The Ordinary Seaman (32 page)

Esteban scowls at him, as if to say, You again?

And Bernardo thinks, Esteban doesn’t realize this is just El Barbie’s way, that actually Barbie really wants Esteban’s friendship now, but it’s just his way.

“Why don’t you bring something back, fucking huevón,” says Esteban. “I’m not doing that anymore, güey. So far, I’ve been lucky. What if the police catch me, eh? They’ll beat me to a pulp.”

Güey? And before El Barbie can answer, though he’s glowering and puffing himself up and trying to think of something that will no doubt be provocative, just then El Faro excitedly says: “El Buzo and Tostado brought something back. Eight dollars! They sold the Parcheesi!”

Esteban’s face falls. “Qué?” he says. And honestly, the chavalito looks like he doesn’t know whether to cry or just go ahead and punch Tomaso Tostado, who has already started telling about his and El Buzo’s adventure today—

“Those weren’t yours to sell,” says Esteban.

And now Tostado looks upset, and it’s his turn to exclaim, “Qué? What in putas are you saying, ’mano.”

And El Barbie laughingly mutters, “Dé a verga. What a piri.”

“Those were mine,” says Esteban.

And Bernardo cringes with dismay.

Tomaso Tostado puts out his hands, looks around at the others, and says, “Esteban, qué le pasa? We’re all in this together—”

“Together! But I’m the one who does everything.”

“Sos un comemierda, de veras.” El Barbie sneers. “One week of activity after sucking your thumb for four months. And who covers for you when you sleep all day while we work, eh, Piri?”

“You ever call me that again, I’ll kill you, I swear it—”

“Come mierda, Piri.” After all, what does El Barbie have to fear? He’s bigger, physically stronger—

But Esteban charges him, and El Barbie is up; there is a flurry of punches and kicks while everybody else except Bernardo jumps in shouting, wrestling the two fighters apart, while Bernardo just sits there feeling helplessly dismayed. But no one gets hurt very badly, there’s no blood this time, they’re pulled apart, both of them panting heavily. But,
Dios mío, look at that!—that chavalote El Barbie has tears in his reddening eyes, tears running down his grimy cheeks. He can’t even talk, he’s trying to say something but he can’t even get out the words. And Esteban is glaring around at everyone, making those sniffling, angry otter sounds through his nose. And El Barbie, his voice quavering, choking on emotion and rage, his massive chest heaving up and down, finally begins to speak:

“Piri, sos un hijueputa, sos un cabrón. And I am too, I know. Basically, I respect you. But the differences between you and me are many. And these are the differences.
One,
I’m not stuck-up. Two, I believe in God. Three, I can take a joke. Vos, you can’t!” and El Barbie is overwhelmed with emotion, he can’t speak, he looks down at his shoes while everyone looks at him with bewilderment, except for Esteban, standing there looking as blank as if he hasn’t heard any of it anyway. El Tinieblas mutters some words of encouragement, lays his hand on El Barbie’s shoulder, and Barbie shrugs it off.

“Four,” says El Barbie, “vos, number four is Tostadito’s been saying for days that he thinks we should sell those chunches, and you were just ignoring him, which is what I meant by stuck-up. And number five, vos, piri hijo de puta—”

“Ya, Barbie, that’s enough,” says Bernardo, slowly getting to his feet. “Carajo! Stop all this craziness!”

“Vos, what’s number five?” says Esteban calmly, staring sadly at Barbie. “I want to hear this.”

“The fifth way we’re different, vos, is I didn’t break the hand off the clock.”

Panzón says, “Vos, Barbie, Esteban didn’t break the clock.”

“Who’ll ever know, hombre? But I think he did.” Now El Barbie grins. “Oiga, Estebanito. Let’s make a pact. You treat me with respect from now on, I’ll do the same to you. But don’t ever tell me I can’t say something, because you can fucking be sure that then I will. And the next time we fight, I’ll kick your fucking culo in.”

“Bueno,” says Esteban indifferently. He steps forward and shakes El Barbie’s hand.

It doesn’t seem that El Barbie’s speech has had quite the effect he intended; he seems instantly plunged into a brooding gloom.

Bernardo says, “Chavalos, we can’t have these kinds of disagreements. You were wrong, Esteban, to react that way about Tomaso and Buzo selling those things.”

Esteban nods. “I’m sorry,” he says. “So how much money did we get?”

“Eight dollars,” says Tomaso Tostado.

“Está bien.” He shrugs. “Excuse me. I’m tired.” And he turns and walks off to his cabin.

