The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories

THE STOKER

WHEN THE SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Karl Rossmann, whose unfortunate parents had sent him to America because a servant girl had seduced him and had his child, sailed into the harbour at New York, he saw the Statue of Liberty, who’d already been visible for a while, suddenly bathed in a new light, as if the sunshine had grown stronger. The sword in her hand seemed only just to have been raised aloft, and the unchained breeze blew freely around her figure.

‘It’s so high!’ he said to himself and, even though he’d momentarily forgotten all about disembarking, the swelling crowds of porters gradually pushed him up against the ship’s railing.

A young man he’d got to know slightly on the crossing said as he went past, “Hey, don’t you want to get off?”

“I’m ready,” said Karl, laughing at him, and because he was a strong boy and feeling exuberant, he lifted his suitcase up to his shoulder. But as he looked past his acquaintance, who was swinging his stick and already starting to move off with the others, he realized with dismay that he’d forgotten his umbrella below decks. He quickly asked the acquaintance, who didn’t look too happy about it, to do him a favour and watch his suitcase for a few minutes, then glanced around so that he’d be able to find this spot again, and hurried off. Unfortunately, when he got below he discovered that the most direct passageway had now been closed, probably something to do with the passengers disembarking, and he had to go searching down staircases that just led to more stairs, through constantly branching corridors, through an empty room with an abandoned writing desk, until, eventually, having only ever gone this way once or twice before, and then always as part of a big group, he was completely and utterly lost. Bewildered, meeting no one and hearing only the scrabbling of thousands of human feet above him, along with, far off, as if carried on a breeze, the last workings of the stopped engines, he began to bang on a little door that he’d come across as he wandered around.

“It’s open!” someone shouted from inside, and Karl opened the door with a sincere sigh of relief. “Why are you banging on the door like a maniac?” asked an enormous man, barely glancing at Karl. From some overhead shaft, a murky light that had lost its lustre higher up the ship fell into the wretched cabin, in which a bed, a cupboard, a chair and the man stood pressed against each other as if in storage. “I’ve lost my bearings,” said Karl. “I didn’t really notice on the crossing, but it’s such a big ship.”

“You’re right there,” the man said with some pride, and carried on tinkering with the lock on a small suitcase, which he kept shutting with both hands so he could listen to it clicking into place. “But come on in,” said the man, “Surely you’re not just going to stand out there!”

“I’m not disturbing you?” asked Karl.

“Come off it, how would you be disturbing me?”

“Are you German?” Karl tried to reassure himself, having heard a lot about the dangers that awaited new arrivals in America, especially from Irishmen.

“I am, I am,” said the man. Karl still hesitated. The man abruptly grabbed the door handle and, closing it rapidly, pulled Karl into the room with him. “I hate it when people look in at me from the corridor,” said the man, who’d gone back to working on his suitcase. “Everybody just walks past and looks inside, I can’t put up with that.”

“But the corridor’s completely empty,” said Karl, who was squashed uncomfortably against the bedpost.

“It is now,” said the man.

‘But now is what we’re talking about,’ thought Karl, ‘This man’s hard to have a conversation with.’

“Lie on the bed, you’ll have more space,” said the man. Karl squirmed over as well as he could and laughed out loud at his first failed attempt to swing himself into it. But hardly was he in the bed than he cried, “Oh God, I’ve totally forgotten my suitcase!”

“Where is it?”

“Up on the deck, someone I met is keeping an eye on it. Oh, what’s his name again?” And he pulled a calling card out of the secret pocket his mother had sewn into the lining of his coat for the journey. “Butterbaum. Franz Butterbaum.”

“Do you really need the things in your suitcase?”

“Of course.”

“Then why did you give it to a stranger?”

“I forgot my umbrella below decks and came down to fetch it, but didn’t want to lug the suitcase around with me. And then I got lost.”

“You’re by yourself? Not with anyone?”

“Yes, by myself.” ‘Maybe I should stick with this man,’ went through Karl’s head, ‘Where could I quickly find a better friend?’

“And now you’ve lost the suitcase too. To say nothing of the umbrella.” The man sat down on the chair as if Karl’s affairs had become more interesting.

“I’m sure the suitcase is still there.”

“Be as sure as you like,” said the man, and had a good scratch at his short, dark, thick hair, “but on a ship the way people behave changes with each port. In Hamburg maybe your Butterbaum really would have watched your suitcase, here it’s most likely they’ve both already vanished.”

“But then I’ve got to go up and look for it,” said Karl, glancing around for how to clamber back out.

“Just stay,” said the man, and thrust his hand against Karl’s chest, almost roughly, pushing him back onto the bed.

“But why?” asked Karl angrily.

“Because there’s no point,” said the man. “In a little while I’ll be going too, then we can go together. Either the suitcase has been stolen, in which case it can’t be helped, or your Butterbaum left it standing there, in which case it’ll be all the easier to find once the ship’s empty. The same goes for your umbrella.”

“Do you know your way around the ship?” asked Karl distrustfully, and it seemed to him that this generally convincing idea, that it would be easiest to find his things when the ship was empty, had a hidden catch.

“I’m one of the ship’s stokers,” said the man.

“You’re a stoker!” cried Karl happily, as though that surpassed all his expectations, and, propping himself up on his elbows, he took a closer look at the man. He said, “Just next to the cabin where I was sleeping, near the Slovak, there was a hatch where you could see into the engine room.”

“Yes, that’s where I was working,” said the stoker.

“I’ve always been interested in machinery,” said Karl, following his own train of thought, “and I would definitely have become an engineer if I hadn’t had to go to America.”

“Why did you have to go?”

“Never mind,” said Karl, and waved the whole story away. While doing so he smiled at the stoker, as if asking him to be lenient about this thing Karl hadn’t admitted.

“There will have been a reason,” said the stoker, and it wasn’t clear whether he wanted to hear the story or deflect it.

“Now I suppose I could be a stoker too,” said Karl, “My parents don’t care at all any more about what I end up doing.”

