Читать книгу The Captain's Quest - Hans Mateboer - Страница 4

When creating stories about life onboard cruise ships, it never takes much effort to find topics to write about. Strange things do happen all the time, and I only need to sit down for a few minutes with a guest relations manager or a dining room steward before I return to my office with a big smile on my face and a story in my head. Lots of things happen that don’t always directly involve me. That’s when I know it’s best not to accept the stories I hear at face value or to start writing them up immediately. It’s human nature for every person who passes it on to add a bit of personal fantasy, often to such extent that it’s unrecognizable to the original teller. However, I never have to embellish my stories because often enough what I see and hear is so fantastic that I am almost obliged, for believability’s sake, to understate rather than overstate the tale.

When people are removed from their usual environment, they often display the oddest behavior and ask the strangest questions. This probably is true for any industry, but must be even more so in the middle of the ocean where even the most basic things suddenly become unfamiliar. First-time cruisers can’t help but act like “fish out of water.” Questions like “Does this elevator go up or down,” or “Does the crew sleep onboard” are all too often used by cruise directors doing their end-of-the-cruise talk. This frequently results in quite a few red faces in the audience, knowing it was they who asked them. One actually has to be a bit careful when answering such questions. This applies to me, too, when being asked for the tenth time “Who is steering the ship when you are down here having dinner?” A few times I’ve made up something silly, only to discover going by the disappointed face in front of me, that the question was serious. But I must say, sometimes it’s really difficult to keep a straight face.

Then there are the old salts who have cruised so many times that by now they know it all. These passengers are not without their specific challenges either. While it’s impossible to recognize a guest as a frequent cruiser just by looking at them, we do invite our frequent travelers to special parties or dinners, and they often end up at my table. In most cases, having dinner with our guests is a delightful experience. At the end of the meal, I sometimes catch myself wondering how in the world we managed to have conversations about such strange and interesting subjects.

Of course, this is not complete chance. Before choosing someone for my table, the dining room manager checks out prospective invitees. The number of cruises a guest has taken doesn’t matter to me, and my manager knows that the only decisive factor is if the guests can carry on a good conversation with each other and have a life story to tell. There is nothing worse than having eight pairs of eyes looking at you, waiting for your feeble attempts to get some small talk going and they answer every remark with a shy “Yes” or “No.”

The dining room manager isn’t always successful in his endeavors to make the right selection. Take this particular dinner.

“You must be Norwegian,” the lady sitting next to me stated.

“Uhh, actually I’m...”

“My third husband was Norwegian. Best sailors in the world!”

“Well, I was born in…”

“I wouldn’t feel safe on any ship if the captain weren’t Norwegian.” She smiled at me. “I’m so pleased having you as a captain.”

I then decided it might be prudent to assume the Norwegian nationality, at least for the course of the dinner. After all, a pleased passenger is what we like to see. She then uttered a few unintelligible words and smiled again.

“I’m sure you understood what I was saying. My third husband taught me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I missed part of it. What does it mean?”

“It means that it’s snowing in the mountains.”

“It is?” My eyes widened. First, I couldn’t see the relevance of snow in the mountains while we were sailing in the hot Caribbean, and second, whatever she had said certainly wasn’t Norwegian.

She looked at me, clearly expecting me to say something clever in response. “I apologize. Maybe it’s difficult to understand. It’s the accent from Jutland, you know.”

I decided it would serve no purpose to bring up the fact that Jutland was in Denmark or that the words she had spoken weren’t Danish either, so it was high time to give some attention the couple on my left. The woman was a walking Tiffany’s based on the near-blinding sparkles coming from the jewelry she wore. Yes, jewelry I can appraise quite well, coming from repeated experiences with jewelers inviting my wife and me to have a close look at all kinds of diamonds they hope to peddle. Countless are the times that I’ve stared through those little magnifiers conveniently supplied by the storekeeper to assure me they’re not exaggerating.

