"Let's stick together on that," Hermione said.
"I've never been to Cape Breton," I said. "Is it nice?"
Close to shore, Tom barely maneuvered around a flotilla of sea ducks, peacefully sleeping. And the tugs and U-boat had just passed noisily by. At Purdy's Wharf we stood awhile under a tarpaulin roof set on poles and watched close-up as six RCN itemized and photographed the contents of the burlap sacks. They were very methodical about it.
"I figure it as seven hours' triple overtime," Tom said.
"Seven and a half," Hermione said. "I'm the one wore a wristwatch out there, remember?"
Charles drove up. We got into his car. Hermione was the first to get dropped off at home. When Charles pulled up at the curb, he said, "All of you look like this whole night's been one solid punch in the gut. Today's what?"
"Thursday," Hermione said.
"My decision is, everybody takes the rest of today and Friday off."
"Good Lord, Charlie," Hermione said, "marry me."
"Do I have to tell my wife?"
"That question shows remorse in advance," Hermione said. "Forget it."
"Today and Friday off and full pay accorded," Charles said. "Meantime, I'll arrange a substitute crew, no problem there. If you want, drop by the office, I'll cash out your triple overtime. Otherwise, we'll take care of it Monday morning, first thing."
"See ya, fellas," Hermione said. "I'm off to dreamland. After a whiskey. And not on the rocks, either." She got out of the car.
Bone tired, I slept on and off throughout the day and night and late into Friday morning. Hardly got out of bed at all except for tea, a bowl of oatmeal, bathroom and to listen to the radio. Friday evening I dropped by Ballade & Fugue, and the moment I stepped through the door, I heard the teeth-grating sound of a needle gouging a gramophone record. "Talbot, you dunce!" Randall said. "I told you, if you carry a big stack of records like that, you can't see where you're going."
"Sorry, Pop," Talbot said. He was sixteen now.
Randall laughed. "That's okay. I'm always so happy when you're putting in hours here with me. Besides, that gramophone wasn't long for the world, anyway."
"Pop, try calling it a record player, remember? It's not your old RCA Victor anymore." There was great affection between them.
"Hey, Wyatt," Talbot said. "You're here — it must be Friday, right?"
"Last week I came in both Tuesday and Friday," I said.
"Right, my dad told me that."
"Wyatt, have some coffee and let's listen to Bach's unaccompanied cello suites," Randall said. "They make some people lose the will to live, but they cheer me right up."
"Just what the doctor ordered," I said.
"Listen to this from the liner notes," Randall said. "'Played as Bach intended they be, Pablo Casals succeeds in not allowing a single note of compromised sadness. A profound accomplishment.' Know what? I didn't know you could compromise sadness."
"I guess a lesser cellist could," Talbot said.
While the Bach cello pieces played, customers drifted in and out, a few making purchases. Suzanne, Talbot's girlfriend, dropped by, and Talbot left with her, and by eight o'clock it was just Randall and me. I thought, I've been coming to Randall's store for well over twenty years, subtracting my time in Rockhead, and I often thought about his store even then. There were no other consequences to the evening, I suppose, except that I envied Randall for having such passion and dedication toward his chosen profession, record store owner and classical music expert. He asked me about the U-boat, and I described it as best I could. "Somebody should've blasted some Wagner through loudspeakers off those tugboats," Randall said. "You know, provide a nostalgic sendoff to Hitler's finest. May they rot in peace."
And then we settled into the comfortable banter we'd come to rely on. Randall on the threadbare sofa, me in the chair with the lumpy cushion and broken springs, listening to cello music. Just before he closed up shop, Randall said, "Wyatt, my friend, wonders never cease."
"Don't tell me Ballade and Fugue is making a profit so far this year."
"Not quite that wonderful," he said. "An hour before you got here, one of those RCN who put me in hospital came in and apologized, right in front of my son. You could've knocked me over with a feather. He had his wife with him, and their two daughters. His German wife he'd met in Germany. She bought a few recordings."
