A Voyage of the Nord Kaperen, Part I

Introduction After the Revolution (a fantasy):

Three post-revolutionaries are sitting around a table.  They have been selected as a committee to write a report on the American Deserter Movement in France in the years 1968 to 1972 of the Vietnam War between the United States and the People’s Republic of Vietnam.  The success of the International Revolution has seen the abolition of all European frontiers, at least.  These  European comrades, therefore, are no longer designated by the name of their former nationalities, but according to the sectors of Europe from which they come.  As a practical measure, however, the names of the sectors correspond to those of the former national names.

The three post-revolutionaries are young historians from France, England, and Germany.  They are already having trouble with Max, an older post-revolutionary, who has been assigned to the team by the Central Committee, much the same way as the Bolsheviks assigned an ex-Tsarist General to a division of the Red Army.  Like the Tsarist General, who had been to a military academy and had several campaigns behind him, Max had actually worked in the Deserter Movement in France, practical experience  that these  young Communists twenty years after the International  Revolution had not enjoyed.  They had barely been born then.

Max is late, a fact which has just been stated by the German post-revolutionary (hence p.r. for short), Karl S., a tall sandy-haired young man of twenty-two, and the self-appointed theoretician of the group.  He has noted Max’s lateness in a personal dossier he is compiling on Max, whom Karl considers an encumbering mastodon from pre-revolutionary days.  Intellectual flotsam from the former DDR still pollutes parts of the post-revolutionary waters:  for example, collecting information about a comrade for a no longer existent STASI (State Security Agency).  Karl  opens the session with a remark on Max’s lateness, and a side glance at Charles, the English p.r., who was also late.  Not having the correct change for the metro, he had had to re-surface to get it.

      --Max, continues Karl, has already made the point, in private conversation, that he is to the title, The Deserter Movement, opposed.  Naturally, outside our meetings, he should not discuss.  I think we might perhaps vote a motion of censure or a blame against him for that.  --Oh, come on, objects Charles, the ex-Englishman.  This isn’t a cell meeting.  We can discuss these things freely, can’t we?  I mean, it is not as if we are going to form a faction over the title of the report

      --It could end up so, says Karl somberly.  The Writers League of the International has us directions on the Deserter Movement in France given.  They have not our opinion requested.  Consequently, if we put the title in question,  a directive of the League is also put in question.

      --Well, why not?  asks Charles.  We are the ones writing it and we can decide on our own title.

Decater, the French p.r., who has been leafing through Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, marks his place with a pencil and looks up.

      --Let’s not waste time, he says.  We are working in an Action committee, not a university seminar.  If deserter is the correct term, we use it, and if we decide on some other term, we use that.  We shall explain our reasons either in the Introduction, or in a memo to the Writers League.  C’est très simple.

      --I’m not so sure, answers Karl.

      --I am, says Charles.  We didn’t make a revolution only to get tied up in bureaucracy.

Decater, once a Frenchman, once a Jew, suggests they discuss the question.

      --What else can we call it? 

      --Max wants to call it RITA, Resistance Inside the Army, says Charles.

His support of Max has sprung partly from his own late arrival at the meeting.

      --That is ridiculous, objects Karl.  The deserters left the Army.

      --The Army didn’t think so, says Charles.  If they got caught, they would have a military trial and be sent to a military prison.  You can’t leave the Army.  If you could leave just by deserting, no one would have stayed inside.  Back then, anyway.  A revolutionary army is different.  But back then, one of the early deserters coined the phrase Resistance Inside the Army because their political purpose was to make propaganda against the Vietnam War.  It was directed at the soldiers who were doing the fighting.  And the deserters wanted to reach them, not just express their own anti-army, anti-Vietnam point of view.  Military Intelligence even called its file on them RITA.

      --I fail to understand why, said Karl, twenty years after the American Army has ceased to exist, we should accept their viewpoint on anything.

      --We are not accepting their viewpoint, we are accepting the viewpoint of one of the political deserters in France in 1967.

      --That was France, agrees Karl, with a grimace, but there were deserters in Canada and Sweden and other countries who had another point of view.

      --Nevertheless, we are writing about France, says Decater.

      --There were deserters in France who called themselves deserters, says Karl angrily.  It suffices to read some of our source material.  Leave the title as it is, if only for chronological clarity.  In our field, deserting soldiers from Germany called themselves deserters.  Resistance Inside the Army came later.

      --Well, says Charles, shaking his head dubiously.  It depends on whether you think of history as becoming, or as a simple series of chronological events.  If you are writing the history of recorded music, you don’t call it The Victrola because that was the name of the first phonograph.

