The Death Ship (3 page)

The examination over, I had to stand up before a high desk, behind which sat a roan who looked at me as if I had stolen his overcoat. He opened a thick book filled with photographs. The guy that had pinched me acted as the interpreter. Without him I would never have known, until the end of my days, what the man behind the desk wanted. Funny that these people understood our language pretty well when they needed our boys to fight for them, and when they wanted our money.

The high priest at the desk looked at all the photographs, and after each photograph he looked at me. He did this a hundred times. He had that way of looking upwards with his nose kept close to the thick book that people have when they look over the rims of their eye-glasses.

At last he got tired of moving his neck up and down. He shook his head and disgustedly closed the book with a bang. It seems he hadn’t found my photograph. I could have told him before that he wouldn’t, if he only had asked me, because I knew damn well that I had never been photographed in Antwerp. I too got tired of this lame business, and I said: “Now I am hungry. I want to eat. I haven’t had any breakfast this morning.”

“Right,” the interpreter said. I was taken into a small room, with nothing in it that I would call furniture.

I wonder if all the Belgians call what I got a breakfast coffee, bread, and margarine. It was the minimum in quantity and quality.

Then I was left alone to occupy myself with counting the bars at the window, a job I did rather well.

About noon I was again brought before the high priest. “There are nine,” I said right away, “exactly nine.”

“What nine?” the high priest asked with the help of the interpreter.

“Nine bars at the window,” I answered.

The high priest looked at the interpreter, and the interpreter looked at him, and then both of them looked at me, finally shaking their heads; and the interpreter said: “Well, they are this way, sir. You know it from the war. There is something loose in their upper stories. One cannot take them seriously.”

“Do you wish to go to France?” the high priest asked me.

“No, y’honor, I don’t like France. Under no circumstances do I wish to go to France. I don’t like war-mothers running wild about the battlefields. No, France is no place for me.”

“What do you think of Germany?” He asked.

“I don’t care to go to Germany either, if you please, sir.”

“Why, Germany is quite a fine country. Take Hamburg for instance. You could easily find there a good ship to take you home.”

“No, I do not like the Germans. They often go out of their minds without any warning.”

The high priest assumed a dictatorial attitude: “Well, then, it is all settled now, once and for all. No more objections on your side, sailor. You are going to Holland. And understand, this is final.”

“But I do not like the Dutch,” I said, and I was just about to tell him why, when he cut me short: “We do not care a rag if you like the Dutch or if you don’t. You may fix this with the Dutch yourself, when you meet them in person. In France you would be best off. However, for a rich gentleman like you, France is not good enough. Too bad we have nothing better to offer you. You don’t want to go to Germany either. The Germans also are not good enough for you. Hell, just tell me what people other than your own do you like? None apparently. So you are going to Holland, and that is that. We have no other border. We cannot, just to please you, acquire another neighbor who might find favor with you. And, just to make clear to you what we think of you, we don’t even care to throw you into the water. That is the only border we have besides the others already mentioned. It’s all right with me if you choose the water. We are at your service, mister. And so you are going to Holland and like it. That’s all. Be glad you’re getting off so easily. We have jails, and we have camps for people without papers.”

“But see here, gentlemen, you are all mistaken. I do not wish to go to Holland, because the Dutch  —”

“Quiet now. This question has been settled, for good. How much money have you got?”

“Why, you searched me all over. How much money did you find on me? That’s how much money I’ve got.”

“Which means, in other words, not a single cent. Is that what you mean?” he asked.

“Exactly, y’honor. Right you are.”

“Take him back to the cell,” commanded the high priest. “Let him have a bite to eat.”

A bite. I would like to know when these people really eat.

4

Late the same afternoon I was taken to a railroad station. Two men, one of them the interpreter, accompanied me. No doubt they thought I had never before been on a train, for they would not leave me alone. Not for a minute. One of them bought the tickets while the other remained standing near me. He took good care that no pickpocket should try to search again where they had searched without success. I’d like to see a smart pickpocket find a red cent in pockets that have been searched by the police.

