The Ordinary Seaman (12 page)

The pilot was a young woman. He actually gasped. And she smiled at him disapprovingly, as if she knew what he’d been thinking back there in the wheelhouse. This really cute Japanese girl, just adorable, sexy face! Her hair short like this, just under her ears, the long nape of her neck deliciously bare. She was even wearing a black necktie. Yoriko was her name. Only twenty-four. A capitán’s daughter, her father now retired from merchant ships and working as a pilot himself. I shit you not, güeyes. Yoriko had wanted to be a ship capitán too, studied in England, graduated from the world’s best nautical academy. But it’s still hard for a woman to become a shipmaster; there are only a few in all the world! Though she’d passed all exams, was technically Capitán Yoriko. Her father had gotten her into the pilots’ association, the pay was great, better even than what most shipmasters make, and she was playing in a rock band too. Do you like sports? she asked. No, I hate sports. Do you like rock and roll? Uh-huh, I certainly do. You’re young to be a master. You’re young to be a harbor pilot. She pulled a tangerine from her pocket, wrapped in a white napkin. They shared it. Did you see any whales? she asked. No, not this trip. Hombre, you know? It was just in the air, they both knew. This rapidly accelerating and naughty air of infatuation. There was no one in the wheelhouse but the helmsman and el tercero, sleeping at the charts table—but el Capitán, already fantasizing about what might be about to happen, went and slid the door shut anyway. You know, he’s a believer in fidelity, he doesn’t mess around on his wife. And he’ll tell them all something, he’s not really
very good at sex. Don’t laugh, he’s serious, how many of you think you’re really good at it anyway? He enjoys
thinking
about sex, can easily spend a whole day in bed like when he has the grippe or something doing absolutely nothing but
thinking
about sex, but when he actually has to do it?—well, hardly ever, güeyes. But el Capitán and his wife love each other, so it’s different. But whenever he’s with anyone else he feels a certain insecurity, always thinks he can see in her face that she’s thinking of someone who does it much better. He’s kind of repressed, is what it is. Let’s say he’s just another repressed pervert, a stress on the repressed, OK? Oh, you don’t believe! His limbs are too long, takes his blood too long to get from one end of him to the other, maybe that’s what it is. So he doesn’t move around much. It takes him a long time to get hot. His hands are always cold, they don’t like that. Go ahead, pinche güeyes, laugh! He’s not ashamed of it. But there on the wing, el Capitán began to kiss Capitán Yoriko. Unzipped her windbreaker, undid her tie, unbuttoned her shirt. She undid his belt. Blew him awhile. Hombre! Pulled her own jeans down wriggling. They sank to the floor of the wing. Wrestled around pulling off boots. Right there, they did it. In short, fucking great, her on top, him looking up at her face, and the stars …—But short. Spontaneity, romance, and lust all in one rocket booster leaving one short vapor trail in the sky. Done. She lay on top of him a long time, though, whispering and nibbling. Finally got up without a word, pulled on her pants, her boots. He could have gone to sleep right there. But he got up too, went into the wheelhouse, brewed a pot of coffee. When he came out with the coffee, it was as if nothing had happened; they sipped the coffee, smoked, leaned against the bridge wing’s flank, talked ship talk a bit. He figured she hadn’t liked it as much as he had after all. Oh well, what else was new? He’d treasure the memory anyway, always be grateful to Capitán Yoriko the harbor pilot. It was dawn before the ship was ready to move, when he turned the ship over to Yoriko and she expertly guided the
Seal Queen
through the channel, calling out commands in her lisping and sophisticated, sweet voice. And when the pilot’s boat came out to pick her up, she went down, told them she’d be staying onboard, came back up into the wheelhouse, and stood
beside el Capitán, just her arm lightly touching his. Softly told him she had the next two days off. A miracle. They hardly left his capitán’s quarters except to dine one night in the port, rented some Japanese porno for his VCR, bought wine—that’s right, Japanese porno, muy sofisticado y sucio, güeyes. Had pizza and sushi delivered to the ship. Fell in love with her, he most definitely did fall in love with her. Promised to see her again. Never did, of course. Bueno, así fue, caballeros, Capitán Yoriko, qué mujer! Totally unforgettable couple of days, really. Well, you know how it is, he’s married. Loves his wife. Loves her. Absolutely loves her.

