A Coast of Palms (fiction)
Helprin, Mark
A Coast of Palms Mark Helprin, a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and moment (most recently in March 1976) is the author of A Dove of the East and Other Stories. His novel. Refiner's Fire,...
...Jesus," said Levy, and ran up into the ship, where a man stopped him and then recognized him...
...If you don't work and do what I tell you...
...What is the capital of North Dakota...
...State your nationality and destination...
...Next to him was another thick-armed giant of a woman, with gray streaks in her hair, a face of granite, and a little child near her...
...They set themselves up each morning and played until five, and they played a small concert of favorites before everyone went to sleep...
...He was scared and bewildered, as if he had just come from a prewar French children's book...
...A Shackleion machine gunner fired and killed them...
...some were driven back...
...But when he remembered why he was in the Mediterranean, and that he could easily die at the hands of the Royal Navy, its blue beauty disappeared from his eyes and he returned to the boat of Jews...
...He had done what he could in the face of stubborn opposition...
...guns and (more to the point) half a dozen 40-mm.'s and numerous mounted machine guns...
...she asked herself, and then she wept...
...The smell of pine was like her house, and the pitch like the railroad tracks and new ties which had held down golden hinterlands...
...said Levy, waiting for a long time before he finished, "I would like you to know that my name is Paul Levy...
...As he bent forward to rest against the bow and give his sadness free rein, he realized that in the proceeding days he had not been paying enough attention, that his watches and interrupted sleep had left him ignorant of the ship's course...
...Paul Levy felt as if he would go to her, but he turned away...
...A curtain of strength fell around them...
...By this time the coast was only seven miles distant: the Carmel Range rose alluringly...
...The sergeant in charge of the post casually reported to his headquarters that the ship was in poor condition, overloaded, making only about ten knots...
...Paul Levy's intention had been to shoot down an enemy plane with small arms fire...
...The steam men were proud of their work and leaned over their metal barricades uncautiously...
...I spent most of my adult life fighting the Battle of the Atlantic so that convoys of our men and materiel could get to Britain...
...Silence followed as precious seconds went by...
...Twenty-six died...
...They had no firearms...
...Sometimes smart children drift away, but they always come back...
...It took the housewives only three days to create one hundred light and sturdy shields of various sizes, fashioned with strips of rawhide and sisal rope...
...its brass flashings caught his eye in a circular dance, but he tightened himself and worked...
...Furthermore, they had been ordered around too much by Teutons and Anglo-Saxons, so they each spit on the ground and went back to their tasks...
...Everyone knew his station and job...
...Over the sea, bright angelic winds prodded up whitecaps...
...His lantern swayed back and forth with the ship...
...The beams between them were as steady as a compass needle...
...The two vigilant children rode away with their mother on the back of a farm truck...
...Anyway, the sound of the words "second day of June" sounded to Levy positive and energetic...
...When he did what they did he resembled a chipmunk, or a hamster...
...We have vastly superior force, and are going to board...
...Two doctors and seven nurses established fore and aft sickbays and took care of the ailing...
...Then Levy turned to one of his sailors and had him run up a string of signal flags...
...The slingers had had a week of organized practice during which they fired at dummies hung from racks in the locations of possible boarding ramps and nets, and they had developed excellent aim...
...This astonished him...
...Next thing you know they'll be challenging us to duels and spelling bees...
...Air upwelling about him, he was immobilized in wonder, and a group of people on the main deck returned his gaze...
...An appropriate scan revealed about a hundred marines on the decks of each ship...
...He then took the wheel, which was limp and turned too easily to have been connected to a ship's rudder...
...It was a raw unbelievable scream laden with emotion and energy, and it shocked her because it was so new and so powerful...
...The marines were fully regaled in tropical battle-dress...
...These looked mysterious and dangerous...
...ten worked below on the engines...
...He did not know that she had lost her husband and believed that he was dead, and that despite the vibrant light surrounding her, the flash of her golden coloring, despite her beauty and despite the captain's skill, she was soon to die alone...
...She returned his gaze...
...The great elevation und clear air enabled a strange little detachment of Welshmen to scan a hundred miles of sea...
...The ships were invariably in shambles, and so was the Lindos Transit...
...Does anyone remember his Latin...
...second, combat...
...Though they had learned to call him Paul instead of Pool they resented his command and suspected that he was touched...
...More time was gained...
...you are awakening him from a state of special dreaming, and he can rise to anything...
...These one hundred worked very hard and were to be seen in only apparent disorganization laboring at a score or more of tasks...
...I'm from Texas...
...They were calm, and must have subdued some tough ships to get that way...
...Shackleton had disengaged but was still alongside, hanging back a few hundred yards...
...Levy, as runt of the past, was open-mouthed...
...Several refused the census and did not come to the bridge when summoned...
...You see the man reading the Times of London...
...Levy could see this because the man had grasped one of the many ill-placed rails and pipes which ran overhead, and was suspended like an acrobat...
...I'm going to throw you off the ship...
...Avigdor was at the helm...
...Levy glanced at the wheel turning free...
...As the British sappers began to cut the wire the Jewish steam men sprayed the fences with live heat, driving the sappers back...
...First is engineering and technical...
...and bring it to a doctor...
...By the time Shackleton and Stanford closed, running about 200 feet off both sides of the Lindos Transit, the group was nine miles frcm the coast...
...Of twenty crew members, including Levy and Avigdor...
...How do you know it is the London Times...
...We're going to fight the British—not just resist, fight...
...At eight and a half miles, Levy could see Shackle ton's captain observing him through a mounted telescope...
...Using shreds from the wicker and reed she had woven a straw hat and it framed her gold hair and blue eyes in a rough warm cream color...
...he said, chewing his gum fast as sheriffs had done in his youth when they had questioned him...
...Little children, including the tiny girl with perfectly proportioned Japanese-like features, ladybug eyes, and the white dove of ribbon, danced on a wide canvas-covered expanse behind the conductor...
...First of all," answered Levy, changing his tone to one of challenging argumentation to gain time by forcing Keslake to a lengthy response, "I'm from Virginia, but the ship isn't...
...One final request from me," he said, "is all you will get...
...She sought the emptiest part of the ship, where the lower deck met the slant of the bow, and she crawled into a rope locker which smelled of pitch and pine...
...Instead, it was hot and close and lanterns swayed back and forth as if the ship were simply delivering freight to a tranquil island in the South Seas...
