A Voyage of the Nord Kaperen, Part II

          Interlude on Getting the Spreader Replaced                       l

Max, in one of his exchanges with the Shell man mentioned three reasons why the Nord Kaperen did not intend to go to Menton, France.  First, that Menton was off course; second, they were already late; third, they had to stay in San Remo anyway to get their spreader replaced.  He had not added the principle reason which was that he himself was in a political battle with the French government, to revoke his expulsion, and had broken his assigned residence in Corsica.

      --That is to say, Max says to the Nord Kaperen complex, the French government would probably have no objection to me skipping the country and getting out of their hair.  Then, if I tried to come back, they could arrest me for illegal entry.  On the other hand, if I stay in Corsica like a good boy, they can expel me whenever they feel like it.  In a word, it is to their advantage to know where they can put their hands on me and to my advantage not to be there. 

Why do they want to put their hands on me?  First, to present me with an official notice of house arrest, which they have so far omitted to do, and second, to be able to expel me if they decide to.  August is a traditional time for rapid and quiet expulsion since everybody is on vacation, including my lawyers.  I have firsthand word from the Austrian counsel that they are getting pressure put on them to take me back; at the same time, the Viennese authorities are making inquiries to see whether I might be American and not Austrian after all.  Twenty years ago I did take out second papers towards my citizenship in America.  While they are fighting it out, I have gone sailing.  But I would just as soon not sail into a French port, if it is all the same to all of you.

It is all the same to all of the Danes.  They have to be back in Copenhagen between the 9th and 14th of August, and they have no desire to waste time stopping in Menton.

But neither Max nor the Danes can go anywhere until the spreader is fixed.  The spreader is in the cross bar of the main mast.  The Nord Kaperen caught her spreader tying up alongside a large Dutch sailboat with typical wider-than-average Dutch rigging which snapped off the spreader on the Nord Kaperen.  Björn and Bernhardt are assigned by the captains to get a new spreader.  Why Björn and Bernhardt?  Björn because he is in charge of foreign relations and also because he is the one who climbed up the mast to pry loose the broken pieces of spreader, and he will climb up the mast to put the new one in place.  Bernhardt owns the Volkswagen minibus that they will use to drive into town.  They ask Max and June to come with them to speak Italian.  Max has to be dropped off at the station to place a call to whoever is holding down his lawyer’s office during August, and so June will handle the Italian translations.

      --Trulls has seen a furniture store where they make furniture in the back, says Björn.  Perhaps they would do it.

      --Let's hope so, comments June.  So far San Remo has not been very helpful.  Even the harbor lights were out.

      --They certainly weren’t clear from the sea, agrees Björn.  Very dangerous.

      --They will be when they finish putting up a new mole, says Bernhardt, a philosopher.

      --In the meantime, they should put a red light where it can be seen, maintains Björn.  And be not confused with the light on the rocks.  Just suppose there had been a storm.

     

The future foreseen catastrophically.  The present does not look so good either.  They find the furniture store, but the lady cannot make a spreader and does not know the address of the place where her husband has his carpentry done.  Perhaps if they could come by the next day?  June conveys this information to Björn and Bernhardt waiting in the VW bus.

      --What is the name of the carpenter?  asks Bernhardt.  Perhaps we can find it ourselves.

Bernhardt and June go back to the furniture store lady, who looks up the address in the telephone book for them.  The name is Abalcar, 26 Via Lambroni.  June writes it down in her address book, the three of them thank the lady and leave.

      --Things are looking up, says Björn.

*                            *                                              *                                  *

 The Via Lambroni is also an alley, negotiable by the minibus, turning one way between factory loading platforms and small business buildings, all iron-shuttered for the midday break.  Abalcar’s shutters are up too.  The VW parks between the side of a factory and a truck.  A boy and a man come around the corner on a Vespa and get off.  June gets down from the VW bus and starts looking for number 26.  She asks the man from the Vespa if he knows where the carpenter’s place is.  He gestures towards the corner of the alley.  Through an open door, cut boards, a carpenter’s table, and a carpenter are visible.  June calls to Björn and Bernhardt in the bus.  They all enter the shop, and June asks the carpenter if he can make a spreader.  Björn produces the remains of the spreader and puts them on the carpenter’s table, indicating what a new spreader would look like.  The carpenter says he can make another like it out of the same kind of wood.  It will be ready the next day at noon.  Could it be ten?  Yes.  Hand-shaking all around and departure of the Nord Kaperen task force.  General rejoicing on return to the ship.

      --Now we have the spreader, says Nardo.  All we need now is the gas-oil.

     Continuation of the Battle for the Gas-Oil

 At eight o’clock the following morning, the Nord Kaperen casts off from a fishing boat and motors down to the Shell station.  The Shellman is there, the financieri is there, or at least one of them, and the Nord Kaperen with her ten empty jerry cans and her half-empty drum.  The elements are the same as the preceding day, and so is the situation.  The current version of the financieri is identical with his predecessor in refusing to authorize the Shellman to fill the jerry cans and drum without a written authorization from Customs.

      --The situation, recapitulates Max, is now out of hand and almost irrecuperable.  If you had  gone over yesterday at six oclock as the Customs people had told you, we would have gotten it.  Now the whole port knows about it, and they have to save face by sticking to their decision.

Having stated the deterioration of the objective situation, he adds that Björn and June can always try to get the written permission anyway, but if they go over there, they should remember to bring the ship papers with them. 

 June and Björn, with the ship papers in a black satchel, start walking around the horseshoe of the harbor to the Port Authority building. Björn looks the same as yesterday, but June has put on make-up, a dress and earings. The Nord Kaperen stays in her slot near the gas tanks. 

      --I am not too optimistic now, June remarks to Björn.  But as a matter of principle, I think we should try.  Always fight a bad system.  Besides, you have sailed all the way from Denmark.  They should make an exception anyway.

      --Certainly we have not sailed all the way from Denmark in order to sell gas-oil on the black market in San Remo, says Björn indignantly. 

      --A year ago, June continues, before knowing Max, I probably would have said, “Oh, let’s forget it and just go to Menton.”  But it would be asking for trouble for Max to return to French soil after breaking his house arrest in Corsica.  And I have learned with him that you have to fight on your own ground.  Your own ground being where you are at the time.  It is too easy for them to send everyone somewhere else.  The financieri will go right on running things if everyone goes obediently to Menton.  Secondly, how do we know we will get the gas-oil in Menton once we’re there?  They may have some unknown law there to prevent us filling our jerry cans.

      --Yes, we must get it here, agrees Björn.

They are companions fighting against Customs and Systems.

The sun beats down on the Port Authority building which is made out of brown stucco, with no trees anywhere to shade it.  Together Björn and June enter and climb the stairs to the first floor.  The stone paving is cool.  A very young man wearing a blue sailor suit comes out of an office and stands in front of the door.  The hall is not very wide and not very long.  On the left are three windows where the two officials had looked down on them the day before.  On the right are three offices.

