Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (2 page)

The story, divided into installments, ran for fourteen consecutive days. At first the government applauded the literary consecration of its hero. Later, when the truth began to emerge, it would have been politically dishonest to halt publication of the series: the paper’s circulation had almost doubled, and readers scrambled in front of the building to buy back issues in order to collect the entire series. The dictatorship, in accordance with a tradition typical of Colombian governments, satisfied itself by patching up the truth with rhetoric: in a solemn statement, it denied that the destroyer had been loaded with contraband goods. Looking for a way to substantiate our charges, we asked Luis Alejandro Velasco for a list of his fellow crewmen who owned cameras. Although many of them were vacationing in various parts of the country, we managed to find them and buy the photographs they had taken during their voyage. One week after the publication of the series, the complete story appeared in a special supplement illustrated with the sailors’ photographs. Behind the groups of friends on the high seas one could see the boxes of contraband merchandise and even, unmistakably, the factory
labels. The dictatorship countered the blow with a series of drastic reprisals that would result, months later, in the shutdown of the newspaper. Despite the pressure, the threats, and the most seductive attempts at bribery, Luis Alejandro Velasco did not recant a word of his story. He had to leave the Navy, the only career he had, and disappeared into the oblivion of everyday life. After two years the dictatorship collapsed and Colombia fell to the mercy of other regimes that were better dressed but not much more just, while in Paris I began my nomadic and somewhat nostalgic exile that in certain ways also resembles a drifting raft. No one heard anything more about that lone sailor until a few months later, when a wandering journalist found him seated behind a desk at a bus company. I have seen the photograph taken of him then: he had grown older and heavier, and looked as if life had passed through him, leaving behind the serene aura of a hero who had had the courage to dynamite his own statue.

I have not reread this story in fifteen years. It seems worthy of publication, but I have never quite understood the usefulness of publishing it. I find it depressing that the publishers are not so much interested in the merit of the story as in the name of the author, which, much to my sorrow, is also that of a fashionable writer. If it is now published in the form of a book, that is because I agreed without thinking about it very much, and I am not a man to go back on his word.

G. G. M.

Barcelona, February 1970

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H
ow
M
y
S
hipmates
D
ied at
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ea

On February 22 we were told that we would be returning to Colombia. For eight months we had been in Mobile, Alabama, where the electronic equipment and gunnery of the
Caldas
were being repaired. While on liberty we did what all sailors do ashore: we went to the movies with our girlfriends and afterward met at a bar in the port, the Joe Palooka, where we drank whiskey and sometimes started brawls.

My girlfriend was named Mary Address, and I met her through another sailor’s girlfriend after I had been in Mobile for two months. Mary had some fluency in Spanish, but I don’t think she ever understood why my friends called her, in jest, “María Dirección.” Each time we had shore leave I took her to the movies, although she preferred going out for ice cream. With my half-English and her half-Spanish we could just about make ourselves understood,
but we always did understand each other, at the movies or eating ice cream.

There was only one time I didn’t go out with Mary: the night we saw
The Caine Mutiny
. Some of my friends had heard it was a good movie about life aboard a minesweeper. That was the reason we went to see it. The best part of the movie, however, wasn’t the minesweeper but the storm. We all agreed that the thing to do in a situation like that was to change the vessel’s course, as the mutineers had done. But none of us had ever been in a storm like that one, so nothing in the movie impressed us as much as the storm did. When we returned to the ship that night, one of the sailors, Diego Velázquez, who was very impressed by the movie, figured that in just a few days we would be at sea and wondered, “What if something like that happened to us?”

I confess that the movie also made an impression on me. In the past eight months, I had grown unaccustomed to the sea. I wasn’t afraid, for an instructor had shown us how to fend for ourselves in the event of a shipwreck. Nonetheless, the uneasiness I felt the night we saw
The Caine Mutiny
wasn’t normal.

I don’t mean to say that from that moment I began to anticipate the catastrophe, but I had never been so apprehensive before a voyage. When I was a child in Bogotá, looking at illustrations in books, it never occurred to me that one might encounter death at sea. On the contrary, I had a great deal of faith in the sea. And from the time I had enlisted in the Navy, two years before, I had never felt anxious during a voyage.

But I’m not ashamed to say that I felt something like fear after seeing
The Caine Mutiny
. Lying face up in my bunk, the uppermost one, I thought about my family and
about the voyage we would have to make before reaching Cartagena. I couldn’t sleep. With my head resting in my hands, I listened to the soft splash of water against the pier and the calm breathing of forty sailors sleeping in their quarters. Just below my bunk, Seaman First Class Luis Rengifo snored like a trombone. I don’t know what he was dreaming about, but he certainly wouldn’t have slept so soundly had he known that eight days later he would be dead at the bottom of the sea.

My uneasiness lasted all through that week. The day of departure was alarmingly close, and I tried to instill some confidence in myself by talking to my mates. We talked more insistently about our families, about Colombia, and about our plans for our return. Little by little, the ship was loaded with the gifts we would take home: radios, refrigerators, washing machines, and stoves. I had bought a radio.

Unable to shake off my worries, I made a resolution: as soon as I reached Cartagena I would quit the Navy. The night before we sailed I went to say goodbye to Mary. I thought I would speak to her about my fears and about my resolution. But I didn’t, because I had promised her I’d come back, and she wouldn’t have believed me if I told her I had decided never to sail again. The only person I did tell was Seaman Second Class Ramón Herrera, who confided that he, too, had decided to leave the Navy as soon as we reached Cartagena. Sharing our misgivings, Ramón Herrera and I went with Diego Velázquez to have a whiskey and bid farewell to the Joe Palooka.

