nothing. Where are the Stars and Stripes now, the Norwegian flag, the crucifix, the barque in full sail. The hands have clasped another cross, and the flowers are drowned in salt; the heart remembers nothing. Think then, Norman, always of that extra inch, get the potatoes from the potato locker and proceed with your work as scullion. For the sea is picking Andy’s bones in whispers. Pedro, the Spaniard, will help you in the galley now. Yes, yes, yes, Sculls. Oh you who throw the peel and look to starboard, “acuérdate de Flebas, que una vez fué bello y robusto como tú”—)
“Hullo, Joe.”
“How go?”
“Not bad.”
“Not bad.”
“How are you doing, Mcgoff?”
“Ah, Jock, I’ve got a little story to tell you. Now I ain’t telling the word of a lie, mind you, but this Yankee feller, you know that chap, you was there—you saw him, didn’t you?—well he comes right up to me and he says: Steyord, fond of see-gars. Straight he did. So I sez yes sir, I am right fond of cigars—”
“Skipper, old feller. I knew years and years ago it will be now—”
“Well of course it was his business to find faults. When he does that he’s pleased and lights a cigar. When he ain’t got no faults to find no cigars for the skipper that day, savvy? Well, I reckon it’s the same on this goddam dugout—”
“Plenty of these where they come from, ha ha!”
“Well, I always believe in writing so’s a chap can read, he might owe me something—”
“Ha ha ha.”
“—naval relics—”
“Chatham—”
“Heard the bosun getting at Hilliot the first day. Well, he was only telling him what to do like—”
“—one more game, come on now, boys—”
“What’s that, Andy?”
“Bosun, the first day, telling Hilliot what to do. ‘I expect this room to be speckless,’ he said. Well, look at it. I bet the bilges are kept cleaner than this and he pinches enough soft soap off me to keep the whole ship clean, gawd blimey—and that ain’t all. ‘You’ve got my room, the carpenter’s, and the lamptrimmer’s rooms to do,’ ’e said, ‘and our washbasins to clean—and the brass to do in there as well and everything to be scrubbed out every day. If you don’t do it, I’ll hit you till you do. You’ve got all the meals to get in, and you’ve got your own washing to do as well as the washing-up, and you’ve got to keep yourself clean. It’s my business to see you do that. Sailors aren’t dirty. You ruddy farmers think they are. But they’re not. Muck in … ’ Well, look at the boy now, he never washes himself, this room’s like a pigsty, gawd blimey eh—”
Oedipus Tyrannus—Liverpool.
Seamen. Boddy-Finch Life Jacket. Matroser.
Utdrag av Kostreglement for den Norske handelsflaate.
Certified for use as sailors’ messroom. Tin.
“Murder with his silent bloody feet—”
“Why, here he is!”
“Hullo, lovey, what’ve you been doing?”
“How go, Hilliot?”
“Andy, I’m going to speak to you. Listen, everybody, while I speak to Andy. It’s for you too. Now then, it’s about time I had this out with you. I don’t deny I’ve been listening to what you’ve been saying from the poop. And you can’t—”
“Well, for—”
“—deny that you’ve been doing your level best to make life a misery for me since we left home. And what’s more, you’ve been telling a lot of damned lies about me! You say I pinch your steam covers, and your soft soap—well, let me tell you I don’t! I’ve never—”
“Well, for Christ—”
“—pinched anything of anybody’s. You said that I’ve made a mess of my job. Well, I don’t think that’s true—this room’s not too bad. It’s as good as you could make it yourself. Anyone could see that. And I’d like to know how you make it out that I’m doing another lad out of his job. God damn it, man, it’s surely up to the lad himself to get the job. But wait a minute, I’ve got something more to say; I haven’t wanted to fight before; but to be frank with you that wasn’t because I’m afraid of you and your Glasgow punches—no, simply because I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Well, for … Christ—”
“You weak-chinned son of a Singapore sea lion! you cringing cowardly bloody skulker! You’ve got a face just like a filthy jackal, all nose and no chin … . What a spiteful, cunning, dirty wreck of the Hesperus you are! That’s just it, your face. Your measly, weak face. I’ve just been afraid for you, that’s all! Why, by Christ, if you’d got a chin, you little bastard, I’d hit you on it!”
“For Christ sake go easy, Hilliot.”
“Why should I go easy? Come on, you ship’s cook, you chinless wonder, you—put them up. Up, I say.”
Tin.
“Here … go easy, Hilliot.”
“Why should I go easy?”
“Sit down, Andy; don’t be a bloody fool. Sit down! Sit down!”
“What the hell? What’ve I got to go easy for?”
“Well—listen-it’s like this—”
“Like what? What’s wrong with you all? You know I’m in the right.”
“Now then, Hilliot, don’t be a bloody fool either and go shooting your face off about Andy. He’s an older and better man than you.”
“Yis. He’s knocked seven bells out of harder cases than you in his time.”
“Yes, go easy, boy … We all know, you see, that Andy lost his chin in the War, and he’s had plates in it, and all, and if you hit him on it, he might croak. You mustn’t talk like that. We know it’s your first voyage and you get just the same as any of us got on his first voyage. Andy and I’ve been shipmates for ten years. You mustn’t talk like that. Go easy, man.”
“Three times torpedoed!”
Tin.
“So it’s that way, Andy.”
“—well, I’m going to work in a bathing costume and a sweat rag this afternoon.”
“Me too.”
“Where was it you bought those bloody things—Cebu?”
“Yes, that’s right. Well, I dunno what sort of a ship this is at all!”
“Do you know what the Board of Trade man said—wouldn’t go across the dock in her.”
“Aw, she’s just a laundry boat, that’s what, going round picking up washing.”
“Laundry boat, eh? Huh. She’s an orange box, a balloon boat, a haystack—”
“A Dutch bomb.”
“—Mate says we’re getting a lot of animals in this afternoon: elephants, tigers, leopards and I dunno what all. I suppose that’ll mean the watch on deck. I suppose that’s what he meant by more mail, gawd blimey. I dunno when we’ll be away tonight, I don’t really. One of the elephants for Rome, we get her off at Port Said; oh, they’ve all sorts of bloody things all going to the Dublin Zoo, eh, and a special keeper fellow’s coming aboard with them, prize snakes and Java sparrows, for gosh sake—I suppose to feed the snakes. I dunno what sort of ship this is at all with a lot of pouncing serpints aboard her—”
“Three white leopards—”
“Well, certainly I don’t know when we’ll be away tonight.”
“Yes, I says, I certainly am fond of cigars.”
“—pass—”
“—pass—”
“—pass—”
“—one spade—”
(And Samson to her cut off a ma hair if yo’ shave ma hade
Jes as clean as yo’ hair
Ma strength-a will become-a like a natch-erl man,
For Gawd’s agwine t’move all de troubles away,
For Gawd’s agwine t’move all de troubles away … )