Bacacay

by Witold Gombrowicz

  It was a large three-masted brig with a capacity of at least four thousand tons—and, as I inferred from the arrangement of the sails and the design of the bowspit, was sailing to Valparaiso with a cargo of sprats and herring. Captain Clarke, an old sea dog with cheeks reddened by the wind, said straightforwardly:

  “Welcome aboard the Banbury, sir.”

  The first officer agreed for a small sum to let me have his cabin. But soon the seas began to swell, and I was beset by seasickness with an intensity I had never experienced before. I rendered to the sea all that I had to render, and I groaned, void as an empty bottle and unable to meet the demands of the element, which was insisting on more, more ... In a state of physical and moral torment, because of my unbearably empty stomach, I devoured my blanket, pillow, and window blind—but none of these objects remained inside me for longer than a second. I further devoured the bedsheets and the first officer’s underwear, which he kept in a trunk marked with the letters BBS—but that too stayed only temporarily in my innards. My groans passed through the cabin wall to the captain, who took pity on me and had a barrel of herring and a barrel of sprats rolled in. It was only toward the evening of the third day, after consuming three quarters of the barrel of herring and half the sprats, that I more or less came to, and the movement of the pumps that cleaned out the ship came to a halt.

  We were passing the northwest coast of Portugal. The Banbury was drifting at an average rate of eleven knots with a favorable headwind. The sailors were scrubbing the deck. I gazed at the rocky land of Europe as it receded. Farewell, Europe! I felt hollow, aseptic and light; only my throat hurt hellishly. Farewell, Europe! I took a handkerchief from my pocket and waved it a couple of times—at which a little man standing in a mountain ravine responded also with a wave. The ship moved briskly; water splashed at the bow and astern, and foaming billows rose as far as the eye could see.

  The deckhands, who up till this point had been scrubbing the fore-gangway, now began scrubbing the aft-gangway—their bent backs came close to me and I had to move out of the way. The captain appeared for a moment on the bridge and raised a moistened finger to gauge the speed of the wind. That same day, toward evening, a curious, as it were cautionary incident occurred that was related in some unspecified manner to my recent sickness: one of the sailors, a certain Dick Harties of central Caledonia, accidentally swallowed the end of a thin rope hanging from the mizzenmast. As a consequence, I believe, of the peristaltic action of his digestive tract he began abruptly to draw the rope into himself—and before anyone had noticed, he had risen up it to the very top like a cable car in the mountains, his mouth gaping terrifyingly wide. The peristaltic character of his digestive tract proved so powerful that it was impossible to pull him down; in vain did two sailors cling to each of his legs. It was only after long deliberations that the first officer, whose name was Smith, had the idea of applying an emetic—but here another question arose: how could the emetic be introduced into the digestive tract since the latter was completely blocked by the rope? At last, after even longer deliberations, it was decided to act solely on the imagination through the eyes and nose. At the officer’s order one of the deckhands shimmied up onto the mast and showed the patient a handful of severed rats’ tails on a plate. The poor fellow looked at them with bulging eyes—but when a small fork was added to the tails, he suddenly remembered spaghetti from his childhood years—and he slid back down to the deck so fast he almost broke his legs. This incident ought to have made me think, as, I repeat, it bore a certain analogy to my indisposition—it was not exactly the same, yet both cases involved feelings of sickness, with the difference that his case was of an absorptive, inward character, whereas mine was quite the opposite—outward in direction. There was a certain erroneous resemblance here, much as in a mirror—the right ear appears on the left side, though the face is the same. Aside from this, the rats’ tails also inclined one to reflection. Nevertheless, for the time being I did not pay sufficient heed to all this—nor to the fact that the ship and the backs of the sailors were not so foreign to me as they should have been, given the short time I had been on board.

  The next day, over lunch, I asked Captain Clarke and Lieutenant Smith about the ship and about prospects for the remainder of the voyage.

  “The ship is a good one,” replied the captain, puffing away at his pipe.

  “First rate!” confirmed Smith sarcastically.

  “And even if it weren’t first rate!” said the captain, surveying the expanse of waters with a proud and imperious gaze. “Even if it weren’t first rate! Let’s say there may be a crack here and there!”