      --But RITA is just as much in the past as desertion, Karl insists.  Your argument doesn’t hold.  There is no more U.S.Army, and so no more resistance.

      --And no more resistance? asks Decater.

The three post-revolutionaries look at each other.  There were not many deserters from the International Red Army, but there were some.  Perhaps their subject was going to have more than historical interest?  Perhaps the Central Committee had a hidden agenda?

      --Desertion is not an abstract phenomenon, says Karl.  Desertion from a bourgeois capitalist army during an imperialist war is not the same as desertion from a revolutionary army.

      --Well, we can use Desertion as a working title for now, says Charles.  But I reserve the option to re-open the question at any time.

      --We must begin, says Karl.  We cannot any longer for Max—wait any longer for Max.  Have any of you thought about the Introduction?

      --I have, says Decater.  I’ve even begun writing.

      --Good show, says Charles.

Although Karl does not light a cigarette as he might have done before the Revolution, Decater does re-open volume one of The History of the Russian Revolution, which he would not have done in any socialist country before the revolution.  Unfolding a single sheet of paper, he props it against the open page of the book.

      --Introduction, he begins, clearing his throat slightly.  The deserter has always been a romantic figure.  In liberal eyes he is A Man Alone, isolated from his fellows, sometimes because of the nobility of his motives, sometimes not.  For pacifists he is the object of what is known in France as a “pious wish.”  That is, if a whole army would desert, the war would have to stop.  Under revolutionary conditions, the deserter’s role is marginal.  Sometimes an officer will desert and bring important information on the enemy’s movements to the revolutionaries.  This was the case in the Libyan and Syrian wars of the 21st century.  But it is the soldiers passing over to the workers—as in the first Russian Revolution—and bringing their weapons with them, that may accelerate the course of a revolution.  Under unusual conditions, however, desertion has ceased to be an individual act of protest and become a prelude to a military uprising.

Now I quote from Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution: “On the evening of February 26, 1917, the 4th company  of the Pavlovsky Regiment mutinied—his majesty’s personal guard.  Soon they were encircled by the Preobrazensty Regiment and nineteen of the “pavoltsky” were arrested and put under lock and key in the fortress.  The others surrendered.  From other sources we learn that twenty-one soldiers were missing at roll call that evening with their guns.  Dangerous flight.  These twenty-one soldiers spent the entire night looking for allies to help them.  But only the  victory of the Revolution could save them.  There is no doubt that it was through them that the workers learned what was happening.  It was not a bad sign for the battle next day.

      --That reminds me of a fish story, said Max, breaking into the Introduction, the meeting, and the room.

      --You’re late, says Karl.

      --I was writing in a café, says Max chattily, and everything came to me.  You know, I sometimes can’t write for days, and that depresses me.  So today I didn’t want to stop.

      --It is not considerate to keep your comrades waiting, Karl answers.

      --People keep me waiting all the time, mentions Max agreeably.  I heard what you were reading just now.

He turns to Decater and adds that it sounded like Trotsky.

      --It is Trotsky, says Decater.

      --I thought we were supposed to be writing something? asks Max.

      --We are.  I am just quoting Trotsky in the Introduction.

      --Dangerous, says Max.  He carries a lot of weight.  Anyway, my fish story will clear the air.  It’s a whale of a story.  Get it?  In English, whale means something big.  So a story about a whale is big, or a whale of a story.  See?  You’ll see.  It is not only relaxing but relevant.  It took place in pre-revolutionary times, like most of Max’s stories.  This one was in August off the coast between Italy and France.  We might even use it in our Introduction.  Now that we’ve made a Revolution, we’re not going to go on writing the same sort of analytical stuff—Roman numeral I, large A, small b—that bored children to death in pre-revolutionary days, are we?  Don’t you want to try something new?

      --People are still under the domination of bourgeois ideology, says Karl.  The old system of writing reports worked well enough.  We are not sure people are ready for a sharp break with the old culture.

      --Well enough is not good enough for our revolution, says Charles.

      --This is a period of transition, adds Decater.  We may find a new way of writing reports.  But we will have to begin with the old.

      --And I’ll throw in a fish story for old pre-revolutionary days, concludes Max. 

      --Remembrance of things past?  asks Decater.

      --Wasn’t he the guy who wrote a whole novel about a cup of tea?  Not my bag.  Maybe it’s good—but you have to admit, a fish story is more exciting.

      The three young post-revolutionaries sit down and two do not light cigarettes as they might have done before the revolution; Max sits down too.  Even before the revolution, he did not smoke.

