‘You’re leaving the ship?’ ‘Yup, we’re off this very day.’ ‘But what for? Don’t you like it?’ ‘Well, it’s circumstances really, it’s not always whether you like something or not that matters. Anyway you’re right, I don’t like it. You’re probably not serious about saying you could become a stoker, but that’s precisely how you get to be one. I’d strongly advise you against it myself. If you were intending to study in Europe, why not study here. Universities in America are incomparably better.’ ‘That may be,’ said Karl, ‘but I can hardly afford to study. I did once read about someone who spent his days working in a business and his nights studying, and in the end he became a doctor and I think a burgomaster, but you need a lot of stamina for that, don’t you? I’m afraid I don’t have that. Besides, I was never especially good at school, and wasn’t at all sorry when I had to leave. Schools here are supposed to be even stricter. I hardly know any English. And there’s a lot of bias against foreigners here too, I believe.’ ‘Have you had experience of that too? That’s good. Then you’re the man for me. You see, this is a German ship, it belongs to the Hamburg America Line, everyone who works on it should be German. So then why is the senior engineer Rumanian? Schubal, his name is. It’s incredible. And that bastard bossing Germans around on a German ship. Don’t get the idea’ – he was out of breath, and his hands flapped – ‘don’t you believe that I’m complaining for the hell of it. I know you don’t have any influence, and you’re just a poor fellow yourself. But it’s intolerable.’ And he beat the table with his fist several times, not taking his eyes off it as he did so. ‘I’ve served on so many ships in my time’ – and here he reeled off a list of twenty names as if it was a single word, Karl felt quite giddy – ‘and with distinction, I was praised, I was a worker of the kind my captains liked, I even served on the same clipper for several years’ – he rose, as if that had been the high point of his life – ‘and here on this bathtub, where everything is done by rote, where they’ve no use for imagination – here I’m suddenly no good, here I’m always getting in Schubal’s way, I’m lazy, I deserve to get kicked out, they only pay me my wages out of the kindness of their hearts. Does that make any sense to you? Not me.’ ‘You mustn’t stand for that,’ said Karl in agitation. He had almost forgotten he was in the uncertain hold of a ship moored to the coast of an unknown continent, that’s how much he felt at home on the stoker’s bed. ‘Have you been to see the captain? Have you taken your case to him?’ ‘Ah leave off, forget it. I don’t want you here. You don’t listen to what I say, and then you start giving me advice. How can I go to the captain.’ And the stoker sat down again, exhausted, and buried his face in his hands. ‘But it’s the best advice I know,’ Karl said to himself. And it seemed to him that he would have done better to fetch his suitcase, instead of offering advice which was only ignored anyway. When his father had given the suitcase into his possession, he had mused in jest: I wonder how long you’ll manage to hang on to it for? And now that expensive suitcase might already be lost in earnest. His only consolation was the fact that his father couldn’t possibly learn about his present fix, even if he tried to make inquiries.