A Berth   A berth A place for six men to sleep, no more. One bunk for each of us. Two stacks of three. Herrings in a barrel. I was at the top. Betje was across from me on the other side, also on top. A small berth on a galleon. Somewhere around the year 1623. I was lying on my bunk. I could not get a wink of sleep. I saw myself lying there. I was thinking about my parents. Would I ever see them again? I was one of the youngest on board, together with Betje. We were determined to sail on the Narwal, no matter what the price. It was adventure we were looking for. And adventure is exactly what we found. A storm. Battles with the English and the Portuguese. But even more threatening now was the silence at night. Would everything be all right with Captain Heere and his ship? We just had to go with him, and only him. February, two years ago in Amsterdam at het Blauwhooft Bastion on the IJ. I can still see how we ran, even now. ‘Betje in front, with me running behind him. We are exhausted, gasping for air. The galleon of Wijnhoudt Heere. Such pomp and circumstance. God almighty, what a ship. A stern with decorated mermaids. Gold, blue and white. How many masts does it actually have? ‘Higher than the Schreiers Tower!’ If we still want to make it, we had better hurry. Captain Heere stands proudly on the bridge. He gives the orders around here. Sometimes it is possible to climb on board unnoticed. Betje is the fastest. He quickly unties a small sloop and calls out to me: ‘Why are you just standing there? Are we going or not? We drag the sloop past the gate, jump in and start rowing like mad. The sloop starts spinning around. Somehow we manage to get it on course, heading towards the Narwal. We manage to lay aboard. Straight away, we are boarded and lifted up onto the ship. ‘What’s yur name? Heere asked when we were brought to him. ‘Jacob.., Jacob Dik,’ I answered. I was afraid that we would be thrown off the ship again immediately. I had never seen him that close up before. He was my hero and role model. I was shaking in my shoes. That look in his eye, those bushy eyebrows, the frown on his forehead. ‘He looks right through you,’ I thought. ‘Do not think for one moment that I will turn around and go back because of you. Impossible. I will throw you off board at Pampus,’ Heere said, ‘Boatswain, tie these two up down in the hold, that will give them some time to think about what they’ve done.’ ‘Two stowaways on board!’ the boatswain yelled down below. Grins from the crew; to them we were just free galley boys, two nitwits who were still children. But Betje and I were on board. And that’s how it started. First we were stowaways and before we knew it, we were just classified as crew like the rest; age doesn’t matter on Captain Wijnoudt Heere’s ship. No one would live to a ripe old age here. That was a fact. How long had we been sailing now? For years. In 1621, we sailed out of Amsterdam. The galleon was equipped for privateering, loaded with cannons and ammunition, and on its way to faraway lands. I had to go; I really had no other choice. And neither did Betje. No wind for weeks, months, how long actually? I just lay there on my bunk. I simply couldn’t sleep. The ship rocked gently. Nothing to be done about it. We hardly ever saw Heere on the poop deck anymore. He stopped eating with us as well. He would just stand there, days on end, bent over a map. The boatswain said: ‘There are empty spots on that map.’ He would sit there at night, gazing at the stars for hours on end, making calculations with an instrument I had never seen before. The crew was uneasy and was starting to object more and more. ‘Heere has lost his way.’ And ‘Heere is going stark raving mad,’ they were saying. Time sometimes seems to pass like sand in an hourglass, but now it was dripping as slowly as molasses from a spoon. The galleon lay idle somewhere on an ocean. Motionless. Loneliness is a sailing ship without wind. We hadn’t seen land for months. We lay there rocking, slowly undulating. The rudder was creaking, the masts were creaking. The sails would snap now and then, and would then hang limply. Midsummer. Sweltering heat. The helmsman stood at the helm to prevent the ship, with its high stern, from spinning in circles. This ship was going adrift like a miserable little tub. It looked like a chicken, pecking at grain. With its rear in the air. We had probably been turning in huge circles for weeks. It was impossible to chart a course for the Narwal. The captain just kept walking the after-deck above his berth, pacing to and fro. He hardly spoke a word to anyone. The crew muttered and conspired. Many of those on board took ill. Those who died were given a simple burial at sea. No one wants to die like that. I did not think that we were lost. I went to Heere on the bridge. ‘Aye, aye, captain, everything is going as planned, just not enough wind, isn’t that so?’ I said. I had been on board for so long I figured I could afford to take some liberties. It had been a long time since I was a mere galley boy. Heere had noticed that I was smart, and quickly gave me more freedom. I would help the helmsman. I was allowed up onto the bridge. Sometimes he would even tell me new things. I learned a lot from him about privateering and navigation. From the bridge, I could watch how Heere and his men adeptly torpedoed an English ship in such a way that it did not sink immediately, thus allowing them time to transfer all of the valuable spoils. Now he was grumbling to me: ‘Privateering pays well, but we are going to discover new land here and build a stronghold. Did you see that pigeon on the forward deck recently? We’re not far from shore. I’m certain of it.’ Pigeons? I hadn’t seen a single pigeon. Sometimes, way high up in the sky, a lone albatross maybe. We did not see any land at all, and were just bobbing aimlessly on an endless sea. Heere was also starting to make a peculiar impression on me. ‘Does he think about his parents from time to time?’ I wondered. ‘Has he given ample consideration to the sailors?’ The protests began to increase. They wanted to mutiny, they had had enough. They were exaggerating, nothing was happening. Perhaps that was the problem. Wijnoudt Heere was an unusual man in every way, and had already taken many successful journeys. A real go-getter. He never came home empty-handed. The West India Company was founded just for this voyage. Heere was a sailor who was in search of flourishing colonies. A man who earned money for his city, not someone who stayed home to boast about his earnings. He was unquestionably surly, and even a bully from time to time. But every sailor was. If you did not possess these qualities, you could not survive. Heere had even more: he was also a businessman who would even turn to slave trading to earn a livelihood. A consummate pioneer. And that ship of his cost him a pretty penny. Without the Company, he never would have come this far! I already knew this about Heere before I came on board, and I inquired about it among the crew. Many of them did not even know him. Adventurers, just like Betje and I, but without baggage. Seamen who were easily incited to revolt, thanks to a lack of beer and gin. Heere was not troubled about them. I discovered that he was fully aware of the mood on board. He even used me to learn more. I would do the same if I were captain. One day we bumped up against a large dead fish with a spear in its belly. We sailed alongside of it. The crew’s reaction was one of fear. It was a spear with colored beads. Heere took the fish to the bridge and did not utter a word. The tension mounted. ‘Bumping around, hushed voices. It is night, a dizzying, starry sky above us. Heere is standing on the poop deck. The boatswain sneaks up on him from behind. Betje and I are sitting one deck below. We see it happen. ‘Captain, behind you!' I call out’. But Heere had obviously already seen him or perhaps he was even expecting him. ‘Man overboard!’ Rang out in a loud voice. The boatswain was gone. Heere walked past us and winked. I was lying in my bunk, the events replaying themselves in my mind. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with thoughts of the past, of the story of Jonas in the Whale. Was I just like Jonas on a great ship, adrift on the sea? Would we be spewed out again? I was frightened; the situation was getting more and more unreal. ‘Has Heere completely lost his mind?’ the crew asked me. I had only just come on board, and already I was an informant. Heere and his visions. But I knew that he was right: we are going to discover new land. I could feel it in my bones. The only question was when. I had the same dream often during this voyage. A foetus in the womb, a ship sailing on God’s waters. One night, I awoke suddenly: a great deal of commotion on deck. The men were running back and forth. The artillery was being readied. I woke up Betje. ‘Land ho!’ I bluffed. And it was true! At a distance of less than five hundred yards we saw green (trees, bushes, fields), snow-white sandy beaches. The mouth of a river, a bay. We saw hills and dales. Virgin territory, as far as the eye could see. The crew had already figured out that this was an area teeming with fish. Salmon everywhere, all around the ship. Once the men had readied everything and two sloops were hanging, ready for launch, the captain dutifully took the floor: ‘Men, the journey was long, the hardships difficult, but we have now entered better waters. We may not be the first to set foot on land here, but we are the best equipped expedition to do so. I would like to thank all of you, on behalf of myself and also on behalf of the West India Company.’ The sloops were then launched. ‘The sea is blue, the sky is gray, or the other way around: the sky is gray and the sea is blue,’ I thought. Sometimes, things don’t really change. This voyage did have a certain element of tediousness. But our perseverance was richly rewarded. I saw Heere standing on the bridge. His face was relaxed. The deep grooves in his forehead were gone. I was not imagining it: he was gay. I now recognized myself in the captain. He too was standing there like a young boy whose dream had become reality. I was proud of him. I had something more than just sheer admiration for Heere? A preference of man? No, not really; I had had enough of that in that stuffy ship’s berth. An 'outrageously sad ship’s berth of the oceans', is how Betje described it, and he could put things so beautifully now and then. I don’t smoke, but if I did, I would have gone up to the deck to light a Peter Stuyvesant. Adventure is something you never seek alone. Bert Bakker Bert Bakker made his debut in Hollands Maandblad (‘Waar gebeurd’, 1990). He has had his work published in the Frisian literary magazines Hjir and Farsk. In 2008, he won the second shared El Hijzra literature award (van Gennep, 2008). ‘Een scheepshut (A ship’s berth)’ was nominated for the 2007 Brandende Pen, a prize awarded by Lava for the best short story in the Netherlands (Lava 13.3). It has been translated into Frisian and appeared in his first collection of stories, Ien mei de dingen (Noordboek, Friese Uitgeverij, 2009). Bakker is 62, married, with one daughter. He is currently working on his new novel, ‘The publisher’. See also: http://www.mijnbestseller.nl Bert Bakker Westerdok 566 1013 BH Amsterdam 0031206277078 bertboulanger@mac.com http://www.bertbakker.biz