      --Now, let’s see, he begins, to be leading the conversation.  How do you want me to tell it?  Since I am one of the characters, should I use the first person or just talk about myself Iike I was everybody else?

      --Why not merge yourself in the crowd?  suggests Karl caustically.  If you can.

      --It will be difficult, agrees Max cheerfully.  But I can try to, in this story anyway.  Because I don’t play the central role.  I was important naturally, but more peripheral than usual.

      --Who does play the central role?  asks Charles.

      --The Nord Kaperen, says Max promptly.  And adjacently its crew, and June, my girlfriend, who was a guest along with me.  But the Nord Kaperen was vital or there never would have been any whales—at least we would not have been there to see them. 

The Nord Kaperen is a sailing boat, a big sailboat or small ship, which was built in 1905, had gone three times around the world, twice before the first World War, and once afterwards that we know about.  Maybe she has gone again in the meantime, but no one has bothered to write about it.  Her third voyage was right at the end of World War II, the guy who wrote about it is a semi-fascist type, successor to the feudalist owner symbolized by the Duke of Stettin.  The Duke of Stettin is dead when Max’s story starts, but without him there wouldn’t be no story because he was the one who built the boat.  In the sense that DeLesseps built the Suez Canal.  That means that neither the Duke of Stettin nor DeLesseps were out hammering nails or wielding shovels, but that they had had an idea and were able to pay or, in the case of Delesseps, get people paid to execute it.

The Nord Kaperen’s decks were originally of solid teak.  By the time Max came aboard, the teak had been taken up and sold and replaced by metal, covered with canvas.  Very solid and all that, but no more so than the teak, and not half as elegant.  One of the previous owners had obviously needed money, and you get a good price for teak.

As for the Duke of Stettin, he had been replaced long since by a variety of owners, successive and then simultaneously in the persons of Trulls, Nardo, and Sven, three Danish hippies, or summer hippies at least, who turned the Nord Kaperen into a floating commune.  In the winter they were quite respectable:  Nardo was an architect, Trulls a cameraman, and Sven a lawyer.  Max never met him.  He had gone back to Copenhagen and lawyering by the time Max and his girlfriend June joined the sailing commune.

      --You were hippies? asks Charles.

      --We were ready to work with anyone who was against the Vietnam War.  On the Nord Kaperen we were paying guests, so to speak.  They were doing us a favor by taking Max away from Corsica, and since a boat costs money to run, we offered to pay for our trip, like on any boat.  But the act of taking us was done for the Vietnamese revolution against the Americans.  It showed political engagement because Max was a political case.

      --We know all about your expulsion from France, said Karl, but nothing about your boat trip.

      --Why were you expelled?  asked Decater.  Did you ever find out?

      --Not to this day.  Max has always suspected it was the Americans putting pressure on the French government for our work with the deserters.

      --Then that should go in our report, says Charles.

      --We still don’t know how the Nord Kaperen came into it, says Karl.

      --That was a bit of luck, agrees Max.  I had been kidnapped by the DST secret service, in the heart of Paris—have I told you about my being pulled into a car, just as I was buying my newspaper-

      --We know, says Karl. 

      --Fortunately I had left my briefcase with all my papers, including my passport, with June at the café, and the DST was not sure which country I came from.  I had been cagey about that all my life in France—and a good thing too, as it turned out.  The secret police could have found out easily enough, but these things took more time in those pre-computer days, and in the meantime I wasn’t volunteering any information.  In fact, I went on a food and water strike while I was in prison in the Conciergerie.  What other famous prisoner was kept there, by the way?

      --Marie Antoinette, said Decater promptly.  And from the Conciergerie to Corsica?

      --The French have an old policy of sending people to islands when they don’t know what to do with them.  Look at Napoleon.  He got off too, and so did Max.  Though I had an ethical problem that did not worry Napoleon.

      --Yes?  asked Charles before Karl could tell Max to get on with it.

      --So Max was sent to Corsica while the police were trying to find out what country they could deport him too.  I asked the cop who accompanied me to the plane if he knew why I was being deported from Paris, and he had no idea.  Neither did the cops who met me at the airport at Ajaccio.  I played it big, asked what hotel they were taking me to and said I wanted a room overlooking the sea, naturally with bath.  The hotel the Corsican cops had had in mind, had been obliged to pay for in fact, was obviously not up to these standards, so they said I would have to pay for that myself.  Quite pleased probably to save the expense for the government.  And Max’s  prestige attained a high point that was very useful. I immediately persuaded them that I could not report to the police in Ajaccio every day.  Since I was in Corsica, I was going to enjoy a nice vacation here.  I would however drop in on the police wherever I happened to be at the time, say once a week.  All this was quite normal behavior for someone in the category I had established myself in.  They just requested that, on my honor as a gentleman, I would not leave the island.  I imagine they then immediately gave my description to the airport and the boat  lines, as well as trusting to word of honor, but I myself did not want to break my promise.  You never know when you will be in these people’s hands again.  And besides, it would have been bad for the next person consigned to Corsica.

