IT’S July 9. I wake up at 5.45am and clamber clumsily onto the deck and peer into the disquieting darkness. I had hoped an assemblage of stars would illuminate the sky and the sea, but the host is nowhere to be seen in the boundless blackness. The water is calm. It is raining softly, and my cheeks are wet. It feels strange, as if tears are streaming down from heaven.
Why do the celestials abandon the stage? Why the wave of sadness? Has a lover drowned in despair?
Then, I learn the awful answer. Off the port side, I make out the silhouette of a vessel listing badly. Now and then, thunderous explosions violently shake the ghostly ship and lift it from the water. Enormous red flames leap in all directions giving out a curious light to the surrounding sea, which seems to retreat in great terror. I hold on to the railings, cold and very afraid.
“Aye, lad. That’s poor Brazil. She is going down very soon to the kingdom of Neptune,” says a gruff voice behind me. I turn around and he stares at me. Gleaming eyes set in a gaunt face, crooked nose and little more than pencil lines as lips, a body as straight and thin as the mast, and a peg leg to boot. This Ahab-like creature is the captain of my boat. But is he also the Angel of Death?
“Do you want to know how it came to this evil moment?” he asks.
I nod, but my fearful heart says “no”.
He gives out a miserable croaking laugh as if to mock my apprehensiveness. “Aye, the Brits have the battles of Jutland and Trafalgar, the Americans go on and on about Midway and Leyte. Now the Germans can make merry for generations about the victory at Estadio Mineirao. I’ve never seen the likes of it, and I’ve been around for a very long, long time, boy.”
He gestured to some point in the vast sea. “Eleven there were in the German fleet that sailed into Belo Horizonte to meet the Brazilian men-of-war. See that narrow channel astern. That was where the first blow was struck.”
The morning is still very young, and darkness refuses to flee in most parts, but the mass of land that he is pointing at is beginning to emerge from the shadows. I discern it.
The captain continues: “The battlecruiser, C13 Muller, was lying in wait in that strait. Oh, what a fine testament to Teutonic power is she. None of the Brazilian destroyers were shadowing her. Hah! Not BNS S4 Luiz, not BNS S6 Marcelo.
“Now, lad. Listen closely to what happened just over an hour ago. I bore witness to it all. My eyes are old, but they be as keen as the owl’s in this accursed darkness.
0411: “I was sitting on this very deck when I saw Muller’s 12-inch guns light up like the devil’s fiery breath. The shells landed in Brazil, I know they did. I saw the flames.” The captain shrieks and swings his arms wildly in cruel excitement.
0423: “I observed Brazil limping out of the channel, without escort. Where were BNS S23 Maicon and BNS S13 Dante? But it was then, out of the seeming emptiness, that the old indomitable battleship C11 Klose came charging with her 18-inch guns sending a broadside that set Brazil fully ablaze.”
0425, 0426: “Brazil’s rudder must have given up the ghost. She was moving around in circles as if under some dastardly spell, and even if a gunner were blind he would have torn into her eventually. But something more dreadful came out of the water, the conning tower of the submarine, S18 Kroos. The serpent from the depths crept very near Brazil and spit two torpedoes into her.”
“Enough, I cannot endure this any more,” I yell at the old captain.
“But don’t you want to know about the three other assaults that wrung Brazil’s soul from her, that made so many millions weep?” he cries, then laughs again, hysterically.
“No! The moment of defeat has passed. Now is the time to grieve.” The rain continues to fall as I say this, as I sadly watch the fire consume Brazil, the one I so dearly loved an age ago.
The stars put on the veils of the widow,
The heavens shed tears of
sorrow,
Oh, Brazil, thy ‘death’ a bitter blow,
Will thou ever return to majesty’s glow?
I must awake from this
nightmare.