May 20.
The crew of the Independent Venture includes a fair number of guys who look like they used to be members of an outlaw biker gang or maybe bouncers at a dive bar in Belgrade. But not the first mate. I find Christoph in his office on the poop deck listening to 10,000 Maniacs and eating Danish butter cookies out of a tin. When a hulking Russian sailor with a hairy chest and fists that could crush the throats of Siberian tigers drops by to discuss some ship’s business, I worry about Christoph’s sailor cred.
Christoph has offered to give us passengers— Sue, Mark, and me— a tour of the fo’castle. The front of the ship. On a freight ship, the captain is in charge of the bridge, the chief engineer is in charge of the engine, and the first mate is in charge of the fo’castle. It may not be sexy, but the fo’castle is the whole point of a freight ship. It’s where the shipping containers are stacked. It’s what pays the bills.
It’s a long hike to the bow. A tenth of a mile, Christoph tells us, past row after row of stacked up shipping containers filled with the god-knows-what that constitutes the global trade economy. Up front, you can’t hear the engine anymore. There’s just the silky slosh of the bow cutting through the North Atlantic. It’s a sound with a long pedigree. A sound as old as ships that sail the seven seas.
At lunch, two bad things happen. 1. Werner the chief engineer shows up at the table drunk and, 2. he learns that Passenger Mark served in the American military during the Vietnam War. Mark was a low ranking draftee who worked in an office, but as far as Werner is concerned, Mark was the mastermind of the entire war. Werner tells us that back then, he was a sailor on an East German cargo ship that was delivering cargo to North Vietnam. At some point, the American navy blockaded Werner’s ship. Things got ugly. Shots were fired. As Werner tells the story, his face turns red and the veins in his neck pop out. Passenger Mark tries to change the subject— Vietnam sure is a beautiful country, isn’t it? And boy it sure has changed!— but Werner’s having none of it. He lets Mark know that he isn’t a fan of the American military or of America or of Passenger Mark.
“I am speaking frankly because I am drunk,” he says.
Later in my cabin, I consider my situation. I’m on a ship far out at sea, and the propulsion system is in the hands of an anti-American East German with anger management issues and a drinking problem.
Dinner that night is a box of cold pizza that Paul the steward left on the table in the officer’s mess. Sue, Mark, and I eat a couple slices. Then Werner shows up. He’s drunk again.
“Follow me!” he orders us. “I will now show you zee engine room!”
We follow Werner down the stairs to the lowest deck, where he issues each of us a pair of big ear protectors, the same kind workers on an airport tarmac wear. Then we troop down a long passageway, over catwalks and under steel bladders that sputter and hiss. The passageway ends at an overlook. Below us are six enormous pistons, each one as big as a VW bug. This is it. The thing that sends shivers up to the highest decks, and that rattles the water glass that sits on the table next to my bed, and that works the fillings in my teeth loose while I sleep. The hot, heaving heart of the ship. Werner’s Engine. Werner stands there smiling at us, drunk, a little deranged. A Doctor Frankenstein of the high seas proudly introducing us to his monster.
The tour isn’t over. Werner leads us into the relative calm of the control room and launches into a lecture on horse power and fuel consumption and the basic principles of mechanical engineering. The whole thing lasts even longer because Passenger Mark, in a transparent effort to get on Werner’s good side, keeps asking questions. When he asks about the propeller shaft, Werner perks up.
“Ah, zee shaft. You want to see zee shaft?”
Werner pokes the index finger of his right hand into a hole he makes with his left hand. He winks.
“I will show you zee shaft!”
We follow Werner back into the engine room and climb deeper and deeper into the plumbing of the place. In a dark cubby-hole at the very back of the ship, we find the propeller shaft: a grease-slicked steel rod spinning furiously against the awful churn of the North Atlantic. Werner says something to us, but there’s no way to hear him. There’s no way to hear yourself think. I decide then and there that the propeller shaft is no place for a human being to linger, and I’m happy when we leave.
But Werner still isn’t done with us. He orders us to follow him up to his cabin on the Second Bridge Deck. There’s a little sofa pushed against the wall. He points at it.
“Sit there!” he commands.
Mark, Sue, and I squeeze onto Werner’s couch. Then Werner pulls out his accordion and sits down facing us. He plays three songs in succession: a song he calls “Spanish Lady;” then a song I forget the title of about a sailor who plays the accordion; and finally “Aloha Oe,” the tune you always hear in movies when someone visits or wants to evoke Hawaii.
After his musical performance, Werner abruptly stands up and opens his cabin door.
“Now you go,” he says. “Gute Nacht.”