      --Not that I had any practical idea of how I could leave the island, until I saw the Nord Kaperen.  In fact, first I saw Ute, one of the crew, and Bjorn in a pick-up truck belonging to the commune which had followed the Nord Kaperen down from Denmark.  I leaned in the car window at the traffic light and invited them for coffee, figuring the truck might be a way of leaving .  You could tell they were hippies and open to anything, including my story.  But I hadn’t finished when Bjorn told me they knew all about me. My expulsion had been picked up by newspapers all over Europe, and Nardo, one of the captains of the Nord Kaperen, even had a copy of the clipping.  So I learned about the Nord Kaperen, and that she was sailing on to Majorca in a few days.  One thing led to another, and they agreed—they were delighted in fact—to propose taking me—and June and her poodle—to the rest of the commune.

      --And your ethical problem?  prompted Charles.  Your promise to the police?

      --Yes, and that was the beautiful thing about leaving by a sailing ship.  We could always run into a storm that prevented me returning, or be becalmed.  Actually, both really happened. We just missed getting caught in a typhoon two days out, on the way to Caprera, which no one has ever heard of—

      --It’s where Garibaldi died, said Karl.

      --No!  exclaimed Max.  I know everything about Garibaldi, but I didn’t know that he died in Caprera.

      --Born in Nice, then belonging to Italy, Nizza, in 1807, died on the island of Caprera in 1882.

      --If only I’d known when I was there!  They certainly don’t publicize it on the island. 

      --Now they do, said Karl.  What year were you there? 

      --1969.

The three post-revolutionaries all looked at Max, as if for the first time.  He might as well have been as far back as Garibaldi himself.

      --June and I and the poodle joined the Nord Kaperen in Bonifacio, on the southern tip of Corsica, right opposite Maddalena in Sardinia, and far from Ajaacio where according to the police I was supposed to be.  I don’t even remember whether I signed in there or not.  I took off on the Nord Kaperen the next day, first calling June who was back at our hotel in Calvi, telling her to give in the car we had rented, or rather leave it in front of the rental agency early in the morning, and take the regular ferry to Maddalena.  I had had the foresight to pay for the car in advance, naturally. 

      --The police didn’t know about June?

      --No, she had joined me a week later.  She’ll come into the story later on, but the real heroine, as I said, is the Nord Kaperen.  She was an 18 meter long yawl with two masts, both carrying sail,  although the top mast was tied down, having been broken off in a gale off Corsica earlier that summer.  In good weather, all hands slept on deck in sleeping bags.  In August 1969, all hands consisted of twelve people, plus five children and our poodle.  The Danes being Danes, a racist theory would give them Viking blood—whatever that is—they greatly prefered  travelling under sail to using their motor.  It was a 1948 Grey Marine motor, 85 horsepower, which kept her moving at 6 knots an hour.  This motor ran on gas-oil.  The Nord Kaperen carried a full complement of 500 liters; 200 were in jerry cans and a big oil drum lashed to the deck, and 200 were in the below deck reservoir.  Only a short part of our first run from Maddalena to Caprera  had been made under sail because we had run into a storm. 

We had run north off the east coast of Corsica all night, with a fine beam wind, force 4 and 5, just right for the Nord Kaperen, but there was a strong swell.  June said she felt queasy and was sorry she had eaten supper.  As we passed Bastia after breakfast, the wind began to go up—force 6 and 7 and some points even beyond that.  We reduced sail and closed the hatches which tended to leak when the Nord Kaperen took water over her deck.

In the cabin, malaise spread muchly.  In fact, by eight o’clock, only the dog and one of the children had not thrown up.  The Nord Kaperen had a roomy below decks cabin, but that day it was housing five children and five adults, nine of whom were sick.  When Max came down, wet but happy to be sailing, to see how June was bearing up, any ideas he had had of staying long enough to change clothes left him immediately with all the smells, sighs, and bowls passing all over the place.  He patted June on the back, the behind, and beat a hasty retreat up on deck.  By now it was necessary to tie on.  Suddenly visibility increased and five miles inland, near the coast, we saw, for the first time in the Mediterranean, a real twister.  It was a column resembling, not the cloud over Hiroshima, but a black golf tee, reaching from the sea into the clouds.  This was more than any of the Danes wanted to see close-up.  Sails came down, power on, the Nord Kaperen fell off the west wind and, taking the swell and the wind with her, headed eastward towards Elbe.