  “Exactly,” said the first officer, looking at me antagonistically. “Even if it weren’t first-rate. Anyone who’s afraid of getting wet—is free to leave the ship whenever they wish. By all means!”—he gestured at the waves.—“The landlubber! God darn, that is, the ... godda ...”

  “Mr. Smith,” said the captain, jiggling his finger in his ear, “order the crew to shout three times: Long live Captain Clarke, hip hip hurrah!” We sailed on. The weather was favorable. The Banbury was plying an even course, its jib fully unfurled, amid steady waves. A sea cow appeared on the horizon. The sailors were now scrubbing the brass railings. They were being supervised by the second officer, while the captain gazed out of the window of his cabin, a toothpick in his mouth.

  In this manner several days passed, in the course of which I explored the ship. It was an old vessel, seriously gnawed by rats, huge numbers of which had bred below—in places the hull was completely eaten away, while the stern, as if out of spite, was filled with rat droppings. All in all it was reminiscent of the old Spanish frigates. The excess of rats I found far from delightful—these rodents have disagreeable habits; their fat tails are so long, the pointed tips so far away, that they lose their sense of the tail’s being connected with the rest of their body, as a consequence of which they are continuously prey to the ghastly illusion that they are dragging behind them a tasty piece of meat which is quite foreign to them and just right for devouring. This makes them very nervous. Sometimes they sink their teeth into their own tail, writhing with a squeal, as if mad with craving and in terrible pain. The arrangement of the rigging and the disposition of the tackle, like the design of the port side of the ship, entirely failed to meet with my approval—and when I saw the shape, dimensions, and hue of the ventilation pipes, I returned to my cabin with signs of great dissatisfaction and remained there till evening.

  The crew intrigued me. I shall pass over the stoicism with which the sailors would scrub clean a designated part of the ship, utterly unconcerned by the fact that they were tossing dirty water over the part they had previously cleaned. But each time I tore my gaze from the sea and turned it toward the ship, I was struck by some unexpected sight. Thus, for example, I would see four sailors sitting cross-legged on the deck and staring at their own feet. On another occasion I saw a couple of seamen staring at their own hands. In the evenings, I would overhear phrases chanted for hours on end:

  “Fish and sea birds feed behind the ship.”

  A great cleanliness prevailed on the vessel; soap and water were applied almost constantly. As I passed the sailors they would not raise their eyes—on the contrary, they would stoop all the more energetically over their work, such that I only ever saw backs bent like hoops. Yet I had the obscure impression that whenever I was engrossed in contemplation of the horizon, the deckhands would begin conversing, of course only if no officer was in the vicinity—on land I have seen street sweepers who in similar fashion would set aside their broom and sprinkler when no one was watching. The captain and the lieutenant mostly played dominos or, sitting opposite one another at the table, sang old music-hall songs from 1897—for navigation in a steady and favorable wind did not present any difficulties. Nevertheless, not everything on the ship ran like clockwork. The sailors’ backs were bent too low when I passed by; their spines seemed fearful, and their big coarse hands, which they moved sluggish
ly beneath them, too easily became swollen and suffused with blood. Encountering Smith as he strolled about the deck, I expressed my profound trust and faith that the crew of the Banbury was composed exclusively of good and brave fellows.

  “I keep them in line with this, sir,” replied the lieutenant, displaying a small gimlet in his sinewy hand and swallowing the profanities that multiplied on his tongue. “I keep them by the throat ... The hardest thing is not to give one of them a kick on the backside—you see how they stick them out. G ... d ...—and if I were to kick one of them, for equality’s sake I’d have to kick them all without exception, and that would be foolish, foolish by Chr ... I mean, the ...”—He shrugged, indicating he was at a loss. The astonishing feeling of his own helplessness in the face of extraordinary idiocy struck him like a blow to the head. The ship was moving forward, but monotonously, wave chasing after wave. On the bridge I spotted the faint little glow of a small pipe—the captain was striding to and fro in his mackintosh.

  “Sir,” he said, “do you know what it means to be the master of life and death? Hello there—Mr. Smith, come here a moment and take a look—ha ha ...”

  “Ha ha,” laughed Smith, looking at me with small bloodshot eyes—“Papa and mama .. By J ..., I mean, the ...”

