Departure Page 14

  “I want to hear the turbines,” he said.

  “You want to hear the turbines,” the chief muttered. “The rotten noisiest can I ever been on, and you want to hear it. You got bugs in your head.”

  “When the engines turn over, she’s alive; now she’s dead. A ship without power, she’s dead.”

  “We ought to have a funeral service,” the chief said; but the purser, pouring ample quantities of sweat, drummed with his fingers on the rail and wanted to be away.

  The gray ship was a Victory, which meant that whatever her given name, it would be followed by the word “Victory,” as, for instance, the Arkansas Victory or the Burnside Victory. It also meant that, in a very limited sense, she belonged to an aristocracy; she was meant to survive for the postwar period, provided that no torpedoes ripped out her guts, that no mines caved in her plates, that no shells or bombs smashed her superstructure into scrap; provided all that, she was a little less expendable than the bathtub hulls of the Liberties, a little more expendable than the C1s, the C2s and the C3s.

  Her displacement was about ten thousand tons, her length something over four hundred feet. She had a forecastle deck, which gave her a graceful swoop up to the bow, and differentiated her immediately from the unbroken deck line of the Liberty. Amidships, she had a deck housing. Square, ugly, undifferentiated from the gray-painted metal of the rest of the ship, it climbed from the main deck in this fashion: boat deck, which housed the four lifeboats and gave the ship’s officers a limited promenade; quarter-deck, bridge, topside and flag deck. One fat sack poked out of the housing, and four king posts surrounded it.

  The gray ship was built for the belly of cargo she could carry, and every detail of her was a concession to cargo—no more. Five huge hatches opened to reveal that she was no more than a shell. The seven masts and king posts swung booms to load and unload her, and her own forest of booms, cable and rope made her capable of eating and then disgorging her own diet. Whatever comfort she held existed because cargo could not be disassociated from men, and her guns watched over that same cargo.

  Her guns gave her a will of her own; expendable she was, but not defenseless. She had the power to strike, and to strike hard. Fore and aft were two gun tubs, raised platforms sheathed in half-inch steel plate. The forward gun was a seventy-millimeter, quick, agile, able to swivel and snap like a swan’s neck; aft, long, ugly, was a five-incher, able to fight a surfaced sub on equal terms, able to fling its shell six thousand feet into the air. Amidships, in six smaller tubs, were the twenty-millimeter machine guns, good for a curtain of lead when the dive bombers came in. She was not quarrelsome, the gray ship, but she could hit back if someone struck at her, and she could make her blow felt.

  The guns were a navy affair, and under the five-incher was the gunners’ forecastle, where eighteen navy men slept. Six more navy men slept forward.

  As the purser said, the life of the gray ship was in her engines, oil-burning turbines which, when put to it, could turn over one hundred and five revolutions per minute and drive her at seventeen and a half knots. Turbines, boilers, fires and generators were housed amidships, heart and guts, the bull’s-eye for torpedoes, for shells and bombs.

  Such was the gray ship, unlovely, stubby, confident, long of range, ready to go where orders took her.

  About two hours after the purser’s impatience, the gray ship cast off, and from slumber she came alive. From the midship housing aft, she trembled and purred; her plates vibrated; her propeller washed the dirty water, and the basin water washed back. The master, his patience tried the limit, demanded the pilot. In all his years, he’d never known a pilot to be on time, never; but the first officer, easy now, said, “He’s on board, sir.” “Then, mister, where is he? Is he drinking his tea? Is he sitting on the head? Or is he blowing his nose over the rail?” But at that moment the pilot came up the companionway, natty in his white suit, white shorts, white socks and shoes …