--We do not want to get caught in the spout with our sails up, explained Trulls.          

Everyone thought the first part said it all.  Fortunately, as the Nord Kaperen left the coast behind her, the wind fell to force 5, but the heavy swells persisted.  Unlike the pony in the song, she did not jump, but she rolled and pitched very nicely.  Below, in the cabin, gloom and smell and gulps continued, momentarily relieved when the main hatch cover could be slightly opened.  We consulted the map and saw there was no need to make for Elbe;  halfway there was a little Italian island called Caprera.  Listed as a prison colony, it even had a small port on its east coast.  The Nord Kaperen rounded Caprera on the South;  then, still under power, she entered the calmer, sheltered water on the eastern lee of the island.

Morale improved below deck.  In fact, when the Nord Kaperen anchored in the small, very pretty little harbor, it had improved to the extent that June could invite everyone to lunch ashore.

On shore, the pretty little harbor consisted of a small restaurant where the twelve members of the Nord Kaperen complex lunched—not forgetting the five children from eight years down to fifteen months, plus the grey poodle, small, in heat, and enjoying great success with the local mixtures.  A clean flush toilet attached to the restaurant completed everyone’s total recovery. A Volkswagen bus made half-hourly liaisons with the upper town, consisting of cobbled streets, bougainvillea, and white and pink stucco houses.  A boarding house changed travelers checks.  There was also something looking like a town hall with an iron railing around it and a bench in front.  June sat and waited for the VW bus to take her back down to the port, after having changed travelers checks to pay for the lunch. As you may have gathered, June was an old woman of forty-two, like Max, whereas the Nord Kaperen kids were, outside of the eight and under set, in their mid and late twenties.

And where were the convicts?  On the rest of the island.  Sandy, barely brush-covered, Caprera’s thin layer of topsoil was farmed by the convicts who were guarded by a soldier or two.  One of them could be seen from the port, driving an orange tractor.  Grey sky.

That night the wind changed, and the next day we left Caprera.  Yes, that’s all.  That’s life on a prison island under fairly good conditions.  Paradise compared to Leros off Greece.  Outside of Garibaldi’s two stays there, the second of which did him in, so to speak, there isn’t much else to report.

Watt’s Lazy Little Boy

The Nord Kaperen sailed out of Caprera on a light northwest wind.  As the captains set their course for San Remo, on the Italian coast about forty sea miles away, the wind turned dead ahead, and they switched to motor power.  The sun was shining and the decks of the Nord Kaperen became once again a pleasant place to lie in the sun, or sleep, read, or talk.  The bevy of children immediately recovered their spirits and resumed the games that, strangely enough on an 18 meter long ship, did not overly disturb the twelve adults.  In fact, as long as the children were playing with each other, they kept track of each other and were less likely to fall overboard.

The overcrowding, if over-crowding is not too strong a word, was more than compensated for by the abundant labor force.  The not inconsiderable work of running the Nord Kaperen went off in a smooth and orderly fashion with no undue strain on anyone.  There were plenty of relays for the two men or women three hour watches, and between times, the captains, crew, wives and friends lay on deck and exchanged experiences and ideas in Danish and English. This relaxing summer conversation was encouraged by the many pillows, rubber mattresses and fur rugs strewn around the decks.  Discussions would emerge from a quiet surface and subside beneath it as easily and unexpectedly as sea creatures from the Mediterranean.

It was on such an afternoon that Max got started on the story of Watt’s lazy little boy, carrying him along for considerable mileage on the Nord Kaperen before anyone got around to throwing him overboard.  Whether Watt’s lazy little boy first came into the conversation because of the Nord Kaperen motor, or because of speculations on ways to improve sailing techniques, Max has forgotten.  But it is of little importance.  Watts, whether in the form of Max or the inventor  always was an aggravating little boy, and no one knew  where he came from before his appearance as an unfortunate but necessary appendage to the early steam engine, sometime in the 18th century.

He had, said Max, stretching out on one of the black goatskin rugs and propping his feet up on the oil drum, nothing to do with Watts, who was not the man who invented the steam engine anyway, but only got his name stuck to it like Vespucci to America.  Newcomben had been building practical steam engines for fifty years already, which were working all over the place before Watts went into business, but Watts improved them and everybody remembers Watts and nobody remembers Newcomben.