“My job’s coming up,” said the stoker, then coolly put his hands in his pockets and slung his legs, clad in wrinkled, leathery, iron-grey trousers, onto the bed to stretch them out. Karl had to shift closer against the wall.

“You’re leaving the ship?”

“Absolutely, we’re going ashore today.”

“Why? Don’t you like it?”

“Well, it’s a question of circumstances, it’s not always about whether you like it or not. But as it happens, you’re right, I don’t like it. You’re probably not seriously thinking about becoming a stoker, but that’s exactly the state of mind in which you’re most likely to become one. I strongly advise you against it. If you wanted to study when you were in Europe, why don’t you want to study here? The American universities are so much better than the European ones.”

“You might be right,” said Karl, “but I’ve hardly got enough money for studying. I did read about someone who worked in a shop during the day and studied at night until he became a doctor and I think the mayor of a town, but you need a huge amount of stamina for that, don’t you? I’m worried I don’t have it. Also I wasn’t an especially good pupil; having to leave school wasn’t something I was particularly sad about. And the schools here are maybe even stricter. I can barely speak English at all. And people here are so much against foreigners, I think.”

“Have you noticed that already? Well, that’s all right. Then you’re the man for me. Look here, we’re on a German ship, aren’t we, it belongs to the Hamburg–America Line, why aren’t we all Germans? Why is the chief engineer a Romanian? He’s called Schubal. It’s unbelievable. And this lousy bastard orders us Germans around on a German ship! Don’t think,”—he ran out of breath and flapped his hands in the air—“that I’m complaining just for the sake of complaining. I know you don’t have any influence and you’re just a poor young lad yourself. But it’s too much!” And he banged his fist several times on the table, watching it as he did so. “I’ve already served on so many ships”—he listed twenty names as if they were a single word, which Karl couldn’t follow—“and I’ve distinguished myself on them, been praised, been a worker the captains liked, I even stayed on the same merchant clipper for years”—he lifted himself up as if this were the high point of his life—“and here on this tub, where they lead you around by the nose, where you don’t need any brains, here I’m not worth anything, here I’m always in Schubal’s way, I’m a slacker, I deserve to be thrown out and I only get my pay out of pity. Does that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me.”

“You can’t stand for that,” said Karl, getting worked up. He felt so at home here on the stoker’s bed that he’d almost forgotten he was on the uncertain ground of a ship moored to the coast of an unknown continent. “Have you been to see the captain? Have you asked him for your rights?”

“Oh, go away, why don’t you leave? I don’t want you here. You don’t listen to what I’m saying and then you give me advice. How am I supposed to go to the captain!” The stoker wearily sat back down and put his face in his hands.

‘I’ve got no better advice to give him,’ Karl said to himself. And he was starting to think he’d be better off going to find his suitcase than staying down here to give advice that wasn’t wanted. When his father handed him the suitcase to keep for ever, he’d asked, as a joke, “How long will you have this for?” and now that expensive suitcase was perhaps already lost in earnest. Karl’s only consolation was that there was no way his father could ever find out about the situation he was in, even if he did try to make enquiries. That Karl had come as far as New York was all the shipping line would be able to tell him. It pained Karl that he hadn’t even really used some of the things in the suitcase, even though, for example, he’d needed to change his shirt for a while now. He’d scrimped in the wrong place there; at the start of his American career, just when he most needed to present himself in clean clothes, he’d have to turn up in a dirty shirt. If it hadn’t been for that, the loss of the suitcase wouldn’t have been so bad, because the suit he was wearing was actually better than the one in the case, which was really just an emergency suit that his mother had quickly darned right before he left. He also remembered that there’d been a piece of Verona salami in there, which his mother had packed as a treat and which he’d eaten very little of, because he’d had hardly any appetite at all on the crossing and the soup they’d doled out in steerage had been more than enough for him. He would have liked to have the salami handy so he could give it to the stoker as a present. People like that are easily won over if you slip them something small; Karl had learnt that from his father, who gave out cigars and so won over all the low-ranking staff he dealt with in his work. The only thing Karl had left to give away was his money, and since it looked like he’d already lost his suitcase, he wanted to leave that where it was for the time being. His thoughts kept coming back to the suitcase, and now he simply could not understand why he’d watched his suitcase so closely on the crossing that it had almost ruined his sleep, only to then let that same suitcase be so easily taken away from him. He thought of the five nights in which he’d been absolutely convinced that a small Slovak lying five bunks to his left had his sights on his suitcase. This Slovak was just waiting for the moment when Karl, overcome by fatigue, finally nodded off for a minute, so that he could pull the suitcase towards himself using a long pole which he played and practised with from morning till night. By day the Slovak looked innocent enough, but as soon as night fell, he started getting up from time to time and glancing sadly across at Karl’s suitcase. Karl could see that very clearly, because here and there someone suffering the emigrant’s restlessness would always strike a little light, despite that being against the on-board regulations, and try to decipher the incomprehensible prospectuses of migration agencies. If one of those lights was nearby, Karl could doze a little, but if it was far off, or if the room was dark, then he had to keep his eyes open. The effort had worn him out and now it had perhaps all been for nothing. That Butterbaum—if Karl ever got hold of him again!

At that moment, the former total quiet outside was interrupted by a far-off pattering, as if of children’s feet; it came nearer, grew louder, and then it became the measured tread of men. They were obviously going single file along the narrow passageway and you could hear a light jingling like that of weapons. Karl, who’d been close to stretching himself out on the bed and falling into a sleep released from all worries about suitcases and Slovaks, started upright and jabbed the stoker to make him pay attention, because the head of the column seemed to have just reached the door. “That’s the ship’s band,” said the stoker, “They’ve been playing on deck and now they’re going to pack up their things. That means it’s all over and we can go. Come on!” He took Karl by the hand, then, at the last second, pulled a framed picture of the Madonna off the wall and stuffed it into his breast pocket, grabbed his suitcase and hurried Karl out of the cabin.

“Now I’m going to go up to the office and give those gentlemen a piece of my mind. There aren’t any passengers around any more, no need to keep quiet for their sake.” The stoker repeated this several times in various formulations, and, in passing, tried to use the side of his foot to crush a rat that was crossing the passageway, but succeeded only in kicking it faster into the hole that it reached just in time. He moved slowly in general, and although he had long legs, they were too heavy.

