Pínpoyo, El Tinieblas, Roque Balboa, and blind-without-his-glasses El Faro have been wasting away from sniffing paint solvent fumes. (After the night Cebo punched him in the mouth, Canario never sniffed paint solvent again.) They don’t even try to hide it anymore. They walk around with their little soaked rags in their hands, holding them over their noses. They say it keeps them from feeling hunger and cold. It’s best just to ignore them. Because if you try to talk to any of them now, they talk such crazy mierda, even poor little El Faro, and it just makes everyone feel angry and sad.
The other day the wind brought Cebo a woman’s hair: one long, fine strand of blonde hair landed against his burly chest, he looked down and found it sleeping there. Before he became a pathetic ghost of his former self from paint solvent fumes, maybe that hair would have chosen Pínpoyo. Typical of a beautiful woman’s hair, to choose the handsomest cabrón left!—that was the chiste. That Cebo refuses to lend the hair to anyone is another one. He calls the hair La Gringita. Cebo keeps his gringita inside a piece of plastic wrap in his pocket and is always taking her out and looking at her, running her through his fingers, putting her in his mouth, pinching La Gringita just below her end to tickle the inside of his nostril with her, trying to make himself sneeze. Who knows what he does with her at night, ties her around his pija no doubt.
Esteban has friends at a restaurant in Brooklyn who send food sometimes, mainly beans to put over the rice, sometimes a couple of roasted chickens, or some pork. And la Joaquina has a brother who tends the flowers, fruits, and vegetables outside an all-night grocery store owned by Coreanos. It seems they throw out food there as soon as it gets even a little bit old, and sometimes Esteban drops by at the right hour and, if his novia’s brother can get away with it because the Coreanos aren’t watching, he stuffs as much as he can into a large plastic bag and brings it back to the ship. On Panzón’s birthday, Esteban even brought him wilting gardenias. Though nothing Esteban has brought back since, or even before, rivaled the feast of the cow. A whole leg and thigh of bloody beef, sawed and hacked apart by Cabezón the Butcher with engine room tools, roasted out on deck over a bonfire, puta, how they stuffed themselves that night, the very night of the day Mark took Bernardo to the hospital—which was the last time the crew saw either of them, el Primero or the old waiter, back in October, almost six weeks ago. El Capitán drove Bernardo directly from the hospital to the airport, pues, there wasn’t even time to come and say good-bye.
They’d never realized how solely responsible Bernardo was for keeping order on the ship until he went home to Nicaragua. Bernardo used to sweep and mop everything. Now there’s wind-borne litter and leaves and garbage all over the slippery deck, everything covered, especially in the mornings, with a skin of ice. Bernardo used to do their laundry, but lately nobody has the initiative or the energy to go down to the pier and wash clothes in ice water.
The gulls circle the ship laughing and shitting all over and landing on deck to fight over garbage, and once one even swooped down and grabbed a sardine right out of Panzón’s fingers—one of the last sardines, from one of the last rusted cans.
But one night, about two weeks ago, Canario went out to piss at the rail and came running back into the mess, where everyone was trying to sleep without choking to death on the smoke from the fire in the barrel, shouting in his high, twittery voice, The rats are leaving! And everyone, even los drogados, staggered out on deck to watch the rats leaving the ship because finally the ship was too cold even for them. It was an unforgettable sight: so many rats swarming around the gunwales and mooring pipes, while over the side their black silhouettes emerged one by one from the mooring pipes and descended the mooring lines to the pier in such orderly progression they could have been tiny circus elephants on parade, holding each other’s tails in their trunks. Watching the rats leave like that, they’d all felt filled with the same revulsion. Instead of a relieved sense of release from a plague, the spectacle of the rats departing the Urus left them nearly speechless with shame and fear. As if the rats had been their fault and now were escaping from inside of them, and not from the ship. So no one even cheered, or said very much at all.
Though el Capitán was happy to hear the news. He’d predicted, back in the summer, that the rats would leave once it got too cold. That was one of the last times el Capitán came to the ship, and he smiled and said, “Well, that saves us some money, eh, güeyes? At least we won’t have to pay exterminators.” But he must have known by then that he’d soon be abandoning the ship too, maldito hijo de puta.