...They were a mile or less from the beach, where Palmach trucks were waiting and the British Army was nowhere in sight...
...Anyone who is double or triple qualified will do double work...
...Keslake smiled, trying to remember his Latin...
...Above her head and a little to the right was a dark man in a felt hat, a Polish or Czech army officer...
...What moved them was not so much the legend and that they were at last coming home, but rather a simple vision of the sun coming up (here on the beginnings of another day's work, morning light coming through windows in a warm and beautiful land...
...By the love of God this ship rides eastward on moon-driven waves and with escort of heaven...
...I ask you for the third and last time to state your nationality and destination...
...His day was over...
...From the limited materials available, design and manufacture of wheeled and geared auger carriages was a feat...
...I would like to advise you...
...He speculated that his obsession with the impossibie would some day bear fruit or kill him...
...And yet the remaining Jews could play music, write words, build, make children...
...He passed the last salt-eroded fingers of white rock, and then they were in open sea, rolling and pitching, out of breath, suddenly so much smaller, suddenly so much colder...
...Paul held off until his quarry picked up the downed paper and resumed reading...
...The soldiers were smoking, talking, drinking from white mugs...
...When finally brought to Levy, they looked like criminals...
...Levy spoke through several translators...
...Congratulations on guessing my plan...
...And so it was that these Italian sheep were destined for Palestine, and (hey passed the time dreaming of the olive groves and bare meadows where they had been born...
...They had nothing...
...He heard the echo of his own speaking machine: "Captain Keslake, you will have your way...
...But the sun had been of great help, as had been the views and the air...
...The woman rushed off with the baby, intending to return for Katrina...
...The immigrants imagined with a sense of mystery how on that thin dark line Jews were arising (o the normal Ut\ks of farming, factory, and tight...
...The water against the bow reminded her of Russia and the rain on the slate roof...
...If you tell him that he is to fight the British you may renew the man who was beaten down...
...They probably spoke several different languages anyway, and there was hardly enough time...
...Avigdor came to the bridge...
...yonder...
...In the background were other eyes and half-hidden faces, old suits and hats...
...If anyone touches those machines, he will l^e shot...
...Despite their efficiency and impressiveness they were no mystery to him...
...They heard automatic weapons fire and the occasional exchanges over the loudspeakers...
...When the reconnaissance was complete, the captain was the first to speak...
...I want you to pay particular attention to athletes and strong workers...
...But how with metal and tires and furniture...
...Laundry and washtubs were tumbled overboard, babies withdrawn, and the barbwire barricades winched to their protective positions...
...The Jews carried wicker shields almost exactly like those of their opponents...
...Shackleion gunners, carry out this order in one minute's time...
...two thirds of the Jews had been slaughtered...
...People had continued to straggle in until their number verged on the counterproductive...
...He couldn't be sure that the man was not simply reading an English newspaper and had no concern for the Lindos Transit, until he got up a head of steam and, as many ships in the harbor often did, vented it in a white cloud and whistle which echoed off walls, buildings, and hillsides covered with hot brush and stones...
...It was Levy's plan to put his defenses in view or in operation not simultaneously, but as they were needed...
...Where do they get these captains...
...Heat was rising from the beige-colored stones, and prostitutes strolling under the palms were eyed by midget Italian sailors of the Adriatic Squadron...
...Before the marines had arrived on the bridge and taken Levy prisoner, he had given two commands...
...Feeling the surge of speed he had summoned...
...they had already crossed over those lines, something the young sailors who would oppose them could not even imagine...
...The effect was one of great sloppiness and disorganization, especially since the windows had been blacked out with an orange antirust paint and the wash fluttered from lines on all decks...
...Levy felt very little, if anything, for these people and noticed mainly that the girl played with the rail and was the only one who did not return his stare...
...The things they had had on their bodies had been taken, their hair cut, their health stolen...
...Next to her was another stout woman, with a worried expression—and the face of an Italian condottiere in a High Renaissance painting...
...It seemed not to matter...
...Levy worked on the war engines...
...In the long and difficult night before the siege, perhaps because of the tension, or her diet, or God knows why, Ka-trina had begun to feel the first labor pains...
...They were alive on a ship in the sea and they would arise in strength as if from myth...
...It would be best if they were professionals but it doesn't really matter since what we eat is important but how it tastes is not...
...The first barrage was one of small pellets, perhaps ten or twenty from each sting...
...You must be Pool Levy...
...Only Paul Levy was privileged to look from afar...
...They will be put in the combat sections...
...Now," he said, "tell me what you plan to do with all this nonsense we have put...
...Whereas they had expected him to stay on the bridge and turn the wheel, he quickly got to know every inch of the ship and went around telling everyone what to do...
...Where is she...
...A ship out of port is a difficult creature to sustain, much less to convert...
...They sewed canvas garrison belts into which weapons were to slip...
...But completely at the ready meant that lines of laundry suddenly were strung across the decks, babies began to receive very long and luxurious open-air baths, and everyone ate with great ceremony and deliberation...
...Every day they drilled for hours in fighting with night sticks, fire hoses, chains, long pikes, and their fists...
...Including seven officers, the combat battalion numbered sixty-three...
...Levy too had been calculating...
...and you are a first-class compassionless motherfucking son of a bitch...
...Paul Levy had intended to slaughter them, but a delegation from the passengers had insisted that they be left alive, even were it to mean less food...
...Captain Levy, inform your men about this in their own language...
...They hung on her skirts as she cautiously opened the door, fearing that a rat might spring out...
...At (heir tips huge weights were placed in opposition to conical projections with barbed ends of solid steel...
...America was clean...
...In geography class, of which he was by all measures the shining star, he often lost his position in a "bee," or other such exercise, due to his dreaming...
...The Germans had beaten them so badly because, at least in part, the Germans were so well organized...
...Paul had his left hand on the whistle chain and his right supporting one end of the telescope...
...From., then on, Avigdor Avigdor became his right arm and he became Avigdor Avigdor's left arm...
...There were gasps and cries...
...Two children who had been playing below decks oblivious to the terror above, reported to their mother that they had heard a baby crying...
...Keep it steady...
...Motors hummed and a brass band from one of the ships was practicing far in the distance, modulated by the waves of heat...
...Turrets were built on the superstructures, and holes made in bulkheads and decks in order to run hose to the upper fortifications thus created...
