Seagulls in My Soup

by Tristan Jones

  In the two and three-quarter years since Dreadnaught had bid Sissie and me goodbye, there had been a hundred adventures and almost as many misadventures, but somehow I had managed to stay afloat with a boat under my feet and a rocking berth to lay my head on. Now, at long last, after sixteen years of impecunious, miraculous survival afloat, I found myself boatless. But I wasn’t friendless, and that’s what really matters.

  The ways of destiny are sometimes very strange. Later, when I looked back on that time in my life, 1966 to 1969, I could only come to the conclusion that most of us really never know what is actually happening when it happens. If we did, we’d either be saints or insufferable prigs. Being neither (we hope) we can only be thankful that our destinies, the paths of our lives, are, in the making, obscure to us. Whether our future is to be tragic or comic, rich or poor, the obscurity of Fate’s intentions is a kindness in any case. For that kindness we should be grateful.

  No matter what we live through, or how many hazards and dangers we have somehow passed, or how rough and imperfect, how torn and bedraggled, how seemingly irreparably wounded our lives might appear, it is futile for us to try to imagine how it would have been otherwise. If we look back objectively at our lives, no matter how messy and jagged and illogical it all has been, and despite all the mistakes, the further we get in time from the events, the more they line up in an orderly array to join a pattern of eternal fitness, and even, perhaps, at times, of heroic grandeur and poetical beauty.

  In nature nothing follows a straight line, and so it usually is with a person’s life. If it isn’t so, then God help him or her. Normally, it is only after a time, sometimes a very long time, that all the ragged threads of our lives appear to fall into place. But they never really have done. The course of a person’s life, with all its myriad twists and turns, is a maze. Some events happen at one time which we would never, until much later, dream of relating to other events which occurred at another time. This view of life is one of the saving graces of late middle age; one of the consolations for not being young. The lack of this view of life is one of youth’s tragedies. This lack of perspective is one of the root’s of youth’s arrogance. My advice to anyone under the age of forty is to try to understand an older person’s view of destiny. The sooner you do, the kinder you’ll be. It’s got nothing to do with hassocks and cassocks and little green things that go bump in the night. It’s got to do with learning to treat other people with the same understanding that you treat yourself when you look back and see what a fool, at times, you’ve been. It’s got to do with being able to laugh at yourself. As Voltaire put it, “God is a comedian playing to an audience who’s afraid to laugh.” Well, we must laugh.

  Now that I’ve got that little lot on the ship’s manifest, I’ll tell you why.

  Losing Two Brothers 600 miles west of the Azores led to my seeing some of the strangest sights I ever saw. Now, if anyone had been around that drifting rubber raft, with me in it, foodless and dying of thirst, and had told me that I should cheer up; that it was all a part of destiny, of course I should have told him to take a running jump at himself. But there was no one around, and so it was left for time to work its wonders and put events into perspective.

  I’d bought Banjo from Willie the German, and it was he who took me in his fast motorboat to Ensenada Hondo, where my boat had been lost while I was ashore. There we searched for wreckage, and found the ensign staff and flag. That’s all.

  Willie landed me on the rocks of the high cliff. He had to carry on around Ibiza island to the holiday camp where he was manager. Alone now, I kept a straight face while he roared off into the blue. Then I stared down into the water below the rocks, at the iron keel of my boat lying on the sea-bottom. I could plainly see it through the clear, calm water of the deep bay. There wasn’t one shred of timber left on the keel. Banjo had been beaten to death on the jagged fangs of one of the worst anchorages in the western Mediterranean.

  I gazed on the watery grave for quite a while. All I now had was what I stood in—my Breton sailing jerkin, a pair of paint-spattered corduroy pants, and a beaten-up pair of deck slippers. And about four dollars in Spanish pesetas.