Except some rats don’t mind a refrigerated ship. Now and then, they still hear a rat scratching along behind a bulkhead, or spot one splashing through the bog at the bottom of the hold, or squirming through garbage; and you still can’t leave food out. So there are still some rats, which is why every time they ask Esteban why he never brings his novia to the ship, he says, “Qué? With all these rats? What if she gets bitten?”
Esteban brought a pair of barber scissors to the ship. Everyone took turns sitting on a crate on deck, while José Mateo tried to cut their hair. José Mateo is not much of a barber, and they ended up looking not much better, though with their hair at least shorter. Everyone’s hair was left lying there on the deck and the wind carried it away. The chiste was that maybe one of Cebo’s hairs landed on La Gringita somewhere in Brooklyn. True love, eh?
Yesterday, early in the morning when most were still sleeping in the mess, after a night of icy rain and fanged winds, the coldest and wettest night yet, the few who were out on deck heard a voice calling up to them from the pier. And when they looked down over the rail, they saw a blue van parked there, and a tall gringo with reddish brown hair, wearing a pillowy green parka, standing there waving up at them.
They lowered the ladder, and he came up onto the icy deck: John, the Ship Visitor. He was clearly shocked by what he saw, by the condition of the ship and the crew. Esteban wasn’t onboard, he must have gone right from work to see la Joaquina, as he often does; he must not have wanted to walk back to the ship in the icy rain. They didn’t tell the Ship Visitor anything about Esteban and la Joaquina, or about Esteban’s illegal job in a chair fábrica. The Ship Visitor says he is not a policeman or government official, or anything like that. But they should be careful what they tell him, especially if it involves breaking any laws. The Ship Visitor brought them food and socks and plastic sheeting to put over portholes and doors. He said he’d come to help them, that that’s his job.
The Ship Visitor had a strange conversation with José Mateo: Wasn’t he the older man a lady from Argentina had met down on the pier? Finally they realized, sí pues, that it must have been Bernardo the Ship Visitor was referring to. But Bernardo had never said anything about meeting anybody down on the pier, or anywhere else.
It wasn’t that they’d forgotten about Bernardo, but suddenly it seemed as if it had been weeks since anyone had actually mentioned him in more than a passing way. Suddenly it seemed so long ago that the old waiter was there: cleaning everything, complaining, fussing over everybody but especially Esteban, telling his stories. So much has changed since the viejo went home! In the end, though, Bernardo was pretty lucky, no? Lucky viejo lobo de mar! He went home to his daughters with a scarred bump on his head, a scarred but healed leg, his old suitcase stuffed with rags, his photographs, and maybe even his pay—if el Capitán was telling the truth about that. Maybe by now Bernardo has even bought those chicken incubators and is selling chicken and eggs to his neighbors, and telling them horror stories about the Urus. Or maybe by now he’s forgotten all about the Urus, feeling so happy to have gotten out alive, and with his pay, a little salvaged dignity.
The Ship Visitor has a potato nose, pale blue eyes, and hair falling over his forehead. He’s a quiet and solid type. His Spanish isn’t as good as el Capitán’s, though, claro, a million times better than el Primero’s. He likes to sit and smoke and listen to the crew’s stories, except sometimes he doesn’t seem to be really listening;
that is to say, his attention comes and goes like a little light in his eyes. But, except for when he went away to buy the food, socks, and plastic sheeting, he sat with them all day, first in the mess, and later out on deck by the fire, listening and asking questions. He seemed a little disappointed that nobody could tell him much about the phantom owner. But then he wanted to know all about Capitán Elias and el primero Mark. He seemed disappointed that nobody knew either Capitán Elias’s or Mark’s last name. But they tried to give the Ship Visitor as clear a picture as they could of el Capitán and el Primero, and about everything that had happened since June, trying to get it all in order, interrupting each other, everyone wanting to give his own version of certain events so that the Ship Visitor sometimes had to hear the same story told over and over, which was when, claro, he would seem to be no longer listening. And los drogados kept interrupting with snarled curses: Fuck el Capitán! That primero, what a pato! and so on.