...Tell them that we will force our way past the cordon...
...Their insides were destroyed, but messages came to them from all about...
...He had laid it out while in port, but several problems had persisted, problems he knew would submit when he was again in his familiar element and could marshal the genius of the sea...
...the rest dispersed, broken, and separated...
...and go back to Britain...
...Appoint one able man for each twenty-five who are incapacitated...
...The pilot descended, and Levy took his first real command...
...The cabins and hold were silent and dark, but many in them were awake listening to the waves and the engines...
...The musicians were silent...
...One of them fell backwards and landed on the deck, injuring a slinger...
...When augmented from other sections it reached over a hundred...
...His voice was powerfully amplified and it echoed off water and steel in a particularly cold-sounding series of blows: "This is Captain Keslake of H.M.S...
...When combat isn't drilling it will labor for engineering...
...Carmel and on the destroyers could track him at night, but that in darkness no action could be taken short of blasting them from the water—something which caused him to be sure that they entered territorial waters during daylight...
...Paul Levy became a Jew...
...He smiled and gave a little salute...
...and some kept on coming...
...The gentleman of the Times sat bolt upright and threw his paper down...
...After a night and a day the infant scheme coalesced...
...The plan was to have been the capture of the British ship by augering into its portholes and runoff vents, dropping the cranes onto the decks like grappling hooks, and looping steel cables over its chocks and then winching them tight...
...You are a Virginian ship heading yonder...
...As they watched the lantern in its pendulum motion, light emanating from it...
...As well as rotate, each had to be able to move back and forth, up and down, and in and out...
...She was alone, as if she had her own room again...
...They were twin ships (always a pleasure) of the S-class...
...Levy ordered up his final burst of steam...
...The wind was fabulously strong from the east, as it most often is in Brindisi port, and the waves came in hard against the bows...
...He knew that everyone would be going below, and he had ordered coffee, chocolate, tea, and biscuits for them even though the extravagance was bound to hurt later and disrupt some of his careful projections...
...The Palmach was rowing out in surfboats and rafts...
...They would harry the boilers all night and through the following day when they would some time hit the coast...
...When he spoke to them they more often than not kept their lower lips between their teeth...
...I want you to find what you can—food, medical supplies, ropes, scrap metal, lumber, tools, welding apparatus, fire hoses, wicker furniture, dowels, cloth, wire, a record player, tires, anything...
...The unlimited expanse of the sea, the air, the nights, the military order in which Levy worked them (sensible, precise, and rigorous), and the sun rising to illuminate those upward-reaching mountains in Crete, had enabled them to throw over for a time the camps, the wire, the railheads, the minor indignities, the boxcars, the death, and the darkness...
...Get back," he screamed over his microphone...
...He had chosen quite a task...
...Appoint five cooks...
...He still thought he could win, but he had Haifa informed of the situation and he requested that troops be sent to the beach...
...By the time the cutters were distributed and Shackleton drew closer, with Stanford in reserve, they were six and one half miles from the coast...
...Got news for ya...
...How often had American and British ships ridden the ocean together in preparation for a fight...
...Resources of summer began to act upon shattered lives...
...In half a minute more than a thousand coin-sized rocks rained down on the marines...
...With wicker furniture...
...Levy replied in a deliberately irritating backwoods drawl: "I'm from Virginia...
...It never happened...
...For instance, the wicker furniture was pieced apart and rewoven into shields...
...Similarly, they finished the same number of lethal fighting sticks, turned on an improvised lathe, in less than a week...
...But then in fear of running aground or losing his prey, or both, Keslake told his marine major to use any force necessary to reach the bridge and stop the ship...
...They were only two and a half miles from the coast and could see the white beaches, and individual trees at the tops of ridges...
...It was not the most comfortable place to sleep: the vibrations of the engines worked their way up hard and steady, and very often when the wind curled or backed, the stack exhaust settled amidships...
...But as they were too few they were quickly subdued by the battle groups...
...There were to be three corkscrew-type augers on both sides of the ship...
...Keslake glanced at the coast upon which the small group of ships was closing...
...Good God," said the British as the little army took position...
...Although they did not dance, they seemed to lay a great number of eggs, and as maritime chickens usually veer toward the unproductive, this was seen as a good omen—even by the rabbis, who would normally have cautioned against such divining...
...The deck winches which were to power the augers were taken apart and overhauled...
...They were criminals...
...Go and do it...
...He had been so exhausted, so frightened, so tired, so cold all the time, and he had always had the feeling that he was going to die...
...Of these, sixteen were musicians but only ten had instruments...
...Even those who knew each other well did not speak...
...Could he manage even to ingest his desk...
...In other words, if when we approach the cordon we are attacked by a British destroyer, we will sink it...
...He calculated their distance and speed, went to the microphone, and called general quarters...
...The claxon sounded...
...The group captains zealously overdrilled their charges by herding them into the lifeboats and marching them from one area of the ship to another perhaps a dozen times a day...
...Their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers, sons, daughters, and friends had been slaughtered like animals, their homes looted and burned...
...There was heat and love in the gaze, an aura of gold as with the dolphins, an interference locking them together for a moment utterly out of their power...
...But I need at least three minutes to inform my men in their several languages of this new order, since we had not thought to practice it in English...
...A full day passed, during most of which Avigdor was at the helm—a strange new passion for him, of great utility to Levy...
...He tried not to be, but instinctively he felt reassured...
...blurted out the little girl, eager for points...
...It is illegal to go yonder...
...The sea was azure and alert as they had never seen before, the winds warm and fresh...
...As they started coming down gangways and cargo nets the Lindos Transit veered to starboard and back again, halting them just long enough for the slingers to take aim and fire...
...I am from Norfolk, Virginia...
...Avigdor pulled the chain, and later let everyone know that there was good reason to obey their strange captain...
...Kalrina sank back on the ropes...
...Items of news were broadcast between the scenes of the operas—Madame Butterfly seemed most upset at the building boom in California...
...They had their own warship and were determined to fight and die...
...Oh, yes...
...It was dark and hot...
...said Levy, retreating to his cabin and leaving them speechless on the bridge...
...The child had a tiny Japanese-like face with eyes as round and small as ladybugs...
...They said nothing, but some had expressions which meant that they intended never in their lives to do any work...
...The real battle had begun, with Keslake informing his marines that they had five minutes to win or their ship would run aground...