In early stages, engineers or someone else, for both the Newcomben and the Watts steam engine, I assume, had to turn a lever to bring the steam to the other side of the piston.

      --What’s a piston?  asked June.

Or Ute or Marianne or one of the other girls aboard, girls being notorious for understanding nothing about motors or engines.  So Max explained.  He did not consider this a proper scientific explanation, but the sort of thing sufficient for girls who would forget it immediately anyway.

A cylinder is a tube closed at one end.  Inside the cylinder is a piston.  A piston is fundamentally a sliding plug in the “open” end.  The expansion or introduction of gas or gases into the closed space inside the tube pressures the movable piston out.  This drives a piston rod—that is, a rod fixed to the movable sliding plug—from this shaft through various contraptions such as crank shaft, gear boxes, and what have you until things are moved or turned.

      --Like a locomotive, said June.

      --Like a locomotive, said Max, wondering if the Danish girls had understood the technical terms in the foreign language.  Where else did they use steam engines, he added, deciding not to let them off too easily.

      --Well, it is an alternate name for locomotive, said June.

      --You have already said that.  Where else?

      --Steam boats obviously.  Fulton.

      --Fulton, repeated Max.  I suppose Fulton, Watts, and Newcomben were running simultaneous competitive businesses?

      --Well, it was the nineteenth century after all, answered June.  Progress, competition, and invention—

      --What invention?

      --The steam engine.

Max shook his head and muttered something about women.

      --Stationary steam engines, he went on, had run water pumps and cotton mills for a century before visionaries like Fulton or Stevens thought of putting them on boats or wheels.

      --Who’s Stevenson?

      --Someone who thought of putting an engine on a wagon, thus making a locomotive.  Before then, how do you think things were moved?

      --Before when?

      --The 18th century, for example.

      --Oh, by man power, or horse power, or water power, or—

She hesitated.  Max looked pointedly up at the sail-

      --Wind, said Marianne.

      --Good, said Max, beaming with pleasure.  Give the lady a banana.  He was very happy on the foredeck with all the half-naked girls around him.

I would give you all A, he praised them, except that none of you mentioned gravity.  Wind, water, muscle—animal or human—and gravity were all man had to move things by or with until the 18th century.  Our real domination over nature only began to get going with the engine, the machine, the motor.  In the early days of the Newcomben, and I assume the Watts engine, someone had to turn a lever to bring the steam to the other side of the piston.  Given the social situation of England in the 18th century, someone soon became a little boy.  Most little boys working at this turned the lever beautifully and, not having read Horatio Alger, they did not even dream of marrying the boss’s daughter.

But Watt’s lazy little boy wanted to do something else—whatever lazy little boys in the 18th century wanted to do (besides not reading Horatio Alger which had not been written yet.  He couldn’t read anyway).  So, instead of turning the lever all the time, he figured out a system of strings and pieces of wood which, tied to a moving part, caused the lever to be turned by the machine itself.  He was even lucky when his system failed, and all that happened was that the 18th century version of a straw boss came around and cuffed him soundly for being such a lazy little boy and futzing around with the machinery.

The next lazy little boy—as you all have guessed by now, he was a multiple creation-- lazy little boy number two was somewhat less lucky—if you could call it that—because his system failed too.  The strings got caught in the safety valve, the boiler blew up, and he was scalded alive to death, like a pink lobster. 

But lazy little boy number three was the most unlucky of all because his system worked perfectly.  In fact, he laid the basis for the modern reciprocating engine.  Another straw boss (also a m.c. or multiple creation), a smart one, saw this and immediately fired lazy little boy three, took out a patent on turning levers by steam, and became rich.  All the other little boys, good little boys who had been industriously turning levers by hand, were subsequently fired because they were no longer necessary.

      --What happened to lazy little boy number three after he was fired?  asked Ute, thinking perhaps of Horton, her own little boy.

      --Lazy little boy number three, answered Max, was not only unemployed himself but responsible for the firing of those thousands of busy little boys, so he hung his head in shame, went to America (a contemporary form of suicide), and was, in fact, eaten by Indians.

      --Indians are not cannibals! said Marianne indignantly.

      --To the 18th century they were, answered Max unperturbed.  In those days, they undifferentiated savage activities.  Now, one of you is undoubtedly going to ask me the point of this story?

He smiled expectantly both at the present post-revolutionaries and the past bikinied Danes, and connected up:

      --A fundamental invention, an essential step in man’s domination over Nature, brought scolding, scalding, and unemployment to its heroes.  But though they did not know it, the lazy little boys were fighting a necessary battle for progress, for humanity, for a better world.

