Peter Rabe - A Shroud for Jesso

Kator was there with two sailors. They looked very solemn at the stern of the ship.

“There’s Mr. Kator,” said Bean Pole, “and just on the other side is where you go. Move.”

Bean Pole needn’t have done that. The jab of his gun almost missed, because Jesso was already leaning against the wind and going toward Kator. When he got there the two men in pea jackets grabbed his arms as if they thought he might jump.

Kator pursed his lips, but otherwise he made no movement. Only his black overcoat flapped at the bottom.

“This is to finish my end of the bargain,” he said, and he nodded to the white water behind the ship.

With the wind tearing at his words, Jesso leaned forward. “I got something for you.”

Kator took an involuntary step backward. The two men held Jesso’s arms more tightly.

“Since there is nothing personal in this, Jesso, you can save your breath. All right,” and he nodded at the two sailors.

It wasn’t much of a heave, and they were several feet from the railing, but Jesso bucked hard.

“Kator,” he yelled, “it’s about Snell.”

But Kator hadn’t understood. They had Jesso off the floor, legs thrashing, and the low railing was almost under him.

With a powerful concentration his leg whipped out and caught one man behind the knee. The guy buckled and fell.

“About Snell!” Jesso roared. “The rest of the stuff, Kator-from Snell!”

This time Kator heard. He moved forward and opened his mouth, but the two sailors didn’t catch his words. With an angry push they flung Jesso forward. He caught himself on the railing with a painful thud and balanced there until one more short push at his leg made him slant forward and down.

Suddenly the wind had stopped. Close behind the stern there was no wind, no rushing noise, just the dull hissing of the foam below, and then Jesso flailed, tossed down, and hit.

The water, cut and churned, dragged at him, twisted him, and not until moments later did he feel the icy wash of the ocean sucking at his body from all sides.

How long it took for him to surface, how hard he screamed, none of this was ever clear to him. At first there was just the great panic when he heard the murderous roar of the big screw close by, and then his head was out of water with foam bursting around him, and the tall shape of the ship sliding away in slow dips made him feel as small as a black speck.

He was fighting the water. Then, when the large swells came and the white water had died away, the ship kept him from thinking. He had to see the ship, draw it back with his last will, hold it there, hold it before the panic came back and everything was over. Then the ship was gone behind the slow mountain of a wave while Jesso seemed suddenly to fall with terrible speed. The water sucked him back and up, higher in a continuous sweep, until the ship was there again, black, and smaller.

Details meant nothing to him then, and when he saw the ship the next time, partly sideways now, it never meant a thing. The next time it was still the same, and he slid down again into the cold valley of the wave.

He started to die then. He was past the panic and ready to die, except that it came to him like a strength instead of like a weakness. He would fight the suck and push of the water until he was dead, which meant that he could fight no longer. He would never be dead until he was empty of that.

So when the boat came alongside and they tried to pull him out, he was kicking and slashing at them so hard that he almost choked in the process. When he started to sink, they heaved him up and over the side of the boat.

Jesso woke with a strong shiver, and when he felt the warmth around him he was surprised. Then there was a cup of coffee. It was black, hot, strong: smelling strong. Right then heaven could have been that cup of coffee. It was a pleasure that gave him time to come alive again. He sipped it slowly, he remembered what he could, and he looked around without talking.

Kator was a patient man. He sat at the other end of the cabin and watched Jesso come alive. Let the man have his coffee. It was small payment for what Kator hoped to gain.

When Jesso put his cup down and sat up on the bunk, he first hit his head on the bunk above and then he saw he was naked. The blankets had fallen back. He got up carefully, cursed with concentration, then sat down again. He stopped cursing suddenly, because now was the time for the pay-off.

“You mentioned Snell,” Kator said. “Did you have something to tell me, or was it all a maneuver?”

Jesso picked up a blanket and made a toga. “I got something.”

“Go ahead, please.”

Kator picked up a cut-glass bottle and poured red liqueur into two pony glasses. He gave one to Jesso.

“How about some clothes?”

“You won’t need any, Jesso. You will tell me what you know and that will be the end of it.”

Except for the queer position of Kator’s eyes, which gave him a fixed stare, he might have looked bored. He sounded bored.

It took a while before Jesso caught it.

“You mean I take another dive?” It came out calmly, because Jesso didn’t believe it. “You mean I tell you what I know and then hop-skip-jump back into the water?”

“Certainly. More liqueur?”

Jesso nodded automatically. His mouth moved but he didn’t quite know what to do with his voice.

“I can make you talk, Jesso. One way or another. And if it doesn’t work the first time-” Kator shrugged. “We have nine days before making port.”

They looked at each other. Kator went on. “I rarely make bargains, Jesso, except in extremities, and I grant you that I am anxious to hear what you have to say. So I will bargain. You give me the information willingly and your death will be simple; unwillingly, Jesso, and it will be complicated. There is your choice.”

The blanket had dropped off his shoulders and Jesso sat bare, but the sweat stood on his skin like hot glue. He stared at the man across the table without seeing him, thinking furiously, weighing his chance. He had only one advantage. Kator wanted something and wanted it bad. A dead man was no use to him, and that’s how Jesso meant to stay alive.

“Kator, I want some clothes.”

It surprised Kator, and he stopped his glass halfway to his mouth.

“Bravado, Jesso, will get you nowhere.” He finished his drink.

Jesso moved suddenly. He slapped Kator’s hand out of the way and for good measure he grabbed the bottle and threw it across the cabin. It crashed against the bulkhead. The sound of glass breaking was just the overture. Jesso’s neck started to swell, and when he talked it wasn’t politely.

“Now you hear this, you bastard. I know what little Joe said and you know nothing. You pitch me in the drink or run a bullet through my head and you know nothing. You rig it up so I get scared maybe and start yelling uncle, there again you don’t know from Adam. I’ve had my scare, Kator, back there in the white water with the screw sucking me down. That was my scare and it cured me. You scare me like that again and you won’t get the time of day from me. Maybe you got some fancy notions on how to make a man remember things, a trick or two you picked up in a concentration camp maybe-“

“You’re right,” said Kator, who had found his voice again.

“Shutup, you sonofabitch, and hear me out!”

Kator blinked, but then he had to strain to hear the rest. Jesso’s voice had dropped to a vicious whisper and he spat out the words as if they tasted too strong.

“Maybe you think you’ll rattle me with little tricks or something, or peel my skin off till I crack wide open. Like hell you will, you pig-eyed bastard, because you know what’ll come out. I’ll even tell you why. What Snell told me takes remembering, and I’m not good at complicated stuff. You just say boo to me and I can’t add two and two. I’m nervous, I get confused. I can’t remember complicated stuff. You don’t believe me? Go ahead and try, Kator. You’re afraid of losing what I know.”