They went through a part of the kitchens where several girls in dirty aprons—they splattered them on purpose—were washing dishes in big tubs. The stoker called over one of the girls, Lina, put his arm around her waist and led her along for a few steps while she pressed herself coquettishly against him. “It’s cashing-out time, do you want to come?” he asked.

“Why should I bother, you can just bring me the money here,” she answered, then slipped out from under his arm and ran away. “Where did you dig up that beautiful boy?” she called after them, but didn’t stop for an answer. The other girls, who’d paused their work to listen, all laughed.

Karl and the stoker continued on and reached a door topped with a small portico held up by little golden caryatids. By the standard of ship’s furnishings, it looked downright lavish. Karl realized that he’d never been to this section, which had probably been reserved for first- and second-class passengers during the crossing, whereas now the dividing doors had been taken out for the ship’s deep clean. They’d already come across men carrying brooms over their shoulders, who’d said hello to the stoker. Karl was astonished by how busy it was; down in steerage he hadn’t seen much of what was going on. There were even electrical cables running along the corridors and a tinny bell kept ringing.

The stoker knocked respectfully on the door and, when someone shouted “Enter,” he gestured at Karl not to be afraid and to come in. Karl did go inside, but stayed close to the door. Out of the room’s three windows he could see the waves of the open sea, and as he watched their cheerful movement, his heart thudded as if he hadn’t just been looking at the sea nonstop for five long days. Huge ships crossed one another’s paths, so heavy that they shifted only slightly with the force of the waves. If you narrowed your eyes, it looked as if these ships were swaying under their own weight. On their masts they flew long, narrow flags, blown taut by their speed but still wriggling from side to side. Gun salutes rang out, presumably from warships, and the long barrels of one passing quite close by, shining brightly as the sun struck its steel cladding, were rocked back and forth by the ship’s steady, smooth but not quite perfectly horizontal motion. The smaller boats and launches could only be seen in the distance, at least when standing by the door, but there were swarms of them running in through the gaps between the big ships. Behind all this stood New York, watching Karl through its skyscrapers’ hundred thousand windows. Yes, in this room you knew where you were.

At a round table sat three men, one a ship’s officer in his blue jacket, the two others officials from the port authority in black American uniforms. Stacked high on the table in front of them were all sorts of documents, which the officer skimmed over with a pen in his hand, then passed to the two others, who read or copied out certain sections and put them in their briefcases, pausing only when one of them, who kept making a clicking noise with his teeth, dictated something for his colleague’s report.

Sitting at a desk by the window, with his back to the door, sat a diminutive man working through a row of heavy ledgers lined up at his eye level on a strong shelf. Next to him was an open, empty-looking cash box.

The second window was unobstructed and gave the best view. Near the third, however, stood two more gentlemen having a murmured conversation. One, wearing a naval uniform and toying with the hilt of his sword, was leaning against the window frame. The man he was talking to was facing the window, and now and then his movements revealed part of a row of decorations on the first man’s chest. He was in civilian clothes and carried a thin bamboo cane, which, because his hands were on his hips, stuck out like a sword of his own.

Karl didn’t have much time to take all this in because a steward came up to them and, giving the stoker a look that plainly said he didn’t belong there, asked what he wanted. The stoker answered, as quietly as he’d been asked, that he would like to speak to the chief purser. The steward, for his part, rejected this request with a gesture, but nonetheless walked softly across to the man with the ledgers, making a wide detour around the table. The purser—you could see it clearly—literally stiffened at what the steward said to him, but eventually turned towards the stoker and sternly waved his hand to dismiss him, and then dismissed the steward, too, for good measure. At that, the steward came back to the stoker and, as if confiding something to him, said, “Leave this room at once!”

Upon receiving this response, the stoker looked down at Karl as if Karl were the stoker’s heart and he were silently lamenting his sorrows to it. Without a second thought, Karl set off and marched straight across the room, even lightly brushing the officer’s chair as he passed; the steward went after him, leaning forward with his arms held out ready to grab him, as if he were chasing a bug, but Karl was first to the purser’s table and he held on to it in case the steward tried to pull him away.

Of course the whole room suddenly got very lively. The officer at the table jumped to his feet, the men from the port authority were calm but alert, the two gentlemen at the window stepped closer together, while the steward retreated, believing that anywhere the higher-ups showed an interest was somewhere he was out of place. The stoker, still by the door, waited nervously for his help to be called upon. The chief purser finally swung his chair around to the right.

Karl rummaged in his secret pocket, which he had no hesitation in revealing to these people, fished out his passport and laid it open on the table without any other introduction. The chief purser seemed to consider this passport irrelevant and flicked it aside with his fingers, at which Karl, as if this formality had been correctly taken care of, put it back in his pocket.

“I have to say,” he then began, “that in my opinion this stoker has been unjustly treated. There’s a certain Schubal who keeps doing him down. He’s already served on very many ships, all of which he can name for you, to the complete satisfaction of their captains, he’s hard-working, takes his job seriously, and it really doesn’t make any sense that, on this one ship, where what’s required isn’t especially difficult, not like it is on a merchant clipper, for example, he wouldn’t be up to the mark. It can therefore only be slander that’s preventing him from getting ahead and robbing him of the recognition he deserves, and which he would certainly otherwise be getting. I’m only giving the general outline here, the specific complaints he’ll present to you himself.” Karl had directed this speech to everyone in the room, because they were already listening and because it seemed far more likely that there would be one fair-minded man among the group than that that man would happen to be the chief purser. Cunningly, Karl had omitted that he’d known the stoker for such a short time. And he would actually have spoken much better if he hadn’t been thrown off by the red face of the gentleman with the bamboo cane, which he could see properly from his new vantage point.

“It’s all true, every word,” said the stoker before anyone had asked him, indeed before anyone had even looked at him. This over-hastiness would have been a big mistake had the gentleman with the decorations, who Karl now realized was the captain, not already made the decision to listen to the stoker. He reached out his hand and told the stoker, “Come over here!” with a voice so hard you could have hit it with a hammer. Now everything depended on the impression the stoker made; Karl didn’t have any doubts about the rightness of his cause.