He paused.  June thought the others probably thought he had finished, but she thought he probably had not, and she was right.

      --Without knowing it, some men fight battles which later turn out to be decisive.

Max  then draws a deep breath and adds:  Unfortunately, the reverse is also true.  Sometimes a battle that, at its time, seems important and pointful may turn out to be, in fact, pointless.  Such turned out to be our future battle for the San Remo gas-oil.

The Battle for the San Remo Gas-Oil

The Nord Kaperen, continued Max, after another day of plowing through subsiding seas and sunny weather, reached San Remo around midnight.  The twelve person complex, and the poodle, intact as it turned out, despite close calls with the Caprera catch-alls—were all asleep except for the two people on watch: Trulls was steering and June was  watching.  No one ever was on deck at night alone.  The Nord Kaperen spent one solid hour luffing about outside the harbor looking for the entrance, which had been changed since the chart had been drawn up.  In August 1969, the inner harbor was being enlarged and amid all the construction work, the green beacon on the starboard side of the entrance had been taken down, and no one had gotten around yet to putting it back up.  Since the NK chart showed a red light warning against rocks, Trulls did not dare to take her too close in the dark in order to find out which of the two blinking red lights indicated rocks and which the harbor.  June vaguely remembered being at San Remo with her husband, who was giving a symphony concert there and she was able to situate the harbor approximately—where she remembered an excellent though expensive fish restaurant.  This vague memory, harbor location not restaurant, enabled Trulls to bring in the Nord Kaperen and get her tied up in second position to a converted fishing boat.  Whereupon they too joined the others below decks and went to sleep.

While they are sleeping, Max will take advantage of the fore-shortening of time allowed by this activity and explain a few things about our motor.  The diesel engine has long since replaced the steam engine on small floating craft in general, parallel to the teakwood dining table of the Duke of Stettin also being replaced by the diesel engine.  Filling up in Sardinia, the Danes had then alimented the below-deck tanks with gas-oil from the drum and jerry cans lashed to the deck in, Max thought and undoubtedly had remarked, extremely unseamanlike fashion.  After the storm from Corsica to Caprera, and the sunny run on heavy seas into San Remo, the below-decks tanks were half-full and only 100 litres were left topsides. 

After cleaning up cabins and decks, and helping a considerable part of the commune to get packed and ready to catch the six-thirty train to Copenhagen, one of the two captains started the Grey Marine diesel and eased the Nord Kaperen over to the Shell station to fill up on gas-oil.  The Shell man filled the half-empty tank but flatly refused to fill the drum or the jerry cans.  When the Nord Kaperen complex of captains, crew-and-friends asked why, he told them that there is a law against it.  In Italy as elsewhere, Marine gas is tax-exempt and costs only 25 lire a liter, as compared with 70 lire for the normal taxed gas-oil.  To prevent people selling 25 life fuel at a profit, no boat is allowed to have gas pumped into anything but the below-deck reservoirs.

      --As if anyone could not siphon the gas-oil out of the reservoir and sell it, if that is what they really wanted to do, said Björn in disgust.

Björn is nineteen years old and Trulls younger brother.  He is tall and thin, has long blond hair, and wears glasses and, most of the time, no shoes.  He speaks English well and usefully handles foreign relations.

But even after Björn has explained the position, or rather the disposition of the gas-oil on the Nord Kaperen, translated by June into Italian, the Shell man still refuses to fill the jerry cans and the drum.  And without these 300 liters, the Nord Kaperen cannot hope to get from ‘San Remo in Italy to Majorca in Spain, where she will spend the winter.  It would be extremely risky to suppose that they would be able to do the whole distance under sail.  As Björn explained it to the Shell man:  the 200 liters of gas-oil carried below decks is less than half of what the ship needs for any medium-long voyage.  The Nord Kaperen was certainly built as a sailing ship in 1905, and space then made for the diesel motor and the gas tank but, as she was still fundamentally a sailing vessel, her regular tank capacity is small; for a long trip one either sailed or took extra fuel on deck.  For various reasons, such as the presence of children, the necessity to reach Majorca by a certain date, due to work obligations in Copenhagen, and above all a medium range weather forecast for the next few days of very little wind, the San Remo-Majorca run would depend largely on power.

Battle with Bureaucracy

      --If you want to pay 70 lire a liter, you can have all you want, says the Shell man.

      --No, answers Björn.  What an idea!

He turns to the NK complex, at full strength of the remaining lot, all watching the negotiations.  The sailing ship is tied up broadside to the marine gas station.  The Shell man tanks an Italian speed boat which has sneaked in around their stem and then suggests they move.