  I turned and clambered up the high cliff without once looking back down at Banjo’s resting place. It wasn’t difficult to do; the cliff was almost all overgrown with dense brambles, high grass, and stubby little trees hanging on to narrow ledges overlooking the abyss. The sun, even in late September, beat down. I knew that even when I got to the top of the cliff I would have a good five-mile walk along the clifftops until I reached the road. Then I would have at least an hour’s wait for a bus to take me back to Ibiza town. What would happen then was up to the gods.

  Cliff-climbing isn’t the usual sailor’s idea of exercise. Some of them do it for fun, of course, but for the majority of yachties it is usually an exercise reserved for howling nights with the boat pounding the rocks at the base of the cliff. Somehow I made the 600 feet or so to the top.

  There was a little old man, in black peasant’s garb, watching me as I pulled myself over the topmost clump of thick, high grass. Breathless now, I stood and panted, about twenty yards away from the peasant. Slowly, but at a steady pace, he approached me. I saw that he was very old. His nut-brown face was lined and creased with at least eighty years of laboring on thin soil under a relentless sun. He was no more than five feet, three inches or so, and bent. He wore the typical black felt hat, black jacket, black trousers, and woolen shirt, collarless, of the Ibizan countryman. I stared at him as he reached up and made to doff his hat. By this time I could reasonably understand the Ibizan version of Castilian.

  “Good day, señor.” He greeted me with as much courtesy as if I had been in an immaculate suit at a Sunday parade in Ibiza. There was no sign that I was damp with perspiration and breathing heavily; dirty and bedraggled after losing my footing half a dozen times on the way up the steep cliff. No sign that we were at least three miles from the nearest habitation.

  “Good day, señor,” I panted.

  “Tourist?” said the little old man. His eyes were slits against the bright sun. He carried a hoe.

  “Sailor. My boat’s down there,” I told him.

  “That is not a good place to leave a boat, señor.” His voice was high-pitched, but clear.

  “I know. My boat’s sunk.”

  “Hundido? Sunk?”

  “Yes. It happened last night. I wasn’t onboard her. I’ve just been down to see if I could salvage anything. There’s nothing left.”

  “It is God’s will, señor.”

  We were silent for a few moments while the old man tried to lean over and peer down the cliff. As I stood there the full import of my disastrous loss struck home. I felt utterly wretched.

  “I’ve lost everything I have, señor! Everything!”

  The little old man looked me straight in the eye. His eyes were like a hawk’s, dark and piercing. “Any life lost?” he asked, quietly.

  “No, no lives. But they were lucky.”

  “And you are still alive?” The little old man asked the obvious question in the penetrating Spanish way.

  “Yes . . . But I’ve lost . . .”

  “Then thank God, señor. You have lost little. With no lives lost . . . and even if there had been . . . it is God’s will. He has other intentions for you, for the others. Now, take a cigarette. Here.”

  He handed me an ancient tin. Inside were tobacco and papers. As I rolled a cigarette he said again, “No lives lost . . .”

  I thanked him, and wished him many more years.

  “Go with God, señor.” He lifted his hoe onto his shoulder.

  I walked away from him strong and free and even a little happy.

  Willie the German’s friend, Christian, who was a Frenchman and kept a scuba-gear store outside Ibiza, arranged that I should sleep onboard the tiny sloop Coquette, which was moored for the winter in Ibiza harbor,
until I could find a delivery job or in some other way earn my keep until I had my fare home.

  Coquette was only eighteen feet long; more like a closed-deck dinghy than anything else. There were only two berths in her, and her galley was tiny and primitive, but it was better than nothing.

  By the time I had been sleeping onboard Coquette for a couple of weeks, and helping Willie and Christian out a bit in return for their help, I had written letters to a dozen maritime contacts from Scotland to Malta, but no boats were moving. It was too late in the year for westward-bound trans-Atlantic deliveries, and only a madman or novice sails very far in the Mediterranean after the equinoctials—but bit by bit I was getting my fare home.

  I built a bird-coop for a children’s primary school. I helped some fishermen caulk their keels. I painted a couple of boats, and slowly the money came in. I never went short of a meal, of course—Antonio at the bodega and Josélito the fisherman saw to that.

