By Hanns Heinz Ewers 1921
Translated by Joe E. Bandel 2008
Copyright 2008 by Joe E. Bandel
Protected under United States Copyright Law as a derivative work of a foreign Author originally published prior to 1923
Early the next morning the second knocked on Frank Braun’s door.
“Come here Doctor,” he cried. “I want to show you something.”
They went up on deck. The officer waved at the water.
“You see anything?” He laughed. “That’s yours floating over there.”
“What’s floating?” Frank Braun asked.
“Your Chinese,” the other cried.
“Mine?” Frank Braun spit over the railing. “What makes you think it is mine?”
The officer quickly convinced him.
“It is most certainly yours! The pieces of iron that you put in with him to make him sink weren’t enough. I forgot to tell you about it. Now he came back up and is floating around the ship.”
“What do you want to do?” Frank Braun asked. “Fish him back out? Put in more weight?”
“No,” said the second. “Not me! He has already been alone in the sun one day and will go back to being fish food.”
Then he became more serious. “The paymaster is sick.”
“Anyone else?” Frank Braun asked.
“No,” said the second. “No one else.”
Frank Braun thought, the paymaster! He hadn’t taken out any corpses, not him. He had avoided everyone, avoided touching the sick and the dead and still the yellow beast had gotten him.
* *
*
That day and through the entire night he was seized by an unrest that his books could not calm. He kept going up on deck, stood at the railing, paced up and down the bridge, stared into the water at the bow or at the stern. The Chinese was always floating nearby, first in the hot sun and then in the moonlight.
He wants to take me, thought Frank Braun. The fever devil that is creeping in the yellow corpse wants me in his sailcloth. Against his will his lips spoke:
“Stabat Mater Dolorosa! -”
Speciosa! Speciosa! He corrected. But it still rang: Dolorosa!
It was the crucifixion; the image wouldn’t leave, held him fast without compassion, without escape, the one from Colmar. How often had he stood there before The Small Crucifixion, the dreadful painting by Matthias Grunewald. He never wanted to go there but it pulled him. Whenever he was in Freiburg, in Strassburg, he always took the train to Colmar. He had to. Once he went there with a beautiful woman.
He told her, “It is a powerful work of art. You must see it!”
The beautiful woman saw it. She became pale white, then green like the rotting flesh of the Messiah. She fell back, screamed and then threw up.
“It is awful,” she whispered. “It’s awful.”
He brought her out into the cloister courtyard, set her down on a stone bench under the Linden trees. Then he went back inside, staring, staring at the crucified on the cross. Dead, rotting, putrefied- and yet still alive! The victory was over the death of the physical body and its annihilation!
That’s how it was now, right now, and yet different too. The waves carried the sailcloth, threw it lightly up and down. Wouldn’t the seams break next! His work had been so botched and clumsy!
In his mind’s eye he could see the corpse, see him through the cloth. He saw something that festered and baked, it rotted and stank. The ocean spit it out because it was so disgusting, and this putrid, this wretched decomposing cadaver still lived, lived like the mighty Christ of Colmar.
Only- what was it then? What was it? It grinned in the moonlight. It was no victory, no liberation of the spirit over death! No continuation of the rotting covering of flesh. Nothing pure and noble pushed out through the pus and decay. No prophet, No Messiah.
It was something that he could feel in the decomposition, something that swam in the sewage and stretched out in the slime of the rotting corpse. Something that reached out to him, pulled at him-
“Holy Virgin,” he stammered. “Sweet Mother of God.”
* *
*
They had lain at anchor before the Golden Gate for six days before the Paymaster died. The second officer had a large sheet of paper on the wall of his cabin with twenty-one squares on it, one for each day of the three weeks. Every night at midnight he would cross one off. Six had already been crossed off. Now he needed to make a new one. He was in despair that day and again two days later when the Kitchen boy died.
“We will never leave!” He sighed. “Not with four sick over there and who knows how many more will get sick yet.”
In his free time he sat together with the little assistant. They had a plan. As soon as the ship got out of quarantine they wanted to take the train to New York. Then take a Dutch or Swiss ship across the Atlantic. In six weeks they could be in Kiel. Only a little longer, just a little longer.
Five days passed and then another death. The three-week quarantine started all over again. The second sat in his cabin crying like a little girl.
“We will never leave, never!”
But the assistant was cunning, said nothing, sneaked around, spoke to him again just before the boat came that brought the Harbor doctor. He now had the Paymaster’s duty and was able to speak with the crew down at the gangway.
Late that night someone knocked lightly on Frank Braun’s door. He opened it, the second stood there with the little assistant.
“Psst,” the second said. “Quiet!”
Like two conspirators they came inside and shut the door behind them.
“We can go,” whispered the little one. “I have bribed one of the crew. It cost me five pounds. He’s coming in the morning with a boat!”
“Famous!” Frank Braun said.
“It is just-,” the second hesitated. “You must help us. We don’t want to steal away, to desert! You must speak with the Captain. Then he will permit it!”
Frank Braun was doubtful. “Do you really think so? He will be annoyed and it will be unpleasant when the Port Authorities find out.”
“They won’t find out,” the assistant threw back at him. “They can’t find out because they don’t have a list. They don’t know who is on board and who isn’t. Just speak with the Captain. He can’t refuse you! If he lets you go, then he will need to let us go as well.”
“Alright, alright,” said Frank Braun. “I will try.”
He spoke with the Captain, did so as if the entire thing was his idea, as if he had chosen the two men to go with him. The Captain was not very agreeable. Was he really in that much of a hurry? If he went back now there was the highest probability that he would be shot dead by October or December.
That sounded so true to him that he didn’t know how to answer. Did he really want to go back? In any case he knew what he did want- off the ship! If only he had a little patriotism! Only a little bit of what the other two had! But it wasn’t there, none at all. All he could think was that the Captain was entirely correct. If he went back now he would get shot.
Finally he thought of something.
“Captain,” he said. “If you had the possibility of going back to Germany today would you wait until tomorrow?”
The Captain looked straight at him. “No Sir, I would not. I would not wait!”
“Well then?” Frank Braun said.
The Captain shrugged his shoulders but gave his permission.
* *
*
The boat departed just as the moon set. They moved cheekily right through the middle of the harbor and no one stopped them. A coach picked them up, took them to the train station where they needed to wait a couple of hours.
As the train rolled out of San Francisco the second cried, “Now we are free!”
The little assistant exalted, “Back to Germany! Long live the Kaiser!”
Frank Braun didn’t say anything.