      --Even if we had money to pay 70 liters, we would refuse on principle, continues Björn, first in Danish, then in English for Max and June.  The commune nods in agreement.  Max and June are courtesy members of the commune.

The Shell man’s position, outlined after the Italian speedboat has left, is that there is a financieri behind him and that if the financieri says it is okay, he, the Shell man, will be only too glad to sell them the diesel gas at the marine price of 25 cents a liter.  The financier is wearing a grey uniform and grey cap and has a jaw reminiscent of Mussolini’s.  He says no, both to the Shell man and to Björn who asks him via June’s Italian.

Björn jumps down on the Nord Kaperen to discuss the situation with the ship’s company.  Max offers to help.  He agrees that June should continue to translate into Italian, his own Italian continually at war with Spanish in his memory, just as it had been in Cuba with Spanish the priority communication channel, but offers to try his hand at negotiating  since he has a lot of practice talking people into things.  The Danish captains accept Max’s offer, and he and June climb back up on the wharf with Björn.

The Shell man, between filling up the large below-decks reservoirs of other boats, yachts and sailing boats, maintains his passing-the-buck to the financieri position, i.e. I just work here.  As long as the financier says no, no dice, no gas-oil.  Like Björn before him, Max turns to the financieri.  The financieri still says no. This time he adds an explanation that in Italy there is a law against it.  Max makes the point that they had been sold gas-oil in Sardinia.

      --Not in San Remo, says the financieri, as if San Remo was certainly superior to Sardinia.

      --Why not?  asks Max.

      --There is a law.

It seems that the conversation is over, and he has had the last word.  It is and he has.

Max gives up on the financieri and turns to the Shell man again.  If they drain the 200 litres he has just put into the below decks reservoir into the jerry cans, discretely and not in the harbor, and return the next day with an empty below-decks tank, the Shell man has said that he will ask no questions and will fill up the main tank again.

      --I suppose it is a long and dirty job, says Max.

      Trulls says it is.

Trulls and Nardo and the girls are sitting on the hatch covers and railings of the Nord Kaperen.  A meter above them, Björn and Max and June are standing on the dock.  At the end of the dock, the financieri is looking out over the port, ignoring the Nord Kaperen.  A mahogany varnished speedboat speeds around the stern of the Nord Kaperen, cuts the motor, and the driver, wearing blue jeans and a white T shirt with a yacht-like name on the right pocket, hands up a jerry can to be filled.

      --Let’s see if he gives him his gas, says Björn.

The Shell man sees the Nord Kaperen complex watching him.  The financieri’s presence seems to shadow the panorama: port, Nord Kaperen, Shell station, speedboat, jerry can.  The Shell man does not fill the jerry can.

      --I think he has filled it before, says Björn.

The sailor, undisturbed drives off in the mahogany speedboat.

      --And he will fill it again. 

      --He did not dare because we are here, says Nardo.

The Shell man turns to Max.

      --Why don’t you go to Menton?  You’ll get your gas-oil there right away.

      --France is not on our course, says Max sternly.

Max, as everybody listening to this story knows, has been expelled from France.  If the port at Menton has his picture as wanted, his presence may be signaled to the police and he may be kept in jail in Menton until Paris sends down word what to do with him.  The Danes are solidly behind him because he is a political refugee.  Denmark was very Left in the sixties.

      --We must go directly to Majorca, says Nardo.  We are on a tight schedule.

June translates.

      --Menton is on your way, points out the Shell man.

      --We have to stay here anyway to get our spreader fixed, says Björn.

They all look up at the  mast where the spreader is missing.  The damage to the ship seems to awaken the Shell man’s sympathy.

      --Go across the port and ask at Customs, he suggests.  If they give you the permission, I will give you the gas-oil.

The port is shaped like a horseshoe.  On the other side from the Shell station is the Port Authority building.   There is where the Customs is housed.

      --How much water is there over there?  asks Max.

The Shell man glances at the Nord Kaperen.

      --Enough, he says.  Seven meters.

The Nord Kaperen draws two meters ten.  Max consults the two captains and they nod.

      --Do you want to try?  asks Max.  Unless you want to buy a pump and we try to pump it from the reservoir into the jerry cans, it looks like the only way we’ll get it.

      --Try the Customs, says Trulls.

He would have had to do a lot of pumping.  So Björn and Max and June jump down on the deck of the Nord Kaperen and she crosses the port.  There is no room to tie up to the dock in front of Customs and so she ties up to one of the fishing boats there.