Luckily, in this moment it turned out that the stoker was a man of the world. With exemplary calm, he neatly fished a little bundle of papers and a notebook out of his suitcase and, as if it were the obvious thing to do, simply bypassed the chief purser and took his papers straight to the captain, for whom he spread his evidence out on the window sill. The chief purser had no choice but to go over there himself. “The man is a well-known troublemaker,” he said in explanation, “He spends more time at the cash desk than in the engine room. He’s driven Schubal, that quiet soul, to the brink of desperation. Now listen here!” he turned to the stoker, “don’t you think you’ve finally taken this pushiness of yours too far? How many times have you already been thrown out by the cashiers, just as you and your completely and utterly unwarranted demands entirely deserve! How many times have you come running from there to this office! How often have you already been told, quite rightly, that Schubal is your direct superior and that it’s him you have to sort these things out with! And now you’ve got so shameless that you come barging in when the captain’s present and bother him with this, and you’re not even embarrassed about bringing along this boy, who I’ve never seen on the ship before, to trot out these ridiculous allegations for you!”

Karl had to keep himself from lunging forward. But the captain was already there, saying, “Let’s hear what the man has to say. It’s true that Schubal has recently been getting a bit too independent for my liking—which isn’t to say anything in your favour.” The latter was directed at the stoker, but it was natural that the captain couldn’t take up his case just like that, and everything seemed to be on the right track. The stoker began his explanation and even managed to give Schubal the title “Mr”. How happy Karl was, standing by the chief purser’s abandoned desk, where he kept pressing down a parcel scale with his fingers, out of sheer delight.—Mr Schubal is unfair! Mr Schubal gives preferential treatment to foreigners! Mr Schubal ejected the stoker from the engine room and sent him to scrub the toilet, which was certainly not his job!—At one point doubt was even cast on Mr Schubal’s work ethic, which was apparently discussed rather more than it really existed. At that, Karl stared at the captain with all his might, candidly, as though they were colleagues, so that he wouldn’t let himself be unfavourably influenced by the stoker’s slightly clumsy way of expressing himself. Nevertheless, for all the stoker talked, he didn’t actually bring up anything concrete, and although the captain still looked straight at him, his face set with determination to hear him out this time, the other men started to get impatient and the stoker’s voice lost its hold on the room’s attention, which was not a good sign. The first was the gentleman in civilian clothes who began to toy with his bamboo cane, tapping it, albeit quietly, on the parquet floor. The others began to glance around the room and the two officials from the port authority, who were obviously pressed for time, took up their files and started looking through them again, if still a bit absent-mindedly; the ship’s officer shifted his chair closer to them, and the chief purser, who thought he’d won the day, heaved a deep and ironic sigh. Only the steward seemed unaffected by the air of distraction that was setting in among the others, because he sympathized with the plight of a poor man put in front of the powerful, and he nodded seriously at Karl as if trying to assure him of something.

Meanwhile, the life of the harbour went on outside the window: a flat cargo barge carrying a mountain of barrels, which must have been ingeniously stacked not to roll off, went by and plunged the room into shadow; small motor launches, which Karl could now have got a good look at if he’d had a moment, swooshed past in dead straight lines, twitching with the hands of the men standing upright at the helms; strange floating objects kept popping up out of the unsettled waters, but they were swamped again at once and sank out of Karl’s astonished sight; boats belonging to the ocean liners were rowed ashore by toiling sailors, each stuffed with passengers who quietly and expectantly sat where they’d been told to, even though a few couldn’t resist turning their heads from side to side to see the changing backdrop. It was motion without end, a restlessness transferred from the restless deep to these helpless people and their works!

The whole situation urged speed, clarity, the most precise description, but what did the stoker do? He talked himself up into a sweat, his hands trembled so much he couldn’t hold the papers on the window sill; he thought of endless complaints to make about Schubal and in his opinion any one of them should have been enough to bury him for good, but what he managed to present to the captain was just a sad mishmash of all of them. The man with the bamboo cane had already started whistling quietly and looking at the ceiling, the men from the port authority had drawn the ship’s officer over to their table and showed no sign of releasing him again, the chief purser was visibly holding himself back from butting in only because the captain had stayed so calm, and the steward was waiting attentively for the order that the captain must soon give about what to do with the stoker.

Karl couldn’t stand idly by any longer. He went slowly over to the group, and as he went he thought quickly about the cleverest way he could get a grip on what was happening. The time was ripe: only a little more of this and he and the stoker would both be thrown out of the office. The captain might be a good man and might also, as it seemed to Karl, have some particular reason for presenting himself as a fair commander, but at the end of the day he wasn’t an instrument you could play however you wanted—and that was exactly how the stoker was trying to handle him, albeit out of sincere and boundless indignation.

Karl said to the stoker: “You’ve got to explain it more simply, more clearly; the captain can’t take it seriously, the way you’re explaining it. Do you think the captain knows the surname of every engineer and errand boy, or their Christian names, so that you can just refer to them like that and he’ll know who you’re talking about? You’ve got to arrange your complaints, say the most important thing first, then the other things in descending order, and it might turn out that most of them you don’t even have to mention. You’ve always explained it so clearly to me!” If you can steal suitcases in America, you can also tell a little white lie here and there, he thought apologetically.

If only it had helped! Wasn’t it already too late? The stoker broke off as soon as he heard Karl’s familiar voice, but his eyes were glazed with the tears of wounded male pride, of dreadful memories, of an extreme predicament, and he couldn’t even properly make out Karl’s face any more. How could he now—Karl silently understood this as he stood in front of the silent man—how could he now suddenly change his whole manner of speech, especially when it must seem to him that he’d already put forward all there was to say, without anything to show for it, while at the same time, it also seemed that he hadn’t really said anything yet and couldn’t expect these gentlemen to keep on listening to the rest of the story. And in this moment, here comes Karl, his only supporter, trying to give him some good advice, but instead only showing him that all, truly all, is lost.