  Below, on the gray ship, those who slept felt the change, the slight movement, the vibration, the waking up and coming alive, and they turned in their sleep, more easily than uneasily; in their sleep too they heard the hiss of the tugs, the chugging, the shouted orders, the second officer’s repeat of the pilot’s command, “Wheel amidships—” the blast of the whistle, the swirl of water, brown water which would presently become green and then blue water. The purser went back to his books, his nervousness gone. Two short whistles warned the change of watch, and the men coming off duty leaned on the rail and watched the harbor swing as they warped toward the canal. All over the basin, packed ships, merchantmen of all nations, patrol craft, destroyers, and menacing ships of war watched them. There were around the harbor the regrets men feel when they see another ship putting out to sea, the envy and the nostalgia. The gray ships, in time of war, have no proclaimed destination; somewhere, men wait for a ship; somewhere else a man knows where all ships are going and from whence they come; but he who sees the ship passing by knows only that it’s outward bound …

  The English pilot stood on the bridge and called his orders. London was in his voice, but he had been out here twenty-five years now. He went nowhere; for twenty-five years he had taken the ships in and out of the complex channel, released them from their brief, fretful imprisonment, and given them leeway for the ports of the world—San Francisco, Rio, New York, Antwerp, Saipan, Said—and then himself gone back; no ship liked his port, and sometimes it occurred to him, though he was not an imaginative man, that no ship liked any port. By now he went through his movements mechanically; you could roll back the water of the river, and it would not make much difference to him; he knew every mud hummock, every bar and channel. Always ahead of him was the thought, somewhat unclear, like the muddied waters of the channel, that he would take ship one of these days and go home; but he stayed on and the gray ships came and went.

  Some of the men on the ship wrote letters, because the restless wonder of open sea again had to be expressed, and they would say things like “… my darling, we are going through the channel, and finally will be out to sea. So we should be home soon …” Or “… it was so hot here that it is good to be away …” But it could have been too cold as well as too hot; the core of the matter, on the gray ships, was movement. Logistics, the military called it, and on the gray ships movement expressed their purpose and their reason. Indeed there were a few men on the ship who never went ashore, in any port, as if the covenant to them was so dear that it couldn’t be violated.

  So the gray ship, which had slumbered, which had been dead to the purser, stinking dirty to the engineer, shirking to one, whorelike to another, came to life again and sailed out to the open sea. The gray ship was a stitch in a broad-woven pattern which had only slight variations in the whole of the warp and the woof. It sought little credit and found less. Though there was glory enough to go around, the gray ships did their job without glory; as their men wore no uniforms, so did they wear no medals.

  They put out to sea again, and in a way that was its own reward. The brown water turned to green and the green water turned blue. The time-old phrase went the rounds of many lips, blue water, blue water, no bottom and a deep swell. The pilot shook hands all around, wished them good voyage, and climbed overside to his bobbing boat. On shore the blinker gave them clearance and wished them good voyage too. The captain, relaxed for the first time in many days, took his sharp turn on the quarter-deck, six paces port, six paces starboard, six paces port again. The messmen dumped the garbage overside, and the crows flew back to their own hot land. Full speed ahead came down to the engine room from the bridge, and given a lasting course finally, the helmsman fixed his eyes on the compass. Night fell and land dropped away, and in the brief, tropical twilight the gunners stood to general quarters. With darkness the ship blacked out and faded into the inky sea, and in the crew’s mess three sweating A.B.s sat down for their evening of euchre.

  Three Beautiful Things

  MARK TRAVEN, THE writer, entered the Waldorf, looked aro
und for a while, because he was five minutes early, and then went to the express elevators that go up to the tower apartments. He was wearing his best tweed, which meant the best of two, and he was a little excited at seeing Mr. Calwell, but not too excited, since he had no real hopes of anything lasting coming from it. Still, you could never tell, and it was with not a little pleasure that he told the elevator boy to take him up to the twenty-ninth floor.

  “It’s a nice day,” said the elevator boy.

