We arrived at last, but not even after mooring the ship could we let Nuño loose. As soon as we took away the gag, he let loose with such loud cussing that our ears were almost bleeding, so we had to muzzle him once more. When we disembarked, we thought to bring him along with just his hands tied together, but as soon as his feet touched the ground, he began to run toward the sea with such determination that he was about to drown himself a few times. I can assure you that never, neither before nor after, had I seen Nuño so out of himself. Now that I think of it, not he nor anyone else. Ever. One might have thought that he had swallowed ten rats with toothaches and that they were gnawing on his entrails from inside him. And so the Whale hoisted up Nuño and tied him onto his back, facing backward as if he were the Whale’s knapsack. A really angry knapsack, that is.
We walked down a long stretch of beach. Russian Kitty, who didn’t want to be there either, was last in line, looking all around as if an infantry battalion might attack at any moment. The beach soon ended at the edge of a jungle. The vegetation was so thick, choking out the daylight, that it seemed as if night had fallen. We found a path that led through the jungle, and we followed it for a while. Suddenly, it opened onto a clearing, where there was an enormous house. Over the door, a sign read: “The Galleon. Food and Lodging.” The inn looked as if it were empty, but that was about to change since fifty-three guests had suddenly turned up: the entire crew of the Southern Cross.
I’ll tell you, in case you didn’t already know, that fortune can be inexplicably capricious. Sometimes you can search for someone your entire life and never find them. Other times, however, although you don’t want to run into that certain someone, and you hide beneath the largest rock in the middle of the farthest desert, you’ll run into him. Both situations are equally certain to take place.
And that’s precisely what happened in this case. The Miskito Coast is more than four hundred kilometers long and seventy wide, and, nonetheless, there, in the middle of nowhere, more than fifteen years later and without any warning, whom do you think we found behind the counter of the Galleon?
Exactly!
It wasn’t necessary for anyone to say anything because the innkeeper was an exact copy (and I mean exact) of our Nuño. It was as if Nuño had arrived there ahead of us! He even had the same mustache!
Everyone was astonished; well, everyone except the captain and Two Molars, who in unison said (as if it were the most normal thing in the world), “Oh, hadn’t I mentioned? They’re twins.”
Barracuda stepped forward. “Hola, Rodrigo! What a surprise to find you here! It’s been ages!”
“A long time, Captain,” the Spaniard answered (the other Spaniard, that is; not ours).
“The truth is, we didn’t know if we would find you. We could use your services.”
“Well, Barracuda, I left pirating behind years ago. This inn is more boring, but it’s also more peaceful. And today you have it all to yourselves! Some lumberjacks have just left, and the rooms are vacant; you can stay as long as you like.”
“No, it’s not that,” Barracuda clarified, “although it would also be good for us to rest here today. We’re looking for a place, and you, who must know this area better than anyone, could perhaps guide us there. The other guide we have doesn’t seem to be very interested in helping us . . . I’ll pay you well.”
“If it’s just that . . . ” Rodrigo replied. “I can do it. I know this jungle as if I had planted it myself . . . I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”
The captain remained quiet for a moment.
“Before anything else,” he said at last, “I think it is fair that you should know that with us is . . . ”
He made a sign to the Whale, who turned around. When the two Spaniards were face to face, they seemed to be looking in a mirror inside a nightmare: one, frozen while he ran a cloth over the countertop; the other, tied up like a bundle on the back of a giant. The two of them turned bright red at the same moment, which was even stranger, and they glared at one another with such intensity that I thought they would make their heads explode simultaneously.
“So you’ve come back . . . ” Rodrigo said slowly. “Well, well! Of all the holes of the Caribbean, I knew that someday you’d come back to fall into mine!”
“It wasn’t voluntary,” Whale said, his voice sounding funny because his back was still turned, and he shook Nuño like a puppet.
Erik elbowed him, and the Whale muttered, “Well, it’s not like he can say anything himself!”
“We’ll see,” the captain said, approaching Nuño and removing the gag from his mouth. “If there’s one place where we can be one-hundred-percent certain that you’ll keep quiet, it’s right here!”
