that person is still looking after it, in which case heâs an idiot and should keep on looking after it, or else heâs just an honest man who has left the trunk there, and itâll be easier to find if we wait till the ship has emptied out completely. The same goes for your umbrella.â âDo you know your way around the ship?â Karl asked suspiciously, for he believed there must be some hidden flaw in the otherwise convincing notion that his belongings could be more easily found when the ship was empty. âBut Iâm a stoker,â said the man. âYou are a stoker,â Karl cried with delight, as if this announcement surpassed all his expectations, and propping up on his elbows, he took a closer look at the man. âOne could see into the engine room through a hatch next to the cabin in which I slept in with the Slovaks.â âYes, thatâs where I worked,â said the stoker. âIâve always been very interested in technology,â said Karl, following his own train of thought, âand would no doubt have eventually become an engineer if I hadnât had to go away to America.â âBut why did you have to go away?â âAh well!â said Karl, dismissing the entire affair with a wave of his hand. At the same time he smiled at the stoker as though seeking indulgence concerning matters that he had not disclosed. âBut there must have been a reason,â said the stoker, and one could not tell whether he was requesting an explanation or attempting to forestall one. âI too could become a stoker,â said Karl, âmy parents no longer care what I do.â âThereâll be an opening for my job,â said the stoker, and basking in this knowledge, he put his hands in his trouser pockets and stretched out by swinging his legs, which were clad in creased leatherlike iron-gray trousers, onto the bed. Karl had to move closer to the wall. âYouâre leaving ship?â âOh yes, weâre marching off today.â âBut why? Donât you like it here?â âWell, thatâs just how it is; oneâs own preferences arenât always taken into account. Besides, youâre right, I donât like it here. In any case, youâre probably not completely set on becoming a stoker, though thatâs actually when itâs most likely to happen. So I strongly advise against it. If you wanted to study in Europe, why wouldnât you want to study here? The American universities are, of course, incomparably better.â âThat may well be so,â said Karl, âbut Iâve barely any money to pay for my studies. I once read about someone who worked for a business by day and studied at night till he became a doctor and then, I believe, a mayor. But that takes great perseverance, doesnât it? And thatâs something Iâm afraid I lack. Besides, I wasnât an especially good student, and it wasnât that hard for me to leave school. And the schools over here may be even stricter. I know hardly any English. In any case people here are often very prejudiced against foreigners.â âSo youâve already run into this too? In that case everything is fine. Then youâre my man. You see, weâre on a German ship, it belongs to the Hamburg Amerika Line, so why arenât all of us here Germans? Why is the chief machinist a Romanian? His name is Schubal. Itâs really incredible. And that scoundrel mistreats us Germans on a German ship. Now I donât want you to get the ideaââhe was out of breath now and fanned himself with his handââthat Iâm complaining for the sake of complaining. I know youâve no influence and are only a poor little fellow. But this is too awful.â And he pounded several times on the table, keeping his eyes on his fist as he did so. âIâve served on so many shipsââhe reeled off twenty names as if they were a
Learning to Kill: Stories