But it had been six weeks since they’d last seen Mark. They told the Ship Visitor they hadn’t given it too much thought when, in the days after el Primero took Bernardo to the hospital, he didn’t come back to the ship, because by then he was already coming much less frequently than Capitán Elias. Then el Capitán told them that Mark had found a new job. Not only one that was better paying, el Capitán joked in his dry, raised-eyebrows way, but one that actually paid. In a bank. El Capitán said that Mark was better suited for life in a bank, because he wasn’t much of a ship’s officer, no?
They worked hard those few days, getting ready for the inspection. Mainly, the ordinary seamen painted, as if they were trying to disguise the ship’s infirmities under shiny paint; while Cabezón and the others in the engine room crew—minus Pínpoyo, already becoming useless from paint solvent fumes—kept up their ceaseless tinkering and maintenance. The inspection did seem like a definite sign that they weren’t all trapped on an eternal ghost ship after all. El Capitán isn’t a total lunatic, they told themselves. Why would he have us get ready for an inspection for no reason at all?
The strange thing is, now that they’ve been abandoned, it doesn’t feel as terrible as they’d always imagined it would. Maybe the worst has passed. That is—they more or less admitted to the Ship Visitor—the crew has had a long time to get used to the idea of going home broke and in debt someday, total and humiliated failures. They’ve had a long time to get used to that.
Capitán Elias and the owner were having a grave problem with money, they’d understood that. Bueno, the phantom owner was obviously out of money. Especially now, according to el Capitán, that he’s had to pay Bernardo’s hospital bills. El Capitán said the owner had been so exasperated by those expenses, added on to everything else he already owes, that he’d even threatened to sign the Urus over to Bernardo.
When Esteban (he didn’t have his job in the chair fábrica yet) demanded to be paid anyway, el Capitán said, No, Esteban, you cannot be paid, none of us can, the money simply isn’t there. That’s why this is our last chance. Because there’s going to be an inspection. And I think it’s probable that then the owner is going to want to sell the ship, just to be able to pay off some of his debts, including all of our wages.
And just like that, after so many months of trying to believe that when the ship is fixed she’ll sail and we’ll all be paid, the rosary changed. Now it was: When the ship is sold, we’ll all have to be paid.
Capitán Elias had never seemed so serious, so grim and preoccupied as he did during those days when everyone was put to work preparing for the inspection, just after Bernardo went to the hospital and was sent home. That was another reason they believed in this last chance. As in their very first weeks onboard the Urus, el Capitán came to the ship every day, bringing them food; they sensed his urgency—as different, as changed as el Capitán and this new urgency now seemed. He stayed out of the engine room; it was as if he’d given up on the engine ever since the new circuit breakers hadn’t fit. He tended to stay by the gangway, by the rail, for hours, often just staring out at the lot behind the grain elevator. He came and stayed all day and hardly talked to them at all, staring off as if he was waiting for somebody—as if he missed his old adjutant and friend, and was hoping to see Mark in his yellow Honda driving into the lot and onto the pier, Miracle sitting beside him.
The days went by, and el Capitán began to relax his remote and somewhat despondent mood. He was a little bit more his old self. Sometimes he asked the crew questions:
What made Mark decide to take Bernardo to the hospital?
Though he seemed to be asking just out of curiosity, the question confused them. Why was he asking? Did he and the owner still wish Bernardo hadn’t gone to the hospital so that they could have saved money? But then, puta, what would have happened to Bernardo? Did he think that, given more time, his medicine would have worked?
Tomaso Tostado answered that el Primero had taken Bernardo to the hospital because his leg was beginning to stink and rot and the viejo was delirious.
(El Capitán also asked, Where does Esteban go all the time? And they answered, No sé. Saber. Quién sabe, mi Capi? And when el Capitán asked Esteban directly where it was he was always going off to, Esteban just answered, Nowhere. Though none of this was part of the story they told the Ship Visitor.)