      --I would like to see the man in charge, says June politely.

The sailor suited boy does not react.  Perhaps it is her Italian?  In Italian, he asks her if she speaks French and leads her into the first office.  In the first office is another young man, not much older than the first one.  He is wearing a white T shirt and blue pants like many of the sailors on the yachts.  June decides she must not be satisfied with him.  So she repeats she would like to see the Commander about getting an authorization for gas-oil.

      --I know nothing about it, says boy number two.

      --Then please show me in to the Commander, answers June.

As long as they are having a conversation, she thinks things are positive.  The young yacht sailor sends boy number one away and leads June and Björn into the next office where the man in the white uniform from the previous day is sitting behind a katy-cornered desk.  He gets to his feet and the boy leaves. 

      --I know nothing about your situation, says the Commander.

 June knows he knows about their situation because he was in the window the day before.  But she starts from the beginning and explains about the gas-oil on deck and in the tank and ends with the Nord Kaperen having come all the way from Denmark.  The Commander says he has nothing to do with such permissions as he is the Captain of the San Remo port and fuel is handled by Customs.  June feels they have come to the right place, because he is an important man and above Customs, or at least he thinks he is.  He goes on to say he will see that they are officially registered as entering the port, and, with that paper, they can get the authorization for the gas-oil.  June thanks him, and he accompanies them into the next office where he directs the boy in the sailor suit to write the Nord Kaperen into the log.

      --Halloo halloo halloo, calls Max from below.

June crosses the hall and leans out the window, like the Commander yesterday.

      --Halloo, says Max.  You’re on the wrong floor.

      --Go away, answers June quietly.  Things are going well.  We are registering the Nord Kaperen as having entered the port yesterday.

      --What good will that do?

      --With that paper we can go downstairs and get the authorization for the gas-oil.  Don’t upset things.

      --Good luck, says Max.

She goes back in the office in time to answer the Sailor Suit’s inquiry about how many people are on the Nord Kaperen.  He is sitting at a desk with the open log in front of him.

      --Oh, about fourteen or fifteen.

The Commander looks down at the logbook.

      --Here are only six names, he remarks.

      --Some are babies, says June.

      --Babies too must be registered, comments the Sailor Suit sententiously. 

The Commander shakes his head and announces that all they need is the captain’s name.  Björn darts a quick look at June.  June is beginning to feel that all this interference by the men of the ship may interrupt the smooth progression she is making through the shoals of bureaucracy.  Björn is worried because Nardo was once arrested in Rome for hitting a cop.  As if anyone is going to stop and look up his personal history, June thinks with exasperation.  Why would they bother?  She ignores Björn’s glance and assumes no one else has noticed it.

      --Here is the captain’s name, she says. Leaning over from the front of the desk and pointing to the log:  Leonardo Nielsen.

It is obvious that she is not Leonardo Nielsen.

      --Are you the owner?  The Commander asks her.

      --I am aboard ship, answers June, as if that were the same thing. 

      --Where is the captain?

      --He is in town at present.  I am authorized to sign for him.

Nardo has gone with Trulls to get the spreader.  Björn has remained slightly behind June, and June hopes he will not interfere.  She feels that if negotiations are now stopped for any reason—even to comply with an easy-to-fulfill requirement such as producing Nardo, it will put a stop to the smooth bureaucratic flow of papers that will, or should, culminate in the delivery of the permit for on-deck gas-oil.  So she signs her name and for Leonardo Nielsen under it in the Port Authority logbook, for which she pays 625 lire, about a U.S. dollar at the current exchange rate.  This is accepted by everyone in the office with no problem.

      --Can I take this and get gas-oil with it?  she asks the Commander.

The sailor suit and the Commander do not look at each other.  They do not know if she is aware that they have made her pay 625 lire, admittedly not much, for a worthless and unnecessary paper that very few boats putting in at an overnight harbor would bother with.  They look a little uneasy, June thinks, but this uneasiness does not turn into aggression, and she has the advantage of letting them have the first trick.  Now it is their turn to do something for her.  The Commander says she must go downstairs with it to Customs and there she will get the paper she needs.  She thanks him again and leaves the office with Björn.

      --Now we’ll see, says Björn.  Downstairs there are different people.

      --Yes, but these still are right upstairs, remarks June.  They know we will come up again if we run into trouble, so what would be the point?

      --They could have closed this office in the meantime, says Björn.

      --How did you like the way they let me sign for Nardo?

      --You could have been someone I just met, says Björn.  It makes no sense at all.  They are so careful with one thing, and let something much more important pass.  In Denmark things are more logical.

      --It’s logical because the financieri is watching them on the gas-oil, but here they are only responsible to themselves.

The ground floor is on the same plan as the upper floor, or probably vice-versa; that is, three windows on one side, separated by a two meter wide hallway from three offices on the right.  The first office is a secretariat which Björn and June with one accord avoid, to go directly to the center office.  There, also behind a katy-cornered desk, sits a man in civilian clothes, cream-colored shirt and white pants, who cordially invites them in.  There is one chair which he indicates to June.  Björn , bare-foot, holding the black satchel with the ship’s papers, including the 625 lire receipt from upstairs, sits on the window sill outside.  The office door remains open.  The physical distance he has placed between himself and the others is supposed to establish him as part of the crew and June, therefore, as owner.

The Customs official is alone, so it is two to one.  This is good, figures June, as long as he does not react by becoming aggressive—one of him is better than two of anybody else sort of attitude.  He also is physically inferior, missing one eye behind his glasses and having no glass eye replacing it.  Could also work for them or against them.

June explains that she and Björn are from the Nord Kaperen, and the c.o. says he knows, he has heard something about their situation.  That sets things off on a better footing than with the Port Authority Commander who was playing too grand to know anything about them.  The customs official now explains to them for the nth time about the marine law forbidding oil to be put in jerry cans on deck, and why such a law exists—although he adds immediately and politely that he knows they would not re-sell the oil in town as some people would.  This law is only for that type of person, and not for them, but still, if he makes an exception for them, then he will be plagued by many others who will also want an exception and it will not be possible.  June says she understands it is a problem.  Björn is looking out the outside window.  June adds that she thinks their case is, however, an exception because the Nord Kaperen has come all the way from Denmark, and that, without the deck quota of gas, they will never be able to reach Mallorca where the boat is to winter while they go back to Denmark.

      --When are you leaving?  asks the c.o.

      --We would like to leave this afternoon, explains June, hoping that he will be mollified by this recognition of his authority.  We had to have a spreader made here, but it will be ready this morning.

      --I must see the ship’s papers.

June considers this a step in their direction.  Björn, who has been following this conversation from his outside perch, zips open the black portfolio, extracts the ship’s papers and enters the office to put them right side up on the custom official’s desk. 

      --This is useless, he says, putting aside the 625 lire port registration paper.  Now, what is your tonnage?