‘If only I’d come quicker instead of looking out of the window,’ Karl said to himself, then bowed his face away from the stoker and clapped his hands against the seams of his trousers as a sign that every hope was at an end.

But the stoker misunderstood, somehow getting the idea that Karl was secretly criticizing him, and, hoping to win him round, he—on top of everything—started to quarrel with Karl. He did so at a point when the men at the round table had long since become resentful of the unnecessary noise disturbing their important work, when the chief purser was beginning to find the captain’s patience incomprehensible and was on the brink of erupting, when the steward had reverted to being entirely his bosses’ man and was weighing up the stoker with a wild look in his eye, and when the gentleman with the bamboo cane, to whom the captain occasionally sent a friendly glance and who was by now totally indifferent to the stoker, even disgusted by him, took out a small notebook and, evidently preoccupied with something else entirely, let his attention wander back and forth between the notebook and Karl.

“I know, I know,” said Karl, who was finding it difficult to defend himself against the tirade that the stoker had now directed at him, but nevertheless still kept up an amiable smile for him. “You’re quite right, absolutely, I never doubted it.” He would have liked to grab the stoker’s gesticulating hands, for fear of being struck, but would have liked even more to push him into a corner and whisper a few quiet, comforting words that no one else would have needed to hear. But the stoker was totally beside himself. Karl began to take some solace from the thought that, if need be, the stoker would be able to subdue all seven men present with the strength of his despair. On the desk, however, there was a raised section with far too many buttons, all connected to the electrical system; simply pressing a hand down on it would have roused the whole ship and filled its corridors with people hostile to them.

At that moment, the seemingly indifferent man with the bamboo cane approached Karl and asked, not loudly, but in a voice distinct despite all the stoker’s yelling, “What’s your name?” At the same time, as if someone had been waiting for the man to speak, there was a knocking at the door. The steward looked to the captain, who nodded. The steward went to the door and opened it. Outside in an old military-style coat stood a man of middling build who, judging by his appearance, didn’t seem very well suited to working with machines, yet was in fact Schubal. If Karl hadn’t realized that from the way everyone looked at him, betraying a certain satisfaction that even the captain wasn’t above, he couldn’t have missed, to his shock, that the stoker tensed his arms and balled his fists as if these fists were the most important thing about him, for which he would have sacrificed whatever he had in life. All his strength, even what kept him on his feet, had gone there.

And so that was the enemy, free and fresh in his smart clothes, with a book of accounts under his arm, probably the stoker’s hours and pay, and he looked each of them in the eye in turn, not afraid to let them see that he was gauging their mood. All seven were already on his side, because although the captain had had certain reservations about him, or pretended to have them after feeling nettled by the stoker, Schubal now seemed above even the smallest criticism. You couldn’t be strict enough with a man like the stoker, and if Schubal had done anything wrong, it was that he’d failed to break the stoker’s wilfulness before he could dare present himself in front of the captain.

You might have assumed that a confrontation between the stoker and Schubal before this group of people would have the same effect as one before a higher court, and that even if Schubal was good at disguising his real character, he wouldn’t be able to keep it up till the end. A brief flash of malice would be enough of a demonstration for these men, and Karl wanted to make sure it happened. He’d been able to pick up a little about the acumen, weaknesses and temper of each of the men, and, seen from that perspective, the time he’d spent here had not been wasted. If only the stoker would make a better impression, but he seemed completely unable to stand up for himself. If you’d held Schubal within his reach, the stoker would presumably have managed to bash in his hated skull with his fists. But just to take a few steps over to Schubal would have been beyond him. Why hadn’t Karl predicted what was so easily predictable, namely that Schubal would eventually have to appear, either under his own impetus or called in by the captain. Why hadn’t Karl and the stoker worked out a precise plan of attack on the way here rather than walking in hopelessly unprepared simply because the door was in front of them? Was the stoker even still capable of speech, of saying yes and no when required to in the impending cross-examination, which, at this rate, they would be lucky even to get to? He was standing there with his legs apart, his knees unsteady, his head lifted slightly, with the air going in and out of his mouth as if he had no lungs left to absorb it.

Karl, meanwhile, felt stronger and more lucid than he perhaps ever had back home. If his parents could only see him now, in a foreign country, championing a just cause in front of distinguished persons, and although he hadn’t won yet, he was ready to make a final push. Would that change their opinion of him? Would they sit him down between them and praise him? Look him once, just once, in the eyes that gazed at them with such devotion? What dubious questions and what an inopportune moment to start asking them!

“I’ve come because I believe that the stoker is accusing me of some kind of dishonesty. A girl from the kitchens told me she’d seen him on his way here. Captain, gentlemen, I’m ready to disprove any allegation by referring to my records and, if necessary, with the testimony of impartial and independent witnesses, who are waiting outside the door.” Thus spoke Schubal. It was the clear speech of a mature man, and from the change in the expression of his listeners you might have thought this was the first time in a long time they’d heard a human voice. They certainly didn’t notice that even this fine speech was riddled with holes. Why was the first specific charge that occurred to him “dishonesty”? Perhaps the stoker’s allegations should have started there rather than with his national prejudices? A girl from the kitchen had seen the stoker on the way to the office and Schubal had understood at once what was going on? Wasn’t it guilt that sharpened his powers of understanding? And on top of that he’d immediately brought along a gang of witnesses, whom he had the nerve to call impartial and independent? It was a racket, one big racket! And these gentlemen were letting it go on and clearly even considered this the right way to behave? Why had Schubal let so much time pass between getting the message from the girl in the kitchens and showing himself here? Surely for no other reason than to let the stoker wear everybody out until it fogged their judgment, which Schubal had good reason to be afraid of. Hadn’t Schubal, who must have been standing outside the door for a long time already, only knocked when that gentleman had asked an unrelated question, which suggested that the stoker was finished?

It was all crystal clear and Schubal was giving himself away despite everything, but these gentlemen still needed it put to them even more straightforwardly. They needed to be shaken up. ‘Karl,’ he thought, ‘it’s time to act, before the witnesses come in and swamp the conversation.’