We thought we would have one whiskey, but we ended up having five bottles. Practically all our girlfriends knew we were leaving and they decided to say goodbye, get drunk, and cry to show their gratitude. The bandleader, a
serious fellow who wore eyeglasses that made him look nothing like a musician, played a program of mambos and tangos in our honor, thinking this was Colombian music. Our girlfriends wept and drank whiskey at a dollar and a half a bottle.

Since we had been paid three times that week, we decided to raise the roof. Me, because I was worried and wanted to get drunk. Ramón Herrera, because he was happy, as always, and because he was from Arjona and knew how to play the drums and had a singular talent for imitating all the fashionable singers.

Shortly before we left, a North American sailor came up to our table and asked permission to dance with Ramón Herrera’s girlfriend, an enormous blonde, the one who was drinking the least and crying the most—and she meant it! The North American asked permission in English and Ramón Herrera shook him, saying in Spanish, “I can’t understand you, you son of a bitch!”

It turned out to be one of the best brawls Mobile ever had, with chairs broken over people’s heads, radio patrol cars and cops. Ramón Herrera, who managed to throw a couple of good haymakers at the North American, went back to the ship at one in the morning, singing like Daniel Santos. He said it was the last time he would go aboard. And, indeed, it was.

At three in the morning on the twenty-fourth, the
Caldas
weighed anchor at Mobile, bound for Cartagena. We were all happy to be going home. And we were all taking along gifts. Chief Gunner’s Mate Miguel Ortega seemed happiest of all. I don’t think another sailor was ever as prudent as Miguel Ortega. During his eight months in Mobile he hadn’t squandered a dollar. All the money he got he invested in presents for his wife, who was waiting
for him in Cartagena. As we boarded that morning, Ortega was on the bridge, talking about his wife and children, which was no coincidence, because he never talked of anything else. He had a refrigerator, an automatic washer, a radio, and a stove for them. Twelve hours later, Ortega would be stretched out in his bunk, dying of seasickness. And twenty-four hours later, he would be dead at the bottom of the sea.

When a vessel weighs anchor, the order is issued: “Service personnel, to your stations.” Everyone is supposed to remain at his station until the ship has left port. Standing quietly at my station in front of the torpedo tubes, I watched the lights of Mobile fade into the mist, but I wasn’t thinking of Mary. I thought about the sea. I knew that on the following day we would be in the Gulf of Mexico, and at that time of year it was a dangerous route. Since dawn I hadn’t seen Lieutenant Jaime Martínez Diago, second in command and the only officer to die in the catastrophe. He was tall and husky, a taciturn man whom I had seen on very few occasions. I knew that he was a native of Tolima and a fine person.

But that morning I did see First Warrant Officer Julio Amador Caraballo, a tall, well-built man, who passed by me, looking at the fading lights of Mobile, and went off to his station. I think it was the last time I saw him aboard the ship.

None of the crew of the
Caldas
was more vocal about his delight at going home than Warrant Officer Elías Sabogal, the chief engineer. He was a sea wolf. Small, leathery,
robust, and talkative, he was about forty years old, and I think he had spent most of those years talking.

Sabogal had good reason to be happier than everyone else. In Cartagena his wife was waiting for him with their six children. He had seen only five of them, the youngest having been born while he was in Mobile.

The voyage was perfectly calm until dawn, and within an hour I had once again grown accustomed to sailing. To the east I could see the sun, just starting to rise. I wasn’t feeling uneasy then, merely tired. I hadn’t slept all night. I was thirsty and had bad memories of the whiskey of the night before.

At six the order was given: “Service personnel relieved. Midshipmen to your stations.” As soon as I heard the order I returned to quarters. In the bunk below mine, Luis Rengifo, sitting up, blinked his eyes in an effort to wake up.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

I told him we had just left port. Then I climbed into my bunk and tried to go to sleep.

Luis Rengifo was a complete seaman. He was born in Chocó, which was far from the sea, but he had the sea in his blood. When the
Caldas
put in to Mobile for repairs, Luis Rengifo was not among the crew. He was in Washington, taking a course in armaments. He was serious, studious, and spoke English as well as he spoke Spanish.

He had received his civil engineering degree in Washington. He had also married a woman from the Dominican Republic there in 1952. When the repairs to the
Caldas
were completed, he left Washington and rejoined the crew. A few days before we left Mobile, he told me that the first thing he was going to do when he arrived in Colombia was
to try to speed up the arrangements to have his wife move to Cartagena.

Since Luis Rengifo had not sailed for such a long time, I was sure he would be seasick. That first morning of the voyage he asked me, while he dressed, “Haven’t you gotten sick yet?”

I told him I hadn’t.

Then Rengifo said, “In two or three hours I’ll see you with your tongue hanging out.”

“That’s how
you’ll
look,” I said.

“The day I’m sick,” he replied, “the sea will get sick.”

Lying in my bunk, trying to coax myself to sleep, I remembered the storm. My fears of the night before were rekindled. Worried again, I returned to where Luis Rengifo was dressing and said, “Be careful, now. Don’t go letting your tongue punish you.”

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y
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ast
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inutes
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board the
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olf
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hip
”