...Though she believed the child's father to be dead, she was not alone...
...Although this aristocrat was more than a quarter of a mile from the ship, lost in a sea of masts, spars, clotheslines, pigeons, vendors, and pedestrians on the steps and in the little piazza, Paul picked him out immediately in scanning with the ship's telescope because it was easy to recognize the front page of the Times of London...
...Levy became used to issuing orders and hearing them echo in half a dozen languages...
...At first light...
...To the south were the mountains of Crete in steadfast order, swept back into a line of peaks which bellowed like cloud, so white were they, a blinding white...
...There was nothing to stop them except hand-to-hand fighting—no catapults, no steam, no threat of capsizing, no wire fences, and Levy did not use the Molotov cocktails for fear of a great slaughter...
...The rest, even...
...He thought that in less than fifteen minutes he could make it just by resisting with his deck force and keeping the enemy out of the wheelhouse and the engine room...
...Where did he find such strength...
...They were for the most part broader and more muscular than the marines, but much shorter...
...They had not been insulted, only he...
...But a cat can outrace the best thoroughbred horse if only it can grasp the idea of racing...
...Levy was hoping that they would not attempt to board before the three-mile limit...
...Keslake had not thought that he would still be fighting at only four miles from the coast...
...He called Avigdor to the telescope...
...They had six boilers which collectively could bring up 40,000 shaft-horsepower...
...At a Norfolk bar he talked for several hours with an air squad mechanic from a carrier, about which parts of an airplane engine, upon being struck by a bullet, would cause the whole to fail and the plane to crash into the sea...
...when we're far from land...
...Perhaps in such a place they could again make themselves whole...
...Many were badly injured and lay bleeding on the deck...
...One hundred and fifty men emerged from the gangways and assembled on deck in fifteen groups of ten, looking smarter in their organization than did the British, who were grouped into rough lines...
...For example, he had wondered if it would be possible to eat Borneo...
...With almost fifty engineers, technicians, and artisans...
...After the seasickness wore off it became obvious that fresh air, decent food, sun, activity, music, and the promise of a place to settle were good medicine for the heat-oppressed souls and their thick ledgers of real and imaginary complaints...
...If Francois Villon could write on the scaffold a poem swift and sure enough to save him, could he not have eaten the platform itself...
...Those abandoned included the two doctors, the wounded, the newborn infant, and Levy...
...He ignored the cries and plaints, the colors and the sea, and beautiful women who go for a captain tike a sea bird for water, the captivating children, the smashing luminescence of the bow waves, the rapid winds and the sea lure, and stayed in his cabin to concentrate on the plan...
...From that day forward he knew how to knit together strength and love...
...Put down your weapons," said Keslake...
...Children with nearly shaved heads and black shorts settled on the sea walls like rows of vultures...
...Though he had asked mainly for junk, in Southern Italy even junk was then in short supply...
...The deck hands climbed up and down the masts, supervised drills, and did watches on the bridge...
...They took for their Midway or Coral Sea a ship loaded with cynical innocents...
...The newsletters also were multilingual, and the entertainer wrote jokes for them, sweetening the directives at Levy's command...
...Curiously, they were in no way frightened, and looked forward with great anticipation to the fight...
...Immediately Levy commanded stations ready...
...Risking a great deal, he ordered full speed ahead and took the helm himself...
...There was silence until she opened the locker door a crack and the cooler air made the baby cry...
...That was when he thought the song "Speed Bonny Boat Like a Bird on the Wind...
...At the proper moment, about three in five of the engineering force will transfer to combat...
...They read: annuit coeptis...
...everything worked...
...to sleep, to be in peace...
...Levy withdrew the pistol, snapped out the barrel, and turned it so that the criminals could see brass inside blue chambers...
...Timing was most important...
...Then he winked, but stood up and strapped on the pistol, with no intention of taking it off...
...The Jews fell, their glossy yellow wicker shields rolling away from them over the deck and into the sea...
...Two-page census forms in Russian, Yiddish, German, French, and English had been distributed among the passengers...
...Any objections...
...The rest will be damage controllers...
...They looked at themselves—sunburnt faces, golden and dark hair, eyes green, blue, gray, brown, and black...
...Although it was difficult at first to get any of the musicians to play the ocarina (they sneered at it as if it were a dead animal by the roadside), eventually a complex rotational system evolved in which everyone shared his instrument, and from this arose an extremely attractive little orchestra which played a sort of harp-and-bassoon-punctuated, violin-laden ragtime—further exoticized because one of the violinists was a Greek and could play only in Hellenic style...
...In the harbor, garbage scows and miscellaneous unkempt craft scuttled back and forth between ships, halting now and then to nestle against a cruiser or a minesweeper, not quite in the manner of a calf leaning on its mother but rather like the flies which settled on carcasses in the horse butcheries...
...Something about beginnings...
...Prepare to board...
...Paul Levy had arrived at a pier in the old port, and there he stood staring at the Motor Vessel Lindos Transit, an appalling piece of junk by any standard, more like a bombed-out house than a ship...
...British marines began to board her...
...Still they did not answer...
...There were four 115-mm...
...However, four groups comprising forty men were lined up behind what Keslake had thought to be some sort of improvised chairs, which were actually rubber slings...
...Almost as if by magic he was afforded another eye in which to look and by which to receive a reflected message from the sea...
...piece by piece, the strong ticking was joined by hearts revived, by instruments of warmth and creation...
...Among those not classified in any major categories were three brothers who had been circus acrobats, two professional cocoa-tasters, and half a dozen rabbis who made the ship quite holy even though in many cases they were dealing with hardened atheists...
...He gazed deep into the smooth globe of the compass...
...He then veered off and made for open water...
...asked the teacher...
...He cut the drills by half, but only because he was convinced that entering the lifeboats was by then instilled into their natures...
...The thick magnum bullets were somewhat terrifying to see in their dull symmetrical brassiness...
...A half a village...
...Refiner's Fire, The Life and Adventures of Marshall Pearl, a Foundling, from which this selection is excerpted, will be published in October by Knopf...
...They were three quarters of a mile from the coast and between shifting uncharted bars...
...The census proved a valuable tool...
...What she did was not surprising, especially in view of her years in camps and in hiding...
...But they did not understand...
...Some were knocked unconscious and lay on the decks...
