Chapter 4
Remote Marriage
I turned up at the company earlier than expected. There was no problem, I have been sent to Uncle Louis and he assigned me to a boat that would be sent by all probabilities exclusively on upper-river trips. For a newly married man it has not been unimportant, if he had a home trip every second or eighth weeks. She has been a low-draught tug-boat. Instead of the usual five and half feet, she has submerged only four. By a larger breadth and a lighter hull and deckhouse, it has been designed to work on the upper Danube, even at low tide.
She was in the repair yard freshly refurbished after a bad crash. It could have been named even funny, had it not been so dangerous, but, as no casualty has resulted, all, who have heard about the event, laughed at it. The crash had happened in the newly finished lock of Aschach in Austria. They were coming to the lock downriver, and by the regular water-level forecast the boat could have gone under the bridge at the upper sluice. But, as from the forecast a certain time had elapsed, the water level has grown about four inches. The captain led her into the lock from above. As her lowered mast crashed into the sluice bridge, it went under it forcing the head of the boat to submerge more in the water. By this trim, the wheel-house of the ship slipped under the sluice structure. The trouble came, as the mast could bear the load no longer. As the ship popped up, the wheel-house crashed from below into the bridge of the sluice. In an instant the captain and the steering-man jumped for their lives for the doors, and the aluminium structure collapsed. Witnesses described the sight after the crash, as the wrecks of an airplane.
In the yard she has got an ordinary collapsible wooden wheelhouse. After my boarding, she has remained for another ten days in the yard for other repairs. The factors effecting my health in an unfavourable way have been the boatswain and his stupidity.
He had seen a hose and water was coming out of it. He had put it into the drinking-water tank of the boat and filled the tank. Alas, it had not been drinking water from the city works, it had been ordinary unclean river water. In a day everybody began to have diarrhoea. Members of the crew, not sensitive to bacteria of that kind, soon overcame it, but, as infected water has remained in the tank, and later fillings have made the fluid only less polluted, but not clean, some of us were not immune enough to defeat the sickness. I went at once to the doctor and have got a good medicine. As long as I have been taking it, my condition has been fair. After stopping with it in a few days, my troubles returned. For a week I was in a bad condition, having diarrhoea and feeling ill. Regularity of sex could not have been worse.
In all our common life, it was the only period, when my appetite for love with my wife has been lower than hers with me. In the remaining days, after I have got better, she has been visiting me on the boat many times. She has slept there, too, when my young colleague has been absent for his trip home.
The start of the boat has been timed on a Saturday evening. Here I do not write more about my trips, because I gave a detailed account in the book Canned Roaddust.
Between the trips the boat stopped at the usual place, and my wife came to me. It was in August, the weather was fine and we had so much to make up for. During the trip I had written at least five letters, but had not received any. It has not been her fault. When in Vienna on the downriver trip I grumbled for the lack of mail, my boss said:
"Be patient. You will get it next time. The sailor in love has got a basketful of them.” Yes, he has, and they all were 3 months old. Exactly, she has written me many and the next time in Vienna I have got them.
But now we could speak live and do much more. Her pregnancy was confirmed, the permission for the surgery given and the date of it known. We were terribly sorry for this necessity and decided not to repeat this mistake any more. The two days of waiting has not been too long, worse still, she could stay with me only one day.
Floating downriver in our second trip the boat has got the instruction to continue her route to the capital. It meant, the boat would be going on a lower-Danube assignment.
In the capital, a short stay has been allowed to enable the crew to travel home, before the long stay downriver. My wife had to be spared after the surgery and so, our stay together has been very tender. She brought me other news, I had been invited to take my diploma. In my absence she would have to go to the ceremony. Her sister was to get the new apartment in the next month, then it would be time for her to move in. Her brother and his girl-friend had been engaged. When I had to leave her standing on the bank at last, I felt terribly lonely.
We have taken a lot of barges behind us. This time they were our towage only to the cataracts. We had an assignment to serve there for six weeks, actually we did it for eight weeks. And then we would be sent not home, but down to Reni again, that time already belonging to Ukraine.
At the end of October at last we got the instruction to take the barges waiting for a downriver trip at the lower end of the cataracts and tow them to Reni. Load would be again iron-ore. On route our second officer, who has been doing also the work of radio operator, got a message about the power take-over in the Soviet Union. We had to learn a new name that was Brezhnev. Anyway, we would have almost 20 years to memorize it.
Timing has not been very good for our arrival at Reni. There was a 3-day break because of their November 7 holiday. Even there was an assembly of celebration and the crews from all the boats have been invited to it.
For my forty days below the cataracts, I have taken all my allowance in Soviet currency. It has been a stupid thing, taking into account my experiences two years before. I spent it buying an electric heater and a guitar. Both would end up elsewhere within the family. I was coming back from town in the evening darkness with the characteristic Russian packages, when a uniformed man stopped me and asked about my shopping. It was astonishing for me, but I showed him my goods. Of them only their prices interested him. He took me into his office, wrote down the sum I told him I had got, and made a calculation. Sixty kopeks were missing – I forgot to tell him I took a bag of candy, too –, but it was only his first problem. His bigger one was: did I tell the truth about the origin of my money, or might I have changed it on the black market.
I was instructed to wait in the office. The situation was similar to that at the frontier guard barracks three years before. Well, you are able to break rules by doing nothing wrong, in case, the rules are wrong. It is the same case, how millions of my compatriots became strangers on their own land after World War I, by the wrong decision of the winners to shift large pieces of lands from one country to another.
Half an hour passed, and the man returned. He told me everything was in order, I was allowed to leave. “Vy svobodny (You are free).” No apologies, of course. A good lesson about Soviet rules and Russian spirit.
The day to arrange our towage came at last and we left for home. We have reached our capital in a record of two weeks. The tug has been laid on the pontoon of the popular pub on the embankment, and we all have been allowed to get one day off. It was dawn, still dark and raining in the end-of-November weather. I knew from the latest letters of my wife that she had moved into the rented room. With some difficulty, I have found the house.
The owner of the house has been just leaving for work. He recognized me and let me in. The door of our room has been closed, I knocked. A sleepy voice called and I told her it was me. A rush could be heard, then the door opened and she was on my breast. I pushed her in and closed the door.
"Oh, at last”, she sighed between two kisses. She had only a nightshirt on.
Suddenly she left me and began to wipe up something from the floor. She had her time and suddenly it started to flow.
The room has been a small one at the corner of the house. It was eight by thirteen feet. The smaller side faced the street, there was no window there. The only window we had on the longer wall looking out to the garden. Opposite the street we had the door going out to the corridor.
It has almost been empty. Beside a wire-mesh steel hospital bed and a chair, there was only a wardrobe and a stove. The latter has still been lukewarm, but the fire has burned out.
It was almost time for her to go to work, but we went into the bed to embrace and speak at least.