The Ordinary Seaman (11 page)

“OK,” said Capitán Elias. “Bueno, caballeros. I think we all deserve a party, no?” Then he pulled a wad of white cloth, like a fat handkerchief, from his back pocket, slowly unfolded it, and held a scissored square of bedsheet up for the crew to see:
EL BARBIE’S BAR
written in black marker across it. El Barbie, flattered and reddening, laughed loudly while Capitán Elias fastened the banner under the water tank on the high shelf at one end of the mess. He turned around and made a forlorn face, put out his hands, apologized for the lack of women, smiled, and then looked over at el Primero and said, “Mark, can you go and get
the beer now? A bottle of rum. Coke. Ice …,” and lifted one shoulder in a light shrug.

“Come on, Elias, it’s raining,” said Mark.

El Capitán looked at him coldly. “What the hell, Mark?” And still looking at him that way, he pulled out his wallet. “While you’re gone, I’ll tell them about the promotions—if you have no objection.”

“Great,” said Mark. And he went and took money from Elias, then left the mess followed by Miracle.

“Al Primero no le gusta la lluvia,” said Capitán Elias and asked if they’d ever heard of a seaman afraid of a little rain—no, Mark was just impatient to go and see his new chica, that was what it really was, these single guys, how they suffer, no? Capitán Elias was already explaining the promotions when they heard the Honda start up on the pier. The promotions were to make their labor even more efficient, to streamline the chain of command. As far as he was concerned, they all deserved to be promoted to
segundo oficial
—or even higher! But a crew of all second mates, that probably wouldn’t work out. So Cabezón and Caratumba were promoted to first and second engine room officers, respectively; Canario and Pínpoyo, first and second electricians. And El Barbie was named contramaestre, or bosun, in charge of overseeing the ordinary seamen’s deck work and communicating the officers’ instructions. They needed a purser, someone to keep a better record of the crew’s working hours and wages—Who was good with numbers? Elias wanted to know. When no one asserted such a talent, el Capitán posed a mathematical problem: A pig, a wolf, a sack of corn on a riverbank, and a farmer who can only transport one at a time across the river in his small canoe. If the pig is left alone with the corn, the pig will eat it; if the wolf is left alone with the pig, the wolf will eat the pig. So how do you get them all safely across? … Qué? El Capitán repeated the problem, but no one could solve it, the pig was always left alone with the corn or the wolf with the pig, and the crew, baffled and suspicious, wondered what el Capitán was up to now … Until Panzón’s lugubrious expression suddenly lightened and he said to take the pig first, mi Capitán, then bring the wolf but take the pig back
across
and leave it there, come back with
the corn, then go back for the pig. Capitán Elias told Panzón he was the purser and that he’d bring him a ledger book tomorrow (and, the day after the next, he did).

“The ordinary seamen,” Capitán Elias said, “should now consider themselves able seamen.” Because they’d certainly learned as much in three weeks on the
Urus,
he said, as they would in the year they’d need to spend working onboard any other vessel to qualify for able seaman certificates.

Capitán Elias paused a moment; perhaps he was waiting for Tomaso Tostado to lead another round of applause for the new “able seamen.” But it didn’t come. Most everyone was openmouthed—they were vulnerable to this, after all, aching for it, any dose of triumph, anything bright to write home about—until Tomaso Tostado’s hissed “So where are the certificates?” which apparently el Capitán didn’t hear, instantly opened a trapdoor under their brief surge of buoyancy. Then El Tinieblas, staring down, whispered between his raised knees, “And a raise? Más nada encima de nada?” and giggled weirdly. Capitán Elias, uncomprehending but suspicious, looked over and was apparently placated by the smiles he saw breaking out on the faces of the others seated near the tattooed former prisoner. He smirked back at them as if he too understood and felt himself equally entangled and fatalistically amused by this farce of “promotions” he was somehow being “forced” to perpetrate. But then he heard El Buzo from another corner of the mess suddenly singing, in English, with low, soft, perfectly inflected mimicry,
“Oh pirates, yes they rob I…,”
and when he looked over El Buzo glanced innocently away. Then everyone saw el Capitán’s pallor actually darken, and he held himself perfectly still for a moment, staring into some anger-letting void somewhere over El Buzo’s head, his lips pressed thin.

“I meant what I said,” Capitán Elias finally said, fiercely; but then he smiled sadly, his eyes softening. “Of course it can’t become official until you’ve served a year, I know that,” he said. “But I think we find ourselves in a situation far enough outside the norm that we can write our own rules, for now, and stand by them. So consider yourselves very able ordinary seamen. You deserve at least that much.”