Björn has understood without translation.  The custom’s official has not understood because the papers are in Danish.  Björn points to the tonnage: 19 T 84.

      --How much gas-oil do you need to get to Mallorca?

 June translates the whole sentence.

      --All of it, says Björn.  300 liters.

      --300 liters.

      --How many liters did you buy yesterday when you filled your reservoir?

June turns to Björn who says 100 liters.

      --I am surprised, says the c.o. that a ship of your size only carries 100 liters of gas-oil below decks.

      --It was built in 1905, says June, hoping that this is an explanation.  She herself does not understand anything about the relation of tonnage to gas-oil capacity and can envisage carrying 500 or 50 liters above or below decks with equal facility.

Björn, however, has understood the custom official’s inquiry and takes over the conversation:

      --We carry 200 liters below decks, he says.  But we still had 100 liters when we came into San Remo as we have been filling the reservoir from the jerry cans. 

June repeats this, but the custom official understands English, though he had kept his status as an Italian official by making them translate for him.  Now he shakes his head.

      --You should have first taken the gas-oil directly from the jerry cans, he says.

      --We did not envisage having this problem in San Remo, says June.  Everywhere else in Italy we have gotten gas easily.

She hopes this will be interpreted as good will on their part, and not as criticism of the San Remo people.

      --What is the minimum you need?  The very minimum.  I won’t give you a liter more.

But he is smiling, so he is going to go through with it.

      --225 or 300, says Björn in Italian, to show his own good will, and June smiles and the custom’s official smiles and June thanks him and they all go into the next office.  At the desk is a man in a business suit writing out papers.  The c.o. explains he wants an authorization for 300 liters of gas-oil and indicates to Björn that the papers are to be put on the scribe’s desk.  At this point the Shellman himself walks in, and everyone nods to everyone else, and the Shellman asks the c.o. for a letter he can show to the financieri authorizing him to give the gas.  The c.o. says he is going to telephone over there immediately, so there will be no necessity for a letter.  The Shellman nods encouragingly to June and Björn.  Now that we have won, he is on our side, thinks June.  She nods back to welcome him to their side.

A grey-haired man in impeccable shorts and sport shirt with Yacht Owner written all over him comes in the office and the scribe stops writing the authorization for the Nord Kaperen and asks what he can do for him.

      --Finish up, I’ll wait, says the Yacht Owner.

The scribe adds a flourish or two to the Nord Kaperen authorization and puts it to one side.  From the next room, comes the angry voice of the c.o.  The Shellman raises his eyes to heaven.  In a minute, the c.o. comes back, goes directly to the scribe, speaks angrily to him, leaves.  Then the scribe gets up and leaves, and the Shellman leaves, leaving June, Björn, and the Yacht Owner together in the office.

      --Are we getting it or not?  asks Björn.

      --I thought we were, says June.  Now I’m not so sure.

      --He’s written the authorization anyway.

 The Yacht Owner smiles at June, shrugs, and comments stupid red tape.

 The custom officer’s voice is heard in angry one-sided dispute with the telephone in the next office.  The Shellman returns and gives a thumbs up sign.

      --He is taking your part!  First with the financieri, now with the Lieutenant of Finances in San Remo.

      --These people have been trying to get gas-oil since yesterday, the Shellman tells the Yacht Owner.  If you had just gone to Menton, he turns to June, you would have had it by now.  In Menton, they stamp a paper, and it’s finished.  Whereas here—

He shrugs.

      --Even now the financieri is making objections.

The Yacht Owner agrees.  He and the Shellman begin talking together very rapidly.  The customs official is still talking angrily in the next room.  June is afraid all this indicates back-sliding, especially since the subject of Menton came up again…The scribe returns and without glancing at the papers of the Nord Kaperen, begins to make out some papers for the Yacht Owner.

Björn comes and perches on the end of the desk next to June.

      --It’s one of two things, says June.  Either the c.o. lets the financieri bully him or he doesn’t.  If the c.o. wins, we get our gas-oil.  Because he is higher up than the financieri.  The financieri probably said he is only responsible to the director of finances and so our c.o. had to get him on the phone.  Each bureau works separately, but the police in Italy today is more important than customs, and so even a low-grade financieri who has to spend all day standing at a gas station feels he can talk back to a Director of Customs.  If the Lieutenant backs up his financieri, then the c.o. will lose face and he will be very mad, just like he was now, when he asked the scribe to get the Lieutenant on the phone; a little face-saving for him, not to make his own phone calls.  If the financieri wins, one of two things will happen.  The c.o. gets mad at us, or suddenly finds a regulation he has forgotten, and it becomes all our fault that he can’t give us gas-oil.  Or we never see him again because he sends word by the scribe, or one of the sailors, that he has been suddenly called away and will not be back today.  And tomorrow is Sunday.

The Shellman comes back with his hands folded in prayer.  He is enjoying himself.

      --He is arguing for you, he says.  I think you are going to get it.

June realizes the Shellman has certainly joined their side.  Because everyone, particularly people working for a strong bureaucracy like the Italian Customs, are glad to go against it when they can.  Technically, he probably worked for the Shell Corporation, but it was dependent on Italian bureaucracy. 

Anyway, yesterday the Shellman was neutral, against them—why don’t you go somewhere else?  It is not my fault, I just work here—but he was always ostensibly for them against the financieri.  Once he saw they were going to fight, it tipped him in their direction.

The c.o.’s voice in the next room has stopped.  The Shellman makes an OK sign with his thumb and fore-finger.  The Scribe stamps a paper for the Yacht Owner.

      --Give her her authorization, says the Shellman to the Scribe. 

The Scribe looks up and hands the authorization to June who hands it to Björn who puts it in the portofolio.

      --We will get the gas-oil now?  June asks the Shellman to keep him into things.

      --I’ll meet you across the bay, says the Shellman.

Leaving the second office they stop at the first office.  June walks in and thanks the customs officer.  He gets up and smiles quietly as if two minutes ago he had not been shouting into the telephone.  Then he walks with them to the top of the stairs and says if ever he can help them in any way, she has only to ask for the Director of Customs.  June asks his name and he says she has only to ask for the director of customs.

Not that they care what his name is.  On the way around the horseshoe bay to the Nord Kaperen, still moored in front of the Shell station, they see Max in a café telephoning and June makes the OK sign like the Shellman had done.  Although they do not notice him pass on his Vespa, he is already in front of the gas tanks when they arrive.  A financieri is there too.

      --Give him the authorization, says the Shellman to Björn, authoritative and commanding as if, for this moment, he really owns the gas station and is not just working there. 

Björn, still cool, takes the authorization from the portfolio and hands it to the financieri.  The financieri  juts his chin and looks at it, holding it for a time in his hands, like his previous power, before relinquishing it to the Shellman.  Mussolini is once more strung up by the victorious people, thinks June.  The Shellman pulls down the long hose from the gas tank and starts dragging it over to the Nord Kaperen where the two captains are waiting.

