Georg Letham (27 page)

When I was seven he wished he had a youth of fourteen, he didn't want to wait, he needed me. When I was fourteen I was supposed to be like a twenty-year-old, know what free trade, baseness, and victory over rats by cunning are, I was supposed to provide comradeship for him. I was his favorite son. Was? Am I that only now, perhaps? He experimented on me–and what notion can the experimental subject have of
when
the experiment is over? That is known only to the experimenter, and the good Lord.

He spared nothing so that I, his son, would be hardened to life, futile and merciless as it is.

I would like to continue recalling my youth, but my eyes are drooping now. I have a pillow that my neighbor has made ready for me, it is the children's gramophone wrapped in a coat. The inscrutable man has also covered my knees with a blanket. I am too weak to do anything, even eat. I see and smell the food, the flavor of the seasoned, nourishing soup is perceptible on the papillae of my tongue, but I can't. To sleep, sleep, and never wake up. Never wake up again as the son of my father–now he is standing by me, indistinct in the flickering light of the swinging petroleum lamp–never again as the widower of my wife, never again
as the brother of my brother–now he has reached me at last and tells me in a whisper what has prevented him from coming since that last meeting . . . he caught yellow fever, he was saved, though he has not recovered, he shows me his wasted hands, but they gradually dissolve into nothing under the strengthening light of the petroleum lamp. He shakes my shoulder, lifts my head, lets it fall like a piece of lead, and, turning to look over his shoulder toward a crowd of onlookers or students, he pronounces my name, he, the Institute's founder whom I never saw, calls me Dr. Georg Letham the younger . . . Georg Letham, Doctor of Philosophy, was my father, he was . . .

Who could my handsome companion be? Conceivably he was someone from the cultured classes. I reached for his hand when I awoke the next morning. Very much unlike his bony, noble face, it was somewhat flaccid, effeminate, but one wanted to take it. Stroking the palm was like running one's hand over a newborn baby's dry cranium, warmed by the spring sun, beneath it a pulsing where the bones are still soft, rubbery, not completely fused.

It was a pleasure to tickle the inside of his hand with my index finger as he slept, unaware of what I was doing. But the youth was not asleep at all, he had noticed it. Or I was not even acting spontaneously, and he had succeeded in tempting me to a caress.

He told me his name, March, and I told him mine.

Heavy iron heating pipes, like steam ducts in basement corridors, ran across the ceiling of our cage. Steam heat in the hold of a ship on its way to the tropics? Where now, in the morning hours, it was already as hot as a steam bath? Once the eye had adjusted to the half-light, it could be seen that these steam pipes were open at one end. Could they
be attached to the boilers that powered the engines, for spewing out hot steam to make us see reason, should that become necessary? Discipline or scalding, that was the choice. It was not a choice. We would all be well-mannered and stay that way.

March looked at me, but refrained from caresses. He pulled out the gramophone, examined the records. He desperately stroked the one that was broken in the middle, followed the microscopically fine grooves with a sharp fingernail. The others cast covetous, almost fierce glances at the battered little toy. No one else had anything like it.

It was worth more to him than money. I would soon find out how much it meant to him.

He showed me something inscribed on the record, actually two signatures, one scratched on each of the pieces. Louis and Lilli. They were similar hands, straight up and down, regular, perhaps those of a brother and sister.

Meanwhile work had been assigned in Cargo Hold 3. Some of the men had to help in the galley, others had to clean out the filth in the holds while they were vacated during the “walkabouts,” the half-hour promenades on deck. I will not speak of the arrangements for washing, which practically made one dirtier instead of cleaner. Let the reader take a shower in seawater and describe the result! But even these most primitive of facilities, which might have sufficed in the time of Columbus for the personal hygiene of his hydrophobic crew, had to be maintained.

The troughs for drinking water had to be rubbed down inside with metal shavings and seawater. The two together produced a corrosive acid, and the hands of the convicts entrusted with this cleaning job soon became unfit for work, or fit only if miserable pain were no object. I had this job.