...Katrina Perle slept on a hatch cover, (he one on which the band had played in the more carefree days farther from the point of contact with the English...
...Tell them that...
...Sweating under their pan helmets, the marines winced at what they had to do...
...They had no tolerance for reflection...
...This they did, looking fast and beautiful...
...Pan helmets, pistols, rifles, submachine guns, clubs, shields, hoarding pikes, and battering rams cluttered the decks...
...The Lindos Transit looked like a fruit wagon which had rolled down a steep hill and crashed into a laundry truck...
...The passengers were still and passive as they always were...
...It was a difficult night...
...For the benefit of the gentleman in white he tapped out the Morse symbols for Palestine, since he had always believed that homage was due to British agents in hot places...
...That gave him three miles, since at a mile his seventeen-foot draft would almost certainly ground him...
...As for the rest, they are the heart of the matter...
...By observing this he settled a conflict within himself, determining to be as strong as was necessary and yet not to be hard...
...Keslake eased his ship about and pointed his lancelike prow at the bows of the Lindos Transit...
...but comfortable on the canvas and hemp, and isolated...
...They were no one...
...Keslake was astonished, and his marines were nervous, suddenly it was no longer a picnic...
...The type face...
...But suddenly this landscape had arisen from the sea...
...They waited as the two destroyers, then in bright sunlight, approached and veered out to the north and south so that they could execute wide turns and come about parallel to the Lindos Transit and its course...
...Levy explained...
...Only fifteen marines remained on board, and would be overpowered by the Palmach...
...In bright afternoon the ship drew out of the harbor and into the Adriatic...
...Completed at the end of the war, they were modern and extravagantly equipped...
...In five minutes, not even the British could cut through the several grasping augers, cables, and crane hooks, and no one could prevent the Lindos Transit from going under...
...We haven't that much time to waste it on Latin mottoes...
...He had refused to tell his plan because of an elegant Italian in a white suit...
...Levy could not help staring, so great was her beauty, the others...
...No one, he said, was allowed to stay or even walk there...
...And one by one...
...Katrina Perle died alone...
...It can be done, but to do it everyone will have to work day and night for three weeks...
...He knew that the radars on Mt...
...I saw a lot of my friends die, we picked up a lot of British sailors...
...they had in America methods of organization as incomprehensible to Europeans as alchemy or a dead oriental language...
...For fear of running aground...
...He used to lie awake at night thinking about ways for one man to sink a warship...
...The two cargo booms were modified to slide at the base and lock down...
...How about a house...
...This in turn could propel the ship at thirty knots or more...
...Oh yes, if there are enough musicians and musical instruments aboard, I want a little orchestra...
...Levy saw it, and he also saw the machine gunners take aim...
...The marines laughed and waited for their captain's reply...
...The music was good for the workers, the children, the fighters, the crew, and, some said, even the chickens...
...In her hair was a bright white ribbon which shone against the darkness and was in the shape of a perching bird...
...The picture of his eight y-five-pound four-foot self gnawing at the beams of a Borneo house staggered him...
...he couldn't...
...Except for a few, those who had not been well quickly regained their health...
...1 believe yes...
...1 am Avigdor Avigdor...
...As the clouds passed, they called to mind all the geography of the wide world as he had always known and loved it...
...and here he hesitated for a long time even after the translators had caught up, "I'll put a bullet through your head...
...To get metal for these projects, for the hinged barbwire fences which hung off the sides of the ship, and for the various camouflage structures created to mask most of this from view, parts of the vessel were cannibalized...
...Sometimes even their elders did dances of delight as the strange ship steamed over the electric blue Mediterranean, stacks trailing a constant unraveling cloud of steam...
...His officers were numb with their own beating hearts...
...And her son, Marshall Pearl, was born...
...From the depth of the encouraging mountains they peered at the Lindos Transit through a telescope twenty feet long...
...These ships had a complement of 250 men, and Levy assumed that they were outfitted with ingenious boarding equipment...
...The windows of the wardroom were sparkling with spray...
...Tell them that their mothers and fathers are poised in heaven waiting, that now is the time for the dream of the Jews...
...Many of the passengers had seen the Alps, the Urals, the Apennines, but never had they seen mountains rising from the sea...
...keep on...
...Some men were offloading coils of rope, barrels of solvents, and hundreds of iron poles with auger ends...
...The Welshmen were able to see the ship's name and the white banner with the blue Star of David flying briskly from the mainmast...
...In battle, they were to serve as powder monkeys and medical auxiliaries...
...It was so effective that a few minutes passed with no progress at all...
...The lower decks of the Lindos Transit were silent except for the confused speaking of the wounded and dying...
...Before tomorrow, I want two things...
...They were divided into ten platoons of ten, each with an officer in charge...
...Before dinner this same entertainer read the news in Swedish and Italian, and played scratchy opera discs over the public address system...
...She wanted to have the baby, to nurse it...
...They were twelve miles from the Palestine coast and in the distance (he Carmel Range appeared, a thin purple line dark in shadow...
...Gulls wheeled and turned in smooth waves around the ship...
...Sweet pines and lemon trees grew on quiet terraced slopes...
...She was pregnant...
...They were fascinated...
...They exercised and practiced climbing the masts and cables, swinging from ropes, broad-jumping from hatch to hatch, and maneuvering in unison...
...And although that simple statement will appear vacuous to those for whom living has always been a right, for those who have been challenged on this score, it is the most beautiful and momentous thing to be said or heard in the world...
...to which Levy replied, "Very well...
...They had taken to movement unlike anything he had ever seen, and he thought that should this venture of the Jews prove successful, the new state would be filled with dancers and musicians, but especially dancers, for dancing like nothing else says: / am stiil alive...
...The baby was so tiny and so feeble that she feared for its life...
...But the Germans had been beaten badly in their turn by the Americans, who were savage and rich...
...When Shackleton was about fifty feet from the Lindos Transit, Levy sent his main battle force on deck...
...All the men there were in khaki as in the military, although they had forsaken its precise and terrible beauty to convey east the men...
...For several weeks trucks rolled up periodically, and at the end of May everything Paul had requested was stowed aboard the ship...
...Levy closed his eyes to this, letting the frail be driven, until they dispatched from their number a delegation demanding more consideration...
...The silence vanished and natural laws which had withstood all assaults appeared once again as ultimate guides, as they had been in the beginning and will always be—lines along which shattering can make itself whole...