Capitán Elias, with a funny, almost rueful twist to his lips and a shy-seeming softness in his eyes, stiffly basked in smiles warm with alcohol and astonished admiration—even Bernardo, who’d always known el Capitán was perverse but had never suspected a timid perversity that could be revealed so ingratiatingly, felt oddly won over by his revelations and story. And though Elias had told his story in Spanish, Mark, swaying slightly, approached him with his hand out, and el Capitán lightly clapped his own hand down on it.

“Yoriko, huh?” said Mark, and he chuckled.

“Yoriko,” said Capitán Elias, with a nod.

“Brill, huh?”

“Definitely brill, Mark.”

“Fucking-A, Elias! You’re too much!” el Primero grinned drunkenly, and el Capitán suddenly scowled and turned away.

Then Bernardo told his story about being on a ship sailing from Istanbul carrying, among its cargo, hundreds of crates packed with bagged, red-dyed pistachio nuts. “Chavalones, the crew couldn’t keep their hands off those pistachios. The whole crew addicted! Sneaking down into the hold at every chance, ripping open crates and bags, stuffing their pockets with pistachios. All these marineros macho going around all day with their fingers and lips colored bright pink with pistachio dye!”

Mark loved that story more than anyone else, laughed until he had to go and lean sluggishly against the bulkhead, eyes squeezed shut, laughing as if surrendering to an invincible tickler.

Later Esteban looked up and saw Mark drunkenly swaying, grinning goofily at Bernardo, and shouting, yet again, “Pink lips and fingers! Muy funny, man!” Esteban took a drink from his warmed beer. Cebo was using a broom to sweep water out the mess door. El Capitán and others were gathered now around El Tinieblas, who’d taken off his shirt and was showing off and telling about his prison tattoos; from where Esteban sat, in the umbral corner outside the lamp’s dim, coppery glow, he could see a Mickey Mouse waving a white-gloved hand from the dark, thin flank just under El Tinieblas’s rib cage, among all the other images and symbols tattooed all over him. And José Mateo pulling up his shirt to show the marinero tattoo on his chest: helmsman at the spoked wheel, Jesucristo with one hand on the helmsman’s shoulder and pointing the way ahead with his other.

And Esteban went back to thinking about la Marta and the horrible day a few months ago when he’d taken a bus from Corinto to León for the Juventud Sandinista commemoration in front of her house on the first anniversary of her death. Marta Llardent—
Presente!
Honor to the revolution’s immortal dead. Verdad? Ni verga. La Marta. There was a small band of musicians in green fatigues and black gloves marching up and down in front of her house, and a girl in a silvery drum majorette’s uniform, her baton clumsily twirled in black-gloved fingers too, and a bass drummer who took big, high steps and pounded out the rhythm and turned smartly on his heel in the steamy mud to march yet again past the big pink stucco house which took up half the block. Marta and Amalia’s parents and little brother Camilo didn’t even come out to watch, windows shuttered behind iron bars, door closed; up and down the uniformed musicians marched. And then, at the end of her street, at the muddy edge of a grassy lot with some tall jicaro trees in it—parakeets teeming in upper branches, which shone lollipop green in the last light of the sun evaporating into a graying sky; the excremental stench of split-open jicaros rotting on the ground—they planted a small boulder painted red and black,
MARTA LLARDENT
in white,
BON
77-65, her volunteer battalion, and the date, there to remain for ever and ever, like an infected eye staring up at the sky, open to sun and rain, pissing dogs and drunks. Her sister still vegetating in the military hospital in
Managua a year later, though soon to be sent to Cuba for more operations, rehabilitation. Her parents, who wouldn’t come out or watch and who had no interest in the boulder; they would have been my in-laws, who knows, maybe they’d even be abuelos by now. We’d be living in León, I was going to try to start university, and she was going to work and finish her studies part-time … Y qué? Speak to me, Martita … What am I supposed to feel? What do I owe you? Why this nothing inside?

