The Death Ship (11 page)

I myself could form no idea as to what these little things might be good for.

The warden in charge of the shop came up and said: “You count off this pile one hundred and forty-four pieces. Then you make a new little pile of a hundred and forty-four pieces. Then again you count off one hundred and forty-four pieces, pile them up neatly, and put them aside. That is your work.”

After I had counted the first pile, the warden returned. He looked at the little pile and said: “Are you sure there are exactly one hundred and forty-four pieces, not one more or less?”

“Yes, officer.”

“Better count them again. I trust you fully. But, please, I beg of you, count them with the greatest care. That’s why I gave you this special work. You look intelligent. I think you are the only man here who has the intelligence to do work with his brain and not with his hands.”

“You may be assured, officer, I shall do my best.”

“Please do. That’s a good boy. You see, suppose my superior checks up and finds one piece above or below the hundred and forty-four I have to deliver; I might get a terrible rebuke. I might even lose my job here. I would not know what to do, with a wife sick at home and three little kids; and my mother and the mother of my wife also depend upon me. I could not afford to lose the job. Please be careful when counting.”

I counted them first in one heap; then I made twelve dozens, counting carefully each dozen, then all the dozens twelve times. After that I counted them all over in heaps of ten each, making fourteen heaps of ten, and adding at the end four single pieces. Having done that, I counted them in piles of twenty, making seven piles all together, and again four extra.

The warden came up, looked at what I was doing, and said: “That’s the way to do it. You are the first one that ever could do it right. I knew that you had brains, and that you know how to use them. I can depend upon you. Thank you.”

When finally I had decided that I had one pile of one hundred and forty-four pieces, I laid them aside and reached out to count off a second pile of one hundred and forty-four. No sooner had I started than the warden, who had been watching me all the time from a seat in the corner, came up and said: “Better count them once or twice more. There might easily be a mistake. I would commit suicide if I lost my job for such a grave error.”

I took the pile and began to count the pieces again, one by one. The warden stood for a while watching me, and said: “That’s exactly the way it has to be done. Just use a little brain, that’s all. I will see to it that you get some cigarettes for good behavior.”

After two hours I decided once more to start counting off another pile. The warden came. He looked with a worried face at the pile I had shoved off to make room for the new one. I took profound pity on him. I thought he would break out crying any minute. I could not stand it. So I took back the first pile and began to count it all over again. His face immediately began to brighten up, and I noted even a faint smile around his lips. So pleased was he that he tapped me on my shoulder and said: “You have brightened up my whole life as nobody else ever did around here. I wish you could stay here for a few years.”

When at last my time was up, I had counted the grand total of three piles, of one hundred and forty-four pieces each. For months afterwards I still wondered whether perhaps one of the three piles was not counted incorrectly. I trust, however, that the warden gave my piles to a newcomer to count over.

I received fourteen centimes in wages. I didn’t want to ride on a French railroad again without a ticket. It was not that I was afraid of being caught once more. No, it was just that I could not burden my conscience with the thought that on my account the French railroad or the French nation would go bankrupt. It might come to a point where the French government would say that I was responsible for their failure to pay their debts. (By the way, these are the same people that make such a fuss about the Russians not paying their debts.)

To tell the truth, I must say that it was not my concern for the welfare of the French nation that made me decide to leave France and go elsewhere. It was that when I found myself outside the prison there were again two gentlemen waiting for me to warn me seriously to leave the country within fifteen days or go back to jail for six months and after that be deported to Germany. I did not like to see the Germans go to war with France again, this time on my behalf. I do not wish to be responsible for another war. It will come anyway.

13

Going south, following the sun. I wandered along roads as old as the history of Europe. Perhaps older.

I stuck now to my new nationality, merely to see what would happen so soon after the war to a vagabond in France who said openly: “I am a Boche.” It appeared that everybody took it good-naturedly, sometimes entirely indifferently. Wherever I asked I got food; and the peasants were always willing to put me up for the night in their barns, often even in their spare rooms inside the house.

Instinctively, it seemed, I had hit upon the right nail. Nobody liked Americans. The French peasants cursed us. We were the robbers. We coined our dollars out of the blood of the glorious French youth. We were the Shylocks and the usurers. We cut their throats; we made money out of the tears of the French orphans and widows. We took away from them their last cow and goat. We could not swallow all the gold we already had, but we wanted the last French gold coin found in the stocking of the poor grandmother.

No matter where I met those small-town folk and village people, it was always the same: “If we only had one of those damned Americans here, we would beat him up as we do all swindlers. They don’t deserve anything better than to be treated like a filthy dog. Did they fight for us? The hell they did. They only ran after our women. They sold us ammunition. But what sort? We couldn’t kill a single German soldier with their ammunition. Their shells killed our own soldiers, because they always came out backwards. Fought for us? Don’t make me laugh. They sent their men over not to fight for us, but only to look after their money.

“Where do you intend to go now, boy? To Spain? That’s right. A good idea, a splendid idea. Spain is pretty. And warm.

They have more than we have to feed you. Just look what those Americans have done to Spain. They cannot leave any country alone. They must put their fingers into every country on earth and make all the people in the world slave for their bankers. What have they done to Spain? I mention only Cuba, and the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, and Florida, and California. Always robbing us poor European countries. Now go on and eat, just help yourself. We have still a few potatoes left and a stale bread crust.

“And when a poor fellow saves up a little money, and wants to go to America to earn a few dollars and send them home to his poor parents, do they let him in? They do not. First they steal all the land from the defenseless Indians, and then they want to keep it all for themselves.