It was a bit of a letdown to hear that the woman had nothing complimentary to report about the cruise. The food was horrible, of course, but I must have known that because I had ordered the same thing she had. With a sneer she disgustedly pushed her empty plate away. Worse than the food was the fact that her cabin steward had taken at least five minutes to get her a real down pillow. And then there was the wine selection…

I clicked my tongue, indicating how concerned I was with all these problems. Of course, I would look into all this, but quite frankly, it wasn’t easy to keep track of how many things didn’t meet her expectations. Secretly I glanced at my watch, and then looked over to the husband who seemed very eager to say something.

“Yes, sir. Sorry for ignoring you.” I prayed that he would be a bit more understanding of all these horrible errors and mistakes my poor crew had made. I was very glad that indeed he was, saying he hadn’t noticed any problems at all as he looked askance at his wife.

I sighed with relief, thinking he would be the savior of the evening. Indeed, this turned out to be true but in a rather different way than I anticipated.

In fact, he was very keen to get involved in the conversation and had been holding back on what he had to say much longer than was wise. Now, in his eagerness to share his thoughts, he didn’t wait until he finished a mouthful of food before speaking. This was a bit of a concern to me, because if some food went down the wrong way, I pictured myself doing a Heimlich maneuver on him. Then this concern turned into delight. When he spoke in my direction, little pieces of salmon mixed with broccoli landed halfway between him and me. And this halfway spot was exactly where his wife was sitting! She had noticed, too, and discreetly plucked the little particles from her glittery dress. With a strained smile on her face, she tried in vain to divert her husband’s attention from me toward the lady on his other side.

I had to devote some attention to the others at the table. That’s when I discovered that a guest across the table was a most interesting professor who was an expert on a subject so intricate that it never became entirely clear to me what exactly it was all about. He even went so far as to etch formulas and conclusions onto the white tablecloth with the tip of his knife. I nodded as if I understood everything he was talking about, but nothing was less true. Almost from the very beginning he had lost me. The steward who inconsiderately erased all the tablecloth equations with his breadcrumb remover saved me.

Somebody tugged the sleeve of my jacket. The lady on my left, not having talked with me for a whole five minutes had used that time constructively by remembering quite a few more things that had gone wrong during the cruise. This time I was prepared and included her husband in the conversation right away. Needless to say, this strategic action resulted in few specks of tiramisu being freely distributed on her dress. I fully admit that what I did was not very gentleman-like, but it did effectively reduce the number of issues she brought up, and I felt quite pleased with myself.

One lady near my professor had been trying to get my attention for a while, but it was a bit difficult to converse with people in a noisy dining room. Finally she took the plunge.

“I’ve been knitting a sweater for you!” she yelled. She was so loud that her voice could be heard throughout the dining room. Just about everyone stopped his own conversation and turned to see what this was all about. I wasn’t sure whether I had heard it right.

“I beg your pardon?”

“A sweater! I knitted one for you! Need to check the size now. Come over!” Her voice hadn’t diminished in volume and the general chatter in the dining room hadn’t started again either, so every person, except me of course, was very interested in further developments. She now reached below the table and from a big plastic bag came a bright yellow sweater. Even from a distance, anyone could clearly see that the art of knitting had somehow escaped her. The left side hung down a lot more than the right and I could see ends of thread sticking out everywhere.

“Come over here. Take that jacket off and try it on.”

“But this is my formal jacket and part of my uniform. I can’t…”

“Oh! Nonsense. Take it off!” she commanded.

“Well, what the heck?” I thought. “I’d better get this over with!”

A minute later I was covered in yellow. Sure enough, the left sleeve covered my hand, while the right sleeve ended at my elbow. Loud applause came from all around.

“Looks quite good,” she observed.

I completely agreed with her on one thing – the sweater was a rare piece of workmanship.

Shortly after that, we gave our good-byes and the evening came to a grateful close.

I looked all around the dining room, and I noticed that by some coincidence my manager was nowhere to be seen.