Chapter 7 Chapter 7

The presence of the Navy captain, decorated submarine captain, in our school hall ended the concert in the cabin of the Polish minesweeper Lark.Even if he didn't show up, the records and phonograph would only ring for four more days at most.However, he showed up after all.He interrupted the underwater concert without having to visit our wreck, offering a new—if not entirely new—direction for all the talk about Mark. The navy captain probably graduated from our school in 1934.It was whispered that he had read a little theology and Germanic languages ​​in college before he volunteered for the Navy.I have no way of avoiding it now, it must be said, his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.The curly hair was thick and bristly, combed to the side like the ancient Romans.There was no beard like a submariner usually wears, and the eyebrows protruded forward like a roof.The forehead is between the forehead of the philosopher and the forehead of the meditator, so there are no forehead lines, and there are two vertical marks from the base of the ears, as if to find God.This is the result of sunlight acting on the outermost part of this sharply rounded face.The nose is small and well defined.The mouth that opened towards us is slightly raised, and it is a mouth that can speak well.The auditorium was packed, and the morning sun slanted in.We squatted in the window alcove.At someone's request, the two top classes of Gudrun Secondary School were also invited to listen to the reports given by this eloquent mouth.The girls sat on the front rows of benches.They were supposed to be wearing bras, but nobody was.The school's civil servants informed us to attend the report, but Mark refused to attend at first.By virtue of my vantage point, I finally pulled him away.Before the captain opened his eloquent mouth, Mark was crouching next to me in the window alcove, trembling.Behind us and the windowpane was the schoolyard, and the few chestnut trees were motionless.Marc clamped his hands in his hamstrings, still shaking.The whole staff of our school, including the two Senate teachers from Gudrun Secondary School, sat in a semicircle on oaken chairs, those high-backed leather-upholstered chairs which had been placed in advance by the school servants.

Mr. Moeller clapped his hands and called everyone to be quiet so that Principal Klose could speak.The third-grade boys, fiddling with pocket knives, sat behind the senior girls at Gudrun Secondary School.The girls wore their hair in braids—double or Mozart, many with the double on their breasts, and the Mozart was at the mercy of the third-grade boys.Klose first made an opening remark.He talked about all his alumni who had fought outside, in the Army, Navy, and Air Force; he boasted about himself and the Langemark students. Walter Flex, who was killed on the Isle of Auxerre, famously said, "Mature and stay pure!"

It embodies the virtues of a man.He again quotes Fichte⑤ or Arndt⑥: "It depends only on you and your actions⑦!" Excellent composition: "Among us, there is one person who stands out. He is born of the spirit of our school. In this sense, we want to" ① Put your hair behind your neck and tie a bow. ② Langemark is a town in West Flanders, Belgium. After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, many German college students who volunteered to join the army sang the national anthem and went to war here. This behavior of acting as cannon fodder was later exaggerated as patriotic myth.

③Flex (1887～1917), a German writer, voluntarily joined the army after the outbreak of the First World War, served as a company commander, and was killed when he led his troops to attack Assel Island in the Baltic Sea. During the Nazi period, he was regarded as the hero of German youth role model. ④ Quoted from Flex's novel "The Wanderer Between Two Worlds" (1916). ⑤ Fichte (1762～1814), German philosopher. ⑥ Arndt (1768～1860), German prose writer and poet. ⑦In fact, this is a poem by the German poet Albert Mattei (1855~1924), which is quoted from the last section of "Fichte to Every German".Because of the title, Klose mistook it for a poem by Fichte.