But right at that moment, the captain waved Schubal away, and he—since his affairs seemed to have been postponed for a little while—stepped aside and began a hushed conversation with the steward, who’d joined him at once, a conversation with no shortage of sidelong glances at the stoker and Karl, nor of emphatic hand gestures. Schubal looked to be preparing his next big speech.

“Didn’t you want to ask this young man something, Mr Jakob?” said the captain to the man with the bamboo cane over the general hush.

“Indeed,” he said, thanking the captain for this courtesy with a slight bow. And then he asked Karl again, “What’s your name?”

Karl, who believed it was in the interest of their cause to dispense with this interlude and his stubborn questioner as quickly as possible, answered curtly, breaking his habit of introducing himself by presenting his passport, which he would anyway first have had to find: “Karl Rossmann.”

“But,” said the man the captain had called Jakob, immediately taking a step back, smiling almost in disbelief. The captain, the chief purser, the ship’s officer, even the steward also appeared to be inexplicably astonished by Karl’s name. Only the men from the port authority and Schubal didn’t react.

“But,” Mr Jakob repeated, coming over to Karl on stiff legs, “that means I’m your Uncle Jakob and you’re my dear nephew. I suspected it from the very start!” he said to the captain, before putting his arms around Karl and kissing him, while Karl silently let it happen.

“What’s your name?” Karl asked after being released, speaking very politely but not feeling at all moved, and trying to predict what the consequences of this new development might be for the stoker. For the time being, there seemed no reason to believe that Schubal would be able to turn it to his advantage.

“Try to understand how lucky you are, young man,” said the captain, who thought that Karl’s question had wounded the dignity of Mr Jakob, who’d gone over to the window, evidently so that the others wouldn’t see the emotion on his face, which he was dabbing with a handkerchief. “The man who’s just told you he’s your uncle is Senator Edward Jakob. From now on, a glittering career awaits you, presumably quite in contrast with what you’d been expecting. Try to grasp that as well as you can right now, and get a hold of yourself!”

“I really do have an Uncle Jakob in America,” said Karl to the captain, “but if I’ve understood correctly, Jakob is the senator’s surname.”

“That’s right,” the captain said, and waited for him to go on.

“Well, my Uncle Jakob, who’s my mother’s brother, it’s only his Christian name that’s Jakob, and his surname must obviously be the same as my mother’s, whose maiden name is Bendelmayer.”

“Gentlemen!” cried the senator, coming back very cheerfully from his restorative break by the window, and referring to what Karl had just explained. All of them, with the exception of the port officials, burst out laughing, some seeming genuinely touched, others more inscrutably.

‘What I said wasn’t that ridiculous,’ Karl thought to himself.

“Gentlemen,” repeated the senator, “without your meaning to, or my meaning you to, you are witnessing a little family scene, and I feel I owe you some explanation for it, since, I believe, only the captain”—this mention elicited an exchange of bows—“knows the full story.”

‘Now I’ve really got to pay attention to every word,’ Karl said to himself and, looking over his shoulder, he was happy to see that the figure of the stoker was coming back to life.

“For all the long years of my American sojourn—the word sojourn isn’t actually quite right for someone who’s an American citizen, as I am with every part of my soul—but for all these long years I’ve been living entirely estranged from my European family, for reasons that are firstly not relevant here, and secondly would be too distressing to relate. In fact, I’ve already begun to dread the time when I will have to explain it to my dear nephew, a task that will make it impossible not to say some frank words about his parents and their friends.”

‘He’s my uncle, no doubt about it,’ Karl said to himself, and listened. ‘He must have just changed his name.’

“My dear nephew’s parents have—let’s call this thing what it is—simply got rid of him, the way you put a cat outside when it annoys you. I certainly don’t want to play down what my nephew did to elicit that punishment, but his misdemeanour is such that just describing it excuses him.”

‘I’d like to hear that,’ thought Karl, ‘but I don’t want him to tell it to everyone. And aside from that, he can’t know anything about it. How could he?’

“What happened,” continued his uncle, leaning his weight onto the bamboo cane and rocking back and forth a little, which removed some of the unnecessary solemnity that this subject would otherwise have certainly taken on, “what happened is that he was seduced by a serving maid, Johanna Brummer, a woman of around thirty-five. It’s not my intention to embarrass my nephew with the word ‘seduce’, but it’s hard to find another that fits.”

Karl, who had moved to stand quite close to his uncle, turned around at that moment to read the effect of the story on the faces of those present. Nobody laughed, all of them listened patiently and seriously. After all, you don’t laugh about the nephew of a senator just like that. If anything, you would have thought that the stoker was smiling very faintly at Karl, which was both gratifying as a new sign of life and excusable in him because, when they’d been together in his cabin, Karl had tried to keep secret this thing that was now being made so public.

“Then this Brummer,” his uncle continued, “had a child by my nephew, a healthy boy, baptized with the name Jakob, doubtless as a reference to myself, who must have made a strong impression on the girl in what I’m sure were merely passing mentions by my nephew. And a good thing too, I say. Because since his parents wanted to avoid maintenance payments or whatever other aspects of the scandal would have touched them—I must emphasize that I’m not familiar with either the laws over there or his parents’ general circumstances—but since they wanted to avoid maintenance payments and a scandal, they had their son, my dear nephew, shipped off to America with an irresponsible lack of material provisions, as you can see, meaning that, had it not been for one of the miracles that can apparently still happen in America, the boy would have immediately met his death in some New York back alley, except that the serving girl wrote me a letter which, after many detours, arrived in my possession yesterday, telling me the whole story as well as providing a description of my nephew and—very sensibly—the name of this ship. If I wanted to entertain you, gentlemen, I could just read out some choice passages from that letter”—he pulled two enormous, closely handwritten sheets of paper from his pocket and waved them around. “I’ve no doubt you would find it affecting, since it’s written with a certain amount of quite crude but well-meaning guile, and with a great deal of love for the father of her child. But it’s neither my purpose to entertain you more than is necessary to explain what you’re witnessing, nor, in this moment of welcome, to run the risk of injuring any feelings that my nephew may still have for her, especially as, if he likes, he can read the letter for his own information in the privacy of the room that’s already been prepared for him.”