...Tell them anything...
...Can they...
...It will change everything, as you will see if it materializes...
...so the woman slapped her hard across her face and pulled the bab\ away...
...There was a woman who looked Bulgarian, perhaps a washerwoman, in a print dress...
...Two minutes," said Keslake...
...Four hundred and twenty people were aboard...
...All eyes were on the signal flags...
...She did not care that despite her beauty, which increased every day in the sun and air so that her hair was the color of burnished gold and her face roseate and dark, no one wanted her...
...Separate the people into those who can effect the skills they claim, and those who cannot...
...What is wicker furniture...
...Pull the chain and watch him come to life...
...Katrina was silent, for she had not understood...
...Levy was happy at the sight of two trim new British ships...
...I would appreciate your statement, and advise you to comply...
...Hundreds of people crowded the decks, practicing club fighting, doing calisthenics, peeling potatoes, welding, painting, putting out imaginary fires, calling orders, playing violins and an ocarina, praying, dancing, running with messages, nursing children, pushing around supplies, sewing, polishing, bathing, climbing into the lifeboats, climbing (he masts, running lines, arguing, jumping from hatch to hatch, drawing plans, singing, sawing, rolling bandages, tearing up wicker chairs, weaving shields, piling rocks and rubble, erecting barriers of wood, metal, and wire, cutting apart rubber tires, treating the sick, hiding, laughing, doing everything except standing like a zoo animal behind bars watching as the world passed by...
...keep on...
...Shackleton hesitated as at the top of a wave, and Keslake rammed her fiercely against the port bow of the Lindos Transit, opening a huge gash and knocking the ship to the side...
...The decay of Brindisi and its garbage-filled harbor, where it was not unusual to find the corpse of a dead horse lapping against a quay, was replaced by long glimpses of chalk-white islands floating in a summer sea...
...The light coming through the hatch was a blur of colors because of the water in her eyes...
...For them it was not an unusual position or occurrence—to be huddled in a dark low place while the world outside fought and built-up things were leveled...
...Those who slept on deck looked up past the cables and shrouds and watched the smoke trail to stern past an array of mountain-flower stars...
...Levy studied his adversaries through the ship's glass...
...At first there were six alternating conductors, but then from the bundles and scraped suitcases came another concertina, two harmonicas, and an ocarina...
...His men were so positioned and drilled...
...Though only twenty-six, he had spent all his adult life in war...
...But if it could float and go, it would do...
...Nature persisted like a metronome, saying...
...Paul Levy would sometimes stand on his sway bridge and look backward over the sea along the ship's white wake churning up green water in a continuous noise that sounded like krill or dolphins...
...This was something entirely different...
...The woman realized that to save the infant she had to get it immediately into the light and air...
...And yet, in a spirit of anger, he then ordered them to board...
...I want four translators who are proficient in our five main languages...
...Many more were captured...
...Here, steer one-twenty-six...
...She undoubtedly had a husband, and he was captain of all the ship—a rigor unquestioned, to which he had to keep faith...
...Levy saw two British destroyers heading for him in perfect symmetry...
...The coast was six miles away...
...The Lieutenant used Levy's microphone and informed Keslake that the rudder cables had been severed and the engine room would not respond...
...Keslake turned to the junior officers on the bridge...
...He went to his cabin and stared into a round mirror set into a fake ship's wheel...
...A ten-man band was set up on the main hatch cover...
...But the times were not normal...
...Since our cargo is human and hence very light, we can carry anything we require (if we can get it) without reference to weight...
...He realized as Shackleion thudded against the port side of the Lindos Transit and gangways were rolled over and tightened to bolt the ships together that his men were not throwing themselves across as he would have done, but were proceeding delicately...
...The marine major ordered up the wire-cutters...
...These did not hit very often but forced everyone on Shackleion to be extremely careful, a harrassment which did not last, for the Shackleion gunners sprayed the decks in front of the catapults with heavy fire...
...Death was familiar...
...It was Paul Levy's moment, to tell the old ship how to do the right and proper thing...
...Know what that means...
...Whether they would arrive i>n time and in sufficient number was none of his concern...
...They used this expression to show their bewilderment, anger, happiness, and hope—a long and difficult string of things which drove the lower lip into the path of the teeth...
...Then there was a man who could only have been a waiter in a fashionable Budapest cafe or, and this is said without levity, a professional movie usher in Strasbourg...
...He fired up his engines, called in the Italian pilot, cast off at the tide, and with a plume and a whistle he signaled the port that the Lindos Transit was about to sail...
...Levy took possession, ordering them to return the material to the ship...
...A quarter...
...Even as a child Levy had been obsessed with achieving the impossible...
...There were, to the surprise of the observers, quite a few sheep on board, standing on deck crowded up near the forecastle...
...A squadron of marines with submachine guns fired into the massed defenders to clear a corridor to the bridge ladder...
...That evening as the sea got a little rough and the clouds broke into driven archipelagos...
...One morning the passengers of the Lindos Transit awoke to find themselves in a dreamlike new land...
...They were in the mid-Atlantic hunting U-boats and hoping for contact with a surface raider...
...At the peak of the seige her pains came thick and fast, and the child was born in darkness onto the heavy ropes and canvas...
...A hundred, mainly women and merchants, were neither fighters nor engineers...
...Levy had held his vessel within a few miles of the coast...
...First, I want the census to be analyzed...
...They looked up in disbelief and weariness, for they had been working all morning...
...They had great strength and endurance, and yet they were beautiful and not hard...
...The bow of the Lindos Transit began to go under, and by the time the ship was several hundred yards from shore it dug into the sand and stopped its momentum with a great release of steam...
...Very well for you," said Keslake...
...They would die first—willingly...
...They watched quietly from the dark shade, as he stood in bright sun...
...Second, another five will do a competent analysis of the census in light of what I have just told you...
...The fifth group climbed into the two crow's nests and into the breastworks of steel and sandbags on the superstructure...
...But Katrina became hysterical and would not let go...
...If it starts to seesaw then lock it and watt, and make the adjustment little by little...
...They tended the animals, inventoried and rationed provisions, cooked, mended, watched the children, kept things in supply, and, most importantly, were an extraordinarily adept cottage industrial force...
...He did not know the nationality of the steam men...
...He said, "I'm going to put you in the combat division...