When Klose spoke, we squatted in the window alcove and were passing notes frequently to the girls in the upper grades of Gudrun Middle School. Is it necessary to say this now?Of course, the boys in the third grade were unwilling to be lonely, and used their pocket knives to make a "chachacha" sound.I wrote something on a note and passed it on to Vera Prutz or Hildrin Mathur, but I didn't get a single reply.Mark's hands were still clamped in his rouge, and the trembling had stopped.The captain of the navy sat on the rostrum, looking a little stiff, flanked by our Latin teacher Dr. Stachnitz and the elderly counselor teacher Brunis-he still held his mouth freely as usual. sugar cubes.As the prologue draws to a close, our notes are passed around, third-year boys fiddle with pocketknives, the Führer's eyes meet those of Baron de Conrady, the morning sun slowly slips out of the auditorium, and the navy captain licks every now and then Wet his slightly protruding, glib mouth, looking sullenly at the audience, trying not to pay attention to the girls at Gudrun Secondary School.His hat was set squarely on his knees, and his gloves were pressed under it.He was wearing a tuxedo, and the thing hanging around his neck stood out against the white shirt.Suddenly, turning his head to the side window of the auditorium - the medal followed meekly half way - Marc twitched, probably thinking he was recognized, but it wasn't.The submarine captain looked over the window niche where we crouched, to the dusty, motionless chestnut trees.I wondered then and now: what might he be thinking?What might Mark be thinking?What might Klose, who is speaking, be thinking?What might Mr. Brunis, who is eating sugar, be thinking?What might Vera Plutz, who is reading your note, be thinking?What might Hildsyn Mathur be thinking?He, he, he—Mark or he with the glib mouth—could be thinking?It is instructive to know what went through the mind of a submarine captain when he had to listen to someone else.He moved his eyes without seeing the crosshairs ① and the undulating horizon, until the middle school student Mark was shocked.He looked over the heads of the middle-school students, through the double-pane panes, and stared intently at the few dry chestnut trees on the campus, their green leaves looking listless.He licked the eloquent mouth again with his pinkish tongue.Klose tried to let his last words spread through the center of the auditorium with the smell of peppermint: "Now, we are going to listen to how you people's soldiers who have returned from the front report the news from the front at home."

① Refers to the reticle used for aiming on the periscope. That eloquent mouth disappointed us greatly.The lieutenant first gave the general situation and the mission of the submarine in a rather prosaic manner, as in every Naval Year Book: German submarines during the First World War, Weedigan, submarine "U-9", submarine decided The Battle of the Dardanelles, totaling thirteen million gross registered tons; our first 250-ton submarines, powered by electric motors underwater and diesels above water; Rien and U-47, Captain Prien sank the Ark Royal ③--we already knew this, and it was clear--and the Repulse, Shuhar Special sank the "Brave" ④ and so on.What he said was the same old stuff: "The officers and men of the ship are a group with a common belief, because everyone is far away from their hometown, and they are all under tremendous mental pressure. You can imagine that our submarine is ordered to stay below the Atlantic Ocean or the Arctic Ocean, Like a sardine can, cramped, damp, hot. The crew slept on top of the torpedoes, without seeing any ships for days. The horizon was blank. Finally, a convoy appeared, escorted by a very strong force Strong, the command must be perfect, and there must be no nonsense. We fired two torpedoes and hit the 'Arndal'. This is the first tanker we hit, 17,200 tons, 19 I just got into the water in 1937. Believe it or not, dear Mrs. Stachnitz, I was thinking of you at the time. I didn't turn off the intercom, and started doing Latin spelling exercises aloud: quiquae quod, cuius cuius Cuius until the navigator on the boat shouted through the communicator: "Read very well, Mr. Captain, you have no class today!" Tubes, ready to go! Days of calm seas, the jolt and roar of the submarine, the sky above, you know, a dizzying sky, sunsets day after day" Wiedigan (1882 ~1915), a captain of the German Navy, the submarine "U-9" led by him sank three British cruisers in succession on September 22, 1914.

②The Battle of the Dardanelles, a military action taken by China, Britain and France against Turkey in World War I. Many warships were sunk or damaged by German submarines, so they were forced to give up attacking from the sea. ③ On October 14, 1939, the submarine "U-47" led by Lieutenant Commander Prien of the German Navy sneaked into Scapa Flow and sank the British battleship "Ark Royal". ④ On September 12, 1940, the German navy ensign Schulhardt led the yacht "U-29" to sink the British aircraft carrier "Brave". The lieutenant filled out his report with that tall neck protrusion, though he had sunk a quarter of a quarter of a million gross registered tonnage: a light cruiser of the Despatz class, A large destroyer of the "Tribal" class, he used a rich vocabulary to describe the natural scenery more than to report the battle in detail.He also boldly used some metaphors: "The stern of the boat has layers of white waves, like an expensive floor-length dress. The boat is like a bride in full dress, stirring up a series of gauze skirts." The water curtain, to meet the wedding presided over by the god of death."

There was a chuckle among the braided girls.But the next metaphor erased the bride: "The submarine is like a whale with a dorsal fin, and the spray from its prow is like the twirling beard of a Hungarian hussar." The lieutenant is good at emphasizing technical terms calmly and using words that are often found in fairy tales.He was probably speaking more into the ear of "Father Brunis," Eichendorff's former admirer and former German teacher, than into us.Klose has been mentioned several times in his powerfully worded classroom essays.We heard him whisper 'bilge pump', 'helmsman', 'general compass', 'subcompass', etc., and he probably thought it would be a novelty for us.In fact, we've been familiar with these naval terms for years.He was the fairy-tale aunt again, talking of "dog whistles" and "spherical partitions" and of the easy-to-understand "roiling seas," like good old Andersen or the Brothers Grimm mysteriously Whisper about "ASDIC Pulse ②".