  “It’s a real fine day,” said Traven. That was the way he felt. When the door of Mr. Calwell’s suite opened, Traven entered with what he considered a fair mixture of humility and self-assurance. Miss Deale ushered him into the room. Miss Deale was about thirty, brunette, and very pretty; but with her good looks went an uncertainty that told people it was no picnic to work for Mr. Calwell. She and Traven had lunched the day before. Now she introduced Traven to Mr. Calwell, who waved the writer to a seat without rising.

  Mr. Calwell sat with his back to the windows, and he motioned Traven to a deep chair facing him. He wore a dressing gown of green and red plaid and an ascot of the same material; slacks, also of the same material, were matched by slippers of green and red plaid. On his fingers were a wedding ring and a signet ring with a large diamond. He was older than Traven had expected, at least sixty.

  “This is Mark Traven, the writer.” Miss Deale said.

  “It is always a pleasure to meet talent,” said Mr. Calwell.

  Traven, who was rehearsing in his mind those of Mr. Calwell’s pictures he had seen, so he could talk intelligently about them, nodded and said that he was very pleased to be there. It was his first interview with an important Hollywood producer, and it had so turned out that he was talking to just about the most important of the lot. He felt honored and said so.

  “It is I who am honored,” said Mr. Calwell. “Even if I am not always and continuously honored by talent—and for a man who don’t respect talent I have no respect—I am honored by Thomas Jefferson.”

  “Thomas Jefferson?” Traven inquired.

  “Thomas Jefferson,” Mr. Calwell repeated, treating the name with both love and respect. “Of course, for Thomas Jefferson, you are younger than you should be.”

  “For Thomas Jefferson?” Traven said.

  “But he himself was young, wasn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “Thomas Jefferson,” Mr. Calwell smiled.

  “I suppose so,” Traven agreed, looking desperately at Miss Deale. But Miss Deale, who sat over on the other side of the enormous room, preserved a poker face.

  “Of all the people in the world, you might say,” Mr. Calwell explained, “who was there greater in the whole world than Thomas Jefferson?”

  Traven shook his head, sparring for time.

  “Washington? Lincoln? Theodore Roosevelt—not FDR, you don’t see FDR on a mountain in stone—but you don’t compare them to Jefferson.”

  “No, I guess not,” Traven said.

  “If I was talent and I had a choice, I would say to myself, go on writing about Jefferson.”

  Traven swallowed and said, “I did a book about Paine, Mr. Calwell, my last book.”

  “Who?”

  “Tom Paine,” Traven whispered. “Citizen Paine—”

  “With Orson Welles,” Mr. Calwell smiled. Then the smile vanished and he said, “That too is talent. Welles is talent if he doesn’t break you. But he shouldn’t mix in politics. That’s the kiss of death, to mix in politics. That’s why you’re smart with Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is not politics, he is immortality. You take a newspaper publisher and make a picture about him, that’s politics. Orson Welles is talent; I admit that, and talent you got to respect. So I respect Welles.”

  Traven nodded.

  “Not like I respect Jefferson,” Mr. Calwell added.

  “No,” Traven said. “Of course not.”

  “But is there a place in Hollywood for Jefferson?” Mr. Calwell questioned seriously.

  “I had hopes about Paine—” Traven began.

  “You got a deal with Orson Wells?”

  Traven shook his head, feeling like a blind man at the edge of a precipice.

  “Then don’t discuss him,” Mr. Calwell said. “Even at Jefferson in short pants, people could laugh.”

  “Sir?”

  “With Bing Crosby, a costume piece is something else. I am not against laughter.”

  “No, sir.”

  “The world should be filled with laughter. But they shouldn’t laugh at Thomas Jefferson.”

  “Yes, sir,” Traven said. “But I’m afraid you have confused Jefferson with Paine.”

  “Welles confused him. Welles is talent, but if Welles comes to me and wants to work for nothing, I don’t have him.”

  “That’s Citizen Kane, sir,” Traven said softly.

