The Ordinary Seaman

by Francisco Goldman

  “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 onb
oard 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?

  The pilot was a young woman. He actually gasped. And she smiled at him disapprovingly, as if she knew what he’d been thinking back there in the wheelhouse. This really cute Japanese girl, just adorable, sexy face! Her hair short like this, just under her ears, the long nape of her neck deliciously bare. She was even wearing a black necktie. Yoriko was her name. Only twenty-four. A capitán’s daughter, her father now retired from merchant ships and working as a pilot himself. I shit you not, güeyes. Yoriko had wanted to be a ship capitán too, studied in England, graduated from the world’s best nautical academy. But it’s still hard for a woman to become a shipmaster; there are only a few in all the world! Though she’d passed all exams, was technically Capitán Yoriko. Her father had gotten her into the pilots’ association, the pay was great, better even than what most shipmasters make, and she was playing in a rock band too. Do you like sports? she asked. No, I hate sports. Do you like rock and roll? Uh-huh, I certainly do. You’re young to be a master. You’re young to be a harbor pilot. She pulled a tangerine from her pocket, wrapped in a white napkin. They shared it. Did you see any whales? she asked. No, not this trip. Hombre, you know? It was just in the air, they both knew. This rapidly accelerating and naughty air of infatuation. There was no one in the wheelhouse but the helmsman and el tercero, sleeping at the charts table—but el Capitán, already fantasizing about what might be about to happen, went and slid the door shut anyway. You know, he’s a believer in fidelity, he doesn’t mess around on his wife. And he’ll tell them all something, he’s not really very good at sex. Don’t laugh, he’s serious, how many of you think you’re really good at it anyway? He enjoys thinking about sex, can easily spend a whole day in bed like when he has the grippe or something doing absolutely nothing but thinking about sex, but when he actually has to do it?—well, hardly ever, güeyes. But el Capitán and his wife love each other, so it’s different. But whenever he’s with anyone else he feels a certain insecurity, always thinks he can see in her face that she’s thinking of someone who does it much better. He’s kind of repressed, is what it is. Let’s say he’s just another repressed pervert, a stress on the repressed, OK? Oh, you don’t believe! His limbs are too long, takes his blood too long to get from one end of him to the other, maybe that’s what it is. So he doesn’t move around much. It takes him a long time to get hot. His hands are always cold, they don’t like that. Go ahead, pinche güeyes, laugh! He’s not ashamed of it. But there on the wing, el Capitán began to kiss Capitán Yoriko. Unzipped her windbreaker, undid her tie, unbuttoned her shirt. She undid his belt. Blew him awhile. Hombre! Pulled her own jeans down wriggling. They sank to the floor of the wing. Wrestled around pulling off boots. Right there, they did it. In short, fucking great, her on top, him looking up at her face, and the stars …—But short. Spontaneity, romance, and lust all in one rocket booster leaving one short vapor trail in the sky. Done. She lay on top of him a long time, though, whispering and nibbling. Finally got up without a word, pulled on her pants, her boots. He could have gone to sleep right there. But he got up too, went into the wheelhouse, brewed a pot of coffee. When he came out with the coffee, it was as if nothing had happened; they sipped the coffee, smoked, leaned against the bridge wing’s flank, talked ship talk a bit. He figured she hadn’t liked it as much as he had after all. Oh well, what else was new? He’d treasure the memory anyway, always be grateful to Capitán Yoriko the harbor pilot. It was dawn before the ship was ready to move, when he turned the ship over to Yoriko and she expertly guided the Seal Queen through the channel, calling out commands in her lisping and sophisticated, sweet voice. And when the pilot’s boat came out to pick her up, she went down, told them she’d be staying onboard, came back up into the wheelhouse, and stood beside el Capitán, just her arm lightly touching his. Softly told him she had the next two days off. A miracle. They hardly left his capitán’s quarters except to dine one night in the port, rented some Japanese porno for his VCR, bought wine—that’s right, Japanese porno, muy sofisticado y sucio, güeyes. Had pizza and sushi delivered to the ship. Fell in love with her, he most definitely did fall in love with her. Promised to see her again. Never did, of course. Bueno, así fue, caballeros, Capitán Yoriko, qué mujer! Totally unforgettable couple of days, really. Well, you know how it is, he’s married. Loves his wife. Loves her. Absolutely loves her.