  It must have been mid-October when Jonnie the Swiss showed up. His boat was an old French sail-fishing smack. She was about thirty-five feet long and rigged as a ketch, the same as Cresswell had been. As soon as I saw her come sweeping around the harbor entrance, all weather-beaten and odd, with her rig somehow not seeming to belong to her hull, I reckoned it might be worthwhile to get to know her owner. I would have done it in any case, but I hopped from Coquette onto the outer mole to help him moor up.

  As Sans Culotte dropped her anchor her owner shouted, “No motor!”

  I sang out, “That’s all right! Throw me a line!”

  I climbed onboard a deserted motor yacht, ran to her bows, and waited for him to heave me a line. Sans Culotte’s deck was littered with fishing gear. There were lines and nets and lobster pots all scattered about. She had a Swiss ensign drooping from her stern.

  As her owner got a line ready, I noticed that he handled it clumsily, slowly. “You Spanish?” I called out to him.

  His English was guttural. “Swiss!”

  “You won’t be very welcome here, with all that fishing gear lying around!”

  I caught his line and secured it. He looked at me quizzically as his boat’s stern swung toward me.

  “The local fishermen aren’t doing too well here,” I continued. “If they see that little lot . . .” I gestured at the dozen lobster pots lying on his deck, “. . . well, the least they’ll do is report it to the harbormaster, and the most they’ll do . . . You’ll be lucky if they don’t burn your boat!”

  “What shall I do?” he shouted.

  “Stow it all below! Hide it! Get rid of it as fast as you can!”

  As soon as Sans Culotte was tied up, Jonnie (he had introduced himself by then) collected all the fishing tackle and somehow rammed it below into the cabin. He was no more than about twenty-three or -four, no taller than about five feet, six inches; mousy, straggly haired, lean, wiry—and he had a perfectly insane look in his dark blue eyes. When I looked at his face it was like looking at a benevolent fanatic. He was sunburned, of course, and looked strong and healthy. His hands were calloused and scarred. He was dressed in shorts and a light jersey.

  “Nice boat,” said I. By this time I was below in Sans Culotte.

  “Ja. Found her on the beach at Fréjus.”

  “Never been there—somewhere near Nice, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “I never been to sea before. Never worked on a boat. I fix this one up in two months!” The boat was tidy and well-painted below.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I stay around here until spring, then Gibraltar and the West Indies. I do some fishing here, some fishing there, ja?”

  “You’ll have to be careful with the local fishermen, Jonnie.”

  “Oh, I make friends with them, quick. See, I know . . . how you say . . . magic. You know, all that kind of thing.”

  “Conjuring?”

  “Ja. Go to parties, make the kids laugh.”

  Jonnie handed me a strong cup of coffee. I don’t usually drink it, but I was too intrigued by the idea of a sailing conjuror to refuse it. As he handed the cup to me he stared from below his brows. It amazed me to see that devilish look in such a young face.

  He turned to his galley and took a bottle from the shelf. Then he reached into a cupboard and brought out two deflated party balloons. As I watched in astonishment he blew up the balloons, his eyes still gleaming brightly. “Watch,” he whispered. “Magic for der kids, ja?”

  He tied the balloons, now inflated so much as to have almost lost their colors, to a hook overhead. Then he grabbed the small, dark bottle with one hand and delved into his pocket with the other. He brought out a box of matches, gasped in, took a swig from the bottle, turned loose those mad, staring eyes toward the balloons, struck a match, lifted it in front of his mouth, closed his lips, threw his arms in the air, and blew a six-foot flame at the balloons, which exploded.

  “Yow!” he roared, as little traces of flame ran around the beams above.

  I flinched, expecting the whole boat to burn down to the waterline around our scorched ears.

  Jonnie turned to me, his eyes now wide open, shining like a child’s, innocent and happy. “You like? Look, I do it again, ja?”

  “No, that’s all right. I’m convinced, Jonnie. But isn’t it a bit dangerous, I mean in a wooden boat?”

