Lorenz exclaimed: ‘Is anything working?’
‘The auxiliary magnetic compass,’ Graf replied. But after a short pause he added, ‘Possibly.’
Lorenz laid his book on the table and drifted through the compartments, not in order to offer encouragement or stirring clichés, but to simply make his presence felt, to embody the indomitable spirit of the stricken U-boat. In the gloomy half-light, the crew looked more like a long lost tribe of troglodytes than sailors: streaked faces, bloodshot eyes, wielding wrenches like clubs, and gripping wrenches between exposed teeth, negotiating the narrow confinements of their forgotten underworld. In the torpedo room Kruger was searching for new breaches beneath the waterline. After filling his lungs with air, he squeezed his nostrils together and disappeared beneath the surface. A minute passed before he rose up again coughing and gasping.
On returning to the officers’ mess, Lorenz lifted his book again and simulated reading. He turned the pages at regular intervals and allowed his mind to wander. Superimposed on the blurred text, his imagination supplied a limpid portrait of Faustine. Where was she? Asleep in her bed or sitting in an office typing letters for Monsieur Gilbert? Eating her breakfast in a café or watching the west facade of the cathedral turn gold in the afternoon. He didn’t know what time it was. Faustine was in Paris and he was sitting in a metal tube, balanced on the summit of a mountain under the sea.
A voice roused Lorenz from his thoughts. ‘Kaleun? All of the breaches have been stopped.’
Lorenz lifted his head and saw Graf standing over him. ‘Is that the pump I can hear?’
‘Yes. We just got it going again.’ The two men smiled at each other, but the familiar grinding became labored, the pitch dropped, and then there was silence. Exhausted, Graf leaned back against the woodwork and spat out his frustration. ‘Shit!’
Breathing was becoming increasingly difficult. Lorenz felt as if a tight harness was constricting the expansion of his chest, and his head ached. The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were perilously high. When he spotted some of the crew twitching he ordered Sauer to distribute the potash cartridges. After hanging the case around his neck, Lorenz placed a clip on his nose and bit on the ‘snorkel’ mouthpiece. The taste of rubber was strong and unpleasant. His headache receded but the mouthpiece made him produce excessive amounts of saliva. He was soon having to wipe away unsightly threads of drool from his chin.
Having previously taken on the appearance of cave dwellers, the cartridge ‘snorkels’ now made the men look like giant insects. The bunks resembled a hive, the result of some outlandish scientific experiment. This fanciful thought seemed to intensify the illusion, and Lorenz shook his head to recalibrate his brain. He was tired, a bone-deep tiredness that made simple activities like raising a hand or just thinking effortful. He could feel the weight of sleep in his body, the pull of its shadowy mass. There was nothing more to do. He had lost count of how many times he had toured the boat, so he retired to his nook and lay down, resting the potash cartridge on his stomach.
At once, he was standing outside the boat on the Mid-Atlantic ridge. The peaks were jagged and stretched to the north and south. To the east and west, rocky slopes descended into dark obscurity. U-330 was leaning to one side and pointing downward, its bow hanging over a wide chasm. The saddle tanks were dented, the deck rails were warped and twisted, and there were scorch marks on the tower. Lorenz could barely make out the scorpion emblem. The boat looked forlorn, almost abandoned — a wreck that would eventually rust away and vanish. Lorenz climbed over uneven ground and when he was next to the boat he slapped the hull, producing a low, resonant ‘thump.’ Some paint flakes were dislodged, and they sank through the water in oscillating arcs like falling feathers. His examination of the battle-scarred hull was disturbed by the sound of thrashing propellers. He scrambled down the slope and stood on a flat ledge. When he looked up, he saw a wolf-pack of U-boats passing overhead, and beyond them, the merest shimmer suggesting the play of light on a surface too far removed to see. The wolf-pack traveled slowly through the green vastness, and the spectacle of its progress was arrestingly beautiful. A giant squid swam by trailing long, suckered tentacles.
Lorenz removed his cap and waved it above his head, and was surprised to feel the water resisting his movements. ‘Help!’ he called. His request was carried upward by a single, irregular, wobbling bubble of air. ‘Help!’ he called again. Hydrophone operators would be listening: surely one of them would hear his call? He noticed a new phenomenon — an unhurried shower of black specks. As they descended they became more readily identifiable as depth charges. They began to explode and their continuous detonation resembled a fireworks display. There were flashes, cracks, and smoldering streamers. One of the submarines was blasted out of the arrowhead formation and it dived toward Lorenz. He watched it gathering speed and he was tempted to run, but he was strangely transfixed and did not budge from the ledge. The boat sailed past him, demolishing the summit of a neighboring peak, before plummeting into the darkness on the other side. A few moments later he saw a fireball ignite in the fathomless deep. The consequent shock wave woke him up.
The overhead showed through the fading vision, and Lorenz became conscious of the weight of the potash cartridge on his stomach. He adjusted the mouthpiece and noticed that his beard was covered in spittle. The boat was remarkably quiet. So quiet, in fact, that he wondered if the crew had suffocated while he had been asleep, and whether he was the sole survivor. He still felt incredibly tired and rolled his head to the side. Through the gap in the curtain he could see a figure, turned away, wearing a long coat — arms angled slightly and distanced from the body — a cap held in the right hand. The back of the man’s head was missing. Instead of an occipital bulge, there was only a gaping cavity, the interior of which glinted beneath an unsteady emergency light. Splinters of bone bristled around the edges of the wound and runnels of cerebrospinal fluid trickled around the man’s ears. Lorenz thought: I am still dreaming. But he knew that he wasn’t. The sound of his shallow breathing was amplified by the ‘snorkel.’ Fear had dispeled the torpor of sleep and sharpened his senses.
Lorenz eased himself up so that his torso was supported by his elbows. He could not believe how solid Sutherland looked. When Lorenz raised himself higher, the dead commander tilted his head, as if listening. Blood had pooled around the stump of the brain stem. This minute movement caused a red cascade to spill over the jagged bone and splash down Sutherland’s coat, creating an archipelago of dark stains. Something inside the cavity loosened and dropped and its wet impact on the base of the skull sounded like the parting of puckered lips. Lorenz blinked, and the figure was gone.
The sense of time flowing forward was restored, he could hear men at work, voices, the clatter of tools, and these indications of life seemed to rush into his nook like air filling a vacuum. He pulled the curtain aside and saw Ziegler asleep in the radio shack. Rising from the mattress he walked across the gangway and shook the radio operator’s shoulder. After removing the mouthpiece of his ‘snorkel,’ Lorenz said, ‘Wake up! Ziegler, wake up!’
Ziegler opened his eyes, mumbled something incomprehensible, and removed his own mouthpiece. ‘Kaleun?’
‘How long have you been asleep?’
‘I don’t know — not long. I was in the middle of these repairs.’ He gestured at a circuit board. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Did you see anything?’