Sure enough, Nuño didn’t say a word. Nobody said anything for a very looooong and tenssssse moment.
“Well, brother,” Rodrigo the innkeeper said at last. “I’d be delighted for you to stay here in my residence. Perhaps, for lunch. I’ll prepare for you . . . a paella.”
Oh my! This was when everything went mad! Just hearing about the food made our Nuño suffer a kind of fit of fury like I’ve never seen before! He began to twist around as if his underwear were full of gunpowder. He twisted so much that, although you wouldn’t believe it if you hadn’t seen it for yourself, he wound up knocking the Whale to the floor. The worst part is that Nuño fell underneath him, and the weight of our enormous Whale almost squashed him. We turned the Whale over, and Barracuda pulled out his dagger and cut the cords that bound the Spaniard. Then Barracuda grabbed him by the neck of his shirt, lifted him to his feet and walked outside with him. He backed Nuño up against a palm tree and all of us, crowded into the doorway, heard this conversation between the two of them:
“Now, look here, Nuño,” Barracuda said, placing his hands on his hips. “This stopped being funny a long time ago. You’re acting like a child. Whatever it was that happened, it was fifteen years ago! Besides, he’s your twin brother, for crying out loud!”
“I won’t forgive him! Never! Not even if my entrails are tied around my ears!” Nuño answered, huffing like a buffalo. “Didn’t you hear him? Didn’t you hear?”
“Didn’t I hear what? You’re acting like a complete lunatic!” The captain tried to calm down. He took a deep breath, rested his hook on the palm tree, right next to Nuño, and continued with a calmer voice. “Look, I don’t know what happened between the two of you. I’m not your father; I won’t give you the whole speech about Rodrigo being your own blood or that family is what’s most important. No, I won’t do that. I know that you’re a reasonable man, the most reasonable of any I know; that’s why you’re my second in command. I’m sure you have your reasons for not wanting anything to do with Rodrigo. But listen to me well, Spaniard. I could care less if you make peace with him or not. I’ve come here for just one thing: Krane’s treasure. Neither you nor your brother nor all the Spaniards of the Armada are going to get in my way. You can bet my right hand you won’t!” He showed Nuño his hook. “And, as you can see, I’ve already given my left . . . ”
Nuño seemed to calm down. I can assure you that when Barracuda gets serious like this, anyone’s knees would grow weak.
“Reasons?” came the high voice of Rodrigo, who was also watching the scene from the door of the inn. “Tell him why you got mad, Nuño, go on . . . ”
“I don’t want to talk to you!” Nuño said, still leaning against the palm tree. “Captain, please, get him out of my sight!”
“Fifteen years! He’s been mad for fifteen years because . . . Why don’t you tell him, brother?”
“He’s the one . . . I mean, he’s the only one who’s angry?” I asked Rodrigo. “Not you as well?”
“Me?” he asked. “Please! Why should I be angry over something so trivial? He’s the one who stopped talking to me . . . to this very day!”
“How could I?!” Nuño said, turning and moving towa
rd us. “How could I tolerate something like that? Do you want to know what happened? Do you really want to know what this heartless piece of meat did to me? Fine! I’ll tell you! It took me days to get everything required. I had to bribe the captain of a merchant ship to get some of the things . . . I did it all for him! For this selfish vermin who calls himself my brother! And after, when it was over, did he thank me? Nooo! Did he think of all the work I’d done for him? Nooo, sir!”
“But what the heck are you talking about, Nuño?” Erik asked from within the group of us crammed in the doorframe.
“Yes, go on . . . tell them, go on!” Rodrigo interjected, smiling from ear to ear as he leaned against the inn.
“That’s not important!” Nuño went on, whirling his arms around. “What’s important is that you acted like a royal ba . . . ”
“A paella,” Rodrigo interrupted him, without changing his posture.
There was silence.
“A . . . paella?” Barracuda asked, walking toward us from behind Nuño.
“Yes,” the innkeeper replied. “I told him it was too salty.”
I, who had known him for three years now, had never seen the captain so surprised. If a crocodile were to speak to him one night from beneath his own bed, I doubt if his face would have been like it was just then. He looked at Nuño as if he didn’t know him, but Nuño just kept on with his story.