①Sailors' common saying, that is, the sentry on the warship from midnight to four in the morning. ②ASDIC is the abbreviation of English-Allied Reconnaissance Submarine Committee. His depiction of a sunset is uncomfortable: "Before the night of the Atlantic came upon us like a towel turned from a crow, the colors in the sky were divided into many layers. We have never seen it at home. An orange rises, fleshy but false, and soon becomes like a soft mist, surrounded by a gorgeous halo, like a master painting, with a feathery center. Clouds. What a strange miner's lamp it hangs above the blood-soaked sea."

He made the hum and rustle of the organ with the hard thing around his neck.The sky changed from sea blue to a luminescent lemon yellow to maroon, poppies appeared in the sky, and thin clouds floated, first silvery and then changing colors. "Let the birds and angels shed their blood!" said the eloquent mouth.He suddenly stopped his bold description of the natural scene, and let a Sunderland seaplane come out of the idyllic clouds and roar toward the submarine.After the seaplane lost its target, he started the second part of the report with this glib mouth.Instead of metaphors, he succinctly recounted something dry and unimportant: "I was directing the attack from the periscope observation seat. Probably hit a refrigerated transport, its stern first sinking into the sea. The submarine dived 110 meters, and found a destroyer at a bearing of 170 degrees, 10 degrees to port, and a heading of 120 degrees. The heading was kept at 120 degrees. The noise of the propeller rotating gradually faded away Go, then approach again, keep the heading at 180 degrees, and release depth charges, six, seven, eight, eleven. The lights on the submarine are all extinguished, and the spare lights are connected quickly, and each gun position is successively Report the situation. The destroyer stopped suddenly. The bearing is 160 degrees, 10 degrees to port, and the new heading is 45 degrees."