  “I practice every day. I even do it over the side. Attracts the fish at night! The kids in Fréjus, they love it so much!”

  I supped onboard Sans Culotte with Jonnie that evening. He had some freshly caught mullet and a couple of small squid. As I ate I stared around the cabin. There was no sign of any navigation books or instruments. Casually I brought the matter up. “You use the British tables or the French, Jonnie?”

  “The table—I make it good, ja?” He slapped the cabin table, a wooden job, rough but well-made and sturdy.

  I grinned. “No, I mean navigation tables.”

  “Yow!” Again the Swiss flung his arms out. “I don’t have the time to learn yet. I use . . .” He scrambled up and reached under the mattress of his berth. He slapped a large book in front of me. It was a French school atlas. Quickly he turned over the pages. On a map of the Atlantic ocean he had scrawled an unsteady line right across the pages from Gibraltar to Barbados . . .

  Next day, when I returned from the post office, Jonnie and Sans Culotte were gone. He had confided in me the night before, over supper, that he knew a good fishing place off the southeast tip of Formentera. I guessed that was where he had headed, to catch his next few days’ food. He had told me he was out of money.

  The storm rose about nine o’clock that evening. The local fishing boats were already in harbor, in the safest place from the howling easterly, right in front of the bodega Antonio. I had made sure that tiny Coquette was secured up, but her movement in the sea which the wind was sending into the harbor was far too sickeningly violent for me to remain onboard in any kind of comfort. It was bad enough that she had a mere three feet of headroom, but added to that, a foot’s continual bouncing up and down sent me ashore in the wind and rain. I stuck my head into the bodega as I passed by. It was crowded with about twenty fishermen.

  “Anyone seen the Swiss ketch that left this morning?” I asked. There was a sudden quenching of talk. Most heads shook. Fishermen are not the best of company ashore when the catches are lean and the weather is unsettled. I headed out into the rain again.

  I had walked for half a minute on the otherwise deserted waterfront when Josélito caught up with me. Ever since my Halloween visit to the graveyard with Rory O’Boggarty, Josélito had been more of a confidant of mine than any other Ibizan.

  “I saw the Swiss this morning, Señor Capitán.”

  I turned into the rain and wind to face Josélito. “Where?”

  “He was fishing off Punta de Cala Calador.” José’s eyes looked hurt.

  “Chr
ist, he’s got no engine and he’s on a lee shore. With a rig like he’s got he’ll never beat his way offshore! The wind’ll have his boat on the rocks! We’ve got to do something, José!”

  “It’s God’s will. He was stealing our fish. He had some lobster pots down, too. We’re not stupid. We watch every boat, señor. We have to—our families’ lives depend on it!”

  “Then you won’t help me, José? I have no boat now . . .”

  “No fisherman will help you to go out for the one who steals our living. Anything else, señor, you know we would help, but this . . . nunca! Never! Only God can help him now, if he’s still out there. We can pray for him, of course, but no help for a poacher!”

  “Then I shall have to give God a hand.”

  “Goodnight, Señor Capitán. Go with God!” The rain poured off his peaked cap.

  “Good night, Josélito.”

  I headed for the hangouts of the foreign exiles wintering in Ibiza.

  The Isleno was a tiny restaurant owned by young Americans who served excellent chili-con-carne. There was no one but the owner and a dumpy figure in a fur coat, hunched in one corner. As I stood at the open door, with the rain sluicing down outside, the figure turned to look at me. It was Elmyr the art-collector. He looked wretched. I nodded to him. He bowed, slightly, back at me. The young American owner grinned at me. No help there. “Nice weather for ducks,” I muttered, and turned away again into the night.

  On a night like this there was only one other chance. Only the steady boozers would be out in this weather. They would be in the George and Dragon. I ran around the corner into the Calle Mayor and flung myself down the steps of the English pub. All I could see in the lights behind the bar was the dark, curly-haired young bartender, grinning eagerly at me as he fished around for a glass. Otherwise it was too dark to see who was in front of the bar.