“Say, Boche, do you know what? Look here, you stay here with us for a couple of weeks and work. Spain is still far, far off. Mon lieu, far off. Of course, we cannot pay you very much for your work, because the Americans haven’t left us anything. Let’s say thirty francs a month. Eight a week. Before the war we paid only three francs to our farm-hands. Then, of course, our franc was worth a lot more than now. For a franc you could buy five times what you can buy now, or even ten times. We had a Boche here working with us during the war. He was a prisoner of war. I have to say this much about him, he was an industrious laborer. We were all very sad when the war was over and he had to go back to his country. Say, Antoine, wasn’t that Boche a hard worker? I should say he was. Wil’em was his name. But he said he wasn’t related to the emperor. Just his name. We all liked him a lot. People told us we were treating him too well, since he was only a prisoner who had killed perhaps a thousand of our boys. Anyway, he didn’t look that way. He was tame and he knew how to work on a farm. He worked like three oxen, didn’t he, Antoine? I should say he did.”

I stayed and worked there. Soon I learned that Wil’em must indeed have been a worker such as none other under the sun. Half a dozen times every day I had to listen to some remark like this: “I don’t understand, but Wil’em must have come from another part of the country than you. You cannot work as Wil’em could. Am I right, Antoine?”

Antoine answered: “You are right, mother. He is surely not from the same province. He cannot work like Wil’em. I suppose even among you Boches there are differences, just as with us; some are good workers, some are so bad they don’t even earn the salt they put in their soup.”

This soon got on my nerves. Wil’em must have understood more about farming than I. One doesn’t learn agriculture in Lincoln Avenue in Chic. At least I didn’t. I am sure Wil’em worked so hard, not because he liked to work hard, but because he preferred to stay with these peasants rather than work on Algerian roads, as tens of thousands of other German prisoners did. No matter how hard I worked, no matter how early I rose in the morning and how late at night I turned in, Wil’em had done better. But the peasant I was working for will never get a farm-hand as cheap as he got me. Other peasants in the same village had to pay their hands as much as twenty, twenty-five, and even thirty francs. I received eight. Of course, I was that poor Boche who had been found and picked up on the roadside half starved and nearly dying. They had saved my life, they told everybody. It was only fair that I worked for them for eight francs.

When finally Wil’em appeared in my dreams, I thought it time to leave. I explained I had to see relatives in Spain whom I had not seen since the Goths had left Germany for Spain.

“They sure will be pleased to see you looking so fine,” Antoine said.

Instead of eight francs a week, they made it eight francs for six weeks of work. Mother said: “It’s easier to count a round number, so we’ll make it even.”

I said: “It’s all right with me, mother.”

“Of course, you understand,” Antoine said, “we cannot pay you your wages now. You will have to wait until after the New Year. Then we get our money for the crop. But the good food you got here has done wonders for you. You haven’t overworked yourself. See, that Wil’em, he —”

“Yes,” I interrupted him, “Wil’em came from Westphalia. I am from Southphalia. We don’t work so hard. Everything grows there of its own accord. We only have to pray once in a while. We are not used to working hard. Everything is thrown into our laps.”

“You certainly are clever people. I must say that much of you,” the peasant said. “We won the war, of course, as was expected. But we take it like good sports. The war is over now, so why should we be angry at each other? We all must live, mustn’t we? Well, here, take a franc. The rest, after New Year. I hope you have a good time in Spain.”

14

The longer I wandered on, the more mountainous became the country, until I found myself in surroundings so desolate and dreary that I longed to see a human face. I would have been contented even with a bandit or a smuggler, in whom, I had been told the day before, this region was richer than in goats. And I saw plenty of goats.

“The border is not far off now,” the shepherd with whom I had stayed last night told me in the morning when I left. This shepherd, poor as he was, had shared with me his bread, onions, goat-cheese, and watery red wine.

Walking along a winding path, I saw something near by that looked partly like walls covered with mud, partly like the ruins of an ancient castle. I thought I might find a treasure left hidden there by the old Romans, so I went closer.

Suddenly two soldiers sprang up right in front of me, pointed their rifles at my stomach, and said: “Vollevoo, where are you going?”

“To Spain,” I answered. “It must be right over there, right behind this mountain.”

“It is,” they said. “There is Spain. But first you will have to come to our officer in command. Don’t you know where you are?”

“How should I know, messieurs, I am here for the first time in my life, and I wish I were in Spain.”

“You are within the French fortifications,” one of the soldiers said, “and I might just as well tell you that if your story is not good, or if the old man has got a letter that he does not like from his lady, then there is a good chance of your being shot at sunrise, whether you like it or not.”

They gave me cigarettes and brought me to a gate that was so well hidden in the mud wall that I almost got a shock when it appeared before us as if it had risen out of the ground at the word of Aladdin.

I was led in, searched, and ordered to wait until called for. Two hours passed. Then I was taken across a big yard where I saw a dozen heavy guns and soldiers lined up for drill. Again I had to wait in a small room, always with the two soldiers at my side, with bayonets fixed.

A door opened and an orderly told my soldiers to bring me in.

Behind a desk sat an officer. Rather young.

My soldiers made some report that I only partly understood, because they spoke in military language which in all countries is different from the language of the people who pay taxes so that soldiers may live.

“You are Dutch?” the .officer asked.

“No, I am Boche.”

“You look more like a Dutchman.”

I am sure he wanted only to know whether I was lying or not, because the soldiers certainly had told him that I said I was a Boche.

“What are you doing in a French fortress?” the officer asked.

“I did not know that this is a French fortress. It does not look like one.”

“What did you think it was?” he asked.

“To me it looked like ruins left by the old Romans.”

“Can you sketch?” he wanted to know.

“No, sir, I cannot.”

“Know how to make photographs?”

“I never spent any money buying a camera. Really, I am not much interested in photography. I think it rather silly, because you can get photographs made anywhere for little money.”

“Did you find anything on him?” the officer asked the soldiers.