Fredy Neptune by Les Murray

Author:Les Murray
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781466894808
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

BOOK 4

The Police Revolution

When we got to New York, that is not paved with gold

but with dollars of chewing gum, I did get a job

on the L.S. Das Rheingold. I had to climb a lot of notches

down the high noses of her officers, from being a travel-guest,

a passenger. And I’m not proud how the vacancy

I filled got vacant. There was a rigger in the crew

name of Peter Salomon, that three of the others smashed up

in a bar for saying the German fighter ace

Joseph Jacobs was as good or better a pilot

than Hermann Goering, and I didn’t stand up for him.

It saved his life, maybe. He stayed on in America

and I took his watches over Far Rockaway,

over the Atlantic, over the pine-trees and fields

clear to Friedrichshafen, with its lake and church

and its hangars hundreds of yards long that we would tow

our switched-off ships into, a hundred marching men to a side.

Yes yes, Boettcher. We lift off for Singapore soon!

Meantime, I could eat, because airships didn’t lay off

and pick up hands for each voyage. We stayed hired.

I thought of trying for a shift across to the Graf

but she plied to Brazil, not that much nearer home.

Dear Love I’m boarding with a family Sievert. They build

sailing boats. Decent people, with three sons out of work.

The one at home, Jost, bled a towel full last week from a brawl.

Far from my family, yet to the locals I was

the lucky pig himself, having a job in Germany.

Frau Sievert, knitting with her finger up, the Catholic way,

reckoned it was shameless, all the poor boys out of work

and blaming themselves, not the Bolsheviks.

Her Jost had taken his gold tooth to the pub

and a man laid hands on her—I got lost at this stage

and asked how big a tooth he had and did it

stick out of his mouth? The newer slang often stumped me.

Seems it meant his girl. Where did you learn German then,

Herr Boettcher?—In our colonies, Ma,

that we’ll get back from the English. Eh, Fredy, eh?

Jost was teaching me how to bend planking

and treenail boats. We’d sail across to Rohrschach

or Romanshorn and listen to the Switzers

swallow beer and their language with never a doubt of themselves.

They’re sort of Scotch to the Germans, so imagine:

Yon Hitler’s a coof. He stravaigs aboot an aa

his buitlickers reach oot tae pat him wi their haunds

but he refuses them wi’s ain haund cruickit back

like a bairnie fendin aff a guid skelp o the tawse.

It took Jost’s father Klaus and I to hold Jost back

there in the beer garden. November criminals Versailles—!

Ye should hae focht hairder, says the Switzer, chewing wurst.

L.S. Hindenburg was building, Graf Zeppelin plied to South America

and Das Rheingold was to cover the East, Singapore, Shanghai

but the service hadn’t started yet. We adjusted and tested,

filled in time, really. We went on training flights. On this one

over the Alps, we had a man out on a line

in his big felt slippers, patching a gas leak half way

down the curve of the hull, big white peaks pointy below him,

valleys and I spose cows.

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