      --Get your jerry cans ready for the gas-oil, he says.

                                       *                                              *                                              *         

      --Gas-oil, repeats Karl back in Paris, as Max finishes up his story.  Capitalist bureaucracy.  OK.  I thought you were going to tell us about whales?

      --How can I tell you about whales if we don’t even have a boat to get to them?  asks Max pleasantly.  That had been more June’s story than his, but he always liked tales of victory.

      --You had a ship leaving Caprera, says Decater.

      --They’ve all been on the Nord Kaperen since they left Sardinia, says Charles.  So what?

      --I can see none of you are sailors or ichthyologists, says Max smugly, considering himself both.  If you think any self-respecting whale would have put in a public appearance during a storm…

      --Whales are mammals, not fish, says Karl, so, in point of fact, ichthyologist is not the right term.

      --Dolphins too, adds Charles.

      --I know quite a lot about dolphins too, agrees Max.  But whales—first of all, you don’t usually see whales in the Mediterranean at all, and only in August, in the hot still weather, when they sometimes come through the straits of Gilbraltar.  Like these must have done.  I’ll tell you about them.  We weren’t going to write anything this morning anyway.

                                                                  Voyage to Mallorca   

We were all relieved to be back at sea, began Max.  Björn had installed the new spreader in record time and had gone off to drive the VW combi to Spain, where he would rejoin us on the Nord Kaperen; that is, those of us who remained after the massive departure for Copenhagen in the afternoon with about seven hours of light to start us on our way to Mallorca.  There the Nord Kaperen was to spend the winter and set off in the spring through Gibraltar and around the Iberian peninsula back up to Denmark.

 One morning a bunch of us are sitting as usual on the foredecks:  Max lying on a mattress with his feet up on a hatch cover, Ute reading a book and enjoying one of the infrequent and unfortunately brief interludes when Horton was asleep and not crying.  The others were on watch, or below decks, Trulls was steering and the Grey Marine engine doing all the work brum brum brum.  It is almost a dead calm and the Nord Kaperen has been using her motor almost since we left San Remo on August 2nd.  The mizzen is up to catch any wind to help push her along, but there is little wind to catch.  It was Ute who first noticed the porpoises. 

Did I mention she is a very pretty young girl with very nice breasts, always available for Horton?  Actually she was the reason Max got hooked up with the Danes in the first place.  He saw their combi, with Ute in the front seat, one day driving along the port in Corsica?  Nardo, one of the captains, actually had kept the news item about Max’s expulsion—

      --We know all that, says Karl.  Get on with it.

      --I never remember what I have told people or not, says Max good-humoredly.  So, as my mother used to say, doppelt genäht hält’s besser.  Ute has gotten up to see better, and Marianne comes up from below decks and joins her.  She says they don’t look like porpoises, maybe sharks?

      --They are big to be porpoises, agrees Ute.

      --There are no sharks this big in the Mediterranean, says Max, who has joined the girls at the railing.  Can we try to get nearer?

This is directed at Nardo.  Max has a lot of respect for the captains.

      --Only to settle the question, says Nardo.  We don’t want to get off course.

      The motor, nicely fueled with its new supply of gas oil, turns after the whales.  Below decks Horton wakes up and starts to scream.  No one pays attention.  Everyone is focused on the big fish, momentarily below the surface.

Bernhardt, Horton’s father, goes below deck for his camera.  Everyone else is lined up along the deck, except Nardo at the wheel, with one new crew member who has been taken on to replace Björn.  Suddenly one of the fish jumps out of the water with a sort of swoosh.

      --A big porpoise, cries Ute softly.

      --A whale, says Trulls.

      --After him, cries Max.

The new crew member waits, Max not being one of the captains.

      --Don’t we want to get closer, says Max, appealing to Nardo and Trulls.

      --We can try, says Trulls and takes over the wheel.  He begins to reverse not to hit the whales below the surface.

      --When we get close, says Max, happily giving orders even if they are not obeyed.  Cut the motor.  I think they hear the vibrations and get scared.

      --Why did they come over then, if they were scared? asks June.

Bernhardt comes up the ladder with Horton and his camera.  He gives the child to Ute and starts focusing on the whales.  The lead whale, or the visible one, sends up a long spray of water before disappearing below the surface.

      --Cut the motor, directs Max.

Marianne goes below for her camera.  Horton has stopped crying.  Everyone is silent.  The whale too.

      --No one make any noise, says Max.

Quiet laughter on deck.  Quiet from the deep.

      --They can stay under three minutes, says Max.

SWOOSH

The three minutes are up.

Hump dorsal tail emerge SWOOSH head with eye tail dorsal hump head submerge blue phosphorous eye clearly visible under water sigh SWOOSH sigh SWOOSH sigh SWOOSH

Five whales.

      --There was a porpoise but he went away, says Ute.

The whales start to go away.

      --Let’s follow them, says Max.

Chugging along with the bounding whales, two to starboard, three to port, the Nord Kaperen follows the whales humping along soundlessly, soulfully.

Bernhardt and June and Nardo are taking pictures.  Horton says da for a change.  Trulls has climbed the mast with his camera.  Bernhardt takes the wheel from the temporary crew member.  The course is forgotten. The Nord Kaperen has had to maneuver to keep tract of the whales but now she follows effortlessly brum brum brum…

      --Don’t hit them, says Max.

One whale is twenty meters long with almond-shaped eyes, whale-shaped tail, spouting water sporadically and sighing before he spouts.  The last water spout the Nord Kaperen saw was off on the horizon between the island of Maddalena and the island of Caprera.  Immensely bigger than a whale’s spout and avoided not followed.  That windy rainy grey day has changed to bright calm seas and rollicking whales.  No wind but plenty of gas-oil and a chugging motor.

For one hour the Nord Kaperen follows the whales, and then the whales depart very quickly, just like the porpoise had.  The Nord Kaperen cuts the motor.  Lunch.  Lunch is rice and tomatoes and onions and peppers.  After lunch June and Marianne go below to wash the dishes.  Marianne makes a face as the motor starts brum brum because the whaling peace and lunchtime quiet is finished.

Brum brum um um plum…

Motor trouble.

Nardo turns the wheel over to Max and goes below to the cabin to look at the motor. He is the mechanic/engineer, Trulls the sailor.  Nardo takes off the cover to look at the motor.  The dish washing team stops and goes back up on deck.  Then the ladder leading topside is hauled up on deck and no one can get easily up or down.  No one wants to except Horton who has started crying again.  The motor is brumming away to itself.

      -- It no longer turns the propeller shaft, explains Nardo.  It may have over-heated during the maneuvering.  It may be a ball bearing. We will let it cool down.

June contributes that she once had a food blender that had reacted similarly to over-heating.  Max knows that this is totally different and says so.  The motor runs but only in neutral and jams at any attempt to shift into gear.  June says so did her food blender.