...Therefore, when Paul Levy covered the decks in red geometry, they deferred, for evidently he had some son of plan, and who would dare to contradict him...
...His charges fell in love with the abstract air above the mountains...
...In that way the British would never know what was next and would be forced to consider their own dispositions and responses at each juncture, allowing the coast to draw ever closer...
...wash it, cover it...
...The technique was extremely effective...
...On wooden tiers of plank bunks, the old men, women, and children could not see the blue sky or the beaches ahead...
...They were seized and put in detention...
...The slingers kept on slinging, having switched from shot to rocks and rubble of considerable size...
...He opened his desk drawer and took out a revolver in a leather holster wound around by a cartridge belt...
...All seemed normal...
...Stop your engines and stand by to receive a tow cable...
...Shackleton...
...Levy had a wide grin...
...Paul noticed that he came to sit every day near the foot of Virgil's Column...
...They were resolute...
...She was small and delicate, with strong and graceful limbs...
...women, and children who were the sweepings of the great European war...
...They pulled at her and said...
...Some were knocked over the side, after which Stanford lowered some boats...
...She was also somewhat ashamed...
...At fourteen knots, he had about fifteen minutes to subdue the ship...
...About 350 immigrants had at least escaped the acrid soil of Europe and they rode shaken but singing in old trucks under the sweet trees and warm air of a place where there were farms and endless groves full of green, fragrant, waxy leaves...
...In the holds and corridors people were eating and laughing...
...They fought like madmen, but the Jews responded in kind...
...Sir," said a navigation officer...
...But matching the artistry of their determination was that of the British...
...April, what is the capital of North Dakota...
...How indeed...
...Tum your ships around...
...At first she refused their entreaties but then followed them to the rope locker...
...Panels were missing, pieces of metalwork hung over the sides, and the windows were a crazy orange...
...The British were lords of that part of the Mediterranean anyway and could do what they wished, and they had had some outstanding failures when, like gentlemen, they had waited for the three-mile limit...
...Well, damn them, it looks like we'll have to go aboard...
...Keslake again clicked on his microphone...
...They were going fast through waters in which there had been a storm and the clouds were trailing rapidly across the sky...
...Captain, and your crew, that you are approaching Jewish territorial waters, and are subject to arrest at my discretion...
...Its composition was especially strange in view of the rousing marches and bandshell waltzes it played: it consisted of four violins, a bassoon, a guitar, a trumpet, a concertina, a snare drum, and a harp...
...The Lindos Transit was in sufficiently critical disrepair to sink in about five minutes...
...It was a hot day in Brindisi...
...An English lieutenant rushed to the engine room telegraph and signaled full stop...
...Her name was Katrina Perle...
...Could you even east just one little village in Borneo...
...That night the ship made fourteen knots—the swan song of the old boilers...
...There was a girl of about twenty-five, a pretty girl with black curls which were blowing in the hot breeze...
...The second was that the rudder cables be cut so that the ship could travel only in a straight line...
...There was a girl amidships, sewing belts...
...I'm going over there...
...Each time he pulled the chain the man sat more upright and appeared more expectant and tense...
...He remembered how early in the Battle of the Atlantic he had gone to the bow of the destroyer to hide his face between the converging gray plates and be alone...
...They just looked at the sky, toward the dark crashing and hissing which was the sea, and at themselves— rolled up in as many blankets as they could get, cold, sunburnt, thin, strong, and uniformly young even though they were of many ages and the young themselves were not youthful...
...I see...
...Onward,' the Sailors Cry" meant that the sailors were aforeship crying as they left their homes and country...
...Levy had deliberately turned his ship and taken it close to Crete...
...hoses...
...they did not know that they were slowly being healed...
...What about the mommy on the ship...
...There was Katrina...
...With all they've been through, they are due for some sweet language...
...Europe was in ruins...
...This would prevent many casualties...
...The ship swayed, a water dancer, and the waters fumed and glistened to left and right...
...Shields, Avigdor, shields and breastworks...
...The destroyers adjusted their speeds...
...His plan was quite complicated and quite correct...
...They had to leave half a hundred behind because the British had been sighted driving at great speed down the sea road from Haifa...
...He the second day of June the Lindos Transit was fully stocked with refugees, food, and a hold full of junk and tools...
...Paul Levy spoke as waves of white rolled and battered the ship in a night hour in the Mediterranean...
...Clocks ticked, light rays were refracted, fires burned, the sea rose...
...They behaved exactly like small children at a wedding...
...One of them veered outward and in so doing made it possible for his eye to catch Paul Levy's eye, and both seemed to smile without smiling...
...Ha...
...When Katrina opened her eyes she was shocked to see bodies lying around her, and she would not sleep until she had seen some movement confirming that they were living men and women, and (hat therefore she herself was alive...
...Levy had said to Avigdor, "Put jokes on the form, any kind of jokes...
...Keslake...
...Levy was making his final plan...
...It was moist and uncomfortable...
...As planned, Levy ordered them abandoned, and the operators rushed to the augers and specially adapted cargo cranes...
...Using clubs and shields, fighting on the deck of a ship steaming over a blue sea toward an Asian coast, the men felt as if they were in another time...
...We're going to make sure that we get these people to where they're going...
...No warship was going to take them to camps on Cyprus...
...The passengers were transfixed...
...The distant strip had so much import that they stood on deck mute and still...
...I believe they can...
...As he looked into the bow waves he saw the faithful and miraculous shape of dolphins, speaking to one another in chirps and whistles...
...She was always partial to light and its various manifestations, messages, and tricks, and she could not help but share in the general good wilt and optimism...
...At first she had wished to do away with the child but then, like the magnificent rarity of a warship backing up, she reversed herself entirely and saw it as a great gift, comforting, the beginning of something better...
...They had penetrated the tropics—a warm wind circled about him and he undid his coat—for the sea was green and thick...
...It is tn fact of Italian registry, but it is foremost a Jewish ship...
...everyone was sensible and fair...
...Most irritating for the more than three hundred passengers was that he made them move from where they had settled so that he could draw squares and rectangles on the deck plates in bright red paint...
...So he combined his anxiety and his astuteness, and quickly recognized some sort of threat in the strange machinery on the deck of his quarry...
...Keep on...
...From his flying bridge he saw that the response could not have been better...
...For a second or two he thought of surrendering to the nearby English-speaking, young, war-bred officers like himself...
...It means if you don't work and you won't jump...
