Algren at Sea (67 page)

The
ayah
came crawling toward her on her belly, but Martha ignored her, joggling the baby in her arms. She paced up and down, strode to the bookcase and, with one hand demonstrating the enormity of the old woman's crime, shook the lower shelves angrily—and down they came with a louder crash than the one the old
ayah
had caused. In this fresh plunge every record, that had not fallen in the first fall, was smashed utterly.

And the
ayah,
as though sure now she must be responsible for
all
the bookshelves in the world, emitted a howl like a terrified child. She clutched, in her misery, at the hem of Martha's robe and Martha slapped her off so forcefully I felt I myself had been struck.

The old woman lay howling face-down in the rug.

“She's honest. You said so yourself,” I reminded Martha.

Martha didn't seem to hear.

“She's too old to get work,” I insisted, “she'll die in the streets.”

“Let her die,” Martha decided.

In the morning the
ayah
was gone. Anna would be pleased, I knew.

It was time for me to leave as well.

So farewell to Ezekiel's and Ezekiel's creatures: goodbye to slicky-boy mackers with paralyzed mugs—may their ricepaddy angels all turn out to be carhops.

Good fortune for keeps to old ruined customs-men asweat in the noon bazaars: may police never entrap him in his Anglo-Indian home. And farewell to slipper-sloppering snitch-on-Papa girlfinks: may they wind up in such cages as have room for one more.

Goodbye to all Mama-sans of low-voltage ports whose girls sell their clothes when no ship comes to dock. Farewell and soft blessings on all mascaraed ghosts who subsist on green ladydrinks along old Ho-Phang Road.

Farewell to the flares of Kamathipura and its sixty-watt night-bulbs burning all in a row. May all cockeyed whores, the whole wide world around, find rest under lamps that lean each to each.

Farewell to poor girls who put up with everything: and to upside-down tightwire walkers who wind up on all fours in fly-buzzing bars.

Good riddance to all cheesified, praise-me-and-I'll praise-you bone-deep begrudgers, whittling their words to gain six more floppy-hats at the next lecture—small-time cross-indexing annotators: Fiedlers, Kazins, Podhoretzes, Macdonalds and such, sniffing the wind while counting the house—mere nosedrops in the nostrils of literature—screw the whole spiteburning lot.

Goodbye to all seamen whose heads are on crooked as well as to those whose heads are on straight. Goodbye to dead pursers who kept their ships out of trouble; and to radio officers, headphones clamped, who can't remember whether it was in Macao or Saigon.

Forever farewell to all mariners, beached or ashore, adrift between lonely hotel rooms and the shifting floor of the ocean's deeps.

Goodbye to all seamen who fear those deeps: yet fear the shore even more.

Goodbye to that ominous tenement—goodbye most of all and goodbye for keeps—goodbye to the woman of Assam.

Wherever she sleeps.

The
Malaysia Mail
was swinging out of the Port of Calcutta.

It was that hour when the ship, leaving the quais lighter for cargo discharged, seems heavier than ever with a weight of regret. Those short-term loves that might have been long-term; those glimpses of the Might-Have-Been that never would be now, leave officers and men alike feeling low. I needed a drink myself.

Concannon's door was open; the radio was beep-beep-jotting. But all to be seen of Sparks was two big feet, with shoes unlaced, stretched on his bunk. He opened one eye when I came in and rolled face to the wall. I helped myself to his gin, sat down and waited.

Fantasies, of having Martha with me in Chicago, came and went; in each of which she was companion and lover. Coming down one level of fantasy, she became faithful servant in a spacious house, with living quarters for herself and her son: the boy was growing up to share his mother's everlasting gratitude to the magnanimous American who had rescued them both from a life of shame, all of that. How to fit this into a sixty-a-month walkup in Chicago I hadn't quite resolved, when Concannon came awake at last.

“That was the worst one yet,” he concluded.

“You look it,” I assured him.

“I feel like it,” he acknowledged, splashing cold water across his temples. He was already beginning to get his color back.

“What's the story on Manning?” I wanted to know.

“You know as much as I do,” he told me, “a thousand watches worth fifty apiece, and twelve thousand dollars, American, in undeclared bills.”

“I didn't know about the money.”

“It's a break for him, as it turns out,” Concannon filled me in, “he'll be tried in the States instead of here.”

“You mean he's still on board?”

“Karensen got hold of the American embassy—they wouldn't let the customs cops take him off the ship. He has to face charges on the twelve thousand first. Then India can extradite him. They didn't like it one bit.”

“What becomes of the watches?”

“Customs confiscates them, then sells them at auction. The merchant who tipped them off will be allowed to get them back for a token bid.”

“Do you think the old man was in on it?”

Sparks shook his head, no. “But he'll have trouble getting another ship all the same. Drink up.”

He slipped the headphones on to indicate he had to get to work.

“Watch out you don't get the ship in trouble,” I warned him.

I glanced into the officers' lounge on the way down to the crew's quarters. Danielsen, stirring something in a cup, seemed to be waiting for me. He gave me a faint bird-like shuttering of his eyes to indicate he wanted to say something. I tried a hearty, “How's things? What's your story?”