      --Food blenders don’t have gears, says Max.

      --Maybe a ball bearing, repeats Nardo, still concentrated on the Nord Kaperen’s motor.

      --Have you tried reverse? asks Max.

      --We can always try, says Nardo.

Bernhardt topsides has the wheel.  Nardo calls up in Danish.  But the boat does not go backward any more than it had gone forward.

      --It is not really meant to go backwards, says Nardo by way of excuse.  Just in momentary maneuvering.

      --Like when we were following the whales, remarks Marianne.

The commune is discussing the problem.

      --I did not want to say anything at the time, contributes Max, a momentary communard, but stopping the motor by going into reverse is not a good idea.

      --Perhaps it was the whales, suggests Ute, holding a momentarily silent Horton.

      --It might well have been all the turning, says Max.

Bernhardt’s head appears above in the hatchway.  He nods, not knowing much about motors at all.  He is more of a philosopher.  Horton awakens with a hiccup. Usually a prelude to crying.  Anyone envisaging life with Horton on a permanent basis would have to be a philosopher, thinks Max, not for the first time, but refrains from saying, due to the tense prospect of being becalmed for days, running out of food—and with Horton, to boot.

Nardo tries the motor once more for Trulls, who has swung down through the open hatch to join them.

       --It is a fairly new motor, he remarks to the assembly.  I had it installed when we bought the boat.

      --It's a little small for such a big boat, Max remarks to June when they are alone on deck.  It is all right to push her straight ahead, but not to maneuver the way we did with the whales.

      --Why didn’t they put in a bigger motor then?

      --Come on, says Max.  She’s a sailing vessel.  Don’t forget back in 1911 or whenever she was built, no one thought of her traveling any way but under sail.

      --In 1911 they already had steam ships crossing the Atlantic, counters June.  What about Watts lazy little boy and all his brothers?

      --I know, says Max.  There were even races around the world to see which was faster, the old clippers or the new steam.

      --I suppose the steam ships won hands down.

      --Depends on the route.  Don’t forget, steam was totally dependent on coaling stations, whereas if the clippers had a strong steady wind…Anyway, the Nord Kaperen was built as a sailing ship, for recreational purposes.  No one thought of including a motor.

When the Nord Kaperen began to drift, Trulls and Bernhardt hoisted the mainsail to catch any available wind.  Max took over the wheel.  With the return to this archaic mode of transport, the ship stopped drifting and moved slowly forward.  Bernhardt remarked that their pursuit of the whales was like Ulysses and his crew dropping everything to go after the sirens.

      --The sirens were women though, says June.

      --Only in poetry, corrects Max.  They really were sea cows who, seen from a distance, seem to have sort of breasts.

June says they don’t sing though.

Late that evening, Nardo and Trulls try to reactivate the cooled off engine.  During the next days they will partially dismantle it.  The ship moves, when at all, under sail, luffs, picks up a stray night wind or two, or drifts again.  The sound of the boom swinging from one side of the mast to another is what they go to sleep to, and usually wake to.  From time to time they discuss the battle for the gas-oil, stored in jerry cans and the big drum and in the tank right next to the motor.

      --I wonder what the Shellman would say if he could see us, says June.  Or the Commander at the Custom’s office.

      --Or the financieri, for that matter, adds Nardo. 

      --Or Björn, says June, thinking of her companion in struggle, now driving across France on his way to meet them in Mallorca.

      --Björn has taken enough sailing trips not to worry too much, says Nardo.  It depends on how long we are delayed.

      --He knows we have enough gas-oil, June adds.  And I guess he will check the weather reports on the lack of wind. 

      --Anyway, we beat the system, says Nardo.  That was worth it, whether we need the gas oil or not.

      --Always beat the system, agrees June.

      --Always beat the system?  asks Max, a gleam in his eye. 

      --A very worthwhile exercise, says Nardo, the revolutionary, who had socked a cop in Rome on a previous voyage.

      --Even in Cuba?  asks Max.

General silence.  The Cuba Revolution has all their support.

      --You would have to see it from up close to judge, says Trulls.

      --Not in Cuba, says June.

      --I know what you think, says Max.  I want to know what the others think.

      --You might want to change some things, starts Nardo.  Even in Cuba.

      --Exactly, agrees Max.  But you don’t want to beat it.  Or beat it up.

      --Beat it up?  asks Marianne.

      --Beat it up, repeats Max.  Demolish it, melt, destroy it, or blow it up.  You want to ameliorate it.  And this brings us to the question of order.  Post-Revolutionary order.

Max is the only one on the ship who has been in Cuba, so everyone is listening.  The Nord Kaperen has never crossed the Atlantic under the Danes capitainship, but in pre-Revolutionary times had gone around the world, and possibly put in at Havana in the days that Havanna was a virtual colony of the United States.  None of them know for sure, since the first owner kept all the log books.  Max, however, is hypothesizing  on the post Cuban revolution of 1959. 

      --So in Cuba you don’t want to beat the system but probably ameliorate it, perhaps reform it.  Although reform is a tainted word these days.  But the basic assumption is: it is our system.  We, or people very like us—

He glances at June who often verbally objects to his taking credit for any deeds done by the Left at almost any time.

      --People fought very hard against a rich and powerful enemy, in most cases.  You know that after the victory of the Russian Revolution against their own reactionary government, they had to fight an expeditionary force launched by the Americans, accompanied by the British, French, and even soldiers from countries in Asia.  If I’m not mistaken, I think Japan was a part of that effort.  Maybe after defeating the old Russia in 1905, the Japanese just thought they should be there whenever anyone else decided to start a war with Russia.  The imperialist regime the Japanese were starting to build certainly felt that getting a, or the, only socialist country in the world out of the way was too good an opportunity to miss out on.

The point is that this time, in Cuba, or the Soviet Union, it is our system.  However good things may be in Italy, let’s say, it is theirs.

      --Not so good for gas-oil, puts in Marianne.

      --For example, Max goes on.  We were very pleased to beat the Italian system, and in Cuba, if such a thing should happen, we would think differently about it because it was our system.

      --In Cuba there would have been nowhere else to send us, says June, re-thinking the alternatives they had had.  All the surrounding islands in the Caribbean belong to the imperialist powers.  So it would have been sending  people to the enemy to get their gas.

      --Plus the distances are greater, added Nardo.  Menton was only forty sea miles from San Remo.

      --At any rate, continues Max, adept at not letting a discussion get away from him, we do act differently when we are dealing with our system.  In fact, this is one of the enormous problems we have for The Day After.

      --The Day After what?  asks Marianne.

      --The Day After the Revolution.

Max stops, waiting to be encouraged.  June tells him to go on. 

      --Yes, explain, says Ute impatiently.  We’re not stupid, you know. 