Saturday afternoon I walked down to the harbor. U-99 was elevated in dry dock, on reinforced scaffolding. There was also a grid of beams, specially made to compensate for any possible shift in the bulk of the submarine. Upward of thirty people had come with their cameras, posing with U-99 in the background or taking pictures of the boat on its own. Trucks had converged from a local television station and the Department of Health, and an RCN jeep and a few other official-looking vehicles were parked nearby. On deck three men stood near the open hatch. They were wearing black frogmen's suits and buckle-up galoshes and had surgical masks over their mouths, a strange combination. One by one they climbed down, hauling in the hose of an industrial vacuum — the truck it was attached to was close by. On the truck's doors it read MONTREAUX REFUSE CONTROL. The City of Halifax often worked with these guys, and I always found them very competent. A fire truck was parked near the stern, and a fireman in full gear was blasting the hull with a pressure hose. Pretty soon the industrial vacuum could be heard rumbling at high throttle.
Though a police cordon had been set up to keep onlookers at a distance, you could get close enough to see everything there was to see, except of course inside U-99, and who'd want to see that? I stood with a family of five — mother, father, two daughters and a son — and since each had their own camera, I figured they must be well-to-do. "At our hotel I read in the newspaper they're going to clean this U-boat right up," the son remarked with excitement. He looked to be twelve or thirteen. "Then they're going to move it to the Maritime Museum."
I lingered at U-99 long enough to realize I never wanted to see it again. The next time I'm in Harbor Methodist, I told myself, I'd fall on my knees and pray not to ever see it again. I knew where the Maritime Museum was. I'd have no difficulty keeping away.
I got a scone and coffee in an open-air café in the historic district and read the Mail, which had a two-page article about the salvage of U-99, but gave no details about what was found inside. The article did include an official statement from the RCN: "Records show that on December 19, 1944, at approximately 3:15 A.M., Axis attack submarine U-99 was severely damaged under a massive barrage of depth charges, and in all probability drifted or was mistakenly steered with crippled maneuverability into Halifax Harbor, where it was ensnared in antisubmarine fencing and finally sunk to the bottom. Records also indicate that U-99 was one of the last to have carried out attacks in Eastern Maritime Canadian waters."
The following Sunday I went to the ten-fifteen service at Harbor Methodist. I didn't feel particularly inspired, but there I was anyway, on my way to church. Maybe it's a simple equation: if you arrive uninspired, a sermon has a fighting chance to inspire you, but if you're already inspired, a sermon has to work wonders. Approaching the church, I'd seen on the bulletin board that the title of Reverend Lundrigan's sermon was A POSSIBLE ANODYNE. I'd never heard the word "anodyne" before (my thoughts went to Hans Mohring; had he known what it meant?), and when I walked in and sat, as usual, in the back pew, Lundrigan was already holding forth:
"Anodyne — it's not a word recently in good repute. But, my friends and neighbors, we all need an anodyne, and the definition, according to Webster's dictionary, will tell you why." He set a dictionary next to the Bible on the lectern, put on his reading glasses and continued. "One: a medicine that relieves or allays pain. Two: anything that relieves distress or pain; as in, the music was an anodyne to his grief. Three: soothing to the mind or feelings." He closed the dictionary but left it on the lectern. "And may I suggest that God can be an anodyne. Think of Job — think of others in biblical times who needed God at moments of great distress, facing challenges of immense proportions. But I don't wish to speak about that quite yet, my friends. For as you know, the sea has recently delivered us a disquieting messenger — a messenger in the form of a German submarine. We must look directly at this messenger and say, 'Evil One, we defeated you. We put you in chains and we defeated you. You have come back to try and torment us with bygone fears, but we reject you!' Here, today, on this holy Sunday in Harbor Methodist Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia, we call forth the memory of our best good deeds and how Canada defended its own. Let me now read from Scripture—"