I had to put my ear down toward his mouth to catch his answer.

It sounded like “I'm not going ashore anymore.”

“I don't blame you,” I assured him, “if I'd had a gun I would have had to shoot you.”

“I know,” he smiled weakly, “I know.”

“Has it happened before?” I asked, sitting down across from him.

He started to nod, yes. “But never aboard ship,” he assured me, “never at sea.”

There was an awkward silence.

“It's why I never go home at Christmas,” he told me, “I
always
ship out.”

“Something about Santa Claus does it?”

He shook his head. “I can drink at sea but not ashore.”

“Well,” I told him, “I thought I'd had
my
last drink, at sea or on shore, you can believe me.”

“I'm sorry,” he told me wistfully, “I apologize.”

I didn't like it. His fury had diminished, yet had not died. When the light of sanity had come back into his eyes he had
still
wanted to kill me.

What I represented to him, that he needed to kill it, I surmise, had something to do with being—or seeming to him to be—of some specially privileged order.

“Have you seen Manning?” I asked, to change the subject.

“I haven't seen him,” Danielsen told me, “the First Mate was taking care of the store when I was down there. Either Manning is ashamed to show his face or afraid to.”

“What does he have to be afraid of?”

“The men won't get a draw again until we hit Long Beach. He was using their money to buy watches. There goes Smith's funny poker game.”

I left Danielsen stirring whatever-that-was in a cup.

Cutting through the narrow Officer's Galley I had to squeeze past Smith and Captain Karensen in front of Manning's stateroom. Had either
recognized me I would have exchanged greetings. But, as both moved aside to let me pass without a word, I took it as one of those small snubs that men at work put on the man who has nothing to do but stroll idly about.

“Mister Manning!” I heard Smith call loudly as I left the galley. I continued on, down the ladder and into the crew's quarters.

Nobody was around but Bridelove and Muncie, playing call rummy for matches. Bridelove looked to be winning.

“What's our next port?” I asked him.

“The Philippines,” Bridelove informed me. “I don't know whether we'll hit Tacloban City. Probably Ilo-no and Cebu.”

“Why not Manila?”

“Not this trip,” Bridelove was certain.

Crooked-Neck Smith stood in the doorway, his head as far out on his neck as I'd ever seen it. It was really
stretching.

“Manning just killed himself,” he told us.

And turned and walked off.

Manning had been not only a scandal himself, but a cause for others to behave scandalously. The overdose he had taken had not been, necessarily, fatal. Had there been a single person aboard who cared, in the slightest degree, whether the man lived or died, he could have been saved.

Nobody had reported to the Captain that the purser hadn't shown up for duty. The Third Mate had rapped the man's door at six that morning and, receiving no answer, had informed the First Mate; who had simply dismissed the matter until ten, and had then opened the ship's store himself.

It had remained for Smith—who else?—on his customary round of making everybody's business aboard his own, to bring Karensen down to Manning's door. It had been Smith who'd broken in and dragged the man, without help, into the galley.

He'd tried mouth-to-mouth breathing, but the man's lips had turned blue even while he was trying. The Captain and the First Mate had had to carry the body down to the engine room.

There was no other place aboard to keep a corpse. Manning could not
be buried at sea because the cause of death had not been determined. Karensen could scarcely risk an investigation like that on top of the one he was already facing because of Manning's black-market operations. Beyond sending a radio cable to the next of kin, Karensen could do nothing about Manning's body until he could turn the body over to a company doctor at Tacloban City or Ilo-Ilo.

That meant keeping the body in ice for a full week.

Whether Smith volunteered or was ordered to it I wasn't told: yet he seemed the logical man for the job.

“Talk about getting the ship in trouble,” I heard Smith mourning the loss of his poker game, “I'm going to freeze the fat bastard's balls off!”

 

At first they distrusted his style. Then they distrusted his lack of politics. Then they distrusted his politics. Then they distrusted his drinking in public while they drank in secrecy. Or—worse yet—didn't drink at all. They distrusted his adventures. They distrusted his beard. Finally they distrusted his smile.

Yet they never came out with what they really distrusted. Because the big thing with them was the money; and he never went for the money. He made the money, he liked the money, he spent the money. But he never went for the money.

They had his goat, they said. Because, sooner or later, they felt sure, he'd go for the money. He bought leisure and travel and adventure and houses and boats and sporting days and easy good times. Yet he never went for the money. Had he gone for the money they would have had his goat. As long as he didn't he had theirs: because it left them with nothing to get hold of except his beard and his smile.

The big thing with him was neither the money nor yet that mystic stream of time, eternal and serene; nor yet those long beautiful islands. Nor yet the changeless and changeful seas.

He was the historian who noted how many letters littered the field where the Austrian dead lay face-down in the sun with their hip pockets emptied: and he was the Austrian facedown in the sun. He was the English girl dreaming herself dead in an Italian rain. He was the advance man with purple wounds from elbow to wrist hiding beneath the sheets in a cheap hotel. He was the chronicler of mules with their forelegs broken drowning in the port of Smyrna.