Мариус Габриэль - The Ocean Liner

Almost everyone he had known aboard U-113 , a small world, but a world nevertheless, was gone. He would never see any of them again. It was a thing almost impossible to comprehend. Most of them had been barely over twenty. He himself was only a few years older than that, and nothing in his life had prepared him for these past weeks. He felt altered in vital ways, a man apart, as though he had in reality gone down with the iron coffin, and a stranger had been put in his place.

The well-meaning officer gave him a swig of scotch from a bottle, to fortify him against the pain of the crude stitches with which he was trying to hold together Hufnagel’s torn and bleeding arm. It was a mistake. The raw alcohol made Hufnagel confused and then violently ill. The bed which he had borrowed from a British sailor had to be changed.

The British crew, fresh out of port, were clean and groomed. He and the other four survivors had been dirty and unkempt even before U-113 had been sunk. They were far worse now, covered in oil and filth. The only emotion he was able to feel at first was a vague shame at his own appearance and that of his fellow Germans.

The British skipper, Cottrell, was inquisitive. He was eager to talk, and looked in on Hufnagel now and then as they waited to rendezvous with the destroyer which would take charge of the captured Germans. He was a pink-cheeked, gingery man who affected a pipe, and seemed to Hufnagel like the cartoon of a typical Englishman.

‘May I ask,’ he enquired during one of his visits, ‘what you were up to with the Manhattan ?’

‘Our captain got it into his head that he was going to torpedo her.’

‘Didn’t you see the American flags painted on her sides?’

‘Yes. We had a disagreement about that.’

‘And that’s when this so-called mutiny took place?’

‘It had started some time earlier, I think.’

‘But this is when he shot you?’

‘Yes.’

Cottrell puffed on his unlit pipe, producing a whistling sound which apparently give him as much satisfaction as real tobacco smoke. ‘I don’t mean to interrogate you. They’ll do that when you get to England. But it seems you saved a lot of innocent lives. You’re not a Nazi, I take it?’

Hufnagel couldn’t think of an answer which would explain his feelings without seeming disloyal to his country. ‘I am a German.’

‘Yes, of course you are. The reason I ask is because your skipper’s still Heil-Hitlering and raving about you.’

‘Yes, I hear him.’ Todt was perfectly audible a few bunks away, accusing Hufnagel of treason.

‘He seems awfully cut up. I suppose the fact that you were all so busy arguing about the Manhattan explains how we were able to surprise you.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Did you serve in the last war, old chap?’ Cottrell asked innocently.

Hufnagel realised he must look very decrepit indeed. ‘I wasn’t born yet when it started.’

‘Oh, I see. So you’re about the same age as me. Well, the closest I’d been to battle was breaking a tooth on some buckshot in a roast pheasant. Your boat was our first kill.’

‘I congratulate you,’ Hufnagel said dryly.

‘Thank you.’ Cottrell champed on his innocuous pipe. ‘I’m glad you survived. Sorry about your crew.’

‘You didn’t start the war.’

‘Neither of us started the war. There’s not much point in worrying about it, is there?’

‘No. If you worry about it, you won’t last very long. Like Hamlet.’

‘Oh, you’ve heard of Hamlet?’

‘We read Shakespeare at school.’

‘Odd, that.’

Hufnagel, weak with pain and loss of blood, found himself wishing Cottrell would go away and leave him alone. ‘What is odd?’

‘Our two countries being at war again.’

‘You always start it.’

‘Not exactly.’ Cottrell opened his mouth to launch on a defence, but seeing Hufnagel’s drained face, thought better of it, and drew the curtain again.

‘They say we will be in New York in four days,’ Stravinsky announced at breakfast the next morning.

‘You sound happy about it,’ Katharine observed.

‘Why should I not be happy about it?’ He dabbed egg yolk off his lips. ‘It is our journey’s end, after all. The start of a new life.’

In Le Havre, a matter of three weeks earlier, he had been bemoaning the end of an old life, Katharine reflected; but she did not utter the thought. She was glad to see him starting to look buoyant again, shedding his weariness and despair. Even the tone of his skin was improved, as though the blood beneath were circulating more vigorously. ‘I think you quite enjoyed our encounter with the German submarine.’

‘There was a certain exhilaration in evading death,’ he acknowledged. ‘And now to be speeding away is also very pleasant. We are making an average of twenty-two knots. And the weather ahead of us is fine. I found this out from the steward, Mr Nightingale. The information cost me five dollars.’

‘Why did you have to pay five dollars?’ Thomas asked.

‘A sprat to catch a mackerel. There is a sweepstake of a hundred dollars. Armed with this information I was careful to buy a low number. A hundred and fifty-three.’

‘I don’t understand what you are talking about,’ Masha said.

‘They are betting on how many hours it will take us to reach New York,’ Katharine said. ‘Though if you think Mr Nightingale isn’t selling the same information to every passenger who asks him, you are more naïve than I imagined, Igor.’

He smiled sardonically. ‘Perhaps I am. An innocent lamb arriving to be shorn by the cunning Americans.’

‘In my experience,’ she retorted, ‘it’s usually Americans who are taken in by Old World guile and deceit.’

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Rachel put in. ‘I look forward to spinning my Jewish web again. The Führer made it rather difficult for us to practise our wiles.’ She glanced at Katharine. ‘You are Jewish, aren’t you?’

‘I am an atheist,’ Katharine replied, irritated as always by the question.

‘Ah. This means what, exactly?’

‘It means I do not care to categorise myself as adhering to one outmoded system of beliefs or another.’

‘One can see you have not lived in the Third Reich,’ Rachel said dryly.

‘Rachel,’ Masha whispered, ‘you are being impertinent.’

‘In the Third Reich,’ Rachel went on, ‘it does not matter how you characterise yourself. One does not enjoy the luxury of categorising oneself. It matters only how the authorities categorise you.’

‘I am aware of how things stand in the Third Reich,’ Katharine said stiffly.

‘That is very clever of you, having had no practical experience of life there, as well as not adhering to any outmoded system of beliefs.’

Stravinsky was amused. ‘It seems it’s your turn to suffer the elder Miss Morgenstern’s ironical barbs, Katharine. Have you tired of tormenting young Thomas, Miss Morgenstern?’

‘I will get to Thomas by and by,’ Rachel said with a glint in her ice-blue eyes.

Thomas looked up from his plate with a wan smile. ‘For my part, you can skip over me, Fräulein. I will donate my turn to someone else.’

Rachel stared for a moment, then gave a sharp laugh. ‘So there is a little wit in that head of yours.’

As they left the breakfast table, Masha took Rachel’s arm. ‘Don’t you think there is some mystery surrounding Thomas?’ she whispered.

‘What mystery might that be?’

‘He seems so young.’

‘He is eighteen.’

‘I don’t think he’s telling the truth about that . And where are his parents, for another thing?’