Very politely they escorted me aboard the train and offered me a seat in a compartment. I thought the gentlemen would now take leave. They did not. They sat down. Apparently afraid that I might fall out of the window when the train was moving, they seated themselves on either side of me. Belgian policemen are courteous. I could find no fault with them. They gave me cigarettes, but no matches. They were afraid I might set the train afire.

We came to a very small town and left the train. Again I was taken to a police-station. I had to sit down on a bench. The men who had brought me told a long story to the high priest in charge.

All the policemen stared at me as if they thought me a murderer who had not been properly hanged and had escaped. Suddenly I conceived the idea that I was to be hanged and that they were all only waiting for the hangman, who could not be found for the moment because he had gone off somewhere to a wedding. This idea, that I was to be hanged, impressed me more and more every minute. Had not the high priest in Antwerp said clearly that they wouldn’t mind throwing me into the water? Why not hang me just as well? It’s the easiest thing to do in a lonely spot.

There’s nothing to laugh about; no, sir. It was a very serious matter indeed. Only consider, please: I had no papers; the high priest had not found in his thick book my photograph either. Things would have been different if he had found my photograph, because then he would immediately have known who I was, and that I was an honest sailor. Anybody could say that he had been left behind by the
Tuscaloosa
. Where are the proofs? I had signed on half an hour before the
Tuscaloosa
was leaving the port of New Orleans. The skipper had no time then to sign me on properly. I am sure he didn’t even know my name. He never cared to know it. What was a plain deck-hand to him? He had other worries; he was not sure what his woman was doing when he was at sea. Therefore, even if somebody took the trouble to wire him, he would just answer: “I don’t know the bum; hang him if you wish.”

He was that kind. Better for him to ignore me altogether than to run up expenses for his company bringing me back home. Y’see, sir, I had no proof of any sort as to my legal existence.

I had no established home anywhere in the world. I was a member neither of a board of trade nor of a chamber of commerce.

I wasn’t the president of a bank. The truth is I had no bank-connections at all. I’ve never heard yet of a sailor with a savings-account. It’s not the sailor’s fault. It’s the wages, which never allow him to meet all his expenses ashore.

I was just a nobody. You can’t blame the Belgians if they don’t want to feed a nobody. You see, the Belgians already have to feed so many nobodies who are only half Belgian, while the other half is French, English, Austrian, German, American, or Scotch, on account of the trouble they had with the war and the occupation of their country. I would have been only another reason for not paying us back the money they borrowed from us when they were in a hole.

So hanging me was the simplest thing to do, and the quickest. There was no one in the world who would worry about me. No one who cared. One bum more or less, what does it matter? There was even no necessity to put my name in the thick book in which all hanged people are written up.

Now they were waiting only for the hangman, because without the hangman it would have been plain murder, and illegal, and it would have been a blemish on as civilized a nation as the Belgians are.

I was right. They were waiting for the hangman. They made preparations. One of the flats came along and handed me two packages of cigarettes. The last gift to a condemned man. Then he gave me matches, seated himself near me, and started to talk English. He slapped me on the back, laughed, cajoled me, and tried to tell me an Irish joke, which, as he explained, he had studied in a book that was supposed to teach English in six weeks without a teacher.

“Don’t take it so hard, old man,” he said. “Smoke your cigarettes and be happy. See, we all have to die some day. I was spared in the war. But one day I too have to swallow dirt. As for you, sailor, we have to wait until dark. We can’t do it in bright daylight very well.”

Not take it so hard. I wonder if he ever was as close to being hanged as I was then. Perhaps he was the kind that doesn’t take being hanged so hard. Maybe he was used to it. I was not; no, sir.