      -- I never thought you were, says Max gallantly.  I’ll be delighted to explain.  I love to explain.  You see, this question of The Day After is best explained by what I call “contradictory reactions.”  Contradictory reactions  means that the people who make the Revolution and work for the Revolution want many things that, once the Revolution has been made, the day after, are seen to be in contradiction with the very survival of revolutionary order and, in fact, with the revolution itself.  This can be seen most clearly when, in one way or other, such as exporting art or importing firemen, the revolution starts producing contact between pre-revolutionaries and post. Turning on in Cuba was identified with foreign tourists who had the money to pay for the stuff.  It was not a symbol of freedom and doing your own thing.  In fact, such things became increasingly things to check with the well-being of the revolution.

An even better example is the reaction of French audiences, right and left wing, to Eisenstein’s film on the October revolution, French pre-, Eisenstein post-revolutionary.

      --Which is what?  asks Nardo.  Elaborate.

      --Elaborate… well, there is a scene in the movie which, when it is shown in France, always produces outraged howls of non, non, pas ca.  This is when the Red guards smash the priceless wine bottles in the cellars of the Winter Palace. 

One of the first actions of the working class after taking power—in fact, you might say that on that late October day, the line between a revolutionary and a counter-revolutionary passed, among other places on the map, right between those who wanted Order and those who wanted Disorder.  The revolutionaries, in case you were in any doubt, being for Order and the counter for Dis.  An unknown Soviet commissar, talking to a certain Lev Davidovitch on his way to becoming Commander of a yet non-existent Red Army, strongly stressed the necessity of running a fundamental anti-alcohol campaign. 

      --“The Preobrazhensky regiment got completely drunk while it was doing guard duty at the Palace, reports the commissar;  the Preobrazhensky regiment, our revolutionary rampart, has not withstood temptation any more than the others.  Mixed guards from different detachments have been sent there, but they get drunk too.  At present, leading members of the regimental committees have been consigned to do guard duty, but even these revolutionary leaders are going under.  Comrade Trotsky, our new born baby revolution is drowning in a sea of alcohol!”

      -- A  commissar would not have said that, puts in June.

      --Oh yes, Max insists.  Russians get very sentimental when drunk.  The commissar was drunk too, but clear-headed.  He had been at the Winter Palace and knew what he was talking about.  At this point Lev Davidovitch said: “Break the bottles and pump the stuff into the Neva!”

      --Eisenstein cut straight through this and got the action, remarks Trull, the cameraman.

      --And cut out Trotsky, adds Nardo.

      --Eisenstein became a Stalinist, adds June, a Trotskyst.

      --No sectarianism, says Max, a professed Third Internationalist when he was not being an honest liberal.  It’s a good action film if not exactly historically correct in all details.

      --Trotsky was hardly a detail of the Russian revolution, says June.

      --We can discuss that next, says Max.  Now I just want to make the point that pre-revolutionary French audiences feel this scene in terms of wine and in terms of authority.  In the France of the first, second, third, fourth, or even fifth Republic, even leftists could not condone people pumping wine into water.

      --All right, I see the contradictory reactions, says Nardo.  Between the French audiences, even left ones, and the Red Guard.  Order in Petrograd.

      --Good, says Max.  Do you want to hear about Woodstock?

      --What is Woodstock?  asks Bernhardt.

      --Oh, that’s true, you don’t know about Woodstock, says Max.  June and I read about it in the Herald Tribune.

      --We don’t read those papers, says Nardo stiffly.

      --No Establishment Press?  asks Max and smiles.  That’s another other question, so I’ll just say there is very useful information to be got from them.  It’s a question of knowing how to read them correctly.

      --What is Woodstock?  repeats Nardo for the commune.

Max is aware of his own tendency to get side-tracked and accepts this push back to his subject.

      --In August 1969, just before we left San Remo, several hundred thousand young people, first in Woodstock in upstate New York, and then on some British Isle of Wight, got together.

      --The same people?

      --No, different.  In different countries, different people.  Different islands.  Although both places begin with W.  Is that significant?  Probably not.

      --Get to the point, pushes June, impatient as usual with Max’s deviations.  Woodstock is not an island anyway.

      --Most of the people, continues Max undaunted, were different, as I said. Except the journalists.  Anyway, they got together, the young people, slightly more in Woodstock than in Wight.  They spent the time listening to music, doing their thing, and then they went apart.

Silence.

      --Is that all?  asks Trulls.

      --That is a good deal, says Max.  Their thing was illegal.  On their own level, the Woodstockers defied the power structure.

      --But you are not going to compare the October Revolution to some hippie festival?  objects Nardo.

      --No, nor Watts lazy little boy to the San Remo gas-oil battle, says Max.  But they all have something in common… Looking at Woodstock, New York, and the equivalent British festival on the Isle of Wight—did you know that among those Woodstockers and Wighters were Red Guards?

      --How was that?  asks Bernhardt, platonically playing up to Max's Socrates.

      --Well, what were the Red Guards doing?  In a rough and ready way, they were maintaining Order, “the day after.”

      --I still don’t connect it up with Woodstock, says Nardo.

      --Whose order were the soldiers maintaining?  asks Max.  The Tsars?  Evidently the Tsar, Kerensky, and the whole counter-revolution, all these people who represented “the dead hand of the past” (as some poet, Yevtechenko I think, said forty-six years later about something else) wanted Disorder in the Winter Palace on the 8^th of November (or 26^th of October, old style, both being on the same day).  They wanted to drown the Revolution and they were pretty short of drown-em-in-blood Cossacks at the time.  Only later, when the Revolution showed its capacity to break the bottles and swim on that spirited sea, did the Americans and their allies, such as the French, the Germans, the Japanese—what have you—come to help the counter-revolution and Kerensky with the job.

      --What do you mean?  asks Marianne.

      --It took eight months, not till July 3, 1918, before the Marines landed to save the Russians from Communism.  Didn’t you know that?

It seemed no one did.

      --Well, you know we are in Vietnam to save the world from Communism; how is it you didn’t know we also tried that in Russia?  Saving the Russians from Communism, I mean.

      --You did?  asks the Crew, the extra sailor picked up in San Remo.

      --Oh yes.  First in Murmansky, then in Vladivostock—read Dr. Jivago carefully, go get some reference books—but let me finish with the Woodstock deal.  Mostly, of course, the difference between Woodstock and Petrograd is that the Old Order in Petrograd was so weak that they could not take advantage of the sea of alcohol and use it to sink the Revolution.

      --You said that before, puts in June.

      -- It can’t be said enough.  The first socialist revolution in the world had a lot of enemies.  But the Bolsheviks prevailed.  Despite the Tsar’s wine cellars and the United States Marines, I think is their official name, and the First World War which it didn’t call itself because they did not know there was going to be a Second.  And in the case of Woodstock, the Old Order didn’t even know it was the Old Order.  The Dow Jones has fallen, but American capitalism figures it can handle the situation.  The hippies probably kept order better than the Red Guards, but, despite this, a week later the Old Order had recaptured the terrain—that is, the town of Woodstock.