Karl, however, didn’t have any feelings for that girl. Amid the confusion of an ever more distant past, she was sitting in her kitchen with one elbow propped on the dresser. She looked at him when he came into the kitchen now and then to fetch a glass of water for his father or to run an errand for his mother. Sometimes she was writing a letter from her cramped position next to the dresser, and would draw her inspiration from Karl’s face. Sometimes she covered her eyes with one hand and then nothing he said could reach her. Sometimes she got onto her knees in her narrow little room next to the kitchen and prayed to a wooden cross; Karl would watch her shyly through the crack of the door as he went in and out. Sometimes she raced around the kitchen and, if Karl got in her way, she’d flinch backwards, cackling like a witch. Sometimes she closed the door to the kitchen after Karl had come in and held on to the handle until he asked to be let out. Sometimes she brought him things that he didn’t even want and silently pressed them into his hands. But once she said “Karl” and, amid sighs and grimaces, led him—still astonished by being addressed in this unexpected way—to her room, and locked the door. She flung her arms around his neck tight enough to choke him and, although she asked him to undress her, she actually undressed him and laid him on her bed as though from now on she would keep him all to herself and caress and care for him until the end of the world. “Karl, oh my Karl!” she cried as if she’d just seen him and was reassuring herself that she had him, while he couldn’t see a thing and felt ill at ease among the mass of warm bedclothes that she seemed to have heaped up for his sake. Then she lay down next to him and wanted to hear some kind of secrets, but he couldn’t think of anything and she got cross, whether joking or for real, shook him, listened to his heart, offered her breast for him to listen to, pressed her naked stomach against his body, sent her hand searching between his legs so horribly that Karl shook his head and neck free of the pillows, then thrust her stomach against him several times—it seemed as if she’d become a part of him and perhaps for that reason he was gripped by a terrible helplessness. In tears, and after many tender goodnights on her part, he’d finally got back to his own bed. That was all it had been and somehow his uncle was turning it into this whole big story. And it seemed the cook had been thinking of him and had written to tell his uncle he was coming. That was very good of her and he would be sure to make it up to her some day.

“And now,” cried the senator, “I want to hear it from you, am I your uncle or not?”

“You are my uncle,” Karl said, then kissed his hand and was kissed on the forehead in return. “I’m very happy that I met you, but you’re wrong to think that my parents only have bad things to say about you. There were also a few other mistakes in what you said, I mean, it didn’t actually all happen like that. But from over here you couldn’t really have got a good sense of what was going on and I don’t think it’s a big problem if these gentlemen have got a few incorrect details about something that can’t mean very much to them.”

“Well spoken,” said the senator, then led Karl over to the visibly emotional captain and asked, “Don’t I have a splendid nephew?”

“I’m delighted,” said the captain with the kind of bow that only comes from military training, “to have met your nephew, Senator. It’s a special honour for my ship to have been the place where you met. I’m just sorry to say that the crossing must have been very uncomfortable in steerage, you never know who’s being carried along down there. We do everything possible to make the crossing as pleasant as possible for our steerage passengers, far more than our American counterparts, for example, but to make that journey an actual pleasure is unfortunately something we haven’t yet managed.”

“It hasn’t done me any harm,” said Karl.

“It hasn’t done him any harm!” repeated the senator, laughing loudly.

“The only thing is my suitcase, which I…” and with that he remembered everything that had taken place before and that remained to be done, looked around and saw those present still standing where they’d been before, but silent with respect and amazement, their eyes directed at him. Only in the port officials, inasmuch as their stern, self-satisfied faces gave anything away, could you see regret at having come at such an inopportune time; the watch they had lying on the table was probably more important to them than everything that was happening in this room and indeed anything that could happen.

After the captain, the first to express his happiness for them was, strangely enough, the stoker. He said, “My heartiest congratulations,” and shook Karl’s hand, also wanting to show something like respect. But when he turned to the senator with the same phrase, the senator shifted backwards, as if the stoker were overstepping his rights, and the stoker dropped his hand at once.

The others saw what they were supposed to do and crowded around Karl and the senator. In the confusion, Karl was even offered congratulations by Schubal, which he accepted with thanks. The last to step forward were the two port officials, who said a few words in English, making a ridiculous impression.

The senator was in such a good mood that he wanted to savour every detail, and started to describe the circumstances of how this reunion had come about, something that was of course not only tolerated by the others but listened to with interest. So he told them that he’d copied the list of Karl’s distinguishing features from the cook’s letter into his notebook in case he needed them to hand. Then, during the stoker’s unbearable waffling, he’d pulled out the notebook for no other reason than to distract himself and—just for amusement—tried to match the cook’s not exactly detective-standard description to Karl’s appearance. “And that’s how you end up with a nephew,” he concluded in a tone that made it sound as if he wanted to be congratulated again.

“What’s going to happen to the stoker?” asked Karl, ignoring his uncle’s latest story. In his new position he thought he was entitled to say whatever crossed his mind.

“The stoker will get whatever he deserves,” said the senator, “and whatever the captain considers best. I think we’ve heard just about enough from the stoker, indeed more than enough, something I’m sure these gentlemen will agree with me on.”

“But that’s not the point, it’s a question of justice,” said Karl. He stood between his uncle and the captain, believing, perhaps because he was standing there, that the decision lay in his hands.

But the stoker no longer seemed to hold out any hope. He’d tucked his hands into his belt, which his agitated movements had brought into view along with part of a striped shirt. That didn’t bother him in the least; he’d made his complaint, let them see what rags he wrapped around his body, and then let them carry him off. He thought that the steward and Schubal, the two lowest in rank, should be the ones to give him the final send-off. Then Schubal would be left in peace and not driven to the brink of desperation, as the chief purser had put it. The captain would be able to hire a bunch of Romanians, everyone on board would speak Romanian and then maybe everything would indeed be better. No stoker would shoot his mouth off in the cash office and only his last tirade would be remembered, with a certain fondness, because, as the senator had said, it had prompted him to recognize his nephew. Moreover, that nephew had tried to help him several times already and so provided more than enough thanks in advance for the good turn the stoker had done him in having him recognized; it didn’t occur to the stoker to now demand anything more. And anyway, he might be the nephew of a senator, but he was still a long way short of being a captain, and it was from the captain’s mouth that the bad news would come. — So the stoker tried not to look at Karl, but unfortunately in this room full of enemies there was no other resting place for his eyes.