And before El Barbie can say anything, Bernardo says, “Of course he’s tired. He’s been up all night. And he feels bad, because he didn’t find anything to bring back. It’s time to start the dinner fire.”

“The menu tonight, gallos,” croaks José Mateo, “is sardines and rice.”

When Bernardo comes into the cabin, he’s surprised to see Esteban wide awake, lying in bed with his hands clasped behind his head, smiling at the ceiling.

“Un centavito for your thoughts.”

Esteban glancingly grimaces and looks back up at the ceiling, his smile gone. “I was thinking what a good thing it would be to put rat poison in everyone’s sardines.”

“I’d rather use it on the rats, if we had such poison.”

“Then you and I could live here, fix it up, move upstairs, take steam baths, it would be like having our own mansion de Playboy, no?”

“El Capitán and the owner might have something to say about that.”

“Poison them too. Malditos.”

“De veras, chico. People who know what it’s like to kill shouldn’t joke about it. Somehow it never sounds funny.”

Esteban says,
tch,
with his tongue.

Claro, Bernardo knows he sentimentalizes Esteban, thinks of him as youthfully pure hearted, even innocent, always forgetting that not so
long ago he was a baby-breathed military killer. Isn’t it true that those who kill, even in war, become dead inside too, at least in certain ways? Maybe that’s why the chavalo has so little fear, has revealed himself to be such a blithely intrepid felon, because he feels dead already. Though he never talks about it; just once, when he told that barbaric story about the German dog. He’s never even been in love, thinks Bernardo. That’s the saddest thing. Has never even alluded to ever having felt the elation or sorrow or rage of love—

“I know I acted like a pendejo out there,” Esteban is saying. “But I was planning to sell those things, those Parcheesi, myself, to get the money for a haircut.”

“Ah.”

Bernardo goes to the porthole and pulls it shut, a rather pointless gesture, given its broken pane.

“We should find a way to fix this,” he says, “now that the nights are getting cold.”

“I met somebody today who works in a beauty salon,” says Esteban. “It’s unisex.”

“Unisex?”

“That means it doesn’t matter what sex you are, they still cut your hair.”

“Where was this place?”

“In a part of Brooklyn where all the signs are in Spanish. I think a lot of Mexicanos live there.”

“Pues, you see? Didn’t I tell you? I bet you can find a job there just like that—” He snaps his fingers.

“Maybe. But not looking like this. That’s the point. She said a haircut would cost me ten dollars.”

“She’s trying to rob you. Was she pretty?”

“No. Pues, maybe. Y qué?”

“Young?”

“She looks young.”

“Vos, then it shouldn’t be a problem. Ahhh, Esteban.” He sighs. “I think you’ve missed all the lessons about how to get your way in
life. Be audacious, muchacho, charm her, flatter her, seduce her into cutting your hair for free. When you’re all cleaned up, she’ll see how handsome you are and fall in love. And that will be your entrance to Nueva York. It’ll be good for you, anyway. You’re in no position to be choosy.”

“She doesn’t cut hair,” Esteban says heatedly. “She’s the manicurist. Her boss does. His name is Gonzalo. I suppose you think I should try to seduce him? Hijueputa, güey! The things you say!”

“Why are you saying
güey?”

Esteban laughs up at the ceiling. “De veras? I caught it from her, I guess. She never shuts up and uses it twice in every sentence. Güey, you’re the one who’s been urinating in this door, güey.”

“You urinated in her door?”

“No! But that’s the first thing she said to me, I was just standing there. She’s completely horrible, a total agresiva. From then on, everything she said was a provocation.” Esteban tells Bernardo all about his encounter with Joaquina.

“Something was going on between her and that Chucho. I was supposed to believe this macho pato was there to have his hands manicured at eight in the morning? Please!”

So, this pistolito has a trigger after all! Bernardo has listened in growing astonishment.

“Chavalo, bossy, difficult women are the greatest thing on earth!” he exclaims. “Bueno, as long as they don’t overdo it. My Clarita was like that. I tell you, they only do it out of love, and they never let you fall asleep at the wheel. And after, docile women seem tepid forever. Why should it bother you that she has a lover? It’s good that she’s not a prude. You’ll have him out of the way pretty fast, if she’s already talking to you like that, already trying to take control of your life, eh?”

“Qué? She’s not trying to—puta!”

Bernardo cackles with excitement. “You don’t know what you’re in for, muchacho! Let a woman like that down, she’ll have you burning in hell. You’ll have no choice but to be a success in life. Get used to the idea, chigüín: I’d say she already owns your salary.”