Trulls glances at Marianne, who translates.

      --Recaptured?  He repeats, looking at Max.

      --Got back in power, says Max.  I don’t know how you say that in Danish.

Marianne does and says it to Trulls.

      --During the festival, the hippies were running things.

      --They weren’t running the banks or the town hall, says June.

      --They were not interested in the banks or the town hall, continues Max.  Which were probably closed anyway.  They ran the only part of the power structure they really came in contact with—the cops.  No one was arrested:  not for trespassing, walking around naked, selling or giving away marijuana, LSD, speed or whatever—not for making love in public—

      --But the cops are always for disorder, says Nardo, remembering his expulsion from Rome.

      --Exactly, agrees Max.  Woodstock was engaging in activities by definition disorderly, but doing them in an orderly fashion, thus blowing the cops’ minds.

      --Listen, says Nardo, opening June’s copy of the History of the Russian Revolution:

“Cutting their way with the breasts of their horses, the officers first charged through the crowd.  Behind them, filling the whole width of the Nevsky Prospect, galloped the Cossacks.  Decisive moment!  But the horsemen, cautiously, in a long ribbon, rode through the corridor just made by the officers.  Some of them smiled, recalls the Commissar, and one of them gave the workers a good wink.  This wink was not without meaning.  The workers were emboldened with a friendly, not hostile, kind of assurance, and slightly infected the Cossacks with it.  In spite of efforts from the officers, the Cossacks, without openly breaking discipline, failed to force the crowd to disperse but flowed through it in streams.  Individual Cossacks began to reply to the workers’ questions and even to enter into momentary conversation with them.  Of discipline, there remained but a thin translucent shell that threatened to break any second.  Standing stock still, in perfect discipline, the Cossacks did not hinder the workers from diving under their horses.  The revolution does not choose its paths; it made its first steps toward victory under the belly of a Cossack horse.”

      --That commissar seems to have been everywhere, says June.

      --He was discussing his February experiences with Lev Davidovitch, explains Max.  This business with the winking Cossacks happened well before October, at the beginning of the February Revolution.

      --We don’t get the connection with Woodstock, says Nardo.

As a cohesive commune, its members often speak of themselves in the plural.

      --If the Cossacks equal the Woodstock cops, what equals the Red Guard? asks Bernhardt.

      --The Red Guard of Woodstock are those of the 100,000 hippies who were consciously “keeping things in order,” the revolutionary day-after order.  One hundred thousand people, four days, rain, fuzz, and frolics, and no fighting;  today’s revolutionaries, like these kids, descendants of Watt’s lazy little boy, are nameless, but they are there all right.

Now, continues Max, let’s go back to the Cossacks and the cops.  Both can be influenced.  Like the drown-em-in-blood Cossacks, a certain percentage of policemen are sadists and will always prefer kicking girls in the stomach; more fun than reading old Spillanes in the back of the wagon.  We can assume, however, that many of these country cops in or around Woodstock were not.  Sadists.  But, like the 1917 Cossacks, they will tend to adapt to the existing power structure.  I know this is somewhat contradictory with old Karl who, after or during the Paris Commune, concluded that revolutionaries cannot just take over the bourgeois state, the power structure.

      --You mean, you really consider a hippie assembly as being an alternate power structure?  says Nardo.  Even if they might have been one during the festival, there was no “day after.”

      --So far their day after hasn’t had a tomorrow, agrees Max. But it might have.  As far as I can tell—I was not in Woodstock but on the Nord Kaperen while all this was going on--young people, the hippies, enforced their order, with a small “o”, on points in direct contradiction with what we must, unfortunately, still call the very-much-alive hand of the present.

      --The philosophy animating the present power structure, says Bernhardt, is certainly passé.

      --Not yet, says Max.  But today’s present is always one of tomorrow’s pasts—hey, that’s pretty good, get it?  Today’s—

Port Andraix was the lookout shout, not at that present moment, but in one of tomorrow’s presents.  Whoever shouted it got no reward, but then he or she had not expected one.  In which the situation had improved since Columbus’s day when the first sailor to sight land had been promised gold but never got it.  The Admiral of the Ocean Sea said he himself had already seen land the night before and had pocketed the reward himself.

      --Didn’t the crew object?  asks the Crew.

      --Yes, but sailors were in no position to put through an objection in the fifteenth century, says Max.  They were too replaceable.

*                                        *                                  *

      --Stop!  Enough, cried Karl in a present tomorrow: the meeting of Max and the three post-revolutionary historians to write about the movement of American deserters in Paris.  You have already gone far beyond the whales, back to Columbus, soon in the cretaceous period—

      --How did you know?  asked Max, happy to have a reaction.  I was thinking of comparing some groups working with the deserters, the future RITA’s, to dinosaurs and pterodactyls.

      --At least you were wending your way back to the deserter movement, said Deter, the Frenchman, who preferred events to be discussed in linear order.

      --Oh, I’m ready, said Max.  I just wanted to tell you all my fish story.

      --Mammals, put in Karl.

      --What about dinosaurs and pterodactyls, asked Charles, the Englishman.

      --They certainly weren’t mammals, said Max.  If they had been, they might not have died off, and earth might never have developed humankind, otherwise very badly equipped to survive in the primordial world. 

      --How were the other groups working with deserters pterodactyl-like?

      --One other serious group, began Max.  Besides us.  The phoneless friends were very seriously working with deserters.  At times we found them very useful, I must admit.  They did not like working with us though.  A tendency of a primitive mentality is the inability to adopt, or even adapt to new ways.

      --Didn’t they adapt to the telephone?  asked Charles.

      --They thought, said Max, quite rightly as it turned out, that all our phones, and their phones, were probably taped by the police.  Obviously that had occurred to us too, which is why we greatly appreciated Tony Clay of the Quaker Center giving us permission to hand out the Quaker telephone to groups working with the deserters.  The Quaker Center was a respectable registered charitable organization in Paris and the police expected it, like most charitable organizations, to have all sorts of dubious individuals like American deserters turning up there.  And, of course, the phoneless friends used it too.  But inside their group—which probably did not have a name, in line with their secrecy obsession—they were working by rules that had been necessary during the Second World War and the Nazi occupation of Paris, but were certainly counter-productive when it came to organizing a movement to help U.S. deserters. 

      --I’ll give you an example, that the G.I.’s did not at all relate to: all rendez-vous were understood to be for one hour before the agreed upon time.  If the other person had not turned up inside of fifteen minutes, you left.  All based on the premise that the German Secret Police had arrested the person you were meeting.  Try to establish that with a deserter.  According to the same book, the deserter was supposed to be hiding out in an attic somewhere, living on food brought him by a phoneless friend volunteer.  In fact, he was usually down on Saint Michel, trying to chat up a girl.  Americans do not cower in attics.  That worked well enough with Algerian rebels, who knew they were in for torture and prison if they got caught by the police, but not with the Americans.