...A ship of the living dead—breathing, animate, and warm—was going (o be quite a surprise for those who were simply manipulators of steel, engineers and analysts who could not delight in dying...
...especially if it is a quarter-century-old coal-fired coastal freighter destined to match up with a contemporary imperial warship...
...They felt it possible that the gray mists of their lives, their dark cold histories, could be cured from them, lifted out of them by the sun...
...This angered Keslake, but not his crew...
...Shackleton sailors manned machine guns, and Stanford trained her 115-mm.*s on the Lindos Transit...
...She returned so different from the saddened beauty of his gaze...
...In the war, he had wanted to be a hero and was forever trying to find the proper position...
...The sappers dismantled the wire very quickly, and when the Lindos Transit was still five long miles from the Palestine coast...
...any motion seemed sacred...
...Dawn broke swift and hot...
...Keslake picked up his binoculars and glanced at the beach...
...You know," said Levy, "I'm the captain, and I'm the law...
...some held...
...He knew them well and had been aboard...
...Before the interpreters had calmly and elegantly elongated the new instructions, the marines were pouring onto the Lindos Transit...
...In the time it took him to take off his leather jacket, tuck his shirt into his pants, adjust his pistol belt and ammunition clips, and put his jacket on again, they were completely at the ready...
...Levy was to have announced to the British that if they did not retreat he would blow holes in his keel plates and scuttle the Lindos Transit, capsizing the British warship in the process...
...I can understand," said Avigdor, his left fist clenched and his right hand open, "food, livestocks, ropes" (he looked quickly about the bridge and superstructure to indicate his ignorance of nautical affairs), "but what please may I ask are we to do with scrap metal, tires, and wicker furniture...
...He calculated that powdered and mixed with conventional food it would take six months...
...Remember, when you awaken someone in the middle of the sea...
...The\ imagined the cows being milked, the chickens scattering like idiots in the face of golden feed, the soft-earth beneath barn doors, the dawn shadows, and the cry of the birds...
...But he had heard that the British began their actions on the high seas, according to the premise that illegal blockade runners were outside the law and deserved to be treated in like fashion...
...The first thing you must realize," said Levy to his assembled seconds in command, "is that on a ship like this we will need every kind of equipment, material, livestock, and provisioning that we can get aboard...
...He could not restrain himself from consideration of that which was feasible mainly in the magical world and, strangely enough, sometimes in this one...
...Besides, a night landing would be difficult for his passengers, too many of whom were old and sick...
...A suffocating oily smell and taste in the air, familiar to manners, was unwelcome to the twenty or so sleepers and sprawlers on the hatch cover, for its unpleasantness and for its associations...
...Were they to be necessary it could only mean that he had Tailed...
...It was as if she wanted to be the first to see the child, to make certain that she could love it...
...Welders, mechanics, engineers, smiths, tinkers will form a technical section...
...Eight deck hands took care of the rest—more than enough, since no one was interested in long-term maintenance: the ship was to be rammed against a beach south of Haifa...
...The weather was off just enough to set them properly on edge...
...First, five of you will circulate among all the people to wake them up and tell them that we are going to fight the British...
...If Pizarro could subdue the vast Inca empire with a handful of men far from home and only one casualty, then surely people had wrong ideas about the possible...
...Her pregnancy was just beginning its seventh month...
...Suddenly the dilapidated immigration ships could seem like speedboats and the docile Jews like polecats...
...I want a medical staff of at least five, and one man, preferably an entertainer, to play records and to talk over the public address system...
...Above her, more like a monkey than an acrobat, was a boy in an almost Alpine jacket and a fiat cap...
...Above her, leaning forward to look at the American, was a thin and handsome man whose arms were very strong...
...The microphone clicked its hollow echo...
...But there will be priorities...
...So was the installation of variable-length, angled power trains to provide tum for the drills, three of which would be operating at once...
...The mother hushed them...
...Darkness, danger, and combat did not bother him...
...and nets ready to swing...
...There were about a hundred and twenty of the very old, the sick, and small children...
...Some fell into the sea and drowned...
...The coast was a mile and a half away, the beaches empty and white...
...The criminals were especially aggressive, and this stimulated the others...
...He could see the faces and caps of the Palmach, but not one British soldier...
...He will be their captain, and lie will drill them in lifeboat procedure, response to instructions in English, etc., etc...
...Sacramento...
...holding her child too tightly for its own good...
...gangways...
...That day Keslake lost his passion for the chase and for arms as well...
...At night after work, as the sea rolled and winds swept by, they felt satisfaction and equanimity...
...especially if it is crowded with children, the old, the sick, the dejected, and the insane...
...Given the opportunity he would have stood in the open as the planes swept by, eyeing their engines and firing with careful fury until either he or they were crushed...
...He was, of course, an orphan...
...Depending upon their facial structures they looked variously like chipmunks, hamsters, rabbits, raccoons, and even a bucktoothed puppy he had seen once in Tennessee when his father had taken him there to experience the place before Roosevelt covered it with water...
...The first was that the engine room was to be bolted shut from the inside and that the motor men were to keep up full speed until the ship ran aground, no matter what they heard from the bridge...
...The interpreters spoke slowly to fill up the two minutes...
...Behind each slinger was a small pile of stones and a powder monkey, who dropped a stone into a breechlike contraption from which it was shot...
...They manned two steam hoses (from the breastworks) and three stations for throwing Molotov cocktails...
...Levy wore his pistol almost ceremoniously, for he could not imagine how it might help...
...When well out to sea, the ship found its stride...
...He was dressed in khaki pants, a white shirt, and a brown aviator jacket which he slung over his shoulder...
...The teacher abandoned him to an apparent dunce's reverie...
...Ij He noticed that the people, whether Poles, Germansvj Czechs, Russians, or whatever, had a very peculiar mannerism...
...Copyright § /V77 by Murk Helprin He was lanky and well over six feet tall, with short blond hair and the remnants of a suntan he had picked up on the Albemarle...
...They had web belts from which hung clubs and (to Levy's surprise) knives...
...The combat section sent regular shifts to relieve the stokers and help with heavy work...
...No one would move unless told to do so by Avigdor, who knew nothing about ships...
...The Palmach came aboard and began evacuation...
...Preparations had been completed: Levy's plan allowed several days of rest before the landing...
Vol. 2 • September 1977 • No. 9
