Pirate King

by Laurie R. King

  “We don’t need a theatre, just a large room,” I protested.

  “It was inexpensive, so long as you end each day before their evening performances.”

  “How inexpensive?”

  He took a sheaf of papers from his inner pocket and showed me various figures, comparing an actual theatre (having both lights and heat) with a bare, cold warehouse. I nodded.

  “Very good, thanks. Next, as you may have been told, we’ll need the various accoutrements of pirates.”

  He looked puzzled.

  “Things like costumes and make-up—you’ll need to help Sally and Maude, two of our crew, find what they need.”

  “For pirates?”

  “Yes. Didn’t Miss Johns tell you what this picture is about?”

  “Not in detail, no.”

  “Oh, Lord. Say, I don’t suppose she mentioned to you where she was going?”

  “Your telegram was the first I knew that she was no longer with Fflytte Films.”

  “Odd. Well, do you know the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance?”

  “I have heard of it, but not seen it.”

  Lisbon began to sound appealing. “This picture is about a moving picture company that is making the film version of The Pirates of Penzance. In the process, they encounter actual pirates, based on—”

  He sat forward, frowning. “Pirates, both fantasy and authentic?”

  “I don’t know how authentic—”

  “A picture with two layers of dream. A picture which is itself a dream? Artifice upon artifice …”

  The conceit of the film-within-a-film appeared to be exciting some poetical instinct behind that melancholic face: Pessoa’s dark eyes went darker, his cigarette drooped alarmingly close to his knee. He smiled, a dreamy and faraway smile. Before he could either catch fire or reach for his pencil to write down whatever literary inspiration had seized him, I cleared my throat loudly and said, “One of the girls asked me to find a shop in Lisbon where she might buy chewing gum.”

  The spell was broken, and we went back to my list, not pausing over a hasty lunch—the steamer having been delayed by the weather, tryouts began a mere three hours after we’d docked. Near the end of the list, if not the meal, Hale and Fflytte came in, both of them tidy and, no doubt, well fed. I looked down at my clothes, the same I had worn off the ship that morning, and at the half-eaten meal, then stood to introduce my employers to their translator.

  Pessoa led us under threatening skies along pavements of attractive black-and-white mosaics to the hired theatre, a large, handsome, and surprisingly new building called the Teatro Maria Vitória. I was handed a list of Portuguese names, the men trying out for the parts, and we took our places in the comfortable seats, Fflytte and Hale third row dead centre, with Pessoa and me behind them. The actors had been given a badly roneographed copy of the Major-General’s song for their reading, which would have been a peculiar choice even for native English speakers. After the third man attempted to decipher the blotched printing and the unfamiliar words, Fflytte’s hand came up (lifted high enough to clear the seat-back in front of him) and his voice cut into the stumbling, heavily accented attempt.

  “No no no, that’ll never do. Give me anything.”

  Pessoa hesitated, then asked, “What does this mean, ‘give me anything’?”

  “It means, these are supposed to be actors; have them give me any speech or bit of dialogue they’ve used for a rôle. Any rôle. So I can see what they look like.”

  Pessoa addressed the stage with a flood of Portuguese, guttural and sibilant. The actor lowered his sheet and asked something; Pessoa responded. After several exchanges, another face popped around the curtains to make a remark, then several more short, dark men came out until the stage was filled with enough argument to establish a riot scene.

  “Enough!” Instant silence, as every face turned towards the astonishingly loud command from the tiny director. Fflytte said to Pessoa, “We want pirates. Tell them to act like a pirate.”

  The Portuguese command was terse and to the point. Fflytte settled back into his seat. Pessoa sat down, fishing out his tobacco pouch. I sat back. The man on the stage contemplated the piece of paper he held, folded it neatly into his pocket, then stared at his empty hand as if a sword might appear there. He cleared his throat, raised his head, and lowered his eyebrows into a terrible scowl. “Eu sou um pirata!” he stated, although it came across less of an exclamation than a question.