And then the man on the radio said, “Nicaragua …” Esteban stayed hidden in his own thoughts at first, as if it was himself who’d spoken. But then he heard “Nicaragua” again: the man on the radio was saying that despite the Sapula agreement and the cease-fire, both sides were quibbling over terms and supposed violations, and then he heard a short burst of nasal-fulminating English, the U.S. president, quickly drowned out by Spanish translation requesting full renewed-funding-arming-training of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters. Esteban saw Capitán Elias’s long legs suddenly standing in front of him, and looked up and saw El Barbie poised behind el Capitán’s shoulder, still with a drink in each hand, his chubby, small-eared bat’s face, his eyes blearily alert, a queer, gaping dog grin, and the other Nicaraguans coming over, drawn to Nicaragua on the radio. Capitán Elias shouted, “That fucking idiot! Wants to start the war up again. I don’t see why we can’t leave Nicara-goo-wah alone. Such a fucking tiny country!” And then everyone was talking all at once, the usual mierda: the viejo was saying he didn’t approve of the war but the revolution a shitty betrayal. And el Capitán was loudly asserting that the United States caused the betrayal of the revolution’s ideals by suffocating it with an illegal war, saying, “That’s the problem with fucking Americans, can’t deal with being an imperial power and so they fucking deny they are one, just don’ fucking want to know, do they?” And now el Capitán looking down at Esteban again and saying that back in ’79 during the insurrection against Somoza he’d really wanted to join the Sandinista International Brigades fighting on the Southern Front but he’d had a business in the Amazon going, and then he said, “You were a soldier, Esteban? Is it true you were right in the middle of it?” I’m not going to say a word, thought Esteban, looking
up at the fishy underside of el Capitán’s chin, but he nodded anyway. “I’m honored to have you onboard, Esteban,” said el Capitán. “Truly, I am. You muchachos kicked culo on an army backed and trained and led by the greatest military power on earth!” Sí pues, the viejo was saying, the cubs sent to do all the fighting are fine chavalitos, both sides full of wonderful young people fighting for democracy, so then why is there a war if la contra are for democracy and the Sandinistas are for democracy? How can there be this war, starving everyone who doesn’t fight, giving business only to the coffin builders? Because the leaders on both sides are liars, hypocrites, traitors, and puppets! “Do you feel betrayed, Esteban?” asked Capitán Elias. “No, señor,” said Esteban. He lived, didn’t he? Sí pues,
kicked culo,
so they say. It’s over. Came home to shitty ration cards and no work and his bocón uncles and his mother boiling shark bones or crab shells for caldo and moldy Polish potatoes—and democracy. “Wasn’t it la Revolución that taught you to read, Esteban?” Chocho, este capitán. “I went to school,” said Esteban, hitching his shoulders. Go outside and get some air even if it’s still raining, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. And El Barbie saying, “You can’t talk about politics with a piri, mi Capitán. He was just another brainwashed, rabid dog. That’s what the communists do, isn’t that true, Capitán?”

“Comemierda,” said Esteban listlessly. Eat shit, Barbie.

“Come muchísima mierda, Barbie,” said Panzón, jovially-clumsily clapping the new bosun on the back.

“Oiga, mi purser, it was all fine with me, all those luscious young Nicaraguan whores flooding into Honduras.” And Barbie threw back his head, laughed up into the air like a whale.

“Put you mother out of work, pendejo.” Roque Balboa giggled.

And everyone laughing. And the group finally trudging away. And Esteban already chewing his gritty thumbnail until cold sparks shot through his teeth. Before turning away Capitán Elias put his big hand down on his head, ruffled his hair. Comemierda, Capitán …

Now what’s going on? Howls of laughter. Something about a drinking game El Barbie used to play back in La Cieba. Some of the crew lying, sitting on the floor. So many staggering around it looked like real rough seas. Pínpoyo stumbling out the door to vomit. El Barbie
almost fell down pulling the butane stove off the table, and now Barbie lining Oreo cookies along the edge of the table. “Rompe la galleta, mi Capi!”

El Capitán protesting, “No no, Barbie, we have to go now.”

And Mark slurring, “What? What’s going on?” while El Barbie explained about breaking the cookie. “What?”

“With your dick, Mark,” said Capitán Elias. “The game is called Break the Cookie.”

El Barbie standing unsteadily over the table undoing his fly, pulling out his pija, shouting, “Winner gets the last beer!”

And he leaned against the table with his pija in his hand, waggled it up and down as if taking aim, closed his eyes, opened them again, and then he forcefully slapped it down onto an Oreo cookie and the cookie jumped in the air but didn’t break, El Barbie shrieked, with hilarity or pain, spun away, and barely got out the words “Your turn, mi Capitán!”

“No fucking way,” he answered.

And then this happened: Mark moving towards the table as if wading against a waist-high river current, undoing his pants, pulling it out, expression strenuously wide eyed with brutish concentration, and he thwacked his doughy pene down hard onto the table, missed the cookie completely, and stumbled backwards, two, three crumpling steps, and landed on his ass and then lay back with his arms out laughing.