Capitán Elias let that sink in a moment, and then he said, “You’re probably wondering why I didn’t name a segundo oficial,” and focused his gaze on Bernardo with what seemed skeptical warmth, mirth slowly seeping into his expression like water up through footprints on a beach. “I think you’ve already appointed yourself to that role, Bernardo,” he said. “But I’m afraid your work detail isn’t going to change. You’re el segundo oficial, at least until we sail and the real segundo boards. Of course, you’re still the waiter too.”

It was as if Capitán Elias had delivered the punch line to a very long, very straight-faced routine which had finally become pretty funny: for the first time since the meeting began, nearly everyone succumbed to laughter over the notion of the waiter being promoted to second mate. If the crew had felt confused by el Capitán’s esteem for El Barbie and his apparent assumption that they shared it, that seemed less baffling now in the context of el Capitán’s joke on the old waiter, which finally seemed as much a joke on himself as it was on all of them and this whole jodido ship. But Bernardo stared stonily at el Capitán and a moment later leaned over and muttered near Esteban’s ear, “Este niñote, qué pendejo es.” It wasn’t until days later, as they pondered the full meaning of the joke, that they suspected that Capitán Elias had actually begun his speech on the promotions in earnest, and then, sensing that his ploy—well meaning? deceitful?—was floundering, had simply changed course and improvised a comedy. By then the able ordinary seamen would be feeling fully ordinary again, the reality of their days too plainly what they were to be lightened by any new label.

Mark, rain-wet curls sticking to his forehead, came back, asked for help bringing his purchases up from the car: six six-packs of beer, a jug of Bacardi rum, paper cups, two plastic gallon bottles of Coca-Cola, two bags of ice, a carton of cigarettes, that was what Cebo and Roque Balboa carried into the mess. No limes.

The radio was turned all the way up. Esteban stayed sitting beside it well into the “party,” knees up, chewing his thumbnail, occasionally taking a drink of beer. There was a grumble of thunder, a loud crack of lightning nearby, rain like celestial debris. Rum, beer, tobacco smoke,
sweaty, steamy air, music, loud, boasting voices; Capitán Elias said he felt like he was back in one of those Amazon backwater cantinas, sort of place where everyone drinks to pass out, güeyes falling backwards off their chairs and splitting their heads open on the floor while bleary-eyed drunks stumble around tracking the blood all over; cockroaches as big as his foot… Later Bernardo, from where he stood with the others grouped around José Mateo listening to the cook’s ribald, rum-stoked stories, looked over at Esteban. Sometimes the chavalito just goes off, he thought, his heart going out to him. After three weeks he recognized the state all too well: Esteban relentlessly chewing his thumbnail, his burning, faraway stare aimed out over rocking knuckles, holding his breath inside himself and letting it out all at once through his nose, loudly, almost sputteringly, like an angry otter.

José Mateo, animated tonight for the first time in three weeks, was telling about the bule bars of Santos, Brazil. How you spent all night buying drinks and dancing and kissing and feeling up some splendid, big-assed, big-breasted puta, and then you got her back onboard and into your cabin and undressed her and, hijo de cien millones de putas, mi Capitán, she turns out to be a macho! But he never knew a more degenerate, vice-ridden putero than his friend El Peperami, radio operator on the
Tamaulipas.
Discovered his puta was a puto and decided he didn’t care, even told them all about it the next day, how he’d thought to himself, All the money I’ve already spent, all the time I put in, and here we are naked in bed and I’ve got a hard-on and I’m drunk, bueno, in love as in war, ni modo, every hole is a trench!

And then everyone laughing and repeating the punch line and some of the chavalones wrinkling their noses, shouting, “Nooo! Nooo! Ay no! Qué asco!”

El Barbie looked over at Esteban sitting by the radio on the floor and shouted, “Piri! Oye, Sandinista! Is that true, in love as in war, every hole is a trench?”

And Esteban gaped up at him.

“Is that what you piris do in the jungle, every hole a trench?”

“Qué?” asked Esteban, looking irritated and confused.

“Barbie,” said Bernardo. “Ya.”

“Este Estebanito, mi Segundo,” said El Barbie, a beer in one hand and a paper cup of ice and rum in the other, turning away, “you can’t joke around with him about anything.”