I tried to laugh, but it was a false laugh, a croak. I resented this work too much! The others gloated as they watched me, and laughed laughs that were true.

It was not until the third day that I reported for a walkabout. I toiled along in the line like a beaten man.

The sea was frothing. The officers lay smoking, drinking, playing cards, red-and-white-striped awnings over their heads. Brig. Gen. Carolus was nowhere to be seen. Over our own heads were only the plume of smoke that wafted from the ship as it labored against the swells and the good, kind, vast blue and gold sky with its already almost tropical heat. The clogs of the convicts clattered in rhythm on the planks of the ship. The surface was slippery. Why was that? Many were seasick, unable to appreciate the fresh air. I lost my footing in the muck and steadied myself by taking hold of my companion's hand with my injured one. He squeezed back. Back?

My face was stony.

I had overestimated my comrade's age. I had taken him to be well past his midthirties, but he was only in his late twenties. One day soon I would find out more about the fancy he had taken to me.

I was very depressed, suffered greatly from physical symptoms, I was itchy inside and out. I had expected to be ordered to the sick bay, where I assumed life would be easier; I had believed that Carolus would show some human feeling toward his one-time laboratory mate.

I was mistaken, as it appeared. The days passed, and nothing happened. But I said nothing.

Silence is the most powerful magnet. One who contains himself, one who does not speak, need never fear rejection. He is safe. His position is good, or at least he is better off than the one who is driven to speak.

My handsome companion was one of those who must speak. On the dock he had been able to contain himself. For twelve hours we had been attached to each other, and he had not said a word to me. Now there was nothing binding us together, and yet I soon had an idea what had brought him here. This crime had to have some bearing on his feelings toward me.

March wanted to, I did not. It was so easy to scare him off–a frosty look, that was enough. When he launched into his confession for a second time, I mentioned my hand, on which there was now a painful eczema from the metal shavings and seawater. And the scab had come off the wound on my wrist, the place where the manacle had injured me as we were climbing the rope ladder. If only that had been the extent of it! My entire body was burning, as though I were wearing the shirt of nettles from the fairy tale. So had I had enough? Assuredly. But what did I do? I closed my eyes and yawned loudly.

The good March hung on me, his eyes drinking me in. Perhaps he thought he could appeal to
my
sympathies, to my warm compassion? Hardly. Nothing isolates one more than suffering. He couldn't take that away from me. I said nothing in response to his questions, I lay on my belly in my bunk, I tossed about, I could not rest. Not a wink of sleep.

At night the light of the moon came to me through the porthole. The petroleum lamp swayed and stank. Almost none of the convicts slept, a few dozed. One rooted through another's hair like a monkey. Others played cards, many told stories, but groups kept to themselves, there were sudden scuffles, boxing matches in the middle of the night, almost no words exchanged, only blows, bloody duels of unimaginable brutality. A master of the art of tattooing offered himself to the gentlemen as an emissary of the fine arts, demanding sums of money that
no one could pay. But the most coveted object (after the leather shoes and the flannel vest that had somehow found their way aboard) was March's old children's gramophone. The gentlemen imagined that marvels would come from this music box. They expected the music of the spheres from the scratchy old records. March could have asked anything, and they would have given it to him. But he did not. What did he care about goods and chattels? He had no thought of such things. Feeling was his life.

And the proof of his affection for me? A kiss? A warm hand squeeze? A declaration of love, an emotional speech, a vow that he would be my friend forever, that we would be blood brothers until the two of us escaped from C. to Brazil? That he would care for me tenderly if I came down with yellow fever? No! Something much bigger and yet much less great. I will have to explain–no one will ever guess.