“I spent all morning making it! The kitchen was hotter than the bowels of a volcano! And I did it only because you said that you missed the food from Spain! And did you thank me? Noooo! You acted like an ungrateful, selfish cretin!”
“All this is . . . over a paella?” Boasnovas said, unbelieving.
“I don’t understand. What is it?” the Whale asked. “I’ve never heard of a ‘paella’ before in my life!”
“It’s a rice dish,” Rodrigo explained.
“Don’t say it like that!” Nuño said, without calming down. “If you say it like that, it sounds like it’s something ridiculous!”
“Rice?” One-Legged Jack asked. “All of this bother is over some rice?”
“Rice,” whimpered the Kitty. “It’s the Chinese pirate! The Curse!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Malik said to the Russian. “I liked you more when you didn’t open your mouth.”
“It can’t be,” I said. “Nuño would never do something so . . . so . . . ”
“Say it, lad,” Rodrigo intervened. “So stupid!”
“Well, the mystery is unveiled,” Boasnovas said. “Some stories certainly are better if you don’t know all the details.”
“I don’t expect for you lot to understand!” Nuño exclaimed, still angry. “That’s asking too much. Said like that: ’a plate of rice’ makes it all sound absurd. But you don’t know what . . . ”
Barracuda pushed Nuño out of his way (and Nuño suddenly fell quiet), waved the rest of us out of the way, and headed toward the door of the inn. He stopped just before entering and, without turning around, said very slowly: “I don’t want to hear another word about this . . . matter. I won’t lose a single second more on this. Rest today. Rodrigo, tomorrow we’ll leave early to find what we’ve come here looking for. There won’t be any further distractions.”
We looked at Nuño as if we didn’t know him, and he looked back at us as if he couldn’t believe that we didn’t support him.
“You just don’t understand,” he spluttered. “You can’t under . . . ”
“Come on, Nuño!” John the Whale cut him short. “I admire you . . . but this is about rice! Even I can see that this is just silly!”
We left Nuño outside, all alone, and the rest of us went inside to eat something. We barely spoke during the meal because we were all shocked by what had happened. None of us could have thought that Nuño—the most sensible of all, always so calm, the one who never got upset and rarely raised his voice—might also make mistakes and commit a ludicrous folly of this degree. After that day, we often told the story of the Spaniards and the paella, and everyone who heard it thought it was too incredible or an outright lie.
The next morning we set out very early—almost before dawn. Rodrigo told us that he could find the place where Phineas had built his house. Many rumors ran along the coast, and they all pointed to the same area. Because of what the book said, we thought we would find it on a beach facing the sea, with the sand reaching the door to the house. But no, things aren’t that easy, at least not for pirates.
The path Rodrigo showed us was very narrow. The day was stiflingly hot, but we never stopped during our ascent of slopes so muddy that we slipped a thousand times. All of our new finery (well, it was no longer that fine) that we’d bought in Basse-Terre was now even worse because it was covered in muck.
From the moment we left the inn, nobody mentioned Nuño. In the years that followed, the paella story became legendary in taverns throughout the Caribbean. At least a thousand different versions—and I know because I’ve heard them all—were told about what happened to Nuño during those days: that he disappeared forever and his soul thirsting for vengeance wanders the Miskito Coast; that he burned down the inn as soon as we left it; and that he challenged his brother to a duel on the beach and killed him with a shout of “It wasn’t salty!” And still another tale claimed that Barracuda tied him to a pole, covered in pig’s fat, and left him for the crows . . . In short, all lies. I’ll tell you what really happened.
We had walked for more than half a day when Erik the Belgian overtook the Whale and me, whispering to us in a low voice, “We’re being followed, my friends.”
We looked back and saw Nuño crawling behind us on his hands and knees. He also saw us but didn’t say a word. For the entire afternoon, he followed some distance behind us. Feeling tremendous pity for him, I moved forward along our line and reached Rodrigo, who was in the lead with Barracuda.