  “Papa and mama,” the captain repeated, his shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter, “while here in fact there is no papa and mama! This is a ship, sir—a ship on the ocean! Far away from any consulates!”

  “By my granny’s granny,” Smith swore with relish.—“There’s no gingerbread or cakes here, nor any da ... I mean, the ... nothing but discipline. An iron fist and that’s the end of it—by ... keep them by the thro ...”

  “All right, all right, that’s enough now, that’s enough, Mr. Smith. After all, Mr. Zantman is a passenger ... But by the by, it wouldn’t do any harm to show him what a captain at sea really is, what the meaning is of that huge word composed only of fancies. Hee hee, Mr. Zantman probably imagines a captain in a braided cap and spotless pressed white pantaloons, like one sees on picture postcards. Think up something good, Mr. Smith.”

  He reflected for a moment, taking a few puffs at his pipe.

  “I could give orders, eh? If I order them to jump, they’ll jump,” he said. “Tomorrow and the day after.”

  “We already did that,” murmured Smith.

  “I’ll give orders—eh, Mr. Smith? I’ll order them to cut something off—to cut off an ear ...”

  “Perhaps,” said Smith, “but it’s a devilish tricky operation ... that is ... um ... Afterward. It’s problematic.”

  “Then I’ll give orders, eh? I can order anything! By three hundred devils—I’m the captain! Those devils will feel it . . . call one of the sailors here, Mr. Smith.”

  “The sailors all feel it already,” said Smith after a moment, in no hurry—he spat his gum onto the palm of his hand, looked at it closely and slipped it back into his mouth.

  “Choose the one who feels it the least,” Captain Clarke replied, growing impatient. “Quick—I want to show Mr. Zantman. Think something up, Mr. Smith. You’re rather unimaginative. Remember Baffin Island and the seal.”

  “I’m out of ideas,” said Smith, looking dully with the glazed pupils of a gin-lover. “Everything’s been used. They’re all used up, crumpled, covered in sh ... that is, I mean the ...”

  “You’re a fool, Smith,” said the captain, bridling. “Quickly—quickly—I need someone to feel me. Sometimes I have doubts. Sometimes I’m beset by doubts.”

  At this moment I made the mistake of moving—but my heel had begun to itch, and with me it is innate that a heel always itches when it shouldn’t.

  “Maybe Mr. Zantman could be used,” murmured Smith, eyeing me with undisguised malice.

  “You know, that’s not a bad idea,” exclaimed the captain. “We’ll use Mr. Zantman. He’s still fresh. He hasn’t felt me yet—he’ll be the best one to feel me on his own skin ... That’s right—that’ll be the simplest.”

  “If those are your orders, captain,” said Smith, and he took my hand warmly and squeezed it as if in a pair of pincers (I once had my hand shaken in just this way by a certain sergeant on land—first warmly, then very strongly)—“in that case we’ll knock together a big fishing pole, we’ll stick Mr. Zantman on a hook and with this bait we’ll catch a great deep-water fish. The fish will swallow Mr. Zantman, and we’ll slit open its belly and pull him out still alive, like Jonah. It’ll be a capital lark. You remember, captain, we got up to worse tricks in the Caribbean Bay—now that was the real thing—ho, ho . . .”

  “You’re a fool, Mr. Smith,” repeated the captain. “That’s all hogwash. What will he feel in this manner? He won’t feel a thing. Besides, he’s a passenger ... hmm ... But no violence, Smith, no violence. You’re a fool,” he roared; “be silent now, sir! I’ve had it up to here with your pranks and your jokes; to be honest, they make me puke! They don’t make an ounce of sense. I need him to feel, to feel Captain Clarke, to feel without a figleaf or any other extras, as the Lord God created him. I spit on pressed white pants and a captain’s braided cap! I want to take my clothes off, I want to be naked —you understand!—naked and hairy! But after all your idiotic Jonahs will Mr. Zantman recognize me, me, Clarke, when I take my clothes off?”

  “We’ve no need to stand on ceremony,” said Smith indistinctly through a mouthful of gum. “There aren’t any boarding-school girls here. Or any consulates!”

