“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.