Almost everyone had three or four changes of underwear. After the long train trip, only what was at the bottom of the bag was still clean. But what if there was nothing there but two little books of the greatest cultural but no practical value,
Hamlet
and the Gospel? What if one had been relying on the excellent authorities to look after all one's needs, even those most intimate ones? If one had been counting on a dear blood brother, had calculated that he would come at the last minute to the embarkation point, the port city, bringing, aside from poignant words of parting, some clean drawers and undershirts? Yes? No? No! Then one would have miscalculated foolishly, and the idiot doing the miscalculation was me, my father's son, who had only a single good pair of underwear and two not very clean shirts to his name. Anyone who was a man tried to help himself: man and fate were one. A dirty pair of drawers should not be the cliffs upon which the intrepid experimenter
was wrecked. There was enough time, what should he do? He should go to the tap and wash his underwear in plenty of running water, injured hands or no injured hands. Yes, that would have been good advice! If only I had tried to follow it from the outset.

I did do it the next night. And what was the result? Yes, some of the dirt came out at first, because, like a complete imbecile, I failed to conserve the soap that was so precious and for the time being irreplaceable. But, when I had finished washing my dainties, not all the soap came out, still less, unfortunately, all the seawater. And now these anything-but-sparkling whites would be dried on a line stretched between the frames of two portholes, or, better yet, ingeniously attached to the iron bulkheads. The next morning one would slip one's undies on and sweat through them. And fifteen minutes later find oneself in hell. But no, my dear Georg Letham, let's not exaggerate, it's only a mild condition known as red dog or prickly heat. What does the physician Dr. Georg Letham the younger have to say? He goes to Dr. Georg Letham the younger, listens to his tale of woe, looks the fellow over, and says:

“Red dog is a disease with which almost every newcomer to the tropics during hot weather becomes acquainted, usually even during the passage. It is an acute inflammation caused by profuse perspiration leading to excessively moist skin. The material of the under-clothing is often an irritant, also sometimes soap that has been poorly rinsed from it during washing. Extremely small, slightly raised papules densely distributed over the skin form on those areas of the body where there is the most friction from clothing: initially the waist and the forearms, later also the shoulders and the chest, back, and neck. These are extremely itchy and hence highly detrimental to the general condition
of the sufferer. In particular, nocturnal pruritus can lead to severe insomnia . . .”

Severe insomnia? Is there a mild kind too, Dr. Letham?

“. . . Continual scratching generally aggravates the inflammation. Scratching to the point of bleeding will readily induce further inflammatory processes, infections by pyogenic bacteria, furuncles, and eczema formation.”

Fervent thanks, esteemed doctor and benefactor of mankind! Where would we be without you, man of the spirit and custodian of medical knowledge? What do you advise? Powdering? With whose powder? Frequent washing with pure, nonsaline water? What pure water? Alcohol compresses would be excellent too, but to use alcohol for compresses, here in Cargo Hold 3, what a grotesque fantasy!

Oh, you loving hearts, I'm not laughing at you now! I'm not yawning. March had everything I needed, and he gave it with pleasure.

He had long understood my condition, he had powder, he had pure water, for he had saved up his supply of the fresh water we had been receiving, a liter ration poured into our canteens every day after the walkabout. He himself had suffered from severe thirst, and his tongue, long and narrow and purple like a dog's, had passed across his parched lips more than once.

He was capable of making a sacrifice, his ideal was worth something to him. But did he expect a reward? Was he capable of working pro bono in the service of an ideal?

Why worry about it? Shouldn't one just be grateful? It helps, yes! It's a balm, yes! It's a good deed. Let's switch roles. You be the doctor and I'll be the patient. In any event I slept well and deeply that night, very deeply.

That was when I dubbed March “Gummi.” Rubber gum is wonderful, one of the things that make the world go round. To create the chicle plantations necessary for manufacturing rubber, broad swaths of land in the colonies are cleared, the natives' idle Eden is razed. The black plebs are worked to death, and if they rise up, if they want to return to their nation's way of tropical idleness, war is declared on the colony, there is not the slightest hesitation about using squadrons of fighter planes to drop poison gas. Man passes, rubber goes on.