  “He won’t recognize me,” said the captain thoughtfully, “but what if I don’t allow him to fasten his garter? What if I don’t allow him to fasten his garter, Smith, and he goes around with his sock hanging down? What then? By hell! Then he’ll recognize me, then he’ll know who I am, because the calf is hairy! Dammit! These landlubbers with their white pants and their blue-and-white postcards forget that a captain’s calf is hairy. Quickly now, Mr. Zantman, did you hear? Quickly! Look lively, sir!”

  “Quickly, sir!” repeated Smith and clasped my hand.

  “That I like,” said the captain more calmly after a moment. “I see that with you one can come to terms, Mr. Zantman, even though you don’t sway as you walk. We had one landlubber here two years ago—he was a hopeless dunderhead. He had to be thrown off the ship and straight into the water, because when I ordered him—a trivial thing—to lift up the collar of his jacket, he squealed like a stuck pig, and we sailors, you know, are not fond of squealers.”

  “I think that’s enough now,” I said when Clarke had gone, leaving me alone with the lieutenant. “I think that it’s all right now to fasten the sock,” I added confidentially, hoping to resolve the matter amicably, in an approving and understanding tone of discreet tolerance for the captain’s unrefined eccentricities. “What?” responded Smith, stepping back at arm’s length from me. “What? What do you imagine? I’d advise you not to—I’d advise you not to, even when you’re alone in your cabin. What is this!” he thundered, so ominously it gave me gooseflesh—“Don’t you try to be funny! Godda ... Sh ...” I grew embarrassed and, flushing deep crimson, I stammered only: “Oh no, no, no ... I was merely ... that, that ... Not in the slightest! Far from it!”—just like on the tram once, and once at that picnic ...

  We sailed on; the weather was marvelous, the sky clear. Here and there amid the silver and emerald waves a ray or a swordfish appeared; a school of sharks sped along behind the stern, and tiny little fish flew above the water; but the ship was also moving ever more slowly, as if wondering whether it shouldn’t stop for good—while the crew, under the supervision of the tireless second officer, after washing the leeward side of the brig would carry their cleaning rags over to the windward side. The second officer was a flaxen-haired young man in his twenties, vigilant, expressionless and not given to familiarity. In essence he existed only pro forma, so that the first officer should be able to exist too. The captain and Smith spent whole days almost entirely in their cabin, since the sea was tranquil. Walking on deck I could see them through the p
orthole, sitting at the table and throwing small balls made of some substance—probably bread—at something or other. It seemed boredom was making itself felt rather strongly—at times they quarreled bitterly and poured invective on one another, and they themselves probably did not know what it was about. They also mixed cocktails with Bols liqueur and flavored their whisky with ginger root. From time to time, at a given signal the crew would begin to chant: “Fish and sea birds feed behind the ship.” Recently I had noticed that the sailors were performing bizarre movements with their torsos; specifically, as they bent over their rags they would suddenly lean on their hands, stiffen their legs and arch their backs, just like certain earthworms do.

  I did not, however, ask anyone for an explanation. I put it down as a “novel way to pass the time.” Truth be told, I generally avoided conversation, since I considered that the line of the mainspar twisted needlessly into a letter S. The letter S began one word that I had thought up myself and that I would have preferred not to know. In fact, it was not the mainspar alone—there were also other disagreeable shapes and outlines on the ship; it was cracked all over from the heat. And so it was not I who entered into conversation with Smith—but Smith who came up to me as I was leaning on the rail, and asked flat out if I did not know any good card games, or dicing games, or others—or if I didn’t have any puzzles to solve.

  First is father, second mother,

  While the third is yet another.

  “Earlier on we used to play dominos, old maid, snap, and jackstraws, and we would take turns at singing old songs from operettas. Then we’d look through the horse breeder’s calendar. For the last few days,” he said frankly, swallowing a variety of imprecations, “we’ve been throwing balls of bread at a deuced tiny little bug that we pulled out from under the cupboard. But we’re sick of it. Then (since we always sit opposite each other at the table) we started to fix one another, you know, sir?—stare at one another—to see who could hold out longer. And as we started to stare at each other, we also started to prick one another with pins—to see who could hold out longer. Now it’s hard for us to stop, and we’re pricking each other harder and harder. The captain strikes, then I strike, back and forth. Perhaps you could think something up—perhaps you know something good, Mr. Zantman. I’m pricked all over already.”