The cigarettes had no taste at all. Straw and nothing else. Damn it all, I don’t want to be hanged. I looked around for a chance to make a clean get-away. Nothing doing. They were staring at me all the time. I was the first American sailor that ever had come their way. An interesting circus animal to them. How I hate these Belgians! I’d like to know why we ever helped them out when they had their pants full.

When darkness had fallen, about nine, someone brought me my last supper. Nasty people, these Belgians. So that’s what they call the last supper for a poor condemned man. I can assure them I will never commit murder in Belgium. Potato salad, three slices of liverwurst, each slice as thin as paper. Clever people, the Belgians, not cutting their fingers when slicing liverwurst for the last supper of a poor devil. There were also a few slices of a bread that was neither really black nor really white, and the inevitable margarine. Belgium has no cows and therefore no butter. Why don’t they come to Wisconsin, where people throw butter into the fire to make coffee boil quickly. What a supper! That’s the gratitude of these Belgians. And I was nearly wounded once when they were down on their knees begging us for help.

The flat who had used up one hour and a half to tell me an Irish joke now came up with a bottle.

“What are you, feller? A good American or a bad one?” he asked.

I looked at the bottle in his hand, and I answered: “I am a bad one, officer.”

“Exactly what I thought,” he laughed. “And since you are a bad one I am allowed to give you this bottle of red wine to wash down your supper with. If you had said you are a good American, I would have taken you to be a true believer in prohibition.”

“Prohibition?” I said. “Shit prohibition. Let me have the bottle and I’ll show you the real gargle of a real American sailor, a gargle such as, migud, you have never seen and never heard of in all your life.”

“That’s right, old feller. I thought so all along. Your prohibition. Don’t make me laugh out loud. Fine men like you Americans letting yourselves be bossed round by hysterical church-sisters. Not us Belgians, sailor. With us Belgians it is still the man who wears the pants. And if we men like to get a good shot, we damn well drink it and care the devil about women and sin.”

What a pity that a man like that is a cop! Why isn’t he a sailor? And why doesn’t he come to God’s country? That’s the kind of people we need back home. The Belgians are not so bad after all. I felt now rather glad that we loaned them our good money, even though there’s no chance in the world of ever getting it back again. It pleased me a lot to see that our money helped to keep alive a spirit like this one. So our money was not altogether wasted.

About ten that night the cop who had made me feel at home with his bottle said to me: “It’s time now, sailor. We have to step on it. Come along.”

No use crying now: “I don’t want to be hanged.” It’s fate. That’s what it is. If the
Tuscaloosa
had waited only two hours more, this would never have happened. It seems I am not worth two hours. Well, let’s go and get it over with.

Then something awakened within me. After all, I am not an animal that anybody can do with as he pleases. Where there’s life there’s hope. An old sailor’s saying, and it has always been a good and truthful one.

I shook off the hands which were upon my shoulder, and I yelled: “I’m not going. I’ll resist. I’m an American. I’m an American citizen. I’m going to complain to my ambassador and to my consul. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Said the interpreter: “You are going to complain? You? And just who are you? You are no American. Prove it. Come, come, show us your passport. Or your sailor’s card. We’ll even be satisfied with a letter from your consul. See, we are generous. Even a letter from your skipper will do. You have no passport. In any civilized country he who has no passport is nobody. He does not exist for us or for anybody else. We can do whatever we want to. And that is exactly what we’re going to do right now. If we want to, we can even hang you or shoot you or kill you like a louse. Just like that; chip, and off you are.” He snipped his fingers and rubbed the nails of his thumbs one against the other. “Out with him,” he commanded.

“And don’t ever bring him back here,” shouted the high priest from behind his desk, where he had been asleep during the past few hours. He had just been awakened by the row I made. “If any one of you,” he addressed the two men taking me, “ever brings him back here, I will hang you instead of him. The least I shall do is to put you behind the bars for three years. Get him out now and execute him right in front of the station; what do I care?”

I said nothing more. The two flats were armed, and I was not.

We three left the town, and soon we arrived in open fields.