Capitán Elias was translating the cook’s story for Mark, who was sweating profusely like everyone else, his shirt completely unbuttoned. Mark took a step back from el Capitán as if he didn’t like it when he stood so close, as if el Capitán had been spraying his face with spittle, and said, “Uh-huh, I get it. Fucking-A!”

So it was strangely like all the other midvoyage shipboard drinking parties Bernardo remembered from twenty years before. Though it hadn’t turned violent yet, and probably wouldn’t so long as the officers were present. Stories like cooped up, alcohol-lathered bulls breaking through midvoyage monotony and nostalgia. Brothels and whores, brawls, clever escapades with contraband, screwy capitanes—does anything else of interest ever happen to real seamen? Wives sometimes, but wives don’t usually make for good shipboard stories. Despite himself and the persistent, sweat-stung throbbing of the bump on his head, Bernardo was enjoying it—he had happy and strange memories too, he wanted to tell a story too … Which one? Waking up in his cabin in a friendly port, sunlight streaming through the porthole, the screeches and ship-jostling knocks of derricks hoisting cargo and the shouts of stevedores, the harps and guitars of jarocho music playing somewhere and a faint trace of perfume infiltrating the muggy air of the cabin and raising an appetite like the smell of eggs and bacon frying and suddenly the knock on the door and a voice, “Mujeres! Quieres mujer?” announcing that the good-morning whores have boarded the ship … Or that stuck-up braggart, Capitán Yo Yo, who was bringing his wife and two teenage daughters (all capitanes, by the way, name their daughters for stars and constellations, did you know that, chavalos?) to see his ship, but the guard at the port gate thought they were putas and asked for a bribe, and Capitán Yo Yo began to beat the guard, who pulled out his pistol and shot Capitán Yo Yo in the belly in self-defense; Capitán Yo Yo died with the hot tears of Maia and Merope drip-dripping on his face
… El Tibio, whose gonorrhea got so bad his whole pene turned black and green and revoltingly leaky, and they were still a week from the nearest port, where doctors would undoubtedly have to amputate it, but the second mate took a band-saw blade from the machine shop, long, sharp, and thin, sterilized it, then drove it all the way down El Tibio’s urethra, gouging and twisting it around, serrating and scraping the diseased flesh out while El Tibio’s screams turned a whole ten-thousand-ton cargo freighter into a trembling, frightened niñita cringing in a corner … Entering the port of Hong Kong on a rainy night, the huge bow crushing a fishing sampan that couldn’t get out of the way, the brief screams of fishermen far below, the brittle clatter of smashed boat pulled by wash under the ship into the propeller; there was an accident in the engine room almost immediately after, a piston cylinder cover flew loose and smashed a Burmese oiler in the face, shattered both cheeks and the bone over his upper lip; the Burmese engine room crew and many of the Latino seamen became convinced that the ghosts of the Hong Kong fishermen had somehow climbed onboard and put a curse on the vessel; they wouldn’t work, the ship couldn’t leave port, their Greek officers even began beating some of them, until finally a resourceful “ship visitor” from the local port chaplaincy came onboard to help resolve the standoff, went away and came back with a Catholic priest and a Buddhist monk of some kind, and they conducted ceremonies to exorcise the vengeful spirits…

But Capitán Elias was telling a story about when he was master of the
Seal Queen
two years ago, bringing her into Yokohama. Ship traffic was really backed up, it was going to be a long wait outside the harbor, but the pilot boat had already come out to meet the ship, and the pilot had climbed up the drop ladder and was waiting, sitting on a couch in a corner of the pitch dark wheelhouse, when el Capitán went back up about three in the morning. Capitán Elias greeted the pilot in the usual manner, offered a cup of coffee, made small talk about the delay, was struck by the pilot’s polished English and highly feminine, somewhat lisping voice: Sounded like some pampered Oxford-Malaysian rubber-plantation-scion poof, if you know what I mean, voice like seductive
smoke in a long silk sleeve. The pilot’s a bloody maricón, he thought, a total fruit! Nothing against, you know, but a harbor pilot? Usually you expect gruff retired captains, or inbred union types with the bearing of New York cops. He thought it was pretty humorous, was all. He couldn’t see the pilot’s face in the utter dark of the wheelhouse, what with the polarized windows and all, just a faint glow of black hair, a white shirt collar protruding over zipped black windbreaker. He went out onto a bridge wing to have a smoke, count the lights of ships ahead. The pilot came out a moment later. Now, with a little moonlight, he could see the pilot, and you know what?