NO SHIP EVER SAILS
Mayer, Milton
No Ship Ever Sails By MILTON MAYER Paris IT must have been seven years ago that Dr. Rothmann, the great skin man at Chicago, said to me, "Dr. Mayer, I will give you salves and bandages, but they...
...And what I did for myself and by myself yesterday, you can do for yourselves tomorrow if only you will take my advice and follow my example...
...Some of the French are doing all right," he said...
...no mail (the next to last resort of a scoundrel) to read and re-read, and even write and re-write...
...I said...
...These are nothing, because they are over quickly...
...The Trondanger was bound for Europe, with no stops except for fuel at the Panama Canal...
...and got into the coach to Paris and into the pension where la patronne rubbed each of the dollars quietly...
...The ship is the world, leaving all of the other world's sorrow behind, bringing all its own with it...
...In some people it leads to suicide, in others to murder...
...Rocky, 10 (or 9 at European ticket windows...
...But Le Havre was pocked a little, the quays and locks and the buildings near the water half destroyed...
...The Mayers were bound for a year in Germany...
...The borax was leaking from the bags on the pier, but this, we were told, was of no consequence to anyone, since the cargo was insured...
...said Dr...
...So speaks the Russian tempter to a bewildered and discontented Asia...
...The French are different," said the Second Officer, in charge of the cargo...
...they stare blankly, with the blank stare of class warriors...
...The Americans work hard and fast, because they want their money...
...Theirs is all the rest...
...the same . . . A week, two weeks, three weeks...
...Rothmann, meaning, "Ach, so...
...Rothmann, who was a German refugee...
...and into the benches on the subway...
...I wanted to see what all the shooting of Mayers was about, and the place to see it, in the current lull, was Germany...
...Ach, so," I said...
...And they know which world they belong to...
...Lazy—or efficient...
...It was the tropics...
...But for almost three weeks it hadn't been...
...no, Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da...
...The countryside and Paris would be the same, and Americans in France would be saying, "How lovely," having forgotten that the price of the loveliness was surrender...
...After the first two or three days all the Mayers, beginning, of course, with Rocky and Dicken, knew the whole ship and began to know the officers...
...or the sea air...
...A handsome woman in middle life came to our table, selling newspapers...
...ikanische," said Dr...
...We got off the Trondanger, tipped the bitterly honest Norwegians with American dollars which bitterly honest Norwegians would be crazy if they didn't exchange in the black market...
...or the salt water in the swimming tank set up on the deck...
...And the rest," I said, "have decided to do all right...
...Even the waiters in the little cafes are the same...
...Everybody else has money, but nobody else has time...
...May I speak freely...
...I said...
...And for once, no guilt...
...If your world is small enough . . . The same cookies for tea again today . . . salad with hoodies in it again . . . the same . . . again . . . again...
...Two or three whispered, "Go—for God's sake, go," and we went...
...You have neurodermatitis on your right elbow, a remarkably well-developed case, and it will go away when you stop scratching it...
...No guilt, if you except the great guilt of having done it at all...
...who hasn't...
...And they're a little like children, hollering and vulgar without meaning anything...
...Why...
...He was only a businessman...
...said Dr...
...In France Marx's thesis of the advanced capitalist state is supported at last...
...I know the Russians...
...You have perhaps read the poems of Horace...
...The longshoremen don't stare at the passengers any more in hopeless envy or, as they do in America, in hopeful envy...
...no telephone to serve as the last resort of a scoundrel who will telephone people all day long rather than work...
...And that's where Stal—that's where the trouble comes in...
...I'm afraid so," he said...
...The Trondanger sailed leaving sorrow, as well as part of its cargo, behind...
...or the food, which began by being ecstatic and ended by being bland and uncomfortable...
...The same some...
...The French are different...
...Da-da-da . . . Does "the drop of water wear the stone away at last...
...The France of the '20s lives on, at the Meurice, the Ritz, and George V. Where the rich are, Americans, French, even Germans, everything is always the same...
...Of Horace...
...or the throbbing of the diesels, which let up once at the Canal and once in the Caribbean for a two-hour repair...
...The Steward: "You see, it's the cost of everything...
...There was nothing to say...
...Ahl-zo," said Dr...
...France is rolling in Marshall Plan Recovery, inside the dollar's military strategy...
...If your consciousness is circumscribed...
...no, 2-4 time...
...they are thinking of proletarian and bourgeois, of two worlds face to face...
...no —. Da-da, da-da...
...I said...
...Who, if not I? Who, if not I, is rich enough to spend a month at sea and a year in Europe...
...My unofficial reply is, "I have been told so often that if I don't like it here why don't I go back where I came fronv that, though I liked it MILTON MAYER, a regular contributor to The Progressive, recently reached Europe, after a 28-day voyage, to begin a year's appointment on the social science staff of the University of Frankfort...
...My left elbow was beginning to itch...