  Hale rested an aristocratic forefinger on his furrowed brow.

  I drew a line through the first name on my page.

  One man after another would wander onto the stage, feebly pat at his pockets, take off his hat and search for a place to lay it, put it back on, and then turn to the audience of four, assume a fierce scowl, and declare himself a pirate. After the third such declamation, Pessoa ceased to bother with a translation.

  Four hours later, Hale had filled three of the eighteen parts, two of whom would only be adequate for the dim recesses of a pirate horde. Sounds from backstage made it clear that the afternoon’s performance was about to get under way. Hale told Pessoa to inform the would-be pirates that the process would resume the following morning, and two sets of irritated theatre-folk grumbled past each other, one onto the stage, one off.

  Fflytte decided to stay for a time to watch the performance, on the chance that he could steal a few of its players, but five minutes was enough: There is not sufficient make-up in the world to turn a Portuguese comic actor into a Barbary pirate.

  Out on the street, the director stormed away, talking furiously to his friend and assistant, Hale. They made an odd pair, since Hale did not bother himself with the foot of height he had over Fflytte, but walked straight-backed at the small man’s side, one slow pace for every two of the director’s. Pessoa trailed behind, unsure if his services would be required. I followed after, examining the city around me.

  In the fifteenth century, Portugal had become the world’s first truly global empire, planting its flag on four continents, beginning with Ceuta, just across the Mediterranean, and stretching to Macao in one direction and São Paulo in the other. Lusitania to the Romans, Portucale to the Moors, and troublesome to all, at its peak the pugnacious little country had possessed sea-borne chutes that filled royal coffers to overflowing with gold and spices and power, its Navy making full use of the enormous harbour at Lisbon’s door. Now, its heyday well past, Portugal was a small country with a robust sense of importance, giving one the impression that its walls hid untold riches.

  Most of which description would also apply to Randolph St John Warminster-Fflytte, come to think of it.

  Craning my neck at an ornate façade overhead, I promptly walked into a man crouched on the pavement tapping stones into place. Reeling away from him, I collided with our translator’s outstretched hand, pointing in the direction of the water.

  “An interesting idea,” Hale was saying. He sounded dubious.

  “A great idea,” Fflytte corrected him. “We should’ve thought of it ourselves.” Meaning: You should have.

  “They’d be rank amateurs,” Hale countered.

  “Sorry,” I cut in. “What is this idea?”

  “This chap said—well, you tell her.”

  Pessoa inclined his head. “I merely suggested that if Senhor Fflytte requires men who look like pirates, he might wish to search among the sea-folk rather than among those who make their living in the theatre.”

  “It’s a great idea,” Fflytte repeated.

  “An interesting possibility,” Hale mused.

  I could not imagine that this would end well.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ALL [kneeling]: Hail, Poetry, thou heaven-born maid! Thou gildest e’en the pirate’s trade.

  13 November

  Lisbon

  My dear Holmes,

  The ides of November have come. And are (I fear) far from over. The next time you see Lestrade, you can tell him he owes me three weeks on a warm beach somewhere,
by way of repayment for this.

  It’s a madhouse. I knew before ever I left Sussex that the situation would be a lunatic one, but who would have suspected that every person I have met since my London interview with Geoffrey Hale ought to be lodged in Bedlam?

  Beginning with Fflytte himself. His Christian name might as well be Napoleon for all his megalomania, with the stature to match. His films are, to his mind, the defining markers of the modern age, and require from each and every one of his small army of experts the scrupulous attentions of a Fabergé enamellist.

  I discovered him on the ship—in one of its calmer moments, when I was not stretching my torso over the railings—deep in a discussion with the third-mate concerning the proper hand position to be used in a knifefight. I’ll grant that all signs testified to the sailor’s experience with knifefights; however, his missing ear, notched eyebrow, and scar-striped forearms did not have much to say for his expertise. I was tempted to correct the man’s lecture, but decided that knifefights were not included in my job description, and made do with a gentle remonstration, pointing out that shedding First Class blood would be a sure guarantee of never working on a passenger ship again.