It's a pity that after this really gripping narration, there are descriptions of natural scenery, such as "Winter in the Atlantic Ocean", "Fluorescence in the Mediterranean", and a picture that exaggerates the atmosphere: "Christmas on a Submarine" And the essential broom that is used as a Christmas tree.Finally, he creates their mythical triumph in accordance with the legends of Odysseus' victorious return from the enemy's camp: "The first seagulls announce to the port." I don’t remember that it was Principal Klose who ended the report with the familiar phrase “All go back to class now!” and everyone sang “We Love the Storm” together.I always remember the muffled but respectful applause and the erratic stand-ups that began with the braided girls.When I turned to look at Mark, he had already walked away.I only saw his center split pop a few times on the right exit.I couldn't jump from the window alcove to the waxed floor right away because one of my legs was numb from squatting while listening to the lecture. ① A wandering song popular in German youth organizations such as the Youth League and the Boy Scouts in the 1920s. During the Third Reich, it became a morale-boosting song for youth organizations and the army. In the locker room next to the gym, I finally ran into Mark again, but at that moment I didn't know how to speak.There were many rumors during the change of clothes, which were later confirmed: the Navy captain asked his former gymnastics teacher Maren Brandt to let him do gymnastics again in that unforgettable gym, although he graduated. Little to no training was done.We will be honored to be with him.In two consecutive gymnastics classes—usually always the last two on a Saturday—he performed his feats first for us and then for the eighth graders.Year 8 students share the gym with us from the second period. He is short and stout, with black and long hair.He borrowed a set of the school's traditional gymnastics suit from his teacher Maren Brandt: red gym pants, a white gym suit with a red stripe on the chest and a black capital letter C embedded in the middle.While he was changing clothes, a group of people surrounded him and asked him many questions: "Can I take a closer look? How long will it take? If you want my brother to have a friend serving on the speedboat now, he said" he Answering questions patiently, sometimes laughing for no reason, and contagious everyone, the locker room kept laughing. At this moment, Marc caught my attention because instead of laughing with everyone, he concentrated on folding and hanging the clothes he had taken off. ①The capital letter C is the German abbreviation of Conradi Complete Middle School. Maren Brandt's whistle called us into the gym.We gather under the horizontal bar.Under the careful protection of Maren Brandt, the navy captain started the gymnastics class.We don't need to work hard, because he mainly demonstrates the performance for us. The main project is to do giant loops and then split-leg leaps on the horizontal bar.Apart from Horten Thorntak, only Mark can follow this movement, but no one wants to watch him do it, because when he does the giant slalom and then the split leap, his knees are bent, his body is huddled, and his posture is very ugly.Until the captain of the navy started practicing a well-choreographed, light-handed gymnastics with us, Mark's Adam's apple was still jumping, as if he had been stabbed by something.He probably twisted his ankle when he landed his feet on the edge of the mat while doing the dive-vault-and-tumble.He was sitting on a climbing frame in the corner of the gym, the cartilage bouncing.He must have sneaked in here just as the eighth graders were coming in for the second period.He didn't rejoin us until he started playing basketball against the eighth grade.He made three or four shots and we lost to each other despite that. Our neo-Gothic gym looks as stately as a Notre Dame in New Scotland.The Notre-Dame retains the distinctly schoollike character of the original gymnasium, although Priest Gusevsky concentrated the gilded plaster figures and church furnishings donated by the people on the sidewalks that shot through the wide front windows. in the light.If there is light ruling all the secrets, then we practice gymnastics in the mysterious and dim light. Our gymnasium has many pointed arch windows, and the pattern of brick inlays divides the rosette and swim bladder panes into many smaller pieces. In Notre Dame, lit up with sacrifices, transubstantiations and communions, these ceremonies are always glamorous and cumbersome - the metal plaques on the doors, the tools of the past, gymnastics, baseball bats and batons It’s okay to be handed out like a sanctuary—in the mystical light of our gym, a jump ball between two basketball teams is grand and moving, akin to a priestly investiture or confirmation.The side that didn't win the ball humbly and quickly retreated to the dimly lit backcourt like a sacrament. Ten minutes of vigorous competition ended the gymnastics class.Whenever the sun is shining outside, a few beams of morning light shine through the leaves of the chestnut trees and the pointed arch windows in the schoolyard.As long as there are people exercising on the rings and high swings, the oblique side light will create a harmonious atmosphere.As long as I try to recall now, I still see the short and thick navy captain in front of me, wearing our school's red gym pants, swinging lightly and leisurely on the high swing.I saw his feet--he was bare when he was doing gymnastics--immaculate and free, bathed in a slanting golden sun; I saw his hands--he was suddenly He made a knee-hanging motion—stretching toward a beam of golden dust.Our gymnasium is quaint and pleasing, and the dressing rooms are lit by pointed arch windows, so we call the dressing rooms the vestry. ①The church is used to place the sacristy and vestments and the room for priests to change clothes. Maren Brandt blew the whistle.The eighth graders and sixth graders lined up after the basketball game to sing "We Climbed the Mountain with the Morning Dew" to the captain of the navy before disbanding to go to the locker rooms. The captain was soon surrounded again, but the eighth graders didn't just pester them.The Navy captain washed his hands and armpits carefully in the only washbasin—we had no shower—and then with such swift movements as to change from his borrowed gym suit to his own underwear, we could see nothing.He began to answer the students' questions again, with a smile on his face, high spirits, and a somewhat arrogant tone.Taking advantage of the silence between questions, he groped restlessly with both hands, first covertly and then fully openly, even under the stool. "Wait a minute, boys, I'll be right back." The