“Don’t misunderstand the situation,” said the senator to Karl. “It may well be a question of justice, but it’s also one of discipline. Both of those things, especially the latter, are for the captain to decide.”

“That’s right,” mumbled the stoker. Those who heard and understood smiled disconcertedly.

“Besides, we’ve already kept the captain from his business for long enough and it must be piling up now that he’s arrived in New York. It’s high time for us to leave the ship before we get unnecessarily mixed up in some petty squabble between a pair of engineers and end up turning it into more than it is. I completely understand what you’re doing, by the way, my dear nephew, and that’s precisely what gives me the right to lead you away from here at once.”

“I’ll have a boat made ready for you,” said the captain, astonishing Karl by not offering the slightest objection to his uncle’s self-deprecating words. The chief purser hurried over to the desk and phoned the captain’s order through to the bosun.

‘It’s true that we’re almost out of time,’ Karl said to himself, ‘but there’s nothing I can do without insulting everybody. I can’t leave my uncle when he’s only just found me. The captain is polite, but no more than that. His politeness will stop when it comes to discipline, and I’m sure what my uncle said is what the captain really thinks. Schubal I don’t want to talk to, I even feel bad that I shook his hand. And all the other people here are irrelevant.’

Thinking these thoughts, he slowly went over to the stoker, pulled the stoker’s right hand out of his belt and held it playfully in his own. “Why don’t you say anything?” he asked. “Why do you let them treat you like this?”

The stoker just wrinkled his forehead as if searching for the words to express himself.

“You’ve suffered an injustice, more than anyone else on this ship, I know that for sure.” And Karl pulled his fingers back and forth between those of the stoker, who looked around with shining eyes, as if experiencing a moment of bliss that no one could take away from him.

“You’ve got to stand up for yourself, say yes and no, otherwise people won’t have a clue about the truth. You’ve got to promise me that you’ll do as I’ve said, because I’m very much afraid that I won’t be able to help you at all any more.” Karl was crying as he kissed the stoker’s chapped, almost lifeless hand, pressing it against his cheek like a treasure he had to give up. — Then his uncle was at his side and, ever so gently, pulled him away.

“The stoker seems to have captivated you,” he said, and looked knowingly over Karl’s head at the captain. “You felt abandoned, you found the stoker and you’re grateful to him, that’s very commendable. But, for my sake, don’t take it too far, and please start to learn your station.”

Outside the office there was a sudden racket, shouting, and it even seemed as if someone was being brutally shoved against the door. A seaman came in, a little dishevelled and wearing a girl’s apron. “There are people outside,” he said, jabbing his elbows as if still in the ruckus. Finally he got a hold on himself and tried to salute the captain, but then noticed the apron, ripped it off, threw it on the floor and shouted, “That’s disgusting! They’ve tied a girl’s apron on me.” Then he clicked his heels and saluted. Someone began to laugh, but the captain said severely, “That’s what I call a good mood. Who’s outside?”

“They’re my witnesses,” said Schubal, stepping forward. “I sincerely apologize for their behaviour. When people have a sea voyage behind them, they sometimes get a little crazy.”

“Call them in right away,” ordered the captain and, turning straight to the senator, he spoke politely but briskly: “If you’d be so good, Senator, as to follow this seaman with your nephew, he’ll take you to the boat. I’m sure I don’t have to say what a pleasure and an honour it’s been to make your personal acquaintance. I only hope that we’ll soon have an opportunity to carry on our conversation about the state of the American fleets, and perhaps we’ll again be interrupted as pleasantly as we were today.”

“One nephew’s enough for the time being,” said his uncle with a laugh. “And now please accept my sincerest thanks for your kindness, and I hope all goes well until we next meet. It’s actually quite possible that we”—he gave Karl an affectionate squeeze—“might end up spending some time with you when we take our next trip to Europe.”

“It would be a great pleasure,” said the captain. The two men shook hands. Karl could only give his hand briefly and wordlessly, because the captain’s attention was already consumed by the fifteen people who had trooped in, a little sheepish but still very noisy, under the supervision of Schubal. The seaman asked the senator for permission to go ahead and then cleared a way for him and Karl, who moved easily through the crowd of bowing crewmen. It seemed that these good-natured people thought of Schubal’s quarrel with the stoker as a joke that even the captain could share. Among them Karl noticed the girl from the kitchens, Lina, who winked at him playfully and tied on the apron that the seaman had thrown to the floor, because it was hers.

Still following the seaman, they left the office and turned off into a narrow corridor that, after a few steps, brought them to a little door from which a short staircase led down to the boat that had been made ready for them. The seamen in the boat—into which their chief made a single, sudden leap—stood up and saluted. The senator was just giving Karl a warning to be careful going down the steps when Karl burst into painful tears. The senator took hold of Karl’s chin, pressed Karl to him, and stroked his head with his other hand. In this way, step by step, they went slowly down the stairs and got into the boat, where the senator chose a good seat for Karl directly opposite himself. At a sign from the senator, the seamen pushed off from the ship and were immediately rowing hard. They were hardly a few feet from the ship when Karl noticed to his surprise that they were on the side of the ship with the windows that looked into the office. All three windows were filled with Schubal’s witnesses, who waved and shouted goodbye so cheerfully that his uncle waved back and one of the seaman performed the trick of blowing a kiss off his hand without breaking the rhythm of his strokes. It was really as if the stoker didn’t exist any more. Karl took a closer look at his uncle, whose knees were almost touching his own, and started to wonder whether this man could ever replace the stoker in his heart. His uncle avoided meeting his eye and looked out at the waves that were rising and falling around their boat.