Esteban is sitting up now, glaring furiously at him. “Salary? You’re really losing your mind, viejo. Chocho! And she
does
overdo it! Who wants to burn in hell?”

“Ya, ya, ándale.” Bernardo nods. “If you’re so sure. Just stay here on our barquito. Eventually, I suppose, they’ll have to deport us. Sí pues, that’s what I would do if I were your age, just wait here until somehow we get sent back. Our country has a wonderful future, sí pues. What is it your family does for money? Pilfer cargo from ships that don’t come anymore? That’s a good life.”

He lies back on the bed and listens with guarded happiness to Esteban’s infuriated breathing, his angry sputtering.

“Clara was the love of my life. But she used to overdo it too,” he says finally. “But that’s because I let her down so often. Maybe you won’t.”

“Ya! I just want a haircut! … What a pest!”

“A haircut would be good, claro.”

He lies listening to Esteban ventilating his fury.

“… Bueno. OK,” the chavalo finally mutters. “How did you let her down?”

“I was a marinero. I’d promised her when we married that I wouldn’t be anymore, but there was no other way of escaping being even poorer. The same story as always.”

“She should have understood that.”

“She was twenty years younger than me, and I only saw her once or twice a year. And gradually I became old and she, when still young—” He sighs. “Pues, you know what happened.”

“Bueno,” he says after a long while. “The sardine cans are waiting for me.”

The mood at supper is dismal. Esteban has stayed in his cabin. The crew seems to take his absence as an unjustified rebuke, sullenly chewing as if being forced to eat oily beach sand. Bernardo thinks, They have every reason to be sick of sardines and rancid rice. But it’s sustaining enough, they’re lucky to have it, often it’s the only meal of the day and usually they
eat like the nearly starving men they are. In the past, whenever Bernardo’s felt too tired or apathetic—or whenever los blacks were already on the pier—to wash the plates after supper, he’s always let it go until morning with a clear conscience, knowing he’d be leaving the rats nothing but plates licked clean. But tonight, several set their plates down on the deck still loaded with food. He stares wearily at those plates, waiting for a surge of temper to bring a stinging reproach to his lips; it doesn’t come.

“Not hungry?” he says with an arid sigh. “Then you can eat it tomorrow.”

Nobody replies.

“You don’t think I’m going to throw all that out, do you?”

“I’m saving mine for the piricuaco,” snaps El Barbie.

When Esteban comes out of the cabin, Pínpoyo has already started in on dessert, though without any sugar to sprinkle over it: scraping and peeling up pieces of el raspado with his fingers, the rice scorched to the bottom of the pot. Usually the pot is passed around, everyone gets a few pieces of crunchy, oily, charred rice. Pinpoyo looks up as Esteban approaches, smiling as he holds the smoke-blackened pot out to him. Esteban takes it and carries it to the starboard rail, sets the pot on top, and eats from it while looking out over the breakwater and the harbor night beyond; after a while, he turns and sits against the gunwale with the pot between his knees, tilting the pot towards him with one hand and reaching in with the other, scraping up raspado, licking and sucking on his fingertips. The crews listens with averted eyes to Esteban’s fingers scratching inside the pot, the sound mixed with the clack of dominoes and the rhetorical retorts of the domino players, the cracking and wheezing of the fire, the rustling of water in the cove. Finally Esteban lets the pot clang down on the deck. He mutters buenas noches and heads back towards his cabin.

Four of the crew lying in a circle on the deck, stretched out on their sides with arms curled protectively around their dominoes:

“I’m out of the shoe!” and the clack of a domino slapped down.

“Hair oil!” Clack!

“Yo no me meto con nadie!” and El Buzo slaps down a double six.

“Make the soup, cabrón!”

Bernardo gets to his feet. He picks up the rice pot and looks inside, the bottom gleaming as if scoured with a wire brush. Then he starts collecting the plates. He can’t stack them, because of the uneaten food. He picks up two, and in the darkness just beyond where one of the plates has been set down he sees a large rat wriggling up through one of the still unplated holes in the deck, watches the rat waddle up to the plate, attacking a sardine with starved frenzy. Only then does his anger finally flare; he hurls a plate towards the rat and misses it wildly, sardines and rice sliding in one clump to the deck while the plate shatters near the rail and someone shouts, “Not again with the bottles!” and the rat with sardine scurries back down through the hole. Bernardo turns, sees their astonished faces. But he doesn’t say anything, just goes back to collecting the plates, carrying those with food one at a time to the rail, using a fork to push the wasted food off, down into the water.