navy captain, wearing navy blue pants and a white shirt, squeezed his way through the students and the stools in his socks, without bothering to put on his shoes. It stinks like a small animal house in a zoo.His collar was unbuttoned, turned up, waiting for his tie and the ribbon of that medal which I cannot describe in words.On the door of Mrs. Maren Brandt's office is a weekly timetable for using the gym.He knocked on the door and broke in. ① This is a roaming song of Swedish college students, which has always been loved by German youths. Who else doubted Mark but me?I'm not sure now if I asked right away: "Where did Mark go?" But even so, my voice was not too loud, in fact, I should have shouted.Nor did Schilling yell, nor did Horten Thorntuck, Winter, Kupka, or Esch. On the contrary, we all agreed that it was the fault of the frail Buschman, a rascal who, after a dozen slaps, would not stop the eternal, womb-bred sneer. Maren Brandt stood among us in a terry bathrobe and led a disheveled navy captain, shouting: "Who did this? Tell me!" At this moment, Buschman was pushed to him. in front of. I also shouted "Bushman", and I was able to think naturally in my heart: Yes, it can only be done by Bushman, who else but Bushman? Behind us, the commotion started from the outside, as Buschman was interrogated from several sides—including the Navy captain and the eighth-grade class president.The sneer on Bushman's face wouldn't fade even during the interrogation, so he got the first slap, and the commotion died down.I opened my eyes wide and pricked up my ears, waiting for Bushman to confess one by one.A certainty crept up my neck: look, this is a big deal! Buschman was still sneering, and I expected less and less of an explanation from him, especially since Maren Brandt's many slaps to Buschman also betrayed his own lack of confidence.Maren Brandt no longer mentioned the missing item, but roared loudly between two slaps: "You should put away your sneer. Stop laughing!I have to get rid of your sneer! " By the way, Maren Brandt didn't have the hair to get Buschman out of his sneer. I don't know if Buschman is still alive today.But if there were a Bushman Dentist, a Bushman Veterinarian, or a Bushman Assistant Physician—Heinie Bushman wanted to go to college to study medicine—he would be a sneering Dr. Bushman.For the sneer is too constant to die out so soon, it has survived countless battles and currency reforms, and even when the captain with the empty collar expects the success of the interrogation, the sneer is Has already overcome the slap of teacher Maren Brandt. ① Refers to the currency system reform carried out in the Anglo-American and French-occupied areas of Germany in 1948. Although Buschmann drew everyone's attention to me, I sneaked a glance back at Mark. I don't have to look around for him, I can feel where he's humming the Ave Maria just by the neck.He was not far away, but he did not participate in the booing in the slightest; he was dressed and was buttoning the top button of his shirt.Judging from the cut and texture of the shirt, it is likely that the shirt belonged to his father.With great difficulty he tried to slip his special emblem behind the button. Leaving aside the jumping thing on the neck and the corresponding movement of the chewing muscles, Mark left a calm and calm impression.When he realized that the button could not be buttoned over his Adam's apple, he took a crumpled tie from the inside breast pocket of his coat on the hanger.No one in our grade wears a tie.Only a few vain guys in grades seven, eight, and nine wore ridiculous bows.Mark's shirt collar was still bare when the navy captain left the podium two hours earlier after his inspiring speech.However, the crumpled tie was already in the inner breast pocket of his jacket, eagerly awaiting the critical moment. This is Mark's tie debut.He stood in front of the only speckled mirror in the dressing room—not approaching it, but keeping a distance, as if doing it—and wrote the colored dotted one, which today looks very different. The bad tie went over the collar of the turned-up shirt, then the collar was turned down, and the oversized tie was ripped again.He began to speak, in a quiet but expressive voice: "I bet it wasn't Bushman who did it. Has someone searched Bushman's clothes already? The ongoing interrogation and the sound of slaps set off his words clearly. Regardless of the objections of the navy captain, Maren Brandt continued to slap Bushman's sneering face endlessly. Mark immediately had an audience, even though he was speaking to a mirror.His new trick, the tie, did not attract much attention until later.Maren Brandt searched Buschman's clothes himself, and this time he had another reason to slap the sneering face: in the two pockets of his jacket, he found many freshly opened condoms, which Buschman often used Running a small business in grades seven, eight, and nine—his father was a pharmacy owner.Other than that, Maren Brandt got nothing.Reluctantly, the captain of the navy fastened the officer's tie, turned down his collar, and tapped lightly with his fingers on the now empty place where the medal was hung before, suggesting to Maren Brandt not to take the matter too seriously: "Or It's possible to make it up, Mr. Councilor. It's no big deal, it's just a prank!" But Maren Brandt ordered the gym and locker room to be locked, and then, assisted by two eighth graders, began searching our pockets.He also checked every possible hiding place in the locker room.At first, the captain of the navy was also very happy to help them, but gradually he lost his patience and did what no one would dare to do in the locker room: he smoked cigarettes one by one and threw the butts away. On the linoleum floor, and stomped out.He was visibly in a bad mood when Maren Brandt handed him a spittoon without a word.The spittoon, unused for many years, lay dusty beside the washbasin, having been inspected in advance as a stash of stolen goods. The lieutenant blushed like a schoolboy, and quickly pulled out the cigarette he had just lit from his slightly protruding mouth, which was eloquent.Instead of smoking, he folded his arms and began nervously checking the time.He made a monotonous boxing motion, letting his watch stick out of his sleeve, to show that he was running out of time. He went to the door, shook the gloves on his fingers, and bid us farewell, hinting that he would not like the manner in which the search had been conducted, and that he was going to report the unpleasant incident to the Headmaster himself, because he Not going to let an ill-bred pig ruin his vacation. Maren Brandt gave the key to a student in eighth grade.The man was inflexible, causing an embarrassing pause as he opened the locker room door.