  Capitán Elias, with a funny, almost rueful twist to his lips and a shy-seeming softness in his eyes, stiffly basked in smiles warm with alcohol and astonished admiration—even Bernardo, who’d always known el Capitán was perverse but had never suspected a timid perversity that could be revealed so ingratiatingly, felt oddly won over by his revelations and story. And though Elias had told his story in Spanish, Mark, swaying slightly, approached him with his hand out, and el Capitán lightly clapped his own hand down on it.

  “Yoriko, huh?” said Mark, and he chuckled.

  “Yoriko,” said Capitán Elias, with a nod.

  “Brill, huh?”

  “Definitely brill, Mark.”

  “Fucking-A, Elias! You’re too much!” el Primero grinned drunkenly, and el Capitán suddenly scowled and turned away.

  Then Bernardo told his story about being on a ship sailing from Istanbul carrying, among its cargo, hundreds of crates packed with bagged, red-dyed pistachio nuts. “Chavalones, the crew couldn’t keep their hands off those pistachios. The whole crew addicted! Sneaking down into the hold at every chance, ripping open crates and bags, stuffing their pockets with pistachios. All these marineros macho going around all day with their fingers and lips colored bright pink with pistachio dye!”

  Mark loved that story more than anyone else, laughed until he had to go and lean sluggishly against the bulkhead, eyes squeezed shut, laughing as if surrendering to an invincible tickler.

  Later Esteban looked up and saw Mark drunkenly swaying, grinning goofily at Bernardo, and shouting, yet again, “Pink lips and fingers! Muy funny, man!” Esteban took a drink from his warmed beer. Cebo was using a broom to sweep water out the mess door. El Capitán and others were gathered now around El Tinieblas, who’d taken off his shirt and was showing off and telling about his prison tattoos; from where Esteban sat, in the umbral corner outside the lamp’s dim, coppery glow, he could see a Mickey Mouse waving a white-gloved hand from the dark, thin flank just under El Tinieblas’s rib cage, among all the other images and symbols tattooed all over him. And José Mateo pulling up his shirt to show the marinero tattoo on his chest: helmsman at the spoked wheel, Jesucristo with one hand on the helmsman’s s
houlder and pointing the way ahead with his other.

  And Esteban went back to thinking about la Marta and the horrible day a few months ago when he’d taken a bus from Corinto to León for the Juventud Sandinista commemoration in front of her house on the first anniversary of her death. Marta Llardent—Presente! Honor to the revolution’s immortal dead. Verdad? Ni verga. La Marta. There was a small band of musicians in green fatigues and black gloves marching up and down in front of her house, and a girl in a silvery drum majorette’s uniform, her baton clumsily twirled in black-gloved fingers too, and a bass drummer who took big, high steps and pounded out the rhythm and turned smartly on his heel in the steamy mud to march yet again past the big pink stucco house which took up half the block. Marta and Amalia’s parents and little brother Camilo didn’t even come out to watch, windows shuttered behind iron bars, door closed; up and down the uniformed musicians marched. And then, at the end of her street, at the muddy edge of a grassy lot with some tall jicaro trees in it—parakeets teeming in upper branches, which shone lollipop green in the last light of the sun evaporating into a graying sky; the excremental stench of split-open jicaros rotting on the ground—they planted a small boulder painted red and black, MARTA LLARDENT in white, BON 77-65, her volunteer battalion, and the date, there to remain for ever and ever, like an infected eye staring up at the sky, open to sun and rain, pissing dogs and drunks. Her sister still vegetating in the military hospital in Managua a year later, though soon to be sent to Cuba for more operations, rehabilitation. Her parents, who wouldn’t come out or watch and who had no interest in the boulder; they would have been my in-laws, who knows, maybe they’d even be abuelos by now. We’d be living in León, I was going to try to start university, and she was going to work and finish her studies part-time … Y qué? Speak to me, Martita … What am I supposed to feel? What do I owe you? Why this nothing inside?