Free The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin

traveller. But what does the journey not afford the reader? When else is he so focussed on reading that he can feel with some assurance the existence of his hero intermingled with his own? Is his body not the shuttle which, in keeping with the rhythm of the wheels, tirelessly pierces the warp – the hero’s book of fate? One did not read in the stagecoach and one does not read in the car. Reading is as related to rail travel as stopping at train stations is. As is well known, many railway stations resemble cathedrals. We, however, want to give thanks to the movable, garish little altars that an acolyte of curiosity, absentmindedness and sensation chases past the train screamingly – when fora few hours, snuggled into the passing countryside, as though into a streaming scarf, we feel the shudders of suspense and the rhythms of the wheels running up our spine.
    â€”
    Translated by Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie and Sebastian Truskolaski .
    First published in Literaturblatt der Frankfurter Zeitung , 1 June 1930; Gesammelte Schriften IV , 381–3.

CHAPTER 29
The Voyage of The Mascot

    Hero With Wings (Held mit Flügel) , 1905.
    T his is one of those tales that one gets to hear out on the sea, for which the ship’s hull is the proper soundboard and the machine’s pounding is the best accompaniment, and of which one should not ask whence it hails.
    It was, so my friend the radio operator recounted, after the end of the war, when some ship owners got the idea of bringing back to the homeland the sailing vessels and saltpetre shipswhich had been caught off guard in Chile by the catastrophe. The legal situation was simple: the ships had remained German property and now it was just a matter of readying the necessary crew in order to re-commandeer them in Valparaiso or Antofagasta. There were plenty of seafarers who hung around the harbours waiting to be taken on. But there was a small snag. How was one to get the crew to Chile? This much was obvious: they would have to board as passengers and take up their duties upon arrival. On the other hand, it was equally obvious that these were people who could hardly be kept in check by the kind of power that the captain ordinarily wields over his passengers, especially not at a time when the mood of the Kiel uprising still lingered in the sailors’ bones.
    No one knew this better than the people of Hamburg, including the Baton of Command of the four-masted sailing ship The Mascot , which consisted of an elite of determined, experienced officers. They recognised that this journey could come at a great personal cost. And because wise men plan ahead, they did not rely on their bravery alone. Rather, they attended closely to the hiring of each member in their crew. But if there was a tall chap among the recruits whose papers weren’t completely in order, and whose physical state left much to be desired, then it would be overly hasty to blame his presence solely on the commander’s negligence. Why this is will become clear later on.
    They were barely fifty miles out of Cuxhaven when certain things became evident that bade ill for the crossing. Upon deck and in the cabins, even on the stairs, from early until late, there were meetings of all kinds of associations and coteries, and by the time they were off Helgoland, there were already three games clubs, a permanent boxing ring and an amateur stage, which was not recommended for sensitive folk. In the officers’mess, where, overnight, the walls had been decorated with explicit drawings, men danced the shimmy with each other every afternoon, and in the stowage an on-board exchange had been established, whose members traded dollar notes, binoculars, nude photos, knives and passports with each other by torchlight. In short, the ship was a floating ‘Magic City’ and – even without women – one was tempted to say that all the delights of harbour life could be produced out of thin air or, as it were,