  “But it’s not Jefferson. First, I said to myself, if it’s the last thing I do, if I lose a million dollars, I will make Thomas Jefferson. That’s a public service; the whole world can look at America with Thomas Jefferson. But maybe the time isn’t ripe. When I doubt a thing, even a little bit, I say to myself, the time isn’t ripe.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Calwell added, “if it has three beautiful things, it will make money.”

  “Sir?”

  “Mr. Traven, in all the world there are three beautiful things. Three beautiful things are immortality. You have three beautiful things and you will make money, even out of a public service.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Suppose I asked you to name three beautiful things?”

  “Any three beautiful things?” Traven inquired uncertainly.

  “No—no. You see, a talent is something. You got a talent for Thomas Jefferson. You should go on writing about Jefferson. That’s a service. Can you write too much about Jefferson?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Your play is a service. Your play is something everyone in America should see.”

  “My play?” Traven asked.

  “About Jefferson. Jefferson is immortality. But there are three beautiful things that are immortality in the box office. There is beautiful love. There is beautiful music. There is beautiful laughter. Those are three beautiful things. Those are sweetness. If you make a picture without them, even about Thomas Jefferson, what have you got?”

  Traven shook his head.

  “You got a public service, but not in the box office,” Mr. Calwell said. He rose to indicate that the interview was over. “I’m happy to see you. Talent, I’m always happy to see. Talent is the most precious thing on earth. You shouldn’t go to Hollywood and destroy your talent, Mr. Traven. You should go on writing about Jefferson.”

  When Mr. Calwell closed the door of his tower suite on Mark Traven, the writer, he turned to Miss Deale.

  “I pay you three hundred a week to bring me lunatics,” he said. “I pay you to waste my time.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Calwell,” Miss Deale said. “I think you mixed him up with Sidney Kingsley.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who wrote The Patriots, the play about Jefferson. Mr. Traven wrote about Tom Paine.”

  “I need Orson Welles like I need the measles. If you got to bring me talent, Miss Deale, you should only not bring me lunatics. Without that, I can live.”

  The First Rose of Summer

  I WAS FOURTEEN when first love came to me, which was older than some yet younger than others. A round and appropriate age, you might say, and I was ignorant of ductless glands and such things, but knew only the blaze of glory that poets have always sung about.

  At that time, my brother and I had a newspaper route, which netted us fifteen dollars on good weeks and which we both conducted after school. Before we were finished on this particular day, my brother knew that childish things were behind me and that there were more than material reasons for the deep and saintly sadness in which I had wrapped myself.

  “What’s eating you?” h
e asked me, and I told him about it. It had been a gentle day, a sweet day. We delivered our papers for the most part in five-story tenement houses, and my brother’s idea of equity was for me to take the top three floors while he took the bottom two; being a year and a half older than I and some sixty pounds heavier, he could enforce this edict, but out of a basic concept of equal rights, I fought him on every house. Today, however, I accepted. There was a flavor to suffering; my whole heart was filled with music.

  “I’m in love,” I said.

  “What?”

  “In love,” I said. “In love with a woman.”

  “No?”

  “Yes,” I said, with dignity that couldn’t fail to impress him. “Deeply in love.”

  “When did this happen?” His respectful curiosity combined interest and a touch of admiration.

  “Today.”

  “All at once?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I saw her in my English class, and I knew it.”

  “How could you know it?”

  “The way I feel.”

  “You mean like taking the top three floors?” my brother asked hopefully.

  “That’s only a part of it. My own suffering is of no consequence any longer, because now I’m consecrated to something bigger than I am.”

  My brother nodded and watched me intently. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Noble.”

  “Not sick?”

  “Not with physical sickness. It isn’t something I can explain to you.”

  “I guess not,” he agreed. “What’s her name?”

  “Thelma Naille.”

  “Thelma?”

  “Thelma,” I repeated, savoring the sound of it, the joy of it, the inflection of it.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “That’s a strange name,” my brother said. “She doesn’t lisp or anything?”