...I looked at the woman and, as she left, at the great American...
...Only the unemployed, and the permanently unemployed at that, are rich enough to go away alive...
...What about Korea...
...but the cookies will positively be the same tomorrow as today, the salad will positively have noodles in it tomorrow...
...Those of our friends who said we could go said we shouldn't...
...you kill him...
...I . . ." The ship is the world...
...exchanged American dollars at the bank, where the clerk rubbed each of the dollars and reddened with the desire to tell us to take them around the corner and up the stairs and get twice as many francs for them...
...They tortured my uncle, killed him...
...This can be arranged, however...
...and out into the Champs-Elysees, the American suckers' own boulevard, the face of the French world, to have lunch with a great American...
...and after a fortnight, one another...
...Sad—no, that is not the right word...
...They are all bound, every one of them, to honorable occupations and a two-week vacation until death itself unbinds them...
...no guilt over all the young people and old, the whole 150 million, who need your help, your advice, your consolation, whose help, advice, and consolation you need even worse...
...Mayer, as the first lights of the French coast blinked exactly where the chart said they would, "next time we'll take a slow raft...
...Of course, there is, as always, a catch in what the tempter says to the intended victim whom he is stalking...
...His next article will be written from Germany...
...Mayer, I will give you salves and bandages, but they won't help...
...Rothmann, "but it is no substitute for strong character in cases of Ellenbogen amerikanische...
...Our first baby . . . quite late in our marriage . . . I'll see him when he's three months old, in October...
...Ford...
...And there, against the light summer sky, at night, we saw the first of war's Halloween masks, the broken walls with their window-holes and door-holes...
...and the world that manipulates you, first, the sky, the Southern Cross, or the sunrise, a burning, flaming, hydrogen-bombed world spreading itself before dawn over 180° of the horizon...
...There is, of course, the incidental consideration of eating, but, then, there are wealthy institutions, such as banks and pawnbrokers and relatives, whose responsibility it is to see to it that the hungry are fed...
...no errands, and no errands of mercy...
...And they respect the machinery...
...The whole 150 millions have become Capt...
...If you scratch it, it will stay, salves or no salves, and I think you will scratch it...
...For seven years my right shirtsleeve had been unbuttoned, for readier access to my Richtellenbogen amerikanische...
...Mayer, two days before we reached the English channel, "your right shirtsleeve is unbuttoned...
...This is a minor condition, almost universal in America, and nothing to worry about...
...What about a sanitarium...
...There was no morning paper, or evening...
...they work slow...
...Rolling in European Recovery, and rocking in the class war...
...Russia can say to Asia today: "Yesterday, I, Russia, was an old-fashioned peasant society, such as you are today...
...I had two briefcases filled with work to be done, all the work I was going to do in those 30 days...
...The lines are drawn...
...III The ship is two worlds—the world you manipulate, Capt...
...But France is different...
...There was one other passenger...
...But in your case, an advanced one, it has led to your scratching your right elbow...
...In a sanitarium you would have to be in, I think it is called, a strait-jacket...
...I did something less than half of it...
...and third the diesels, throbbing you all day and all night, compelling your consciousness into marching to 2-4 time...
...First Officer Moen: "Perhaps some sort of socialism was the only way for China, if only . . ." The Stewardess: "He told me I had to . . . the nerve of him...
...The technical name for this is Ellenbogen amerikanische, or Richtellenbogen amerikanische...
...The wireless operator heard yesterday that negotiations were broken off . . . resumed . . . broken off . . . resumed . . ." Broken off...
...no voices of friends 10 years away but never forgotten ("I'm just in town for the day...
...The French are poor," I said...
...Rothmann, meaning, "Well," and he went on: "You are a nervous wreck, Dr...
...everybody but the French...
...Gibelhausen at table...
...no, 4-4 time...
...There is no known cure for this except strong character...
...A sanitarium is nice," said Dr...
...Seven years later the ship sailed from Long Beach, and I was aboard, with Mrs...
...I don't make any money...
...My official reply is, "It is the cockpit of Europe...
...What makes you so sure it will be a boy, Chief...
...The whole 150 million have become Chief Engineer Trondssen...
...in two days they discharge the whole cargo...
...Of course...
...You will see...
...What about a sea voyage...
...We saw...
...And with what...
...Ours is the ship, the sea, and the sky...
...Arnold Toynbee in the Listener (publication of the British Broadcasting System), May 24, 1951 the process continues long enough and will positively continue long enough in the future, with the certainty of an end, the whole externality (cte-da-da, cfa-da-da) finds a place for itself in unconsciousness, and consciousness is thrown back upon internal sorrows, and for the first time you discover what proportion of your sorrows no ship ever leaves behind...
...See how I have pulled myself up to the Western level of efficiency, prosperity, and power...
...those who said we should said that they didn't see how we could...
...But then Adam and Eve have never been good at seeing the catch in their temptations without a good angel to enlighten them...