One day Capitán Elias took a long walk off the ship himself, into that empty field with that big old terminal at the end of it, and when he came back he was holding a bunch of gray weeds he’d pulled up by the roots. He said it was dogbane, one of the plants he’d used in the medicinal mix he’d brewed back at the end of their first week on the Urus, when everyone was sick from rat water, which had worked pretty well, no? He only wanted the roots, he cut the rest of the plants off with a little pocketknife and threw them overboard. And then he put the roots into both pockets of his leather jacket.
For all their sense of a resolution of this last hope approaching as tangibly as freezing weather, coming a little closer with each night’s dropping temperatures, most of the crew were soon working lethargically and without commitment. Because they’d noticed that el Capitán didn’t really seem concerned with how their work was going. José Mateo said, Maybe the ship is going to be sold, but sold for scrap after all. Bueno, in that case, they all thought, it won’t make any difference what she looks like.
The inspection was surprisingly brief. A car drove up and parked on the pier, and a white-haired man got out wearing a thick, nylon-shelled blue parka and black trousers. Those who were by the rail saw him standing on the pier scrutinizing the hull for a long time. And then Capitán Elias hurried down the ladder to meet him, and when they both came back up onboard together, they heard Capitán Elias refer to this inspector as Captain something, they didn’t catch the name. They noticed that Captain Something walked with a slight limp, and that his heavy cheeks looked scraped raw, and that he seemed to take an immediate liking to Capitán Elias. But they also noticed that Captain Something didn’t call Elias Captain in return, he just called him Elias. This captain’s accent was a lot like Elias’s—an English accent, supposedly. All right then, Elias, they heard him say a few times, among other words they didn’t understand. Tomaso Tostado is sure that he heard Capitán Elias say, February, and then the other repeating this, nodding. And he heard Capitán Elias say, The Amazon. The inspector didn’t even bother going down into the engine room, or looking in the cabins or mess, nor did he seem at all interested in the crew. They could tell that he did say something about the missing lifeboat. He seemed most interested in the cargo rigging, looking up the masts at the booms, blocks, and derricks; down at the winches at the foot of the masts, now and then drawing Elias’s attention to something or other. And then the inspector was shaking Elias’s hand, and they heard him say, Good luck, Old Boy.
When the inspector was gone, El Barbie asked Capitán Elias how the inspection had gone. And Capitán Elias calmly said, Bien, Barbie. I told him we weren’t ready for a full inspection because we’re still under repair, tha
t’s all.
Capitán Elias didn’t come to the ship quite as regularly after that. He said he had to stay home with his wife, because the baby was going to be born soon. But el Capitán also told them that soon he would begin bringing potential buyers out to look over the ship. And he warned the crew not to interfere or contradict anything he might say in front of those potential buyers, nor, if asked, should they say anything to these potential buyers that might damage their impression of the ship. El Capitán laughed a little when he said all that. He said, Let’s face it, güeyes, this isn’t a ship you can sell just by telling the truth.
They understood why he was worried about what the crew might say when he arrived at the ship with the first potential buyer: he spoke in Spanish to el Capitán. But he didn’t talk to any of the crew. He was wearing a fur coat, a crimson beret, had a pencil mustache and a long nose like a tapir’s. He just walked around the ship and went down into the engine room, where Cabezón, Caratumba, and Canario, though not Pínpoyo, were hard at work as always; they heard el Capitán telling the potential buyer that it wasn’t hard to find replacement circuit breakers, but the owner had decided to sell the ship as she was, where she was, because he didn’t want to put in any more money.
There were other potential buyers, gringos who spoke in English to el Capitán. But one was a robust and happy-seeming man with a roaring laugh, thick eyebrows, and thick hair sticking up through the open collar of his shirt and even out of his ears. El Pelos Segundo, they instantly nicknamed him. Capitán Elias called this man Captain too, and this man, José Mateo said, appeared to be Greek. Capitán Elias treated this Capitán Pelos Segundo with uneasy deference, seeming to sink into a gloomier mood the more the other walked around the ship inspecting and laughing. But this laughing capitán was the only one of any of the potential buyers to strike up a conversation with the crew: down in the engine room, he complimented Cabezón, Caratumba, and Canario on how well maintained the engine was, told them they all had the makings of a first-class engine crew.
The Ordinary Seaman Page 37