  Had I followed my initial impulse and stepped forward to demonstrate, Fflytte would no doubt have contrived to write a female pirate into the script.

  That demented attention to detail pervades the enterprise. Evenings on board the steamer began well enough, but as soon as the weather permitted use of the deck, Fflytte had a projector set up there, and my quiet evenings were taken over by screenings of at least three moving pictures a night, each of which had portions re-played at the demands of one or another member of the company: Our “Isabel’s” mother wished to repeat a scene in which her young daughter appeared—three times over; Mabel had many remarks concerning the actress in The Flapper; and in—why have I not seen this picture before?—Sherlock Jr, Buster Keaton climbs into a cinema screen and becomes a detective. Several of its scenes are now etched indelibly onto my mind’s eye, as our cameraman wished to re-examine the (admittedly clever) effects.

  Did I say that attention to detail pervades every aspect of the enterprise? That is not strictly true: rather, every aspect of it except those that might actually be of benefit.

  For example, might not someone have noticed early on that Portugal is on the brink of some kind of revolution? That its capital city might not be the ideal place to drop a film crew? That a movie about pirates does not require convenient access to bread riots and clashes between the Army and the National Guard? (Although should we be so fortunate as to experience an uprising as we go our way in the streets of Lisbon, you can be certain that the cameras of Fflytte Films will capture every moment of it.)

  Similarly, the cast. We have brought with us all the English characters, from Frederic to the Major-General, managing successfully to keep the daughters (thirteen of the creatures—even W. S. Gilbert would have quailed) from falling overboard, or falling into bed with one of the sailors. Having hastily read Gilbert’s libretto before we left, I protested to Fflytte that since all the opera’s pirates turn out to be English noblemen fallen on hard times, we needed only hire Englishmen—and could even avoid sailing to Morocco altogether (yes, we are headed there next) by sticking to the original story, which takes place entirely in Penzance. I might have convinced him, had he not remembered that he was not making a movie about The Pirates of Penzance, but a movie about a movie about The Pirates of Penzance, and because his fictional movie crew goes to Lisbon to hire its pirates, so must we. (Is your head spinning yet, Holmes?) The logical next question being, if the fictional movie crew is, in point of fact, fictional, could not we adjust chosen elements of the fiction?

  No.

  (Did I say three weeks on a warm beach? A solid month, I think, will be required.)

  In my brief hours between being hired by Hale and leaping with my valise onto the departing steamer, I had no spare minute to hie me to a bookseller, and thus my choice was limited to the three books I had brought from Sussex, supplemented by offerings from some of the film company and some well-thumbed novels from the ship’s library. As one can only bear so much Ethel M. Dell, and even I cease to discover new revelations in the Holy Writ after an unrelieved diet of it, I seized on a Defoe title that I had last read as a child.

  And regretted having done so. I’d forgotten that the book starts out with Robinson Crusoe taken prisoner by the pirates of—yes—Salé. However, Crusoe managed to escape. Eventually. Perhaps I shall be as lucky.

  In any event. This morning we docked in Lisbon, half a day late, and scurried off to a borrowed theatre with Hale’s translator, to hire us some pirates.

  Our translator is a singular gent by the name of Pessoa, neat of dress and polished of shoes. He carries about him an air of distraction, as if his mind is on Greater Things than translating for a moving picture crew. (He is a poet, which you might have guessed.) Still, he appears to know his business and seems intelligent enough to be of assistance, with the occasional faint betrayal of a sense of humour. He seemed much taken with Fflytte’s peculiar vision of what Pirate King is to be, although whether that is the humour speaking or the intelligence, I have yet to discover.

  Perhaps I shall soon know. The day draws to an end, a cup of some liquid purported to be tea has been drunk, but as yet, piratic actors have we none. In a quarter of an hour, Senhor Pessoa will return to guide us to an alternative source for these creatures (no doubt a drinking establishment of the lower sort) where a friend of his may be found. Pray with me that the would-be pirate is not also a poet.

