Jens Bjørneboe, “Styrmannen”, opening chapter of The Sharks (Norwich: Norvik Press, 1992). Translation of Haiene (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1974). © 1974, 1995 by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag A/S. Used by permission. English translation ©1992 by Esther Greenleaf Mürer.
Sailor, beware, sailor, take care ...
My name is Peder Jensen, born in Hammerfest in Norway in 1866. I was second mate on the Neptune, and I shall relate what happened.
I shall record it as well as my uncommon memory and modest writing ability allow. Only the Gods in heaven know what was the meaning of that terrible, insane voyage. But as sure as the Southern Cross stands in the firmament, just as certain it is that everything has a meaning. It's just that our defective human reason lacks the power to grasp it. But this voyage began more absurdly, more meaninglessly, than any other journey I know of. It was as if the vessel were soaked through and through with hate—built, welded, rigged, and riveted with hate. It's as if she were possessed by Satan.
And she was one of the loveliest creatures I've seen; a white-painted bark, somewhat overcanvassed. Now, a bark is always the noblest and loveliest, the most graceful and beautiful thing afloat on the sea. For me a bark is the topgallant of the shipbuilder's art. But even for a bark she was improbable: wild, fast, moody, difficult to sail, and a dazzling beauty. If I myself had christened her—from her appearance—I should have named her “Venus,” for the goddess of beauty and love and for the wondrous planet in the evening sky. And yet all this well-nigh sensual loveliness was possessed by the devil.
But I've heard like things of human beings, of women, beautiful and wild, mysterious, inscrutable, magnificent, driving men to frenzy: that they themselves were victims of demon possession. Tales of love, madness, and death.
As I said: Neptune was possessed by Satan. When I think of her it strikes me as sick, wicked, and perverse to call such a vessel by a man's name. Neptune is to the highest degree a male deity as he pursues his fruitful veneries in the ocean's bottomless, enigmatic deep. It was simply indecent to name this vessel after him—after such a pronounced he-god. At the sight of her I would have christened her “Sancta Vénere”—Holy Venus. And she was perhaps the fastest sailer I've had under my feet.
In short: I was wildly in love with her when I went aboard in Manila. That was why I signed on. I boarded her with a sea chest and a violin case, with my trembling heart and fevered brain: all I own and possess in this singular world. On the twenty-first of October, 1899, we sailed out of the harbor, duly laden with cordage and hemp. There I stood on her planks, with the sky above me and the sea below. Great God, what a situation! Upward, the endless space of heaven; downward, the dark, bottomless sea. A third of the crew, plus the steward and the third mate, were dead drunk. The carpenter lay senseless after a fight with one of the hands. It delayed our sailing, but we sailed.
Once I had settled into my cabin, I went through the medicine chest. As second mate I was also the ship's medicine man, and I had an unpleasant foreboding that we should find a use for our medicines. The chest contained the usual nautical pharmacopoeia: quinine, opium, morphine, ether, chloroform, etc.; dressings, splints, and a small array of relatively simple but modern surgical instruments. It's rather tiresome that I'm inclined to spew at the sight of blood, but that's the way of it: it is my fate, and I must bear it.
It is also my fate to be a seaman. For of all things on earth, it is first and foremost a seaman that I am. That means that I'm afraid of the sea. I hate the sea. I despise the loathsome, malicious roar of the surf. Indeed I have a kind of hydrophobia, both bodily and spiritual. The thought of the deep, that realm of twilight and darkness where so many men of my calling have rotted, fills me with genuine terror. All sailors are afraid of the sea. They know what it is.
At least six generations of my forefathers have been seamen. I hate the ocean, the bottomlessness, the depth, but I can never escape it. The sea is the incomprehensible: fathomless as the starry sky, as the human heart.
From terror of the ocean I've tried to live on land, with firm ground under my feet. At such times, when my dread of the sea had become too strong to bear, I earned my daily bread by giving instruction. I've taught chiefly mathematics and geography, and French and English as well, but also music. Still, after a time on land, it was the sea again. Always. That is my fate and my curse: to love what I hate.
What more is there to tell? I'm five feet eleven inches tall and a rather straightforward man. At the time I signed on in Manila I was thirty-three years old.
Then Neptune set out on her last, meaningless, incomprehensible voyage, on a southeasterly course, by way of Cape Horn, bound for Marseilles. The voyage of death which was to mark me for life. That autumn of 1899 I thought too of another journey, soon to begin: the voyage into a new century. I did a great deal of thinking back then—on the deck planks or in my cabin on board that lovely accursed ship. She was so beautiful that for me to this very day her name is still Sancta Vénere—Holy Venus.