The Death Ship by B. Traven Read Free Book Online Page A

stenos, he might easily be willing to spring another twenty bucks. Money can always be squeezed out of an idea, regardless of whether it makes somebody laugh or somebody else cry. In this world there are just as many people who like to weep and will pay two dollars for that pleasure as there are people who will pay for having lots of fun. Usually it costs more money to see a bad tragedy than to see a good comedy. People are like that, and nothing can be done about it. Anyway, I like people who prefer a good time better than —
    A good time! What’s the matter now? Can’t a guy have his beauty nap for the last gulden he paid for a bed? I’d like to know where the next bed will come from.
    “Leave me in peace, damn it all. Yes, I paid for my bed last night when I went upstairs. Yes, I paid for it all right, so let me sleep. I am tired.”
    The knocking and banging against my door, however, does not cease.
    “Goldfish in shit, leave me alone. I want to sleep. You heard me. Get out of here. Get away from that door or I’ll sock you.” I wish that bum would only open the door so that I could fire my shoe into his face. So they call the Dutch a quiet people!
    “Open that door”; again the voice at my door. “Open! Police. We want to speak to you for a minute.”
    “All right, all right. Coming.” I begin to doubt that there are some people still left on this earth who are not policemen or who have no connection with the force. The police are supposed to maintain quiet and order, yet nobody in the whole world causes more trouble and is a greater nuisance than the police. Chasing criminals, and thereby killing innocent women. Keeping order, and throwing a whole town in the middle of the night into an uproar. Nobody drives more people crazy than the police. And just think, soldiers are also a police force, only with another name. Ask me where all the trouble in the world comes from.
    “Hey you, what do you want of me? I’m not wanted anywhere.”
    “We only wish to ask you a few questions.”
    “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
    “You’d better open that door. We want to see you.”
    “Nothing interesting about my face. I’ve never been on the screen.”
    “Come, come, or we shall have to break in the door.”
    Break in the door. And these are the mugs paid by the taxpayer to protect him against burglars. Break in the door. All right. No getting away. So I open the door. Immediately one of the guys sticks his foot in so the door can’t be closed again. The old trick of the master. It seems to be the first trick a cop has to learn on joining the force.
    Two men. Plain-clothes men.
    I am sitting on the edge of my bed and start to get dressed. “Are you American?”
    “Yip. Any objection in Holland?”
    “May we see your sailor’s card?”
    It seems to me the sailor’s card, and not the sun, is the center of the universe. I am positive the great war was fought, not for democracy or justice, but for no other reason than that a cop, or an immigration officer, may have the legal right to ask you, and be well paid for asking you, to show him your sailor’s card, or what have you. Before the war nobody asked you for a passport. And were the people happy? Wars for liberty and independence are to be suspected most of all, ever since the Prussians fought their war for liberty against Napoleon. All peoples lost their freedom when that war was won, because all liberty went to that war and has been there ever since. Yes, sir.
    “I haven’t got a sailor’s card.”
    “Wha-a-a-t? You ha-a-a-ave no sailor’s card?”
    The tune of this long-drawn-out question reminded me of the question with which I had been bothered not long before, and exactly at the same time when I wanted to sleep.
    “No, I ha-a-a-ave no sailor’s card.”
    “Then you have a passport.”
    “No service, gentlemen. Gas-pump out of commission.”
    “No passport?”
    “No passport.”
    They looked at each other, nodded, and felt well satisfied with