“Rodrigo . . . Your brother is following behind—”
“I know,” he interrupted me. “I saw him this morning as soon as we left. Leave him; he needs a lesson.”
Barracuda, at his side, didn’t even open his mouth. One never knew what that man was thinking. I had always thought that he and Nuño were friends, but there you had it; it was as if he couldn’t care less about the Spaniard’s fate, as if it was all the same to him if he slipped off one of those steep embankments or got swallowed up by some ten-foot-long python.
The journey (as always) was extremely difficult. I don’t know why people think that a pirate’s life is simple and comfortable. Nothing is further from the truth. This business of searching for treasure and attacking ships is exhausting. Even if you are lucky and avoid injury in an attack or a skirmish, your feet are always hurting, your hands are scraped raw by the ropes, and it’s almost impossible to sleep through an entire night. And that’s if you don’t get seasick! That’s the worst. All of us have been seasick at one time or another. For some, at first, it happens when they’re a sprog, a brand-new pirate on board a ship for the first time; for others, it hits at any moment and without warning because of a storm or because on that particular day, they’re not in hearty shape. One’s innards get all twisted up, and you wind up feeding the fish everything you’ve ever eaten, back to the first mother’s milk you had as a babe.
So, now you can appreciate how hard a pirate’s life is and how demanding our journey was on that day. We trudged through extreme conditions all day long: mud, relentless heat, poisonous insects and critters, and dangerous terrain. By the time the sun began to set, I was dying from exhaustion. We set up camp for the night in the middle of nowhere. We unrolled our mats to sleep on, lit a bonfire to keep wild animals at bay, and ate. There was no moon; the night sky closed in on us like a dark cave. I couldn’t stop thinking that out there, somewhere far from our fire, alone and angry, was poor Nuño. How awful pride is!
I saw that many of the pirates also peered into the darkn
ess, surely thinking the same as I was. But not Barracuda. He stared right into the flames; the fire reflected in his eyes and seemed to draw gold doubloons in them. If he was worried, I can assure you that nobody would have guessed it.
I didn’t sleep well at all. I dreamed that I was being swallowed by a frog whose mouth was full of lava. I ran, but its long tongue caught me again and again. I sweated buckets as I slept.
The Whale woke me with a jab of his elbow. I was about to complain, but then he pointed toward the end of the slope where we had camped. A little apart from us, almost at the edge of a cliff and silhouetted against the morning mist, Nuño and Rodrigo were talking in low voices, their arms crossed.
We couldn’t hear what they were saying. First, Rodrigo spoke while Nuño nodded his head. And then the opposite. The other pirates were waking up and also kept silent as we watched the two Spaniards speaking to one another. At one point, they both fell silent, facing one another, just staring at each other for what seemed an eternity to me. Suddenly, as if someone had given a signal, they hugged one another and started slapping each other affectionately on the back. As they headed back toward us, we all looked at one another as if we were embarrassed.
The brothers approached the camp as companions, each with his arm over the other’s shoulders. Our Nuño looked like a true gentleman: clean, well-combed, with his leather jacket and his sword at his belt. No one would guess that he’d spent a day crawling through the muck; he was elegant, even in the middle of the filthiest jungle. At his side, his copy (Rodrigo) was so scruffy, disheveled and dirty, that together they looked like the same person before and after being trampled by a herd of buffalos.
“In three hours, the heat will be unbearable,” Barracuda said from behind us. “We’ve got to get going now. Nuño! Get this troop of layabouts moving!”
And everything went back to normal. This was the captain’s only and very peculiar way of saying that he was glad that Nuño had returned to us: without saying anything, acting as if nothing had happened, and never speaking of it again. But as we got underway, we couldn’t help but notice that, whether or not we found Phineas’ treasure, our journey had served an important purpose: to reunite two brothers who hadn’t seen one another for some fifteen years. For people like us (most without families), having a brother was something like hitting a jackpot, and I know that we all secretly envied the two Spaniards. After their reconciliation, everything between them was, “Whatever you say,” “No, you first,” or “I’m sure you’re right.” After fifteen years of disagreement, they had to balance things out with a whole lot of agreement.
The Treasure of Barracuda Page 9