      --What happened if the deserters got were caught?  asked Charles.

      --The French police would call a base in Germany and tell them to send someone to pick up their soldier.  That was what the deserter expected too.  Our first deserters were often just guys who thought a week in Paris was worth the three weeks of stockade they would have to pay for it once they were sent back.

      --In pre-revolutionary times, strict security was a necessity, said Karl.  You never knew what will happen.  Your phoneless friends sound like a very conscientious group.

      --Oh, they were conscientious all right, agreed Max.  But it wasn’t the right technique for U.S. deserters.  The guy that made our test case for us had been picked up by the French police in an unlocked car on the banks of the Seine, where he had spent the night.  Of course, he was disobeying even our not very stringent rules of security.  But if he hadn’t been picked up, no test case, no asylum.  Actually deserters never got asylum in France like they had in Sweden and Canada, but they were given residence papers, short term ones, and working papers if they got a job, far better than normal immigrants get in the twenty-first century in most European countries.

      --What happened to the phoneless friends?  asked Charles.

      --They were one of the few groups that weathered the failure of the May ’68 Revolution, said Max.  Not only as a group, but without any individual expulsions.

      --Like yours, added Karl.

      --Like mine, said Max smugly.  But there weren’t many left after May ‘68—because like most groups, revolutionary and other, membership has a tendency to expand in moments of success and dwindle in periods of crisis—they eventually dissolved themselves.   Some of them, like Kurilla, did not agree with our revolutionary government—or maybe they were just annoyed that they had not been asked to form it. 

      --Do you know what happened to any of them?  asked Charles.

      --I lost touch when I went to Germany to live, said Max.  But I met a former girlfriend of Kurilla when I went to Australia years later.

      --Which one was Kurilla?  asked Decater.

      --He was really the main organizer.  For one thing, he was very critical of our giving them money.  He wanted the American deserters to live in the provinces and train as guerillas.  You can imagine how that went down with the G.I.’s.  They always ended up coming back to Paris on their own.

As for Kurilla, he was an Egyptian Jew who had been politically active in the Algerian War, and then with us against the Vietnam War.  He was assassinated sometime during the great political downsurge of the mid to late twentieth century.  At more or less the same time that the socialist republics in Europe were broken up, and before the Soviet Union itself turned into  capitalistic Russia, and China became the creditor of the United States to the tune of 300 billion dollars, and all sorts of things that we never would have dreamt of back in the sixties.

      --You say he was assassinated?  asked Karl.

      --Yes. His body was found in front of the elevator in his apartment building.

      --You were lucky just to be kidnapped.

      --Twice, said Max.  Not long after we returned to Paris after the Nord Kaperen trip, they drained the gas out of my motorbike, and when I stopped to see what was wrong with it, four guys jumped me.  By then the DST had found out I had an Austrian passport, and I was deported to Vienna the next day.  But I never connected what happened to me with what happened to Kurilla.  With Ben Barka, yes.  But Kurrila’s murder took place much later, long after I had left Paris and he was no longer at all involved with the G.I.’s.  And I don’t think the DST was responsible.

      --Why not? stated Karl.  First of all, your situation was not at all like Ben Barka’s.  He was kidnapped and eventually killed during the Algerian War because he was working with the Algerian revolutionaries against the French.  You and Kurilla were working with American deserters—and you’ve just made the point they were not at all revolutionary, and had been given virtual asylum in France. Whereas I was working with RITA’s in Germany.  That was one of the reasons I decided to stay there obviously.

      --What does DST stand for anyway?  asked Charles.

      --Department de la Securité Territoriale, said Max.  Or Defense—no, I think it was a department.

      --There, you see, said Karl.  You and Kurilla were a threat to the security of French territory.  Whatever he was doing after the deserters was also a threat to French security. So they must have decided he had to be gotten rid of.

      --So why didn’t they just send Kurilla back to Egypt like they sent me to Austria?

      --Because he had been working with the Algerians in the Algerian War and they had it in for him.  What were you doing during the Algerian War?

      --I had been working in Algeria as a geophysicist for BP, said Max.  Before the war, of course, but the Algerians were not buying any geophysicists who had worked for an imperialist country.  I was on their side naturally, but I didn’t have the opportunity of connecting up with them.  And I am still pretty dubious about the DST’s role in Kurilla’s murder.

      --Well, you were lucky, repeated Karl.

      --But when you got expelled, there were quite a few deserters—RITA's, said Charles. What happened to them?

      --They took over their own movement, said Max.  A sign of our success.  The whole point of organizing proletarians is that they can run their own organizations.

      --What proletarians?  asked Karl. 

      --What do you think the G.I.’s were?  asked Max.  Students?  Entrepreneurs?

      --David Mitchell was a student, said Decater, who had been doing background reading.

      --David Mitchell was a war resister, said Max.  Not a deserter.  Quite a different sort of animal.

      --Their fathers might have been entrepreneurs, said Karl.

      --Their fathers, those of them who had actual fathers around, were lots of different things.  None of them had enough money to send their sons to college.

      --That was one of the reasons lots of guys joined the army, said Charles, to get a college education.

      --That was after the Vietnam War, said Max.  In 1967, most of the deserters we got in Paris had joined to avoid Vietnam.  There was a pretty unfounded rumor going about that if you volunteered, rather than waiting to be drafted, you got sent to Germany—or England, or Italy, or Spain when that still had army bases--rather than being shipped off to Vietnam.  Probably started by the army to beef up recruitment quotas.  Some of the guys joined when they were drunk; or were offered a choice between the military and jail.

      --Why jail?

      --Oh, minor offenses; car stealing was a favorite.  Did I ever tell you about Pfc. Cornell Heiselman?  He left Paris for Canada and played quite a role in the deserters committee up there.

      --The Canadians are doing that report, said Karl.  We are getting deviated again.  

      --It is interesting, however, put in Decater, that the international revolution started in North Africa, in a country with one of the oldest dynasties in history, and a forty year past of repressive dictatorship.

      --That’s one theory, said Karl.  To count the Arab Spring as the precursor of the International Revolution.  The South American theory is much better grounded.

      --Well, it’s nearer to  the three conditions our fathers, insofar as we had revolutionary fathers, had thought almost indispensable:  the people no longer consent to be governed as in the past, the government can no longer govern as it has in the past, and there is a revolutionary party to lead the revolution. 

      --And no one sings the International any more either, said Max.  Do any of you even know it?

Decater said he had heard it at gatherings commemorating May ’68.

      --I’ll sing it for you, said Max.  It’s still one of my favorite songs, along with John Brown’s Body.  I’ll begin with the third verse which very few people besides Max still know.   The third verse is the most revolutionary.

The third verse is sung by soldiers who are going to use their guns to shoot their own generals.  We will leave Max singing it to the young revolutionaries.  If he had had the opportunity to sing it to the Nord Kaperen commune, he certainly would have.