...said I. "I'm afraid so," said he...
...My neighbor with three cars and a flourishing law practice...
...I came originally, like all the Mayers, from the wrong side of the Vistula, but my first known ancestor was a small (5' 2") landowner in Germany...
...Sullen, I think you say...
...no, 6-8 time...
...Everything is the same, except the good food, less varied than it used to be and in smaller portions...
...Gibelhausen, the Chief, the First, the Steward...
...Six months of this and we'd be unwound...
...Carnegie...
...France had escaped the war by surrendering...
...Like you today, I yesterday was depressed, ignorant, hopeless, and tame...
...Next time," said Mrs...
...They are thinking—don't tell me I can't tell you all this after an hour on the pier—not of you, of them, of France, of America, of a tip, or of real or false hospitality...
...Ahead of us lay 30 days before the mast—or deckchair...
...I have pulled myself up by my own bootstraps...
...I'm afraid so," he said...
...So we are going to stop Communism, are we...
...after a week, the crew...
...here, I decided to go back where I came from...
...They're like American businessmen, and like children...
...IV The French longshoremen are different, all France is different...
...Since May 9, 1945, those that are left have become (again, through no virtue or vice of their own) heroes...
...Ach, so," said Dr...
...Rockefeller...
...Both sides had bombed the French ports, of course...
...If you actually call the police, they walk off the job and you sit with your cargo...
...I said...
...Within a day, a single day, the whole world, the whole universe, becomes two worlds, two universes...
...Neither...
...Behind us lay unfinished business, all the unfinished business which, ordinarily characterized as "life," keeps all of us from doing, not only the things we ought to do, but even the things we want to do...
...and Dicken, 6. The ship was the M/S Trondanger (variously re-christened, enroute, as the Ding-donger, Galdanger, and Hongadon-ga), a 10,000-ton freighter of the Westfal-Larsen Co., Oslo, loaded with citrus, borax, and a surprising consignment of bulk Scandinavian cockroaches...
...second, the sea that pitches and rolls you in a pattern that you've got to analyze if it's the last thing you do, but you don't...
...no movies that we'll never see if we don't go tonight...
...The French are doing all right," said the great American, who ought to know...
...In this next chapter of our story, the Russian challenge to the West is a challenge to us to be Asia's good angel—the angel who will guide Asia's feet out of the Communist paths of destruction by showing her a Western way of peace...
...Nothing to be done about them or you, for 30 days...
...Mayer," said Mrs...
...The way to stop a madman...
...What is more, I have done all this without Western aid...
...The blotch that had begun at the elbow, seven years ago, and had moved on up the dorsal side of the flipper, was fading from red to brown, and around the periphery from brown to white...
...I must go...
...the face of the world...
...But...
...While in Europe Mayer will also do special assignments for the University of Chicago Round Table, the Great Books Foundation, and the American Friends Service Committee, with all of which he was identified in this country...
...I was lying, then, as you are still, under the heel of a privileged native minority which was itself the creature of the Western masters of the world...
...Why Germany...
...or the trade winds...
...C'est vrai," said I. For it was France...
...There's a radio aboard, in the little lounge: "This is the overseas service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, bringing you the news of the wage dispute in the Saskatchewan Lumber Mill . . . four-thousand-dollar fire in Toronto . . . wheat closed a trifle lower than . . ." The static is intense, the reception fades and rises...
...You perhaps know the line of Horace, 'No ship ever sails leaving sorrow behind...
...no dinners we simply have to have (or go to...
...But look at me now...
...The industrial proletariat will take neither "no" nor "maybe" for an answer...
...The head waiter bowed, the Champs Elysees bow, and took the great American's American dollars to the cage...
...This is a free country," I said...
...It turns out that the variety of external sorrows is limited—as it is not at home—and when Russia's Appeal to Asia Russia's appeal to Asia is, I think, this...
...If you complain," said the cargo officer, "they ignore you...
...That was seven years ago...
...Ser schon...
...no news, good or bad, of anybody or anything...
...Of recent times the German Mayers, of one name or another, have all lost their land and most of them (through no virtue or vice of their own) their lives...
...Little Julie, now a great big, beautiful girl of 16...
...Rothmann, meaning, "Very nice," and he went on: "A sea voyage is always very nice also, but it, too, is no substitute, in cases of Ellenbogen amer—" "—ikanische," I said...
...The friends who came down to the pier to make sure that we left wallowed in envy and aquavit as the Trondanger weighed anchor in the windless dawn...
...You must write a little book entitled, How to Unwind an American...
...Of course we must stop them, but how...
...no committees, conferences, consultations, or dates for lunch that can neither be kept nor postponed...
...First we saw ourselves moved into the pier at Le Havre, very untidily I should say (as an old harbor pilot...
...II Horace was wrong...
Vol. 15 • October 1951 • No. 10