  Still, if the den in which the fellow hides out sells local wine, it shouldn’t be too bad.

  In haste,

  R.

  Postscript: It may not have escaped your notice that this missive contains a dearth of data concerning the true reason for my presence, namely, a missing secretary and the illicit selling of cocaine and firearms. Perhaps that is due to the circumstances of my employment, which is rather that of a person attempting delicate surgery whilst standing in a hurricane.

  I shall persist.

  –R

  CHAPTER NINE

  PIRATE KING: And it is, it is a glorious thing

  To be a Pirate King!

  PESSOA STOOD IN the hotel lobby, hat on head and cigarette in hand—a commercial cigarette, this time, not hand-rolled. He was gazing out the window at a group of unloading passengers, his thoughts far away. Perhaps he was composing an ode to the taxi. The poet-translator was a thin figure in an elderly black overcoat, about five foot eight and in his middle thirties. One could see a slight fray to the collar beneath his hairline.

  He started when I said his name, causing a length of ash to drop at his feet, and hastened to press the stub out in a receptacle. He took off his hat, revealing black hair, lightly oiled and neatly divided down the centre.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

  “Life is a surprise, is it not?” he said. His accent was neither British nor purely Portuguese, but shaped by the British school that his curriculum vitae said he had attended during his formative years in South Africa. His owl-like spectacles could not hide the attentive gaze or the gleam of humour, no more than the brief triangle of moustache could hide the slightly drawn-in purse of his lips. Everything about him was watchful rather than outgoing, although the previous day’s pristine but slightly out-of-date neck-tie had been replaced by a tidy if well-worn bow tie, suggesting a minute relaxation of standards. His overcoat, hat, suit, and shoes were those he had worn the previous day, brushed and polished.

  This was a man with pride, if little money.

  “If we’re fortunate, life will not inflict on us too many more surprises,” I replied. “You haven’t seen either of the others?”

  “Not yet. I have only been here a few minutes.”

  Long enough to burn down one cigarette. “Well, we could be waiting some time. Shall we sit down and have a drink?”

/>   Pessoa seemed to know the hotel as well as he knew the rest of the city, and led me to a small table with a view of the lobby. He waited until I was seated before he placed his hat on a chair and prepared to sit, then paused to remove a folded magazine from his overcoat pocket. This he put with rather elaborate casualness on the table before gathering his overcoat tails and lowering himself to the chair.

  The gesture was too off-hand to be anything but self-deprecation, like a man accidentally letting drop the photograph of a first-born son. I stretched out a hand, asking, “May I?”

  “Oh, it is nothing,” he said, predictably. “A small publication some of us started up recently.”

  Athena, it was called, a literary journal, handsomely produced. Although it seemed to be in Portuguese, I opened it with respectful hands. To my surprise, it did not appear that any of the poems had been written by Pessoa, merely an essay.

  “You’re the editor?” I asked. “I was told you wrote poetry yourself.”

  “I am. And yes, in a manner of speaking, I have several poems.” He laid a nicotine-stained finger beside a name, then another, and another. And a fourth.

  “Pseudonyms,” I commented. It was one way to add literary credibility to what would otherwise look like a single man’s collected verse.

  But he corrected me. “Heteronyms, rather. Reis and de Campos are not Pessoa, but their own men, with their own history, style, opinions. About Caeiro I am sometimes not so certain,” he mused.

  I did not permit my gaze to come up from the page; only Holmes would have detected the minuscule raise of an eyebrow. However, silence encourages elucidation.

  “To lie is to know one’s self. I see in Pessoa a living drama, but divided into people rather than acts,” he told me. “To some extent, all men are thus: The modern belief in the individual is an illusion.”

  To hear that Pessoa’s alternate personas had their roots in Modernist philosophy rather than psychological aberration came as something of a relief. Still, I couldn’t help suggesting, “I shouldn’t mention that to Mr Fflytte, if I were you. He’s pretty dedicated to individual statement.”